Speaker 1: How much juice for you, sort of squeezing out of life.
Speaker 2: In those young years, I was kind of a repressed guy.
Speaker 2: I thought of myself as a loner, and like many
Speaker 2: good Jewish boys, I threw myself into my studies and
Speaker 2: so I didn't live a while the crazy life, but
Speaker 2: I think I did internalize the lesson that one needs
Speaker 2: to make the most of life, and that it can
Speaker 2: be cut off because of political horrors and war or
Speaker 2: natural disasters illness. So we have to, you know, in
Speaker 2: the Latin phrase carpa dm momente maury, I have a
Speaker 2: hold of life, see us live and remember death.
Speaker 1: I'm mongas shittigular. This is Skyline Drive how to Live Forever.
Speaker 1: In making this show, I talked to so many people
Speaker 1: who were certain you could live forever, and people who
Speaker 1: wanted to live forever. But there was really only one
Speaker 1: person who thought you should want to live forever, but
Speaker 1: didn't feel the need to bring up the singularity or
Speaker 1: cyborgs or wanting to see Mars. Someone who thought living
Speaker 1: was its own reason. Someone who started with joy, which
Speaker 1: definitely appeals to me. John Fisher is Distinguished Professor of
Speaker 1: Philosophy at the University of California Riverside. In fact, he's
Speaker 1: the first philosopher to hold the title of university professor
Speaker 1: within the UC system. In all those schools from Berkeley
Speaker 1: to San Diego, there are literally thousands of professors, but
Speaker 1: only eight university professors. So John's pretty special. And you
Speaker 1: might think someone with that post might be pretentious or
Speaker 1: full of themselves, but John is anything but. He spent
Speaker 1: the past five decades pondering free will, ethics, and the
Speaker 1: metaphysics of death. In twenty twelve, he led the Templeton
Speaker 1: Foundation's Immortality Project, exploring the science, philosophy, and theology of death,
Speaker 1: immortality and near death experiences, and he went head to
Speaker 1: head with Cambridge philosopher Stephen Cave in a book where
Speaker 1: they each took opposite positions on whether you should live forever.
Speaker 1: You might remember Cave's nickname, People do call me a
Speaker 1: mortality curmudgeon. By contrast, John Fisher is a longevity booster,
Speaker 1: which makes me curious why, Like, what is in it
Speaker 1: for him? So many people in longevity have an angle,
Speaker 1: so I was sure he had one too, And I
Speaker 1: thought the best way to figure it out was to
Speaker 1: start at the very beginning. So I'd love to hear
Speaker 1: how you got so interested in ethics and what led
Speaker 1: you to philosophy.
Speaker 2: I grew up in a Jewish family and my father's
Speaker 2: father had died in the Holocaust. My father had come
Speaker 2: from Europe during the Holocaust, and unfortunately his father was
Speaker 2: not able to leave Austro Hungary at that time. At
Speaker 2: first they hoped that he would come home. Eventually it
Speaker 2: was clear that he wouldn't and I saw my grandmother
Speaker 2: waiting for letters from the German government and the tremendous
Speaker 2: sadness that that involved. It got me started thinking about
Speaker 2: both ethics and death, premature death. Then my father was
Speaker 2: a physician, a cardiologist, and that was back when physicians
Speaker 2: would make house calls and he would leave the house
Speaker 2: at two am sometimes and come home the next morning,
Speaker 2: and he would let us know what happened to the patient,
Speaker 2: and sometimes they would die.
Speaker 1: When your dad would make these house calls and he
Speaker 1: would come back from these visits where a patient just
Speaker 1: wouldn't make it, what was the mood in the house.
Speaker 2: It became almost normal, or you almost get used to
Speaker 2: death in a way. And my father used to say
Speaker 2: life is for the living, and so all of This
Speaker 2: got me started thinking about death? Can it be avoided?
Speaker 2: My first tea job was at Yale University and I
Speaker 2: was asked to teach an introduction to philosophy. And I
Speaker 2: said to my chair what should I talk about? He said,
Speaker 2: talk about anything you want? And so I thought that
Speaker 2: these topics are of perennial human interest, and I've got
Speaker 2: to be able to reach the students talking about these topics.
Speaker 2: And so that got me started professionally.
Speaker 1: So how do you sort of take a path forward?
Speaker 2: Right? I was familiar with mainly contemporary Anglo American discussions
Speaker 2: of death and the meaning of life, and there was
Speaker 2: a classic work by the New York University philosopher Thomas Nagel,
Speaker 2: who's now retired but still active. It was called Death
Speaker 2: a Paper, and he discussed the attempts by philosophers going
Speaker 2: back to the Greeks and specifically Epicurus, to convince us
Speaker 2: the death being nothing to us, can't be a bad
Speaker 2: thing for the individual who dies. It could be a
Speaker 2: bad thing for their loved ones. But according to Epicurus
Speaker 2: and his followers, death itself, as opposed to die, can't
Speaker 2: be bad for the individual who has died because they're
Speaker 2: no more suffering, no unpleasant experiences on the secular assumption
Speaker 2: that there's no afterlift. So I delved into that material,
Speaker 2: and then I talked about the opposite immortality. Can we
Speaker 2: actually escape death entirely? I was fascinated by all this.
Speaker 2: I read a famous paper by another contemporary then contemporary philosopher,
Speaker 2: Bernard Williams. He wrote a famous paper in which he
Speaker 2: argued that living forever would not be something that any
Speaker 2: human being should choose, And so that's where I started.
Speaker 2: I taught that article, and I thought, this has to
Speaker 2: be wrong. This is such an extreme view. I can
Speaker 2: see why you wouldn't want to live forever if you
Speaker 2: had terrible chronic illness, or you were unable to feed
Speaker 2: yourself where you didn't have adequate medical attention, or if
Speaker 2: the environment was polluted and dirty, but under favorable circumstances,
Speaker 2: I thought it was just a no brainer that you'd
Speaker 2: want to live much, much, much longer than we actually live.
Speaker 1: I was pretty fascinated by this. When I us first
Speaker 1: told this cal professor wanted to live forever, I was
Speaker 1: thinking he'd be some Ein Rand type, a total individualist,
Speaker 1: someone who believes that there are no limits on what
Speaker 1: a person should be able to do, but starting where
Speaker 1: he started, with his grandmother impertly waiting for news that
Speaker 1: never came of her husband's survival. Knowing how cruelly and
Speaker 1: tragically that life had been cut short, and from his
Speaker 1: father's experience of coming home defeated by death, I couldn't
Speaker 1: help but think differently about his stance. I wondered, how
Speaker 1: did his pro longevity positions show up in his life?
Speaker 1: Was he eating ashraganda and his overnight oats or taking
Speaker 1: creatine before hitting the gym? So I asked him one
Speaker 1: question I've been asking everyone is what do you do
Speaker 1: for your own health? Are there any things you've done
Speaker 1: to expand your health span?
Speaker 2: I believe in health span and what I call joy span,
Speaker 2: which some people who want to live forever devote so
Speaker 2: much time to energy to their health that I'm not
Speaker 2: sure that they enjoy life. But I think the capacity
Speaker 2: for joy is important. You know, Over the course of
Speaker 2: my life, unfortunately, I did a lot to worsen my health,
Speaker 2: or at least to make my long term prognosis not great.
Speaker 2: I used to be really overweight and sedentary, and I
Speaker 2: drank regularly and seven years ago, I had a stroke
Speaker 2: and that was a real wake up cough. I'm really
Speaker 2: now devoted to doing whatever I can to avoid a
Speaker 2: second stroke and to live as long as I can
Speaker 2: with a high quality life.
Speaker 1: In the midst of our conversation, I heard a sudden,
Speaker 1: yowing sound. John's daughter Zoe was visiting, and one of
Speaker 1: her cats had knocked into the room where John was recording,
Speaker 1: so he started calling for help to remove the intruder,
Speaker 1: at which point one of his casts decided to join
Speaker 1: the fun and well feline chaos.
Speaker 2: And Zoe, Okay, I'm doing something where I need total quiet. Okay,
Speaker 2: so Vinny can't be in there. They heard that. Oh okay,
Speaker 2: now another cat has come in. Zoe, all right, I'll
Speaker 2: just be right back. We have six six cats. No no, no,
Speaker 2: oh no.
Speaker 1: I love the idea of thinking about these high philosophical
Speaker 1: questions and a cat wandering through. I feel like cats
Speaker 1: and kids love.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, I can tell you I've been asked to
Speaker 2: give a keynote lecture to a conference on the Meaning
Speaker 2: of life at the University of Oklahoma at the end
Speaker 2: of March. And I'm working on my lecture and at
Speaker 2: the same time I'm reading a book by John Gray,
Speaker 2: an Oxford philosopher, called Cats and the Meaning of Life.
Speaker 2: So I've been thinking about that a lot in between
Speaker 2: thinking of cats and the Meaning of Life and cleaning
Speaker 2: their litter boxes.
Speaker 1: And then I ask a question, you know, just asking
Speaker 1: for a friend. If you were talking to an individual
Speaker 1: and they're not interested in a radically extended or an
Speaker 1: immortal life, what would you tell them or ask them
Speaker 1: to consider.
Speaker 2: As we get older, we in fact suffer from the
Speaker 2: afflictions of older age. Even if we're in good shape.
Speaker 2: Our memories are less reliable, and we're less able to
Speaker 2: move around without pain. And I think people tend to
Speaker 2: extrapolate and say, gosh, if I'm suffering this much now,
Speaker 2: it's just going to get worse and worse. And perhaps
Speaker 2: we've seen elderly parents who we might use the word
Speaker 2: gone downhill in terms of their health and then their
Speaker 2: psychological well being, and we just don't want that, And
Speaker 2: I totally understand, But I would ask the individual to
Speaker 2: imagine reasonably comfortable external surroundings and good health, good help,
Speaker 2: maybe not perfect health. Ask them whether that would change
Speaker 2: the equation, and remind them that there are still even
Speaker 2: if life is different now, and even in my seventies
Speaker 2: I realized life is different, there's still wonderful, wonderful, rewarding
Speaker 2: activities that give our life meaning. And the more time
Speaker 2: we have, the more opportunities we have to pursue those
Speaker 2: things that give our lives meaning.
Speaker 1: As we think about these lives that may extend to
Speaker 1: one hundred and fifty, how would you envision that life
Speaker 1: and the way that we sort of reinterpret those chapters
Speaker 1: we might not be expecting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's hard, but it would be the same as
Speaker 2: our current finite or you could say mortal lives. In
Speaker 2: a lot of ways, you'd want to pursue things you love, activities, athletic, intellectual,
Speaker 2: artistic friendshipsationships, love those things that give us meaning. You
Speaker 2: would still want to avoid pain and suffering and loneliness
Speaker 2: and depression. So in many ways life would be the same.
Speaker 2: It would be different though in that we would have
Speaker 2: much more time. Part of that would then change expectations
Speaker 2: and friendships and perhaps marriages. If you just think of
Speaker 2: contracts and legal arrangements we make now in terms of life,
Speaker 2: insurance and pensions and other arrangements, we'd probably have to
Speaker 2: rethink all those things. Could a marriage last one hundred
Speaker 2: and sixty years? Could a marriage last six thousand years?
Speaker 2: Interesting questions. Even in our mortal lives as we lead
Speaker 2: them now, marriage can be challenging. I mean, the statistics
Speaker 2: are what about fifty percent of marriages and in divorce,
Speaker 2: and even the ones that are incredibly successful have they
Speaker 2: evolve over time and they have to be spiced up,
Speaker 2: as we say, from time to time. So bottom line,
Speaker 2: we'd have to ask the question, would there be enough
Speaker 2: that's the same and that's good to make it really
Speaker 2: worthy of choice to live for one hundred and sixty years.
Speaker 2: I think it could be, but I agree it would
Speaker 2: be very different.
Speaker 1: Then. Just as doctor will Maher had brought up the
Speaker 1: two worm problem, that we humans might divide into two species,
Speaker 1: one that'll live forever and one that'll live out are
Speaker 1: short and mortal lives in tough environments, John Fisher took
Speaker 1: me to a place I'd never considered when thinking about
Speaker 1: the possibility of living forever.
Speaker 2: In terms of the social issues, I think we could
Speaker 2: imagine a world in which many people are immortal in
Speaker 2: the sense of radical life extension, and we do not
Speaker 2: allow them to have children that would be a requirement,
Speaker 2: because otherwise, if there are a significant number of people
Speaker 2: who are immortal and they can have children and their
Speaker 2: children can be immortal, there will be increasing pressure on
Speaker 2: the environment and that will cause deterioration of the environment
Speaker 2: and social catastrophe.
Speaker 1: We have to take a quick break, but when we
Speaker 1: come back, John explains how the fear of death is
Speaker 1: similar to a fear of boredom and why do you
Speaker 1: find certain longevity influencers so off putting. Stay tuned, Welcome
Speaker 1: back to this mini bonus episode of Skyline Drive How
Speaker 1: to Live Forever. I'm speaking with the distinguished philosopher John Fisher,
Speaker 1: and just as a heads up, the conversation you're about
Speaker 1: to hear includes talk of suicide and also Brian Johnson's genitals.
Speaker 1: I'm so sorry for the last part. I want to
Speaker 1: ask a question about suicide because there is some suicide
Speaker 1: in my family and I was curious, do you think
Speaker 1: if radical life extension, or this idea of being immortal happens, like,
Speaker 1: will we change our perceptions about this idea of tapping out.
Speaker 2: Some people have suggested that you'd be losing so much
Speaker 2: more if you have the prospects of living forever, and
Speaker 2: you realize there are prospects for cure and improvement of
Speaker 2: whatever is bothering you, maybe it would just be a
Speaker 2: tremendous deterrent to choosing that you would be losing so
Speaker 2: much against that is the idea that if you're really
Speaker 2: suffering often you don't think there'll be any chance for improvement,
Speaker 2: then there's much more to lose by choosing immortality. So
Speaker 2: I think that they might kind of cancel out. We
Speaker 2: shouldn't accept a double standard when we're evaluating mortal lives
Speaker 2: and immortal lives, and in our mortal lives, I think
Speaker 2: it's important that we develop mechanisms for a physician assisted suicide.
Speaker 2: I have seen too many individuals in the end states
Speaker 2: of Alzheimer's, including my mother and other loved ones with
Speaker 2: advanced cancer, in which I just think it's a crime,
Speaker 2: frankly to not give them the opportunit unity to select
Speaker 2: their own way of dying. And so I think it
Speaker 2: should be the same. In an immortal life.
Speaker 1: The end of life is an ultimate deadline and it
Speaker 1: forces certain actions and things, and so like in an
Speaker 1: extended life, can you or how do you get that propulsion?
Speaker 2: I guess they're different reasons why we want to get
Speaker 2: off the couch and be active in our lives athletically
Speaker 2: or in terms of our careers, or meeting people for
Speaker 2: romantic or close friendships or collegial relationships. Death is not
Speaker 2: the only reason we care about these things. The limitations
Speaker 2: of time are not the only propulsive or motivating factors.
Speaker 2: As matter of fact, many people think the fear of
Speaker 2: boredom is just as bad as the fear of death,
Speaker 2: or many people think it's very similar, because when you're bored,
Speaker 2: you just are an interesting than anything. Nothing grabs your
Speaker 2: attention in a way that makes you want to get
Speaker 2: actively involved. Now death is like that too, although it's
Speaker 2: a more extreme version of it. So I think what
Speaker 2: gives us energy is not just the sense of finity,
Speaker 2: but it's wanting to do what we love and wanting
Speaker 2: to avoid what we hate.
Speaker 1: I have that feeling when I go for a swim
Speaker 1: in the ocean. I think I've just been comfortably floating
Speaker 1: and swimming a bit, and then I look back at
Speaker 1: the shore and see I've drifted much farther out than
Speaker 1: I'd realized. And so it makes me wonder should we
Speaker 1: all be doing everything we can swapping blood and taking
Speaker 1: hundreds of supplements.
Speaker 2: I'm in the big tent of pro launche people radical
Speaker 2: life extension. But interestingly, the people who turn me off
Speaker 2: or for whom I have most of days, are in
Speaker 2: this camp. I think the people who are quite conservative
Speaker 2: about life extension and want to focus our resources and
Speaker 2: energy on the problems we have. I can deal with that.
Speaker 2: I think it's too conservative because often it's just an
Speaker 2: apology for the status quo, and we get a lot
Speaker 2: by reaching farther than maybe we have a right to
Speaker 2: hope to achieve. But I can deal with that. But
Speaker 2: the people like Brian Johnson who go to these extremes
Speaker 2: in terms of the use of resources. Frankly, I believe
Speaker 2: he measures his penis and maybe his erection every morning
Speaker 2: or every day.
Speaker 1: Through the night. The number of erections he has a
Speaker 1: night is like account.
Speaker 2: Oh, well, maybe I'm just jealous, but I just think
Speaker 2: that that's totally off putting. It's just taking it to
Speaker 2: an extreme. Also, the cryogenics stuff, to me, I mean,
Speaker 2: if you have that much money, why not devote resources
Speaker 2: to solving the problems we have now or helping the
Speaker 2: people who don't even have enough food to eat or
Speaker 2: adequate medical care. Now, of course you might say, well,
Speaker 2: if you're a billionaire, you can afford to do both.
Speaker 2: But what I would say is, we have pressing problems now,
Speaker 2: and by doing interesting innovative research that seeks to solve
Speaker 2: the problems that cause us to die early, that's great,
Speaker 2: that's great. But to reach for possibility of uploading and
Speaker 2: cryogenic preservation and the kind of extreme body hacking that
Speaker 2: you see put me off. I think I'm somewhat in between.
Speaker 2: Ray Kurtzweil apparently he takes one hundred or two hundred
Speaker 2: prescription pills and supplements envitamins every day in an attempt
Speaker 2: to live long enough that will achieve what he calls
Speaker 2: the singularity, or a situation in which will be superrational
Speaker 2: and be able to upload ourselves. And Aubrey de Gray,
Speaker 2: another longevity guy, thinks that within thirty to fifty years
Speaker 2: we will have solved the problems that the seven major
Speaker 2: reasons why we die early, cancer, Alzheimer's, art disease. These
Speaker 2: people are radically out of touch with reality. We will
Speaker 2: not achieve those goals in thirty or fifty years, or
Speaker 2: in any of our lifetimes. The adolescent quality of it
Speaker 2: bothers me.
Speaker 1: You know, I read this quote about you that says
Speaker 1: fish equips that the vampire as populating American movies and
Speaker 1: television series show quote that achieving immortality by a certain
Speaker 1: means having to suck someone else's blood can be unjust
Speaker 1: or problematic. So talk to me a little bit about
Speaker 1: the ethics of if you could live forever or for
Speaker 1: a long time, but have to do it by some
Speaker 1: means of either hurting or draining someone else.
Speaker 2: Yeah, excellent, man, that's what I think the vampire literature.
Speaker 2: One thing it brings out. I started thinking about these
Speaker 2: issues when I was teaching Bernard Williams famous article, and
Speaker 2: I saw so many really brilliant philosophers agreed with him.
Speaker 2: It was almost like a knee jerk reaction, because Bernard
Speaker 2: Williams is very smart, excellent, insightful philosopher. It resonated with people,
Speaker 2: but it didn't with me so much. And his view
Speaker 2: was there's something intrinsic or inside us, something that's part
Speaker 2: of human nature, which is such that we would inevitably
Speaker 2: integrate and unravel if we had a radically extended life.
Speaker 2: Reminded me of my stepdaughter who would begin to unravel
Speaker 2: after eight hours in the station wagon, and then certainly
Speaker 2: by twenty three hours across country, she would have totally
Speaker 2: unraveled and disintegrated. I just didn't believe that the social
Speaker 2: problems are the most important for human beings. The intellectual
Speaker 2: issues aren't deeply, profoundly interesting to me and to many people,
Speaker 2: But in terms of human importance, we have to first
Speaker 2: solve the problems of global climate change and increasingly problematic
Speaker 2: deterioration of our environment before we can really seriously consider
Speaker 2: the possibilities of radically extended lives. They won't be feasible
Speaker 2: practical options unless we can first address environmental concerns and
Speaker 2: also the social inequities and injustices that currently exist all
Speaker 2: over the world and certainly in the United States. We
Speaker 2: have to address those, or the resources for achieving greater
Speaker 2: and greater longevity and maybe even a kind of immortality
Speaker 2: would only be available to the wealthy and the privilege,
Speaker 2: and this would just make worse the deep social inequities
Speaker 2: that we have now.
Speaker 1: I don't know what I was expected from John Fisher,
Speaker 1: but I love that he wants us to think about
Speaker 1: the climate before thinking about radical life. Extension that he
Speaker 1: sees deep social inequities and injustices and hopes that we
Speaker 1: can address those two. And it tickles me that in
Speaker 1: a conversation with our heads in the clouds about immortality,
Speaker 1: it can all come to a halt. Thanks to a
Speaker 1: couple of cats. A big thank you to John Fisher
Speaker 1: for making time to chat with me, to Zoe for
Speaker 1: her animal wrangling. Thank you to Lizzie Jacobs, our showrunner,
Speaker 1: Mary Philip Sandy, our brilliant producer and researcher, and the
Speaker 1: endlessly connected Mark Steven Allen for producing this interview and
Speaker 1: mini episode. And thank you as always to our editor
Speaker 1: Mark Lotto who finally relented. And a big big thank
Speaker 1: you to Dylan Fagan for mixing this. Dylan, you are
Speaker 1: the best. If you haven't checked out Skyline Drive How
Speaker 1: to Live Forever, please please give it a listen. All
Speaker 1: the episodes are out now so you can binge it
Speaker 1: at your convenience. Thank you so much for tuning in.