1
00:00:10,880 --> 00:00:13,040
Speaker 1: When I was in second and third grade, I was

2
00:00:13,240 --> 00:00:18,960
Speaker 1: obsessed with mysteries Carmen San Diego, Encyclopedia Brown, Agatha Christie,

3
00:00:19,239 --> 00:00:23,720
Speaker 1: and especially Sherlock Holmes. On Thursday nights, I would stay

4
00:00:23,760 --> 00:00:26,799
Speaker 1: up late and snuggled under a blanket with my mom

5
00:00:26,840 --> 00:00:30,840
Speaker 1: watching mystery on PBS. But as much as I wanted

6
00:00:30,880 --> 00:00:34,519
Speaker 1: to solve all the neighborhood mysteries, I only ever cracked

7
00:00:34,520 --> 00:00:38,919
Speaker 1: two of them. First, the case of the nine year

8
00:00:38,920 --> 00:00:44,040
Speaker 1: old boxing champ. When a new kid moved to the

9
00:00:44,040 --> 00:00:46,159
Speaker 1: cul de Sac and claimed he was a world boxing

10
00:00:46,240 --> 00:00:50,720
Speaker 1: champ elementary school division, words spread fast across my neighborhood.

11
00:00:51,320 --> 00:00:53,480
Speaker 1: The kid was tough, He talked back to his mom,

12
00:00:53,520 --> 00:00:56,320
Speaker 1: he cursed, he spit, and he let it be known

13
00:00:56,360 --> 00:01:00,800
Speaker 1: he could beat up anyone who wanted to fight. My

14
00:01:00,840 --> 00:01:02,840
Speaker 1: neighbor dragged me along to see if it was true.

15
00:01:02,840 --> 00:01:06,920
Speaker 1: But a few questions about where he trained, what international

16
00:01:06,959 --> 00:01:09,559
Speaker 1: cities he traveled to, He had a hard time naming

17
00:01:09,600 --> 00:01:12,560
Speaker 1: any and also just pointing out the fact that he

18
00:01:12,600 --> 00:01:15,960
Speaker 1: had very soft hands quickly took the air out of

19
00:01:16,000 --> 00:01:24,240
Speaker 1: the myth. Second, the case of the Secret Admirer. Some

20
00:01:24,480 --> 00:01:27,360
Speaker 1: creep had signed all the Valentines to every girl in

21
00:01:27,400 --> 00:01:31,279
Speaker 1: our third grade class from your secret Admirer. My friends

22
00:01:31,319 --> 00:01:34,160
Speaker 1: Kristen and Sarah brought me the case. Our homeroom teacher,

23
00:01:34,240 --> 00:01:37,800
Speaker 1: Missus DeLong, had even received a secret Admirer card, which

24
00:01:37,880 --> 00:01:42,280
Speaker 1: was a total scandal. But after a little slew thing,

25
00:01:42,400 --> 00:01:45,440
Speaker 1: I realized that the night before, when I was out

26
00:01:45,440 --> 00:01:49,080
Speaker 1: playing basketball, my parents had called me in to sign Valentines,

27
00:01:49,840 --> 00:01:51,919
Speaker 1: and then after a while it got sick of calling

28
00:01:51,960 --> 00:01:54,280
Speaker 1: for me. My dad thought it would be funny to

29
00:01:54,320 --> 00:01:57,600
Speaker 1: sign all the cards anonymously, like I was some love

30
00:01:57,720 --> 00:02:03,040
Speaker 1: sick Casanova. It didn't take that long to solve the case,

31
00:02:03,120 --> 00:02:07,360
Speaker 1: but I didn't let on. I pretended it was unsolvable,

32
00:02:07,920 --> 00:02:11,960
Speaker 1: a mystery for the ages, and quickly shifted the conversation.

33
00:02:13,320 --> 00:02:16,040
Speaker 1: Sometimes solving a case is worse than not solving it.

34
00:02:16,840 --> 00:02:30,239
Speaker 1: Sometimes the answer feels wrong, even when it's right. All

35
00:02:30,320 --> 00:02:33,240
Speaker 1: that's to say, I think my work is often about

36
00:02:33,280 --> 00:02:36,400
Speaker 1: solving mysteries. I like patching the hole in the story.

37
00:02:36,480 --> 00:02:39,240
Speaker 1: I love hearing a curious fact or reading a line

38
00:02:39,280 --> 00:02:42,079
Speaker 1: that doesn't sound right, and then poking around to get

39
00:02:42,080 --> 00:02:46,480
Speaker 1: the full story. So in October of last year, as

40
00:02:46,520 --> 00:02:48,720
Speaker 1: I was starting to gather leads for this show. I

41
00:02:48,760 --> 00:02:50,880
Speaker 1: hopped on the phone with an investor to hear about

42
00:02:50,880 --> 00:02:54,040
Speaker 1: what they'd been pitched in the longevity space, and as

43
00:02:54,040 --> 00:02:57,240
Speaker 1: they walked me through new ideas for drugs and procedures,

44
00:02:57,639 --> 00:03:00,520
Speaker 1: suddenly I heard a cloud of phrases that made me

45
00:03:00,639 --> 00:03:01,000
Speaker 1: lean in.

46
00:03:01,680 --> 00:03:04,799
Speaker 2: We didn't invest because it makes us too uncomfortable. It's

47
00:03:04,800 --> 00:03:07,680
Speaker 2: pulled straight out of sci fi. They're brilliant, but their

48
00:03:07,760 --> 00:03:09,919
Speaker 2: reputations are controversial.

49
00:03:10,720 --> 00:03:13,040
Speaker 1: They want to remain anonymous, so I've had their tape

50
00:03:13,040 --> 00:03:17,720
Speaker 1: replaced with an actor, by which I mean my cousin. Anyway,

51
00:03:18,040 --> 00:03:20,000
Speaker 1: the investor tells me that in the.

52
00:03:19,919 --> 00:03:23,720
Speaker 2: Pitch there's a line item that stands out. It's for

53
00:03:23,840 --> 00:03:25,440
Speaker 2: buying property in South America.

54
00:03:26,120 --> 00:03:28,680
Speaker 1: So then they asked why is real estate part of

55
00:03:28,720 --> 00:03:31,600
Speaker 1: this pitch, and the answer it's.

56
00:03:31,440 --> 00:03:34,400
Speaker 2: Because they're going to buy property to catch monkeys they

57
00:03:34,400 --> 00:03:36,760
Speaker 2: can test on what.

58
00:03:37,320 --> 00:03:41,160
Speaker 1: My mind is spinning trying to understand what they're talking about.

59
00:03:42,080 --> 00:03:42,960
Speaker 1: And then I hear.

60
00:03:42,840 --> 00:03:47,080
Speaker 2: This The goal is to clone humans and use them

61
00:03:47,120 --> 00:03:50,160
Speaker 2: for human organ farms.

62
00:03:53,160 --> 00:03:56,200
Speaker 1: And that's the moment I knew the game is afoot.

63
00:03:57,280 --> 00:04:02,960
Speaker 1: From Kaleidoscope and iHeart podcasts, I'm Monga's heat there. This

64
00:04:03,080 --> 00:04:41,799
Speaker 1: is Skyline Drive How to Live Forever, Chapter one. Dear Leaders,

65
00:04:44,560 --> 00:04:46,080
Speaker 1: as the present.

66
00:04:47,600 --> 00:04:50,279
Speaker 3: Dish state, you.

67
00:04:55,200 --> 00:05:00,360
Speaker 4: Americans do not eat what grows for free, like amazing,

68
00:05:00,640 --> 00:05:03,960
Speaker 4: very tasty fruit lying on the end. In Russia, people

69
00:05:05,360 --> 00:05:09,680
Speaker 4: gather things from the treats. I think Americans want to pay, definitely,

70
00:05:09,760 --> 00:05:10,440
Speaker 4: this is amazing.

71
00:05:12,279 --> 00:05:14,960
Speaker 1: I'm walking with Mikyle Rubin over to this little patch

72
00:05:15,000 --> 00:05:18,479
Speaker 1: of grass on the Stanford campus, and he's right. We

73
00:05:18,560 --> 00:05:22,720
Speaker 1: spot orange trees everywhere, and despite my love of citrus,

74
00:05:23,120 --> 00:05:25,320
Speaker 1: it hadn't occurred to me to pick up any fruit

75
00:05:25,400 --> 00:05:29,240
Speaker 1: off the ground. In spite of his scolding slash teasing me,

76
00:05:29,640 --> 00:05:32,640
Speaker 1: I feel lucky to be here with Mikyle. He made

77
00:05:32,640 --> 00:05:35,640
Speaker 1: his name at a publication called Prey Act, breaking stories

78
00:05:35,640 --> 00:05:38,640
Speaker 1: about Russia's political corruption and the oligarchy.

79
00:05:38,680 --> 00:05:38,960
Speaker 5: There.

80
00:05:39,920 --> 00:05:42,000
Speaker 1: The guy is fearless.

81
00:05:43,400 --> 00:05:48,280
Speaker 4: We specialize on prohibited topics in Russia. So our goal

82
00:05:48,480 --> 00:05:52,000
Speaker 4: is to tell the stories that no one else would

83
00:05:52,000 --> 00:05:56,680
Speaker 4: ever tell, which is mostly everything about lighting me Puicha actually.

84
00:05:57,720 --> 00:06:01,240
Speaker 1: But Mikile is an exile here because us. In twenty

85
00:06:01,279 --> 00:06:02,480
Speaker 1: twenty one.

86
00:06:02,800 --> 00:06:05,520
Speaker 4: We got, let's say, a signal that we need to

87
00:06:05,600 --> 00:06:10,920
Speaker 4: leave the country, which was very direct searchers by the police,

88
00:06:11,520 --> 00:06:15,919
Speaker 4: questions by the police. Then we got this title of

89
00:06:16,040 --> 00:06:22,120
Speaker 4: undesirable organization, which means prison, so very pretty direct signal

90
00:06:22,160 --> 00:06:26,000
Speaker 4: that we need to leave the country. Since my exile

91
00:06:26,080 --> 00:06:30,000
Speaker 4: started four years now, five years ago now, we changed

92
00:06:30,040 --> 00:06:32,600
Speaker 4: places very often, countries places.

93
00:06:32,680 --> 00:06:35,599
Speaker 1: So I really do feel like I'm in a mystery

94
00:06:35,800 --> 00:06:40,760
Speaker 1: or maybe a paranoid conspiracy thriller. I'm chasing this rumor

95
00:06:40,800 --> 00:06:44,159
Speaker 1: of human cloning, human organ farms. I'm meeting with an

96
00:06:44,200 --> 00:06:47,960
Speaker 1: exile journalist under an orange tree at Stanford, and right

97
00:06:48,000 --> 00:06:50,520
Speaker 1: now we're talking about a strange bit of tape that

98
00:06:50,640 --> 00:06:57,680
Speaker 1: emerged on the internet last year. That's Chinese President Hi

99
00:06:57,760 --> 00:07:01,599
Speaker 1: Jinping walking with Vladimir Putin during a military parade in Beijing.

100
00:07:02,160 --> 00:07:05,240
Speaker 1: An essays stroll through the help of their translators, the

101
00:07:05,279 --> 00:07:07,760
Speaker 1: two seventy two year olds are saying that seventy used

102
00:07:07,800 --> 00:07:11,400
Speaker 1: to be considered ancient, but these days being seventy is

103
00:07:11,440 --> 00:07:15,920
Speaker 1: like being a child. Then Putin suggests that maybe people

104
00:07:16,000 --> 00:07:20,840
Speaker 1: will age backwards by replacing their organs and so essentially

105
00:07:20,920 --> 00:07:25,400
Speaker 1: becoming immortal. She chuckles and ads it could be in

106
00:07:25,440 --> 00:07:27,680
Speaker 1: this century humans might be able to live to one

107
00:07:27,760 --> 00:07:31,800
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty years old. That exchange went viral, because

108
00:07:32,120 --> 00:07:38,320
Speaker 1: of course it did. It's terrifying, But to Mikail.

109
00:07:39,320 --> 00:07:42,720
Speaker 4: It wasn't surprised for me at all, as an investigative

110
00:07:42,800 --> 00:07:46,080
Speaker 4: journalist who covers lead in the Putin for most part

111
00:07:46,120 --> 00:07:52,760
Speaker 4: of his career, that he is definitely obsessed. I am

112
00:07:54,080 --> 00:07:58,520
Speaker 4: using this word intentionally. He's obsessed with his health.

113
00:08:00,120 --> 00:08:02,720
Speaker 1: All knows a lot about that. Among other things. He

114
00:08:02,880 --> 00:08:05,400
Speaker 1: was the one who broke the story about Putin adding

115
00:08:05,400 --> 00:08:08,520
Speaker 1: a bath bomb of antler blood extract to his top,

116
00:08:09,160 --> 00:08:13,280
Speaker 1: a Siberian folk treatment for virility, which only amplified Putin's

117
00:08:13,320 --> 00:08:14,440
Speaker 1: myth internationally.

118
00:08:15,920 --> 00:08:19,800
Speaker 4: Like back at like fifteen years ago, they were published

119
00:08:19,880 --> 00:08:25,920
Speaker 4: his photos half naked you riding a horse and swimming.

120
00:08:26,320 --> 00:08:29,200
Speaker 4: It was important part of his image. What we understand

121
00:08:29,320 --> 00:08:32,559
Speaker 4: now is that he wants to live for a very

122
00:08:32,840 --> 00:08:36,800
Speaker 4: very long time, and we found some proofs for that.

123
00:08:39,280 --> 00:08:42,280
Speaker 1: Mckail and his team also broke a story about contracts

124
00:08:42,320 --> 00:08:46,199
Speaker 1: between the Russian President's office and hotels near his various

125
00:08:46,200 --> 00:08:49,600
Speaker 1: homes and who was traveling with Putin along with when.

126
00:08:50,280 --> 00:08:56,160
Speaker 4: So we find that every time Putin travels some way

127
00:08:56,200 --> 00:09:00,160
Speaker 4: out of Moscow, there is a bunch of doctors traveling

128
00:09:00,200 --> 00:09:03,280
Speaker 4: with him and who have to leave very close to

129
00:09:03,400 --> 00:09:08,240
Speaker 4: his residences. Usually it is from four up to seven

130
00:09:08,280 --> 00:09:12,120
Speaker 4: doctors traveling with him, but there were two times when

131
00:09:12,480 --> 00:09:17,280
Speaker 4: Putin was visited by twelve doctors simultaneously.

132
00:09:17,720 --> 00:09:20,520
Speaker 1: The reporters determined that Putin was likely treated for thyroid

133
00:09:20,559 --> 00:09:24,200
Speaker 1: cancer in secret, and that he'd had hernia surgery too.

134
00:09:25,160 --> 00:09:28,680
Speaker 1: Of course, this isn't the kind of thing the Kremlin confirms.

135
00:09:29,280 --> 00:09:32,560
Speaker 1: If Putin disappeared for a few days, Mikael says, they'll

136
00:09:32,640 --> 00:09:35,240
Speaker 1: release pre recorded tapes of meetings to make it seem

137
00:09:35,280 --> 00:09:38,000
Speaker 1: like he's on the job as normal. How do you

138
00:09:38,040 --> 00:09:39,520
Speaker 1: figure out someone like Putin's health.

139
00:09:40,240 --> 00:09:46,000
Speaker 4: It is a prohibited topic in Russia, totally prohibited. This

140
00:09:46,080 --> 00:09:49,800
Speaker 4: is a part of Putin's image. He's always healthy. They

141
00:09:49,920 --> 00:09:52,160
Speaker 4: never tell that he's ill. Never.

142
00:09:53,160 --> 00:09:55,680
Speaker 1: In late May of twenty twenty six, the Wall Street

143
00:09:55,760 --> 00:09:59,600
Speaker 1: Journal released a story clarifying that Putin had earmarked twenty

144
00:09:59,640 --> 00:10:04,080
Speaker 1: six billion dollars for a longevity initiative. Pudin's daughter, a

145
00:10:04,200 --> 00:10:08,640
Speaker 1: pediatric endocrinologist who advises her father on genetics, and a

146
00:10:08,640 --> 00:10:12,880
Speaker 1: physicist who led the USSR's nuclear research project were put

147
00:10:12,920 --> 00:10:16,120
Speaker 1: In charge, and along with delivering new gene therapies for

148
00:10:16,200 --> 00:10:20,760
Speaker 1: slowing cellular aging. The scientists have two key tasks, both

149
00:10:20,800 --> 00:10:24,560
Speaker 1: dealing with organ transplants. The first to figure out how

150
00:10:24,600 --> 00:10:30,080
Speaker 1: to three D print organs in a lab, the second

151
00:10:30,520 --> 00:10:35,000
Speaker 1: using mini pigs as living incubators to grow and harvest organs.

152
00:10:37,320 --> 00:10:39,959
Speaker 1: If everything goes to plan, Russia will basically have generated

153
00:10:40,000 --> 00:10:43,080
Speaker 1: a body farm where fields of hearts and lungs and

154
00:10:43,160 --> 00:10:46,480
Speaker 1: kidneys will either be printed on demand or plucked from

155
00:10:46,520 --> 00:10:51,200
Speaker 1: a pig host to be implanted into a human. According

156
00:10:51,200 --> 00:10:54,040
Speaker 1: to the journal, the hope is that between these two initiatives,

157
00:10:54,280 --> 00:10:57,559
Speaker 1: people will be able to switch out body parts indefinitely.

158
00:10:58,520 --> 00:11:01,680
Speaker 1: Putin has invested billions in the idea and is targeting

159
00:11:01,679 --> 00:11:03,960
Speaker 1: a deadline that isn't as far off as you think,

160
00:11:04,679 --> 00:11:08,000
Speaker 1: just four years, which happens to be before the country's

161
00:11:08,040 --> 00:11:14,000
Speaker 1: next presidential election. Of course, all of this is being

162
00:11:14,040 --> 00:11:17,160
Speaker 1: pitched as a state priority, a way to make Russians healthier.

163
00:11:17,960 --> 00:11:20,920
Speaker 1: Right now, the life expectancy for the average Russian is

164
00:11:20,960 --> 00:11:24,360
Speaker 1: seventy three, putting Russia at a dismal one hundred and

165
00:11:24,440 --> 00:11:27,800
Speaker 1: nineteen out of two hundred and nine countries studied and

166
00:11:27,840 --> 00:11:30,800
Speaker 1: for a new recruit to its military from the moment

167
00:11:30,880 --> 00:11:35,160
Speaker 1: training starts to death in battle, their life expectancy averages

168
00:11:35,240 --> 00:11:41,480
Speaker 1: only up to three weeks. But when this organ replacement

169
00:11:41,559 --> 00:11:45,360
Speaker 1: therapy is ready, which Russian will be first in line.

170
00:11:45,480 --> 00:11:46,920
Speaker 1: I'm sure you can guess.

171
00:11:48,840 --> 00:11:52,760
Speaker 4: What I'm trying to say is that definitely this conversation

172
00:11:53,040 --> 00:11:58,520
Speaker 4: with presidentcy wasn't something newte and unfortunately for Russia that

173
00:11:58,600 --> 00:12:03,480
Speaker 4: his plan is also too for a very very long time.

174
00:12:13,600 --> 00:12:29,360
Speaker 1: Chapter two, Library Science. I can't stop thinking about this

175
00:12:29,480 --> 00:12:32,400
Speaker 1: dystopic vision for the future where if you have a

176
00:12:32,400 --> 00:12:35,240
Speaker 1: good mechanic and a warehouse full of parts, you can

177
00:12:35,320 --> 00:12:39,040
Speaker 1: keep a body running endlessly. I mean, I get the

178
00:12:39,120 --> 00:12:41,880
Speaker 1: idea you might need a pacemaker or to replace a

179
00:12:41,920 --> 00:12:47,000
Speaker 1: bum heart, but to just keep replacing parts forever. And

180
00:12:47,040 --> 00:12:48,959
Speaker 1: it makes me wonder about the urban myths I heard

181
00:12:49,000 --> 00:12:51,520
Speaker 1: in middle and high school of people going to a party,

182
00:12:51,640 --> 00:12:54,920
Speaker 1: getting drugged and then waking up in bathtubs of ice

183
00:12:55,000 --> 00:12:58,360
Speaker 1: without a kidney, which is why Lizzie and I ended

184
00:12:58,400 --> 00:13:01,880
Speaker 1: up in a local public library on a chilly January day,

185
00:13:02,240 --> 00:13:04,760
Speaker 1: sitting with a white hat hacker named Searchlight.

186
00:13:07,120 --> 00:13:09,000
Speaker 6: Going on to Darknet used to be a lot easier

187
00:13:09,040 --> 00:13:11,680
Speaker 6: because you could just go to a website and be like, look,

188
00:13:11,880 --> 00:13:13,480
Speaker 6: this is who's advertising organs.

189
00:13:14,240 --> 00:13:18,000
Speaker 1: Just so you know, that's not Searchlight's actual voice. Searchlight

190
00:13:18,080 --> 00:13:21,520
Speaker 1: works as an elite cybersecurity consultant and studies at one

191
00:13:21,559 --> 00:13:25,200
Speaker 1: of the country's most prestigious universities, and they only agreed

192
00:13:25,240 --> 00:13:27,320
Speaker 1: to talk to me if we kept their voice and

193
00:13:27,400 --> 00:13:30,680
Speaker 1: identity out of the show. It's near closing time, and

194
00:13:31,000 --> 00:13:33,880
Speaker 1: while it's not exactly busy, I'm nervous about who might

195
00:13:33,920 --> 00:13:38,400
Speaker 1: catch wind of what we're doing. The Searchlight tells us

196
00:13:38,440 --> 00:13:40,720
Speaker 1: that the library is a convenient way to access the

197
00:13:40,720 --> 00:13:44,880
Speaker 1: web without using your own IP address. They boot up

198
00:13:44,880 --> 00:13:48,880
Speaker 1: the computer, clear it of the existing searches and credentials.

199
00:13:49,240 --> 00:13:51,679
Speaker 6: If you ever want to take a photo of like this,

200
00:13:52,480 --> 00:13:54,040
Speaker 6: just don't take a photo of me.

201
00:13:55,160 --> 00:13:58,640
Speaker 1: They reassure us we won't actually be doing anything illegal,

202
00:13:59,240 --> 00:14:05,240
Speaker 1: which is a welcome reminder. A Searchlight begins typing, I'm

203
00:14:05,320 --> 00:14:08,280
Speaker 1: giddy to tour the dark web. I'm still thinking about

204
00:14:08,280 --> 00:14:11,760
Speaker 1: Silk Road, the so called black market Amazon where organ

205
00:14:11,800 --> 00:14:15,600
Speaker 1: trafficking was rumored to take place, but Searchlight says that

206
00:14:15,600 --> 00:14:18,160
Speaker 1: that part of the net is filled with government agents

207
00:14:18,240 --> 00:14:23,760
Speaker 1: running honeypot schemes on unsuspecting nubes and anyway, it's not

208
00:14:23,800 --> 00:14:27,400
Speaker 1: where the action is these days. So we're going regular

209
00:14:27,560 --> 00:14:32,400
Speaker 1: old surface web and searchlight starts by demonstrating how embarrassingly

210
00:14:32,480 --> 00:14:36,120
Speaker 1: easy it is to find longevity drugs here on the internet.

211
00:14:36,160 --> 00:14:37,920
Speaker 1: We all use how.

212
00:14:37,800 --> 00:14:39,200
Speaker 3: Long to take? And did it seem surprising?

213
00:14:39,240 --> 00:14:39,800
Speaker 1: How long a tike?

214
00:14:40,560 --> 00:14:45,600
Speaker 6: It took? Under a minute, which is wow, this is

215
00:14:45,640 --> 00:14:47,920
Speaker 6: so easy that why would you ever go through the

216
00:14:47,960 --> 00:14:49,840
Speaker 6: effort of going through the dark web for any of

217
00:14:49,880 --> 00:14:51,000
Speaker 6: these things?

218
00:14:53,880 --> 00:14:56,960
Speaker 1: By current estimates, the shadow markets are a six trillion

219
00:14:57,040 --> 00:15:00,920
Speaker 1: dollars a year economy. That includes money launcher and other

220
00:15:00,920 --> 00:15:04,400
Speaker 1: illicit activity too, but it also includes what we're looking

221
00:15:04,400 --> 00:15:08,520
Speaker 1: at right now, purchasing cancer drugs and anti virals for

222
00:15:08,720 --> 00:15:12,040
Speaker 1: HIV and anabolic androgenic steroids.

223
00:15:12,640 --> 00:15:15,840
Speaker 6: I'm assuming there's a lot of business incentives for why

224
00:15:16,000 --> 00:15:18,400
Speaker 6: this is happening, and a lot of incentive for illicit

225
00:15:18,400 --> 00:15:21,840
Speaker 6: pharmacies in other countries to be targeting the US market.

226
00:15:22,920 --> 00:15:25,720
Speaker 1: I angle my body boxing out any nosy neighbors from

227
00:15:25,760 --> 00:15:28,720
Speaker 1: being able to see the screen. I can't believe how

228
00:15:28,800 --> 00:15:32,200
Speaker 1: brazen this marketplace is. And while we're not talking about

229
00:15:32,240 --> 00:15:37,440
Speaker 1: purchasing organs. These are serious pharmaceuticals, things with real side effects,

230
00:15:37,600 --> 00:15:41,240
Speaker 1: which are being recommended on dodgy sites as off label

231
00:15:41,320 --> 00:15:45,680
Speaker 1: longevity meds search sites. Starts pecking at the keys again

232
00:15:45,960 --> 00:15:49,560
Speaker 1: and we're transported to the world of longevity chatboards, the

233
00:15:49,600 --> 00:15:53,560
Speaker 1: so called community helping a new class of initiates navigate

234
00:15:53,560 --> 00:15:58,000
Speaker 1: their hunt for drugs. The boards point new longevionauts to

235
00:15:58,040 --> 00:16:01,520
Speaker 1: which sites are most reliable, which services to use to

236
00:16:01,640 --> 00:16:05,200
Speaker 1: drop ship the drugs, which banks are better for discrete

237
00:16:05,200 --> 00:16:06,560
Speaker 1: international transfers.

238
00:16:06,960 --> 00:16:11,200
Speaker 6: Yeah, this is super detailed. This person decided to say

239
00:16:12,040 --> 00:16:15,880
Speaker 6: which regional facility their package arrived that and also when

240
00:16:16,160 --> 00:16:19,000
Speaker 6: they paid for it, and also when it arrived to them,

241
00:16:19,280 --> 00:16:21,840
Speaker 6: which is extremely detailed amount of information to put on

242
00:16:21,880 --> 00:16:24,560
Speaker 6: the public Internet about your crimes. Whether this is a

243
00:16:24,640 --> 00:16:27,720
Speaker 6: real name or not doesn't really matter. Essentially, if these

244
00:16:27,720 --> 00:16:31,280
Speaker 6: people are not having some dark web conversation or secret telegrams,

245
00:16:30,880 --> 00:16:32,400
Speaker 6: it's just on the Internet.

246
00:16:33,800 --> 00:16:36,560
Speaker 1: One post we look at about how to order rapamycin

247
00:16:37,000 --> 00:16:41,280
Speaker 1: has over fifty thousand views and hundreds of comments. Rapamycin

248
00:16:41,480 --> 00:16:45,920
Speaker 1: is an immunosuppressant, especially helpful in preventing rejection after say

249
00:16:46,320 --> 00:16:49,720
Speaker 1: a kidney transplant. While the drug has been much hyped

250
00:16:49,720 --> 00:16:53,480
Speaker 1: in longevity circles, it has plenty of documented side effects,

251
00:16:53,920 --> 00:16:58,720
Speaker 1: including mouth ulcers, wound healing issues, and disabling your immune system.

252
00:17:00,040 --> 00:17:03,680
Speaker 1: Anti aging potential for humans, if any is still unclear,

253
00:17:09,440 --> 00:17:12,479
Speaker 1: but at Searchlight points out, we don't really know anything

254
00:17:12,520 --> 00:17:15,000
Speaker 1: about who has set up this forum and what their

255
00:17:15,040 --> 00:17:15,760
Speaker 1: motives could be.

256
00:17:16,480 --> 00:17:19,359
Speaker 6: Who is this person? No idea. If this person's a

257
00:17:19,359 --> 00:17:21,600
Speaker 6: broker or supplier, then there's an incentive for them to

258
00:17:21,680 --> 00:17:24,200
Speaker 6: lie right and tell the people that it's safe when

259
00:17:24,240 --> 00:17:31,320
Speaker 6: it's not, and that's predatory.

260
00:17:31,760 --> 00:17:33,760
Speaker 1: A long time ago, a writer friend of mine told

261
00:17:33,760 --> 00:17:35,800
Speaker 1: me the story about getting in a minivan with a

262
00:17:35,840 --> 00:17:39,679
Speaker 1: formulae one driver on some blocked off roads in New Jersey,

263
00:17:40,280 --> 00:17:45,160
Speaker 1: a new supposed test track. The driver guns it, hurling

264
00:17:45,200 --> 00:17:48,080
Speaker 1: the minivan around corners, and as the writer sweats and

265
00:17:48,160 --> 00:17:52,360
Speaker 1: white knuckles the grab handles, the driver looks over and smirks,

266
00:17:54,119 --> 00:17:57,600
Speaker 1: showing just how much control over this soccer mom vehicle

267
00:17:57,760 --> 00:18:02,439
Speaker 1: he has. I'm reminded of that scene. A surflight whips

268
00:18:02,480 --> 00:18:05,480
Speaker 1: the browser across the web. Click, click, click, A few

269
00:18:05,560 --> 00:18:09,160
Speaker 1: keystrokes and something we're looking at discount injectables that stimulate

270
00:18:09,240 --> 00:18:12,800
Speaker 1: bone marrow to make more red blood cells. A few

271
00:18:12,840 --> 00:18:15,119
Speaker 1: more and we're racing to a site that claims to

272
00:18:15,160 --> 00:18:19,720
Speaker 1: be quote the best Indian pharmaceutical supplier in the Philippines

273
00:18:20,160 --> 00:18:25,080
Speaker 1: that also ships to the US. This is f one handling,

274
00:18:25,160 --> 00:18:28,240
Speaker 1: not some web tourists working the wheel, and we skid

275
00:18:28,280 --> 00:18:31,320
Speaker 1: past disclosures or lack of them on so many sites.

276
00:18:35,840 --> 00:18:38,760
Speaker 1: When we tap the brakes, Searflight points out the market

277
00:18:38,800 --> 00:18:42,199
Speaker 1: here is wider than just longebonouts. It's also filled with

278
00:18:42,200 --> 00:18:45,560
Speaker 1: people with serious health conditions who've been abandoned by a

279
00:18:45,640 --> 00:18:49,840
Speaker 1: broken healthcare system. People left scouring the internet for cheaper

280
00:18:49,920 --> 00:18:53,800
Speaker 1: versions of the drugs they can't afford, for.

281
00:18:53,800 --> 00:18:55,960
Speaker 6: People who actually need these medications and are going on

282
00:18:56,000 --> 00:18:59,080
Speaker 6: these websites because they just can't afford them, because they're

283
00:18:59,080 --> 00:19:01,919
Speaker 6: like five thousand dollars injection in the US. They're like,

284
00:19:02,119 --> 00:19:05,120
Speaker 6: they're like really expensive. You can't blame them for going

285
00:19:05,119 --> 00:19:05,920
Speaker 6: on these websites.

286
00:19:06,080 --> 00:19:09,040
Speaker 1: And Searchlight tells me these chemicals are not made for

287
00:19:09,119 --> 00:19:11,800
Speaker 1: people to take, They're for research only.

288
00:19:12,119 --> 00:19:13,920
Speaker 6: It's still unsafe and it should be shut down.

289
00:19:20,560 --> 00:19:22,960
Speaker 1: I'm thinking of my dad, how at the end of

290
00:19:22,960 --> 00:19:25,680
Speaker 1: his life when he knew things weren't going right. He'd

291
00:19:25,760 --> 00:19:28,800
Speaker 1: ordered these ira Vedic tinctures that he thought could maybe

292
00:19:28,840 --> 00:19:32,919
Speaker 1: heal him. It was this act of desperation, and I

293
00:19:32,960 --> 00:19:36,520
Speaker 1: had no idea what he'd bought, or from where, or

294
00:19:36,520 --> 00:19:42,120
Speaker 1: how he'd even research these supposed cures. But as much

295
00:19:42,160 --> 00:19:45,240
Speaker 1: as I didn't want it to be true, I knew

296
00:19:45,240 --> 00:19:46,160
Speaker 1: they weren't going to work.

297
00:19:48,680 --> 00:19:50,800
Speaker 6: I think what it really says about the longevity situation

298
00:19:50,960 --> 00:19:54,320
Speaker 6: is like this is being discussed openly. There is the

299
00:19:54,359 --> 00:19:57,840
Speaker 6: opportunity to know, hey, these drugs are dangerous, Like there's

300
00:19:57,920 --> 00:19:59,919
Speaker 6: guidance that can be and hasn't been put up by

301
00:20:00,200 --> 00:20:03,280
Speaker 6: FDA saying these longevity drugs are off label and are

302
00:20:03,320 --> 00:20:04,200
Speaker 6: dangerous to be using.

303
00:20:20,760 --> 00:20:23,960
Speaker 1: My mind is reeling. For the same price as a

304
00:20:24,000 --> 00:20:27,119
Speaker 1: dinner out, I can buy research grade drugs that cure

305
00:20:27,240 --> 00:20:32,399
Speaker 1: major diseases on essentially an open market. It's barely harder

306
00:20:32,440 --> 00:20:35,919
Speaker 1: than ordering sneakers off of eBay. But what about the

307
00:20:35,920 --> 00:20:38,879
Speaker 1: people who aren't desperate? What about the prudence of the

308
00:20:38,880 --> 00:20:42,040
Speaker 1: world who talk of switching out a bad heart or kidney,

309
00:20:42,320 --> 00:20:45,040
Speaker 1: treating the human body like a Lego kit where you

310
00:20:45,040 --> 00:20:48,320
Speaker 1: can just snap in new parts, or the whispers. I

311
00:20:48,440 --> 00:20:53,159
Speaker 1: keep hearing of ultra elite longevity mansions, residences where New

312
00:20:53,280 --> 00:20:56,800
Speaker 1: Zealand oil airs and their friends. The actual phrase one

313
00:20:56,840 --> 00:21:01,000
Speaker 1: source used gream up longevity experiments they can fund without

314
00:21:01,000 --> 00:21:04,359
Speaker 1: worry of ethics. So I go back to my original

315
00:21:04,480 --> 00:21:08,000
Speaker 1: question and ask Searchlight, are people buying new livers and

316
00:21:08,080 --> 00:21:09,400
Speaker 1: spare kidneys online?

317
00:21:10,280 --> 00:21:12,639
Speaker 6: Well, there's a lot of conversation about replacing kidneys and

318
00:21:12,680 --> 00:21:17,200
Speaker 6: things like that in the longevity community, but actually acting

319
00:21:17,240 --> 00:21:20,040
Speaker 6: on that is extremely fringe. And not only do I

320
00:21:20,080 --> 00:21:22,879
Speaker 6: not know anyone who's done that, I've never heard of

321
00:21:22,960 --> 00:21:25,000
Speaker 6: anybody who's heard of anybody who's done that.

322
00:21:26,640 --> 00:21:30,280
Speaker 1: For a minute, I feel relief, like an anxious parent

323
00:21:30,480 --> 00:21:33,680
Speaker 1: looking out onto an ocean and not seeing any fins

324
00:21:34,760 --> 00:21:39,800
Speaker 1: taking that is proof that the water is safe. Searchlight

325
00:21:39,880 --> 00:21:42,359
Speaker 1: says that if we want to go hunting for organ sales,

326
00:21:42,760 --> 00:21:45,879
Speaker 1: they could reboot the system and find a burner phone

327
00:21:45,880 --> 00:21:49,080
Speaker 1: for us to use, but the various security measures would

328
00:21:49,119 --> 00:21:52,120
Speaker 1: take more time than we have. The library is about

329
00:21:52,160 --> 00:21:56,320
Speaker 1: to close. Besides, they explained to me, organ trafficking isn't

330
00:21:56,400 --> 00:22:01,159
Speaker 1: just illegal, it also requires an incredible amount of coordination.

331
00:22:01,680 --> 00:22:06,199
Speaker 6: For extreme cases. Let's do an organ transplant illegally. It

332
00:22:06,280 --> 00:22:10,320
Speaker 6: requires a donor who's forced into donating organs, be trafficked

333
00:22:10,359 --> 00:22:12,960
Speaker 6: to a safe house and then have organs removed, and

334
00:22:13,000 --> 00:22:15,200
Speaker 6: then have a surgeon and a surgical feed are nearby

335
00:22:15,840 --> 00:22:18,760
Speaker 6: implant them into the recipient, and all of that has

336
00:22:18,800 --> 00:22:20,040
Speaker 6: to be coordinated by a broker.

337
00:22:22,040 --> 00:22:25,120
Speaker 1: A searchlight walks me through this. I'm realizing how hard

338
00:22:25,160 --> 00:22:27,760
Speaker 1: the recovery is, how easy it is for the body

339
00:22:27,800 --> 00:22:31,359
Speaker 1: to reject a foreign organ. The medicines you need to

340
00:22:31,400 --> 00:22:36,159
Speaker 1: override it. Even in the best circumstances. It is far

341
00:22:36,200 --> 00:22:36,880
Speaker 1: from smooth.

342
00:22:37,600 --> 00:22:40,240
Speaker 6: People who are primarily trying to get transplants on. Here

343
00:22:40,240 --> 00:22:43,600
Speaker 6: are people who actually need them but are just going

344
00:22:43,600 --> 00:22:47,520
Speaker 6: about it in extremely unethical ways that they just don't

345
00:22:47,520 --> 00:22:49,400
Speaker 6: care about the people who they're trying to get things

346
00:22:49,400 --> 00:22:51,280
Speaker 6: transplanted from.

347
00:22:51,480 --> 00:22:53,960
Speaker 1: And it feels like there's desperation on both sides, from

348
00:22:54,000 --> 00:22:56,760
Speaker 1: the person in dire need of a failing organ, but

349
00:22:57,000 --> 00:22:59,959
Speaker 1: also from the person for whom their own internal organs

350
00:23:00,440 --> 00:23:04,040
Speaker 1: maybe the most valuable things they have in or on.

351
00:23:04,240 --> 00:23:07,320
Speaker 1: In twenty twenty three, when inflation had gotten so bad

352
00:23:07,440 --> 00:23:11,840
Speaker 1: that poverty was rampant, people were posting on telegram offering

353
00:23:11,880 --> 00:23:16,080
Speaker 1: their livers, their bone marrow. According to Business Insider, someone

354
00:23:16,160 --> 00:23:20,520
Speaker 1: even posted an offer to sell their testicles quote twenty

355
00:23:20,520 --> 00:23:31,040
Speaker 1: five years old. Oh positive, I know searchlight can illuminate

356
00:23:31,080 --> 00:23:34,679
Speaker 1: the darkest corridors of the Internet, places I'd never be

357
00:23:34,720 --> 00:23:37,920
Speaker 1: able to find. Were all those rumors I'd heard from

358
00:23:38,000 --> 00:23:41,920
Speaker 1: vcs about organ replacement just another kind of urban myth.

359
00:23:42,880 --> 00:23:46,359
Speaker 1: Had we hit a dead end? I can't believe it.

360
00:23:47,280 --> 00:23:48,200
Speaker 1: There has to be.

361
00:23:48,160 --> 00:24:12,400
Speaker 5: A way Chapter three, Cracking the Faberge Egg.

362
00:24:15,200 --> 00:24:17,720
Speaker 1: In any detective story, there are moments when the trail

363
00:24:17,800 --> 00:24:21,440
Speaker 1: goes cold, when the pieces don't seem to fit, and

364
00:24:21,840 --> 00:24:25,040
Speaker 1: there are always options. You can play a violin and

365
00:24:25,480 --> 00:24:29,000
Speaker 1: hope for an inspired connection, or you can keep working

366
00:24:29,080 --> 00:24:32,840
Speaker 1: the neighborhood, tracing acquaintances, looking for one name to daisy

367
00:24:32,920 --> 00:24:36,320
Speaker 1: chain into the next. And in a community this small,

368
00:24:37,000 --> 00:24:39,840
Speaker 1: there's a sense that the young scientists with the boldest,

369
00:24:39,960 --> 00:24:43,879
Speaker 1: wildest ideas have all met each other, which is how

370
00:24:44,040 --> 00:24:47,080
Speaker 1: three days into my trip to San Francisco, I find

371
00:24:47,080 --> 00:24:48,680
Speaker 1: myself talking to Nicoa Poe.

372
00:24:49,600 --> 00:24:52,640
Speaker 7: The people I valued the most actually weren't encouraging at all.

373
00:24:52,720 --> 00:24:56,400
Speaker 7: They were just like, that's stupid entire thing, scrap.

374
00:24:58,400 --> 00:25:01,880
Speaker 1: That's what helped me, oh a lot of things. A vegan,

375
00:25:02,119 --> 00:25:06,200
Speaker 1: a former research assistant at Stanford an Army, National Guard Reserve,

376
00:25:06,640 --> 00:25:09,720
Speaker 1: and a startup founder running his trials at the Buck Institute,

377
00:25:10,000 --> 00:25:14,080
Speaker 1: a prestigious research institute devoted to longevity, where he's worked

378
00:25:14,080 --> 00:25:18,480
Speaker 1: on a way to replace his brain. But as we

379
00:25:18,600 --> 00:25:22,840
Speaker 1: sit in his office in Marin overlooking sweeping hills thick

380
00:25:22,880 --> 00:25:25,200
Speaker 1: with fog, he tells me he doesn't want to replace

381
00:25:25,200 --> 00:25:29,480
Speaker 1: his organs by transplant putin style. Instead, he's taking his

382
00:25:29,520 --> 00:25:34,719
Speaker 1: inspiration from an old philosophical thought experiment. The Ship of Theseus.

383
00:25:35,600 --> 00:25:39,320
Speaker 7: Theseus was this Greek explorer, right, and he goes on

384
00:25:39,359 --> 00:25:42,159
Speaker 7: a journey and the mast of his ship break, so

385
00:25:42,200 --> 00:25:46,399
Speaker 7: they replaced the mast. The board's break, so they replace

386
00:25:46,480 --> 00:25:48,520
Speaker 7: the boards, and by the end of the journey they've

387
00:25:48,560 --> 00:25:51,399
Speaker 7: replaced every single part of the ship with a new piece.

388
00:25:52,119 --> 00:25:56,520
Speaker 7: But everybody still calls it Theseus's ship and the like.

389
00:25:56,720 --> 00:26:00,879
Speaker 7: The philosophical question is if you completely play something piece

390
00:26:00,880 --> 00:26:02,879
Speaker 7: by piece, is it still what it started to be?

391
00:26:03,760 --> 00:26:06,000
Speaker 1: Nikoa has a theory about how you can replace your

392
00:26:06,119 --> 00:26:10,040
Speaker 1: entire brain piece by piece and still retain your identity.

393
00:26:10,560 --> 00:26:12,440
Speaker 1: And I want to know how he came to that belief.

394
00:26:16,359 --> 00:26:19,360
Speaker 1: Nikoa grew up in Hawaii with the health conscious hippie mom.

395
00:26:20,000 --> 00:26:23,760
Speaker 1: In college, he identifies two event horizons, and since he's

396
00:26:23,840 --> 00:26:27,320
Speaker 1: quote not good at ai, he decides to lean into

397
00:26:27,359 --> 00:26:31,639
Speaker 1: the other one, longevity. But even after studying biochemistry and

398
00:26:31,680 --> 00:26:34,600
Speaker 1: molecular biology and moving to the West Coast to work

399
00:26:34,640 --> 00:26:37,480
Speaker 1: in a Stanford lab, he wasn't satisfied.

400
00:26:38,080 --> 00:26:42,320
Speaker 7: So one of my lab mates goes, well, you won't

401
00:26:42,320 --> 00:26:45,320
Speaker 7: stop talking about immortality. Here's a house full of people

402
00:26:45,320 --> 00:26:54,439
Speaker 7: that just do That's amaze. So then I applied and

403
00:26:54,480 --> 00:26:57,440
Speaker 7: they gave me a very serious interview and they're like, yes, well,

404
00:26:57,480 --> 00:26:59,960
Speaker 7: we'll see if you're good enough for the next cohort.

405
00:27:00,080 --> 00:27:03,679
Speaker 7: I was like sweating, this is extremely serious. I'm going

406
00:27:03,760 --> 00:27:05,800
Speaker 7: to be living with a whole bunch of biotech legends.

407
00:27:05,840 --> 00:27:07,760
Speaker 7: And then I showed up and it was just like, oh,

408
00:27:07,760 --> 00:27:08,320
Speaker 7: what's up, bro.

409
00:27:13,640 --> 00:27:16,359
Speaker 1: But at Vida's house, whose stated mission is to create

410
00:27:16,359 --> 00:27:20,359
Speaker 1: community and quote incubate the most promising moonshots at the

411
00:27:20,359 --> 00:27:24,320
Speaker 1: intersections of biology and tech, was just what Nikoa needed.

412
00:27:25,000 --> 00:27:26,920
Speaker 1: I was out of Vida's house the day before and

413
00:27:27,280 --> 00:27:30,120
Speaker 1: had been charmed by the college off campus house feel

414
00:27:30,160 --> 00:27:30,320
Speaker 1: of it.

415
00:27:31,000 --> 00:27:33,119
Speaker 7: Our fridge had a whole bunch of different peptides in

416
00:27:33,200 --> 00:27:35,040
Speaker 7: it on the side, and I was having space to

417
00:27:35,600 --> 00:27:37,840
Speaker 7: store my hot sauce because there was like too many

418
00:27:38,160 --> 00:27:44,159
Speaker 7: vials of Reddit, trude eyed and other tiny little peptide fragments.

419
00:27:44,240 --> 00:27:45,080
Speaker 7: So that was fun.

420
00:27:46,480 --> 00:27:49,080
Speaker 1: And he finds inspiration all around him that make some

421
00:27:49,200 --> 00:27:52,320
Speaker 1: investors and fame researchers who drop by to give talks,

422
00:27:52,960 --> 00:27:54,840
Speaker 1: and the like minded residents who lived there.

423
00:27:55,720 --> 00:27:58,679
Speaker 7: Just having conversations and sharing my ideas with people and

424
00:27:58,720 --> 00:28:02,520
Speaker 7: coming like, look, I have this precious faberget egg of

425
00:28:02,560 --> 00:28:05,480
Speaker 7: an idea and I'm so proud of it. And then

426
00:28:05,520 --> 00:28:08,360
Speaker 7: they smash it and they're like, ninety percent of this

427
00:28:08,400 --> 00:28:10,240
Speaker 7: is garbage, and I go, okay, well I'll take this

428
00:28:10,320 --> 00:28:12,600
Speaker 7: ten percent. Look I have another wife.

429
00:28:13,040 --> 00:28:14,240
Speaker 1: Boom, Okay, well now I.

430
00:28:14,200 --> 00:28:17,080
Speaker 7: Have twenty percent of a good idea and just refeeding

431
00:28:17,119 --> 00:28:18,479
Speaker 7: that process.

432
00:28:18,720 --> 00:28:22,080
Speaker 1: And that's on a CoA started Sundial Therapeutics, an early

433
00:28:22,080 --> 00:28:26,400
Speaker 1: stage company focused on cellular brain replacement, whereas he likes

434
00:28:26,440 --> 00:28:27,000
Speaker 1: to call it.

435
00:28:27,359 --> 00:28:30,080
Speaker 7: The brain of theseus. Basically, what we do is we

436
00:28:30,119 --> 00:28:33,280
Speaker 7: look for stem cells that can cross the blood brain

437
00:28:33,359 --> 00:28:35,760
Speaker 7: barrier and home to sights of damage and injury in

438
00:28:35,800 --> 00:28:39,040
Speaker 7: the brain and replace the dead and dying cells with

439
00:28:39,160 --> 00:28:41,920
Speaker 7: new healthy cells, so you can slowly replace the brain

440
00:28:42,600 --> 00:28:45,800
Speaker 7: over time. Every time one of the cells in your

441
00:28:45,840 --> 00:28:49,920
Speaker 7: brain dies, we send a stem cell in there and

442
00:28:49,960 --> 00:28:52,960
Speaker 7: it replaces it with a new, younger, healthy cell.

443
00:28:59,280 --> 00:29:02,360
Speaker 1: What's fascinating about Nikoa is that he's actually tackling one

444
00:29:02,400 --> 00:29:05,520
Speaker 1: of the hardest problems in biotech. It's one thing to

445
00:29:05,560 --> 00:29:09,080
Speaker 1: coax stem cells into becoming skin or blood cells, or

446
00:29:09,120 --> 00:29:13,400
Speaker 1: even say a liver, things that have a very straightforward purpose.

447
00:29:14,400 --> 00:29:17,280
Speaker 1: It's another to get new cells across the blood brain

448
00:29:17,400 --> 00:29:20,880
Speaker 1: barrier into the right part of the brain, not to

449
00:29:20,960 --> 00:29:25,239
Speaker 1: mention doing it without disrupting the existing circuitry and the

450
00:29:25,280 --> 00:29:29,160
Speaker 1: person inside. But Nikoa is a rising star, and his

451
00:29:29,240 --> 00:29:32,120
Speaker 1: hope is that you can heal traumatic brain injuries and

452
00:29:32,160 --> 00:29:36,760
Speaker 1: replace damaged cells without the need for surgery. But also

453
00:29:37,360 --> 00:29:40,880
Speaker 1: he knows these advances take time because he knows just

454
00:29:40,960 --> 00:29:42,400
Speaker 1: how complicated the body is.

455
00:29:43,000 --> 00:29:44,480
Speaker 7: This is going to go on the record, right, so

456
00:29:44,480 --> 00:29:46,280
Speaker 7: I'll check back in ten more years. But I don't

457
00:29:46,320 --> 00:29:51,200
Speaker 7: think the predictions of curing all diseases using AI and

458
00:29:51,240 --> 00:29:54,280
Speaker 7: synthetic biology in ten more years are going to play

459
00:29:54,320 --> 00:29:58,520
Speaker 7: out in anywhere near the time span, because biology doesn't

460
00:29:58,560 --> 00:29:59,720
Speaker 7: move at machine speeds.

461
00:30:01,000 --> 00:30:03,680
Speaker 1: It's something I've been thinking about a lot, like there

462
00:30:03,720 --> 00:30:06,240
Speaker 1: is so much optimism and hype in the space, but

463
00:30:06,320 --> 00:30:08,800
Speaker 1: also there's a real tension between the people in the

464
00:30:08,920 --> 00:30:13,480
Speaker 1: university labs who believe advances take decades, people like doctor

465
00:30:13,560 --> 00:30:17,680
Speaker 1: Cy who is effectively replicating simplified brains in petri dishes,

466
00:30:18,320 --> 00:30:21,640
Speaker 1: from the tech optimists, people who are certain that death

467
00:30:21,760 --> 00:30:26,400
Speaker 1: with enough computing power is a very solvable problem.

468
00:30:26,600 --> 00:30:30,240
Speaker 7: I think tech teaches you to be optimistic and biotech

469
00:30:30,280 --> 00:30:34,880
Speaker 7: teaches you to be pessimistic. Here, when you're working with

470
00:30:35,000 --> 00:30:38,800
Speaker 7: living systems, you get used to things taking twice as

471
00:30:38,880 --> 00:30:41,120
Speaker 7: long and costing three times as much as you thought

472
00:30:41,400 --> 00:30:42,440
Speaker 7: every single time.

473
00:30:45,040 --> 00:30:48,440
Speaker 1: He's cautious about putting a neat timeline on biology, but

474
00:30:48,560 --> 00:30:51,560
Speaker 1: also just look at the scale of his ambition. He's

475
00:30:51,560 --> 00:30:56,120
Speaker 1: trying to replace an entire brain cell for cell, and

476
00:30:56,160 --> 00:31:00,160
Speaker 1: despite his caveats, Nicoa's Brain of THESEUS project is moving

477
00:31:00,200 --> 00:31:04,080
Speaker 1: at a surprisingly fast clip. He tells me that just

478
00:31:04,160 --> 00:31:04,960
Speaker 1: this year.

479
00:31:05,160 --> 00:31:09,680
Speaker 7: We're planning to launch our first pre clinical study in

480
00:31:09,720 --> 00:31:12,080
Speaker 7: an animal model of Alzheimer's to see if they can

481
00:31:12,120 --> 00:31:15,160
Speaker 7: actually reduce the burden of the disease.

482
00:31:16,480 --> 00:31:19,480
Speaker 1: Of course, the bigger question I have is the original

483
00:31:19,520 --> 00:31:23,520
Speaker 1: philosophical one. If you replace a brain sell by cell,

484
00:31:24,040 --> 00:31:25,680
Speaker 1: and at the end of it you have a totally

485
00:31:25,760 --> 00:31:30,000
Speaker 1: new brain, is that still you? Nikoa has a theory.

486
00:31:31,920 --> 00:31:35,760
Speaker 7: My conjecture is, because of how the brain works, even

487
00:31:35,760 --> 00:31:38,400
Speaker 7: if you replace every single cell in your brain over

488
00:31:38,440 --> 00:31:41,560
Speaker 7: time with a different cell, you're not going to lose

489
00:31:41,600 --> 00:31:46,600
Speaker 7: your identity because identity is encoded not in the individual neurons,

490
00:31:46,600 --> 00:31:50,320
Speaker 7: but in the patterns of firing between them. And every

491
00:31:50,360 --> 00:31:53,960
Speaker 7: time a new cell comes into your brain, it's trained

492
00:31:54,360 --> 00:31:57,560
Speaker 7: by all of the neurons next to it in order

493
00:31:57,600 --> 00:32:00,440
Speaker 7: to start behaving as part of your brain. So as

494
00:32:00,440 --> 00:32:03,760
Speaker 7: you get this gradual replacement, the parts that are there

495
00:32:04,000 --> 00:32:06,440
Speaker 7: train the new parts that are coming in, which train

496
00:32:06,560 --> 00:32:10,640
Speaker 7: their replacements, which train their replacements, and you eventually get

497
00:32:11,120 --> 00:32:15,560
Speaker 7: full replacement of your brain with healthy, er, younger sells,

498
00:32:16,360 --> 00:32:17,200
Speaker 7: but you're still you.

499
00:32:20,400 --> 00:32:22,120
Speaker 1: It's not an answer that would have occurred to me

500
00:32:22,440 --> 00:32:25,720
Speaker 1: that despite replacing your entire brain, you still might be

501
00:32:25,880 --> 00:32:29,120
Speaker 1: you at the end of it. And yet maybe that's

502
00:32:29,160 --> 00:32:31,880
Speaker 1: just how humans work because I'm not the person I

503
00:32:31,960 --> 00:32:35,680
Speaker 1: was as a kid, or even the person I was yesterday.

504
00:32:35,800 --> 00:32:40,040
Speaker 1: I have experiences that continuously change me. Our brains are

505
00:32:40,080 --> 00:32:44,840
Speaker 1: constantly changing. So maybe he's right. I don't know enough

506
00:32:44,880 --> 00:32:53,040
Speaker 1: to know if it's optimism or wishful thinking or just true.

507
00:32:56,480 --> 00:32:58,600
Speaker 1: I'm worried the trail has gone cold on the mystery.

508
00:32:58,640 --> 00:33:00,920
Speaker 1: I'd initially set out to solve the one about the

509
00:33:00,920 --> 00:33:04,720
Speaker 1: company making clones for organ farms, but before I go,

510
00:33:05,240 --> 00:33:08,120
Speaker 1: I decide to take a wild swing. I asked Nicole

511
00:33:08,200 --> 00:33:11,600
Speaker 1: if his brain, if theseus idea extends to the whole body,

512
00:33:12,240 --> 00:33:17,240
Speaker 1: and whether Putin's supposed goal of continual organ replacement is possible.

513
00:33:18,520 --> 00:33:20,720
Speaker 7: I don't think organ by organ is going to work

514
00:33:21,800 --> 00:33:25,920
Speaker 7: just because the environment has such a big impact. Like

515
00:33:26,000 --> 00:33:30,960
Speaker 7: you can take a day's zero embryonic cel but put

516
00:33:30,960 --> 00:33:34,840
Speaker 7: it in an old organism and it'll rapidly age just

517
00:33:34,840 --> 00:33:36,760
Speaker 7: because of all of the signals it's getting from the

518
00:33:36,840 --> 00:33:42,880
Speaker 7: older organism. So you see this with organs. Even if

519
00:33:42,880 --> 00:33:45,080
Speaker 7: you take an organ from a younger person, like a

520
00:33:45,160 --> 00:33:47,160
Speaker 7: kidney from a younger person, and put it into an

521
00:33:47,200 --> 00:33:52,040
Speaker 7: older person, it'll degrade in function to match the older

522
00:33:52,040 --> 00:33:54,880
Speaker 7: person's other kidney much more rapidly, just because it's in

523
00:33:54,920 --> 00:33:57,400
Speaker 7: an older, more damaging environment.

524
00:33:58,320 --> 00:34:00,840
Speaker 1: And then he says something i't expecting.

525
00:34:02,000 --> 00:34:09,000
Speaker 7: So I think, to get big gains from replacement, doing

526
00:34:09,080 --> 00:34:11,720
Speaker 7: as much replacement as possible, all at once.

527
00:34:13,120 --> 00:34:15,600
Speaker 1: And with those words, I realize he knows what I

528
00:34:15,600 --> 00:34:18,240
Speaker 1: want to know, because as I've been digging for clues

529
00:34:18,239 --> 00:34:22,279
Speaker 1: in Silicon Valley about the human cloning, about the organ replacement,

530
00:34:22,960 --> 00:34:27,120
Speaker 1: I've heard shades of exactly this language, doing as much

531
00:34:27,160 --> 00:34:31,160
Speaker 1: replacement as possible, all at once. So I asked Nicole

532
00:34:31,200 --> 00:34:33,880
Speaker 1: about the company. I only have a vague description of

533
00:34:34,800 --> 00:34:37,560
Speaker 1: if we're possibly talking about the same thing, and it

534
00:34:37,560 --> 00:34:39,719
Speaker 1: feels like we are, So I ask if he can

535
00:34:39,760 --> 00:34:42,759
Speaker 1: make an introduction for me, and he says he'll ask.

536
00:34:43,719 --> 00:34:46,719
Speaker 7: They sometimes don't like going on the record, just because

537
00:34:46,719 --> 00:34:47,799
Speaker 7: of the nature of what they do.

538
00:34:49,560 --> 00:35:10,719
Speaker 1: And then about a month later, I hear from Alice

539
00:35:11,400 --> 00:35:14,719
Speaker 1: Chapter four, Alice in monkey.

540
00:35:14,440 --> 00:35:26,200
Speaker 8: Land, I had a phenomenal lamp wreck at the hotel

541
00:35:26,239 --> 00:35:29,560
Speaker 8: that I'm staying at. I woke up at twelve, so

542
00:35:29,600 --> 00:35:33,360
Speaker 8: I decided to make it a brunch and it was great,

543
00:35:33,960 --> 00:35:35,200
Speaker 8: zero complaints.

544
00:35:35,560 --> 00:35:38,640
Speaker 1: Alice Gilman won't tell me where she is exactly, and

545
00:35:38,680 --> 00:35:41,240
Speaker 1: I can't really see her either. The room is dark

546
00:35:41,280 --> 00:35:44,239
Speaker 1: and I can only make out her shadow next to

547
00:35:44,280 --> 00:35:49,239
Speaker 1: the curtains billowing in the breeze, which adds to the mystique.

548
00:35:49,600 --> 00:35:51,960
Speaker 1: Alice is the co founder of the startup ar three bio,

549
00:35:52,400 --> 00:35:54,719
Speaker 1: and she's talking to me from a hotel somewhere in

550
00:35:54,760 --> 00:35:57,680
Speaker 1: the vicinity of their newest workspace on one of the

551
00:35:57,680 --> 00:36:00,560
Speaker 1: one hundred and forty three islands that make up Puerto Rico.

552
00:36:01,360 --> 00:36:03,720
Speaker 8: You know, working on a science project in an island.

553
00:36:03,880 --> 00:36:05,439
Speaker 8: People are like, what are you guys doing?

554
00:36:06,320 --> 00:36:10,120
Speaker 1: But I've been chasing a shadow for five months, and

555
00:36:10,200 --> 00:36:12,640
Speaker 1: I think I've finally found the person who belongs to

556
00:36:13,400 --> 00:36:16,680
Speaker 1: Alice and her company are three Bio, seem to operate

557
00:36:16,760 --> 00:36:22,160
Speaker 1: on that outermost ring where science kisses the impossible, and

558
00:36:22,239 --> 00:36:25,719
Speaker 1: up until this point in mid February twenty twenty six,

559
00:36:26,160 --> 00:36:29,080
Speaker 1: her company has been in stealth mode, a phrase I

560
00:36:29,200 --> 00:36:32,520
Speaker 1: keep hearing in Silicon Valley where people are very happy

561
00:36:32,520 --> 00:36:35,239
Speaker 1: to talk about their work but also pretend like it's

562
00:36:35,239 --> 00:36:38,560
Speaker 1: a secret. But those secrets have generated a lot of buzz.

563
00:36:39,840 --> 00:36:42,520
Speaker 8: I think that we're just like entertainingly a company that

564
00:36:42,920 --> 00:36:45,960
Speaker 8: is actually extremely boring, but a lot of people decided

565
00:36:46,000 --> 00:36:49,759
Speaker 8: that we are radically crazy.

566
00:36:51,280 --> 00:36:54,680
Speaker 1: As we talk, it's clear we're both walking on eggshells.

567
00:36:55,480 --> 00:36:57,239
Speaker 1: This is what I think I know about Alice.

568
00:36:57,400 --> 00:36:57,640
Speaker 6: One.

569
00:36:58,160 --> 00:37:03,560
Speaker 1: He's connected for the Residency and incubator, associated with Sam Altman.

570
00:37:04,239 --> 00:37:07,319
Speaker 1: She has spent time at Prospera, and she gives talks

571
00:37:07,320 --> 00:37:12,200
Speaker 1: to Adam Greeese's longevity conference Vitalist Pay. Two. There are

572
00:37:12,200 --> 00:37:17,200
Speaker 1: whispers about our three all over Silicon Valley, more than whispers,

573
00:37:17,200 --> 00:37:23,840
Speaker 1: actually palpable excitement, but there is very little online. And three.

574
00:37:24,000 --> 00:37:28,560
Speaker 1: She is not a scientist, She's an operator the COO.

575
00:37:28,960 --> 00:37:30,960
Speaker 1: But as I begin to ask her take on radical

576
00:37:31,000 --> 00:37:34,040
Speaker 1: life extension, she wants to start with the story of

577
00:37:34,080 --> 00:37:38,480
Speaker 1: her grandmother, a woman with an epic biography.

578
00:37:38,640 --> 00:37:41,239
Speaker 8: She escaped World War two, stole a horse from the

579
00:37:41,280 --> 00:37:43,640
Speaker 8: Nazis and got her three year old sister on a

580
00:37:43,719 --> 00:37:47,719
Speaker 8: horse across. She went from Germany to China basically over

581
00:37:47,840 --> 00:37:50,120
Speaker 8: like five years in them, ended up with Shaolin monks.

582
00:37:51,000 --> 00:37:54,000
Speaker 1: Alice grew up in Kazakhstan, spending time with her grandmother.

583
00:37:54,560 --> 00:37:57,560
Speaker 1: This woman who should have died but instead fought to

584
00:37:57,560 --> 00:38:00,799
Speaker 1: stay alive and now struggles in body she's in.

585
00:38:03,960 --> 00:38:06,400
Speaker 8: I'm like sitting in front of this person who's like

586
00:38:06,640 --> 00:38:09,800
Speaker 8: a legend, right, who's here playing with pills.

587
00:38:12,360 --> 00:38:16,000
Speaker 1: Alice tells me she can't stomach the disconnect. Why should

588
00:38:16,080 --> 00:38:19,359
Speaker 1: someone so full of life, so committed to life, have

589
00:38:19,480 --> 00:38:26,560
Speaker 1: to suffer just because their body is older? More than aging,

590
00:38:26,960 --> 00:38:31,319
Speaker 1: What terrifies Alice is death, because it wasn't so long

591
00:38:31,320 --> 00:38:34,280
Speaker 1: ago that she remembers sitting and waiting for news about

592
00:38:34,320 --> 00:38:35,600
Speaker 1: whether her father would live.

593
00:38:36,480 --> 00:38:40,399
Speaker 8: My dad had a open heart surgery. I got very

594
00:38:40,440 --> 00:38:45,120
Speaker 8: lucky my dad is still around. I made myself a

595
00:38:45,160 --> 00:38:47,960
Speaker 8: point of I want to make sure my dad gets

596
00:38:48,000 --> 00:38:50,560
Speaker 8: to live longer this decade. And I didn't find anything

597
00:38:50,920 --> 00:38:55,080
Speaker 8: technologically that would guarantee that this decade, so I decided

598
00:38:55,120 --> 00:38:56,279
Speaker 8: to help make it.

599
00:39:02,640 --> 00:39:05,799
Speaker 1: The experience drove Alice into the longevity space. She began

600
00:39:05,880 --> 00:39:08,640
Speaker 1: scouring for solutions scientists who might be able to help,

601
00:39:09,040 --> 00:39:12,200
Speaker 1: and then she finds a way to John Schloendorn, a

602
00:39:12,239 --> 00:39:16,960
Speaker 1: self proclaimed biological designer and PhD in molecular biology. He

603
00:39:17,000 --> 00:39:20,480
Speaker 1: counts Peter Teele as a benefactor. Teal invested and reported

604
00:39:20,600 --> 00:39:24,400
Speaker 1: one point five million dollars in one of Schlowendorn's previous startups.

605
00:39:25,440 --> 00:39:29,960
Speaker 8: I ended up meeting John, who's sitting there in his

606
00:39:29,960 --> 00:39:33,799
Speaker 8: little garage lab out in the middle of nowhere, and

607
00:39:34,160 --> 00:39:37,120
Speaker 8: I talked to him for a few hours and realized

608
00:39:37,160 --> 00:39:39,720
Speaker 8: that this guy can build things that no one can build.

609
00:39:40,200 --> 00:39:42,239
Speaker 8: And I informed him that I now work with him.

610
00:39:42,480 --> 00:39:44,600
Speaker 8: I've seen him do things in our lab that I'm

611
00:39:44,680 --> 00:39:48,000
Speaker 8: afraid to name because I think they sound like miracles.

612
00:39:48,880 --> 00:39:52,799
Speaker 1: Miracles. Whatever Alice saw convinced her that she and John

613
00:39:52,840 --> 00:39:55,120
Speaker 1: together could offer new solutions to the world.

614
00:39:55,960 --> 00:39:58,480
Speaker 8: We are making very strong statements and we can deliver

615
00:39:58,560 --> 00:40:01,920
Speaker 8: the extraordinary evidence. Someone called us the right hemisphere and

616
00:40:01,960 --> 00:40:03,200
Speaker 8: left hemisphere of real and musk.

617
00:40:03,320 --> 00:40:03,440
Speaker 3: Like.

618
00:40:03,600 --> 00:40:05,520
Speaker 8: One of our investors is like, yeah, you guys are

619
00:40:05,520 --> 00:40:08,080
Speaker 8: like a feeling musk was two separate people, and we're like, yeah,

620
00:40:08,239 --> 00:40:10,000
Speaker 8: that's not a bad branding. We'll take it.

621
00:40:10,480 --> 00:40:13,040
Speaker 1: She believes a partnership with John could be the ticket

622
00:40:13,080 --> 00:40:13,959
Speaker 1: to saving her dad.

623
00:40:14,680 --> 00:40:17,040
Speaker 8: So I'm like, wait, so could I grow him a

624
00:40:17,080 --> 00:40:19,560
Speaker 8: new heart that will never develop heart disease because I

625
00:40:19,680 --> 00:40:22,040
Speaker 8: genetically engineered it at like stage one?

626
00:40:22,880 --> 00:40:25,680
Speaker 1: And so Alice is in Puerto Rico at a bougie

627
00:40:25,719 --> 00:40:28,640
Speaker 1: hotel and near some type of monkey reserve. She wants

628
00:40:28,640 --> 00:40:32,120
Speaker 1: to grow replacement organs for people, better ones that will

629
00:40:32,160 --> 00:40:34,920
Speaker 1: never fall prey to disease like her dad's heart did

630
00:40:35,239 --> 00:40:35,480
Speaker 1: to me.

631
00:40:35,680 --> 00:40:39,960
Speaker 8: Tattoos are much more biologically damaging to the body than

632
00:40:40,040 --> 00:40:44,240
Speaker 8: like an organ transplant, because you're like eternally inflaming your

633
00:40:44,480 --> 00:40:48,080
Speaker 8: system forever, your body will be screaming in pain, right,

634
00:40:48,520 --> 00:40:51,799
Speaker 8: and so that is somehow normal to eternally have your

635
00:40:51,800 --> 00:40:55,440
Speaker 8: body screaming in pain, And like getting a heart transplant

636
00:40:55,520 --> 00:40:59,279
Speaker 8: is not normal somehow, right, Like what how did we

637
00:40:59,360 --> 00:40:59,919
Speaker 8: decide that?

638
00:41:01,480 --> 00:41:04,080
Speaker 1: But to get there, she can't just start with humans.

639
00:41:04,680 --> 00:41:08,840
Speaker 8: We have a few milestones that we're hoping to achieve.

640
00:41:08,960 --> 00:41:12,000
Speaker 8: The first milestone being we are working on replacing animal

641
00:41:12,040 --> 00:41:16,839
Speaker 8: testing by using skin stem cells. We take skin cells

642
00:41:16,840 --> 00:41:21,160
Speaker 8: from monkeys and we reprogram them and do some Yamanoca

643
00:41:21,160 --> 00:41:24,960
Speaker 8: miracles that result in fully grown organ systems.

644
00:41:25,600 --> 00:41:29,719
Speaker 1: The Yamanaka factors are these seemingly miraculous proteins that won

645
00:41:29,760 --> 00:41:33,920
Speaker 1: Shinya Yamanaka a Nobel prize. He and another scientist turned

646
00:41:33,920 --> 00:41:37,960
Speaker 1: adult cells into fresh stem cells, which can then be

647
00:41:38,040 --> 00:41:42,480
Speaker 1: reprogrammed to become any kind of cell. But what does

648
00:41:42,520 --> 00:41:45,560
Speaker 1: she mean by an organ system? In the course of

649
00:41:45,600 --> 00:41:48,640
Speaker 1: our conversation. She also calls these organ sacks.

650
00:41:49,320 --> 00:41:51,719
Speaker 8: So it's just pretty much a heart, like lungs and

651
00:41:51,800 --> 00:41:53,640
Speaker 8: everything that you would find in a body, but it's

652
00:41:53,680 --> 00:41:58,920
Speaker 8: not technically alive because it's exclusively the organs, and they

653
00:41:58,920 --> 00:42:01,640
Speaker 8: are kind of in this like little biological platform that

654
00:42:01,680 --> 00:42:03,279
Speaker 8: you can test on and you can map out the

655
00:42:03,360 --> 00:42:04,920
Speaker 8: cross organ interactions.

656
00:42:05,560 --> 00:42:11,440
Speaker 1: The language feels almost purposefully oblique. It's quote not technically alive.

657
00:42:11,920 --> 00:42:15,399
Speaker 1: It's everything quote you'd find in a body. It takes

658
00:42:15,440 --> 00:42:18,120
Speaker 1: me a while to piece together what Alice is talking about, because,

659
00:42:18,600 --> 00:42:20,719
Speaker 1: as Alice tells me, I.

660
00:42:21,440 --> 00:42:25,400
Speaker 8: Try to not be scary to an average person.

661
00:42:26,760 --> 00:42:30,480
Speaker 1: But what she's describing here, I finally figure out is

662
00:42:30,520 --> 00:42:34,120
Speaker 1: a shell of a body. A layperson like me might

663
00:42:34,200 --> 00:42:37,400
Speaker 1: call it as a clone. Alice and R three Bio

664
00:42:37,680 --> 00:42:42,239
Speaker 1: have called this quote immunocompatible organs grown out of your

665
00:42:42,280 --> 00:42:45,160
Speaker 1: skin cell, and the ones she's talking about as the

666
00:42:45,160 --> 00:42:48,799
Speaker 1: future of biological testing come from scraping skin cells from

667
00:42:48,840 --> 00:42:53,239
Speaker 1: a monkey. But the big difference, Alice claims, is that

668
00:42:53,440 --> 00:42:58,160
Speaker 1: R three would grow these without any sentience, meaning they

669
00:42:58,160 --> 00:43:01,480
Speaker 1: would use proprietary techniques to knock out the brain function

670
00:43:01,600 --> 00:43:05,200
Speaker 1: from inception so that the creatures would have no memory,

671
00:43:05,680 --> 00:43:11,399
Speaker 1: feel no pain, and have no consciousness, hence an organ sack.

672
00:43:18,239 --> 00:43:21,319
Speaker 1: But I'm curious, how do you get organ sacks that

673
00:43:21,480 --> 00:43:27,040
Speaker 1: grow but don't feel anything? So, like, do these organ

674
00:43:27,080 --> 00:43:29,279
Speaker 1: sacks like have the stem of a brain?

675
00:43:30,400 --> 00:43:34,960
Speaker 8: So the mice models can exist without any like like

676
00:43:35,000 --> 00:43:37,440
Speaker 8: with like a very limited set of nervous systems. But

677
00:43:37,760 --> 00:43:40,120
Speaker 8: then there are other constraints on the ability of like

678
00:43:40,120 --> 00:43:43,640
Speaker 8: the organs to preserve themselves. So there's a way in

679
00:43:43,680 --> 00:43:47,280
Speaker 8: which you can skew towards social acceptance and make less

680
00:43:47,280 --> 00:43:50,920
Speaker 8: nervous system And then when you skew towards social acceptance,

681
00:43:51,040 --> 00:43:54,160
Speaker 8: it looks better, but it's less scientifically feasible. Oh and

682
00:43:54,239 --> 00:43:57,000
Speaker 8: so we are still like making observations about how that

683
00:43:57,040 --> 00:43:57,600
Speaker 8: would work.

684
00:43:58,320 --> 00:44:01,440
Speaker 1: Alice is saying, less sentient the organ sack, the more

685
00:44:01,520 --> 00:44:04,799
Speaker 1: people are okay with it, but the science doesn't work

686
00:44:04,880 --> 00:44:08,680
Speaker 1: as well. The more sentient the test subject, the better

687
00:44:08,760 --> 00:44:13,520
Speaker 1: it works. But then it freaks everyone out and that

688
00:44:13,560 --> 00:44:17,320
Speaker 1: doesn't solve the unanswered scientific question about whether the clone

689
00:44:17,360 --> 00:44:22,680
Speaker 1: test subject would actually feel zero pain have zero sentience.

690
00:44:29,640 --> 00:44:31,839
Speaker 1: But Alice wants me to know this is sci fi

691
00:44:32,040 --> 00:44:32,720
Speaker 1: with a heart.

692
00:44:34,080 --> 00:44:36,480
Speaker 8: I'm a big animal rights advocate, and I believe in

693
00:44:37,480 --> 00:44:39,799
Speaker 8: making a better world, So I don't want to keep

694
00:44:39,840 --> 00:44:42,319
Speaker 8: monkeys in cages, and there's an option to have them

695
00:44:42,360 --> 00:44:46,480
Speaker 8: run around the island with bracelets on.

696
00:44:45,520 --> 00:44:48,560
Speaker 1: On its website. Our three Bio says we do not

697
00:44:48,719 --> 00:44:52,120
Speaker 1: work with live primates. Alice tells me the logic for

698
00:44:52,160 --> 00:44:53,520
Speaker 1: her being in Puerto Rico is.

699
00:44:54,320 --> 00:44:57,040
Speaker 8: We wanted monkey access, and there's a lot of monkeys

700
00:44:57,040 --> 00:45:00,560
Speaker 8: here that we can after negotiating with local companies that

701
00:45:00,719 --> 00:45:02,799
Speaker 8: are like supervising them, we can walk up to them

702
00:45:03,040 --> 00:45:04,600
Speaker 8: get some of their skin cells.

703
00:45:05,200 --> 00:45:09,600
Speaker 1: Wired magazine reported after our call that Gilman posted a

704
00:45:09,680 --> 00:45:13,880
Speaker 1: job listing for a veterinarian in Puerto Rico to quote

705
00:45:14,080 --> 00:45:20,239
Speaker 1: implant embryos, monitor pregnancies and help deliver healthy births in

706
00:45:20,360 --> 00:45:24,680
Speaker 1: non human primates. So I don't know, it seems like

707
00:45:24,719 --> 00:45:28,480
Speaker 1: they might start working with live primates. And also, just

708
00:45:28,520 --> 00:45:32,440
Speaker 1: to be clear, in today's world, with today's science, for

709
00:45:32,560 --> 00:45:36,360
Speaker 1: that organ sack to exist, some poor being has to

710
00:45:36,400 --> 00:45:44,960
Speaker 1: give birth to a brain dead offspring. But as Alice

711
00:45:45,080 --> 00:45:48,320
Speaker 1: keeps reminding me, she doesn't want to put living animals

712
00:45:48,320 --> 00:45:51,640
Speaker 1: in pain, and she doesn't see these organ sacks as

713
00:45:51,680 --> 00:45:54,879
Speaker 1: real monkeys, so she feels the ethics check out.

714
00:45:56,239 --> 00:45:59,320
Speaker 8: Hypothetically, so you imagine COVID hits. A bunch of AI

715
00:45:59,400 --> 00:46:02,400
Speaker 8: lab scientists already generate a hypothesis for what would be

716
00:46:02,400 --> 00:46:07,120
Speaker 8: a good vaccine and start infusing these little room cabinets

717
00:46:07,120 --> 00:46:10,480
Speaker 8: with these organ stacks, and in two hours we already

718
00:46:10,480 --> 00:46:13,279
Speaker 8: have reactions and they're like self recursive, so you can

719
00:46:13,360 --> 00:46:16,839
Speaker 8: keep updating whatever you're infusing into their body and like

720
00:46:16,960 --> 00:46:20,160
Speaker 8: check out what all the organ system reactions are creating.

721
00:46:20,719 --> 00:46:23,160
Speaker 8: By the time the first scientist walks in at six am,

722
00:46:23,760 --> 00:46:26,760
Speaker 8: you already have basically multiple proof of concepts for vaccines,

723
00:46:27,120 --> 00:46:29,480
Speaker 8: and we could actually have a COVID vaccine in two weeks.

724
00:46:38,360 --> 00:46:41,880
Speaker 1: The scene feels like pure science fiction. Cabinets full of

725
00:46:41,920 --> 00:46:45,920
Speaker 1: allegedly non sentient monkey bodies hooked up to AI, ready

726
00:46:45,960 --> 00:46:50,120
Speaker 1: to test for lightning fast medical advances. Instead of a

727
00:46:50,200 --> 00:46:54,279
Speaker 1: year and change in lockdown. In Alice's world, complex vaccines

728
00:46:54,360 --> 00:46:59,759
Speaker 1: are just a few weeks away. That image is overwhelming.

729
00:47:00,680 --> 00:47:03,840
Speaker 1: You know that William Gibson quote, The future is already here,

730
00:47:04,000 --> 00:47:07,799
Speaker 1: it's just not evenly distributed. Alice is forcing me to

731
00:47:07,840 --> 00:47:11,920
Speaker 1: confront a sci fi present. I didn't know existed and

732
00:47:12,000 --> 00:47:14,840
Speaker 1: now I'm trying to get my bearings.

733
00:47:16,520 --> 00:47:18,640
Speaker 8: This could mean things like designer organs, and now we

734
00:47:18,719 --> 00:47:22,560
Speaker 8: can have Olympic lungs, and we can have extremely healthy

735
00:47:22,640 --> 00:47:25,719
Speaker 8: organs where your genetics actually you know, your whole liver

736
00:47:25,800 --> 00:47:28,640
Speaker 8: is going to consist of like cells that are from

737
00:47:28,680 --> 00:47:31,040
Speaker 8: the beginning program to not form any diseases.

738
00:47:31,520 --> 00:47:34,240
Speaker 1: Vcs and scientists in Silicon Valley have also been telling

739
00:47:34,239 --> 00:47:37,200
Speaker 1: me that when autonomous cars take over, car crashes will

740
00:47:37,200 --> 00:47:40,160
Speaker 1: go down and the number of legitimate organs available for

741
00:47:40,280 --> 00:47:45,560
Speaker 1: donation will decrease significantly. To keep humans alive, these organs

742
00:47:45,560 --> 00:47:50,000
Speaker 1: will need to come from somewhere. So why not organ bags.

743
00:47:50,360 --> 00:47:53,399
Speaker 8: Say we grew a set of human organs and say,

744
00:47:53,480 --> 00:47:56,359
Speaker 8: like a rich person orders a heart, we still have

745
00:47:56,600 --> 00:47:59,840
Speaker 8: all of the other organs. There is nothing stopping me

746
00:48:00,040 --> 00:48:02,680
Speaker 8: from donating the rest of them to someone who needs

747
00:48:02,680 --> 00:48:05,000
Speaker 8: them in a wait list of one hundred thousand people

748
00:48:05,280 --> 00:48:10,160
Speaker 8: instead of a car accident or a suicide.

749
00:48:15,040 --> 00:48:17,840
Speaker 1: Alice blames the media for making people feel scared of

750
00:48:17,880 --> 00:48:22,120
Speaker 1: the future when there are solutions around the corner. Remember

751
00:48:22,640 --> 00:48:24,080
Speaker 1: she's half an Elon Musk.

752
00:48:25,760 --> 00:48:29,760
Speaker 8: People hating on billionaires for investing in anti aging makes

753
00:48:30,040 --> 00:48:33,160
Speaker 8: people want to hide working on anti aging and like

754
00:48:33,400 --> 00:48:37,359
Speaker 8: the whiplash you get just for working on something scientific

755
00:48:37,680 --> 00:48:41,480
Speaker 8: because of the propaganda that people see that was filmed

756
00:48:41,480 --> 00:48:44,520
Speaker 8: by people who were also potentially genuinely afraid of the future.

757
00:48:45,800 --> 00:48:48,680
Speaker 8: I think is kind of a gap I'm noticing between

758
00:48:48,719 --> 00:48:52,520
Speaker 8: the rest of the world and the Silicon Valley.

759
00:48:52,680 --> 00:48:56,840
Speaker 1: She feels compelled to keep pushing humanity forward because the

760
00:48:56,880 --> 00:49:00,160
Speaker 1: way she sees it, there's limited downside.

761
00:49:00,840 --> 00:49:04,080
Speaker 8: Worst case scenarios. I say, millions of lives, and to me,

762
00:49:04,160 --> 00:49:07,200
Speaker 8: that is a be worth taking, regardless of any kinds

763
00:49:07,200 --> 00:49:08,640
Speaker 8: of blows that are going to come our way.

764
00:49:10,239 --> 00:49:14,480
Speaker 1: I noticed that whenever we start talking about ethics or feasibility,

765
00:49:15,040 --> 00:49:18,040
Speaker 1: she sways the conversation to how much good R three

766
00:49:18,080 --> 00:49:21,040
Speaker 1: is doing, or about not putting cute monkeys in pain,

767
00:49:21,200 --> 00:49:24,880
Speaker 1: or the cows and Cowshwitz an animal rights term for

768
00:49:24,960 --> 00:49:26,280
Speaker 1: factory farms.

769
00:49:26,760 --> 00:49:29,799
Speaker 8: I live in a contextual world where just because we

770
00:49:29,840 --> 00:49:32,279
Speaker 8: don't talk about a lot of things, that doesn't mean

771
00:49:32,320 --> 00:49:35,120
Speaker 8: they're not happening.

772
00:49:36,440 --> 00:49:39,239
Speaker 1: I feel like I'm on the receiving end of debate tactics,

773
00:49:39,560 --> 00:49:43,200
Speaker 1: though I don't know. I wasn't on the debate club,

774
00:49:43,600 --> 00:49:46,440
Speaker 1: but I was on the high school newspaper, and I

775
00:49:46,560 --> 00:49:50,840
Speaker 1: do know how to press gently for facts. So fifty

776
00:49:50,840 --> 00:49:53,239
Speaker 1: five minutes into our call, I just decided to talk

777
00:49:53,239 --> 00:49:57,680
Speaker 1: about it. This idea. I keep hearing this persistent rumor

778
00:49:57,680 --> 00:50:01,960
Speaker 1: in Silicon Valley that there are people, maybe r through bio,

779
00:50:02,040 --> 00:50:05,839
Speaker 1: working to make nonsentient clones of people's bodies. So then

780
00:50:05,880 --> 00:50:08,680
Speaker 1: when your body at seventy or eighty or whenever has

781
00:50:08,760 --> 00:50:11,799
Speaker 1: outgrown its use, you can snap your head onto a

782
00:50:11,840 --> 00:50:16,840
Speaker 1: younger version of yourself. The more I talked to people

783
00:50:17,800 --> 00:50:22,360
Speaker 1: in San Francisco about it, the more I heard people say, like,

784
00:50:23,080 --> 00:50:27,080
Speaker 1: transferring one organ just isn't efficient, and ultimately, like a

785
00:50:27,239 --> 00:50:30,520
Speaker 1: surgical like cut for where where you replace a head

786
00:50:30,520 --> 00:50:32,920
Speaker 1: on a new body is actually much much more efficient

787
00:50:33,400 --> 00:50:36,799
Speaker 1: and you're not asking an organ to adapt to like

788
00:50:37,200 --> 00:50:38,880
Speaker 1: the circumstances of a body.

789
00:50:39,480 --> 00:50:42,760
Speaker 8: Well, if I was to join you in your Sciphi

790
00:50:42,800 --> 00:50:45,400
Speaker 8: speculations of the future, as long as we can figure

791
00:50:45,440 --> 00:50:50,560
Speaker 8: out surgical infrastructure, it would be I would take I

792
00:50:50,600 --> 00:50:54,520
Speaker 8: would probably be open to living in a younger, healthier

793
00:50:54,680 --> 00:50:56,959
Speaker 8: set of organs in the future, and I think that's

794
00:50:57,000 --> 00:50:59,080
Speaker 8: a desirable thing to have in the world.

795
00:51:00,320 --> 00:51:01,680
Speaker 1: She keeps bringing it up.

796
00:51:03,560 --> 00:51:06,640
Speaker 8: Would you get a new body if you wouldn't a

797
00:51:06,680 --> 00:51:10,000
Speaker 8: younger one?

798
00:51:10,320 --> 00:51:14,600
Speaker 1: And then this about full body replacements. And I also

799
00:51:14,600 --> 00:51:18,240
Speaker 1: think that, like as you pointed out earlier, the ways

800
00:51:18,320 --> 00:51:23,160
Speaker 1: that we embrace change is very slow. Right, Like the

801
00:51:23,239 --> 00:51:27,040
Speaker 1: idea of getting a heart transplant initially was so foreign.

802
00:51:28,960 --> 00:51:32,120
Speaker 8: I think head transplants are definitely a scary way of

803
00:51:32,480 --> 00:51:37,520
Speaker 8: thinking about the future. Right. It feels like either like

804
00:51:37,560 --> 00:51:39,279
Speaker 8: it sounds like a lot of people are going to

805
00:51:39,360 --> 00:51:41,799
Speaker 8: be taken advantage of, and this is something either only

806
00:51:41,840 --> 00:51:44,200
Speaker 8: available to the ridge but also somehow very horrible and

807
00:51:44,239 --> 00:51:46,440
Speaker 8: four people are going to be taken advantage of, and

808
00:51:46,520 --> 00:51:49,919
Speaker 8: like it just creates an ick. And so that's one

809
00:51:49,960 --> 00:51:52,080
Speaker 8: example of like, no, we're not doing that.

810
00:51:52,120 --> 00:52:00,560
Speaker 1: By the way, the thing is, I can't say head

811
00:52:00,560 --> 00:52:04,319
Speaker 1: transplants or what Alice is working towards. I can't say

812
00:52:04,360 --> 00:52:08,040
Speaker 1: that a company in stealth mode whose chief operating officer

813
00:52:08,520 --> 00:52:11,080
Speaker 1: tells me that it's working towards an organ sack of

814
00:52:11,120 --> 00:52:14,480
Speaker 1: a monkey with aspirations of making an organ sack of

815
00:52:14,520 --> 00:52:18,200
Speaker 1: a human might want to sell you a clone so

816
00:52:18,239 --> 00:52:20,920
Speaker 1: you can avoid death by cutting off your head and

817
00:52:21,040 --> 00:52:28,319
Speaker 1: implanting it on a younger you. But the MIT Technology

818
00:52:28,440 --> 00:52:33,279
Speaker 1: Review did because when they released a story in late

819
00:52:33,360 --> 00:52:36,799
Speaker 1: March this year, over a month after I chat with Alice,

820
00:52:36,960 --> 00:52:37,960
Speaker 1: they found this.

821
00:52:39,320 --> 00:52:39,800
Speaker 5: Quote.

822
00:52:40,040 --> 00:52:44,080
Speaker 1: Last September, Alice and her co founder John Schlowandorn presented

823
00:52:44,200 --> 00:52:48,120
Speaker 1: at Abundance Longevity, a seventy thousand dollars per ticket event

824
00:52:48,200 --> 00:52:52,120
Speaker 1: in Boston, and while that presentation was meant to be confidential,

825
00:52:52,360 --> 00:52:56,120
Speaker 1: the article alleges the agenda leaked the name of our

826
00:52:56,200 --> 00:53:10,360
Speaker 1: three session quote full body replacement. Alice and I talked

827
00:53:10,360 --> 00:53:12,920
Speaker 1: for an hour and forty five minutes, but now it's

828
00:53:12,960 --> 00:53:13,680
Speaker 1: time for her to go.

829
00:53:14,560 --> 00:53:17,520
Speaker 8: I think we covered a lot of it. I wish

830
00:53:17,560 --> 00:53:20,520
Speaker 8: people knew the perspective of how hard it is sometimes

831
00:53:20,520 --> 00:53:24,160
Speaker 8: to be guiding a company based on like a moral compass,

832
00:53:24,320 --> 00:53:27,440
Speaker 8: like we would be triple funded if we were not

833
00:53:27,600 --> 00:53:35,360
Speaker 8: making decisions with certain moralities attacked. And I hope people

834
00:53:35,400 --> 00:53:38,840
Speaker 8: get really excited about things that will save hundreds of

835
00:53:38,840 --> 00:53:42,920
Speaker 8: millions of people's lives and explore and how to scale that.

836
00:53:44,400 --> 00:53:47,200
Speaker 8: And I love all these intelligences in the world, and

837
00:53:47,239 --> 00:53:49,560
Speaker 8: I hope that we can make a world better for

838
00:53:49,640 --> 00:53:53,320
Speaker 8: all forms of intelligences and people to live healthier longer

839
00:53:53,360 --> 00:53:56,480
Speaker 8: lives and think about infrastructure in more efficient ways.

840
00:54:00,160 --> 00:54:04,160
Speaker 1: Some important points here. Our three Bio rejected the claims

841
00:54:04,160 --> 00:54:08,000
Speaker 1: in the MIT Technology Review, giving the following repudiation to

842
00:54:08,040 --> 00:54:12,600
Speaker 1: the outlet quote, any allegations of intent or conspiracy to

843
00:54:12,640 --> 00:54:16,200
Speaker 1: create human clones or human beings with brain damage are

844
00:54:16,400 --> 00:54:20,719
Speaker 1: categorically false. Alice did share with me a piece she

845
00:54:20,880 --> 00:54:24,200
Speaker 1: liked better. That article m wired with a quote about

846
00:54:24,200 --> 00:54:27,359
Speaker 1: the veterinarian posting. It came out days before the MIT

847
00:54:27,560 --> 00:54:30,799
Speaker 1: Tech Review piece. It still focuses on their work with

848
00:54:30,880 --> 00:54:34,120
Speaker 1: monkey skin cells, organ sacks for testing and transplants, and

849
00:54:34,160 --> 00:54:37,560
Speaker 1: it even quotes an our three Bio investor saying, quote,

850
00:54:37,760 --> 00:54:41,640
Speaker 1: if we can create a non sentient, headless bodyoid for

851
00:54:41,680 --> 00:54:46,920
Speaker 1: a human being, that will be a great source of organs. Also,

852
00:54:47,000 --> 00:54:48,840
Speaker 1: the week before this episode came out, we did a

853
00:54:48,880 --> 00:54:51,040
Speaker 1: fact check and call with Alice. She asked us if

854
00:54:51,040 --> 00:54:54,200
Speaker 1: we could postpone the episode. We declined. She told us

855
00:54:54,360 --> 00:54:57,719
Speaker 1: all of this is theoretical and just her opinion. She

856
00:54:58,000 --> 00:55:00,920
Speaker 1: also wants us to know that our three BI isn't

857
00:55:01,000 --> 00:55:05,600
Speaker 1: working on organ sacks quote for now period. What are

858
00:55:05,640 --> 00:55:09,560
Speaker 1: they doing? She won't say, though she did start the

859
00:55:09,560 --> 00:55:12,279
Speaker 1: fact check and call by letting us know r III

860
00:55:12,440 --> 00:55:21,600
Speaker 1: is now quote a federal asset. For me, the whole

861
00:55:21,680 --> 00:55:24,520
Speaker 1: thing is a head trip. I started this quest trying

862
00:55:24,560 --> 00:55:27,799
Speaker 1: to track down a rumor. Who was this company that

863
00:55:27,880 --> 00:55:30,479
Speaker 1: had pitched investors on funding a business with a dream

864
00:55:30,520 --> 00:55:34,759
Speaker 1: of full body replacement. After a lot of digging, I

865
00:55:34,760 --> 00:55:37,200
Speaker 1: think it's fair to say we found it, and I

866
00:55:37,200 --> 00:55:39,359
Speaker 1: heard the way one of its co founders talks about

867
00:55:39,400 --> 00:55:43,319
Speaker 1: the future. Here's what I can tell you. The technology

868
00:55:43,400 --> 00:55:47,040
Speaker 1: is nowhere near close to the promise, at least not yet.

869
00:55:47,280 --> 00:55:51,640
Speaker 1: There are so many milestones, and for right now, even

870
00:55:51,640 --> 00:55:55,640
Speaker 1: the first ones, those organ sacks made from monkey skin

871
00:55:55,719 --> 00:56:00,319
Speaker 1: cells are all theoretical. I still don't know how to

872
00:56:00,360 --> 00:56:03,040
Speaker 1: answer Alice's question, wouldn't you want to live in a

873
00:56:03,080 --> 00:56:05,319
Speaker 1: younger body? I don't even know how to live in

874
00:56:05,320 --> 00:56:09,360
Speaker 1: a world where that is a question, because the answer

875
00:56:09,440 --> 00:56:19,719
Speaker 1: is maybe, but not that way. Sherlock Holmes always sank

876
00:56:19,800 --> 00:56:23,640
Speaker 1: back into an ui, what he called the dull routine

877
00:56:23,640 --> 00:56:28,440
Speaker 1: of existence whenever a case ended. And that's kind of

878
00:56:28,480 --> 00:56:32,719
Speaker 1: where I am feeling unsatisfied and a little creeped out,

879
00:56:32,800 --> 00:56:36,120
Speaker 1: because I thought I was in a detective case, but

880
00:56:36,960 --> 00:56:40,120
Speaker 1: I was really in a sci fi novel, and all

881
00:56:40,120 --> 00:56:43,200
Speaker 1: I can think is what I always think when I'm lost.

882
00:56:44,440 --> 00:56:52,440
Speaker 1: I just need to get home next time on how

883
00:56:52,480 --> 00:56:53,200
Speaker 1: to live forever.

884
00:56:54,360 --> 00:56:57,480
Speaker 3: What our ancestors were eating five hundred years ago may

885
00:56:57,520 --> 00:57:00,000
Speaker 3: have worked really well for them, but then our biology

886
00:57:00,160 --> 00:57:19,680
Speaker 3: was perturbed by two hundred years of trauma.

887
00:57:22,440 --> 00:57:24,760
Speaker 1: Let's do the credit. Skyline Drive is a production of

888
00:57:24,800 --> 00:57:28,800
Speaker 1: Kaleidoscope and iHeart Podcast. This show is hosted and written

889
00:57:28,840 --> 00:57:34,080
Speaker 1: by Me Mongage Artigulu, but I could never do this alone.

890
00:57:34,280 --> 00:57:36,480
Speaker 1: The show is story edited by Mark Lotto, who told

891
00:57:36,520 --> 00:57:39,600
Speaker 1: me to indulge my inner Encyclopedia Brown for this one.

892
00:57:39,840 --> 00:57:43,600
Speaker 1: Lizzie Jacobs, my partner in solving crimes, is the EP

893
00:57:43,840 --> 00:57:46,400
Speaker 1: on the show. I also have massive, massive help from

894
00:57:46,440 --> 00:57:49,640
Speaker 1: the only kid who loved Sherlock Holmes more than me,

895
00:57:49,960 --> 00:57:54,040
Speaker 1: Mary Philip Sandy, and our international man of Mystery science

896
00:57:54,120 --> 00:57:59,000
Speaker 1: producer Mark Stephen Allen. This episode was mixed by Casey

897
00:57:59,120 --> 00:58:02,280
Speaker 1: Holford As who also worked on the first season of Skyline.

898
00:58:02,320 --> 00:58:06,200
Speaker 1: Thank you so much, Casey, with beautiful music from Botany Bliss,

899
00:58:06,240 --> 00:58:09,800
Speaker 1: Samsa and the Zadi Records. We are so lucky to

900
00:58:09,880 --> 00:58:11,880
Speaker 1: have these tunes. If you want to hear more we

901
00:58:11,920 --> 00:58:14,600
Speaker 1: made you mixtape. Just check out the show notes. This

902
00:58:14,720 --> 00:58:17,080
Speaker 1: show is executive produced from My Heart, but my good

903
00:58:17,120 --> 00:58:20,560
Speaker 1: friends Ali Perry and Katrina Norvel from Kaleidoscope. We've got

904
00:58:20,560 --> 00:58:24,920
Speaker 1: my co founder Oswold Listen also cost Us Lina's cost us.

905
00:58:24,960 --> 00:58:26,960
Speaker 1: How could you leave us for Greece? We are going

906
00:58:27,040 --> 00:58:30,840
Speaker 1: to miss you enjoy so much. Julia Nutter Our head

907
00:58:30,840 --> 00:58:34,040
Speaker 1: of studio, Rachel Strom our wonderful lawyer and friend who

908
00:58:34,520 --> 00:58:37,360
Speaker 1: somehow reviewed this episode and made it to the front

909
00:58:37,360 --> 00:58:41,080
Speaker 1: page of the Liberties Instagram that in itself is a mystery. Also,

910
00:58:41,280 --> 00:58:44,680
Speaker 1: thank you to the team here, Christy David, Dara Agne,

911
00:58:44,800 --> 00:58:49,400
Speaker 1: Sheina calypso El Viney for the beautiful collage art. There

912
00:58:49,440 --> 00:58:52,120
Speaker 1: are so many of you. I also want to give

913
00:58:52,120 --> 00:58:55,200
Speaker 1: a little special thanks to all the kiddos out there,

914
00:58:55,400 --> 00:59:01,320
Speaker 1: Henry Ruby, Julian Brendel, lou Baby, leon Enzo and Pearl Etour.

915
00:59:01,840 --> 00:59:04,560
Speaker 1: You guys make us so happy. All my friends at iHeart,

916
00:59:04,560 --> 00:59:08,560
Speaker 1: including Bob Connell, Will, Carrie, Nikki, Jason, Jerry and Moore,

917
00:59:08,920 --> 00:59:12,600
Speaker 1: also Shanta and Sarah, my family in India, my family

918
00:59:12,600 --> 00:59:16,280
Speaker 1: in the States, my cousin Roshni and Rohan, who promoted

919
00:59:16,360 --> 00:59:19,960
Speaker 1: us to first cousins because of Carmen San Diego. The

920
00:59:20,080 --> 00:59:23,160
Speaker 1: very biggest thanks to Lucas Adams, founder and editor of

921
00:59:23,200 --> 00:59:25,200
Speaker 1: The New York Review of Comics, and the person who

922
00:59:25,240 --> 00:59:28,720
Speaker 1: introduced me to the Hot Rock and the wonderful Donald

923
00:59:28,800 --> 00:59:33,680
Speaker 1: Westlake Mysteries books that made me smile wide. A very

924
00:59:33,720 --> 00:59:36,760
Speaker 1: big thank you to my cousin and our family playwright

925
00:59:36,840 --> 00:59:40,800
Speaker 1: Akshay Srivastov, and also to his dog Dimmy, just because

926
00:59:40,800 --> 00:59:44,720
Speaker 1: he's also great. And thank you to our pal Natalia Fiddleholts,

927
00:59:44,840 --> 00:59:49,400
Speaker 1: who also lent us her acting chops. Thank you so much, Natalia.

928
00:59:49,800 --> 00:59:52,440
Speaker 1: Just one last thank you to my Amma and my

929
00:59:52,600 --> 00:59:55,800
Speaker 1: dad Lalita and Omesha Ticular who let me stay up

930
00:59:55,880 --> 00:59:59,200
Speaker 1: so late and ordered pizza and we would watch Mysteries

931
00:59:59,200 --> 01:00:03,520
Speaker 1: together even though I had school the next day. Thank

932
01:00:03,600 --> 01:00:04,720
Speaker 1: you so much for listening