Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 1: learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hello, and welcome back to the show. My name is Nol.
Speaker 3: Our pal Matt is on adventures and will be returning soon.
Speaker 2: They call me bet.
Speaker 3: We're joined as always with our super producer, Dylan the
Speaker 3: Tennessee pal Fagan.
Speaker 2: Most importantly, you are you. You are here.
Speaker 3: That makes this the stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 3: Ed Noel, I know we've been talking a lot about
Speaker 3: some classic rock stuff in previous episodes, So riddle me this.
Speaker 3: Who wants to live forever?
Speaker 4: It's the other nol the lesser Noel Gallagher of the
Speaker 4: Gallagher Brothers family. Now he's way more famous than me,
Speaker 4: you and I is who wants to live forever? And
Speaker 4: we're going to We don't just want it, We're going to.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're gonna manifest it. Dude.
Speaker 3: This is a question for the ages over the past
Speaker 3: few millennia, just what's a couple thousand years between friends?
Speaker 3: Civilization has tried all, dude, all sorts of stuff to
Speaker 3: stave off mortality, and in recent decades, as you and
Speaker 3: Matt and Tennessee and I have discussed in previous episodes,
Speaker 3: science has made some extraordinary and terrified breakthroughs into what
Speaker 3: we call longevity studies.
Speaker 2: Hey did I tell you I finally got a blood boy? Oh? No, around,
Speaker 2: We're just connected, oh intravenously.
Speaker 4: I'm just kind of siphoning off his life for us,
Speaker 4: his youthful energy, and I feel like a million bucks
Speaker 4: never felt better.
Speaker 3: That's yeah, Okay, are you gonna put him in frame?
Speaker 3: His name is no later episode Steve.
Speaker 4: Okay, I mean that's no no, no, no, no, no no no.
Speaker 2: I can't have people know too much about Steve.
Speaker 3: This is okay, yeah, keep it secret, Canty Steve. So
Speaker 3: we know that new medicine, new treatments are all over
Speaker 3: the horizon, especially for investors. We know about organ transplants
Speaker 3: and cloning, the kind of stuff that makes you really
Speaker 3: question what it means to be human. Luckily, we are
Speaker 3: not diving into tonight's topic alone. We are thrilled, friends
Speaker 3: and neighbors to be joined by one of our old,
Speaker 3: dear friends. He's not old, We've just known each other
Speaker 3: for a while. The award winning co founder of Kaleidoscope, and,
Speaker 3: among many other things, the creator of the hit podcast
Speaker 3: Skyline Drive, How to Live Forever, Man Gesh How to Couture.
Speaker 3: Thank you for joining us, Dude, I am so thrilled.
Speaker 5: I love that we get to hang out.
Speaker 6: On camera because we haven't been able to do it
Speaker 6: in person in a while.
Speaker 5: And I miss you guys to be good.
Speaker 4: Gonna be saying and speaking about camera? What kind of
Speaker 4: life extension technology are you tapped into?
Speaker 1: Man?
Speaker 2: You look great.
Speaker 5: I'm suspicious for the filter.
Speaker 2: I think that that must be. That's about what most
Speaker 2: of us can.
Speaker 3: Afford, to be honest, So, Mengesh, Is it okay if
Speaker 3: we call you Mango in this one?
Speaker 5: Of course? Are you kidding? We're friends you don't have.
Speaker 2: To hide from.
Speaker 4: Okay, so don't you call him that. That's only close
Speaker 4: personal friends like us.
Speaker 3: We had to earn it. Uh so uh, you have
Speaker 3: done so much stuff. A quick peek behind the curtain.
Speaker 3: We knew Noel, Matt and myself we knew a lot
Speaker 3: about your work before we ever met in person. There
Speaker 3: was a very awkward moment you and I had when
Speaker 3: you we started working together, and I showed you what
Speaker 3: are your books Mental Flaws? And you asked. You were
Speaker 3: so polite and in person bull, You said, Ben, do
Speaker 3: you want do you want us to sign this book?
Speaker 3: And then I revealed that you had already signed it,
Speaker 3: and I sort of walked away backwards because they didn't know.
Speaker 5: What to do.
Speaker 1: Ah.
Speaker 2: Yes, the Homer Simpson Bush mood. Love it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, just so, I don't think I would have offered
Speaker 5: to sign it.
Speaker 6: I think Will is very happy to sign anything that's
Speaker 6: put in front of it.
Speaker 4: Also, yeah, now he's now he's signing big contracts and
Speaker 4: making billion dollar deals with TikTok and stuff.
Speaker 2: As we know everybody.
Speaker 6: When we first started, like menal plus, we made this
Speaker 6: like little video of like like just how our personalities
Speaker 6: had blossomed and and and we did this thing where
Speaker 6: like someone was pulling over to ask for directions and
Speaker 6: this is so long ago that people had maps, and
Speaker 6: like they showed this map to Will and he's like,
Speaker 6: of course, he just signs it.
Speaker 2: Incredible, incredible. We love that dude too.
Speaker 4: And he of course was your partner in Mental Flaws
Speaker 4: and y'all work together on part time genius still from
Speaker 4: time to time, and we love it when new episodes
Speaker 4: of that Drop Mego. You and I worked together back
Speaker 4: in the day on one of our very first true
Speaker 4: crime shows. We worked on together, Happy Face, And uh,
Speaker 4: you know you've moved on to do amazing things with
Speaker 4: your company Kaleidoscope, and that I'm.
Speaker 6: Gonna say just I mean, like I'm sure people know this,
Speaker 6: but like you're just an insane and so talented musician
Speaker 6: and and and the soundtrack for Happy Face, like we
Speaker 6: talked about together, like.
Speaker 5: It's so crazy that this is an audio medium and.
Speaker 6: Uh, there's so little actual music in it, like so
Speaker 6: much of it as stock and stuff like that. And
Speaker 6: you'd already been playing in this with with with previous
Speaker 6: stuff at house stuff works. But like we made such
Speaker 6: a rich soundtrack for that, and it was really you
Speaker 6: for that set the tone of that show, and people
Speaker 6: were asking if they could buy it. I mean, it
Speaker 6: was it was incredible.
Speaker 4: It was It was these lovely musicians from Athens called
Speaker 4: Hope for a Golden Summer that were who I had
Speaker 4: known from when I lived there back in the day,
Speaker 4: and it was just that fit was perfect.
Speaker 2: And yeah, I do wish.
Speaker 4: It was available, but I'm really proud of those those folks.
Speaker 2: For for the work that.
Speaker 6: It was lush and gorgeous and and and when I
Speaker 6: did my first season of Skyland like that, That's what
Speaker 6: I was thinking, was like, like, what are the influences
Speaker 6: that that I had growing up? And I had these
Speaker 6: cousins who were always like going to matinees at CBGB's
Speaker 6: and like had introduced me to like all this like
Speaker 6: shoegaze and and then like rap and and and then
Speaker 6: my being Indian, like I didn't want to just have
Speaker 6: like the the stock sitar and and thub blood tracks
Speaker 6: right like, like I wanted real fresh music and and
Speaker 6: so like i'd say, there's a direct line from working
Speaker 6: with you to like the way some of these things feel.
Speaker 4: It's very kind and it sounds fantastic. And we're burying
Speaker 4: the lead here a little bit. We should probably talk
Speaker 4: right away just about the subject matter around this season
Speaker 4: of Skyline Drive how to Live Forever, And then a
Speaker 4: little later we're going to get into something. I think
Speaker 4: Ben and I are both excited to talk about this
Speaker 4: idea of the organ trail.
Speaker 5: Yeah, totally.
Speaker 6: I mean I can just just to take us back step,
Speaker 6: like the first season ended up, I wanted to do
Speaker 6: something about astrology, because astrology was this thing that like,
Speaker 6: you don't believe it in the US, but but or
Speaker 6: it has become more and more popular, but certainly as
Speaker 6: a kid, it was this thing that was a complete joke.
Speaker 6: And then when you go to India, people are basing
Speaker 6: their entire lives on it, Like people were having c
Speaker 6: sections and ordering gynecologists to like their obg y ns
Speaker 6: to deliver a baby within a ninety second window because
Speaker 6: they felt that was what would make the you know,
Speaker 6: the life of this child the best possible. And for me,
Speaker 6: like being first generation in the US, like it was
Speaker 6: one of these things where I always had to translate
Speaker 6: each other's cultures to to you know, like go to
Speaker 6: India and have to be the translator for US culture
Speaker 6: and US like for India. And I wanted to make
Speaker 6: a show that wasn't for believers or skeptics, but was
Speaker 6: just really uh fascinating with the topic and all the
Speaker 6: sort of like strange aspects from Reagan and his nuclear de.
Speaker 5: Proliferation, like.
Speaker 6: Linking back to his astrologer basically telling him that this
Speaker 6: is the moment he should do it. To baseball teams
Speaker 6: in California deciding whether or not they're certain between two players.
Speaker 6: Managers were actually using astrologers to dictate like which players
Speaker 6: they'd use, and they don't go on the record on this,
Speaker 6: but like they it is true and and so you know,
Speaker 6: I wanted to do this whole lark and then I
Speaker 6: and then I went to this astrologer and Queens had
Speaker 6: this like really wonderful reading, but in it he told
Speaker 6: me my dad was going to fall ill. And then
Speaker 6: thirty minutes after it, like my dad texted me that
Speaker 6: this metastatic cancer had spread through his body and only
Speaker 6: lived for three weeks after that. And so like it started,
Speaker 6: it was this idea of like what happens when you
Speaker 6: don't leave in astrology, but astrology keeps.
Speaker 5: Happening to you. And I didn't know where to go
Speaker 5: from there.
Speaker 6: You know, I love that I did this season, and
Speaker 6: I thought it was a fascinating topic that you pull
Speaker 6: people into this sort of cultural phenomenon. And as I
Speaker 6: was looking through old tapes, I noticed that that an
Speaker 6: astrologery had told me that I probably would only live
Speaker 6: to sixty maybe sixty four at the latest, and no
Speaker 6: fire them. Yeah, but that's you know. So I found
Speaker 6: this old tape and at the same time, I realized that, like,
Speaker 6: you know, when you turn there are two moments in
Speaker 6: your life, one in your sort of mid forties and
Speaker 6: one in your early sixties where your body goes through
Speaker 6: precipitous declients. And so being forty six, I've started feeling,
Speaker 6: you know, like that, you know, I don't recover the
Speaker 6: way I used to, Like my body is a little
Speaker 6: more achy there, you know, my metabolismally isn't the same.
Speaker 6: But feeling that and then realizing there's this explosion of
Speaker 6: science around us, right and this whole new wave of
Speaker 6: really often wealthy people who are invested in science, who
Speaker 6: think that they're going to live forever, and they have
Speaker 6: this real sense that, like you know, they missed the
Speaker 6: age of exploration and they want to be around for
Speaker 6: to sail the stars essentially, and they're hoping that various therapies,
Speaker 6: life extension techniques, et cetera will have them live well
Speaker 6: into their mid hundreds, and many people think that they'll
Speaker 6: live more than that.
Speaker 3: So let's stay on this for a second, Mangesh, because
Speaker 3: we have in our research, we had the weird moment
Speaker 3: that happens to a lot of us nowadays, where we say, Okay,
Speaker 3: we're listening to this amazing story for the ears right,
Speaker 3: this is amazing fact based storytelling. And then we have
Speaker 3: that moment where we look at each other and go,
Speaker 3: oh wait, we could just call Manes and ask him.
Speaker 4: So this is also I mean, we talk about so
Speaker 4: much of this stuff just organically over the years.
Speaker 2: I mean, we're all.
Speaker 4: Incredibly fascinated by life extension technology is like red meat
Speaker 4: for critical thinking conspiracy discussions.
Speaker 2: So it's so awesome to see you.
Speaker 4: Kind of point your laser focused research brain at that
Speaker 4: topic and it gives us so much to think about and
Speaker 4: then to chew on.
Speaker 2: So yeah, second thing that, Yeah.
Speaker 3: You travel in the course of this season. You travel
Speaker 3: to all sorts of places physically and cognitively. You're talking
Speaker 3: to some of the world class experts at elite research
Speaker 3: institutions like Harvard and MIT and so on, and then
Speaker 3: you're also going a little off the grid to biohacker communities,
Speaker 3: to what I'm still convinced is a very strange commune.
Speaker 3: And you've got to tell us really quickly, in your
Speaker 3: exploration of what you call longevinauts, what are some of
Speaker 3: the most surprising things you learned.
Speaker 6: Yeah. I mean for us, it really started from a
Speaker 6: place of not picking apart the stuff by really just
Speaker 6: trying to understand and understand people's motivations and this very
Speaker 6: human sense of wine.
Speaker 5: To live forever.
Speaker 6: I think what's fascinating about it is that it stretches
Speaker 6: so many spaces, right, Like, Like one of the things
Speaker 6: we did was we ended up talking to two philosophers
Speaker 6: who were debating whether endless life could be a meaningful one.
Speaker 5: And and to me, like the fact that like one.
Speaker 6: Of the California like the University of California systems, like
Speaker 6: he's like a like a dean and this emeritus like
Speaker 6: he's arguing that you could have an endless life that's meaningful.
Speaker 6: Is incredible, right, And and then the other person who's
Speaker 6: considered this, like he's at Cambridge and he's this philosopher
Speaker 6: who is called a mortality curmudgeon, thinks that you could
Speaker 6: have a radically extended life. But like life changes so
Speaker 6: often every one hundred years, like that you know, you
Speaker 6: could be considered a good brit because you were a colonist,
Speaker 6: you know, like you could be considered a good brit
Speaker 6: because you were the head of a household and someone
Speaker 6: who controlled his wife and family, but now you know,
Speaker 6: you're someone who has to change diapers and things like that,
Speaker 6: and like the changing morality and customs and ideas make
Speaker 6: it very hard to cling onto what a good and
Speaker 6: meaningful life is. And watching these two people debate is
Speaker 6: just like stunning, right, and so like, just on the
Speaker 6: philosophical side of it, my roommate in college was a
Speaker 6: philosophy major, and everyone was always like, you know, what
Speaker 6: are you going to do with a philosophy major when
Speaker 6: you grow up? And now you go to Silicon Valley
Speaker 6: and every single thing hints on philosophy, right, like like
Speaker 6: can should you upload your your life and your consciousness?
Speaker 6: And is that a version of you? There are twenty
Speaker 6: versions of you? Right, Like if you you know, we're
Speaker 6: going to talk about organ replacement and body replacements and clones,
Speaker 6: and like every single thing touches on ethics and it's
Speaker 6: all philosophy, and it's it's fascinating that like in some
Speaker 6: ways that's where the show started with how there's always
Speaker 6: been the sense not only like a perpetual sense of
Speaker 6: snake oil that was marketed to people, but also this
Speaker 6: sense that there's always been a quest to live forever,
Speaker 6: whether that's through religion and the idea of a soul
Speaker 6: or like you know, reincarnation, ideas of elixirs.
Speaker 5: Right, Like, all.
Speaker 6: These things are ancient ideas that that sort of of
Speaker 6: perpetuated our lives because we can't figure out how to
Speaker 6: accept our life stopping.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, it's funny really quickly.
Speaker 4: I've been super enjoying the new season of Interview with
Speaker 4: the Vampire, the Vampireless stat The songs are fantastic. But
Speaker 4: one thing that vampire lore and you know, fiction has
Speaker 4: always bumped up against is like, what is it like
Speaker 4: to live forever? Functionally speaking, to see all the ones
Speaker 4: that you love pass away and have to kind of
Speaker 4: reinvent yourself over and over and over again. And it
Speaker 4: does seem that inevitably these individuals sort of head towards
Speaker 4: a life of nihilism and hedonism. And it just feels
Speaker 4: like the Silicon Valley mentality of it all has a
Speaker 4: little bit of that in it as well, this idea
Speaker 4: of like, well, yeah, living forever sounds great, but then
Speaker 4: what do you do with that life? And it's sort
Speaker 4: of you start seeing like the Elon musks of the
Speaker 4: world where it just feels like enough is never enough.
Speaker 4: And I'm fascinated by the philosophical side of what living
Speaker 4: forever even looks like.
Speaker 6: I think you're absolutely right, right, there's this like incredible
Speaker 6: philosophical side to it. There's a side of like, you know,
Speaker 6: is it natural and not natural to do this? Right?
Speaker 5: Like that's always been a part of it.
Speaker 6: I think the other thing that ends up coming up
Speaker 6: before we even get to the science of it is
Speaker 6: the economics of it, right, like the idea that you
Speaker 6: can end up with, you know. I talked to this guy,
Speaker 6: Will Maher who's at Harvard, and he's in the Public
Speaker 6: policy school there and and health school there and and.
Speaker 5: He is brilliant.
Speaker 6: And one of the things he was talking about is that,
Speaker 6: you know, when you're testing longevity science and ideas of
Speaker 6: like metabolism, fasting, et cetera, you are often working with
Speaker 6: parasites and and and two types of worms, these sea
Speaker 6: elegance and then these the other type of worms called
Speaker 6: the Loa loa and the two worms are almost functionally identical,
Speaker 6: and the ways you can play with them are identical,
Speaker 6: except that the sea elegant has a very very short lifespan,
Speaker 6: and the loa Looa has this enormous lifespan, and and
Speaker 6: it's because one of them lives in a costed environment
Speaker 6: the other doesn't. And and what's he ses is essentially
Speaker 6: the splitting of species. That's that you know, may happen
Speaker 6: with with the ways that longevity, the ways that people
Speaker 6: uh in these communities are moving to islands like Prospera,
Speaker 6: and these exit communities where where they they'll be siloed
Speaker 6: and they'll and the ways that the rest of us
Speaker 6: will emerge, the ways the rest of our health will
Speaker 6: be taken care of, could be vastly different. And that's
Speaker 6: also really stunning.
Speaker 3: That's a great point. Let's let's hang there for a second,
Speaker 3: because we've had some very interesting conversations with old professors
Speaker 3: of ours about the exact points you're bringing up, not
Speaker 3: just the idea of a species driven kind of inequality
Speaker 3: right or island effect, but also the hard cold truth
Speaker 3: that historically most societies are designed with the assumption that
Speaker 3: people die at a certain time, right. And we see
Speaker 3: this in we see this in populations that are maybe
Speaker 3: not hitting what we call like their sustainable reproduction rate
Speaker 3: right where the population is largely getting older and even
Speaker 3: now without amazing sci fi immortality, we see countries having
Speaker 3: to ask serious questions about what happens when they're demographics
Speaker 3: are up ended and the economic inequality aspect of this
Speaker 3: is one of one of my favorite parts of your
Speaker 3: exploration in this season of Skyline Drive, because we're not
Speaker 3: just focusing on the science, right, We're not just throwing stats.
Speaker 3: We're talking about, as you said, sure, philosophy, what it
Speaker 3: means to be human and uh, with that, i'd like
Speaker 3: to bring uh break some attention to one of our
Speaker 3: favorite parts of your Organ Trail episode. You plucked something
Speaker 3: that we clocked as well. Man, our buddy Daddy v
Speaker 3: Over in Russia is apparently trying to live forever.
Speaker 4: There's some there was some hot mic conversations, right uncle,
Speaker 4: That's that's what what hipped me to this. But I
Speaker 4: would love to know more because that was really the
Speaker 4: only time that that's across my radar. But yeah, it
Speaker 4: makes sense, but how how exactly is he getting into
Speaker 4: this world?
Speaker 6: Yeah?
Speaker 3: We had this just so you know, make We had
Speaker 3: this moment where we were talking about this hot mic
Speaker 3: story that Noel mentioned and eventually we shrugged our shoulders,
Speaker 3: and we said, you know, maybe that's just like those
Speaker 3: guys version of small talk.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the way that we shows as your blood boy,
Speaker 2: what's your life? Exactly? Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3: So could you tell us a little bit more about
Speaker 3: this Live Forever initiative or what's going on with Vladimir Putin?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 6: So, I mean what's funny is that, like I had
Speaker 6: done this interview with Russian journalists who had worked at
Speaker 6: a publication called Proect, and he has actually been banned.
Speaker 6: He's excommunicated essentially from from Russia. And and the reason
Speaker 6: is is because he was reporting on Putin's health and
Speaker 6: and Putin's health is so secretive, right, so much of
Speaker 6: his identity is based on him being shirtless, him being like,
Speaker 6: you know, hunting and this virility right completely, and and
Speaker 6: and I don't know if you ever saw this, but
Speaker 6: there's this incredible photo journalist who had like gone around
Speaker 6: and taken all these pictures of kids who were putin
Speaker 6: stands essential and like in in their rooms. Where these
Speaker 6: like photos of like Putin shirtless. It was like it
Speaker 6: was basically like lad so pro act, right, he's writing
Speaker 6: for this thing, and and and he is discovering all
Speaker 6: this stuff, and and along the way he realizes that
Speaker 6: like Putin has uh, there's a whole team of people
Speaker 6: around Putin all the time. And and he realizes that
Speaker 6: actually they're all doctors and and and he and there
Speaker 6: are these periods where Putin will disappear and they show
Speaker 6: old coverage in in the Kremlin. Uh. But he finds
Speaker 6: that not only is Putin traveling to his houses, but
Speaker 6: in various places around Russia, but near them in the hotels,
Speaker 6: there are these contracts that he finds where twelve doctors
Speaker 6: are staying at a time. And and so what they
Speaker 6: discovered through various like means was was that like that
Speaker 6: Putin was getting various types of cancer treatments and surgery, uh,
Speaker 6: including a thyroid surgery, et cetera. So they kind of
Speaker 6: cracked the wall on on on what is going on
Speaker 6: with Putin's health, but what he hadn't quite figured out
Speaker 6: and hadn't quite pinned. And along the way there are
Speaker 6: other crazy things, right like like Putin's taking baths in
Speaker 6: in deer, in this dear blood extract and in Siberia
Speaker 6: right like like they're there are all all sorts of
Speaker 6: things that are sort of like folk ideas that circulate
Speaker 6: to show his virility. But what happens is that like he,
Speaker 6: he knows that his daughter, Putin's daughter is is very
Speaker 6: into genetic manipulation and and and and epigenetics type of stuff.
Speaker 5: And and uh.
Speaker 6: And it doesn't quite come out until a little later,
Speaker 6: but there's this conversation that takes the world by storm, right.
Speaker 6: It's this hot mic between Putin and Uh and she
Speaker 6: and you realize that Putin has always been obsessed with longevity,
Speaker 6: that he does not want to let go of control.
Speaker 6: This is well speculated and well reported on within Proect
Speaker 6: et cetera. And then what comes out on the Wall
Speaker 6: Street Journal is that Putin has basically invested in two
Speaker 6: different types of organ farms for humans.
Speaker 5: And in the in the leaked.
Speaker 6: Conversation, Putin and she are basically saying that you can
Speaker 6: continue living to one hundred and fifty if you keep
Speaker 6: replacing your organs, right, if you continuously cycle them out,
Speaker 6: kind of like parts of a car. And they laugh,
Speaker 6: but they both acknowledge it's true. What hadn't been known
Speaker 6: was that Putin had been investing in this for quite
Speaker 6: a while now, and that he has this twenty five
Speaker 6: billion dollars initiative that supposedly for all people, but really
Speaker 6: is for one person.
Speaker 3: Okay, just like when he a few years back the
Speaker 3: government of Russia created a law that said any Russian president,
Speaker 3: whoever they may be, is immune from prosecution for us.
Speaker 3: You know what, like who whomever? That guy or the lady.
Speaker 3: Maybe this is okay, this gets us to the hot
Speaker 3: button issue here, because anybody who's a fan of science
Speaker 3: fiction has read about the idea of cloning organs, and
Speaker 3: we know that there are already tremendous serious issues with
Speaker 3: the organ transplant industry as it stands today, right, exploitation
Speaker 3: of the poor, the fact that even in the best
Speaker 3: of situations, a transplant may not take for one reason
Speaker 3: or another. But it seems like the idea of cloning
Speaker 3: organs comes with its own bevy of ethical albatrosses. So
Speaker 3: real quick for us, Mango, can you tell us I
Speaker 3: know this is a softball, but people need to hear it.
Speaker 3: Can you tell us a little bit about the headline
Speaker 3: issues with cloning human organs?
Speaker 6: Well, I mean, like you said, they're just the medical issues, right,
Speaker 6: Like the the idea of trying to take an organ
Speaker 6: from someone who was a foreign person in a way
Speaker 6: and a foreign body and and inserted into you like
Speaker 6: like makes the ability to host the organ more difficult.
Speaker 6: So the idea is that cloning, obviously, like makes it
Speaker 6: more smooth. If if I've got a clone of myself
Speaker 6: that has been built to replace my heart, that that's that,
Speaker 6: I guess makes the surgery more smooth and and hopefully
Speaker 6: the implementation. But obviously the ethics of whether that clone
Speaker 6: has consented is very difficult. The pain you're putting the
Speaker 6: clone into. Also the idea that these clones don't grow
Speaker 6: in petri dishes. They have to be birth, and so
Speaker 6: the idea that someone is giving birth to a clone
Speaker 6: of me for the specific purpose of organ donation, you know,
Speaker 6: is really tricky ethically. I mean, I think you know
Speaker 6: that I was talking to one person who was saying, like,
Speaker 6: you know, we for a long time believe that any
Speaker 6: sort of transplantation was unnatural, right like hearts, and we
Speaker 6: we have a hard time surrendering to autonomous cars in
Speaker 6: a way, right like, So maybe this is just something
Speaker 6: that we will grow accustomed to because there's a need
Speaker 6: for in the future.
Speaker 5: And then on.
Speaker 6: The other side of it, there's a whole bunch of
Speaker 6: people whould say, like, these science fiction books were written
Speaker 6: for the express purpose of letting us know that these
Speaker 6: are the dangers and implications, and instead these people have
Speaker 6: taken the wrong lessons. All these people who grew up
Speaker 6: on this science fiction have like picked up on the
Speaker 6: wrong ideas for the wrong reasons, and so.
Speaker 3: Kind of like naming a company palante here.
Speaker 5: Exactly.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, Well, there's so many examples of these like
Speaker 4: Silicon Valley types not getting the whole point of the
Speaker 4: science fiction that they're obsessed with, and naming things after
Speaker 4: like what is ultimately dystopian like cautionary Tales, you know,
Speaker 4: like I forget the exact series that he's into, but
Speaker 4: it's like he kind of seems to have missed the point.
Speaker 4: I do wonder though, I mean, obviously we're not quite
Speaker 4: there yet in terms of like fully, you know, birthing
Speaker 4: clones in order to harvest their organs, and of course
Speaker 4: the ethical questions there are many.
Speaker 2: We do have.
Speaker 4: Examples though of like you know, growing in a human
Speaker 4: ear on a lab rat or various like lab grown organs.
Speaker 4: Harvesting things like that, Is that to you a little
Speaker 4: less ethically fraught or do you feel like that's sort
Speaker 4: of the middle ground. Is that maybe where some of
Speaker 4: this research should go into.
Speaker 6: That may be, yeah, and that is one of is
Speaker 6: creating a basically a pig farm where the pigs are
Speaker 6: growing the organs for us within them and harvested for that, right,
Speaker 6: And you can see how that's a clear sort of
Speaker 6: middle ground between the two spaces. I also think that,
Speaker 6: you know, the mice stuff is really fascinating in terms
Speaker 6: of on one hand, like the transfer isn't significant, right,
Speaker 6: Like it's not clear, like the amount of advances you
Speaker 6: can make in mice and the way that transfers to
Speaker 6: human is so small in some ways, it's only like
Speaker 6: twenty percent or something. But on the other hand, like
Speaker 6: what's been starting to be Like as I started this,
Speaker 6: it's funny because now the odyssey is a big thing,
Speaker 6: But when we started this, we were thinking, like, oh,
Speaker 6: what if we treated this kind of like an odyssey, right,
Speaker 6: like where we first went to the land of Boston
Speaker 6: where it was real science and and sort of science
Speaker 6: that government was funding and science for everyone right in
Speaker 6: a way, And and then we left those shores and
Speaker 6: went to California, where there was wildness and then we
Speaker 6: went to let you know, and we're trying to build
Speaker 6: this story that way in a sense and and then
Speaker 6: ultimately returning home. But the thing about like the science
Speaker 6: I saw on an MIT in particular that was stuying
Speaker 6: to me was that, like there were all these non
Speaker 6: invasive techniques that ended up being really incredibly fruitful. And
Speaker 6: so like one was I walked into this lab of
Speaker 6: this brilliant neuroscientist named Lewisie and you walk into the
Speaker 6: MIT labs and they've got a little screen with what
Speaker 6: looks like mice at a rave And I was like,
Speaker 6: why is there a strobe light and mice going on
Speaker 6: and whatever? And she said that basically, they figured out
Speaker 6: that if you flash lights at a certain frequency and
Speaker 6: you have certain pulses, that you can reduce the effects
Speaker 6: of Alzheimer's on people. And like so it started in
Speaker 6: mice and that's transferred to humans and now there's going
Speaker 6: to be a mask that people can wear and headphones
Speaker 6: and through that pulsing, basically like your symptoms of Alzheimer's
Speaker 6: will decrease, which is just unbelievable, right, And this is like,
Speaker 6: you know, before we even get to the science fiction
Speaker 6: of it all, This non invasive therapies are incredible. And
Speaker 6: then the other thing she was doing is like without
Speaker 6: growing clones, she had figured out like how to create
Speaker 6: something called my brain, which was creating these organoids of
Speaker 6: your brain using six stem cells that basically mimicked your brain,
Speaker 6: and so they could give it different medicines and therapies
Speaker 6: and see how your body specifically would react, so you
Speaker 6: don't need like a brain transfer or whatever. Like from
Speaker 6: I realized brain transfer. We actually talked to someone who
Speaker 6: is uh is trying to replace a brain cell by cell.
Speaker 6: But but I mean, this is just miraculous medicine. And
Speaker 6: the fact that like if you have Alzheimer's or nergent
Speaker 6: generative diseases that you know, in a lab they could
Speaker 6: replicate your brain and figure out which medicine and which
Speaker 6: specific cocktail is perfect for you.
Speaker 3: That's fascinating.
Speaker 7: It is Hey, tennessee Pealt here. Noel Ben and Minguesh
Speaker 7: will be back right after a word from our sponsors.
Speaker 3: One quick point we have to make, which doesn't spoil
Speaker 3: the show too too much. We were talking about this
Speaker 3: off air, you Nolan myself at some parts of this investigation,
Speaker 3: especially in the Oregon Trail episode. Dude, you sound like
Speaker 3: a spy and you one of the nicest, most personable
Speaker 3: folks that we know, so the best questions, right, So
Speaker 3: the question becomes, we see this multiple times right in
Speaker 3: that episode of particular, but in a lot of your
Speaker 3: other explorations in this season of Skyline Drive. We have
Speaker 3: to ask why are so many people so hagey about
Speaker 3: this stuff? Like I remember the moment where you said, Okay,
Speaker 3: this guy gave me a lot of good information. But
Speaker 3: whomever they were, they were not comfortable beat on air,
Speaker 3: so I got my cousin to do voiceover.
Speaker 6: There are so many people who will tell you off
Speaker 6: camera like what they are hearing in this space, But
Speaker 6: don't they both want access to sort of like they
Speaker 6: want to be on that island, right, They want to
Speaker 6: have access to the better life, et cetera. They want
Speaker 6: to be able to have their companies funded. But then
Speaker 6: you hear about these like mansions where people use words
Speaker 6: like eugenics without any sort of worry and and they
Speaker 6: actually think it's a good thing to be able to
Speaker 6: use it, like it has no connotation from the past,
Speaker 6: and and like it's really crazy to like hear the
Speaker 6: sort of ways people are thinking about the future and
Speaker 6: the ways that people think about a future that isn't inclusive.
Speaker 5: And I'm saying the way is.
Speaker 4: That not The elephant in the room though, that this
Speaker 4: is not for everybody, that this is like it's so
Speaker 4: research funding dependent and like who is who are the
Speaker 4: ones that are providing that money and then literally doing it,
Speaker 4: So it's just for them, and they're like, you know,
Speaker 4: in their community. I mean, this is important research that
Speaker 4: could save lives of everybody in the world, but it's
Speaker 4: not for everybody in the world.
Speaker 5: I think.
Speaker 6: I think one of the craziest things to me was realizing,
Speaker 6: like what this is like in practice, right where where
Speaker 6: you have a researcher who was at Yale, the superstar
Speaker 6: who was publishing NonStop papers, right goes to work for
Speaker 6: Alto's labs there for four or five years, hasn't published
Speaker 6: a paper since, you know, like and I mean there's
Speaker 6: maybe one paper that was a holdover or whatever.
Speaker 5: But the fact that.
Speaker 6: Like all of this is being done in private in
Speaker 6: a way where none of us will be able to
Speaker 6: access it unless we pay you know, extraordinary amounts of money, right, Like,
Speaker 6: is difficult to stomach and the idea that, like the
Speaker 6: way that the story is told is like, oh, we're
Speaker 6: doing something that's good for humanity, it's good for the world,
Speaker 6: this is for everyone, et cetera. When you know that
Speaker 6: the barriers to entry are going to be significant.
Speaker 2: Look at space tourism.
Speaker 4: I mean you could you could draw a parallel with
Speaker 4: space tourism and like who is that for? And this idea,
Speaker 4: this is for the better men of all, But it's
Speaker 4: just the Katie Perrys of the world that are doing
Speaker 4: on TV and making such a pr stunt out of it.
Speaker 4: But it's like you or I can't afford to do
Speaker 4: that as a bit of a joy ride. But it
Speaker 4: seems like there's parallels there. But this is much more consequential.
Speaker 6: And we could also think about smallpox one hundred percent,
Speaker 6: And I think there are two things there, right, Like
Speaker 6: one is that there are actually a lot of medicines
Speaker 6: that could be used widely, right like met foreman is
Speaker 6: one that that is very very cheap. It can be
Speaker 6: very beneficial for everyone over like fifty right, like can
Speaker 6: lengthen our lives supposedly, but they can't get the money
Speaker 6: for studies or research for it because you can't patent
Speaker 6: it anymore, right, Like it's too cheap, no one can
Speaker 6: make the money off it, and so like no one
Speaker 6: will fund it, and that becomes a real difficulty. And
Speaker 6: so you have people who are trying to make an
Speaker 6: economic argument for why to invest in longevity drugs. But
Speaker 6: those arguments are like, well, if you can get someone
Speaker 6: who's in their sixties to work for five more years,
Speaker 6: ten more years, whatever it is, right, then that's benefit.
Speaker 6: And it's strange that the only way that we'll invest
Speaker 6: in something that is really for humanity and to reduce
Speaker 6: suffering is through making the argument that these people should
Speaker 6: continue working, right, And so's that's one thing. But ben
Speaker 6: to your earlier point, right, like you were saying about smallpox,
Speaker 6: and the idea that like we got these extra thirty
Speaker 6: years of life come from things that affect everyone, whether
Speaker 6: it's like smoking policies, or like hygiene or or like
Speaker 6: vaccines or seatbot laws, right, Like these things have affected
Speaker 6: all of us and given us all a better life ultimately,
Speaker 6: And and so like the idea that like we're going
Speaker 6: to prolong our lifespans by not including everyone is is
Speaker 6: kind of tricky and and uh and ultimately false, I think.
Speaker 3: Yeah, ultimately self defeating. You know, there's a there's this
Speaker 3: thing that we've been wrestling with on this show quite recently,
Speaker 3: which is that technological innovation is key, right, it drives
Speaker 3: the human experiment forward. But that technological innovation only is
Speaker 3: only worthwhile if society evolves in step with it. Right,
Speaker 3: So if we had a smallpox vaccine, for instance, that
Speaker 3: was limited to the one percenters of their day, then
Speaker 3: smallpox would still be a huge problem happening constantly to
Speaker 3: everyone who wasn't wealthy. And with this, we have to ask,
Speaker 3: you know, given the secrecy, right, given the fact that
Speaker 3: people are moving, as you said in stealth mode, everybody
Speaker 3: wants to be on the island. If the research continues
Speaker 3: as it continues now, right, and there's no interruption, civilization
Speaker 3: doesn't collapse or anything like that, do you think, to
Speaker 3: nol and ize earlier questions here, do you think that
Speaker 3: we're looking at a dystopic society? Like is there a
Speaker 3: possibility of true speciation? You know, I.
Speaker 5: Don't know exactly.
Speaker 6: What I do know is that, like you know, in
Speaker 6: a time when billionaires used to pass away and their
Speaker 6: legacy was philanthropy, right, like that you would leave money
Speaker 6: to create a library, all the betterment of society, et cetera. Right,
Speaker 6: if the prospect of you living to two hundred, three hundred,
Speaker 6: et cetera, is there, there's no incentive to like share
Speaker 6: any of your wealth, Right, it just becomes more about hoarding.
Speaker 6: And and if that becomes the the way that of
Speaker 6: the future, right like, it becomes very difficult to imagine
Speaker 6: how the capital gets spread in a way that the
Speaker 6: lesser thans or the other halves.
Speaker 5: Benefit.
Speaker 6: I mean, I think that I think it's a real question.
Speaker 6: I think it's one that like scientists are flagging right now.
Speaker 6: And and I think that on the other hand, right, like,
Speaker 6: you see a place like Prospera and it doesn't have
Speaker 6: the sort of which is an island in off Honduras
Speaker 6: where it's basically this libertarian paradise and it's created to
Speaker 6: move medical trials much faster and operates on bitcoin and
Speaker 6: all these things. They can attract enough people to actually
Speaker 6: create a civilization there, And so like, I don't you know,
Speaker 6: on one hand, maybe you get this like elite.
Speaker 2: Group.
Speaker 6: On the other hand, how big is that and how
Speaker 6: does the rest of society, Like, how do they even
Speaker 6: function as a society is confusing to me.
Speaker 4: We talked about that on a Strange News episode not
Speaker 4: terribly long ago, about that community, and I just to
Speaker 4: remember some of those questions coming up. I mean, you know,
Speaker 4: it reminds me of just the way that like you know,
Speaker 4: AI or machine learning, whatever you want to call it,
Speaker 4: has the potential to replace so many jobs, and that's
Speaker 4: being pushed forth as like a feature, not a bug,
Speaker 4: because of course then those jobs can be parlayed into
Speaker 4: other jobs and then everyone's going to be benefit from
Speaker 4: it in the end. But that just seems very high
Speaker 4: in the sky, especially if there is no groundwork laid
Speaker 4: to actually take care of the people, you know, in
Speaker 4: the face of this new technology that could replace quote
Speaker 4: quote menial jobs, Like where are those people gonna go?
Speaker 2: What are the people gonna do?
Speaker 4: If there's no universal basic income or some sort of
Speaker 4: societal safeguard, then those people are just gonna be left
Speaker 4: out in the cold. And that seems to be the
Speaker 4: case too with this life extension technology, Like what happens
Speaker 4: to the rest of us who would become like mortals
Speaker 4: At this point, you know, it just seems like there's
Speaker 4: no framework in place to protect those people, and that
Speaker 4: is to me, ben I think where that notion of
Speaker 4: the dystopian version of these things goes. And it seems
Speaker 4: like the super wealthy are always they're the ones that
Speaker 4: are doing all the biggest damage to the economy, for
Speaker 4: the regular people, to the environment, for the regular people,
Speaker 4: because they've got their bunkers set up, they're gonna be okay,
Speaker 4: their family line is going to be protected.
Speaker 2: Like, how do we safeguard against that?
Speaker 3: Yeah, you can't eat money, right, But that's one of
Speaker 3: the things that maybe escapes the oligarchical class in Noll.
Speaker 3: I think that's such such a phenomenally accurate, important and
Speaker 3: disturbing point. We have to we have to take this
Speaker 3: to a little bit of a personal note for you here, Mango,
Speaker 3: knowing what you know now after these investigations, this spy
Speaker 3: level research as well, Uh, would you ever consider going
Speaker 3: to some of those gray market solutions for a new organ.
Speaker 2: I don't for a family member.
Speaker 4: I could see it if someone was gonna pay, if
Speaker 4: it was yeah, I'm sorry, I don't mean to to
Speaker 4: just that's the only way you know, And you've even
Speaker 4: heard like in in Asia, for example, there's all these
Speaker 4: films about black market organ trading rings and about people
Speaker 4: that can't get the through the proper channels, going through
Speaker 4: these gangs and things to get, you know, a liver
Speaker 4: for their loved one. I mean, I could just see
Speaker 4: in desperation, maybe it would be attractive, But I don't know, man,
Speaker 4: what do you what do you think?
Speaker 2: Mango?
Speaker 6: And that's what that market is right now, right like
Speaker 6: it is not it is not farming organs for wealthy
Speaker 6: people so they can just like replace things while they're
Speaker 6: still working but starting to decline, right it is the
Speaker 6: desperation that drives that space right now.
Speaker 2: But I don't, I mean, I don't.
Speaker 6: It's hard for me to imagine that knowing the consequences
Speaker 6: and the difficulties of like obtaining the organs, how you
Speaker 6: facilitate the like given everything else, right, the ethics of it,
Speaker 6: even the logistics of it are really difficult to like manage,
Speaker 6: right like it's but I don't think. I don't think
Speaker 6: i'd feel comfortable playing in that space. I mean, on
Speaker 6: the other hand, right like, if you take it at
Speaker 6: a much much much lower level, right like the market
Speaker 6: for peptides and red a true tide et cetera. Right,
Speaker 6: is a gray market, and people are very comfortable with that.
Speaker 6: There's no ethical there's less of an ethical consequence with
Speaker 6: those things, right, or.
Speaker 4: Even compounded GLP one drugs, like people that can't get
Speaker 4: it through the pharmaceutical industry and then through insurance, they
Speaker 4: do these compounded labs, which are you know, kind of
Speaker 4: rowned upon them by your physician and they'll say, I
Speaker 4: don't know what's in those, but people are still you know,
Speaker 4: chomping at the bit to get those because they're significantly
Speaker 4: more affordable. And I just think there's a parallel there
Speaker 4: as one mentioning the peptides and a lot of these
Speaker 4: quote unquote new super drugs that are like changing people's lives.
Speaker 4: Everyone wants them. You got to you got to be
Speaker 4: able to get them, and they're going to get them
Speaker 4: in one way.
Speaker 6: And and and it's it's just fascinating to see like
Speaker 6: how many people between I think COVID and and the
Speaker 6: distrust of uh, the government and and the ways that
Speaker 6: like people who should have been adults weren't adults, you know,
Speaker 6: for for for the rest of the country, et cetera. Right,
Speaker 6: Like there's a real distrust well said and so you
Speaker 6: have people who are like PhDs and economics and like
Speaker 6: like people who are like people who are just taking
Speaker 6: their health in their own hands, right, And and it's
Speaker 6: interesting to see like people use chat ept as their
Speaker 6: doctors and they you know, they they they put all
Speaker 6: their information in and all their blood tests and they
Speaker 6: do all the work themselves. But then they come up
Speaker 6: with their own solutions to problems. And I don't think
Speaker 6: that's gonna slow down.
Speaker 4: To dude, I didn't know that you could do this.
Speaker 4: I'm so sorry, Mango. I just got a body scan.
Speaker 4: I've been like on a bit of a fitness kick,
Speaker 4: and I got one of these Dexa scans that like
Speaker 4: shows you your body content, fat content, visceral fat, muscle,
Speaker 4: bone density, all that stuff, much more precisely than.
Speaker 2: Like you know, at home kind of body scanner scale
Speaker 2: could do.
Speaker 4: And I was very curious about some of the aspects
Speaker 4: of it that I didn't fully understand and I didn't realize.
Speaker 2: I did ask KATGBT about it, and.
Speaker 4: It asked me to upload the document and I did,
Speaker 4: and it analyzed the crap out of it.
Speaker 2: And I know it's a slippery slope.
Speaker 4: I know it's there's maybe some knock on consequences of
Speaker 4: using it and being that transparent and putting your personal
Speaker 4: stuff in there, But there is part of the benefit
Speaker 4: of it that does outweigh the sketchy parts of it.
Speaker 4: And I don't trust my physician to a certain degree
Speaker 4: because they're just churning and burning, moving people through the
Speaker 4: system in and out. It doesn't feel like there's any
Speaker 4: kind of personal touch. And like, you know, my father
Speaker 4: passed away due to inattention by physicians, and so yeah,
Speaker 4: I relate to that.
Speaker 2: I truly relate.
Speaker 6: I don't. I don't think that's an uncommon thing, right Like,
Speaker 6: as as as doctors have less and less time for us, right, like,
Speaker 6: that that becomes the thing. It's it's funny, right, like,
Speaker 6: on one hand, how much information is good information?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 6: Like, because I did a DEXA scan too, I had
Speaker 6: a doctor talk me through it all the elements, and
Speaker 6: then I was talking to like a woman in Silicon
Speaker 6: Valley and she was like, I just think all these
Speaker 6: scans are horoscopes for tech bros. Right and and and
Speaker 6: You're like, at a certain point, there's like so much
Speaker 6: information that you know, like like and it's not you know,
Speaker 6: you're chasing like little strands of things that may or
Speaker 6: may not be determinative. The other thing is like I
Speaker 6: talked to a professor who's working on body clocks and
Speaker 6: and these like clocks that tell you how your organs
Speaker 6: are aging, et cetera. And I did two of these,
Speaker 6: and right now you can send your same information to
Speaker 6: the same place and get too wildly different. Right the
Speaker 6: clocks are not accurate at all. And I was asking him, like,
Speaker 6: where in the technology are we? Like are we at
Speaker 6: the like the Lisa the Apple two CE, Like where
Speaker 6: are we He was like, We're not even the garage yet, Like,
Speaker 6: and and the idea that like we're basing so much
Speaker 6: of our medicine on and our ideas and our diagnosis
Speaker 6: on these things that are like completely inaccurate, is is
Speaker 6: we're not you know, they might be directionally accurate, but
Speaker 6: not like you can't replicate them.
Speaker 4: I'm looking for trends. I'm not making life or death
Speaker 4: chain choices based on the scan. I was just curious,
Speaker 4: and I'm going to continue doing the work that I'm
Speaker 4: doing and working out and all of that, but it's
Speaker 4: just neat to be able to track trends and know
Speaker 4: that you're making progress rather than necessarily being pinpoint accurate
Speaker 4: or causing me to make some sort of life, you know,
Speaker 4: medical decisions.
Speaker 2: I'm was more curious. There are some people do take
Speaker 2: it as gospel.
Speaker 6: I did the same thing, right, and it was helpful.
Speaker 6: It was like interesting to see, like and confirm things
Speaker 6: that I'd guessed and and and to like pay attention
Speaker 6: to other things that I hadn't thought about, right, like,
Speaker 6: that's it is valuable. It's not that and and and
Speaker 6: I think you're right about the AI thing. I mean,
Speaker 6: like health insurance is going to be eaten by AI
Speaker 6: because they made doctors inaccessible and inattentive, right, Like, it
Speaker 6: is something that it's a it's a situation that has
Speaker 6: you know, self propelled itself.
Speaker 7: We're going to take one more quick break and then
Speaker 7: won't be back with more from Nash.
Speaker 5: I've got a step is back.
Speaker 3: You're really quickly bansh up because we're using some terms
Speaker 3: that are very familiar to us, and we may arguably
Speaker 3: be a bit bubbled after looking into this.
Speaker 2: Uh, could you you could could.
Speaker 3: You describe for everybody what a gray market is and
Speaker 3: then tell us a little bit about what if any
Speaker 3: legislation is in you know, in the mix or up
Speaker 3: and coming regarding organ transplants. Yeah.
Speaker 6: So so a gray market is kind of the space
Speaker 6: between a black market and the regular market that just
Speaker 6: isn't being paid attention to that closely, and and so
Speaker 6: you can get away with Like one of the things
Speaker 6: I did on the show was in this quest to
Speaker 6: understand if wealthy people are doing organ transplants, people like
Speaker 6: Putin et cetera. Right, Like, we went to this white
Speaker 6: hat hacker who who showed us just how easy it
Speaker 6: is to get drugs online from you know, very expensive
Speaker 6: cancer drugs to to to peptides to what testosterone right testosterone,
Speaker 6: to various IV drugs.
Speaker 5: I mean, like it was it was surprising.
Speaker 6: And what I thought was like, oh, this all exists
Speaker 6: on the dark web, right, like places that that are
Speaker 6: super secretive and and and ilicit in in in a
Speaker 6: major way. What I hadn't realized was that like you
Speaker 6: can just order them online fairly easily, and and they're
Speaker 6: all these sites that guide you to like which bank
Speaker 6: accounts to use, which uh which FedEx ups, which which
Speaker 6: transfer systems to use, like how to get it close
Speaker 6: to your house but not to your house, so it's
Speaker 6: not pointed like, but there's a massive, massive market for
Speaker 6: all the drugs that that are being and mostly pharmaceuticals,
Speaker 6: not like cocaine right like like, but but things that
Speaker 6: are legal somewhere but aren't legal here, and and the
Speaker 6: transfer of that right there. And so that's how I've
Speaker 6: been referring to the gray market.
Speaker 5: And so it's like my.
Speaker 6: Friends in California who are doing various peptide stacks, et cetera,
Speaker 6: and ordering them from China and Russia. They're not under
Speaker 6: any great scrutiny from the police or or Interpol or
Speaker 6: anything like that. But but and it and it's so
Speaker 6: common that a lot of people are doing it. But
Speaker 6: but people who these are people who paid their taxes
Speaker 6: and and you know, otherwise live by by all the
Speaker 6: rules of society in terms of organ transplants in that space,
Speaker 6: et cetera. I think that the current administration and and
Speaker 6: some of where this stuff blends with MAHA, has has
Speaker 6: increased a sort of right to try movement, right where
Speaker 6: one of the libertarian ideals is that as long as
Speaker 6: you're not hurting other people, you should be able to
Speaker 6: experiment on your own body and uh, and that and
Speaker 6: sort of the speed of which drugs you can use
Speaker 6: at which phases of clinical trials, et cetera. And and
Speaker 6: the access to that is something that has increased. And
Speaker 6: and there are drugs right now that are in the
Speaker 6: approval process. But people have seen the New York Times
Speaker 6: write about them, they've seen communities online using them, and
Speaker 6: so they know these drugs are going to be released
Speaker 6: in the next year, like red a true tide, right,
Speaker 6: And all these people are taking it in Silicon Valley
Speaker 6: because they feel like it's safe enough at this point,
Speaker 6: and there's a great market for drugs like that.
Speaker 4: And who are you to tell me what to do
Speaker 4: with my body, big government, they say, I mean, I'm
Speaker 4: kind of with you on that for sure.
Speaker 3: Two, when you are exploring this stuff again, we're not
Speaker 3: blowing smoke here, folks. This is a home run and
Speaker 3: we've listened with rapt attention. When you are exploring this stuff,
Speaker 3: you have a lot of conversations that make it to
Speaker 3: air where you're asking people investors, tech bros. Or the
Speaker 3: tech techarate and researchers. You're saying, well, what is the future,
Speaker 3: what is the future of longevity? And in this case
Speaker 3: the organ trade look like. So one of the questions
Speaker 3: we have to close on here is when the audience
Speaker 3: is exploring this story with you, what do you hope
Speaker 3: what do we hope people take away from it?
Speaker 5: That's a really good question.
Speaker 6: I mean, I think we are ultimately choosing what We're
Speaker 6: watching a lot of futures be laid out in front
Speaker 6: of us and trying to figure out which ones we
Speaker 6: want to indulge in. Right which is the future we
Speaker 6: want to live in? And I think that things are
Speaker 6: moving at such a clip in so many ways that's
Speaker 6: hard to tell what's real and what's hype. And I
Speaker 6: think that even you know, I chase down this story
Speaker 6: about cloning, which is really that this company R three
Speaker 6: Bio has. It's been using a deck in Silicon Valley
Speaker 6: about full body replacement. And the idea is that instead
Speaker 6: of transferring organ by organ, which is a laborious process
Speaker 6: and as we talked about, like the organs don't always
Speaker 6: take what if you could just transplant your head onto
Speaker 6: a younger version of yourself. And the pitch was that
Speaker 6: they would be in the very distant future that one
Speaker 6: of the possibilities is that they could clone a version
Speaker 6: of you and create it with no sentience, so all
Speaker 6: the brain function was knocked out. But ultimately it would
Speaker 6: be a body for you the billionaire, to transfer your
Speaker 6: head onto this new body, and aside from moisturizing your face,
Speaker 6: et cetera. Right, there's very little to worry about because
Speaker 6: it's just one surgical snip. Right, and we've seen, you know,
Speaker 6: since the seventies, people have been have known that you
Speaker 6: can take like one monkey's head and put it on
Speaker 6: another monkey's body and see like the eyes move and
Speaker 6: the mouth open and like, you know, and it can
Speaker 6: live for eleven days, twelve days. The idea is that
Speaker 6: you know, now sciences has advanced so much that one
Speaker 6: surgical snip and and you know, various things the blood
Speaker 6: brain barrier like would allow the advance of this technology.
Speaker 6: And supposedly they've done it with mice. I don't know
Speaker 6: if it's true or not. Like it's hard to it's
Speaker 6: hard to get real answers from some of these people
Speaker 6: because they are in stealth mode. But as soon as
Speaker 6: you know, I talked to this person, and then Wired
Speaker 6: did a story about them, and then MIT did a
Speaker 6: story and then but in the time in between they've
Speaker 6: sort of walked back everything they claim to have done
Speaker 6: and claim they're doing because it's so scary. And I
Speaker 6: think that's the other hard part is that a lot
Speaker 6: of a lot of people working on these technologies aren't
Speaker 6: very good at reading the room in terms of what
Speaker 6: They're very good at reading what the bitcoin billionaires are
Speaker 6: are interested in the future. They're not good at reading
Speaker 6: the room for the rest of us.
Speaker 3: And I'm sorry I kept darkly chuckling there, guys, because
Speaker 3: as soon as you said the head transplant thing, I
Speaker 3: was just picturing a future TMC article where they're like.
Speaker 2: Here's the dead giveaway.
Speaker 3: You know, it's the scar right there by the neck,
Speaker 3: and it's the fact that the head is eighty and
Speaker 3: the body's.
Speaker 2: Twenty four and it's got the neck bolts. It's got
Speaker 2: to the next bolts. Yeah, also very futurama ahead.
Speaker 5: And we couldn't stop thinking about that.
Speaker 2: I mean, man, we could, you know, we could go on,
Speaker 2: you know, we could go on and on about this.
Speaker 6: I mean the thing is right, like, like the steps
Speaker 6: before there are really fascinating because they're thinking about, like, well,
Speaker 6: you can't test on primates, so what if you could
Speaker 6: do this with a sea of primates and create these
Speaker 6: clones and have these testable like primates that there's no sentience, right,
Speaker 6: you could come up with vaccines for something like COVID
Speaker 6: in a matter of weeks because you can test them
Speaker 6: and use AI like cooked up to these bodies and
Speaker 6: and you know, like that's interesting. I don't know if
Speaker 6: that's a future that will happen soon or never, or
Speaker 6: or in a very long time, but but you know,
Speaker 6: on one hand, these people are thinking about like really
Speaker 6: fascinating applications. On the other hand, it's hard to know
Speaker 6: like at what point which futures will accept and which
Speaker 6: futures biology will actually allow for.
Speaker 3: Well, so yeah, nailed it, Yes, And I think that's
Speaker 3: where we get to We get to our rabbit hole. Folks,
Speaker 3: please join us in our exploration skyline drive how to
Speaker 3: Live Forever and then, guess, thank you so much for
Speaker 3: being first off, for being one of the coolest dudes
Speaker 3: we know, but also more importantly, thank you for bringing
Speaker 3: this to disturbing story to light.
Speaker 5: You have to meet more people. You have to start
Speaker 5: meeting more people.
Speaker 2: Come on, you know, I'm so thrilled.
Speaker 6: I'm sorry Matt wasn't here, but I love just seeing
Speaker 6: Dylan on the screen too. Is my favorite Tennessee as.
Speaker 2: You call it, but Tennessee, Pa, Yes, Tennessee it is.
Speaker 5: It is wonderful to be here.
Speaker 6: I love you guys, love your show, and honor to
Speaker 6: be chatting with you.
Speaker 2: The pleasure is at least.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, we did the math man guess how to
Speaker 3: getur Folks Skyline Drive. The newest season, How to Live Forever,
Speaker 3: is available now wherever you find your favorite shows. We
Speaker 3: would love to hear your thoughts. Is this a brave
Speaker 3: new world for better or worse? How will the research continue?
Speaker 3: Should it continue?
Speaker 2: How far would you go to live Forever? Yeah? Let
Speaker 2: us know?
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