We're all living longer than ever before and there's never been so much pressure to spend our lives looking and feeling young. How does this affect our 21st century experience of ageing?

Watch the video trailer here

A Wrinkle in Time video trailer, filmed by Diego Opatowski, edited by Cole Eastham-Farrelly.

With the release of the first episode of the A Wrinkle in Time podcast, Noelle McCarthy reflects on what she's learnt while making the series.

One of the nicer things was feeling - at the tender age of 37- relatively unqualified to tackle the subject of ageing. So I asked everyone I could think of to tell me about it.

Many of the experts - scientists, medical professionals and health-care workers all had thoughtful and provocative things to say about the cultural, social and emotional aspects of getting older. The academics, including philosophers and historians were helpful in explaining possible reasons why there's so much pressure on us to maintain our youthful vigour in an era of increasing longevity.

But the great thing about ageing is that it happens to all of us, so everyone has an opinion on the subject. There are some well-known personalities in this series: Buck Shelford, US news anchor Tom Brokaw, former MP Winnie Laban, activist Helen Kelly and New Zealand Poet Laureate CK Stead, but I also interviewed friends, colleagues, people who answered online adverts, friends grandparents, residents of rest homes. Anyone really. For the past six months, ageing was my preferred conversation topic.

That didn't always go down well at parties. We don't live in a culture that permits us to grow old without a struggle, and to a certain extent, it's no wonder. As Bette Davis said "old age ain't no place for sissies".

Wrinkles, grey hairs, slowness. Cancer, dementia, osteoporosis. The physical consequences of getting older may not pretty, but there's no mileage in minimising them, nor is there any point in pretending that it's not in the post for us. And we all know what's waiting at the end of the process.

The researchers I spoke to are on the cusp of major anti-ageing breakthroughs, but there's still no cure for mortality. Like ageing, death is an inevitable part of being human. This is something of a downer. A series about gradual decline and increasing physical difficulties isn't the most appealing prospect for listeners. There were a few weeks there when I wondered how to do this…

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How do we want to age? And how much control will we have over the process? Noelle McCarthy visits the Dunedin Study, and finds out why the most accurate measure of your age might not necessarily be your birthday.

Noelle McCarthy finds out her biological age: watch the video here

Video filmed and edited by Diego Opatowski.

How do we want to age? And how much control will we have over the process? Noelle McCarthy visits the Dunedin Study, and finds out why the most accurate measure of your age might not necessarily be your birthday.

Potentially, we all have control over how we age.

Genetics plays a part, but there are other important factors: whether you get enough sleep, what you eat and how much exercise you do.

The Dunedin Study has been tracking everyone born between April 1, 1972 and March 31,1973 at the city's Queen Mary Maternity Hospital. When the 954 subjects were aged 38, they tested them all to find out their biological age.

Biological age was calculated based on 18 measurements, including blood sugar and cholesterol levels, lung function, blood pressure, dental health, body mass index, waist circumference. The researchers also looked at chromosomes, measuring the length of protective caps called telomeres - because shorter telomeres are associated with ageing.

The study found that individuals who were ageing more rapidly were less physically able, showed cognitive decline and brain ageing, self-reported worse health and looked older.

Measured biological ageing in young adults can be used to identify causes of ageing and be used to evaluate therapies to slow the ageing process, the researchers say.

"We've all got options, strategies we can bring to bear that will make things better or longer," says Professor Richie Poulton, who directs the study.

"Nothing is deterministic - it's not written in stone, and the faster we can get away from that deterministic thinking about it being written in stone, the better."

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How do our brains change as we get older? Noelle finds out, with the help of a neuroscientist, a centenarian, and a Poet Laureate.

Noelle McCarthy interviews Professor Richard Faull: watch the video here

Video filmed and edited by Diego Opatowski.

How do our brains change as we get older? Noelle McCarthy finds out, with the help of a neuroscientist, a centenarian, and a Poet Laureate.

CK Stead's writing career has continued unimpeded by age. Now 83, and having established himself as one of our best-known critics and most successful novelists, he's New Zealand's current Poet Laureate.

"I still seem able to write fiction and nonfiction. I hope if there is a decline, it'll be clear to me, or clear to someone else who will tell me, but so far I can't really detect it."

But he has noticed some change.

"Sometimes now, when I read a novel by Henry James, which when I was young I would have relished, and read easily, I'm now conscious of difficulty ... so there's a certain loss of intellectual edge, but there may be a compensating astuteness. I don't know, let's hope so!"

He was astonished when he reached 70 and is "bewildered" he's now 83.

"I'm very conscious of being old in a way I wasn't keenly aware of 10 years ago," he says.

"I'm starting to think about how one exits. There has to be an exit and it can't be too far away."

Our brains start growing just three weeks after conception and continue until early adulthood, when fully formed.

Professor Richard Faull, director of the Auckland Centre for Brain Research, says the brain shrinks by about 5 percent every decade after the age of 40.

But that doesn't mean we can't make new brain cells while we age, which Professor Faull and his team proved to the world in 2007. His team's discovery, based on research into Huntington's disease, debunked the received wisdom that we only lose brain cells as we get older.

Now we know that we can keep making new ones, even if we don't yet know how fast.

"Basically, the older you get the less ability you have to make new brain cells, and the question is we don't know how significant that is, but what we do know though is the more you keep people stimulated, doing things they like, living with people they love and enjoying life - having intellectual excitement and stimulation is good for the brain."…

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details