The Counterclockwise Experiment
4th June 2026
Picture this: eight men in their seventies arrive at a New Hampshire retreat in 1979. But something strange awaits them. The magazines are from 1959. The radio plays twenty-year-old news broadcasts. Ed Sullivan flickers on black-and-white television screens. Even the mirrors have been removed.
These men aren’t here for nostalgia therapy. Harvard psychologist Ellen Langer has something more audacious in mind. For five days, she wants them to live as if it’s 1959. Not remember it. Not discuss it. Live it.
What happened next should have revolutionized how we think about aging, health, and the stories our bodies learn to believe.
By week’s end, the men had measurably improved. Their hearing sharpened. Posture straightened. Grip strength increased. Memory and cognition perked up. Most remarkably, independent judges looking at before-and-after photographs rated the men as looking younger.
No drugs. No surgeries. No medical interventions at all.
Just a shift in context. A different story to inhabit.
Sometimes the old ways are best. I remember 1959 (back when Disney animated films were worth watching) and in many ways I prefer it to what we have today.