It's The Scariest Time of the Year

1. The Life Expectancy Party Is Over.

At least?according to a new study?in?Nature?magazine. The study, authored by a team of researchers headed by Jay Olshansky at the University of Illinois, is a fresh look at an old debate. Over the last 150 years, many countries, especially advanced economies like Japan and Spain, have seen radical increases in human life expectancy, but experts have disagreed as to whether those advances would continue or not. Some have argued that we have reached close to the limits on life expectancy (at least among a subset of successful aging countries),?as most of the major expected improvements in public and medical care have been taken, leaving biological limits as the primary risk factor for death. Others have predicted that new discoveries and advances in life-extending technologies and improved behaviors among a better educated population would lead to continued advancement in life expectancy. In this view, the majority of children born in the 21st?century could live past 100.

Olshansky has long been a life expectancy skeptic – famously taking the negative side on a bet with Steven Austad of the University of Alabama at Birmingham,?that the first 150-year-old person is alive today – and he argues in his new paper that life expectancy advances have already begun to slow significantly in recent years and likely will hit a natural limit soon. The paper projects that average life expectancy will top out at around 87 years,?and only about 15% of women and 5% of men will reach 100 years of age, even under optimal conditions. If this were 1924, those numbers would be astounding. In 2024, not so much, since some countries like Japan, South Korea,?and Switzerland are pretty much already at those figures.

The study is not the last word on the subject. Other experts, who have long been more bullish on life expectancy that Olshansky, believe that advances in preventive medicine and/or medical breakthroughs that could slow the aging process could radically change the equation. Whatever the answer, the crack reporting team of TNSB will be here in 2150 with issue number 6,630 to tell you results of the Olshansky – Austad bet.?

2. It's the Scariest Time of the Year.

Both Halloween and the Presidential election are right around the corner, and the properties around TNSB World Headquarters are dotted with campaign yard signs and various forms of spiderwebs, skeletons,?and witches. We don’t know which is spookier.

But we do know that older voters will play a critical role in the election (and perhaps a lesser role in Halloween). In the 2018 and 2022 mid-term elections, the share of voters 50+ was approximately four times that of voters under 30, (56% - 15% and 59%?- 12%, respectively). In the 2020 presidential election, the share of voters 50+ was nearly three times that of voters under 30 (53% - 18%). And?according to a 2023 AARP poll, 85% of voters say that they are highly motivated to vote in this November’s election.

It is sometimes said that less attention should be paid by campaigns to older voters since they have long established voting records that are unlikely to change, but?new polling from AARP?shows that the group that has moved the most since January is Women age 50+. In January, that group was just +3 on Biden,?but as of September, they were +12 for Harris.?This largely cancels out older men, who have been consistently +11 or +12 for Trump over the same period. If Harris wins, it may very well be due to her increasing appeal to older women voters.

It is not a given that this will hold up through November though. Older women are highly pessimistic on the economy, with eight in ten saying that they expect housing and grocery prices to get worse in the next year. Nearly two-thirds of women voters 50-plus (62%) say the current economy isn’t working for them, and 64% say they’re less financially secure than they expected.?Recent economic data has been positive?– hence the political impulse that drove Marco Rubio to call the latest positive job reports “fake”?– but unclear whether that will influence voters at this point. Either way, we’re going to have trick-or-treat on October 31 and then again on November 5.

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3. We Watch So You Don't Have To, Week 3.

Week 3 is on us and things are getting a little testier in the Bachelor Mansion. Forget Joan: she’s off in Vegas with Pascal and then horse-back riding with Jonathon. That’s all predictable, but the interesting stuff is back at the?mansion where 20 or so aging bachelors are starting to find out that communal living with lots of snoring, nocturnal trips to the bathroom,?and mooning over when will they get face time with Joan is not all that it is cracked up to be.?

To be fair, most everyone, at least on camera, seems to take the challenges of daily living with strangers reasonably well, but there are a few cracks. There are a few side-eye looks at Pascal who doesn’t?share?in the cooking or cleaning, and apparently has kicked his roommate out of their bedroom. He’s not a fan favorite at TNSB Headquarters either, so we are not terribly forgiving of his eccentricities. And Captain Kim writes a love ballad for Joan, with the hopes that all the men would sing it together, but virtually all the other bachelors take a big step backwards, leaving only Kim to go it mostly alone.?

As if the daily drama is not enough, ABC has arranged for lots and lots of largely superfluous celebrity appearances: retired footballer stars Eric Dickerson and Andre Reed lead the men in the Quaker Oats kickball challenge, and Wayne Newton shows up just in time to sing part of one song.?Also, Gerry Turner of Golden Bachelor fame pops in to dispense advice and remind us that we don’t miss the Golden Bachelor one bit.?

In the end, Joan says goodbye to Captain Kim (so much for singing), Greg and CK. And ABC promises us a strip tease show from the men in the next episode. Imagine our delight.