Saul Newman has written a book about his Ig Nobel Prize-winning research. The book is called Morbid — Debunking Modern Longevity Science. It’s published by MIT Press. (The photo shows Newman with MIT Press’s director, Amy Brand, and the book.) Newman is a Senior Research Fellow at University College London and the University of Oxford. In 2024 he was awarded the Ig Nobel Demography Prize, for detective work to discover that many of the people famous for having the longest lives lived in places that had lousy birth-and-death recordkeeping.
This week, Newman is revealing (via social media) to the world that: “I’m being asked to promote my book, so naturally, I am going to share the most dazzling part. The index. Just the Ls. I needed an index for the copyeditor and, like P.T. Barnum in a labcoat, it turned out to be a great reflection of modern aging science.”
Here are Newman’s book’s index’s Ls:
Living people who were actually dead
in freezers, 40–41
missing or otherwise dead, 41, 52–53, 55
mummified in apartments, 41, 52
at the post office, 41
Longevity secrets
beans, 82, 86, 111
being a Ferrari GTO, 175–176, 195
bombings, 85–86
borderline alcoholism, 39, 44, 67, 75, 83–84, 87, 90, 111, 124
burning paperwork, 68, 70, 76, 85–86
castration or neutering, 215–216, 218
chocolate, 44, 67, 87
choosing not to degenerate, 76
dog chews, 130–131, 140
drinking mercury, 112
exaggerating, 76, 109–110
exercising, 90, 111, 113, 136
expensive subscriptions or certificates, 89, 90, 129
fish and chips, 37n
incest/inbreeding, 73–75, 79, 86, 111, 223
injecting the blood of the young, 136–139
landmines, 103
living in an asylum, 36–37
maggoty cheese, 85–86, 90
money and virgins, 112, 142
mountains, 73, 75
nasal spray, 154
not dying, 135–136
not exercising, 44
penis abuse, 135
pension fraud, 37, 40–41, 52, 55, 61, 95
potatoes, 82, 86, 111
poverty, 60–61, 71, 75, 96, 111
radioactive water, 85–86, 90
sexual pursuit of children, 76, 112, 134, 136, 141
smoking, 31, 44, 67, 68, 84, 87, 111
valleys, 76–77
washing in the blood of wild animals, 76n
wild, wild women, 44
yogurt, 75–77
