Mandy Oaklander | August 27, 2026

This week, I’ve loved watching old clips of Dolly Parton. After her death on Tuesday, these have been circling social media, and she looks marvelous in each one. Where did she get that megawatt glow? That endless energy?

It didn’t come from the gym. My colleague Angela Haupt told me that Parton hated traditional exercise—a fact that “always stuck with me, because, same,” Angela says.

But that doesn’t mean Parton wasn’t physically active. She preferred doing her signature “rejoicing exercises,” which Angela details in her new piece for TIME. Turns out, we could all learn a little something from Parton’s views on exercise.

TODAY’S TOPICS

No mice allowed
An influx of Ebola vaccines
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QUICK CHAT

Moving longevity research into humans

Potential therapies to extend health span and lifespan abound, and intriguing results from animal models often make headlines. But testing whether they work in people is another story.

Dr. Andrea Maier, a geroscientist at the National University of Singapore and one of TIME’s Longevity Leaders, recently opened a new clinical trial center to help bridge the gap. I recently spoke with her about her work. —Veronique Greenwood, Staff Writer

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Carol Yepes/Getty Images

Tell me about what makes the National University of Singapore Academy for Healthy Longevity unusual.

Our focus is on translating the evidence from geroscience from animal models into humans. We have lots of collaborators doing animal models, but we only touch humans, no mice. We do a precision approach to find out which intervention is working and for whom. We very often do that in randomized control trials.

The Academy is hugely building the infrastructure for clinical implementation. We have had a longevity clinic at a publicly funded hospital for three years now. We have the entire pipeline ready, at least on paper, to bring it into the public-health structures.

What’s a major barrier to getting longevity insights, when they arrive, into broader application?

Here’s a huge hiccup: Nobody is educated to be a healthy longevity medicine physician. It doesn't exist. We don't have regulation, we don't have education, we don't have the structures to implement whatever we are going to find. Your GP doesn't know what I'm talking about. So that’s a big gap.

We are starting now to offer a master’s in healthy longevity. We need individuals who are actually trained, and for me, training means that it has to be evidence-based and has to acknowledge the latest technologies, the latest evidence, because this is so fast-moving.

Any studies you’re particularly excited about right now?

We just did a feasibility study to give nutraceuticals plus exercise plus exergaming cognitive training [which combines physical activity with interactive digital games] to individuals based on their biomarkers of aging. We showed with the individualized therapeutics that we were able to increase muscle mass and muscle strength, and we usually increase cognition. Also, immune markers were improving in individuals just after four to eight weeks.

That gives us the opportunity to do a randomized control trial. We’ve fine-tuned what we are giving to individuals, so we are tailoring the intervention to the needs and to the assumptions we have about how that nutraceutical or that molecule is working.

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BIG NUMBER

70,000

The number of doses of the Ebola vaccine that UNICEF is delivering to Democratic Republic of Congo to treat the current outbreak.

The vaccines target the Zaire strain of Ebola, which is different from the Bundibugyo strain causing infections. But the doses will be used in a study to better understand whether they can help people infected with either strain. —Alice Park, Senior Correspondent

SOURCE: UNICEF

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