How not to cry when I have a shampoo

Seriously, I am really good at that now.

My mom tells a story from when I was young and my grandfather asked what I hoped to learn when I started school for the first time. I told him three things:

1. How to read

2. How to speak French

3. How not to cry when I have a shampoo

Pretty good comedic timing for a 4-year-old, don’t you think?

Now, you might wonder why a kid that young, growing up in the U.S., would rank learning French as his second-most important educational goal.

Simple: my parents sometimes used French as a kind of secret code when they didn’t want me or my brothers to understand what they were saying.

They weren’t fluent, but my mom grew up in Montreal and my dad had studied French in high school—enough to get by. Much to my childhood frustration, apparently.

Fast-forward a few decades, and it turns out they might have been onto something else.

Slow the process of aging

A massive new study published in Nature Aging suggests that learning and speaking multiple languages isn’t just good for communication—it may actually help slow the biological processes of aging.

Researchers analyzed data from 86,149 people across 27 European countries.

Using artificial intelligence, they built what they call a biobehavioral aging clock—a model that estimates biological age (as opposed to chronological age) based on health and behavioral factors like hypertension, diabetes, sleep problems, sensory loss, cognitive ability, education, and physical activity.

From that, they calculated a biobehavioral age gap (BBAG), showing whether people’s bodies and behavior seemed younger or older than their chronological age.

Multilingual people, it turns out, tended to have younger “biobehavioral” ages than monolinguals. They’re 2.17 times less likely to show signs of accelerated aging, even after accounting for education, social factors, and national differences.

Put plainly, language learning and use light up parts of the brain tied to attention, memory, executive function, and social interaction—all areas that tend to weaken with age.

More languages, more benefits

Moreover, the benefits increased with each additional language.

• As study author Dr. Lucia Amoruso explained: “The protective effect was cumulative—the more languages people spoke, the greater their protection against aging-related decline.”

• Her colleague Dr. Agustín Ibáñez of Trinity College Dublin, who also directs the Latin American Brain Health Institute, added: “Language learning and use engage core brain networks related to attention, memory, and executive control—as well as social interaction—mechanisms that may reinforce resilience throughout life.”

As populations age and dementia rates rise, this research suggests that learning—or maintaining—a second or third language could be a simple, scalable way to improve both brain and body health.

Unlike many interventions, it’s free, noninvasive, and genuinely enriching. Plus, it’s relatable.

La belle langue

Personally speaking: No, my preschool didn’t have a French program.

But, I did study la belle langue in middle and high school, and I even won a few awards. Let’s just say I was a highly motivated student of the language.

These days, sad to say, French doesn’t come up often in my life: Je peux parler un peu maintenant, mais j’ai oublié beaucoup plus.

Still, I’m always pleasantly surprised when I visit France or Quebec and find it comes back—enough at least to decode what my parents might try to say to each other, anyway.

So here’s to learning languages and maybe, just maybe, turning back the passage of time. Also: to knowing how to read, and how not to cry when you wash your hair.

I’m really good at both of those.

Hey: Deux sur trois, c’est pas mal!

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7 other things

• Billionaires Michael and Susan Dell pledged $6.25 billion Tuesday to provide 25 million American children under 10 an incentive to claim new federally funded “Trump Accounts.” The historic gift has little precedent; the Dells believe it’s the largest single private commitment made to U.S. children. (AP)

• A former Honduran president convicted of helping to smuggle 400 tons of cocaine into the U.S. has been pardoned by President Trump. Separately, this week’s election of a new Honduran president is a statistical tie, with Trump’s preferred candidate leading by ~500 votes out of 2 million+ counted. Trump accused the country of “trying to change the results,” and warned that there will be “hell to pay!” (CBS News; Fox News)

• Explanation for UFO’s? More than 70 years ago, astronomers at the Palomar Observatory in California photographed several star-like flashes that appeared and vanished within an hour — years before the first satellite, Sputnik 1, was launched into orbit. New peer-reviewed research reports that these fleeting points of light, called transients, appeared on or near dates of Cold War nuclear weapons tests and coincided with a spike in historical UFO reports. (Live Science)

• Flying without a REAL ID? After Feb. 1 it will cost you $45. (Inc.com)

• The end of a tariff exemption on goods worth $800 or less has left some U.S. shoppers with an extra shipping bill that must be paid before delivery. (NYT)

• Top Gun Traders: How stock bets and crypto culture are taking over the U.S. military. (WSJ)

• Chimpanzees in the wild naturally ingest fermenting fruit that equals one to two human drinks each day, supporting the idea that alcohol exposure is not a modern human invention but an ancient primate habit. (Science Daily)

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Thanks for reading. Photo by Caleb Wright on Unsplash. I wrote about some of this before at Inc.com. See you in the comments!