Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 1: learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio, Welcome back to the show. My name
Speaker 1: is Matt, my name is Noel. They called me Ben.
Speaker 1: We're joined as always with our superproducer Paul Mission controlled decond.
Speaker 1: Most importantly, you are you. You are here, and that
Speaker 1: makes this the stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 1: Now in the interest of full transparency, your fellow conspiracy
Speaker 1: realist on this show are returning to you from a
Speaker 1: little bit of time on the road, and I think
Speaker 1: it's safe to say we are all maybe a bit punchy.
Speaker 1: What do you all have going on after this episode?
Speaker 1: Is it nap time? Is it chores cleaning? Catch up? Now,
Speaker 1: it's podcasting time. Baby never sleeps. Let's go, let's go, well, hey,
Speaker 1: we can do shoutouts, we can do shout outs. Let's
Speaker 1: do some shout outs, man, I love that idea. Let's
Speaker 1: do some shout outs. Let's definitely say hey to people
Speaker 1: like Nick Thun and Brian Baumgardner that we got to
Speaker 1: hang out with for a little bit Hopefullysenberg was a delight.
Speaker 1: I got to I got to tell her how much
Speaker 1: I missed asking me another and and tell her how
Speaker 1: much I love the anagram for her name, which is
Speaker 1: her ripe Bagunis, which anagrams are so fun. I'm not
Speaker 1: smart enough to make them, but I remember that one.
Speaker 1: Yeah you are, Oh that's really kind of ben. So
Speaker 1: we went on some travels. We have more travels in line,
Speaker 1: and I think for some of us not naming names, uh,
Speaker 1: for some of us, uh, you're we experienced this point
Speaker 1: that you might have experienced yourself. Folks, At some point
Speaker 1: it hits everyone. You get a you'rd ache in a
Speaker 1: body part, right, you wake up in the morning, you
Speaker 1: slept too long in the wrong position, and you're thinking, wow,
Speaker 1: did this elbow quit? You might have been drinking alcohol,
Speaker 1: you have a hangover that lasts longer than it did
Speaker 1: in your college days. Or maybe maybe you don't drink,
Speaker 1: maybe you don't sleep, maybe you're just not as fast
Speaker 1: on the court anymore, or you have trouble pulling all nighters,
Speaker 1: and it leads to this frightening realization. The moment hits you,
Speaker 1: am I getting old and one day to paraphrase the
Speaker 1: Flaming Lips. You realize that everyone you know, including you,
Speaker 1: will die. This is our episode that's a follow up
Speaker 1: to modern vampires who follow up to immortality. The question
Speaker 1: is should humans reverse aging? Here are the facts? Wait wait, wait, man, Ben,
Speaker 1: are you saying I will I'm going to die? Yeah? Yeah, Sorry,
Speaker 1: I wanted to tell you on air. This is a
Speaker 1: big bummerential crisis in real time right now. One last thing,
Speaker 1: we have personal experience of that feeling that Ben just described,
Speaker 1: or you're like, oh man, something is not right anymore.
Speaker 1: As part of this work thing, we hung out with
Speaker 1: the Johnny Drinks folks, John Johnny and Steve and we
Speaker 1: had to for work. We didn't have to, but as
Speaker 1: a part of our work we drank Manhattan's and just
Speaker 1: getting a little bit of alcohol in the system. Nowadays,
Speaker 1: as we're getting older, I don't know about you guys,
Speaker 1: not so great for me anymore in the morning. Definitely
Speaker 1: causes you to flag a little bit the next day.
Speaker 1: But I think we all kept our composure and exercise
Speaker 1: some restraint. But exercise restraints as you may. The inevitability
Speaker 1: of death is sure the study, is it, yeah? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Or should we fight fight the tide like a salmon
Speaker 1: swimming upstream. The study of death is called thanatology. There's
Speaker 1: a book that we're gonna We're gonna save you some
Speaker 1: time with. It's called The Denial of Death. Mentioned it
Speaker 1: in past episodes. You do not have to read it.
Speaker 1: And thesis is that every single piece of all human technology,
Speaker 1: and all religion, and all of what we call society,
Speaker 1: all all the things that the humans are doing is
Speaker 1: to distract themselves from the fact that one day they
Speaker 1: will no longer be around. Didn't want to start off
Speaker 1: that nihilistic, So a little bit of solve here really quickly.
Speaker 1: The thanatology like Thanos and he like the death God
Speaker 1: kind of in the Marvel Universe in the comics. His
Speaker 1: number one crush is the Marvel Universe embodiment of Death.
Speaker 1: That's what I thought. I remember they didn't really play
Speaker 1: with that in the movie. They do, remember, Yeah, but
Speaker 1: like it was like really like a personification of like death.
Speaker 1: You know. That's interesting. Well, let's add one important positive
Speaker 1: philosophical note before we before we dive into the dark
Speaker 1: waters of lethe or whatever. These days, most human beings
Speaker 1: do not simply cease to exist at the point of
Speaker 1: biological death. Back in the day, for most of your
Speaker 1: human society, the vast majority of people died unremembered. But now,
Speaker 1: as long as there is some idea or record of
Speaker 1: you that exist, so long as you are remembered, you
Speaker 1: will continue to affect the world. So, fellow conspiracy realist,
Speaker 1: let's all do our collective best to leave a good impression.
Speaker 1: You know what I mean? In some way, what we're
Speaker 1: saying is humans do continue after their expiration date. But
Speaker 1: biologically speaking, it's Valor Morgalus. You know what I mean?
Speaker 1: Twenty four to seven, all humans will at some point
Speaker 1: encounter a collapse in mission critical biological systems and die.
Speaker 1: Did I get that right? Valor Mogulas? Is that correct? Morlas? Yea,
Speaker 1: I think it's Goulas, but it's been a Mena since
Speaker 1: I've watched that show. Yeah, So okay, So let's talk
Speaker 1: about the average human being. You are listening, and you
Speaker 1: are human. That's our first assumption. Uh, what's your average lifespan?
Speaker 1: One hundred years? No, no, no, nope, right now it's
Speaker 1: just under seventy four years, really close to the average
Speaker 1: age of a sperm whale. Interestingly, enough, guys, not bad.
Speaker 1: It's pretty good. Un till you get to seventy six
Speaker 1: and you're thinking, is this all bonus credit? Uh for?
Speaker 1: For comparison? What do we know about other animals? It's
Speaker 1: like when they raise the level cap in video games
Speaker 1: you now as part of like an update or a DLC.
Speaker 1: You're just kind of like, yeah, you're on as you're
Speaker 1: playing the extra content. Well, we're doing awesome compared to
Speaker 1: like an octopus that's like four years five years back
Speaker 1: pretty much, yeah, unless you unless you give them the lobotomy.
Speaker 1: Why was that research stopped anyway? Different different question. So
Speaker 1: other other mammals can live quite a long time. Other
Speaker 1: life forms can live quite a long time, and they'd
Speaker 1: be life forms that are called higher order. But shout
Speaker 1: out to a frames excellent point from a week or
Speaker 1: so back about the nature of intelligence and fungus. For comparison,
Speaker 1: the average corvid lives fifteen to twenty two years if
Speaker 1: things go well spoiler they don't. The world is brutal
Speaker 1: and Matt, you were talking earlier as sperm whales, right, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I looked it up just for this episode. One of
Speaker 1: the bigger, more intelligent creatures on the planet that swims
Speaker 1: around in this case is a sperm whale, and they
Speaker 1: have a life expectancy of about seventy years, and that
Speaker 1: that was really puzzling to me, just because of our
Speaker 1: stature the humans, you know, humans average height and weight
Speaker 1: and everything, and then thinking that we live, you know,
Speaker 1: seventy four to one hundred years, that kind of thing,
Speaker 1: and then this huge creature also lives about that long.
Speaker 1: For some reason, in my mind, I thought an octopus
Speaker 1: would live a lot longer than a sperm whale, just
Speaker 1: because of the massive size and how many cells are
Speaker 1: in there and all that stuff. But it has nothing
Speaker 1: to do with anything that I was thinking about. Well again,
Speaker 1: somebody start doing more unethical research on the octopus. Please,
Speaker 1: I'm very interested to see their opinions. If they make
Speaker 1: it to even ten years, you know, it'll be cool.
Speaker 1: You could probably only do it with biologically female octopus.
Speaker 1: I know the research is being conducted. I gotta let
Speaker 1: this go. Okay, humans, that's what we're talking about. Humans.
Speaker 1: So the life expectancy, like I said, something like seventy
Speaker 1: three point one six years. That statistic varies so widely
Speaker 1: across the world, across demographics, across biological sex at birth. Like,
Speaker 1: you know, it's a fact that the female of the
Speaker 1: human species tends to live longer than the male. And
Speaker 1: there are literally thousands of factors at play here, many
Speaker 1: of which are human created factors. People are dying earlier
Speaker 1: because of other humans, not because of their bodies. The
Speaker 1: one thing about this it's so interesting is there's one
Speaker 1: big commonality. It remains constant and it's frankly sinister since
Speaker 1: the early days that people started getting up to the
Speaker 1: business of people and the folks at the Yeah, the
Speaker 1: folks at the top of whatever, of literally any culture,
Speaker 1: the folks at the top would at some point get
Speaker 1: desperate to stay alive for as long as possible, and
Speaker 1: they had all gas, no breaks. They were super crappy
Speaker 1: about it to anyone that they thought was getting in
Speaker 1: their way. I guess so, I mean, but then we've
Speaker 1: also seen you know, cautionary tales or like things like
Speaker 1: Interview with the Vampire for example, where eventually you just
Speaker 1: get to a point where you've had it all and
Speaker 1: you just can't really, you know, just it's just not
Speaker 1: fun anymore. You know, there's a certain malaise that sets
Speaker 1: in and probably causes people to go a little bit
Speaker 1: insane or vampire's brother. Today's episode is what if everybody
Speaker 1: had that feeling right exactly? And it's not a it's
Speaker 1: a scary proposition and we see it in history in
Speaker 1: the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh, for example, where old Gilgamesh.
Speaker 1: I always think of Gargamel, you know, from the Smurfs
Speaker 1: whenever I hear Gilgamesh, but he spends a lot of
Speaker 1: time trying to attain more immortality, much like we see
Speaker 1: this story repeating. You know, there's a fountain of youth
Speaker 1: and all of that stuff, and folks seeking some sort
Speaker 1: of boon, you know, from a god or demigod or
Speaker 1: whatever that would allow them to live forever because it's,
Speaker 1: you know, a human thing. Once you realize that clock
Speaker 1: is ticking, it's kind of natural to want to figure
Speaker 1: out a way to stop it. M Yeah, and the
Speaker 1: Epic of Gilgamesh is is pretty dope. Maybe we can,
Speaker 1: maybe we could actually end today's episode with a clip
Speaker 1: from our boy Guilgee or Gil. I guess you just
Speaker 1: call them gill if your friends. But the story is
Speaker 1: pretty good and it's an instructive lesson that in Samarian
Speaker 1: culture at least, I pause. It was meant to help
Speaker 1: people feel okay with time, as morbid as that sounds.
Speaker 1: But then there are other folks like the ancient Chinese
Speaker 1: emperor sin she Halden, who you know, we're not native speakers,
Speaker 1: forgive us there it looks like and she hung Y're right?
Speaker 1: So Hinchi Huang literally drank mercury. It was buried with
Speaker 1: a bunch of it, with the idea that it would
Speaker 1: make him immortal. And not only did it not make
Speaker 1: him immortal, not only did he die, but it probably
Speaker 1: ruined the natural world for people who lived around the
Speaker 1: area for a while. I mean, we hear about, you know,
Speaker 1: being mad as a hatter or whatever from the mercury
Speaker 1: they used to treat the felt. I mean that stuff
Speaker 1: literally does make you kind of go insane. Do you
Speaker 1: think it was as simple as like, oh, what's the
Speaker 1: shiny stuff? This must be magical juice from the gods.
Speaker 1: Humans love it when someone authoritatively tells them something right,
Speaker 1: like mercury this is neat Huh. You know what else
Speaker 1: you can do? Maybe make you live forever. I'm just
Speaker 1: asking questions. But also the story of that emperor less
Speaker 1: less we be unfair to him. The story about that
Speaker 1: emperor has a lot more to it. These are we're
Speaker 1: just giving you a couple things that might sound like
Speaker 1: weird historical footnotes, But humanity has been obsessed with this,
Speaker 1: and rightly so, and they have an increasingly sophisticated understanding
Speaker 1: of age in the modern day. Like in the modern
Speaker 1: day right now, most people don't believe in biological immortality.
Speaker 1: The big debate is can we replicate someone's brain to
Speaker 1: a level of fidelity such that we could upload a
Speaker 1: version of them that exists beyond the body, right That's
Speaker 1: what most people think of when they think of plausible
Speaker 1: immortality now. But despite the fact that most people don't
Speaker 1: believe in bioimmortality, humans are still desperately doing whatever they
Speaker 1: can to look younger than they are. I was looking
Speaker 1: up plastic surgery statistics. You guys saw that a lot
Speaker 1: of people are get plastic surgery. It's like it's a
Speaker 1: big deal. Yeah, it's a massive industry. Well, and there
Speaker 1: are a lot of different procedures. I mean, they're they're
Speaker 1: always having a lot of different plastic surgery procedures. Some
Speaker 1: are way more invasive than others. Some would still be
Speaker 1: considered plastic surgery, but are more of like a thing
Speaker 1: you'd go and do at the dermatologist on a Tuesday,
Speaker 1: like some of the fillers and other things they get
Speaker 1: injected to people that I would still consider that, you know,
Speaker 1: way plastic surgery. I don't think it is the same thing,
Speaker 1: though it's adjacent. I mean any kind of implant or
Speaker 1: things that go I mean, yeah, yeah, A lot of
Speaker 1: plastic surgery too is implant based. So whether you're getting
Speaker 1: something injected or inserted, I think it's definitely, you know,
Speaker 1: in the same vein. In January of twenty twenty three,
Speaker 1: the International Society of Esthetic Plastic Surgeons or SAPPS is
Speaker 1: APS release the results of an annual global their annual
Speaker 1: Global Survey on esthetic cosmetic procedures today, and it showed
Speaker 1: an overall nineteen point three percent increase and these kinds
Speaker 1: of procedures in twenty twenty one with more than you're
Speaker 1: close to thirteen million surgical and then seventeen point five
Speaker 1: million non surgical, like you were talking about MATT procedures
Speaker 1: performed worldwide. That's nuts. Well, it makes sense when you
Speaker 1: think about what Ben You're saying earlier that there is
Speaker 1: kind of a weird way to live forever now, and
Speaker 1: that's just to exist digitally, not as an actual avatar
Speaker 1: of yourself right and a version of yourself that's in
Speaker 1: the machine, but just the representations of us that are
Speaker 1: going to be around forever until they turn the servers off.
Speaker 1: So I think that what we're seeing here is just
Speaker 1: an attempt to appear as young as you possibly can
Speaker 1: for as long as you can within that space, within
Speaker 1: that medium. Look upon my Instagram you mighty oh no
Speaker 1: and despair yeah, and as servers closed. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's a it's a wild, inherently conspiratorial thing, especially to
Speaker 1: the point about appearance. Yeah, it's like, I mean, Alexa
Speaker 1: play forever young. Shout out to anybody who's it's happening.
Speaker 1: But while people are tucking their tummies and lifting their
Speaker 1: faces and rubbing strange expensive creams across their wrinkles, scientists
Speaker 1: around the world, funded by tycoons, funded by people you
Speaker 1: might not like, are locked in labs conducting strange experiments.
Speaker 1: We may not be able to stop the clock, they
Speaker 1: seem to conclude, but what if we can turn it back.
Speaker 1: We're gonna pause for word from our sponsors. Here's where
Speaker 1: it gets crazy. Wait before we do that, I do
Speaker 1: think we should say, um, there's nothing wrong with getting
Speaker 1: plastic surgery. We're not body shaming anyone. You know, your
Speaker 1: life is your own. But also I mean, like you know,
Speaker 1: whether you're even people who aren't like vain at all
Speaker 1: are like conceded there there's a real psychological effect on
Speaker 1: changing the way you look and feeling good about yourself,
Speaker 1: even if it's not because you know, want to just
Speaker 1: feel like I'm so hot, you know. But it's it's
Speaker 1: simple things. It's the same reason people go to gems
Speaker 1: and all of that stuff, and there are some things
Speaker 1: they go into the gym just won't fix. And we
Speaker 1: are in a sis. We live in a society, as
Speaker 1: it turns out, that does judge these kinds of things
Speaker 1: and can make people feel very uncomfortable or lesson. So
Speaker 1: I think there's an absolute benefit to maybe what I
Speaker 1: would consider you know, moderate procedures like this. It's sure,
Speaker 1: we do know that people can get like addicted to it, though,
Speaker 1: and it becomes a real problem that's in of itself
Speaker 1: a phenomenon that's very modern and very unusual. Like I
Speaker 1: donate to charities that help kids would cleft palates, you know,
Speaker 1: and that would that be plastic surgery. Anyway, The point
Speaker 1: is not plastic surgery necessarily. The point is that people
Speaker 1: want to slow or reverse aging, and for millennia this
Speaker 1: has been the dream. But this part, the twist of
Speaker 1: this episode, or the first twist, is that yes, according
Speaker 1: to recent, ongoing, groundbreaking research, it is in fact possible
Speaker 1: to reverse the effects of biological age. Somewhat caveat asteris
Speaker 1: fine print. First, we have to understand what aging actually is.
Speaker 1: Is it just sleeping wrong? Is it just that you
Speaker 1: get to the point in your life where you feel like,
Speaker 1: subconsciously you have to make sound effects when you get up,
Speaker 1: you know, Oh, it's not an act. My friend, I
Speaker 1: just saw a meme featuring our pal George Costanza from
Speaker 1: Seinfeld where he's sort of pensively leaning again. It's like
Speaker 1: a bridge, you know, an overpasser by a lake, and
Speaker 1: it says, remembering the time before I had to grunt
Speaker 1: anytime I sat down or stood up, and there is
Speaker 1: some truth to that. It's weird. I'm feeling it, you know.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm a little heavier than to you guys,
Speaker 1: but it's something that you see in everybody that gets
Speaker 1: to our age. Lucky enough, but there are things you
Speaker 1: gotta make adjustments, you know, or get adjustments. So what
Speaker 1: is aging? How should we think about it? Ah? It
Speaker 1: is your cells getting older, running the same processes over
Speaker 1: and over and over and over, and then those cells
Speaker 1: dying and being replaced by new cells and it continues happening.
Speaker 1: So really, well, it's so much more complicated than that.
Speaker 1: That's the way I think about it. Your body as
Speaker 1: a system has been functioning for a long time, and
Speaker 1: as it continues to function, your body then becomes more vulnerable.
Speaker 1: All those cells, all those systems become more vulnerable to
Speaker 1: breaking down a little bit, something going wrong, either from
Speaker 1: a genetic standpoint, you know, within a couple of cells,
Speaker 1: a cluster of cells, as they encounter some environmental factor,
Speaker 1: a lot of times you can have some real problems.
Speaker 1: So you're looking at things like dementia, stroke, cancer, so
Speaker 1: freaking common, especially now that we know that we've been
Speaker 1: wiping our butts with forever chemicals. All A true story.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, unless you only use a day uh yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: true story. And that's that's something you should clock, folks.
Speaker 1: I can't remember when this is going to come out.
Speaker 1: But Matt, you would you would hipped us to that
Speaker 1: on a group chat and I had never heard of that,
Speaker 1: But nice teaser. Uh. The the process of aging is
Speaker 1: a series of processes. Honestly, aging is an umbrella's term,
Speaker 1: and there are certain things that can accelerate unevenly. I
Speaker 1: would add maculate or degeneration to the list of age
Speaker 1: related ailments that people encounter. And so for a while,
Speaker 1: doctors and scientists in what we can call the longevity field,
Speaker 1: we're trying to figure out which of these processes is
Speaker 1: the either the easiest to fix or the biggest bad
Speaker 1: guy in the room. And then from there they said, well,
Speaker 1: how do we target these processes? Is there a substance
Speaker 1: that we can use to hit at these things to
Speaker 1: halt them or reverse that trend of aging cells the
Speaker 1: way that you can use other drugs to target specific diseases.
Speaker 1: This is where we have to introduce folks like near Barzilia,
Speaker 1: who is I think he's used to hearing this looks
Speaker 1: great for his age. Also, I hate when people say
Speaker 1: you look great for your age. That's such a strange
Speaker 1: thing to say to someone. But but he had a
Speaker 1: quote that really stands out about it, like treating age
Speaker 1: like like a more understandable condition, the way that someone
Speaker 1: would treat diabetes, for instance. Yeah. And to that end,
Speaker 1: folks like doctor near bar ZELI, I believe him saying
Speaker 1: that correctly phonetically at the very least, um, he argues, quote,
Speaker 1: we can target aging, we can delay it, and in
Speaker 1: several instances we can stop and reverse it. At one
Speaker 1: point we had hope, then we moved to promise. Now
Speaker 1: we need to move to realize that promise. Um. And
Speaker 1: that's where we are. And this sounds a bit like
Speaker 1: a sales pitch to me, doesn't It is this person
Speaker 1: bit Yeah, okay, just make it sure right. But he
Speaker 1: is a medical doctor, yes, and there is there is
Speaker 1: fascinating research going to this and coming out of multiple universities,
Speaker 1: multiple hospitals, multiple you know, parts of the world. It's
Speaker 1: just as we're moving through this stuff. I do share
Speaker 1: your feeling, Noll, that's it feels too good to be
Speaker 1: true right now, because it it does feel too good
Speaker 1: to be true. Yeah, it depends on what people are
Speaker 1: maintaining is the truth. And we'll keep in mind, folks,
Speaker 1: we're not talking about some sort of consensual Benjamin Button situation.
Speaker 1: No one has a switch they can flip, no human
Speaker 1: at least where they can instantly return to a juvenile
Speaker 1: or infant stage. That superpower does belong to one living organism.
Speaker 1: It's a type of jellyfish that we discuss in depth
Speaker 1: in a previous episode in depth Ocean jokes. Anyway, so
Speaker 1: far as we know, people have also not been able
Speaker 1: to successfully replace themselves with clones. And that's good because
Speaker 1: that wouldn't really be you anyway. Genetic makeup is a
Speaker 1: surprisingly small part of what makes the you the actual you.
Speaker 1: So if you made a clone of yourself, you grew
Speaker 1: it up in a vat or whatever. Even if you
Speaker 1: try to replicate all your formative life experiences, it would
Speaker 1: be a very different person from the person that you are.
Speaker 1: So that's kind of like a high right sort of
Speaker 1: fools gold bargain. Anyway, So what are what are we
Speaker 1: talking about when we say reverse aging? Well, Matt, you
Speaker 1: brought up all the excellent work by many doctors, scientists,
Speaker 1: many nonprofit institutions, but a lot of folks leading the
Speaker 1: charge are private entities. They are biotech startups, and several
Speaker 1: of them are entirely focused on reversing biological age. Dozens
Speaker 1: of these groups, more than dozens probably actually, by the
Speaker 1: time this podcast comes out. They want to be the
Speaker 1: first the post to realize that promise that old doctor
Speaker 1: B is talking about through drugs that would be loosely
Speaker 1: called senolytics, as in, you know, fighting against sin essence.
Speaker 1: These pharmaceuticals can clear out those old dysfunctional cells and
Speaker 1: not damage the young functioning ones. They can clean the
Speaker 1: house of time. You know, so weird, that's so weird.
Speaker 1: And they're again there are a bunch of groups working
Speaker 1: on things that like this. A couple of small shoutouts
Speaker 1: before we get to the big one, because there's there's
Speaker 1: a there's a big dog in the game here. We
Speaker 1: just learned about the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of
Speaker 1: Yeshiva University. There's a group of people they're working on
Speaker 1: this stuff. There were several others. I think it's an
Speaker 1: author been that I heard about, David Sinclair who is
Speaker 1: also a He writes a lot about this and is
Speaker 1: doing a lot of research on this. The way these
Speaker 1: people talk about these things, y'all, it's it's just like before.
Speaker 1: It feels like it's happening right now. It's like it's
Speaker 1: already here, It's already happening. It's it's really impressive. But
Speaker 1: when you think about this huge place that we're going
Speaker 1: to introduce you to now, it feels like, at least
Speaker 1: in the minds of the billionaires, the member we were
Speaker 1: talking about, the really powerful people they want to live forever.
Speaker 1: It feels like they see it. That class of powerful
Speaker 1: people that want to live forever, they already see this thing.
Speaker 1: It's in their sights. Yeah, and it should spook you. Uh,
Speaker 1: Mission Control, could we get some spooky music, some scary music,
Speaker 1: something ominous there. It is one of the new biggest
Speaker 1: dogs in the game now, place called Altos Labs. Altos
Speaker 1: launched in twenty twenty one. This group has four Nobel
Speaker 1: winners on the board and they have funding of three
Speaker 1: billion dollars. Yes that's with a B. And they also
Speaker 1: caught the interests of folks like the modern Mansa Musa,
Speaker 1: Jeff Bezos. To them, aging is just a series of processes,
Speaker 1: which means they can not only be manipulated and tweaked,
Speaker 1: but they can be hacked. One of the big one
Speaker 1: of the big boffins working for Altos said quote, In
Speaker 1: certain ways, I interpret aging as a software error. And
Speaker 1: what surprises me about this more to think about it,
Speaker 1: it's actually really valid way to look at it, right, agree,
Speaker 1: It's just the data is compiling in erroneous ways as
Speaker 1: you make copies of copies of copies of copies, and
Speaker 1: you can't shut your system down to just reboot that
Speaker 1: program so that it'll just start running correctly again and
Speaker 1: just fix that error. Um, we have to sleep. Maybe
Speaker 1: that really is why we have to sleep. It's compiling errors. Well,
Speaker 1: the sleep is I think a good analogy would be
Speaker 1: old school defragging a hard drive right of your mind, Yeah,
Speaker 1: cleaning up the leftover detritus, you know, of of of
Speaker 1: memory and all of that stuff. Yeah, there's a there's
Speaker 1: another thing we found and you know, again, this is
Speaker 1: not a ding on these people, but just in the
Speaker 1: interest of transparency supporting a note that a lot of
Speaker 1: the quotes were pulling from are people who are very
Speaker 1: excited about their research, and in some cases people who
Speaker 1: are trying to sell their research, such as Kristen Fortney,
Speaker 1: the CEO of a place called Bioage Labs based in
Speaker 1: San Francisco. The CEO says the following quote. There are
Speaker 1: no hard limits imposed by biology or by physics that
Speaker 1: say we can't live better longer. Her company uses vast
Speaker 1: amounts of biobank, blood and tissue samples to try to
Speaker 1: target markers of aging. That's the big thing. You got
Speaker 1: to find what is creating this problem. Why does that
Speaker 1: eighty year old person function less well than that fifty
Speaker 1: year old person, right? And is there a way to
Speaker 1: change that? Well? And also, I mean there are I
Speaker 1: guess markers that are associated with aging less right, Like
Speaker 1: certain people lose their hair, you know, certain people go gray,
Speaker 1: some people don't. You know, people experience aging differently. Some
Speaker 1: folks would maybe more elastic skin, they don't show cracks
Speaker 1: or wrinkles as much, you know. I mean, there's definitely
Speaker 1: desirable genetic traits while not you know, the equivalent of
Speaker 1: life extension that would be good, you know for folks
Speaker 1: to have. Yeah, And I mean the hair stuff is
Speaker 1: maybe more cosmetic, I guess, but if it does have
Speaker 1: association with something else, that's what those folks are looking at.
Speaker 1: They're getting under the hood in a real way. They're
Speaker 1: looking at the nervous system, the brain, the circulatory system,
Speaker 1: and this bioage lab in particular, those folks are working
Speaker 1: on drugs that will slow age related muscle loss in mice.
Speaker 1: Let's go back to the CEO. Let's get in the
Speaker 1: weeds just a little bit for this quote because it's
Speaker 1: it's kind of creepy and we're going to hang out
Speaker 1: with mice for a minute here. Quote. There is a
Speaker 1: protein called appolin circulates in the blood, and we saw
Speaker 1: that middle aged people with higher levels of applin in
Speaker 1: their blood, we're living longer, with better muscle function and
Speaker 1: better cognitive function as they age. So we gave this
Speaker 1: drug to really old mice and we showed that it
Speaker 1: could improve their muscle function. It helps them run faster
Speaker 1: in their wheels, It increased their muscle size, it improved
Speaker 1: their grip strength. M I know, everybody, everybody listening, just
Speaker 1: go inject that apple. And we're kidding. This is not
Speaker 1: medical advice. To be careful the apple and Olympics. Olympics, Yes,
Speaker 1: what was that? Our buddy Dan Harman said we were
Speaker 1: pitching in Olympics with no rules to him and he
Speaker 1: was like, yeah, make them part truck, part man, all American, whatever,
Speaker 1: all Russian. I think all Russian. That's right, that's it. Yeah, sorry, Dan.
Speaker 1: But the thing is virtually every tech giant that you
Speaker 1: know of as an individual, every one of them, through
Speaker 1: one proxy or another, is probably investing in stuff like this.
Speaker 1: Uh like chat gpt created by open Ai. The CEO
Speaker 1: of open Ai, a guy named Sam Altman. It came
Speaker 1: out recently. This one guy ponied up one hundred eighty
Speaker 1: million dollars to start to invest in a biotech startup
Speaker 1: called retro Biosciences. Jack Dorsey, Mark Zuckerberg. We mentioned our
Speaker 1: buddy Jeff all the hits. They are paying big money
Speaker 1: into this because these are no longer quite high in
Speaker 1: the sky projects. This is not a in the pan
Speaker 1: like an NFT. These drugs, some of them are already
Speaker 1: out there. Welcome to our weird not quite advertisement for
Speaker 1: a diabetes drug called met Foreman. So met Foreman. It's
Speaker 1: used to treat diabetes, as he said, and it seems
Speaker 1: to create thirty percent lower rates of almost every kind
Speaker 1: of cancer. That's cool. It also appears to delay cognitive decline, and,
Speaker 1: as doctor Barzillai says, quote even people with diabetes who
Speaker 1: are OBEs and have more disease to start with, but
Speaker 1: are on met foreman have lower mortality rates than people
Speaker 1: without diabetes who aren't on the drug. Interesting if you
Speaker 1: start seeing something like that in drug trials. Right, Okay,
Speaker 1: we're trying to treat this one very specific thing, diabetes
Speaker 1: with this drug, but there's all these other positive effects.
Speaker 1: You're you know, brain starts going, what else could we
Speaker 1: use this for? There's lots of money here. Sorry, that's
Speaker 1: are thinking. That's not what the scientists are thinking. But
Speaker 1: the folks who give the lights on probably are right.
Speaker 1: And that's the issue. Like so many technological breakthroughs, we
Speaker 1: can see precedence at play. The money is there, the need,
Speaker 1: the desire is there, and those are the two factors
Speaker 1: that push the science forward, which means it's quite likely
Speaker 1: that within a decade or so, maybe sooner, some people
Speaker 1: will be able to turn back parts of their biological clocks.
Speaker 1: But we have to remember, folks, this is a critical
Speaker 1: thinking show. We ask questions people don't always want answered,
Speaker 1: So in our continuing mission to be fun at parties,
Speaker 1: we have to pose a question for you, should human
Speaker 1: society reverse aging? I can, but should will pause for
Speaker 1: a word from our sponsors, and we'll be back as
Speaker 1: time takes by. All right, we're back. What do we
Speaker 1: think should human society reverse aging? Well, I mean we've
Speaker 1: talked about how our natural resources are pretty taxed by
Speaker 1: the population as it is. I mean, if we can
Speaker 1: no longer depend on rates of attrition as far as
Speaker 1: existing you know, human lives, seems like a pretty bad idea,
Speaker 1: a recipe for disaster. And of course, see now the
Speaker 1: part of the conversation your mind immediately jumps to is
Speaker 1: would this be something that only the upper upper of
Speaker 1: the upper class could afford and they would sort of collude,
Speaker 1: you know, to be able to do that, even if
Speaker 1: it was a detriment to the rest of the world. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I imagine how expensive this drug is going to get. Seriously,
Speaker 1: I mean within years, not decades, within years, this drug
Speaker 1: is going to be so sought after and it's only Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's no way this drugs can be so expensive. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it would likely be a cocktail of drugs, right, a
Speaker 1: regiment of treatments. I mean, of course, I always think
Speaker 1: of my old argument with Scott Benjamin about flying cars.
Speaker 1: Scott's right, flying cars are a terrible idea because humans
Speaker 1: are terrible drivers. On the ground, that's the reason most
Speaker 1: people are not pilots. But for a lot of people,
Speaker 1: when you ask about reverse aging, most folks would say, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: at least for me, just like flying cars would be great.
Speaker 1: If I was the only one with a flying car.
Speaker 1: If I the only one who can reverse aging, that's awesome.
Speaker 1: I don't want to die. I'm not done yet. It's
Speaker 1: still my turn. You jerks, that kind of thing. But
Speaker 1: if you think about the world overall, then we see
Speaker 1: that humanity, going back to the study of death amatology,
Speaker 1: humanity has created these millennia old systems based entirely on
Speaker 1: the fact that people have predictable mortality. Every single culture
Speaker 1: you meet, and I know this sounds like a broad brush,
Speaker 1: every single culture you meet is based on and exists
Speaker 1: upon the founding thought that people in it will die.
Speaker 1: That's the heart of the thing. Spoiler alert. And what
Speaker 1: happens if a system like that gets confronted with a
Speaker 1: population that sticks around, that elongates their most productive years,
Speaker 1: it totally upends the system. Everything that's in place is
Speaker 1: like irrelevant now, things like pensions and you know what
Speaker 1: I mean, like or what I'm being silly? Not really, no, really,
Speaker 1: that's absolutely something that is codified within our system of living.
Speaker 1: And if all of a sudden we throw the wrench
Speaker 1: in the works of immortality, you know, and again this
Speaker 1: is only if it's more available than I think. You know,
Speaker 1: we think it will be definitely upends a lot of stuff.
Speaker 1: But why don't we operate under the assumption that it
Speaker 1: is only the upper of the upper echelon. They have
Speaker 1: access to so much stuff anyway, and they have wealth
Speaker 1: that is legacy, wealth that could sustain them, you know,
Speaker 1: it sustains generations of their family members. You know, why
Speaker 1: would that be a hit on the rest of us?
Speaker 1: Would that necessarily be a bad thing other than just
Speaker 1: maybe not the best people in the whole world living
Speaker 1: forever or living for a while, even one hundred and
Speaker 1: twenty years is enough to rock foundations of the death
Speaker 1: systems we call civilization. I mean, look, you raise a
Speaker 1: great point, right. The world already has skyrocketing inequality, and
Speaker 1: it's been skyrocketing for a while, but there's a new
Speaker 1: level of disparity. What if you can tell somebody's income
Speaker 1: by how old they are, right? What if sometimes you
Speaker 1: can outside of blue zones? But nothing in history will
Speaker 1: prepare humans for this potential acceleration. I was reading this
Speaker 1: book by a guy named Matthew Desmond, author of a
Speaker 1: poverty Comma by America. Right now, in the United States,
Speaker 1: about one in nine people live in poverty. If that
Speaker 1: population alone started its own country, it would be a
Speaker 1: bigger country than Australia or Venezuela. There were there were
Speaker 1: a lot of people who in the current system would
Speaker 1: likely not have access to the ability, the means to
Speaker 1: reverse their biological age. And then you start to imagine
Speaker 1: these are all thought experiments. This hasn't happened yet as
Speaker 1: we record, But imagine a world in which some tiny
Speaker 1: percent of the global population becomes increasingly less like your
Speaker 1: average Jane or Joe and increasingly more like some sort
Speaker 1: of perpetual institution. You walk into the mansion, you look
Speaker 1: just like your great grandfather, remember him fondly love for
Speaker 1: caramel apples you had when napples was still abound. For sure,
Speaker 1: I think, I think there were some things like that
Speaker 1: in that show Carbon, what is it called Carbon? There
Speaker 1: were some things like that exactly. It was very smart
Speaker 1: sci fi. I love that because you know, we always
Speaker 1: talk about smart sci fi. Oftentimes mimics reality eventually, you
Speaker 1: know down the line, someone kind of figured it out.
Speaker 1: Um they blew his stack the stack, Yeah exactly. Um,
Speaker 1: But I still stand by though this idea that like,
Speaker 1: you know, is it that different you know, passing down
Speaker 1: that that that obscene wealth to an air you know,
Speaker 1: I mean we know if we watch shows like a Succession,
Speaker 1: they're just waiting for Daddy to die so they can
Speaker 1: get the money. Like it's probably bad for the airs
Speaker 1: if but is it bad for us, you know, the regulars?
Speaker 1: Like is it going to change anything fundamentally about these
Speaker 1: legacy families or whatever? That already our institutions for all
Speaker 1: we care. It's just about who's in charge. You know,
Speaker 1: it can because if you if your time horizon of
Speaker 1: decisions right, if that, if that elongates, then your perspective changes,
Speaker 1: you know. That's why that's a good point. That's why
Speaker 1: the Catholic Church is so awesome at real estate because
Speaker 1: they can lose money on a location. And the British crowd,
Speaker 1: you know, and a lot of a lot of institutions,
Speaker 1: they are better than you at real estate if you're listening,
Speaker 1: because they can lose money on for a hundred years
Speaker 1: and it doesn't matter they know they'll make a couple
Speaker 1: hundred million on the back end, Right, every branch of
Speaker 1: the US military, every branch of the US military, throwing
Speaker 1: McDonald's as well. What we're saying is the playing ground
Speaker 1: is unfair, right McDonald's. You could argue, is a real
Speaker 1: estate holding company or hold go that happens to sell
Speaker 1: French fries. So like, all right, okay, let me get
Speaker 1: off this precarious soapbox. This okay, this same thing though,
Speaker 1: what I love about your point, Noel, The same thing
Speaker 1: could occur if someone is fully replicated as AI and
Speaker 1: upload into a cloud with full legal rights, given the
Speaker 1: power of attorney over whatever like whatever that looks like
Speaker 1: they are for all intents of purposes that individual. That
Speaker 1: could happen, That could happen, That could happen, And there
Speaker 1: is a world in which humanity could, like the vast
Speaker 1: majority of humanity could be controlled by something very close
Speaker 1: to the gods of old religions run by mad ghosts
Speaker 1: in the machines. Because you don't know what happened, like
Speaker 1: no one's done it yet. We don't know what happens
Speaker 1: when there's a real arnhem Zola, right, Marvel Universe anyway,
Speaker 1: so I assumed as much. So then what happens to
Speaker 1: the world's resource struggles? Well, they, yeah, that's so we've
Speaker 1: been hitting out all along, and then why I'm yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm asking what does it really look like? How does
Speaker 1: it trickle down to the rest of us? And I
Speaker 1: think your idea of perspective is super interesting, But I
Speaker 1: think it only really takes a hit on the world's
Speaker 1: resources if everybody gets this and then all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: you know, the population in general just isn't dying off
Speaker 1: like it used to. And while that sounds great, we're
Speaker 1: not set up for that. We're barely set up for
Speaker 1: what's already here. You know, someone's like, hey, we barely
Speaker 1: have enough food for all eight billion of you to
Speaker 1: reach the age of seventy three point one six years,
Speaker 1: and now you can die a little earlier. That'd be
Speaker 1: super dope if it's in your schedule. If it's your schedule.
Speaker 1: But but yeah, there are these there are these huge
Speaker 1: concerns that are happening, and there are a lot of
Speaker 1: great ethicists talking about this, And yes, being an ethicist
Speaker 1: is a real job, and it's an increasingly difficult one.
Speaker 1: It's one that's often ignored. But where are we now?
Speaker 1: In January of this year, Cell, which is a fantastic journal,
Speaker 1: published an article by a guy that you mentioned earlier,
Speaker 1: Matt David Sinclair, Professor of genetics at the blavat Nick
Speaker 1: Institute of Harvard Medical School and co director of the
Speaker 1: Paul F. Glenn Center for the Biology of Aging Research.
Speaker 1: And this guy brought a whole team with him. They
Speaker 1: started messing with aging in yeast. Yeah, yeast, you'll recognize
Speaker 1: it's earlier work from bread. They started aging experiments with bread.
Speaker 1: They moved up to mice. They've done some amazing things. Well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: back in twenty twenty, David Sinclair and his teams published
Speaker 1: the whole thing about how they could reverse the aging
Speaker 1: of eyes in mice. They could make blind mice no
Speaker 1: longer blind, which three of them, all three, all three
Speaker 1: behind mice now have side again. No, but but for real,
Speaker 1: that was in twenty twenty and now we're talking about
Speaker 1: a study this year in twenty twenty three, that's three years.
Speaker 1: Where did this this person, David Sinclair and the teams
Speaker 1: have been working on this stuff, yes, and they've already
Speaker 1: made huge steps forward. So creepy Okay. Sinclair was a
Speaker 1: graduate student at MIT when they said, hey, there are
Speaker 1: these genes they control aging in yeast, and they said, also,
Speaker 1: holy smokes, holy chibbada, these genes exist in all creatures.
Speaker 1: So is there a way to do this in people?
Speaker 1: And you know, there's a lot of ethics around human experimentation.
Speaker 1: You gotta jump through hoops. So they said, let's do
Speaker 1: some stuff with mice first. And this has been away Ben.
Speaker 1: They were really upset that we can't just jove right
Speaker 1: to experimenting on humans. You know, it's a real missedommortuity.
Speaker 1: They're just like us. There's a paperwork, Okay, there should be. Um,
Speaker 1: I get it, is what I'm saying. I get it
Speaker 1: still anyway. So uh yeah. So they did something that
Speaker 1: might be very uncool to some people, especially our animal
Speaker 1: rights activists and our vegans, vegetarians ethicist in the crowd.
Speaker 1: They had to do real science and speak of not
Speaker 1: real science. I want to shout out fringe been rewatching
Speaker 1: that it's basically law and order as science fiction. But
Speaker 1: there's a dark side to this science because, in addition
Speaker 1: to the fantastic stuff you mentioned, Matt restoring site maculability
Speaker 1: right and restoring muscle mass and brain and kidney function
Speaker 1: to these older mice. They had to test the other side,
Speaker 1: and they found that if they could flip some of
Speaker 1: their processes, they could fast forward aging in mice, and
Speaker 1: they could do it without necessarily causing cancer, like they
Speaker 1: could do it without necessarily killing the thing. They could
Speaker 1: just make it older. And this is tremendous research because
Speaker 1: that proves an important thing, that proves there is a
Speaker 1: process at play, right. And so if you wanted to
Speaker 1: be a real super villain, you could make it such
Speaker 1: that you are, you know, eternally thirty or forty or whatever. Theoretically,
Speaker 1: if we're writing sci fi, and then you could just
Speaker 1: hit a group. You could target a group and make
Speaker 1: them age at a precarious, much faster rate. And that
Speaker 1: hasn't happened yet. That has not happened yet. Maybe it
Speaker 1: won't because again, you know, there's a lot of paperwork,
Speaker 1: but this gives us a lot of questions, and there
Speaker 1: are questions that are not being addressed. Should people live longer, honestly, yeah,
Speaker 1: that'd be amazing, But the systems that humanity has built
Speaker 1: since the day people started humaning, they're not built for that.
Speaker 1: They're built on the assumption that mortality is predictable, right,
Speaker 1: that usefulness and productiveness in any society is predictable, everything
Speaker 1: from free market to theocracies, to communism or whatever flavor
Speaker 1: you want at the ice cream store of ideology, the
Speaker 1: ideas that we know people will die probably in their seventies.
Speaker 1: What do you do. You got to change the system, right,
Speaker 1: you have to make a new system. And if that
Speaker 1: doesn't happen, then reversing aging is I hate to say,
Speaker 1: it might be a bad thing more than a good thing.
Speaker 1: On the retirement age is now ninety five, the time
Speaker 1: in age is ninety five. The beatings will continue until
Speaker 1: morale improves, right, I don't know. This always makes We
Speaker 1: were talking about sci fi, but it's like, you want
Speaker 1: to live in a world like Elysium where there's a
Speaker 1: small population orbiting Earth and everybody works for them. You
Speaker 1: have no access to all the stuff they I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't know, and I know that's kind of a
Speaker 1: third rail, But what do you guys think? Do you think, well,
Speaker 1: we should reverse it? I don't know. I think I
Speaker 1: think we should check it out and see if we can.
Speaker 1: Because there's gonna be a mass die off of humans
Speaker 1: at some point if we can figure this out now
Speaker 1: and lock it away somewhere right, like to put it
Speaker 1: in the seed vault somewhere in Scandinavia, and we've got
Speaker 1: the stuff ready to go after that asteroid hits or
Speaker 1: you know that huge cme chrono mass egectu or whatever
Speaker 1: it is and takes out a whole bunch of humans,
Speaker 1: the ones that are left over, then we start them
Speaker 1: on the met Foreman and the what was the other one?
Speaker 1: There's another one, rep them Iyasin. Did you guys, did
Speaker 1: you guys read about Rappa Mayasin? Yeah? Sounds cool. Does
Speaker 1: it give you bars instantly? Yes, it does. It's from
Speaker 1: Easter Island, specifically from the soil and Easter Island, and
Speaker 1: there's a bacterium uh that's that's in there that can
Speaker 1: end up doing some of the same things when you
Speaker 1: apply like you turn it into a drug. Essentially, it's nuts.
Speaker 1: It's nuts. There's so there are more of these things happening,
Speaker 1: or there's more of these substances that are being discovered
Speaker 1: that have these effects on the cell's biological clock. So
Speaker 1: it does feel like it could be amazing if there
Speaker 1: were a way fewer humans. But as we stand now,
Speaker 1: you know, around the eight billion mark, it's probably a
Speaker 1: scary thing to try. So what do you think, folks, Uh,
Speaker 1: let us know. We can't we can't wait to hear
Speaker 1: from all eight billion people in the crowd today. Uh,
Speaker 1: just drop us a line on the internet. While that's
Speaker 1: a thing we should be pretty easy to find. We're
Speaker 1: talking facebooks, we're talking instagrams, We're talking YouTube's and TikTok's
Speaker 1: and Twitter's conspiracy stuff on a lot of those conspiracy
Speaker 1: stuff show on TikTok and Instagram. And if you don't
Speaker 1: sip those social meads, have not a worry in your mind.
Speaker 1: You can always give us a call directly. That's right.
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