WEBVTT - A New Age for Mankind 0:00:14.120 --> 0:00:16.560 Almost twenty years before the enhanced Games were set to 0:00:16.560 --> 0:00:19.840 take place, and hence founder Aaron Desuza was a law 0:00:19.880 --> 0:00:24.079 student at Oxford University. His first week of school, the 0:00:24.160 --> 0:00:28.320 billionaire Peter tele visited Oxford for a guest lecture. Yes 0:00:28.760 --> 0:00:31.840 that Peter Teal, who founded PayPal, was one of the 0:00:31.840 --> 0:00:34.400 first investors in Facebook and is now one of Donald 0:00:34.440 --> 0:00:37.919 Trump's biggest donors. This is a story of how they 0:00:37.960 --> 0:00:41.880 first met. Erin, the law student was showing Tale around 0:00:41.920 --> 0:00:43.640 campus when they got to talking. 0:00:43.560 --> 0:00:45.840 And I asked him, what's the biggest problem that you face? 0:00:46.400 --> 0:00:49.720 This story Erin's telling on a different podcast these days. 0:00:49.760 --> 0:00:52.279 He's proud to share it. At the time though, it 0:00:52.320 --> 0:00:53.720 was a huge secret, and he. 0:00:53.680 --> 0:00:56.720 Said, you know this website Gawker, the writting all this 0:00:56.800 --> 0:01:00.120 horrible stuff about me, and I don't know what to 0:01:00.160 --> 0:01:00.760 do about it. 0:01:01.280 --> 0:01:07.600 Okay, for context, Goker, remember Gaker half gossip site, half 0:01:07.680 --> 0:01:10.800 news and just so so popular back in the early odds. 0:01:11.680 --> 0:01:14.360 In two thousand and seven, Gawker added Peter til for 0:01:14.400 --> 0:01:19.280 being quote totally gay, and Till understandably wasn't happy about it, 0:01:19.640 --> 0:01:21.200 but he didn't think there was much he could do. 0:01:21.360 --> 0:01:24.440 You know, my initial My initial view was that what 0:01:24.480 --> 0:01:26.480 you were supposed to do was you were supposed to 0:01:26.560 --> 0:01:30.840 take your beatings, crouch down, go into a fetal position, 0:01:31.440 --> 0:01:33.280 and then hope they moved on to somebody else. 0:01:33.680 --> 0:01:36.160 This is Teal. At a National Press Club event in 0:01:36.160 --> 0:01:37.319 twenty sixteen. 0:01:37.160 --> 0:01:40.680 One of my friends convinced me that that if if 0:01:40.720 --> 0:01:44.240 Gawker could get away with the sort of sociopathic repeat 0:01:44.280 --> 0:01:46.920 behavior over and over, you know, they would continue to 0:01:47.000 --> 0:01:51.160 ruin lives one after another. And so, you know, I 0:01:51.320 --> 0:01:53.480 was convinced that if I didn't do something, nobody would. 0:01:53.920 --> 0:01:56.600 That friend who convinced Peter til he could do something 0:01:56.680 --> 0:01:58.840 about it Aaron Desuza, And. 0:01:58.880 --> 0:02:02.280 The idea was pretty simple. If Peter sued Gawker publicly, 0:02:02.320 --> 0:02:05.240 it would just generate more attention and not sort of 0:02:05.400 --> 0:02:08.640 purpose he wanted to. And so what we did is 0:02:08.680 --> 0:02:12.880 we engineered a proxy war whereby we found an individual, 0:02:12.919 --> 0:02:16.160 in this case Hulk Hogan, who wanted to sue Gawker 0:02:16.160 --> 0:02:17.800 but didn't have the resources to do so. 0:02:18.200 --> 0:02:20.640 Even if you don't know who hul Cogan is, you 0:02:20.919 --> 0:02:24.400 know who hul Cogan is pro wrestler. He was the 0:02:24.520 --> 0:02:27.920 face of the WWE for years and in twenty twelve, 0:02:28.120 --> 0:02:30.760 Gaker pissed him off to they'd goten hold of a 0:02:30.800 --> 0:02:34.000 sex tape of Hogan with his best friend's wife, and 0:02:34.040 --> 0:02:35.680 Goker posted it on their website. 0:02:35.800 --> 0:02:38.960 When the video came out, it just totally flipped my 0:02:38.960 --> 0:02:40.200 world upside down. 0:02:40.520 --> 0:02:43.600 Here's Hogan testifying in court about the impact that video 0:02:43.680 --> 0:02:44.400 had on his life. 0:02:44.600 --> 0:02:48.080 No, I just remember going days without being able to sleep. 0:02:48.720 --> 0:02:51.440 Just I just had a hard time functioning or eating 0:02:51.560 --> 0:02:52.240 or anything like that. 0:02:52.280 --> 0:02:55.040 I could just I was humiliated. 0:02:55.840 --> 0:02:57.679 I was completely humiliated. 0:02:58.160 --> 0:03:00.800 We could make a whole other podcast about the God situation, 0:03:01.120 --> 0:03:04.600 freedom of speech, consent and all that. But for Peter 0:03:04.639 --> 0:03:07.000 Tiel and Aaron Desuza, they saw an opportunity. 0:03:07.560 --> 0:03:12.919 We funded his lawsuit, and that lawsuit led to, you know, 0:03:13.320 --> 0:03:16.160 one hundred and forty million dollar judgment that bankrupted Calker. 0:03:16.919 --> 0:03:19.959 And we did it completely in stealth. No one knew 0:03:20.040 --> 0:03:23.840 that we were funding haul Cogan's case until we actually won. 0:03:24.720 --> 0:03:26.400 Then, how do you feel about winning? 0:03:27.080 --> 0:03:29.519 It's great to win. They won the largest dimasion of 0:03:29.520 --> 0:03:30.760 privacy judgment in history. 0:03:33.960 --> 0:03:37.000 In the end, Peter and Aaron suit effectively forced Cocker 0:03:37.040 --> 0:03:40.320 to shut down, and in Peter til Aaron had found 0:03:40.320 --> 0:03:43.200 a new friend for life, the life they planned on 0:03:43.280 --> 0:03:50.360 living for a very very long time. From Kaleidoscope and 0:03:50.440 --> 0:03:52.760 iHeart podcast This is Superhuman. 0:03:53.240 --> 0:03:55.560 I'm Chris Guyamali and I'm Sam Egan. 0:03:58.680 --> 0:04:01.920 A few years ago into Aaron Desuza was at a 0:04:01.960 --> 0:04:05.640 gym in Miami, an Equinox for what it's worth. There 0:04:05.800 --> 0:04:09.120 he noticed these two giant powerlifters working out and chatting. 0:04:09.680 --> 0:04:13.720 They were talking about performance enhancing drugs. Aaron told me 0:04:13.760 --> 0:04:16.880 recently when that happened. He walked up to them and asked, 0:04:17.360 --> 0:04:18.880 what are you guys talking about? 0:04:19.120 --> 0:04:22.240 And they're like, oh, we are enhancing ourselves, and they've 0:04:22.279 --> 0:04:24.520 talked about all the different compounds and therapies that they 0:04:24.520 --> 0:04:27.159 were using. I thought this was really interesting, and I 0:04:27.160 --> 0:04:29.200 asked them, actually, what do you do for a living 0:04:29.240 --> 0:04:31.120 and one of them was like, oh, I'm an endocrinologist. 0:04:31.800 --> 0:04:35.000 Aaron's first thought, he says, how incredible it was that 0:04:35.040 --> 0:04:39.200 a board certified doctor was taking performance enhancing drugs. So 0:04:39.240 --> 0:04:42.359 he got to work learning about the economic inequalities of 0:04:42.360 --> 0:04:45.640 the Olympics, how social media was influencing a bunch more 0:04:45.680 --> 0:04:49.200 people to biohack, which by now I'm sure is familiar, 0:04:49.440 --> 0:04:54.159 but basically DIY biology, an idea also incubated in Silicon 0:04:54.240 --> 0:04:58.440 Valley before going mainstream, people experimenting with drugs and lifestyle 0:04:58.520 --> 0:05:03.159 changes in an effort to through themselves, live longer, look better. 0:05:03.760 --> 0:05:04.440 That sort of thing. 0:05:05.000 --> 0:05:07.039 I thought there was something in here, There's something in 0:05:07.080 --> 0:05:11.000 here that can all come together. But there's a lot 0:05:11.040 --> 0:05:11.920 of ingredients. 0:05:12.200 --> 0:05:15.040 Aaron had the beginnings of an idea for a recipe, 0:05:15.360 --> 0:05:17.679 so for the holidays he decided to run a house 0:05:17.760 --> 0:05:20.880 and spend a ton of time figuring out the necessary steps. 0:05:21.320 --> 0:05:24.719 And in a Christmas of twenty twenty two, I wrote 0:05:24.720 --> 0:05:27.920 about an enhanced Olympic Games. 0:05:28.360 --> 0:05:31.000 As Aaron sees it, in the history of this world, 0:05:31.120 --> 0:05:32.719 you can break everything down by. 0:05:32.600 --> 0:05:35.880 Age, the Stone Age, the Bronze Age, the Iron Age, 0:05:36.640 --> 0:05:41.679 the Middle Ages, the Age of Enlightenment, the age of industrialization, 0:05:42.320 --> 0:05:45.840 and our lifetime atomic space and information. 0:05:46.600 --> 0:05:51.120 All of these inflection points basically times of massive change. 0:05:51.760 --> 0:05:54.960 So his question is what inflection point are we in 0:05:55.040 --> 0:05:56.640 right now? 0:05:56.720 --> 0:06:01.799 I believe that there are two choices for the next 0:06:01.839 --> 0:06:05.479 age of mankind. Will the next age of mankind be 0:06:05.560 --> 0:06:12.200 the artificial intelligence age or will it be the enhanced age? 0:06:13.000 --> 0:06:15.320 And so I sat down and I wrote for three 0:06:15.360 --> 0:06:19.200 solid days and came out with the first deck for 0:06:19.320 --> 0:06:20.560 the Enhanced Games. 0:06:20.680 --> 0:06:23.000 The next weekend. Over New Year's Eve, Aaron and Peter 0:06:23.080 --> 0:06:26.200 are together and Peter asked Aaron what he'd been working. 0:06:25.960 --> 0:06:30.600 On, and I said, oh, I have. I'm writing about 0:06:30.960 --> 0:06:34.120 an enhanced version of the Olympics where performance enhancing drugs 0:06:34.120 --> 0:06:36.679 are allowed, and he was like, that's really cool. 0:06:37.839 --> 0:06:40.200 I guess when you're a very close friend is a billionaire, 0:06:40.600 --> 0:06:43.400 someone with a long history of back in big risky beds, 0:06:43.920 --> 0:06:47.120 the world is your oyster. And that's how Aaron got 0:06:47.120 --> 0:06:53.080 his financial backer for Enhanced I want to go back 0:06:53.120 --> 0:06:55.880 for a second to what Aaron calls the two choices 0:06:55.920 --> 0:06:58.640 for the next age of mankind, the Age of AI 0:06:59.480 --> 0:07:04.000 or the enhance stage. According to Aaron, if we go artificial, 0:07:04.560 --> 0:07:07.560 it'll mean humans are no longer relevant, that the machines 0:07:07.560 --> 0:07:11.360 have taken over beaten us. So he says, he hopes 0:07:11.400 --> 0:07:12.240 we go enhanced. 0:07:13.120 --> 0:07:16.160 I hope the headlines will say that the tenth age 0:07:16.160 --> 0:07:21.920 of mankind has forgotten the enhanced age, and it is 0:07:21.960 --> 0:07:26.760 a epic duty of stewardship that somehow has rested upon 0:07:26.800 --> 0:07:31.520 my shoulders to bring that age a mankind into existence. 0:07:31.920 --> 0:07:34.680 Taking what he's saying in good faith. It is pretty 0:07:34.720 --> 0:07:38.280 huge that if it comes down to us versus them, 0:07:38.520 --> 0:07:41.680 humans versus AI, he can make sure we humans win 0:07:42.240 --> 0:07:47.680 by helping us manipulate drug and augment our bodies. I've 0:07:47.720 --> 0:07:49.880 been following the Games for almost a year now, and 0:07:49.920 --> 0:07:51.800 for a lot of that time it's been kind of 0:07:51.800 --> 0:07:56.680 a novelty, a curiosity, like have you heard that new 0:07:56.760 --> 0:08:00.120 crazy thing the ultra rich are doing now? But in 0:08:00.160 --> 0:08:03.040 the last few months it does feel like something I've shifted. 0:08:03.640 --> 0:08:07.160 Not about the Games exactly, but they extended universe around it. 0:08:07.960 --> 0:08:10.480 Like at this year's Super Bowl, one of the biggest 0:08:10.520 --> 0:08:14.840 commercials was for a weight loss injection, a golp one. 0:08:15.400 --> 0:08:20.560 I'm Serena Williams and I'm a real Row member. They 0:08:20.600 --> 0:08:23.480 say golp ones for weight loss is a shortcut. 0:08:24.000 --> 0:08:25.520 It's not. It's science. 0:08:26.320 --> 0:08:31.040 Gop Ones helped me lose thirty one pounds one app. 0:08:30.840 --> 0:08:31.920 To hit my goals. 0:08:32.559 --> 0:08:34.199 This is healthcare. 0:08:34.800 --> 0:08:38.760 This is maybe Aaron's so called enhanced age has already begun. 0:08:43.960 --> 0:08:46.959 What enhance is doing. They really do believe they're ushering 0:08:47.000 --> 0:08:50.560 in a new era, one that begins with sports and 0:08:50.720 --> 0:08:53.559 ends with a fix for some of mankind's biggest problems. 0:08:53.880 --> 0:08:57.120 I'm not doing it because it's controversial or whatever. It's 0:08:57.200 --> 0:09:00.400 really things I want to see happened. 0:09:01.080 --> 0:09:04.320 This is Christian Angermeier. He's Eron's co founder and enhanced 0:09:05.200 --> 0:09:08.360 Christian's a forty eight year old billionaire from Germany. He's 0:09:08.360 --> 0:09:13.760 an investor, entrepreneur, cryptocurrency guy, focused primarily on what i'd 0:09:13.760 --> 0:09:18.120 call unconventional science, like psychedelics. He founded one of the 0:09:18.200 --> 0:09:21.840 leading psychedelic farmer companies in the world. He's so down 0:09:21.880 --> 0:09:25.559 for hallucinogens that he has the molecular structure of psilocybin, 0:09:26.000 --> 0:09:29.680 the psychoactive compound, and magic mushrooms tattooed on his arm. 0:09:30.120 --> 0:09:34.559 And he's also an especially enthusiastic collector of giant dinosaur fossils. 0:09:35.000 --> 0:09:39.679 Who do you see being like the enhanced customer anyone? 0:09:39.920 --> 0:09:43.160 And this is Maximilian Martin. After Christian got involved in 0:09:43.240 --> 0:09:45.680 the Games, Max was brought on as CEO. 0:09:46.240 --> 0:09:49.000 If you have a body enhancements can help you and 0:09:49.040 --> 0:09:52.920 become closer to achieving your goals onlike better at what 0:09:52.960 --> 0:09:53.520 you want to do. 0:09:54.040 --> 0:09:57.080 Then without these men make up a trifecta leading us 0:09:57.120 --> 0:10:00.640 into the so called Enhanced Age start with their counter 0:10:00.679 --> 0:10:05.160 to the Olympics, the Enhanced Games back in twenty twenty five. 0:10:05.400 --> 0:10:07.800 We ask Christian what what success look like at the 0:10:07.880 --> 0:10:09.040 end of enhanced first year. 0:10:09.360 --> 0:10:13.840 Obviously, one big success will be will world records be broken? 0:10:13.960 --> 0:10:16.600 That's the fun part why people tune in. That's one thing. 0:10:17.040 --> 0:10:20.640 A world record, of course, is very tangible. By the 0:10:20.760 --> 0:10:22.680 end of the day on May twenty fourth of this year, 0:10:22.960 --> 0:10:26.120 we'll know if that happened. But Christian has other ideas 0:10:26.160 --> 0:10:29.280 for what success looks like too. He has an entire vision. 0:10:30.240 --> 0:10:33.480 He says, once the public realizes, by way of enhanced 0:10:33.840 --> 0:10:36.719 that aging and dying are within each person's control. 0:10:36.440 --> 0:10:38.320 Then I think people will realize much more weight a 0:10:38.320 --> 0:10:41.160 moment than maybe other things are my control, happiness, like 0:10:41.520 --> 0:10:44.440 how I spent my time and all of that. But 0:10:44.559 --> 0:10:46.719 let's not even talk about lengths of life. Let's talk 0:10:46.720 --> 0:10:48.439 about quality of life. 0:10:49.160 --> 0:10:51.880 To their credit, Christian and Max practice what they preach. 0:10:52.720 --> 0:10:55.200 They both choose to enhance, and they both treat their 0:10:55.280 --> 0:10:57.840 choice to do so as a kind of advertisement, a 0:10:57.880 --> 0:11:01.040 badge of honor, demonstrating their idea of the highest quality 0:11:01.080 --> 0:11:04.240 of life. For example, at the start of our interview 0:11:04.240 --> 0:11:06.800 with Christian when we ask him the same generic question 0:11:06.920 --> 0:11:09.760 everybody uses for setting microphone levels and distance. 0:11:12.080 --> 0:11:14.400 Not a lot because I'm actually a ZEPPI. 0:11:15.160 --> 0:11:18.880 Not a lot because I'm actually on ozembic. And yes, 0:11:19.120 --> 0:11:22.400 Christian absolutely does consider GLP ones to be a kind 0:11:22.440 --> 0:11:27.640 of performance enhancing drug. He calls it outsourced discipline. Basically, 0:11:27.720 --> 0:11:30.920 ozebic is managing his hunger for him, which frees up 0:11:30.960 --> 0:11:34.080 his self control for other things and for Max. 0:11:34.400 --> 0:11:36.280 So I'm obviously not an athlete. I'm not trying to 0:11:36.320 --> 0:11:38.720 improve my time in the track or time to pool 0:11:38.840 --> 0:11:41.280 or what was I optimizing for feeling the best that 0:11:41.320 --> 0:11:42.080 I can possibly do? 0:11:42.480 --> 0:11:47.640 So Max obviously he's muscular. He's also clean shaven, looks 0:11:47.640 --> 0:11:49.280 a little bit like he could be in a boy band. 0:11:50.000 --> 0:11:53.120 When Semini first meet him at Enhance HQ, he's weren't 0:11:53.120 --> 0:11:55.560 a cardigan that looks at least one size too small. 0:11:56.240 --> 0:11:58.800 His enhancement of choice is to sacerone. 0:11:59.160 --> 0:12:02.280 What has I've been my experience with testosterone for me 0:12:02.360 --> 0:12:05.319 personally is that what you put into your body versus 0:12:05.320 --> 0:12:08.640 what you get out is a tenfold Like it's been 0:12:08.760 --> 0:12:11.480 insane and so my body started lining like you could 0:12:11.520 --> 0:12:15.440 see reforming growing after every workout. It's been just amazing. 0:12:15.520 --> 0:12:18.800 There's another reason he's on it. Max says he never 0:12:18.880 --> 0:12:22.520 wants to speak authoritatively about something that he himself hasn't 0:12:22.559 --> 0:12:25.560 actually tried. It's important to him that he understands what 0:12:25.600 --> 0:12:28.680 these drugs actually do to the body, especially when it 0:12:28.720 --> 0:12:31.800 comes to self experimenting. To that end, he hasn't just 0:12:31.840 --> 0:12:35.080 gotten on testosterone. He's gotten off it too. 0:12:35.160 --> 0:12:37.200 It's not because I wanted to, but I was like, 0:12:38.160 --> 0:12:40.079 I wanted to see my body react once I get 0:12:40.080 --> 0:12:41.760 off of it again. Well, I'll tell you it was like, 0:12:41.800 --> 0:12:43.680 after three four months of being off, the only thing 0:12:43.679 --> 0:12:45.320 I was thinking of, I want to be back on again. 0:12:45.360 --> 0:12:46.280 It's like fucking amazing. 0:12:47.040 --> 0:12:50.920 He's back on it. Don't worry. But he says testosterone 0:12:50.960 --> 0:12:54.920 is not for everyone. Actually, it lowers sperm count, making 0:12:54.960 --> 0:12:58.079 it sort of like birth control for men. Max, though 0:12:58.280 --> 0:13:00.880 he never wants to have kids, he thinks of any 0:13:00.880 --> 0:13:04.760 fertility side effects as a bonus, maybe even kind of radical. 0:13:04.640 --> 0:13:07.520 Because it has the same benefits as if my girlfriend 0:13:07.679 --> 0:13:10.600 was taking the contraceptive pill, but she does not need 0:13:10.640 --> 0:13:14.080 to take a contraceptive pill, which is a humongous disturbance 0:13:14.120 --> 0:13:17.199 of her homeown household, etc. And millions of women suffer 0:13:17.240 --> 0:13:19.400 from this for the rest of their lives. And me 0:13:19.480 --> 0:13:21.880 as a guy, I can actually take the stastrung feel 0:13:21.880 --> 0:13:24.520 like superhero and we have the same benefits in terms 0:13:24.559 --> 0:13:25.280 of fertility. 0:13:25.640 --> 0:13:28.240 By the way, none of us are doctors, but the 0:13:28.320 --> 0:13:31.840 National Institutes of Health does say that taesosaron therapy is 0:13:31.880 --> 0:13:36.000 not a reliable form of contraception, so you know, check 0:13:36.040 --> 0:13:40.600 with their doctors before following Max's lead. Something I've picked 0:13:40.640 --> 0:13:43.800 up over time. Folks that enhance can get a bit 0:13:44.080 --> 0:13:47.160 perhaps trigger happy about who among us is quote unquote 0:13:47.320 --> 0:13:51.160 enhanced about what does and doesn't count as a performance 0:13:51.240 --> 0:13:52.000 enhancing drug. 0:13:52.840 --> 0:13:56.440 First fact, the interesting one, seventy percent of orchestra musicians 0:13:56.480 --> 0:13:59.080 are enhanced. They take beta blockers to help them with 0:13:59.120 --> 0:13:59.640 stage front. 0:14:01.320 --> 0:14:04.120 When Max says seventy percent of musicians are enhanced, he 0:14:04.200 --> 0:14:06.320 makes it sound like enhancements are a part of those 0:14:06.400 --> 0:14:11.040 musicians regular routine, which isn't exactly true. There was a 0:14:11.080 --> 0:14:14.080 study which found that seventy percent of orchestra musicians have 0:14:14.240 --> 0:14:17.520 tried taking beta blockers for stage fright, which isn't the 0:14:17.520 --> 0:14:22.160 same thing as actively using them. But anyway, what I 0:14:22.160 --> 0:14:24.920 think is interesting here the question of what counts as 0:14:24.960 --> 0:14:28.960 an enhancement drug. Do beta blockers enhance or do they 0:14:29.000 --> 0:14:33.080 simply treat? Do they make musicians perform better or do 0:14:33.120 --> 0:14:36.680 they slow down musicians heartbeats so that they can perform better? 0:14:38.000 --> 0:14:39.000 Where is the line? 0:14:40.280 --> 0:14:42.320 Am I twenty five years old and I'm training for 0:14:42.360 --> 0:14:45.440 a marathon or a sixty five years old looking to 0:14:45.480 --> 0:14:47.720 have more energy to take my grandkids to the playground 0:14:47.760 --> 0:14:50.760 and play with them. Enhancements can help me achieved, both 0:14:51.680 --> 0:14:56.640 with a male or female, whether I'm Liberal and conservative, Muslim, 0:14:56.720 --> 0:14:59.320 more Christian or Jew and Housman's can help me. So 0:14:59.320 --> 0:15:01.720 it's like what we're selling. We're selling the opportunity to 0:15:01.760 --> 0:15:03.560 live en hand, not substances. 0:15:05.200 --> 0:15:09.200 Either way, the point is they're selling something which really 0:15:09.280 --> 0:15:12.359 throws a wrench in this particular utopia Max is describing, 0:15:13.000 --> 0:15:17.600 because even if your gender doesn't matter, your politics, your faith, 0:15:18.320 --> 0:15:20.120 you still need to have enough money to buy into 0:15:20.160 --> 0:15:23.760 the enhanced lifestyle. The argument I've seen scrolling around a 0:15:23.800 --> 0:15:28.720 little bit that the enhanced age would create divisions among 0:15:28.760 --> 0:15:32.600 those who are enhanced and people who are not. Like personally, 0:15:32.600 --> 0:15:37.680 I worry it might actually create some sort of caste system. Well, yeah, 0:15:37.760 --> 0:15:40.280 so Aaron Desusa Again, my answer. 0:15:40.000 --> 0:15:44.200 To that is that the drugs themselves are not expensive. 0:15:44.520 --> 0:15:48.320 Aaron says, drugs aren't what's being gate kept, it's information. 0:15:49.280 --> 0:15:52.520 Limited access to the truth about performance enhancing drugs is 0:15:52.520 --> 0:15:55.480 what sends in so many people's way, And what enhance 0:15:55.560 --> 0:15:59.560 is doing is distributing that information once it's out there, 0:15:59.640 --> 0:16:03.520 and they're an increased demand, Aaron things, pharmaceutical companies are 0:16:03.560 --> 0:16:05.640 going to want to sell to as many people as possible, 0:16:06.080 --> 0:16:07.240 which will drive costs down. 0:16:08.240 --> 0:16:10.480 And so I'm a firm believer of market capitalism, and 0:16:10.560 --> 0:16:15.160 I think market capitalism will actually solve this problem. 0:16:15.400 --> 0:16:19.280 If the medications are cheap, doesn't necessarily mean though, that 0:16:19.280 --> 0:16:21.760 they're going to be cheap to buy and procure for, 0:16:22.160 --> 0:16:24.000 you know, people who aren't wealthy. 0:16:25.880 --> 0:16:26.240 I think so. 0:16:26.320 --> 0:16:29.840 I think the costs always come down over time. And 0:16:29.960 --> 0:16:32.600 also it's like I just I think people who are 0:16:32.640 --> 0:16:35.280 not enhanced, you know, that could be a status symbol 0:16:35.320 --> 0:16:40.200 in itself, right, you know, like organic food is a 0:16:40.320 --> 0:16:42.520 luxury item. It is a status symbol. 0:16:42.840 --> 0:16:45.960 What Aaron's saying, I've never really heard anything quite like it. 0:16:46.680 --> 0:16:49.120 He's saying the thing he's helping bring to the people. 0:16:49.600 --> 0:16:53.600 Performance enhancing drugs are so likely to catch on and 0:16:53.640 --> 0:16:56.960 therefore so likely to become accessible the richest people in 0:16:56.960 --> 0:16:59.600 the world, the ones who up until now have had 0:16:59.600 --> 0:17:02.840 the most access to enhancing they might end up choosing 0:17:02.840 --> 0:17:05.040 not to enhance to prove they don't have to. 0:17:05.400 --> 0:17:08.119 America has a lot of structural problems with the healthcare system. 0:17:08.240 --> 0:17:13.399 I'll never argue about that, right, And uh, you know, 0:17:13.480 --> 0:17:17.160 and it's like, you know, it's so obvious, like being 0:17:17.200 --> 0:17:20.560 obese is a class signal in the United States, just 0:17:20.600 --> 0:17:23.520 as being thin is. Right, because there are so many 0:17:23.560 --> 0:17:26.639 structural deficiency deficiencies with the US healthcare system. 0:17:27.480 --> 0:17:30.520 If you can't save, if you can't if you can't 0:17:30.520 --> 0:17:32.520 fix the US healthcare system. 0:17:32.840 --> 0:17:35.719 That's one of my producers on this show, Vena meszis, 0:17:36.080 --> 0:17:36.560 then how. 0:17:36.440 --> 0:17:38.760 Can you usher in a new era of mankind? 0:17:39.560 --> 0:17:43.320 Well, like, you know, government is an really intractable, hard 0:17:43.560 --> 0:17:47.960 structural problem to solve, right, Elon Musk couldn't like even 0:17:48.280 --> 0:17:54.040 downsize the government, yet he can make like humans interplanetary. Right. 0:17:55.920 --> 0:17:58.840 Okay, you may be thinking I press play in this 0:17:58.880 --> 0:18:01.040 podcast because I wanted to hear about a bunch of 0:18:01.119 --> 0:18:04.679 dudes juicing to the gills, and instead we're talking about 0:18:04.680 --> 0:18:07.919 like Stephen Hawking's theory of Everything, which I know can 0:18:07.960 --> 0:18:11.159 get really boring really quickly, but I do think the 0:18:11.200 --> 0:18:14.760 boring stuff, the fine print is starting to show up everywhere. 0:18:15.600 --> 0:18:18.960 What's advertised to us on Instagram and TikTok all the 0:18:19.000 --> 0:18:21.280 way to new legislation about what drugs were allowed to 0:18:21.280 --> 0:18:24.960 play around with. There's this philosophy that's been around for 0:18:24.960 --> 0:18:27.520 a couple hundred years and is the undercurrent running through 0:18:27.560 --> 0:18:31.320 all of this. It's called transhumanism. In this case, the 0:18:31.320 --> 0:18:35.240 prefix trends like transcendence going above and beyond ordinary limits 0:18:36.200 --> 0:18:39.080 and humanism, well that's humans what they're able to achieve. 0:18:39.520 --> 0:18:45.480 So transhumanism is the idea that human beings not only can, 0:18:45.760 --> 0:18:49.640 but they also should enhance themselves through technology. 0:18:49.800 --> 0:18:53.240 This is Alex Krotowski. She's a social psychologist, a tech 0:18:53.280 --> 0:18:56.520 and society journalist. She just recently wrote a book about 0:18:56.560 --> 0:18:59.920 exactly this. It's called The Immortalists, The Death of Death 0:19:00.040 --> 0:19:01.200 and the Race for Eternal. 0:19:00.880 --> 0:19:04.520 Life, which is looking specifically at why on Earth's Silicon 0:19:04.560 --> 0:19:09.840 Valley is interested in immortality, longevity, and indeed transhumanism. 0:19:10.320 --> 0:19:13.000 So older innovations that transhumanists would have tucked under their 0:19:13.080 --> 0:19:17.760 umbrella of enhancement. That'd be eyeglasses technology that enables humans 0:19:17.760 --> 0:19:21.640 to see, or pacemakers, technology that regulates the human heart 0:19:22.400 --> 0:19:26.280 and glasses pacemakers. They're obviously not so mind boggling these days, 0:19:26.720 --> 0:19:29.199 but there was a time when they basically sounded like witchcraft. 0:19:30.520 --> 0:19:34.119 These days in twenty twenty six, what counts as transhumanist 0:19:34.200 --> 0:19:37.800 innovation is basically what enhances the selling or wanting to sell, 0:19:38.560 --> 0:19:41.919 and where is it all headed? Pretty quickly gets it 0:19:41.920 --> 0:19:42.720 sounds like sci fi. 0:19:42.960 --> 0:19:48.239 That means uploading themselves to server farms on Jupiter and 0:19:48.359 --> 0:19:51.480 enhancing the sides of their brains and living in bliss 0:19:51.520 --> 0:19:55.560 and delight forever. Or it means putting sensors under their 0:19:55.560 --> 0:19:58.280 skin so that when they walk through a door, that 0:19:58.320 --> 0:20:01.800 particular room turns the light on or gets the air 0:20:01.840 --> 0:20:04.640 conditioning to be exactly the right temperature for them. 0:20:04.880 --> 0:20:09.200 Something changed in transhumanist discourse about halfway through the twentieth century. 0:20:10.040 --> 0:20:13.320 This writer Julian Huxley, maybe you've heard of his brother, Aldus, 0:20:13.520 --> 0:20:15.720 the more famous of the two Huxleys. He wrote a 0:20:15.720 --> 0:20:19.240 book called Brave New World, but anyway other Huxley. In 0:20:19.320 --> 0:20:22.080 nineteen fifty seven he started writing about transhumanism. 0:20:22.600 --> 0:20:28.119 Huxley wrote this quite provocative essay describing how we could 0:20:28.160 --> 0:20:35.359 be transhuman We could supersede our human not suffering, but 0:20:35.440 --> 0:20:39.000 I suppose are the human condition or human frailty. 0:20:39.480 --> 0:20:42.080 In other words, Huxley believed that we could solve for 0:20:42.119 --> 0:20:45.280 what Alex calls the bad, treat it, get rid of 0:20:45.280 --> 0:20:48.879 it so the good can thrive. Huxley's essay, which is 0:20:48.960 --> 0:20:53.240 quite literally titled transhumanism, he coined the term. It's mostly 0:20:53.280 --> 0:20:57.200 about how incredible the world could be. It's upbeat, optimistic, 0:20:57.560 --> 0:21:00.879 and of course it's speculative, like saying what if science 0:21:00.920 --> 0:21:04.639 fiction wasn't fiction at all. But there's one part of 0:21:04.680 --> 0:21:09.160 what he wrote towards the end that takes a turn. Suddenly. 0:21:09.200 --> 0:21:11.760 It isn't about what we could do, It's about what 0:21:11.800 --> 0:21:14.640 we are obligated to do, perhaps even have a moral 0:21:14.640 --> 0:21:17.840 imperative to do. I read it back to Alex. 0:21:17.720 --> 0:21:20.239 That beauty, something to enjoy and something to be proud of, 0:21:20.640 --> 0:21:24.720 is indispensable, and therefore that ugly or depressing towns are immoral. 0:21:25.400 --> 0:21:27.879 That quality of people, not mere quantity, is what we 0:21:27.960 --> 0:21:31.080 us aim at and therefore that a concerted policy is 0:21:31.160 --> 0:21:33.480 required to prevent the present flood of population. 0:21:36.160 --> 0:21:37.199 What's your reaction to that? 0:21:37.880 --> 0:21:39.720 There was a lot of that around at the time, 0:21:40.600 --> 0:21:44.000 that particular moment in history. I mean, that's ultimately, this 0:21:44.080 --> 0:21:47.160 is coming out of the Holocaust, This is coming out 0:21:47.200 --> 0:21:51.880 of a really dark period. This idea that we must 0:21:52.160 --> 0:21:55.439 get rid of the bad, get rid of the ugly, 0:21:55.720 --> 0:22:01.000 we must separate the good from the bad, right, suggests, 0:22:01.320 --> 0:22:05.600 you know, some kind of organized system that crosses over 0:22:05.800 --> 0:22:08.000 hard with this idea of eugenics. 0:22:09.880 --> 0:22:14.720 Eugenics, if you know, you know, it's not great. Eugenics 0:22:14.760 --> 0:22:17.120 is a theory that we can improve humans by controlling 0:22:17.119 --> 0:22:20.159 who does and doesn't procreate. And just to say, this 0:22:20.240 --> 0:22:23.320 line of thinking stains a whole lot of history, but 0:22:23.359 --> 0:22:26.240 the Holocaust is an especially vivid and well known example. 0:22:27.240 --> 0:22:30.200 Under the Third Reich, Germany categorized folks as bad or good, 0:22:30.760 --> 0:22:33.760 eran or Jewish. They literally weeded out and killed whomever 0:22:33.760 --> 0:22:37.439 they believed to be biologically undesirable, and they had a 0:22:37.480 --> 0:22:40.119 clear picture of what a biologically elite person looks like, 0:22:40.640 --> 0:22:46.120 the Ubermensch superior man some translated just to superman. Now 0:22:46.119 --> 0:22:49.760 what eugenics has to do with transhumanism is complicated and 0:22:49.840 --> 0:22:54.000 hotly contested, but both taut a more perfect person, somebody 0:22:54.000 --> 0:22:59.280