Speaker 1: Warning, Despite Mangessa's grandmother's greatest wish, he is one not
Speaker 1: a doctor, and nothing in this episode should count as
Speaker 1: medical advice. You will, however, hear about looks maxing colonialism,
Speaker 1: and there will be references to the Golden Girls and
Speaker 1: the Odyssey. There will also be disclosure of one or
Speaker 1: more annoying astrological predictions, as well as adult language and
Speaker 1: mention of suicide, So sensitive listeners take care.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, Cliver.
Speaker 3: Yes, I'm gonna live twice. I'm mongaish and I am
Speaker 3: so happy here. I've had a heck of a year.
Speaker 3: So let me catch you up real quick. Anna, would
Speaker 3: you pull up the deck? Scun Valley loves a deck
Speaker 3: like this. This is a show about longevity. These are
Speaker 3: some things I heard over and over again. We can
Speaker 3: still be doing a triathlon at ninety, here, hundred.
Speaker 4: The maximum lifespan just keeps increasing faster than you age,
Speaker 4: and then somebody figures out how to stop us from
Speaker 4: dying permanently.
Speaker 5: Longevity sort of feels like this rarefied you know, tech
Speaker 5: pro brainchild of the already wealthy, already healthy individuals that
Speaker 5: somewhat selfishly want to live in extra A few decades.
Speaker 3: I think death is a great evil, and I think
Speaker 3: it takes people away from us way too soon. See,
Speaker 3: everyone wants to live forever. This is me as a
Speaker 3: kid reading.
Speaker 6: Three two one contact.
Speaker 3: I liked it because it was filled with weird science
Speaker 3: and discoveries and facts. The very matter that makes this
Speaker 3: is me now, still obsessed with weird science and discoveries
Speaker 3: and facts. Except for my hair is gray, my face
Speaker 3: is rounder. I'm lucky to have a wife and kids
Speaker 3: who make me smile.
Speaker 2: You don't look bad. You know you have ontap potential, right, And.
Speaker 3: I guess I'm supposed to be a grown up. But
Speaker 3: I can't believe I'm forty seven. I mean, I do
Speaker 3: get more tired. My reflexes aren't what it used to be.
Speaker 3: But my spirit that's a different story. I always have
Speaker 3: a pen on me for doodling. When I sit at
Speaker 3: the front of a bus, I like to inch my
Speaker 3: toe slowly over the do not cross line because it's harmless.
Speaker 6: Also, I don't really like being told what to do.
Speaker 3: This is my childhood friend Chathan. He's a rule breaker too.
Speaker 3: I'm actually a superhero now one years I know that
Speaker 3: live for you to come back and so how I
Speaker 3: can scale walls and a lecture a vision.
Speaker 6: Now there's a new peptide.
Speaker 3: He's lost way has loads of energy. And honestly, I
Speaker 3: don't want to live forever. But what Chathan has that
Speaker 3: sounds appealing. That's where my journey begins. This is a
Speaker 3: longevity doctor I saw while working on this show.
Speaker 7: This is how much that you have. It's like nine kilograms,
Speaker 7: which is a lot. You know, you're almost on the
Speaker 7: O B side.
Speaker 3: This is a genetics expert telling me trauma lives in
Speaker 3: your epigenetics. For eight generations, we see Indians aging pastor
Speaker 3: probably because of generational traumas due to colonization. So even
Speaker 3: if I take a lot of pills, colonialism kind of
Speaker 3: screwed me.
Speaker 6: This is my great grandmother. She saw it.
Speaker 3: All colonial rule, world wars, partition, independence, generations of family
Speaker 3: both entering and passing. When I was a kid, I
Speaker 3: thought she was the coolest. She was funny and surly
Speaker 3: and drank strong coffee with her morning newspaper. She loved
Speaker 3: Calvin and Hobbes and hated to lose its scrabble. The
Speaker 3: fact that she lived to one hundred and three felt
Speaker 3: like an achievement. But these days, when I talked to
Speaker 3: biopunks and longevinots, one hundred three barely seems worth bragging about.
Speaker 3: This is a graph of people who've lived past one
Speaker 3: hundred and twenty.
Speaker 6: There's only one of them.
Speaker 3: Jeane Cowmant from France. She was a smoker. This is
Speaker 3: a graph of the number of people scientists expect to
Speaker 3: live past their one hundred and tens in the year
Speaker 3: twenty eighty. That's three hundred thousand people right there. These
Speaker 3: are some old people we ask for advice.
Speaker 8: And I'll look in the mirror and I get my
Speaker 8: girl a rink, say you look all right, girl, We
Speaker 8: can do this.
Speaker 3: I learned my lessons from my grandmother and my dad.
Speaker 9: Keep it moving, to live forever.
Speaker 10: It's just a fantasy, so yeah, I might as well.
Speaker 9: Can I fly too?
Speaker 3: This is a biohacker who injected himself with cow brains
Speaker 3: just to see the effect.
Speaker 4: We've got all these peptides right here, and I'm gonna
Speaker 4: inject this one into him and I go yeah.
Speaker 3: This is a scientist who thinks some men are overdoing
Speaker 3: it and.
Speaker 9: Are like horoscopes for tech ropes.
Speaker 3: And this is where I find myself eventually talking to
Speaker 3: a startup founder who lives on an island populated mostly
Speaker 3: by monkeys. She's going to make her dad heart attack
Speaker 3: proof and she wants to do the same for you.
Speaker 3: So I'm like, wait, could I grow him a new
Speaker 3: heart that will never develop heart disease because I genetically
Speaker 3: engineered at them?
Speaker 5: Like stage one.
Speaker 3: This year, my friends and I set out to make
Speaker 3: a show about longevity. I wanted to go to blue
Speaker 3: Zones and MIT and meet people at the fringes who
Speaker 3: are developing new drugs and new therapies. I wanted to
Speaker 3: investigate the line between substance and snake oil. And here
Speaker 3: from folks implanting computer chips into their arms and the
Speaker 3: young scientists trying to replace their brains with a totally
Speaker 3: new one, one cell at.
Speaker 4: A time, not people who just talk about the future
Speaker 4: but are brave enough to actually do it.
Speaker 3: This is a show about life, but really it's a
Speaker 3: story about time. The time we have, the time we
Speaker 3: think we have, and the ways as human beings we're
Speaker 3: still asking for an extension. From Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio, I'm
Speaker 3: monga'sha Together. Welcome to Skyline Drive, How to Live Forever
Speaker 3: chapter one The New fifty. If you asked me in
Speaker 3: third grade, Missus Fletcher was the definition of old You
Speaker 3: remember Missus Fletcher.
Speaker 1: Right, I'm tallen and I can't get up.
Speaker 3: For sending help immediately Missus Fletcher.
Speaker 11: He will be called a law.
Speaker 3: Back in the nineteen eighties, these life call commercials were
Speaker 3: always on TV, and they really drilled into this idea
Speaker 3: that anyone who was older and living alone was constantly
Speaker 3: on the precipice of some massive accident. In home accidents
Speaker 3: last year, over three million people were disabled.
Speaker 12: One hundred thousand either suffered permanent disabilities or die.
Speaker 3: Stairs, slippery floors, a bunched carpet. These were all treated
Speaker 3: like murder weapons, and the commercials were so melodramatic you
Speaker 3: can see why they became a national punchline. I'm folling.
Speaker 3: All that's to say, I've been thinking about those commercials
Speaker 3: a lot, and it's made me wonder did old age
Speaker 3: on TV look older than it does now? So I
Speaker 3: called on my friend the communie Ken read.
Speaker 10: I'm more or lesson whenevery issue of TV Guide magazine
Speaker 10: like a normal person.
Speaker 3: Ken has been making his podcast TV Guidance Counselor for
Speaker 3: more than a decade, so he seemed like the perfect
Speaker 3: person for me to run my theory by. I'm about
Speaker 3: to turn forty seven, and I was trying to imagine,
Speaker 3: like what was old age on TV as a kid,
Speaker 3: Like what was my perception of it? And the thing
Speaker 3: I kept coming back to was that I've fallen and
Speaker 3: I can't get up commercial.
Speaker 10: Yeah, yeah, that was what we all had to look
Speaker 10: forward to, being alone and injured and your your family
Speaker 10: doesn't remember your care about you anymore.
Speaker 3: Just to be clear, this was never how I pictured
Speaker 3: my own old age as a third grader. I just
Speaker 3: assumed I'd be living this very able bodied, Sherlock Holmes
Speaker 3: esque life, you know, like playing music and chess, solving
Speaker 3: mysteries with my best friend, wearing a lot of tweed.
Speaker 3: Not exactly life called territory. I mean, I didn't know
Speaker 3: about this, and I don't know if you did before,
Speaker 3: but when I did some research, which like it was
Speaker 3: a true story, like the woman who played Miss Fletcher
Speaker 3: was named Edith for and she had actually fallen. Yeah,
Speaker 3: although it was a dramatic recreation, I don't think she
Speaker 3: hit her head on every step like she does in
Speaker 3: the actual part.
Speaker 9: Of the recreation.
Speaker 10: But yeah, and it's it's funny for a lot of reasons.
Speaker 10: That's such a weird snapshot because a it's pre internet,
Speaker 10: pre cell phone, so like, I think people younger than
Speaker 10: us now would be like, why do you need that
Speaker 10: if you fall? Like, doesn't your phone automatically send in
Speaker 10: the military?
Speaker 6: Yeah?
Speaker 3: No, Like you look at that commercial and you think
Speaker 3: this woman is not leaving her house, like maybe she
Speaker 3: gets escorted to like a piano recital or something every
Speaker 3: once in a while.
Speaker 10: Yeah, I mean you and I were the same exact age.
Speaker 10: I'll most my birthdays in June and I'll be forty
Speaker 10: seven somehow, and my dad's in his early seventies, and yeah,
Speaker 10: I mean, obviously he doesn't look like a seventy something
Speaker 10: year old woman from the mid eighties generally, but I
Speaker 10: don't think of them in the same way. And part
Speaker 10: of its perception as well.
Speaker 3: I was looking back and I didn't realize that, like
Speaker 3: Funker On, all the family dies at like age fifty
Speaker 3: of a stroke. Yeah, Like the idea that they used
Speaker 3: to kill off the loved characters who are not that
Speaker 3: much older than me feels bonkers. Or here's another example,
Speaker 3: as a kid. The Golden Girls seemed like the oldest
Speaker 3: people on TV. Three senior citizens and one of their
Speaker 3: mothers talked away in Florida. I just assumed they were
Speaker 3: in their seventies moving that you.
Speaker 13: Can't teach an old ad new drigs.
Speaker 2: And if anyone knows about tricks.
Speaker 3: But when I researched it, Rue McClanahan, who played Blanche,
Speaker 3: was just fifty one, you.
Speaker 10: Know, likea mona from Who's the Best? Prime example, right.
Speaker 3: The whole joke on that was.
Speaker 10: Like she's sex crazy. So she's an old lady and
Speaker 10: she's like fifty.
Speaker 3: Maybe what's hard to swallow though, isn't just that fifty
Speaker 3: was considered old age. It's also how fragile fifty used
Speaker 3: to seem.
Speaker 10: When you go back and look at clapper ads, they're
Speaker 10: mostly focused on old people at the beginning, because why
Speaker 10: wouldn't they be. It's like, hey, you're old, you can't
Speaker 10: get up and turn all light off?
Speaker 6: Amazing.
Speaker 3: I mean, I remember the clapp for Phenomena, but I
Speaker 3: had not realized that it was targeted at old people.
Speaker 10: That's really oh yeah. The first few ads it's like
Speaker 10: old people in craftmatic chairs clapping, so because they're falling
Speaker 10: asleep in their chair, like they want to shut the
Speaker 10: light off, you know, because he'll live alone. And you're
Speaker 10: really old at fifty.
Speaker 3: But think about what those mid fifties look like now.
Speaker 3: Matt Damon as Odysseus is not feeble. He's fifty five
Speaker 3: and ripped and in the best shape of his life.
Speaker 3: But also think about how much better we all look.
Speaker 3: Our skin is better, the air quality is better. There's
Speaker 3: less pollution. We haven't been exposed to homes full of
Speaker 3: cigarette smoke. Our food has less transfats, and those are
Speaker 3: hard won battles that turned into real public health winds.
Speaker 6: We also care more.
Speaker 3: We use moisturizers and I creams and inject things like botox,
Speaker 3: and that shows up not just in how we look,
Speaker 3: but in the stories we tell. Ken told me that
Speaker 3: TV shows about seniors took a turn too. It used
Speaker 3: to be that stories about older people focused on struggle.
Speaker 10: It was almost like all your resources are gone. Now
Speaker 10: everyone you knew was gone, so you need help because
Speaker 10: it's just.
Speaker 6: Like nice, just you.
Speaker 10: Yeah, And then they kind of focused it on second
Speaker 10: chances or like a second act.
Speaker 3: And now it seems like everyone's pushing for third and
Speaker 3: fourth acts. But at some point doesn't every story have
Speaker 3: to end.
Speaker 6: Chapter two?
Speaker 3: Another prediction making a show is a funny thing. On
Speaker 3: one hand, I don't think I've listened to Skyline Drive
Speaker 3: since we made it, at least not the hard parts.
Speaker 9: Situation doesn't look good for father.
Speaker 11: There is a risk to father, and you should take
Speaker 11: every possible care.
Speaker 3: Back then, I thought I was making a show about astrology,
Speaker 3: and then my dad passed and the show ended up
Speaker 3: being about something else about death and how to accept,
Speaker 3: to grieve, how to hope again, and also how astrology
Speaker 3: was this prism to do all of that. But I
Speaker 3: have re listened to the interviews, and there's something wonderful
Speaker 3: about having these records of chats with my mom or
Speaker 3: my friend and things we said but I don't remember.
Speaker 3: And recently, looking back through old recordings, I stumbled into
Speaker 3: something odd tape of a tantric astrologer I met in Chennai.
Speaker 3: For me, this was one of the most meaningful parts
Speaker 3: of the show. That year, I had heard a prediction
Speaker 3: about my dad's death and it came true. And as
Speaker 3: part of this astrologer's apprenticeship, he had to predict the
Speaker 3: exact time his father would die, and that came true
Speaker 3: as well.
Speaker 12: And he told me, I said, Guru, I am asking
Speaker 12: you when I willn't die. I'm asking you you'd see
Speaker 12: a tenn And unfortunately, yeah, I was the person who
Speaker 12: told that you'll have a kardi cuarist.
Speaker 3: It may sound silly or fantastical, but in that moment
Speaker 3: I felt so connected to him by this strange, invisible
Speaker 3: string of our shared experience. He told me what sadness,
Speaker 3: how he didn't want to be accurate about his father
Speaker 3: but he was, and how certain fates etched into the
Speaker 3: stars are undeniable. That's the part I remember. But as
Speaker 3: I really listened, I heard another part of our conversation,
Speaker 3: a part I'd forgotten.
Speaker 12: So from twenty thirty four or ten month till twenty
Speaker 12: thirty nine, after month, you will retain what you are
Speaker 12: then boom, end of this life. Sorry to say this.
Speaker 3: It turns out that July twenty ninth, twenty thirty nine
Speaker 3: is a critical date. And if I somehow happen to
Speaker 3: make it past that, you.
Speaker 12: May live for four to five years.
Speaker 7: What that will be some kind of issues.
Speaker 3: So if I trust his interpretation of the stars, I
Speaker 3: have an expiration date of sixty four years, which you know,
Speaker 3: not bad, could be worse, or at least that's what
Speaker 3: I thought when I told my except maybe I regret
Speaker 3: sharing my revelation with Lizzie because while I fell asleep
Speaker 3: pretty quickly after my bedtime confession, the conversation kept her
Speaker 3: up and she can't let it go, so we talked.
Speaker 6: About it a little later.
Speaker 3: I don't know if you notice you keep laughing.
Speaker 14: I don't think I've laughed once. I don't find this
Speaker 14: funny at all.
Speaker 3: I mean, either it'll happen or it won't happen.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 14: If you're deflecting, you're deflecting because my beef is not
Speaker 14: with the fact that he predicted it, and you are
Speaker 14: mad that he predicted it.
Speaker 3: I don't know. If I get sixty four years a wife,
Speaker 3: that's okay.
Speaker 14: It's wonderful like to not take things for granted and yeah,
Speaker 14: and be present and be present. But no, I'm not
Speaker 14: okay with that, especially because our children would not be
Speaker 14: very old at that point.
Speaker 15: I mean, I'm not saying it wouldn't be hard. Obviously,
Speaker 15: it would be difficult when.
Speaker 9: You were in your forties.
Speaker 14: So you want your children to have less time with
Speaker 14: their father than you have hit with your father.
Speaker 15: No, but like in the context of like, I don't know,
Speaker 15: we made space Ninja suits on a snow day, but
Speaker 15: like we we've done so many fun things and so
Speaker 15: many weird things, and it's just been like very joys
Speaker 15: and so I'm sure it would be difficult, but like,
Speaker 15: I don't regret things that I've done.
Speaker 2: No, of course not.
Speaker 14: I'm just saying I'm voting for you sticking your own Okay, okay.
Speaker 3: But it isn't just Lizzy. You as feelings about my
Speaker 3: early departure. She and my friend Chathan started talking about
Speaker 3: this prediction.
Speaker 14: One Gush's general attitude about all of this is like, yeah,
Speaker 14: that's fine, what's.
Speaker 11: Wrong with him?
Speaker 6: So why would he be?
Speaker 9: Why you be okay with that?
Speaker 3: So, of course Chathan wants to talk to me. I
Speaker 3: am a little concerned about your health. I think we're
Speaker 3: at this age where like we don't get a whole
Speaker 3: lot more free passes.
Speaker 6: As we both approach our mid forties, right, our.
Speaker 11: Early fifties is what we're fucking approaching.
Speaker 3: Yeah, our health is like a slow burn in terms
Speaker 3: of decline.
Speaker 6: I don't know if this is true.
Speaker 3: But I feel like I played a lot more sport
Speaker 3: than you, and so like I feel like I wore
Speaker 3: down my body more than you might have. So I
Speaker 3: guess my lack of athletic ability is finally coming to
Speaker 3: my veny, like I was good at math and bad
Speaker 3: at sports, and finally like that's like working out for me. Somehow,
Speaker 3: Everyone's got thoughts, even my kid Ruby, Why are you.
Speaker 2: Damning a podcast that like helps you find out when
Speaker 2: own who's gonna die? Like, isn't that sad?
Speaker 3: I mean, that would be a sad podcast. But even
Speaker 3: when we corrected Ruvi about the topic, they still had
Speaker 3: an opinion.
Speaker 14: Do you want to live longer than you might?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I do. I think you shouldn't take what your
Speaker 2: life are granted.
Speaker 14: Do you want to live a long time?
Speaker 2: I would like to live long. I think it would
Speaker 2: be nice, But I also think it would be sad
Speaker 2: to grow and like have a lot of people who
Speaker 2: you love like leave.
Speaker 14: Yeah, you don't think you'd want to be the last
Speaker 14: one left?
Speaker 6: No, I'm a lot like Ruby.
Speaker 3: I figure when it's over, it's over, And I've never
Speaker 3: really thought about negotiating for extra time. The thing is, I.
Speaker 6: Do love to push a deadline. I'm a writer, after all.
Speaker 3: Plus I was semi famous in high school for being
Speaker 3: able to get teachers to push back tests for our classes.
Speaker 3: So maybe you'll fall back on old habits when I
Speaker 3: get to sixty.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 3: What I do know is I feel out of sync
Speaker 3: with my social feeds. The noise is just oppressive. With
Speaker 3: influencers and looks, maxers and billionaires and talking heads all
Speaker 3: chattering about a zepic and life acts and living forever,
Speaker 3: you just cannot escape it. So it's comforting to hear
Speaker 3: my kid talking about the future the way I do.
Speaker 14: Do you have an idea of how old you'll be
Speaker 14: when you're very old?
Speaker 8: I want to get to my late eighties and hopefully nineties,
Speaker 8: But I don't want to like hang on by to
Speaker 8: I just to live longer. I want to like enjoy
Speaker 8: it's done joy.
Speaker 2: I mean, look at joe'snaka dude. She doesn't need longevity.
Speaker 3: She's like it's rash, Chapter three, one hundred candles.
Speaker 11: There are a few things I want to talk with
Speaker 11: you about before we start. For example, I usually work
Speaker 11: like that down top shirts.
Speaker 3: Okay, is that better for age?
Speaker 2: I think?
Speaker 11: I think it's I want to reflect youth. H Okay, okay.
Speaker 3: Doctor Near barzilaias seventy has a boyish charm with the
Speaker 3: mischievous sense of humor. On his office wall, there's an
Speaker 3: awesome powers poster that his students have photoshopped him into
Speaker 3: because there's a clear resemblance. But a superspy looks aren't
Speaker 3: the reason I'm talking to Near. Near has been obsessed
Speaker 3: with one problem since he was a kid.
Speaker 11: What happens that you grow up and then you get old?
Speaker 3: Which is funny to me, like, what's the wonder? Isn't
Speaker 3: that life? But not to Near, which put him ahead
Speaker 3: of the curve when it was time to choose a
Speaker 3: residency after med school.
Speaker 11: And there were no ages. Right, I'm one of the first,
Speaker 11: so there was nobody that I could go and say
Speaker 11: train me.
Speaker 9: We had to kind of invent it.
Speaker 3: He started in endochronology, the study of hormones, because he
Speaker 3: had a hunch that since hormone go up as we
Speaker 3: grow and then go down as we age, and.
Speaker 11: I thought, wow, maybe if you just supplement those hormones,
Speaker 11: you'll stop the aging process, which proved to be largely wrong. Okay,
Speaker 11: but it gave me enough knowledge to know how to
Speaker 11: ask the next questions.
Speaker 3: And then fast forward. He's the director of the Aging
Speaker 3: Center at the Albert Einstein School of Medicine in the Bronx.
Speaker 11: When you don't have a lot of competition, you can
Speaker 11: become a leader.
Speaker 3: Reading Bust here says the modern science of aging gero
Speaker 3: science really kicked off with one observation.
Speaker 11: If you take any animal and give some of the
Speaker 11: brothers or sisters to eat whatever they want, and the
Speaker 11: others you caloric restrict them, they live much healthier and
Speaker 11: much longer.
Speaker 3: This was one of the original breakthroughs in aging science.
Speaker 3: Longevity researchers at places like UCSF, MIT and the Buck Institute,
Speaker 3: we're trying to understand why low calorie diets made worms
Speaker 3: and mice and other creatures live longer, and they uncovered
Speaker 3: key mechanisms of aging, from telemere attrition to cellular damage,
Speaker 3: things that later became part of what we now call
Speaker 3: the hallmarks of aging. Because by itself, starve the mice
Speaker 3: and they live longer isn't exactly useful medical insight.
Speaker 11: Because of course, telling people to eat forty percent less
Speaker 11: is not going to work.
Speaker 3: And along the way, they started to understand something wildly
Speaker 3: important that had nothing to do with mice diets. This
Speaker 3: thing we all know on an intuitive level that not
Speaker 3: all people age at the same rate, meaning your driver's
Speaker 3: license and your blood panels might not say the same thing.
Speaker 11: There's a biological agent and chronological age, and a seventy
Speaker 11: five year old woman can be with all systems totally
Speaker 11: fucked up, and a ninety year old person that maybe
Speaker 11: a little bit of antibiotics you can get to age hundred.
Speaker 3: Also, as your biological age increases, so does your risk
Speaker 3: for the big four diseases of aging, cancer, Alzheimer's, heart disease,
Speaker 3: and diabetes.
Speaker 11: This biology of aging drives diseases. In other words, it's
Speaker 11: not that you get disease and you get told. You
Speaker 11: get told with the years, and this biology brings out
Speaker 11: the disease.
Speaker 3: This is the biggest idea behind the current longevity of revolution.
Speaker 3: If you can slow aging, maybe you can keep sickness
Speaker 3: at bay a little longer and death even further off.
Speaker 3: I want to talk to nir especially because he founded
Speaker 3: the Longevity Genes Project, a landmark study of over five
Speaker 3: hundred centenarians and their children to witness the benefits of
Speaker 3: slow aging up close. Neir knows this one hundred and
Speaker 3: six year old in finance who still goes to work
Speaker 3: every day, siblings who've reached one hundred and nine centenarians
Speaker 3: who were smokers and overweight, and by studying all these
Speaker 3: low agers in the wild, Near realized he could figure
Speaker 3: out how to learn the secrets of aging well and
Speaker 3: make drugs and other recommendations to help those of us
Speaker 3: born without those lucky genes.
Speaker 11: So we had thirty five years to realize and those
Speaker 11: centenarians have realized probably twenty of those So what can
Speaker 11: we learn from them?
Speaker 3: And what they learned is a few things. They learned
Speaker 3: that there's a strong genetic factor, as in, if your
Speaker 3: parents lived a long time, you're pretty likely too as well.
Speaker 3: And it doesn't even have to be both parents, it
Speaker 3: can even be one grandparent. And that there are some
Speaker 3: strong links about having high HDL. Though near his feelings
Speaker 3: about cholesterol.
Speaker 11: If it is very boring subject, I want to get
Speaker 11: over get that.
Speaker 3: But there was another learning from his centenarians that truly
Speaker 3: stunned him.
Speaker 11: They were sick very little time at the end of
Speaker 11: their lives. Of our centenarians thirty percent didn't have any
Speaker 11: disease and didn't take any medications.
Speaker 3: If you can crack this longevity code, you can reduce
Speaker 3: not only medical costs, but also suffering. And honestly, if
Speaker 3: there's a correlation between extending my life and not spending
Speaker 3: my final years getting sick or in hospitals, I'm in.
Speaker 3: Before I take my leave, I have one more question.
Speaker 3: One thing I was curious about is your own aging.
Speaker 11: And why would you be curious about my own aging.
Speaker 11: I'm seventy years old. I have no interest in retiring. Okay,
Speaker 11: I feel like I'm in the prime of my activities.
Speaker 11: But I'm also practicing very aggressively longevity medicine. So how
Speaker 11: am I doing that? I have a longevity doctor, okay,
Speaker 11: because I don't want to have a fool as a client.
Speaker 3: Right Chapter four, The Other Shoe. Doctor Ron Primus's office
Speaker 3: is on the upper east Side with a view of
Speaker 3: Central Park and a mini waterfall.
Speaker 6: But the thing that.
Speaker 3: Really catches my eye a framed profile of doctor Primus
Speaker 3: from some years ago titled the Doctor is Out celebrating
Speaker 3: his work doing house calls for the rich and famous. Allegedly,
Speaker 3: doctor Primus was one of the inspirations for that USA
Speaker 3: TV show Royal Pains, and I do feel like royalty.
Speaker 3: Doctor Primus has generously waved his fees, but when my
Speaker 3: producer asks about costs for the test he runs, the
Speaker 3: staff doesn't know offhand because clients here aren't concerned with prices.
Speaker 3: As Doctor Primus enters the room, he's asking his assistant
Speaker 3: about his meals. He's on this very specific feed schedule.
Speaker 3: He tells me he's short and trim and good looking.
Speaker 3: And as he organizes his desk and pulls out a laptop,
Speaker 3: I launch in with the big question why longevity.
Speaker 7: Everybody's got a story right, right, And like my mother
Speaker 7: died when I was a kid of leukemia, My grandmother
Speaker 7: died of leukemia. How father died of leukemia, and so
Speaker 7: I was always waiting for the able.
Speaker 9: To shoot a drop.
Speaker 6: And then he goes to med school.
Speaker 7: I mean, clearly you have patients that have genetic propasity
Speaker 7: for cancer and things like that. But you know, barring
Speaker 7: those patients, almost everybody else is in there of their
Speaker 7: own device, like handguns, you know, car accents, drinking and
Speaker 7: driving whatever.
Speaker 9: Just I was like, it's gotta be better way.
Speaker 3: So he gets into preventive medicine and public health, ends
Speaker 3: up directing an AIDS clinic, but then he has a revelation.
Speaker 9: I've read Ray Kurzweale's book with Terry Grossman called Transcend
Speaker 9: and I was like, right, this makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 3: And this, this is what leads doctor Primus to fall
Speaker 3: down the longevity rabbit hole. This glimpse into a not
Speaker 3: so distant future. Kurzweil, as the computer scientist and futurist too,
Speaker 3: among other things, helped popularize a concept that would come
Speaker 3: to be known as longevity escape philosophy.
Speaker 11: If you're diligent, you'll use up a year of your
Speaker 11: longevity with the year passing, but you'll get back a
Speaker 11: full year in past twenty.
Speaker 9: Twenty nine, you'll get back more than a year. I
Speaker 9: feel like should go back with some time.
Speaker 3: It's a heavy concept, but the idea basically not aging
Speaker 3: or getting time back, it's one that feels less far
Speaker 3: fetched than an age of AI and the miracle drugs.
Speaker 3: But just hearing the name Ray Kurzweil makes me realize
Speaker 3: how embedded and twined with Silicon Valley ideology, the whole
Speaker 3: longevity movement seems to be as doctor Premus digs deeper
Speaker 3: into the field and starts testing out ideas he sees.
Speaker 3: The impact on himself.
Speaker 7: Was, Oh, I was about fifty pounds bigger than this
Speaker 7: at my heaviest and no matter what I was, like,
Speaker 7: could not lose the weight.
Speaker 3: By his early thirties, Doctor Primus is very dialed in
Speaker 3: on optimizing his health. He's mastered his diet, exercise, sleep.
Speaker 7: Because of all of this my personal health trajectory. Like,
Speaker 7: I'm like the post a boy for longevity.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 7: So Brian Johnson spends like what couple million dollars a
Speaker 7: year on himself, right, and I spend nothing.
Speaker 3: Just to break here for a second. Every single person
Speaker 3: I've told about this podcast has wanted to talk to
Speaker 3: me about Brian Johnson, and I feel like in every
Speaker 3: conversation he's just this looming WWE character getting hyped backstage
Speaker 3: for his walk in Ladies and Gentlemen, making his way
Speaker 3: to the ring from the biohacking lab of the future,
Speaker 3: the founder of the Don't Die movement, A man so
Speaker 3: incredible he doesn't chase greatness.
Speaker 6: He tracks it by the millisecond.
Speaker 3: While you mortals are still asleep, He's awake at four
Speaker 3: thirty am optimizing human existence. When you are having a
Speaker 3: second cup of coffee, he's finishing dinner at eleven.
Speaker 6: In the morning because science said so.
Speaker 3: Piles of pills and powders every day, precision workouts, blood therapies,
Speaker 3: red light therapies. Because he could eat for pleasure, he
Speaker 3: could sleep for comfort, he could choose not to keep
Speaker 3: track of every erection he has every night. Instead, this
Speaker 3: human machine lives for data. So hide your sugar, lock
Speaker 3: up your process cars. Because stepping into the ring tonight,
Speaker 3: it is the blueprint, the hooper, biohacker, the man hooper
Speaker 3: uses to die. Wid Johnson, Brian Johnson is so pervasive
Speaker 3: in culture that somehow even my kid Ruby knows about him.
Speaker 14: Yeah, I know, what do you know about Brian?
Speaker 8: He's doing all this stuff And didn't he like take
Speaker 8: his kids like blood right to make him feel be younger?
Speaker 2: Do I think? Again, that's a lot to do, Like
Speaker 2: I think, are you going to give any blood? No?
Speaker 14: I don't think he wants to curated to myself.
Speaker 3: All that's to say, Brian Johnson has single handedly done
Speaker 3: more to popularize the idea of living forever than any
Speaker 3: other modern human and he supposedly slowed his aging to
Speaker 3: a reported point five oh three, aging half a year
Speaker 3: for every year he lives. That's all according to the
Speaker 3: dunid in paste clock, the gold standard for tracking how
Speaker 3: you're aging biologically. But doctor Primus says it doesn't take
Speaker 3: one hundred pills and two million dollars a year to
Speaker 3: compete with that, not even close.
Speaker 7: I just train really hard, I eat really healthy, I
Speaker 7: sleep eight hours a day, I take a bunch of supplements,
Speaker 7: and my dunit in pace of aging is only point
Speaker 7: sixty five and his is something like point six too,
Speaker 7: So I'm like close to him, and I do almost
Speaker 7: nothing that he does.
Speaker 3: Doctor Primus tells me that his clientele fall into two groups.
Speaker 3: It's either these Brian Johnson inspired men in the thirties
Speaker 3: who want to live forever, or people in their eighties
Speaker 3: and nineties who want to live as well as long
Speaker 3: as they can. It turns out people like me are
Speaker 3: an outlier, not a lot of forty seven year roles
Speaker 3: in that mix. Then the exam begins. Over the course
Speaker 3: of the next hour, doctor Primus starts peppering me with questions.
Speaker 3: We go through some of my family history, which I'm
Speaker 3: expecting any alcoholism. Uh, yeah, there's there's alcoholism in the family,
Speaker 3: poor my dad's side. Any suicides, yes, I debate how
Speaker 3: deep I need to go to tell him about my
Speaker 3: genius cousin my age who took his life. We're one
Speaker 3: of my grandaunts who jumped down a well. The fact
Speaker 3: is my family never talked about addiction or depression, so
Speaker 3: I don't really know how to get into it with him.
Speaker 3: We talk about my dad's cancer and how much I drink,
Speaker 3: Not that much these days. Also, what else friends of
Speaker 3: my family, diabetes, high blood pressure.
Speaker 9: This brings me to the next question.
Speaker 7: So do you have a fire stingleisher or a fire
Speaker 7: blanket in your kitchen when you cook?
Speaker 9: Yes? And do you go to sleep belt in the
Speaker 9: car all the time even an uber or taxi?
Speaker 6: Yeah, you're going to bike it all rarely.
Speaker 9: Do you have a helmet yes? Any firearms in the house.
Speaker 7: No, you know people have in the end to make
Speaker 7: sure you keep the safety on, and yeah, sort of thing.
Speaker 9: It's important.
Speaker 3: It's funny. These are such simple questions, but also so
Speaker 3: different from the fifteen minute cursory checkup I'm used to getting.
Speaker 3: Is this a glimpse into what preventive care could look
Speaker 3: like for everyone. None of this costs any money. What
Speaker 3: it costs is time. How many lives would be saved
Speaker 3: if everyone's doctor asked them these questions. When we finish,
Speaker 3: we go into another room. I put on a paper
Speaker 3: gown and we do a series of tests. Some have
Speaker 3: me standing on something that looks like a scale, driving
Speaker 3: onto what feels like a handlebar of a bike. Some
Speaker 3: are blood draws, some are just routine eye and ear things.
Speaker 3: It takes about twenty minutes and then we walk out.
Speaker 3: It's December eighth, and I'm feeling pretty good in the
Speaker 3: exam room. My eyes and ears checked out, my lung
Speaker 3: sounded fine. There didn't seem to be any irregularities. And
Speaker 3: sure I was expecting like maybe a little note that
Speaker 3: I'm getting older, maybe a pat on the back for
Speaker 3: playing tennis and walking so much. Instead I hear this, so.
Speaker 9: You're fat mess.
Speaker 7: And next, this is how much that you have totally
Speaker 7: and it's like nine kilograms, which is a lot. You know,
Speaker 7: you're almost on the ob side. Waste circumference is definitely
Speaker 7: high for you. This is body composition trut You want
Speaker 7: to be down there, not there, so it just takes
Speaker 7: some work.
Speaker 3: The whole thing is kind of a gut punch. I'm
Speaker 3: hearing about how unhealthy I am. He's encouraging, but also
Speaker 3: sounding the alarm. I need to control the things I
Speaker 3: can control and start putting real effort into them or
Speaker 3: risk losing years. He tells me to intermit fast and
Speaker 3: to start tracking everything. As he's telling me all this,
Speaker 3: I feel overwhelmed.
Speaker 9: You track your data at all?
Speaker 7: I feel like a watch and whoop or biostrap work
Speaker 7: really well.
Speaker 9: You should wear a bluepless monitor just to kind of
Speaker 9: stay on top of it.
Speaker 7: Your aplutment at like sixty two degrees and work with
Speaker 7: ound with like listening, schedule and try and not yet
Speaker 7: so you feel.
Speaker 9: A great trains being quite sure and start vacation so
Speaker 9: you got your work cut out a little bit.
Speaker 3: I'm skeptical I can pull this off, like I could
Speaker 3: take a pill.
Speaker 6: A pill is easy.
Speaker 3: I can show up for injections, but sleeping at regular
Speaker 3: times for eight hours, breaking my day for cold plunges,
Speaker 3: finding time to exercise. How am I going to do
Speaker 3: any of that? Then I think about what's at risk
Speaker 3: and who's giving me the advice? Doctor Primus tells me
Speaker 3: he had an older patient who was very high functioning
Speaker 3: and had the markers for Alzheimer's, and then he had
Speaker 3: a sudden decline.
Speaker 9: I was like, wow, something's wrong.
Speaker 7: He went off the cliff like he literally was good, good, good,
Speaker 7: then bam.
Speaker 9: So I was like, look, we got to do something
Speaker 9: about this.
Speaker 3: So doctor Primus teams up with his friend Neir, who
Speaker 3: is also his patient, and they send the man to
Speaker 3: a third friend in Tel Aviv.
Speaker 7: Neir has a friend called Shaya Friday. There, Shai has
Speaker 7: this protocol for Alzheimer's patients using hyperbaric and he had
Speaker 7: intensive four months daily hyperbaric.
Speaker 9: I put him on a kto diet.
Speaker 3: And then with a tweak to his diet, daily sessions
Speaker 3: in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber, and a regimen of games
Speaker 3: and apps to stimulate his brain. Doctor Primus tells me,
Speaker 3: then just four months.
Speaker 7: He's completely back to normal. All of the testing that
Speaker 7: they did sh dramatic improvements.
Speaker 3: And as I gather my things to leave, I keep
Speaker 3: returning to the story. Maybe it's just that an anecdote
Speaker 3: and end of one, but I can't stop being excited
Speaker 3: by the possibilities. So I started thinking about bellying up
Speaker 3: to my to do list from Doctor Primus. And then
Speaker 3: as I'm walking out into the brisk December air, I
Speaker 3: get one more gentle nudge towards the future. We bump
Speaker 3: into another of doctor Primus's patients, this man who looks
Speaker 3: to be in his eighties. He tells us his mother
Speaker 3: is also a client. She's one hundred and six and
Speaker 3: it's hard to keep up with on the dance floor.
Speaker 6: I really don't want to go to the gym, But being.
Speaker 3: Able to dance until the end of your life, that
Speaker 3: seems like a wonderful thing. Fifty too much, Chapter five,
Speaker 3: The Odyssey of it All. So remember that part where
Speaker 3: my wife and my child were complaining about me being
Speaker 3: okay with my life Sentence of sixty four. There's one
Speaker 3: more thing I need to tell you. Every few years,
Speaker 3: whenever we could afford it, my mom would take us
Speaker 3: to India for a whole summer. For us, India was
Speaker 3: this bizarro world with completely different rules, a place of
Speaker 3: pure chaos and colors. At the edges of my grandparents
Speaker 3: lush garden, beyond Bogan Villa and the tall Gaman tree,
Speaker 3: you could spot mongoose and beautiful gray longer monkeys. At night,
Speaker 3: you sneaked into bed under these lacey mosquito nets that
Speaker 3: hung from the bed frames like some Victorian relic. And
Speaker 3: of all the people in the house, I was most
Speaker 3: enamored with my grandfather, who bridged all these incredible worlds.
Speaker 3: I love that he was this gentleman who studied botany
Speaker 3: at Oxford and kept volumes of national geographics on the bookcase,
Speaker 3: and played weekly.
Speaker 6: Bridge games with his friends on the verandah.
Speaker 3: And I loved how magical time with him could be,
Speaker 3: Like late one night, how he woke me up and
Speaker 3: led me outside to peek it at Bethlehem Lily, this
Speaker 3: flower he'd been cultivating that only opens once a year
Speaker 3: in moonlight. We're hearing him talk about his adventures as
Speaker 3: a chief of forestry, how he'd briefly fostered heard some
Speaker 3: bear cubs at home because he found them abandoned in
Speaker 3: the woods, Or how he'd killed a king kobra that
Speaker 3: was attacking him, how he tried to shoot it as
Speaker 3: it raced towards him, and when he missed, he took
Speaker 3: his rifle and turned it around and swung it like
Speaker 3: a cricket bat, knocking the creature out. But more than
Speaker 3: any of that, I love that he was so loving
Speaker 3: and sensitive too, that he had this deep empathy for others.
Speaker 3: When I was nine, he was taking a bus to
Speaker 3: visit assault mine. He breathed in deeply and in a
Speaker 3: minute disappeared from a heart attack. When I heard the news,
Speaker 3: I was devastated. On the bus where he passed away.
Speaker 3: The young man recognized the initials and last name on
Speaker 3: his briefcase and stayed to lend a hand. His father
Speaker 3: had been in the forestry service too, Mayaja had helped
Speaker 3: him when he became disabled and couldn't work. And I
Speaker 3: always thought, if you can do that in seventy two years,
Speaker 3: if you can live in a way that your grandkid,
Speaker 3: several continents away, growing up in a completely different culture,
Speaker 3: wants to mirror the best parts of you, well, then
Speaker 3: maybe sixty or seventy years is enough. That feels like
Speaker 3: enough time. And that's how I felt and lived my
Speaker 3: life forty seven years in fact, happy to savor the
Speaker 3: time I have, making the most of it.
Speaker 6: But then there's this, I.
Speaker 14: Would prefer for you to plan on and work as
Speaker 14: if we're going to live you much longer.
Speaker 3: Lives together How can I ignore that? Because what if
Speaker 3: Chathin and Near and doctor Primus and yes, even that
Speaker 3: WWE wrestler dooming in the back of my head are right?
Speaker 3: What if I could prove the strologer wrong and defeat
Speaker 3: death by a year or ten or twenty. Doesn't my
Speaker 3: family deserve that?
Speaker 6: Right now, they.
Speaker 3: Are scientists using dancing molecules to make paraplegic mice walk again.
Speaker 3: There are geneticists curing babies of lifelong diseases before they'll
Speaker 3: take their first steps. They are entrepreneurs designing new drugs,
Speaker 3: delivering miracles and labs. And there are world leaders talking
Speaker 3: on hot mics about how they might extend their lives
Speaker 3: and reigns by seventy five years or longer. And I
Speaker 3: don't know if there's a pill or an injection or
Speaker 3: a transplant that's going to give us an endless life,
Speaker 3: But I keep hearing about these secrets that only scientists
Speaker 3: and the elite know about right now.
Speaker 4: They sometimes don't like going on the record just because
Speaker 4: of the nature.
Speaker 9: Of what they do.
Speaker 3: And since I still have a little time on my hands,
Speaker 3: I might as well chase.
Speaker 6: Those secrets down. This season on How to Live forever,
Speaker 6: so you have.
Speaker 3: A testable brain essentially in the futured day. Right, Okay,
Speaker 3: gentle you guys, that totally does work.
Speaker 14: People were just filling up their bottles.
Speaker 4: I learned about Da Vinci writing his notebooks mirrored, so
Speaker 4: that just seemed like the pure most symmetric form of
Speaker 4: just physically developed.
Speaker 12: Sixteen floors, but eight of them are themed. We have
Speaker 12: a floor for AI, floor for crypto, floor for longevity
Speaker 12: and so on.
Speaker 3: I told them I'm new to the building and was
Speaker 3: here for an event, and he asked me, quite blankly,
Speaker 3: if I want to live forever from twenty two to
Speaker 3: twenty five, I have frozen blood samples and data of
Speaker 3: how my plasma proteins and also my immune cells have changed.
Speaker 3: The more muscle loss.
Speaker 12: You're almost there.
Speaker 3: So want to age in MAA right now?
Speaker 13: You can kind of see the appeal of it. You
Speaker 13: want to try and get as much as you can,
Speaker 13: But then you're also downplaying every single other element of
Speaker 13: your existence. Our families and the people we work with,
Speaker 13: and the people that we see in the street, you know,
Speaker 13: are those maybe the more important parts of our existence.
Speaker 9: Everybody holds each other up with their arms.
Speaker 7: They're holding each other up so they can do these
Speaker 7: more difficult movements.
Speaker 3: One of the cool things about def is that it
Speaker 3: completes the story. I mean, I want to say, is
Speaker 3: it really a story without?
Speaker 2: And then.
Speaker 6: Yes, I'm going to live you. We did it.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much for listening. I feel so lucky
Speaker 3: to be making a show. I have so many feel
Speaker 3: to thank. Skyline Driver is a production of Kaleidoscope and
Speaker 3: iHeart Podcast. This show is hosted and written by Me
Speaker 3: Mongish particular, with a ton of help, like so much
Speaker 3: help from these wonderful Evans Lizzie Jacobs aka and my wife,
Speaker 3: who I'm so lucky to have conned into leading this
Speaker 3: production and spending a lifetime with me. I also have massive,
Speaker 3: massive help from the most talented and most cat loving
Speaker 3: Mary Philip Sandy and the unbelievably tapped in science producer
Speaker 3: Mark Steven Allen, who knows everyone from congressman to exile
Speaker 3: journalists to superstar kids in Brooklyn who have put magnets
Speaker 3: into their ends. Mark Lotto is the very very best
Speaker 3: story editor who had to go away to our hammock
Speaker 3: on an island just to handle editing me. That's how
Speaker 3: rough it is. This episode was mixed by our genius
Speaker 3: Kyle Anna from Computer Seni Productions, with lush and wondrous
Speaker 3: scoring from Botany Spencer.
Speaker 6: How can we do this without you?
Speaker 3: Also the beautiful Indian hip hop This courtesy of Azadi Records,
Speaker 3: who is so amazing, and there are gorgeous tracks from
Speaker 3: the artist Samsa Mo and Nathan.
Speaker 6: Thank you so much.
Speaker 3: If you want to hear more, we made you a mixtape, you.
Speaker 6: Just have to check out the show notes.
Speaker 3: Additional production research support from the wonderful Lucas Riley. The
Speaker 3: show is executive produced from iHeart but my good friends
Speaker 3: Ali Perry and Katrina Norvel. The show would not have
Speaker 3: happened without the support of my friends a kaleidoscope, starting
Speaker 3: with my business partner pal oswa Lishan, who somehow still
Speaker 3: believes in the show. Juliane Nutter is our head of
Speaker 3: studio and has been bearing with me and passing along
Speaker 3: so many great story notes. Costas Linos, thank you so
Speaker 3: much for keeping the lights on with a smile, making
Speaker 3: everything go smoothly.
Speaker 6: Costas, you are the best.
Speaker 3: Kate Osborne for getting the show off the ground. Thank you,
Speaker 3: Kate rachel Strom. We owe you so Big, You are
Speaker 3: the very best lawyer and neighbor and human. Also Christy David, Gina,
Speaker 3: Dara calypso L Viney for coming out from retirement to
Speaker 3: do the beautiful collage art again, anyone who led ahead.
Speaker 6: There are way too many of you.
Speaker 3: I also want to give a little special thanks to
Speaker 3: all the kiddos who bore with us through this production.
Speaker 3: Henry Ruby, my two little maniacs who now yell off
Speaker 3: the record at me at the dining table. Also Julian Brendel,
Speaker 3: lou Litleenzo and Pearl Etour. All my friends at iHeart,
Speaker 3: including Bob Connell, will carry Nicki, Jason, Jerry and Moore
Speaker 3: my New York and Atlanta Cruz.
Speaker 6: There are too many to name.
Speaker 3: Also Shanta Sullah, my family in India, my family in
Speaker 3: the States. The very very biggest thank you to Josh
Speaker 3: Clark from the legendary podcast Stuff.
Speaker 6: You Should Know.
Speaker 3: Josh read this episode's warning and he once told me
Speaker 3: he hated his voice until someone told him he sounded
Speaker 3: like a muppet. So from one muffet to another, thank
Speaker 3: you so much. I just want to say thank you
Speaker 3: to my teachers, missus Leary and miss Anderson, who were
Speaker 3: just two of the greatest elementary school teachers ever. They
Speaker 3: made me believe my talents, made fall in love with
Speaker 3: creative projects, and for some reason, they still listen and
Speaker 3: root for me. The world needs more tea fatures and
Speaker 3: people like you. And just one last thank you to
Speaker 3: my Amma, my dad, lovely fandomschaticular who I thank my
Speaker 3: lucky stars for.
Speaker 6: Thank you so much for listening