Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. And
Speaker 1: you know, humans have always been pretty interested in the
Speaker 1: idea of living longer, living forever, even it's uh, it's
Speaker 1: pretty much the thing we're most into. Oh yeah, the
Speaker 1: fountain of youth, right, that that trophy that we continue
Speaker 1: to pursue. Yeah. I I always think back to the
Speaker 1: line and Blade Runner with Rudgar Howard's character Roy Batty. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Roy Batty, where he says I want more life father, Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: and sometimes he says other things to slightly different things
Speaker 1: depending on the cut. But that's the director's the most
Speaker 1: recent director's cut, and I think that's the final word
Speaker 1: on the matter. It's a little creepy too, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: because I think then you like poke somebody's eyes out
Speaker 1: or something. Yeah, and then there's a couple of backflips. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because he's in shape. He only lived to be like three.
Speaker 1: That was the thing. The uh, the fake people and
Speaker 1: that the replicants, um, they had very short lifespans and
Speaker 1: they were kind of pissed about it. They only lived
Speaker 1: to be three years old, even though they were they
Speaker 1: were full grown, you know, sexy adults, but they were
Speaker 1: they were only three years old when they died, that's right.
Speaker 1: And if they all wore makeup or was it just
Speaker 1: Darryll Hannah who uh, Darrell Hannah were makeup? I think
Speaker 1: Rugger Howard just went around shirtless and whip that's right.
Speaker 1: And it was this blazing blue eyes. That's what I'm
Speaker 1: thinking about the makeup. Well, I guess that if they
Speaker 1: were if replicants were real, and and and if Blade
Speaker 1: and I actually happened and they found about this guy,
Speaker 1: this dude named Aubrey de Gray, Yeah, this is the
Speaker 1: guy they would be running down. Because the whole sci
Speaker 1: fi thing of like, oh, I'm not gonna live very long.
Speaker 1: I need to fix it. I mean, that's just an
Speaker 1: amplification of the very real life scenario that everybody's in,
Speaker 1: except I mean some people are more denial. They're just
Speaker 1: kind of like, oh, I guess I'm gonna get old
Speaker 1: and die and you know, there's nothing I can do
Speaker 1: about it. And some would arguable that's the healthy approach
Speaker 1: that you're you know, you're but but not but no,
Speaker 1: not Aubrey to Gray right like he's he's this biogerontologist,
Speaker 1: self taught by the way, but at the same time
Speaker 1: is just has pulled the rug out from under the
Speaker 1: whole field of gerontology, and um, he's sitting there saying,
Speaker 1: you know what, it's it's not that we can't live
Speaker 1: much longer. It's just that we are we are sitting
Speaker 1: there just sort of giving up, when in fact, there
Speaker 1: there are things that we can pursue and do today,
Speaker 1: and that it's very possible that the first person to
Speaker 1: live to one thousand years old has been born is
Speaker 1: in and it could be you or I or both
Speaker 1: of us. Are all of us depending on what sort
Speaker 1: of research and what sort of breakthrough has happened. It's
Speaker 1: not gonna be me. I'm gonna cut it off around
Speaker 1: five hundred years, you know, because I think five that's
Speaker 1: a good that's a good cut off point. After that
Speaker 1: it gets kind of tacky. I mean, how bad of
Speaker 1: a driver am I going to be by five? Well?
Speaker 1: I mean according to him though that you there's good.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm jumping ahead a little bit, but there
Speaker 1: are all sorts of cellular rejuvenations happening that are kind
Speaker 1: of keeping you at this baseline level, always feeling like
Speaker 1: you're thirty years old. Well, that's his thing. His his
Speaker 1: thing is like it's not just a let's cling to
Speaker 1: life till the very limits of our of our ability,
Speaker 1: because that's that's the really sad and that's one of
Speaker 1: the things that that I think that theres a lot
Speaker 1: of people from thinking about, um, you know, life extending research,
Speaker 1: because we have that picture in our mind of somebody
Speaker 1: wasting away um often with a you know, in an
Speaker 1: enfeebled mind, if not in sometimes it seems like it's
Speaker 1: it's either one or the other. Half the time, it's
Speaker 1: like either the mind goes or the body goes, and
Speaker 1: I guess sometimes both go and then very rare instances
Speaker 1: both seem to hang on a little while. But he's
Speaker 1: saying it doesn't have to be like that. We can
Speaker 1: It's not just prolonging life, but but making the good
Speaker 1: part last longer. It's not just keeping the clunk or
Speaker 1: car going, you know, and just to the point we're
Speaker 1: just pushing it along the road, but actually maintaining it,
Speaker 1: replacing the parts that need replacing, uh doing you know,
Speaker 1: giving at the service it requires to keep that that
Speaker 1: car nice and road worthy for for you know, a
Speaker 1: long time. That's interesting and one interview he actually uses
Speaker 1: that same analogy and it says, Yeah, that's why do
Speaker 1: you think we have like these cool antique cars that
Speaker 1: are in mint condition because we continue to rejuvenate them
Speaker 1: at every pass. And it's and basically that aging is
Speaker 1: an engineering problem. Yeah, and he can fix it. And
Speaker 1: I totally buy into this guy, and part of it
Speaker 1: maybe his awesome beard. Will you describe this man's beard.
Speaker 1: The beard is very, very long, it's pointy. Um, it's
Speaker 1: kind of got a ginger colored brownish hue to it. Um.
Speaker 1: It speaks to me literally, it says hello, Julie, and
Speaker 1: it has it has actually caused me to form a
Speaker 1: crush on this man. I know it sounds weird, but
Speaker 1: besides the fact that he's brilliant, he's doing all these
Speaker 1: incredible things. Yes, he looks like a tall, linky gnome. Yeah,
Speaker 1: people like Gandalf and Alan Moore look at this guy
Speaker 1: and they're like, man, and that has got a cool beer. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just bears mentioning, that's all. Yeah, And and also it's
Speaker 1: easy to reconnife. You see a YouTube clip with a
Speaker 1: guy with an epic beer talking about living to be
Speaker 1: a thousand years old. It's this guy. There's not another.
Speaker 1: It's not a crazy homeless guy. It's most likely all
Speaker 1: breated de gray. So so yeah, this is it's it's
Speaker 1: a very cool Argumentum. I I think I've spoken before
Speaker 1: in the podcast about when we think about death, there
Speaker 1: are sort of like two camps. There's like in one
Speaker 1: of our a lot of our problems with death and
Speaker 1: our belief systems about death correspond with this idea that
Speaker 1: death isn't something that our body does, but something that
Speaker 1: happens to our body. And uh, and he's just he's
Speaker 1: basically saying, yeah, this is something our body does, but
Speaker 1: it happens in seven ways, and these are seven battles
Speaker 1: that we can win. All right, all right, this is
Speaker 1: like the Scott Pilgrim versus the world things seven evil boyfriends. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like that he's vanquishing each one. But um, we
Speaker 1: should probably talk a little bit more about, um, some
Speaker 1: of the nuts and bolts stuff that we know, like
Speaker 1: the Hayflick limits. Oh yes, the Hayflick limit is a
Speaker 1: big one. Um. And this involves that this gets a
Speaker 1: little technical. Will bear with me. This involves something called
Speaker 1: yeah yeah, and there'll be more beerd jokes later, but
Speaker 1: it involves telomeres, in and telomerase. Okay, let's hit telomeres first.
Speaker 1: All right. These were discovered in Night by geneticist Hermann J. Mueller.
Speaker 1: Telomeres is Greek for in part and basically what you
Speaker 1: need to think about our shoelaces. Okay, Because these are
Speaker 1: telomeres are essentially protective caps composed of short DNA sequences
Speaker 1: on the tips of chromosomes. All right. The chromosomes they protect,
Speaker 1: in turn, contain the DNA that determines our entire biological profile,
Speaker 1: everything about you. Um. Geneticist Elizabeth Blackburn compared them to
Speaker 1: the little caps on the ends of our shoelaces. That's
Speaker 1: where I get this fantastic analogy. I can't take full
Speaker 1: credit for it, but anyway, Without them, the laces begin
Speaker 1: to unravel. So you see the problem. The unraveling of
Speaker 1: the laces is aging. Each time the cell divides, the
Speaker 1: telomeres become shorter. Okay, so it's kind of like each
Speaker 1: time you wash your shoes in the water, it breaks
Speaker 1: down the odal plastic capitittle Okay, if the telomeres grow
Speaker 1: too short, they reach the hay flick clement. All right,
Speaker 1: this is the point at which they can no longer
Speaker 1: protect the chromosomes from damage. So in this you can
Speaker 1: think of them and you know, less like shoe laces
Speaker 1: and more like a lit candle. So even now, your
Speaker 1: telomeres are burning down, and they're getting shorter with each division,
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, reaching the point of of guttering out.
Speaker 1: And some people have are have longer telomeres than others.
Speaker 1: The longer you have, the longer um life you have. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And when I was getting your article on how to
Speaker 1: telomeres work, I noted that you had a photo of
Speaker 1: a woman I think ditavanties. Yeah, okay, and she's got
Speaker 1: you know, it's a picture of a mole. And I
Speaker 1: guess that there's a connection between people who have moles
Speaker 1: in the length of their telomeres. Right. It took me
Speaker 1: a long time to find a close up of her
Speaker 1: face on Getty Images, but I wonder why. Yeah, but yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that's interesting. Right, So if you have a mole,
Speaker 1: then you might say to yourself, hey, I won the
Speaker 1: the telomere jackpot. Here might are pretty long, Yeah, if
Speaker 1: you have a lot of molds, all the better. That
Speaker 1: was from a two thousand not two thousand seven. I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: dermatology study conducted by King's College, London, And yeah, I
Speaker 1: said people with more moles often have longer deal mirrors. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then you've got that tim raise, which is the
Speaker 1: enzyme that helps, yeah, rebuild telomerase to enumerase. I only
Speaker 1: know that because I had to look at some YouTube
Speaker 1: videos right before we came in here to get appreciation.
Speaker 1: That's good. That's because I was just going to go
Speaker 1: off with like telomerase for something like elomerase. But that
Speaker 1: is something you know. That enzyme is very active when
Speaker 1: we're young, obviously, and helps us um rebuild damage to
Speaker 1: ourselves or rebuild ourselves, so on and so forth. But
Speaker 1: as we get older, it decreases, and the only time
Speaker 1: that we see an uptick and its production is when
Speaker 1: there are cancerous cells right right now. To tilomerase again,
Speaker 1: it it basically repairs and lengthens the telomeres. Yes, So
Speaker 1: that that's why why it's important. But but like you're
Speaker 1: about to say, the problem is it's not just a hey,
Speaker 1: let's pump ourselves full of tilomeraise and and read the benefits,
Speaker 1: because too much tilomeraise is not a good thing, right,
Speaker 1: And we think that it happens in cancer cells because
Speaker 1: it's sort of an ingrained UM algorithm that goes, oh, hey,
Speaker 1: we're being attacked. We need to repair these cells. But
Speaker 1: in fact you probably shouldn't prear these cells because these
Speaker 1: are the these are the cancer as cells, and these
Speaker 1: are the ones that are eating your body up essentially um.
Speaker 1: And so that's why that's one of the reasons why
Speaker 1: cancer cells are so aggressive, is because you've got the
Speaker 1: two mares going on there. But it's it's all sorts
Speaker 1: of interesting implications with telomerase, this enzyme. There's the possibility
Speaker 1: that we could use them in a way that we
Speaker 1: wouldn't be destroying ourselves and we might be rejuvenating ourselves
Speaker 1: from stem cells. So yeah, there go yeah. And this
Speaker 1: is part and parcel of Aubrey de Gray's um thinking Yeah,
Speaker 1: which we will talk about more. This presentation is brought
Speaker 1: to you by Intel sponsors of Tomorrow and in fact,
Speaker 1: in Nature magazine, Harvard Medical School published the results of
Speaker 1: their study in which they treated my suffering from age
Speaker 1: related to degeneration and with Tela Maris, and they found
Speaker 1: that the damage didn't just go away, but the mice
Speaker 1: actually repair their cells to an earlier, healthier and younger state.
Speaker 1: So there's there's possibilities here. We shouldn't, you know, wholesale
Speaker 1: poopo it right now, we just don't quite understand how
Speaker 1: it could work for us. Yeah, but let's talk about
Speaker 1: the bearded one. Oh yes, yes, his his seven the
Speaker 1: seven battles, the sevel seven fronts in the War to
Speaker 1: defeat aging. That's right, Um, I guess we can just
Speaker 1: blow through these. Uh, this guy can talk a lot
Speaker 1: about them. So it's you know, each each one is
Speaker 1: is a very deep issue and if we really wanted to,
Speaker 1: we could probably do a podcast on each of these.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, and and talk about the different examples, because
Speaker 1: you could go on and on. But just just for
Speaker 1: brevity's sake, we'll just kind of go for them, talk
Speaker 1: about them. Let's blow through them. Here we go, all right?
Speaker 1: So number one, cells that die off aren't naturally replaced
Speaker 1: in the heart and brain. Okay, so you it's it's
Speaker 1: again kind of wear and tear. Things are are are
Speaker 1: crapping out on you and they're not getting fixed, all right.
Speaker 1: His fix is, uh, you have stem cell replacements. Yes, okay,
Speaker 1: And again that's simple, that's a simplification. It's a very
Speaker 1: in depth of field of study. But that's the basic
Speaker 1: idea of the fix, all right. Number two, proliferation of
Speaker 1: unwanted cells, such as fat cells that replace muscle like
Speaker 1: this kind of thing leads to diabetes. His fix trick
Speaker 1: them into destroying themselves through suicide gene therapy, which sounds
Speaker 1: pretty awesome. Number three. Yeah, Number three, formation of links
Speaker 1: between certain proteins and the lack of elasticity in certain
Speaker 1: tissues like artery walls that cause high blood pressure. The
Speaker 1: fix drugs that break these bonds. Okay. Number four cellilar
Speaker 1: garbage inside the cell, like build up of ane as
Speaker 1: between the brain. Uh, in the brain that causes Alzheimer's right.
Speaker 1: His fix engineer genes and enzymes to digest the junk. Um.
Speaker 1: This would be like you know, enzyme injections, and he
Speaker 1: thinks that, interestingly enough, we might find the bacteria in graveyards,
Speaker 1: which has a nice creepy twist on this. Like I said,
Speaker 1: there's a whole podcast um. Then cellular garbage outside the
Speaker 1: cell um. The fix is the same enzymes and injection,
Speaker 1: but an example of of how celar garbage outside the
Speaker 1: cell leads to aging and death. This is hardening of
Speaker 1: arteries and heart disease. Number six aging damages mitochondria that
Speaker 1: produced energy for cellular activity. His fix swap around the
Speaker 1: mitochondrial DNA through gene therapy to protect it. And then
Speaker 1: finally the big one number seven cancer runaway cell divisions.
Speaker 1: And his fix for this is awesome, um because they
Speaker 1: basically the idea came to him while he was in
Speaker 1: an Italian bar and he was on his second beer.
Speaker 1: And this is why this is I really love this
Speaker 1: is because there's a there's a British sketch comedy show
Speaker 1: called That Mitchell and web Look and they have this
Speaker 1: one sketch about how about this like secret group kind
Speaker 1: of an illuminated group to control of the world and
Speaker 1: run everything. And they're based along the principle that, um,
Speaker 1: you should never finish your second drink, like this is
Speaker 1: an alcoholic drink things, so you know, you know, if
Speaker 1: you're not drinking age, you you don't know exactly what
Speaker 1: I'm talking about, and nor should you tell appropriate drinking
Speaker 1: rate age if you so choose but the argument in
Speaker 1: the sketch was that by the middle of that second drink,
Speaker 1: everything is possible. You have this this feeling of optimism
Speaker 1: that you can conquer anything, and you just you know,
Speaker 1: just use jazz, like throw a problem at me, death, cancer,
Speaker 1: I got it, I'll figure it out. But if you
Speaker 1: finish that second drink, then any number of catastrophes could happen.
Speaker 1: So their whole thing is just never finished the second drink.
Speaker 1: So I love the idea that the bearded one came
Speaker 1: up with this idea halfway through that second beer. Um.
Speaker 1: And the idea is something called wilt or whole body
Speaker 1: interdiction of lengthening telomeres. And he's talking about destroying the
Speaker 1: replicating abilities of all potentially dangerous cells before they can
Speaker 1: become cancerous and replace and basically and you would also
Speaker 1: like pump in replacement stem cells every decade and so
Speaker 1: it's sort of like heading them off with the past. Yeah, okay, UM,
Speaker 1: I don't know this is this is so fascinating because
Speaker 1: what's what is weird about this is that this guy
Speaker 1: didn't set out to be a biogerontologist, right, like I
Speaker 1: believe that he's got a degree in computer sciences, and
Speaker 1: he's quite esteemed, although a bit of a lightning rod,
Speaker 1: and not just because of his of his beard, but
Speaker 1: because of what he's proposing. But he's done so much
Speaker 1: research and he has published so much on this that
Speaker 1: he really is making inroads in terms of logistics. And
Speaker 1: he's basically saying, I can't do this tomorrow, but I
Speaker 1: think within ten years we're within reach of of extending life.
Speaker 1: Find like, if we can really sink some money into
Speaker 1: looking at the best way to apply this to humans. Um.
Speaker 1: And again, he's done a ton of work with rats
Speaker 1: and so on and so forth. If only there were
Speaker 1: some old people with a lot of money concerned about dying.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I'm not sure the research is going
Speaker 1: to come together on this one, but we'll see. Uh yeah,
Speaker 1: I know where could he find those people? And how
Speaker 1: could he transmit his message? I don't know to these people? Uh,
Speaker 1: but I mean people really are interested in though. But
Speaker 1: in his Ted dot com bio because he had does
Speaker 1: this great Ted talk? Uh? They say. In July two,
Speaker 1: the m I T. Technology Review challenge scientists to disprove
Speaker 1: degrees claims, offering a twenty thousand dollar prize, half of
Speaker 1: which was money put up by Degrades Foundation, which is
Speaker 1: called appropriately enough Methuselah Foundation. Of course, is one of
Speaker 1: the Biblical characters that lived to an advanced stage. I
Speaker 1: think he, along with Noah and Adam supposedly lived to
Speaker 1: be nine They are going um. But anyway, they put
Speaker 1: up this challenge basically any molecular biologist who could demonstrate
Speaker 1: that his sins which is the abbreviation for what he's doing,
Speaker 1: is so wrong that is unworthy of learned debate, and
Speaker 1: the challenge remains open. So and there are a lot
Speaker 1: of people who are looking at this and it's you know,
Speaker 1: it's within his field and outside of his field. And
Speaker 1: what I think is interesting is that Raymond kurts Wheel,
Speaker 1: who I don't know if we could call him the
Speaker 1: father of the singularity, you know that's appropriate, but certainly
Speaker 1: someone who has been talking about the singularity um. And
Speaker 1: this is again for anybody just joining this, uh and
Speaker 1: not for those of you who are sick of hearing
Speaker 1: about singularity. Is that the idea that computers continue to
Speaker 1: advance and advance, and they're advancing at such a rate
Speaker 1: that they will eventually surpass humans and then the singularity
Speaker 1: will occur where they you know, they nose ahead in
Speaker 1: the race. Yeah, and he says, uh, this isn't an
Speaker 1: interview with Ram Kurts. Well, he says, we'll get to
Speaker 1: a point in my view, it's only about fifteen years
Speaker 1: away where every year that goes by, we're adding more
Speaker 1: than a year to your remaining life expectancy. So that's
Speaker 1: a tipping point. And he points directly to degray Um
Speaker 1: and then to kind of back that up, he said,
Speaker 1: he likes to point out that, you know, look look
Speaker 1: at technology, and we've talked about more slaw before and
Speaker 1: so on and so forth, and he's sort of applying
Speaker 1: this analogy to um the medical field. But he's saying, like,
Speaker 1: you know, look at your average cell phone. It's about
Speaker 1: a million the size of the millions of the price
Speaker 1: of an of a thousand times more powerful than the
Speaker 1: computer he had an m I T forty years ago.
Speaker 1: So his point is that technology is speeding up. These
Speaker 1: things are happening. Um, the human genome, you know, nobody
Speaker 1: thought that would ever get mapped, got mapped two years
Speaker 1: earlier than it was supposed to. Uh, we're moving toward this,
Speaker 1: you know, especially in churs Wheel's opinion, at this point
Speaker 1: where technology and science and medicine are converging to create
Speaker 1: this this circumstance where we possibly could extend our life
Speaker 1: in a meaningful way, not as you have pointed out,
Speaker 1: just sort of crawling toward death at you know, age nine,
Speaker 1: but feeling actually robust, yeah, or you know, are also
Speaker 1: these sort of sci fi visions too, of like just
Speaker 1: being a feeble thing locked away in a pod somewhere
Speaker 1: on life support. Like nobody wants that. I mean, you
Speaker 1: want the state you want to You don't want some
Speaker 1: weird sci fi state of living death. And and certainly
Speaker 1: that's that's the the dystopian vision of what the prolonged
Speaker 1: life might be like. But the the side is yeah,
Speaker 1: being you know, being in your sixties, being in your
Speaker 1: seventies and still being able to body you know, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean so, I mean there's some interesting information about that. UM.
Speaker 1: And he even feels like he can bear this out
Speaker 1: again within ten years, particularly through his his mouse rejuvenation
Speaker 1: is which what he calls it UM and I think
Speaker 1: that's interesting too. He has in his ted talk this
Speaker 1: graph of how all of these different aspects work together.
Speaker 1: To create what he calls longevity escape velocity just you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: because it's it's kind of like these seven factors are
Speaker 1: like different, like seven different. Gravity is holding us to
Speaker 1: the to the sphere of mortality. We can free ourselves
Speaker 1: with those bonds than you know, the sky's the limit,
Speaker 1: right Yeah. And uh another interview, this I believe, was
Speaker 1: with The Guardian, uh De Grace said there was a
Speaker 1: question to him and says, you've talked about enriching people's lives,
Speaker 1: but isn't it the very fact of death that gives
Speaker 1: our lives me? And he says, that's nonsense. The fact
Speaker 1: is people don't want to get sick. I'm just a
Speaker 1: practical guy. I don't want to get sick, and I
Speaker 1: don't want you to get sick. And that's what this
Speaker 1: is all about. I don't work on longevity. I work
Speaker 1: on keeping people healthy. The only difference between my work
Speaker 1: and the work of the whole medical profession is that
Speaker 1: I think we're in striking distance of keeping people so
Speaker 1: healthy that it at age ninety, the will carry on
Speaker 1: waking up in the same physical state as they were
Speaker 1: at the age of thirty, and the probability of not
Speaker 1: waking up one morning will be no higher than it
Speaker 1: was at the age of thirty. So this is where
Speaker 1: we kind of begin to float off into the philosophical
Speaker 1: deep end of the pool. Right the implications, Yeah, because
Speaker 1: death is is an insensial, essential aspect of human life.
Speaker 1: It's it's the big reality that everybody faces, no matter
Speaker 1: what you do in your life. This is one of
Speaker 1: the things you're definitely going to get around to doing.
Speaker 1: Um and uh. And it it defines so much of
Speaker 1: who we are. But then, but then how much of
Speaker 1: it does it really define? That you into two questions
Speaker 1: of again, is it does death inspire us as does
Speaker 1: the does it motivate us the idea that we're not
Speaker 1: going to be here forever and we only have you know,
Speaker 1: a finite amount of time to do these things on
Speaker 1: the on this planet, or you know, is it kind
Speaker 1: of a false view. I don't know. Yeah, it's interesting.
Speaker 1: And there was a question from an audience member and
Speaker 1: Degray's Ted talk and the guy was basically saying, well,
Speaker 1: aren't we sort of evolved to die? And his comment
Speaker 1: was no, not really, I mean like we that we
Speaker 1: just as a function we die. In the moderator kind
Speaker 1: of chimed In and um and said, oh, well, so Degray,
Speaker 1: are you saying that the genes don't care? And then
Speaker 1: it's us that care? And he's like, exactly, that's it.
Speaker 1: You know, So basically there's yeah, you could diet your
Speaker 1: one thousand or one hundred or fifty, it doesn't really
Speaker 1: matter to your genes. They just want to be expressed.
Speaker 1: And I was actually thinking that if if the whole
Speaker 1: point is that, you know, like Richard Dawkins, that we
Speaker 1: were just here to spread our genes, it actually would
Speaker 1: makes sense that we'd have a longer lifespan so would
Speaker 1: have the ability to spread more of our genes, you
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying. And it's it's kind of a
Speaker 1: it's a bit of a wacky argument, but yeah, so
Speaker 1: I don't think that we're actually we've evolved to die,
Speaker 1: so to speak. Yeah. There, I mean, on one hand,
Speaker 1: there's you know, to take it into extremes of dystopian
Speaker 1: and utopian um. On the utopian end of things, you know,
Speaker 1: their ideas of like hey you have an Einstein or
Speaker 1: a Hawking, they let's just have them live forever, or
Speaker 1: you know, or let's have them live twice as long
Speaker 1: three times as long, and uh, and get more out
Speaker 1: of them. You have somebody like a Gandhi. You know,
Speaker 1: you have all these these great, great people. Imagine them
Speaker 1: living uh, you know for several hundred years and being
Speaker 1: able to contribute more to our civilization and culture on
Speaker 1: the Charlie five hundred years of Charlie Sheen, five years
Speaker 1: of winning. Yeah. Um, that's the other end of it,
Speaker 1: you know, uh, annoying or pointless people, Um, I mean not.
Speaker 1: Celebrity plays an important role, and it seems like there
Speaker 1: was there There have probably been good Charlie Sheen movies.
Speaker 1: I don't have his filmography at hand, but but but no, um,
Speaker 1: you know the idea that still you can't it's hard
Speaker 1: to argue that five hundred years of of Charlie Sheen
Speaker 1: would significantly in a rich um our, culture or supportation. No,
Speaker 1: but I like to think that if you're going to
Speaker 1: live that long, and and especially if you've got your
Speaker 1: you know, physical prowess and your wits about you, then
Speaker 1: perhaps after a hundred years, two hundred years, maybe you
Speaker 1: become a stage person or do we all become Charlie
Speaker 1: Sheen after after three hundred years of life, we reached
Speaker 1: that point where it's just like I don't care. I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna have a good time, you know. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean you do have to revisit what Middle Ages? Right,
Speaker 1: So maybe age five hundred, we're all like cruising around
Speaker 1: in Ferraris. We quit working. Yeah, we're just hanging out
Speaker 1: the trevy fountain, you know, uh, causing trouble. It's it
Speaker 1: is it's an interesting question, like what do you do
Speaker 1: with all of those years? And and it's so it's
Speaker 1: a seductive idea because none of us want to die, right,
Speaker 1: I mean we that that's one of the bittersweet things
Speaker 1: about living is that it's it is precious and you
Speaker 1: know that, Um, if if we could, we could extend
Speaker 1: it as long as possible. Yeah, and especially if we
Speaker 1: felt good, you know. But also the fear of death,
Speaker 1: you know, it prevents us from doing certain things because
Speaker 1: us you know, their ramifications like this, when you know
Speaker 1: there was no death, more people, more of us would
Speaker 1: have jet skis, right, um, because they look like a
Speaker 1: lot of fun. But but yeah, what does it keep
Speaker 1: us from doing? What is it enables to do? I mean,
Speaker 1: if if we knew we had three hundred years, which
Speaker 1: some of us. Wait, two hundred and ninety years before
Speaker 1: we started writing that book, we've been dreaming about writing.
Speaker 1: I mean I say, no, yeah, I say, if you're
Speaker 1: not going to write that books, you're just not going
Speaker 1: to That's true. Continue to put that off from a procrastinator,
Speaker 1: uh speaking right now? Okay, well how about this. Look
Speaker 1: at authors who you know they write that those you know,
Speaker 1: those like three year two, one to three really good books,
Speaker 1: and then they just write a lot of less interesting stuff.
Speaker 1: We're musicians, you know, artists where they have that one
Speaker 1: burst of creativity and then it kind of dwindles out
Speaker 1: throughout the rest of their career. You have exceptions to
Speaker 1: this rule, but you see it a lot. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: didn't you want to see what Stephen King is doing
Speaker 1: in five years? I don't know, because that's a good example,
Speaker 1: you know. I mean, I I've I've really loved Stephen
Speaker 1: King in the past, but I I'm not necessarily as
Speaker 1: into his recent works, So you know, I don't know,
Speaker 1: like the would ones work get better? Would it? Would?
Speaker 1: It would? Living three hundred years, so that means that
Speaker 1: you'd be at your best for three best. But that
Speaker 1: give you completely different understanding about living in a whole
Speaker 1: new new tool set to express yourself. That's that's one
Speaker 1: of the questions. Um. And then another just on a
Speaker 1: you know, very like nuts and bolts level, what about
Speaker 1: social security? Yeah? How do we for all this? Right?
Speaker 1: And I mean there are people right now who are
Speaker 1: saying we have to revisit the you know, sixty five
Speaker 1: cut off I think within the States, right, So security,
Speaker 1: you know, starting these benefits sign because the life expensency
Speaker 1: has already become much greater than what we had before.
Speaker 1: And just think about this too. But before the fifteenth century,
Speaker 1: I mean, most people did not live to like age thirty.
Speaker 1: So we really have made a lot of games. We
Speaker 1: just don't think about it right now. Um. And so
Speaker 1: you know, even if Degray is like completely off his rocker,
Speaker 1: there's a really good chance that we're still going to start,
Speaker 1: you know, reaching ages of a dred and fifty and
Speaker 1: so on and so forth. So, so security, what do
Speaker 1: you do about that? You know, what do you do
Speaker 1: about overpopulation? Yeah, I mean it's it's it's a it's
Speaker 1: a real concern. Also, look at your health benefits. Do
Speaker 1: does health insurance then pay for your longevity treatments? Gets
Speaker 1: who gets to live this long and then does it
Speaker 1: become a a basic human right to get I mean,
Speaker 1: would do one day instead of being you know, someone
Speaker 1: making the argument, hey, you know this is irresponsible behavior
Speaker 1: because they're starving people in sub Saharan Africa, or there's
Speaker 1: rampid disease and Subsora Saharan Africa. What if people were saying,
Speaker 1: you know, this is irresponsible to be because there are
Speaker 1: people dying of old age at eight in sub Saharan Africa, which,
Speaker 1: granted by contemporary standards, that would be great, wonderful situation.
Speaker 1: But but yeah, imagine a time where that's the arguments,
Speaker 1: you know, or you know, you end up having, you know,
Speaker 1: an elite class that gets to live as long as
Speaker 1: they pretty much want to live, and then everybody else
Speaker 1: can't afford it. I mean, you see this type of
Speaker 1: idea of popping up in science fiction for a reason
Speaker 1: because some of these and this is something we're thinking about, well,
Speaker 1: and if it were then available to everyone again over population,
Speaker 1: So you have to make a choice at some point
Speaker 1: as as a society, do you have a low death
Speaker 1: rate or do you have a low or a high
Speaker 1: birth rate? You know what I'm saying you're just like
Speaker 1: a mandatory death at a certain time or what was
Speaker 1: it close? It not calliope? What was the thing in
Speaker 1: Logan's Run? Mmmm, I don't know, it's like not callioppy.
Speaker 1: What's the thing with the horses? Yeah, what's the thing
Speaker 1: with the horses that goes? You know, you ride the
Speaker 1: horse and you know it's like at the circus circus
Speaker 1: riding horse. I haven't seen the movie recently enough at
Speaker 1: any rate. That thing that they had, they've ensured that
Speaker 1: everybody died at thirty and Logan's Run carousel, I think
Speaker 1: it was a carousel. Okay, we would never do well
Speaker 1: on sixty five dollar pyramid. We we would just select.
Speaker 1: So so anyway, maybe you'd have to have something like
Speaker 1: that where everyone's like, all right, you can live to
Speaker 1: be five, but then you gotta call it quits or
Speaker 1: if you know, or maybe they're special exceptions if you're
Speaker 1: going and it just gets really complicated and mucky, it does,
Speaker 1: and there's just so many different problems with this, and
Speaker 1: of course, um, you know, I I even just look
Speaker 1: at our skin and say, I'm pretty sure that this
Speaker 1: skin is not going to make it to one tho
Speaker 1: years and yes, I know that there are in vitro
Speaker 1: meat uh. You know method that we could probably apply
Speaker 1: to you know, where you take that that that's that
Speaker 1: skin cells from a cow and grow meat out of that.
Speaker 1: Every U we can grow our own skin. Every twenty years.
Speaker 1: You go down to the to the cloning vats. Uh.
Speaker 1: They give you a good flame and then you get
Speaker 1: a new skin out of the vats. So you get eviscerated.
Speaker 1: And then we'll not eviscerated. You get to keep your gut,
Speaker 1: your guts, you know, okay, but you lose the skin
Speaker 1: get a new skin. The evisceration. That's a separate treatment
Speaker 1: where you get all new guts. All right, all right,
Speaker 1: there you go. That's there's just a their myriad of
Speaker 1: different challenges. Also, oh wait, there's one more I have
Speaker 1: to have to bring up to is the idea like
Speaker 1: just psychologically and emotionally what happens to us over the
Speaker 1: course um because memory memory. Um. There's a great like
Speaker 1: one of the more dystopian uh concepts of immortality out
Speaker 1: there comes from one of my favorite authors mentioned before,
Speaker 1: our Scott Baker. He has this U. He has this
Speaker 1: epic fantasy series that is just really chocked with a
Speaker 1: lot of philosophical stuff because he was a philosophy PhD
Speaker 1: guy and U and he has this idea of this
Speaker 1: immortal race that he calls the non men, and they
Speaker 1: all basically they've basically forgotten everything about their their history
Speaker 1: except for the traumas. Like after a while, after you know,
Speaker 1: a long life of just accumulating trauma after trauma and
Speaker 1: misery after misery, it just compiles. It's like kind of
Speaker 1: like your skin analogy, you know what their skin like.
Speaker 1: If you know, we get a scar here, a scar here,
Speaker 1: do we eventually just become all scar tissue? And these
Speaker 1: guys are like all emotional scar tissue after centuries of life,
Speaker 1: and they're just they don't remember the people they loved.
Speaker 1: They only have vague memories of the horrors they've suffered.
Speaker 1: So how do we avoid that? All? Right? Eternal sunshine,
Speaker 1: the spotless mind, right, okay, okay, so you basically can
Speaker 1: erase the memories. And I think about the Blue Brain
Speaker 1: project that we talked about in cyber Immortality, which you
Speaker 1: know there there's I believe it's in Germany. There's team
Speaker 1: um that are working on this to try to to
Speaker 1: map the human brain and basically you know, in this
Speaker 1: mathematical model, and so the idea is that one day,
Speaker 1: not only can we see how our brains are working,
Speaker 1: but it's very possible that you could like download a
Speaker 1: copy of your own brain. So why wouldn't you be
Speaker 1: able to to erase those memories and just re upload, okay?
Speaker 1: Or but in a sense, you kind of it's kind
Speaker 1: of like playing poker. It's like you, where's it blackjack? Oh, anyway,
Speaker 1: you keep getting cards in your hand until you're like,
Speaker 1: all right, whole, that's good. So it's like you you
Speaker 1: you let your mind developed a certain point and then
Speaker 1: you're like, all right, that's good. We're not going to
Speaker 1: add any more experiences to this. We're just going to
Speaker 1: sort of hold and erase things since they o yeah,
Speaker 1: and and and just as a practical matter too, by
Speaker 1: the time that you reach one dred, you're probably gonna
Speaker 1: want a copy of your brain, right so you can
Speaker 1: start to index your memories and um, I mean, because
Speaker 1: that's just that's enormous. That's that's one of the things
Speaker 1: that I think, well, is the human brain actually equipped
Speaker 1: to hold on to a thousand years worth of memories, UM, emotions,
Speaker 1: that are attached to him, so on and so forth.
Speaker 1: So now I'm liking this idea. And maybe the way
Speaker 1: living well it's gonna point us to. But maybe the
Speaker 1: way living for six years is that every two hundred
Speaker 1: years you kind of push the reset button and you
Speaker 1: sort of clean out everything that's not completely relevant and
Speaker 1: start new, because you know, new friends, new family, new
Speaker 1: uh new you know, purpose in life. I see lawsuits happening.
Speaker 1: I'm thinking of like Lasic Surfery, you know, like when
Speaker 1: when that was that first came out, And I'm thinking
Speaker 1: about like someone resets your brain on accident to like
Speaker 1: some sort of failing, you know, Toddler infancy memory bank,
Speaker 1: and and all of a sudden, like you have to
Speaker 1: relearn the entire world as an adult. I don't know,
Speaker 1: these are things to think about. We could keep going
Speaker 1: on about this for sure, Yeah, I know we could,
Speaker 1: but but yeah, birthday candle, it's possible. Get your fire
Speaker 1: extinguishers ready. Yeah, So hey, I have a couple of
Speaker 1: listener males here. This is just a quick one um
Speaker 1: our listener by the name of Eric right soon and
Speaker 1: says in this episode that he's referring to the Tyrannossaur
Speaker 1: Sex podcast. He says, in this episode, Julie said hard
Speaker 1: to imagine dinosaurs quote kicking boots. I'm almost sure she
Speaker 1: meant to say knocking boots. Had me laughing all day.
Speaker 1: Loved the podcast. I didn't notice, but kicking boots, kicking
Speaker 1: or knocking, it is knocking boots. I feel like it
Speaker 1: could be kicking boots somewhere. I was going to make
Speaker 1: a joke that, like in my my mom, you know,
Speaker 1: Michigan Dutch upbringing that it was. We called it kicking boots.
Speaker 1: But now I know better it it's it's knocking boots.
Speaker 1: You could get away with it. This thing was a
Speaker 1: regional thing. Yeah, it's kicking boots in Michigan. Um And anyway,
Speaker 1: I just that's just another opportunity to promote the dinosaurs
Speaker 1: Knocking boots episode. And then here's another one referring to
Speaker 1: that particular episode. Jordan's right, sin Hi, Robert and Julie. Yesterday,
Speaker 1: I was listening to your episode on dino sex. One
Speaker 1: word and I couldn't help but think chloacle Kiss sounded
Speaker 1: like a good name for a metal band. I like
Speaker 1: the phrase so much I even used it on my
Speaker 1: Facebook status score. A friend later informed me that there
Speaker 1: is in fact a decent metal band called chloacle Kiss.
Speaker 1: I've tried to give them a listen, but every time
Speaker 1: I do, I get a vision of uh, look, shall
Speaker 1: we say vallesca raptor indecency with the grinding and screeching
Speaker 1: of the music as the soundtrack. Anyway, despite my unfortunate,
Speaker 1: unfortunate and then old pictures, I wanted to thank you
Speaker 1: for bringing my love of music and science together. I'm
Speaker 1: a huge fan of the podcast. I'm pretty sure you're
Speaker 1: sure you guys play a big part in keeping me
Speaker 1: saying while I'm at were Some might argue that um
Speaker 1: prolonged descriptions of dinosaurs doing it would would have the
Speaker 1: opposite effects and insanity, but but you know, I feel
Speaker 1: like our listeners are the ones that are enriched by
Speaker 1: such things, not to be over the edge. Yeah, So,
Speaker 1: if you have any thing you would like to share,
Speaker 1: you can check out our own Facebook status updates on
Speaker 1: Blow the Mind on Facebook, and we're also on Twitter
Speaker 1: as Blow the Mind, and we update that those feeds
Speaker 1: pretty regularly. Different stuff on each We kind of try
Speaker 1: to diversify, but you know, cool links to stuff that
Speaker 1: we're finding, cool stuff, links to stuff we're writing, and
Speaker 1: updates on what the latest episodes are about. And as always,
Speaker 1: you can always drop us a line at blow the
Speaker 1: Mind at how stuff works dot com. For more on
Speaker 1: this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com. To learn more about the podcast, click on
Speaker 1: the podcast icon in the upper right corner of our homepage.
Speaker 1: The how Stuff Works iPhone app has a ride. Download
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