Three Not-So-Bad Things on Aging and Longevity
A Weekly Newsletter
There’s no denying it: we are constantly bombarded with bad news. A pandemic, climate change, inflation, war, political discord—the list goes on. Here at the Longevity Project, we understand that bad news can be enough to take years off your life, so we want to do our part (however small) to balance the scales.
At the end of the day, though, we’re realists. Good news is hard to come by, no matter how hard you look. So we’ll aim a little lower and without further ado, we are pleased to share our first weekly newsletter: Three Not-So-Bad Things on Longevity and Aging. Feel free to share with others and send us items you want to see included. With some luck, you will see this newsletter (and some more not so bad news) every Wednesday.
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January 14, 2026
Last week, we decamped from TNSB World Headquarters to Las Vegas - home of the Pinball Hall of Fame, the Bugsy Siegel Monument, and the largest BattleBot venue in the world. But we are serious people here at TNSB, so we were focused solely on our work: a weeklong dive into AgeTech at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show. Our reporting will soon be distilled into an upcoming season of the Century Lives podcast, but for those too impatient to wait, here are three things we liked at this year’s CES.
1. The Exoskeleton Revolution is Here.
There were 4,100 exhibitors at this year’s show, and it seemed like every one of them was showing off a new exoskeleton. There were exoskeletons to climb and lift, and to help you hike and ski and bike. Our take is that assistive technology like this holds significant promise to help keep us mobile and active as we age, but much of what we tried on right now is heavy, uncomfortable, difficult to wear and adjust, and ghastly expensive.
One exception to this (except for the ghastly expensive part) is the Sidekick robotic mobility assistance from Dephy. The Sidekick is a walking assistance device, meant to help people maintain practical mobility as long as possible. The assembly consists of a custom (though very ordinary looking) sneaker with a carbon fiber plate on the back, with a battery powered exoskeleton attached to the calf. Unlike other exoskeletons, it is an easy one-person job to attach the device. The Sidekick lifts your heel as you walk, with different speed levels for different tastes. In its highest “spicy” setting, I found myself easily outstripping my group without even realizing it.
At $4500, it is not something we are going to use to encourage faster movement around TNSB World Headquarters quite yet, but presumably prices will fall over time.
2. The Health Monitoring Revolution is Here.
That’s not entirely new of course, but this year, there was an incredible uptick in the number and sophistication of health monitoring devices. That’s everything from home full body scans measuring 60 biomarkers (Withing 2) to devices that target specific conditions like perimenopause (Peri Wearable) or even fall risks. Trends towards use of AI to analyze data and miniaturization stand out, as does the proliferation of devices and the increasing challenge for consumers to manage so many different, often incompatible devices.
Among our favorites was a device from Xander Kardian that uses radar to measure a suite of functions including respiration and heart rates. The Xander Kardian team told us that based on changes in heart and breathing rates, and using AI models, they can accurately predict heart failure and Urinary Tract Infections (UTIs) somewhere between three and five days before symptoms start to appear. That is sci-fi stuff, and if widely and successfully applied, could help cut down on hospital readmissions and help get timely treatment for more high-risk patients.
3. Enough With the Revolutions, We Like This Company Just For What It Is.
CES is full of gee-whiz technologies: flying cars, autonomous vehicles, and even dancing robots. But sometimes, the most straight-forward application of technology can also be the most effective and meaningful.
Such is the case with Remento, a creator of memory books and a proponent of social connection and engagement for older adults. If you sign up for Remento, each week over the course of a year, you will receive a question and a prompt from the company asking you to record a short video answering the question and describing some meaningful experience in your life. The video recording is activated by a link in the message: no app or password required. At the end of the year, the videos are aggregated, massaged through an AI writing tool, and turned into a memory book.
We particularly like the social engagement aspect of Remento, as its stated goal is to turn storytelling into a family experience by encouraging family members to contribute photos, pick and edit questions, and engage with the responses.
If we were a carnival barker, we would now say, “how much would you pay for something like this?” But we’re not carnival barkers, so we’re not going to make you guess. It’s only $99 (reduced by another $10 with a discount currently running on its website), making it only slightly more expensive than the mediocre turkey sandwiches for sale in the lobby of our hotel. In a convention filled with four, five, and occasionally six figure products, it’s a breath of fresh air.
And Finally,
...though it doesn’t fit into the AgeTech category, we just loved Cubo, an AI-assisted device to help drivers stay alert. Cubo maps the face and hands of the driver in order to recognize when the driver is looking away from the road or perhaps glancing at a phone. The device will audibly alert the driver (and passengers) if attention needs to be refocused on the road. It is quite the useful device, but in truth, it was less the invention and more the inventors that interested us: three teenagers from North Carolina (none old enough to drive) who were motivated to create Cubo after the death of a neighbor caused by a distracted driver. They were the youngest exhibitors at CES, and we can hardly wait to see what they will be exhibiting at CES 2060.
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