A few weeks ago, my wife and I got a sitter, drove into the city, and saw Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band play Madison Square Garden for nearly three hours.
Somehow I’d been alive in the United States for five decades and lived in New Jersey for going on 15 years, and yet it was my first time seeing the Boss. Now that I’m fully compliant with New Jersey law on the subject, I’m going to tell you it was worth the wait.
I’m also going to tell you — based on a study published this week — that it may have been doing something to my DNA.
Researchers at University College London recently published findings in the journal Innovation in Aging in which they analyzed survey responses and blood test data from 3,556 adults in the United Kingdom.
Their goal: Comparing how often and in how many different ways those adults engaged with arts and cultural activities — things like attending concerts, visiting museums, reading, dancing, singing, making art — against seven different biological aging clocks derived from DNA methylation patterns in participants’ blood.
The pattern was clear:
* At least three arts and cultural activities per year a year: 2% slower aging
* Monthly: 3% slower
* Weekly: 4% slower
On one of the newer clocks, people who engaged at least weekly were a full year biologically younger than infrequent participants.
The effect size was comparable to what the researchers found for physical exercise.
As lead author professor Daisy Fancourt put it: “These results demonstrate the health impact of the arts at a biological level. They provide evidence for arts and cultural engagement to be recognized as a health-promoting behavior in a similar way to exercise.”
Variety was especially important. Fancourt went on:
“Each type of arts activity has different ingredients that help health — physical, cognitive, emotional, or social stimulation. So, engaging in a diverse range of activities — just like having lots of different plants in our diets — is most beneficial.”
Of course, this doesn’t prove that going to concerts slows aging.
It’s a UK sample, drawn from the UK Household Longitudinal Study, so how directly it translates to other populations is an open question.
I mean, do people in England even like Bruce Springsteen?
Also, people who go to concerts regularly may also have other habits — more social connection, more disposable time, better baseline health — that could be doing some of the work.
Still, Steven Horvath, the UCLA geneticist who developed the epigenetic clock used in aging research, reviewed the study and told NPR he found it “very rigorous,” and that the finding of arts engagement being comparable to exercise “is particularly new to me.”
Which brings me back to the Garden.
The E Street Band’s remaining members from the 20th century — the drummer, the bassist, the guitarist, and the pianist — are all in their 70s — and they were playing ferociously, for three hours, to a packed house at Madison Square Garden.
Springsteen himself is 76.
I don’t know exactly what his habits look like off stage, but I’d guess he’s been engaging with music — as a maker, a performer, and a listener — nearly every day of his adult life.
Maybe it’s coincidence. But maybe a life built around creative engagement leaves a different physical signature than one that doesn’t.
Either way, I’m glad we got the sitter.
Other things worth knowing …
ArsTechnica: In an extremely odd case, a single 79-year-old patient was granted extraordinary early access to Eli Lilly’s powerful, still-experimental obesity drug retatrutide through the Food and Drug Administration’s “compassionate use” program—raising immediate questions if that sole patient is President Donald Trump, according to a report by Stat News. The White House, HHS, and Lilly itself did not directly answer questions about the patient’s identity.
Reuters via Yahoo Finance: The European Central Bank secured key parliamentary backing Tuesday for the launch of a digital euro, an electronic means of payment aimed at making the euro zone less reliant on U.S. credit cards at a time of fraying transatlantic relationships. Six years in the making, the ECB’s digital cash has become a more pressing issue since Donald Trump returned to the White House, amid fears that the U.S. could one day weaponize its dominance over payment networks like Visa and Mastercard.
CNN: A U.S. fighter jet pilot rescued by special forces after being shot down over Iran in April described a shocking sight before ejecting: multiple Iranian drones hovering in the air, moving as one, in a formation that resembled a jellyfish, according to four sources familiar with the matter. If the airman really saw what he described — a formation moving in unison — it would be an alarming advance in Iranian drone capabilities.
WSJ: What I Saw at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool Monday Afternoon.
NBC News, TechCrunch: A 76-year-old Texas woman, Martha Avila, is dead after a Tesla that authorities say was in autopilot mode crashed through her home. Tesla blames the driver, saying he overrode the autopilot system and crashed into the house at 73 miles an hour. The driver does not appear to have been charged with anything. (Interestingly, the rather horrifying video is posted on X.com, but sharing it seems not to work for some reason.)
NBC News: The Department of Homeland Security changed its travel guidelines for Iran’s national soccer team Monday, allowing it an extra day in Seattle ahead of its third World Cup match. The team had previously been given just 24 hours in each host city — less than any other squad — and Iran’s soccer federation had planned to file a formal complaint with FIFA.
ScienceDaily: SETI scientists aimed radio telescopes at 3I/ATLAS — the third interstellar object ever detected passing through our solar system, which was only discovered days ago — and found no signals that could indicate extraterrestrial technology, beyond human-made interference. Researchers say the absence of a signal was expected but that scanning interstellar visitors is now standard practice.
Thanks for reading. I wrote about some of this at Inc.com. See you in the comments.
2 things:
If this study is true, then Keith Richards is a prime example of the outcome. That and the fact that his body is being held together with mushrooms of the magic kind.
I was an avid concertgoer for many years. I would even travel to see the Dead. But now, there are very few musicians who are willing to keep politics out of their concerts. I'm not paying hundreds of dollars for a political rally. Music used to be the great unifier and an escape from the everyday. Now people are walking out of shows because the musicians can't seem to refrain from letting everyone know what they think. I especially love the ones from foreign countries who think they get to have an opinion on our politics while taking our money back to their country. It's on both sides, so please don't give me a rash about who is doing it.
Music is part of my life. I play it while working, I play it while showering, I play it while cooking, reading, driving, beaching, etc. I love live music and will still go to some shows, but for the ones who I know will stand up and pontificate in between songs, they're not getting my money.
I guess I'll have to settle for 2-3% instead of 4%.
Stopped going to concerts in the 90’s after I attended two that had such loud, poorly adjusted sound that it hurt my ears. Won’t mention the very drunk young men in the row behind us at one of those concerts who kept spilling their beer on my head and yelling profanities for most of the concert. I do attend musical performances in a small local theatre that holds about 200 people and the acoustics are wonderful. I think attending cultural events of any kind is good as it keeps your brain active.
The reflecting pool story is sad. There is no limit to that man’s vanity; he has already caused so many issues that one wonders how many more he can possibly create over the rest of his term.