291 | Venki Ramakrishnan on the Biology of Death and Aging

<p>Aging and death happen to the best of us, but there are increasing efforts to do something about it. That effort requires that we have some reasonable understanding of why aging happens, and what processes are involved. You will be unsurprised to learn that it's complicated. Venki Ramakrishnan, who won the Nobel Prize for his work on the ribosome, investigates what we know about aging in his book <a href="https://www.harpercollins.com/products/why-we-die-venki-ramakrishnan?variant=41074404098082" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><em>Why We Die: The New Science of Aging and the Quest for Immortality</em></a>. We talk about aging and death, and manage to get some thoughts in about ribosomes. Venki and many other great communicators will be speaking at <a href="https://newscientist.com/pr" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">New Scientist Live</a>, which takes place at ExCeL London between 12 - 14 October 2024, and is also streamed live as well as on-demand.</p> <p>S<em>upport Mindscape on </em><a href="https://www.patreon.com/seanmcarroll" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><em>Patreon</em></a><em>.</em></p> <p>Blog post with transcript: <a href="https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2024/09/30/291-venki-ramakrishnan-on-the-biology-of-death-and-aging/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2024/09/30/291-venki-ramakrishnan-on-the-biology-of-death-and-aging/</a></p> <p>Venkatraman (Venki) Ramakrishnan received his Ph.D. in physics from Ohio University. He is currently Group Leader at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge, England, and is a Fellow of Trinity College. He previously served as President of the Royal Society of London. He shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work uncovering the structure of the ribosome.</p> <ul> <li><a href="https://www2.mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk/groups/ribo/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Lab web page</a></li> <li><a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/chemistry/2009/ramakrishnan/facts/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Nobel citation</a></li> <li><a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=oTI5BjIAAAAJ&amp;hl=en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Google scholar publications</a></li> <li><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venki_Ramakrishnan" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Wikipedia</a></li> <li><a href="https://www.amazon.com/stores/Venki-Ramakrishnan/author/B07G3FJ93V" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Amazon author page</a></li> </ul> <p><br /></p>