What a 'consequence of success' means for life expectancy

The Briefing

Headlines: Australia’s fertility rate hits record low, 50 aid trucks have entered the north of Gaza, ACT Opposition Leader apologises for flipping the bird at journalist and Jerry Seinfeld walks back comments about the left ruining comedy.

Deep Dive: With the speed at which technology and medicine is developing – electric cars, rockets to Mars, new and improved vaccines – you might have started imagining a world where humans might find a way to live forever, or at least for a very, very long time.

But the commonly held idea that the life expectancy of humans is only going to keep increasing is false, according to new analysis. In fact, most kids born today won’t make it to 100.

Professor Jay Olshansky analysed life and death data from the last 34 years – and he thinks we’ve reached the peak of how long people can live. On today’s episode of The Briefing, Sacha Barbour Gatt speaks with the epidemiology professor about his research, and why not living to 100 could actually be a good thing.

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1. The Briefing Headlines Oct 17 (00:00:00)

2. The Briefing Topic (00:09:31)