Time Orders Old Age to Destroy Beauty, Pompeo Batoni, circa 1746 (Wikimedia Commons). Longevity science and our yearning for extended, optimised lives is feeding a booming global industry. Researchers zap zombie cells in their labs. Biotech clinics offer epigenetic testing and cellular regeneration. Biohackers consume stacks of supplements, invest in wearables, measure their markers and boast of biological, rather than chronological, years of age. Not content with just slowing the ageing...

Brigitte Helm on set as the Machine Human in Metropolis by Fritz Lang (1927). Photo by Horst von Harbou (Wikimedia Commons). We may be heading beyond silicon technology and into an age of biocomputing, where AGI wakes up and humans are slowly but surely shunted into a netherworld of inferiority. But we’re not there yet. We’re still in the land of bots with relatively basic, though impressively speedy, processing abilities. What’s more concerning than Judgement Day, though, is our acceptance...

I’ve always admired unshakeability - the knack of being able to stay composed and centred in the face of life’s challenges. As with physical fitness, this takes more than just having a strong constitution. We need flexibility to adapt to change, and agility to manoeuvre through it. Much of our reaction to our environment and circumstance is involuntary. Our autonomic nervous system is continually shifting between two alternately dominant modes. The sympathetic nervous system (SNS) speeds our...