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Speaker 1: The quest for immortality is kind of the holy grail

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Speaker 1: for human life. Would you want it? What would you

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Speaker 1: do to get it? If you did? Well? Centuries ago,

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Speaker 1: blood from children and teens seem to be the magic potion,

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Speaker 1: and guess what, for some folks it still is. And

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Speaker 1: then there was the nineteen twenties craze for transplanted monkey testicles.

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Speaker 1: I'm Patty Steele, searching for forever. Next on the backstory.

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Speaker 1: We're back with the backstory. I mean, really, would you

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Speaker 1: actually want to live forever? Think about it? The people

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Speaker 1: and events that drive you nuts as things change in

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Speaker 1: our world would continue to drive you nuts forever. Would

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Speaker 1: you continue to have kids or would someone in charge

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Speaker 1: control your reproduction after a few centuries, since the world

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Speaker 1: would get really crowded really fast? Would you continue to work?

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Speaker 1: No retirement ever? And then there's the question of what

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Speaker 1: you'd have to do to achieve immortality. This has always

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Speaker 1: been the kind of ultimate existential question for us humans,

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Speaker 1: How can we live forever? And the follow up, what

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Speaker 1: the heck would we do with all that time on

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Speaker 1: our hands if we did live forever. The earliest writings

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Speaker 1: about immortality involve a mythical story based on a real

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Speaker 1: king in Mesopotamia over four thousand years ago, King Gilgamesh,

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Speaker 1: when his best friend died suddenly, he realized he was

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Speaker 1: vulnerable too, and he launched a pretty intense search for

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Speaker 1: a way to overcome death. He didn't find it, but

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Speaker 1: he says the search finally taught him the meaning of life.

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Speaker 1: He said, humans are born, they live, and then they die.

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Speaker 1: Until the end, enjoy your life, Spend it in happiness,

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Speaker 1: not to spare love the child who holds your hand,

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Speaker 1: and give your wife pleasure in your embrace. Kind of

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Speaker 1: a nice wrap up for his search. Right. One of

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Speaker 1: the hottest quests in medieval times and right into the

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Speaker 1: early twentieth century was for the Holy Grail, said to

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Speaker 1: have been the cup that Jesus drank from at the

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Speaker 1: Last Supper. The story goes that sipping from it would

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Speaker 1: grant you eternal life. Even the Nazis searched for the

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Speaker 1: Holy Grail in the nineteen thirties and forties, it still

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Speaker 1: hasn't turned up now. Back in fourteen ninety two, Pope

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Speaker 1: Innocent the Eighth decided the best way to live forever

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Speaker 1: was to get himself injected with the blood of a

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Speaker 1: bunch of healthy little kids. That was really a no go.

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Speaker 1: He died, as did the children. And what about bathing

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Speaker 1: in the blood of virgins. At the turn of the

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Speaker 1: seventeenth century, one Hungarian countess regularly took dips in young blood,

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Speaker 1: believing it kept her skin from wrinkling. Then there was

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Speaker 1: the search for the Fountain of Youth. Spanish explorer ponste

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Speaker 1: Leone was intent on finding it, and that brought him

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Speaker 1: to what is now Saint Augustine, Florida in fifteen thirteen.

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Speaker 1: While there is a Fountain of Youth archaeological park there

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Speaker 1: with a fountain from which you can sip some really

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Speaker 1: awful tasting water, and I say that firsthand, it doesn't

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Speaker 1: appear to have any reverse aging effects, at least it

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Speaker 1: didn't for me. Fast forward now, right to the early

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Speaker 1: twentieth century. This is wild. Doctor Sergei Voranov, known as

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Speaker 1: the monkey gland expert, believed that shoving monkey testicles into

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Speaker 1: people was the ticket to reverse aging. He said the

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Speaker 1: sex gland stimulate cerebral activity, muscular energy, and amorous passion.

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Speaker 1: It restores the cells and spreads happiness. So he transplanted

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Speaker 1: small pieces of monkey testicle into aging humans and said

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Speaker 1: it restored vigor to men and turned grandmothers into debutantes.

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Speaker 1: By nineteen twenty five, at least three hundred people had

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Speaker 1: it done, and the numbers grew. It was so successful

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Speaker 1: he managed to buy himself a castle on the French Riviera,

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Speaker 1: where he raised monkeys for use in his rejuvenation clinic.

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Speaker 1: Can you imagine wanting to extend your life so much

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Speaker 1: you would allow someone to try this on you. Hundreds

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Speaker 1: of people were on his waiting list, and doctors all

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Speaker 1: over Europe cheered him on. Some of the celebrities who

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Speaker 1: spent time at the castle included the Prime Minister of France,

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Speaker 1: the King of Romania, the President of Turkey, as well

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Speaker 1: as the iconic Parisian singer Josephine Baker and famous American

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Speaker 1: actress Sarah Bernhardt. Voronoff was so popular there was a

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Speaker 1: Sherlock Holmes book that borrowed his story called The Creeping Man,

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Speaker 1: and it inspired the nineteen twenty six film classic The Magician.

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Speaker 1: Now here's the thing. This all sounds a little bit wacky, right,

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Speaker 1: but the search for a fountain of youth has only

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Speaker 1: increased immortality or anti aging. They say, is the next

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Speaker 1: big thing insiders estimate the industry's worth will hit a

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Speaker 1: staggering six hundred and ten billion dollars by the end

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Speaker 1: of this year. At least thirteen billionaires have invested in

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Speaker 1: life extension companies, including Jeff Bezos, Mark zucker Berg, Larry Ellison,

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Speaker 1: and Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, who didn't just put his

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Speaker 1: fortune into it, he put himself into it too. Jack

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Speaker 1: has adopted an intense health routine in his quest to

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Speaker 1: live forever that includes very little food, long fasts, meditation,

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Speaker 1: and daily ice baths. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, worth just

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Speaker 1: shy of two hundred billion dollars, has invested in Altoslab,

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Speaker 1: a startup working on cellular rejuvenation programming. The idea is

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Speaker 1: that the main reason that we eventually die is because

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Speaker 1: every time our cells replicate, which is about every seven years,

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Speaker 1: they lose a little bit of their power and thus

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Speaker 1: the aging process now. PayPal co founder Peter Tiel meanwhile

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Speaker 1: put millions into the Methusla Foundation, a nonprofit that wants

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Speaker 1: to make ninety the new fifty by twenty thirty. Oracle

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Speaker 1: co founder Larry Ellison, worth one hundred and thirty billion bucks,

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Speaker 1: has donated Untold millions to anti AIDS research since nineteen

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Speaker 1: ninety seven. He says death has never made any sense

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Speaker 1: to me. How can a person be there and then

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Speaker 1: just vanish, just not be there. Then there's the retired

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Speaker 1: billionaire CEO of doll Fruits and Vegetables, David Murdoch. His

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Speaker 1: quest for a long life has him living on seafood,

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Speaker 1: egg whites, beans, nuts, and smoothies made with twenty different

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Speaker 1: fruits and veggies. He works out every day and says

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Speaker 1: he believes he can live until at least one hundred

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Speaker 1: and twenty five. He's about to turn one hundred and

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Speaker 1: one and going strong, married to his sixth wife. Finally,

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Speaker 1: maybe the weirdest rich guy in the search for eternal

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Speaker 1: life is Brian Johnson, a forty six year old who

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Speaker 1: made his money in biotech. He started a program called

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Speaker 1: Project Blueprint. He eats very little, fasts a lot that

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Speaker 1: seems to be a thing for these guys, exercises a lot,

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Speaker 1: takes a ton of supplements, and for a six month period,

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Speaker 1: spent hundreds of thousands of dollars each month on having

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Speaker 1: a leap of his teenage son's blood plasma separated and

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Speaker 1: infused into his own blood stream. I wonder if the

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Speaker 1: kid appreciated that now at the end of the day.

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Speaker 1: Maybe The company I'm most fascinated with is a biotech

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Speaker 1: startup that just got FDA backing. It's called Loyal and

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Speaker 1: its aim is to develop drugs that will allow dogs

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Speaker 1: to live longer. If their clinical trials are effective, They're

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Speaker 1: going to apply the same science to humans. Think about it,

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Speaker 1: what's the point of living forever if your best friend

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Speaker 1: isn't right by your side. If you have a story

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Speaker 1: you'd like me to take a deep dive into and share,

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Speaker 1: please direct message me on Instagram at Real Patty Steele

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Speaker 1: or on Facebook at Patty Steele. I'm Patty steel The

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Speaker 1: Backstory is a production of iHeartMedia, Premier Networks, the Elvis

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Speaker 1: Durand Group, and Steel Trap Productions. Our producer is Doug Fraser.

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Speaker 1: Our writer Jake Kushner. We have new episodes every Tuesday

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Speaker 1: and Friday. Feel free to reach out to me with

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Speaker 1: comments and even story suggestions on Instagram at Real Patty

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Speaker 1: Steele and on Facebook at Patty Steele. Thanks for listening

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Speaker 1: to the back Story with Patty Steele. The pieces of

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Speaker 1: history you didn't know you needed to know