Begin Again with Davina McCall - AI and Your Health: What You Need to Know (And Why You Shouldn’t Be Scared!)

Episode Date: September 11, 2025

In this episode of Begin Again, AI expert and journalist Lara Lewington explores how artificial intelligence is transforming our health for the better. From wearable tech that tracks your every heartbeat to AI that can detect cancer, depression, and even Alzheimer’s before symptoms show, Lara shares the groundbreaking ways machines are helping humans live longer, healthier lives. She talks candidly about what the future of healthcare looks like, why we should stop fearing AI, and how embracing it might just be the key to solving some of medicine’s biggest challenges. Through extensive research and real-world reporting, Lara explains how she is learning to embrace AI and how you can too. From boosting our wellbeing to extending our lives, she reveals why AI is not something to fear but a powerful tool here to help us live longer, healthier, and ultimately happier lives. Lara's Book 'Hacking Humanity': https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/465031/hacking-humanity-by-lewington-lara/9780753561140 👉 Follow us on Instagram: @beginagain 🎥 Watch more on TikTok: @beginagainpod (00:00) Intro (01:50) Should We Fear AI? (05:54) Four Pillars of Wellness (08:08) Importance of Sleep (12:56) Adobe Ad (14:06) Loneliness and Health (18:32) AI in Women’s Health (25:10) Detecting Depression Early (31:31) AI Ethics and Access (37:12) AI Use in Therapy (38:47) AI, Kids, and Disinformation (44:52) Fighting Cancer with AI (49:32) Rethinking Diet with AI (53:34) Biggest AI Myths (55:36) AI and Heart Health (01:02:52) Best Mental Health Apps (01:05:01) Frictionless Tech (01:12:10) Lara’s Key Discovery –  Sponsored by: Adobe - http://adobe.ly/Davina  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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It is taking over very fast, but you are trying to. trying to leave us with a more positive feeling around AI. Yes. Everything is changing. The amazing thing is the power of AI in health is absolutely huge. None of this is about putting doctors out of the picture. This is about augmenting them because we are still spending an average of 25% of our lives and poor health. And then the NHS has got such long waiting times. Exactly. We need to be able to close that gap.

AI is driving us to an era where we can delay and possibly prevent disease. AI can see when that happens change and identify who is likely to get cancer when. The change in the future of cancer is the biggest change that we're probably going to see within healthcare. Yeah, that would be amazing. It's able to manage risk of heart disease. You can see the signs of depression before they may even be aware that they have it. And also when it comes to menopause, one of the big things is that is insane. Yeah, AI, it's not replacing a human.

It just pushes you a little bit in the right direction. We have to learn it because this is the future. I know this is a big ask, but what was your biggest discovery? Well, one of the most important things is. So today I am talking to Laura Lewington. She is amazing because she has had a very long and illustrious career on television. She started doing the weather and doing celebrity news and then got into tech and then got obsessed with tech. And that has developed over, what, 20, 25 years?

Yeah, best part of two decades. Amazing. What a lovely introduction for you. You are going to help me because I have a real fear around AI. And I think it is largely due to a feeling that it is taking over very fast that we're going to lose, we're going to have very high unemployment, we're going to lose connection. we're going to create insular kind of situations where people are alone. There's no connectivity to other people or to it's all connectivity to tech.

I have a feeling of doom around it. Well, there's so much to say. And I accept that many of these fears people have are justified. There's enormous risk with bias, disinformation, the risks of cyber war. And actually I think a lot of what people end up scared of is from what we see in the papers, humanoid robots and XOROTs next to stories about chat GPT going rogue, which doesn't even make sense anyway.

But there is also incredible promise. And I think it's really important that we acknowledge this as well, especially within education and healthcare. But something I would really like to know is what is it specifically when you fear AI? What is it specifically that scares you? Um, yes, okay, so my, my fear is around. I guess it's fear for my children because they are a little bit like I was with, um, phones and social, they're at the cusp, the beginning of it. And all my children have left school and they didn't learn about AI at school. I'm hoping my son's going to go to university. I'm hoping that AI is going to be a big part of his university course and that they will now.

from now start including it in quite a big way. But my two daughters, they kind of miss that and that they're going to have to go back and learn about it in some way, do some kind of course. There'll need to be lots and lots of courses around that. Also, I'm one of those people. It's not so much around humanoid AI. It's more around things like AI just having an opinion

and deciding something independently that it doesn't like you or... Yeah. A.I. He has your concern. Okay, so this is really interesting. And I think it's a really interesting place to start because it's where we can break down what's going on. And I think people entering the workplace now

are starting at a particularly difficult moment because AI isn't new. AI has been around for a long time. I've been banging on about it for years. It's just now suddenly everybody's interested and with interest comes worry. And jobs are going to change. There are going to be shifts in what people do, particularly entry-level jobs of white-collar jobs,

of those things which are repetitive, and particularly some jobs where an employee needs to do something that's slightly robotic. A robot is clearly going to do that better. But this isn't the death of work. There is a way more nuanced situation going on here. And work will change, jobs will change, how are we. prompt AI is incredibly important and that will become an incredibly important job. So there are concerns as to how things shift and how it evolves and how fast it's moving. So there are huge conversations and enormous amounts of research being done there. Actually, something's just come out

of Stanford that 16% of entry level jobs are being changed by AI. They are jobs that could be lost. Other jobs will emerge. But the workplace is changing. Everything is changing. The way that we live, the way that we work, the way we interact with each other. AI is changing everything. It's not new, but we're engaging with it more. And there are lots of questions that we should be asking ourselves. And just because AI can do something doesn't necessarily mean that it should. This is a really human story.

And we have to think about what we, the humans and societies want from it. So, Lara, what's brilliant is that your book really talks about how AI can help us. and support us when we are thinking about not just living longer, but being healthier while we live longer and all the ways that it's going to help us do that. Yeah, that's right. AI and technology are the drivers for so much of what is possible, the ability to pull in genetic, lifestyle information, our activity and also look at that matched up to disease risk to better be able to predict and potentially prevent disease.

the book, it's a science book, it's not a self-help book, it makes sense to read it alongside a self-help book to really guide you as to what is possible, what can we really do for our bodies to better them and to close that gap between health span, the healthy years of our lives and our lifespan. Because right now in England, women are spending an average of 25% of their lives in poor health. For men, that's 20%. That's in a high-income country with the National Health Service. We need to be able to close that gap. Hang on a minute. A quarter of of your life is spent in poor health as a woman. What? Why? It's a horrendous figure, and there are many reasons for this, so chronic disease

later in life is one of them. There's also cancer treatment, for example, that can really change your health long term. So a lot of what we're looking at in the longevity space isn't just this idea of wanting to live longer, which I think is more the sensationalist headline that maybe people may jump to you straight away, but how we don't suffer for decades in poor health. Yes, I mean, you wouldn't want that. You wouldn't want that. We have an ageing population,

and we recognise what that means and how unappealing ageing can be, and maybe there's something that we can do about it. So I think what we're trying to embrace right now are some of these ideas that can really better our health span and help us live better for longer. Now, we know the importance of exercise, sleep, eating well,

But we now have the ability, thanks to technology, to better quantify it, log it, look at our long-term patterns and also see how our body is reacting to the changes that we make. And that's really important. It's been quite interesting because I had brain surgery last November. And what's been fascinating for me is I can literally physically feel the importance of sleep. If I don't sleep, I take 10 steps backwards. If I don't get a good night's sleep mentally, my brain needs that time to recover. It's quite incredible, really, when you actually have a tangible sign of what sleep means. I used to kind of survive on not that much sleep and think I was kind of smashing it, you know.

Yeah. And this is the thing. It always feels fashionable to say that you don't sleep much, that you're fine without it. But the reality is, as you've just explained by really feeling, the effects, it's not good for you. It's not good for how you feel the next day and it's not good for your long-term health. Yet most of us don't actually prioritize it in the way that we would like to or should. And for many people, there isn't a choice. Some people are working shifts. Some people have sleep problems and they don't have the luxury of being able to manage it as well as we

might be able to. A lot of the people that I spoke to when I was out in California set there are long clocks to go to bed at night rather than to wake up in the morning, to try and force themselves to go to bed at the right time. But even for people who are working shifts, you can undo some of the damage by planning everything else around it better, the exercise and the eating, but when you're feeling tired, which you may well do from work, because you don't necessarily want to do that. So it's a really tough one, because it's something that you can monitor and you can try your best with, but you don't necessarily have the freedom to change as much as you'd like to. Having young kids as well. Yeah. Of course, you know, yeah.

And one of the things that also, because we talked about three, didn't we, we talked about sleep, exercise and eating well, but we didn't mention stress. And for me, sometimes that wearable tech, it's good because you can see what's happening in your body, but sometimes that creates stress. Yes. Because then you think, oh, I slept for eight hours. Oh, it was not good sleep. Oh, no, I'm stressed about not sleeping. And this is where it really depends on someone's first. personality whether it is the right thing for them to track or not.

Because the power of tracking is absolutely huge, particularly in long-term patterns. It's a lot more important than how many steps you did yesterday because you can see when those patterns change. And when they do, you may be able to identify something's amiss. I've seen many cases of people being diagnosed with heart conditions, with even cancer, somebody who was monitoring lupus. There are various different health conditions that by seeing changes in those patterns, you can recognise you may. may need some medical intervention. So that's really important. But what's also been discovered from these patterns isn't just for the individuals, but is actually at a population level. And for

sleep in particular, this is really interesting, because different countries and different cultures have different attitudes to sleep. In Japan, for example, if you have a nap at work, is considered a marker of the fact that you've been working nice and hard you needed to sleep. Do it in England. You probably get your P-45. So this variation on what is expected in different places and the patterns is really interesting. And in Europe, people tend to sleep in at the weekend. There's quite a culture for people who work regular working hours to do that. Whereas in Asia, that's not so common. And the amount of sleep that people get is varying around the world. In New Zealand, they seem to be having some of the best readings. And in Asia, Southeast Asia,

in particular, some of the lower readings. So all of these wearables are collecting data that has never been possible to be seen before. And that's really interesting as well as what we can do for ourselves. Culturally, I had never really thought about that. And what I immediately thought about then was the Spanish method of having a siesta in the afternoon, which I love. I'm at an age now where I would love it if it was socially acceptable and it doesn't really work in a working day in the UK if I could have a snooze in the afternoon. People would enjoy 90 minutes or something. Personally, I wonder, would I actually just wake up feeling a bit groggy and tail as I'm not used to it? But maybe some people react to it better than others.

And if this was something we were to start to do, I guess our wearables might be able to help tell us how well we'll doing. Orbeit with the readings, and I've done a lot of experiments with them. And the differences between devices in terms of activity, heart rate, are negligible now. There were big differences many years ago. But now they measure them pretty evenly. But the sleep does still show some variation, much less than it did. but because they try and stage the sleep. And if you wake up feeling very tired,

after your device telling you slept really well, which could be really irritating, there are many other reasons you might feel fatigued. So this data isn't the be all and end all, but it is still really useful. Also, the other thing, I guess what might be needed is more collective experiences.

I'm thinking, Abavoyage. You know, places where people can come together and experience technology and, but a collective thing together that we'll need that more and more because this idea of loneliness loneliness is going to make you sick you can't just sit up and talk to someone that's not real

no totally and I think what you're mentioning here is something that's really important both in terms of health span and AI I went to film with a hundred and three year old Mildred in Loma Linda one of these blue zones where people are living where's Loma Linda it's in California right and the people there are living longer than an average lifespan in the US and I have to say there's no particular great secret going on. They live incredibly healthy lives.

They look after their bodies. They're Seventh-day Adventists and for them this is a duty of religiosity. They're living very pure, healthy lifestyles, making sure they exercise, prioritising sleep, doing all these things we should do. But what they also have is a real sense of community, lots of community activities. And sadly, she's now passed away, Mildred. And when I went to film with her, the really interesting thing was she was 100, three, she didn't have anything wrong with her. She was perfectly healthy in mind and body,

but she'd had enough. She'd lost her daughter 30 years before. Her son was bedbound. She said to me she was nervous every time that she stood up in case she fell. And she'd led an amazing life. She set up hospitals in Africa. She was a doctor. She'd really done some meaningful things, a life filled with purpose. And you could just really feel this sense from her. And this is exactly what she was saying to me, that she didn't feel that purpose was still there. She didn't feel great. She didn't recommend living to this age. And I felt terrible when we left, because even though she was living in Loma Linda, a place where there's a sense of community, I didn't know what she was going to be doing with who next. And it's really important to

remember this. We started off at the beginning talking about the pillars of help and these ideas of exercise, sleep, eating well, managing our stress, social interactions, so important. As one doctor in Silicon Valley said to me, people are the most complicated thing of all. You're assessing their reaction, the feedback you're getting from them. What you get from human interaction is very different to what you get elsewhere. So it's a crucial part of the health picture. And in my book, this is something I talk about because it's a very, it's a very human story about health. And it's almost, it's not a self-help book. It's the book that you should read alongside the self-help book. You'll get yourself help tips. But this is the science. It's a

of what matters for you and your body, where science is at right now and what we understand. And those interactions are so important. They're important for our happiness. They're important for our brain. They're important for our longevity. And that's what we do as humans. And we don't want to lose that.

And already we've seen what smartphones have done for us. And AI is going to massively shift human behavior, which may sound wild and out there. It's already doing it, maybe incrementally. But we've seen it with smartphones. even if you're with elderly relatives or youngsters, people are addicted. They're desperate to go and check in with their phone. So we need to really work at maintaining those human relationships. And in some ways, I wonder whether AI will provide customer service, it'll provide lots of services

along the way. Will the human experience become the premium experience? And will it be music created by a human instead of AI is the premium experience? Will that customer service experience be, well, you've paid for premium membership, you get to talk to. to a human, or will the AI get so good, we won't even start to see it that way. And we won't know. We won't know. Although the transparency is... So have to be transparent?

Right now we talk about the importance of transparency. Yes. We feel that is really important. But our views, our ideas, our impressions, our expectations will all shift in the way they have as a result of smartphones. And we may not prioritize knowing that in every instance in the future in the way we do now. We have a big problem with information and what to trust. And we're seeing this play out on social media. And we're really seeing the problems that exist right now. And those problems are only going to get greater. Video content has become increasingly simple to generate and better and better. The telltale signs that used to exist in a photo, you'd only have three fingers and you go, hang on, I don't think that's right. Those telltale signs are going away. So we look at a future of how we might be able to watermark things and actually find a way of telling people when someone's things AI generated, but we're working on the basis that we're still going to think the same

and expect the same because are we going to know the difference? Are we always going to be asking the difference when this becomes more normalized? Generations are going to grow up only knowing the AI age. See, I don't want that. No, but I want to take us back to a positive place. Yes, Lara. Laura, help me. Help me be more positive because that's what... Okay. Okay, let's talk about health because there was something that blew my mind when I read about it and that's you talking around women's health and menopause. Now, I found this fascinating and there's so much to unpick here because there were some surprises I think that you had around things that AI could do but that women didn't necessarily want. Yeah. And this is one of the big things. We've got to really

work with what people want. Humans are at the heart of this. Technology is a really human story. It always has been because it changes our behaviour. It changes society. And I think it's taken probably the emergence of chat GPT for people to really put the two things together. And it was almost a strange trigger for it. But the power of AI in health is absolutely huge. And when it comes to women's health and I've filmed IVF robots, I've filmed all sorts of things that fall into this. But one of the concepts was the idea of delaying menopause, possibly even preventing it altogether. Now, this is something that several scientists were talking about because the question was, is there actually any benefit in going through menopause?

As a woman heads towards menopause, her risk of hormone-associated cancers rises. At menopause, that suddenly drops, but the risk of heart disease massively rises. Yeah, but you can just say by how much the risk of heart disease goes, is called, isn't it? It's quadrupled. I mean, that is insane. It's huge. It's huge. Overnight four times.

This is huge. And I know you've done so much amazing work in this area and raising awareness and getting people talking about it, which has just made such a huge difference. But the scientists I was talking to were looking at the idea of actually for women, they go through menopause. And it really affects them in the workplace. It really affects their role in society. and as a gender equality issue, this is a real problem. So what could we do about it? Well, one of the ideas that was being investigated,

and I spoke to a lady running a drug company that's doing just this, is the idea of drugs to delay menopause potentially indefinitely. So it's just like, it's such a, what's so interesting, I'd love to unpick this a tiny bit with you, is that does that mean that women could potentially still have children? Now, this is the natural direction, the conversation goes. But when I spoke to these experts, they were actually really trying to keep it away from that. That this isn't about having children later in life.

That comes with all sorts of increased risks. Of course. That's why I think it's a bad idea, but women will do that. Well, some women. Yes. And I think this is, at the moment, the drugs are in their fifth species of animal trial. So they haven't moved into clinical trials. yes, I think that's something that is hoped to be done soon. And because the drug in particular

from the company that I spoke to can also work as a contraceptive throughout life. It effectively slows down the ovarian reserve. So it slows down the release of eggs. But as you say, there are many other moral, ethical, practical health challenges that could come with having children later in life. So the idea here potentially could be that if you are delaying menopause, well, what are the benefits that you get? You get. this gender equality potentially. And in terms of health risk, what does it mean? They need to look at what it means for this cancer risk, because would you be slowing down that increased risk and what does that mean collectively? And are you averting the risk of heart disease that would

come afterwards? So there's a big trade-off. And actually, as we understand more in future, about the impact of genetics, lifestyle and AI brings together all of this data, we'll understand who these things would impact more as well, because it will become a lot more personalized. So whether people would want this or not is a big question. So I went out and found people who had big menopause experiences. One of them went through menopause as, I think she may have even been a teenager. She was very, very young. And how would people know, first of all, if you could test to know when you were going to go through menopause

and if there was the option of these drugs available to them, what would they do? Well, what was really interesting to me was these people who'd had unusual experiences, either very young or very traumatic, they actually didn't want to prevent menopause happening. They wanted better treatment. That's exactly how I feel. Is it? Yeah, that's so interesting.

Yeah. So I'm so pleased that other women feel like that because I was just thinking, I take hormone replacement therapy. It hasn't stopped me going through the menopause. I like not being able to have children anymore. There is a relief that comes with that. I grieved.

and then I was relieved and then I was like now I would like to help younger women I want to help my girls have their babies I want to be a grandma and I think if I still had

egg reserves there would be some weird it would mess up this idea of becoming a mentor for younger childbearing women yeah and a lot of people have reacted like that and there is a natural evolution a natural life course that people actually prefer.

So there's a lot that science and technology can do for us. And there may be some people out there that do like the idea of delaying menopause for a whole variety of reasons. But it's important to recognise it's not everyone. And many people will agree with what you've just said, everything that you've just said will really, I think so many people can really relate to that because it's also the natural life course.

And there are other people. is what people want. And we for years haven't had the research into women's health. Obviously, this is the conversation that's been had time and time again. And this isn't just in women's health drugs, it's across medicine as a whole. And AI is driving us to an era where we can better personalise health. We can better personalise trials, treatments. And this is understanding the difference in impact between how things work on men and women

as well as our genetics, as well as so many things, our microbiome, so many things that impact how drugs affect us. And all of this is actually about better treatment and better personalisation. So interesting because hormone replacement therapy does kind of help with all of those areas, but possibly not as much as this postponing menopause. It's a very interesting idea. I mean, let's look at the brain, because you've got a brilliant 3D model here of the brain. I love this.

Indeed. I mean, this is so, when you see it like this, this is. so extraordinary. What's fascinating about it is how large it is compared to the skull. How close to your skull the brain is. Very little protection, it seems, between that and the skull. But I learnt so much doing a programme on brain ageing. And we even looked at depression because untreated depression can be a huge risk for getting dementia later in life. And really, I didn't know that. And I went to film with Leanne Williams, a brilliant scientist at Stanford. And one of the things that was so interesting and you make these programs and you have these nuggets of

takeaway. There's so much interesting science, but just these these old little things. And on the screen, she had screens with lots and lots of data from the research that she'd been doing where she found that you could see depression in the brain on an fMRI scan. So you could give people treatment and you could see how it had worked. And this was having huge impact on people who, you know, you've broken your leg, you can see it in an x-ray and you can see when it's better. It's incredibly helpful to people to be able to see when things have got better. And on her screens, there were all of these five out of ten, six out of ten scores. And I said to her, what, what are those numbers? Is it good to have a high score or a low score? I said, oh, no, the

brain is all about balance. It's all about the fives and sixes out of ten. The amazing thing is that the human brain ever remains in balance. And this was something that was just a huge takeaway for me from the program. Because there's so much that can potentially go wrong. It means that our mental health crisis feels like less of a surprise. Our brains are so incredibly complicated and also unique. I mean, you've obviously been through a lot with your brain surgery. And most of us don't actually get to see what our brains look like. And through various scanning things that I've done for programs,

a lot of analysis about bodies, a lot of the things available in the longevity field. I've seen my insides, maybe more than most people have. But with the brain, one of the things that is being looked at is this idea, that throughout our lives, our natural cognitive decline, so this isn't just the dementia process, but actually what happens to all of us is that our brain shrink. But different parts of our brain can shrink at different speeds, and that can have different impacts on us. So if we can understand what shrinking and see the patterns in it, the AI is predicting which parts of your brain are going to shrink at what speed. So at this point, you can make interventions, lifestyle intervention,

The kind of, I mean, a lot of it comes down to exercise still, a lot of it comes down to the power of good diet. So there's no sort of magic cure right now, but as Alzheimer's drugs get better, we'll start to understand more about who needs, what, when, and preventative drugs will become more meaningful. But in seeing this on the brain, it's really interesting. And a company that was doing this AI platform for anybody that wanted it, the only thing is you do an fMRI scan of your brain, which obviously has. What's an fMRI scan? It's a functional MRI scan. So instead of the MRI scan, just simply looking at the brain, it's actually looking at the activity and the blood flow. Right.

So I was told that I had the talking age of someone a lot younger. The rest seemed a bit average. But it's really interesting to see this. And it's again the power of AI to be able to show you the patterns. And they give everybody one of these to take away as a little memento so you can have an ornament of your brain. I think one of the things that's really blown my mind that you've just said is that depression is visible. Yes, in the brain. And I have a friend of mine who has been depressed all their lives.

And depression is one of those things where often you're thinking, well, I've had a good life. I had good parents. They loved each other. I had a home. I've been married to someone I love. I've got everything I could possibly kind of want in life. Why am I sad? but it isn't, it's just, it's not your fault.

No, of course. It is something that does affect people. And this could really change the quality of someone's life because it is miserable. I know that sounds like a stupid, obvious thing to say. No, but depression is something you beat yourself up about all the time. This is absolutely true. And also, like the facial scans where AI is analysing tiny micro movements

that no human could ever recognise, but do correlate with levels of depression. Being able to quantify it in ways that are very different to an app that gets you to smart to tap on a sad face or a happy face, we've come a long way from that being the way that we track it. And I think when we look at how technology can monitor, assess, quantify, look at patterns and see how we're getting better or worse is really, really important.

Because with the tracking data that we have, for example, and these brain scans and other things bring this in, to the context of the brain. But with a lot of these devices, they're measuring heart rate, they're measuring blood oxygen, they're measuring various different activities and how well you're sleeping. But there are also elements sometimes that you need to put in yourself. For example, or a ring wearers will tell you that if you're doing exercise, it wants you to confirm whether you're running, cycling what you're doing. Well, many people in a hurry will just tick the first thing. Oh, it was exercise. It doesn't matter. So things that involve human input,

we know are imperfect. So anything that can actually really quantify, and especially when it comes to something like depression, stop us having to keep questioning. Stop the person having to question exactly how they're feeling. How on earth do they give this a mark out of 10? It just adds an extra dimension to that. And whilst all the old methods are incredibly useful,

and none of this is about putting doctors out of the picture, this is about augmenting them, and this is about being able to give people ways of assessing themselves 24-7, The power is incredible and this is a really positive story of AI and what it can do for us. You are never too old to learn something new. I used to be so terrified of tech

but I started using Adobe Express which is the quick and easy, create anything app and it's one of our sponsors too and I use it to tell my story my way. It's about impact. Havina? Yes.

Did you mean to export this poster of Michael to such a large size? As I was saying. It's never been easier to bring your ideas to life. Yes. Just checking these stickers that say really to write, they're also for you too? Yes, those are for me. Merchandising is an important revenue stream.

I work with Stephen Bartlett. You know, I'm an entrepreneur. Look, whatever your business, side hustle or random, oh, I've got an idea a moment is, Adobe Express gives you everything that you need to design it, share it and make it real. So head to adobe.ly slash divina to get started. Did she really use the generative AI, did you and bikettes?

She loves Adobe. You were talking about fMRIs, and I feel like it's only a very, I mean, maybe one place or very quite a, that's got this AI technology around this area. How soon before you think it will be seeing it kind of everywhere? Yeah. How quickly will it be rolling out?

Well, access is a really important question. And I have spoken to scores of the world leading scientists and experts in this. And doctors, so people in the healthcare perspective and people from the scientific community. And the question is always this. It's always about access and who gets what, when. So there are smaller MRI scanners being developed. There are wearables being developed. The resolution is often a lot lower.

So they're not necessarily useful right now. But I think what's happening is the technology is getting better and is starting to be able to tell us a lot more. The patterns and AI recognition is getting a lot better as well. So we're getting to this place where you can understand more from tech, which is more achievable. But there are still a lot of questions over access. And in fact, something else I talked about at Stanford was the percentage of people who suffer from migraines is actually lower than the percentage of people that suffer from depression. And people with migrable... Need a vehicle that isn't afraid to make a splash?

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to imagine the idea that people with depression could be once this technology has proven it's worth longer term because a lot of stuff is still at trial stage. It would be a huge game changer. It is. And this is what we need to really embrace with preventative medicine. It can save enormous amounts of money. It will also be much, much kinder.

But if you look at the National Health Service here and very different challenges in the US with the way insurance works because their insurance companies investing in prevention are not necessarily going to gain benefit from people not getting sick because they may have a change insurance company. But we need to look at these challenges

and they're not always the same pots of money. But we are already seeing incremental changes of where this is happening and prevention is being embraced. And as we start to be able to understand so much more about who is at risk of what, when, this is by pulling in our behavioural data, even lifestyle, air quality,

with our genetics, with our understanding of disease, we start to know who is at risk, so we screen better. We start to find disease earlier. We can then treat things in kinder ways, in more personalized ways, more gently if it's earlier, because we mustn't forget quality of life here. That's that gap between health span and lifespan. Yeah. Can I ask you something?

Because you're talking a lot about wearable tech. Yeah. And so it's a good thing then that somebody, would be able to access all of our health data from a piece of wearable tech. Should we all be considering getting some piece of wearable tech? I think it's a controversial question. Yeah. Because it's very easy for me sitting here now to say, yes, and they're going to be prescribed on the NHS, by the way.

This is part of the government's 10-year health plan within 10 years. Is that actually... It is part of the plan that within 10 years, people with chronic health conditions for preventative health and leaving hospital after acute treatment will be given wearer. There's a shoe scale of wearables. There are plenty that are very cheap that can do a really adequate job. So democratising access to wearables is one thing within there. But there are also ethical questions here in countries where abortion is not acceptable. People don't necessarily want to be doing period tracking. They're worried about who is going to be accessing that data. Oh, God. And there's so much to get at.

There is. There's so much to get at. And there are big societal and ethical questions here. and many people bring up these issues and... I haven't even thought about that. Well, yes, these things exist. And they exist in a bigger picture, worldwide picture. And I think I have to give a nod to that. But actually, the question as to whether you, me, and most of the people listening to this are going to benefit from a wearable,

well, my personal opinion and I've got nothing to benefit from anybody doing this, is it's incredibly valuable unless you're a person that becomes anxious. about the data. Right. So if you don't want to share your data, don't wear one. Well, in terms of sharing the data, you're sharing anonymised data. So I'm not sure if people are worried that tech companies are going to benefit from their data and they don't like the idea of that financial gain. But if they're just worried about it being personal information, well, it's anonymised and it's not hugely useful to anybody that data if you're just looking at those patterns. Data is valuable on large scales of large numbers of people.

But when you said that about abortions or periods being tracked or I can understand if there is a criminal case for somebody getting pregnant and somebody doesn't want to know anybody to know, I think I can understand people being nervous. Yeah. If their health is a matter of legal fear. Yes. This is anonymised data. It shouldn't be getting out to anybody.

We know the way that we hear about data breaches. We know things that can happen. But this is anonymised data that is collected from all of these devices. And when it comes to healthcare, because a lot of the things that I've talked about, whether it's AI being used on scans, AI within healthcare is being strictly regulated within that healthcare remit. So we already trust our doctors with our data. And in fact, there was a study into how much more people trust the NHS than they do tech companies.

And a large part of that is because they don't want tech companies benefiting from their health issues. But in health, data needs to be kept safe. And it's a bit like with the mental health chatbot stuff that's going on. Oh, I want to talk to you about that. Sure. Mental health. Yes. So massive.

So the chatbot idea of a chatbot being able to talk to somebody and basically give them therapy. Yes, and there are chatbots that are built for that with safety and privacy at their core, which are designed to be safe and provide a service and escalate to the human help that would be needed where it's obvious that it's there. But we also have to accept that we live in the real world and people have their own way of wanting to do things and people know large language models can be really, really engaging to have conversations with. So this is things like chat GPT, Claude GROC, and people are likely to go to those platforms and have conversations when they're in their time of need, which don't have the privacy built in

because what they're saying is going back to train the model. They're not medical bots. They are general. And there have been some very sad stories of things that have happened. And there was one recently, right? Exactly. And the tech companies are trying to do what they can to build in the safety that's needed. Open AI is making some changes now, especially over parental access to teenagers' accounts, to know more about what they're doing and to flag if there seems to be an issue. But I've done some experiments with this and I can tell you that not all chatbots come back with safe answers always. And a lot is in the prompting and we are still at a point of needing to make these platforms safer because they're not. are not designed for that purpose, but inevitably people will use them for that. So let's discuss the kind of conversation that a parent should have.

If they've got teenagers in the house, teenagers are accessing all of my kids. I've got three kids. They are all accessing chatGBT, add in for an item about everything. What kind of messages do we need to get over to our teenagers? What kind of prompts should we not be giving or be aware of or be careful around? Yeah, a lot of this takes us back to the conversations on internet safety that we've been having for years. And I think there was a generation where it was the first time parents were having to deal with internet safety. And I think now there's a generation of people having to deal with AI safety for the first thing.

Me. I've no idea what to say. Yeah. And one of the really big challenges is we've just talked about the issues over the dangers with mental health that exist. but what is true. Understanding what to believe and what's real, I think is one of the biggest challenges of the age right now. And the problem with this is you teach people, teenagers, anybody, to question everything because you don't know what's real or not and question what the sources are.

And you don't want them to end up in a place where they trust nothing. So understanding what sources are reliable and checking that things have truly come from those sources because sometimes on social media, there are videos and posts that are designed to look like they've come from major national broadcasters that they haven't. So disinformation is a huge threat out there right now. And it's a challenge that we are grappling with and has only just begun. And as video recordings, sound recordings, you can record eight seconds of someone's voice

and turn it into anything that sounds believable. So knowing to question things and knowing to question the sources is of course critical. We also, a bit like with AI safety, need to actually be aware that our children are going to face information. Information is going to get to them that we don't necessarily want it to. How are they going to deal with it? So we actually need to try and teach them resilience and what they do when they come up against something that doesn't seem right. because we can't protect them from it forever. So painful that.

Well, it is. And a lot of the worries people have over jobs and what are people going to do when they leave school, how are they going to deal with this world? Well, one of the most important things is that kids need to finish education, understanding AI and understanding the role it plays within everything. What's often said is it's not people that are going to lose their jobs to AI.

It's people that don't understand AI that are going to lose their jobs to people who are better at, AI. So we do need to understand it and that's really important. It comes with its challenges and in 10 years time we'll probably all be a lot wiser as to how we deal with those things. Is it, is it all right for me to mention what happened to this boy with Open AI and ChatGBT GBT? This is allegedly what happened was a 16 year old boy was talking to ChatGBT. We don't know, I don't know what the conversation was but something happened and he ended up taking his own life. This is a phenomenon known as AI

psychosis, which has grown out of the fact that AI can be incredibly sticophantic. Unless you use one of the models that's deliberately abusive to you for entertainment, then it tends to support your thoughts and how you're feeling quite a lot. And in some instances, that's not ideal. Yeah, safe. So that's what happened to this boy. And then now his parents are taking Open AI to court because they lost their son. So there are some serious ramifications, and that's why it's important that we as midlifers don't try and close our eyes to AI because it, well, I guess there's a lot going on.

You'll know about this, about brain health and learning new things. We need to keep learning new things. It's good for our brain health. We mustn't kind of think, oh, I just don't want to learn about that because it's too complicated. Michael, my partner, he's brilliant because he makes me learn new things. he made me learn about the metaverse. I went to a meeting in the metaverse. It was brilliant.

I was a bit like, I just can't be asked. Like it's too big a thing. But he made me learn about Bitcoin. He made me learn about... I love the subjects he's choosing. Yeah. Well, it's all things that it's new to me. And a bit, oh God.

But he's like, we have to learn it because this is the future. And it's been a brilliant experience for me. But you're really helping me actually. realise that I can't turn a blind eye to AI. No, that's right. Us humans built it and we built it to better things, to better our experiences, to do things more efficiently

and be able to learn more from the knowledge that we have. We have never been more knowledgeable or powerful than we are right now, yet still we are questioning our very future as a result of AI. I think what is interesting is that, like you just say, said, we're more knowledgeable and powerful. We have all of this incredible technologies of fingertips. And yet, there is literally an epidemic of a worldwide epidemic of poor mental health. Yeah. Why is that? Well, technology can also be seen to be one of the drivers for it. Lots of people will say that the smartphone generation has been enormously damaging for it.

The always-on sense that we have, we don't switch off enough. And I mean, look, I'm, I'm, I'm no experts in this, I can't vouch for what has caused it, but I certainly know that one of the things that people often bring up is technology. So whilst it may be blamed for a lot of the problem, it's also hopefully going to play a part in actually being able to improve it as well. And one of the other things that I was absolutely horrified by, because cancer rates are increasing. So I remember, I think it was kind of one in three, one and four, but now it's 50% of at some point during our lives, will get cancer. And obviously, AI is going to play a big part in that.

Can you tell me a bit more about that? It really is. And this has been one of the big drivers for the various programs I've made over the last few years, looking at longevity and the future of health, and for why I've written the book. We'd all like to aid better. We don't want to get bad knees. We don't want to get a bit forgetful. But we really don't want cancer.

And the power here to be able to delay and possibly prevent disease is incredible. And it is agreed upon by all experts. And I spoke to scores of people, 1,500 citations from medical papers when I handed this over to Penguin, because I really needed to get into the nitty gritty here of what was going on. The change in the future of cancer is the biggest change that we're probably going to see within healthcare. Wow. Now, this is for many reasons. There's so many variables.

cancer is so many different things. There are so many types, so many subtypes. There are the genetics of the tumour, not just the location of the tumour. And there are also so many different risk factors. And as we understand more about our genetics, the impact of lifestyle, which is huge on so many elements of our ageing

and our overall health, and what we understand about the genetics of disease and the prevalence of disease, then we are going to really start to understand more about who is likely to get what, when. And with cancer, finding it early can make the real difference. So if this is a matter of being able to diagnose more cancers at stage one or two, which in the UK and the US is an absolutely huge mission, there are the blood tests that are happening, there are loads of different things happening in this space, then a lot more cancer should

become treatable. But something that I thought was really interesting whilst doing this research as well was Genomics England is doing a lot of really interesting. genomic testing. And one thing... What is genomic testing? So this is understanding based on the human genome, which cost $3 billion

back in, I think it was around 2003 to sequence the genome of the first person. Now any of us can sequence our full genome for a couple hundred. Questionable how useful it is to us as individuals, but at a healthcare level

it is really going to become increasingly so. Oh really? And some of the research they're doing is on, for example, on newborn babies to find rare diseases, Rare diseases are actually fairly common, albeit each disease is quite rare. One in 17 of us has one.

And with some of these conditions, discovering a baby has it means they can avert blindness because they can be treated at that point. But what they're doing in terms of cancer, which I thought was absolutely fascinating because I hadn't heard this anywhere before, was they're not just looking at someone's likelihood of getting cancer, but why are people getting it in their 30s, 40s? Yes, it does feel like people are getting it much younger nowadays. Particularly with colon cancer. Yes. Yes. And so they're looking at what is causing that and how they can start looking for it.

Because obviously we can have the greatest screening programs, even if everybody actually stuck to them, which sadly isn't the case, but even if everybody went to the screen that they could. But there are going to be the anomalies, those people who didn't fall into the age groups. And so this research is really interesting because they are hoping that in time, they'll start to understand not just someone's risk, but their risk at what point in their lives, because that would also be critical as well. So you could take more care at that time, get tested more regularly.

Exactly. From a certain time in your life. Wow. And this raises a little bit like what you said with the data from wearables that some people may just feel anxious to have this information. If you're told you're going to die at 50 and there's nothing you can do about it, well, the chances are you wouldn't want to know that. That's not great information. But actionable insights where you can do something about it is what is useful.

And as time goes on, more things are going to become actionable. And that knowledge is going to provide us with greater power as to things that we can actually do for ourselves. You pointed out that younger people are getting particularly, did you say colon cancer or stumps? Yeah, colon cancer. The rates of colon cancer have really increased. I don't know the exact figures. No. But are they, you said that they were looking into the reasons for that.

Did they give you any indication of what they think that might be now? Well, a lot of what people suggest is this comes down to ultra-processed food. So a lot of it's based on diet. And actually, the impact of diet and processed food is absolutely huge. I talked earlier about this blue zone in California. And Okinawa, the blue zone in Japan, is effectively losing its blue zone status. It has lower life expectancy than most other parts of Japan because there's a high rate of processed food being eaten there.

So diet is having a huge impact. and the research is still underway at the moment into what's going on with these figures on colon cancer. I think, and I would suggest somebody to check this afterwards, but I think that the rate in the under 50s of colon cancer may have doubled. Now that is from a thankfully very low base, but why is it rising? And you don't want to see that as an exponential rise. But we do need to check that because I'm not actually sure on the figure. You know what's funny about processed food is, you know, I use.

I used to see it as kind of a treat sometimes. You know, it's something I'd have occasionally. Now I can't even look at it anymore. No, I'm with you. I walk into a petrol station in a hurry to eat something. And I don't actually fancy a chocolate bar of a pack and crisp. I'm not that extreme generally, but just those things, not into them anymore. It's like I don't want to do it to myself.

No. It's quite interesting how it's going to change people's perceptions about it's become like a poison. Yeah. that ultra-processed foods and the way we talk about them is going to change everybody's perception of foods that we've seen as treats. I know. And we've learned so much. Sometimes it is just little nuggets of information that can really change our behaviour. And that's what I think, a lot of this technology and a lot of the research in terms of the stuff that we can do for ourselves does.

It just pushes you a little bit in the right direction. And we all have busy lives. People have kids. People have people they care for. People work shifts. We can't live life permanently, so it's taking away the little bits. And for some of us, that's not wanting to eat Kristen chocolate anymore. Some people might set that a long clock to go to bed.

I thought it was interesting when I was testing a continuous glucose monitor. I didn't want to change my entire diet as a result. But I did start to feel like, well, actually, if my vegetable juice is giving me a bigger spike from having it before lunch than having dessert after dinner, I just won't do that anymore. Yes. And some of this information that used to be available to Elite, athletes so that they could do that have their best performance now is available to all of us. So we can just pick and choose our elements we want. It is interesting because there's quite, there's been quite a kickback sometimes from people

going, oh, you know, say and people that aren't diabetic wearing glucose monitors and this is a fad and it's a, but actually there are a lot of health benefits to being able to see what kind of, because we are all different, right? Yes. And that's what a lot of this drives us to be able. to do, we are and we all react differently to things and some of us need more sleep than others. There's a huge amount of variation between us. So our ability to be able to track it all and to see how our body is responding to the changes that we make is incredibly powerful. And for our

energy levels as well, something like blood sugar, I think for our energy throughout the day is huge. I used to sometimes eat a jacket potato for lunch at work and feel so lethargic afterwards and feel like, Well, it's not that bad. It's only a jacket potato and cheese, but I felt sleepy. I didn't feel great. And I didn't even need to log it to know that. But some people may not feel quite as sleepy as I did. But it's funny because we never knew why.

No. And at school, you'd often have a jacket potato. Not as a school I used to have jacketas for lunch. I probably wasn't listening in the afternoon. Yeah, well, I used to call it a carbcomer. Yeah. But I didn't know what, like, why or what it was, but that's what I'd call it. I've got a carb coma.

That's it. And just changing the order of the food that we eat, eating the same food in a different order can even mean that people lose weight. So there is so much that can be gained by having that knowledge, by understanding a bit more about how our bodies are functioning and also separating the science from snake oil because there's a lot out there that is being pushed at us. How do we do that?

I did by 1,500 citations from medical papers and talking to these people. But I think, I mean, actually genuinely, through making, I made a few documentaries on longevity, through click that I was doing every week when I was looking at various different health technologies. Can we just explain to a very important health technologies? Can we just explain to anybody that's watching Click is a program that's on the BBC about technology?

Yes, it was a BBC's technology show. It'd run for 21 years up until early this year. I'd done it for 15 years. And so I had travelled the world covering the most incredible innovation on Earth. So this could have been sustainability, the latest smart glasses, but a lot of stories about health. And these were the ones that I just really felt were changing the world so dramatically and were real and were happening. And we're changing things now and we're going to increasingly do so. So that's kind of where my focus went. But I've always really done a lot of deep research into the stories behind the claims that companies are making and what they're claiming is possible because you can claim you're doing anything.

But it needs to be possible to start with. And so when it comes to health, this meant a lot of medical papers, a lot of scientific papers. And not everybody's got the time to go through all of that and it would be an absurd thing to do. But you did it for us. But I did it for the book. I've done it for everyone. And, you know, I hope the book is a really human, digestible, easy-to-read story of what this means for us as people. This is what it means for you. It's not a list of takeaways of things you should do for tomorrow.

It's about how your body functions and what we can do to best support that. The role technology and AI is playing in it shouldn't be seen as scary. There's enormous positives. These are the questions we should ask and this is what it means. this is just a little bit of demystifying it, but actually we are looking at a far better future for our health. We've managed to increase lifespan. We need to now be able to increase health span to match that.

And I think AI and technology are driving us to a place where that's possible. I mean, you know, obviously menopause affects all women, and we've talked a bit about the way that our health can decline, starting in pari menopause and menopause. We've talked about brain health and how important matters, but cardiovascular disease is an absolutely massive one. Yeah. Is it, it's the biggest killer, I think, of people, men and women worldwide.

And it's genetic, it can be lifestyle, it can be a bit of anything. And what kind of ways, because I was thinking earlier how brilliant it would be if you could come up with an invention, AI, if you're listening, It's always listening. This is like me being paranoid. I know you're listening. In the UK, we've got like a drain cleaner called Calgon. I seem to remember the advert.

Washing machines live longer with Calgon. Isn't that frighten? How old was that advert? I don't know. 20 years or something. I mean, that's how good that advert was. That song is completely memorable. That you need like a Calgon for veins.

and arteries and, you know, to clean out the plaque that gathers there. But what way, I mean, joking apart, can AI help with cardiovascular disease? There's actually quite a few things in this. One of them is gene editing. There's a gene that means people are at increased risk of high cholesterol, high cholesterol increasing your risk of heart disease. And editing that gene is something that's being looked at as a potential. future. I think I've read about that somewhere. Yeah. I'm pretty sure I've read about that way

where you, it would be, you'd be done. Yeah. So that would mean a lifetime of taking heart medicine would be a thing of days gone by for people who have that as their high risk factor. Yeah. Lifestyle we know is huge. So a lot of the tracking to assess our lifestyle is important. There are various devices like an ECG is a really old way of measuring. And it's been around for years, But actually the data from that is now being processed by AI to learn a lot more about people's risk. So we're starting to understand more. So when people are in hospital or having checkups, we can understand more about future risk as well. And so there are various things going on where AI is taking patterns and data and understanding more.

Also, the GLP ones. You can't write a book about the future of health without weight loss drugs. Laura, can I just say, I love the way you're like. the gLP ones like i'm like i want to whisper to someone i don't know what that is because you were like everybody sorry you said it like everybody knows what that is and i was suddenly like that i don't know what that is the weight lost drugs oh those the weight lost drugs god i was just going to pull my trousers down i'm coming in laura done um we're at a really interesting point with what is going on with the weight loss drugs because what is being seen is they are having

huge benefits in reducing cardiovascular risks, in reducing risks of dementia, Parkinson's, there's a whole list of diseases. And that's because weight gain is a risk? Yes. Look, so I think there's a few things here where being overweight or having obesity are risk factors for a lot of things. What is currently trying to be unpacked is how much is the mechanism of the drug reducing these risks and how much is the weight loss reducing? Right. And the research is still going on that place. It could be. And right now that is being looked at. It's a really active conversation because we have seen the huge difference these drugs are making for individuals.

And also, we can't underestimate this at population level for healthcare systems. Wow. Because people are getting less sick. It massively helps healthcare systems. And obesity is not a choice. It's a condition. It's a really tough and complicated one. And the numbers are staggering. The numbers are staggering here in Britain, even more staggering in the US. So the impact of these drugs is absolutely huge.

And there's many questions about how long term this plays out. Because people are taking them for, say, two years, being advised to him to do you, what happens after that? And there's some data to show that a lot of weight is being put back on by a lot of people afterwards. So how do they keep the weight off and how do they maintain the benefits? Some research was actually showing the disease risk benefits seem to last longer than some of the weight loss benefits. But it's still really early days for a lot of this. Diabetics have been taking them for years. We know that they've been seen to be safe in the diabetics that have been taking them.

And there's a lot that we can learn from that. But in non-diabetics taking them, we still need to see a lot of this unfold. I mean, they've been proven to get very few side effects for a lot of people. It's crazy, isn't it? It just feels like an explosion is happening because of AI in health. And there is so much new information to unpick and AI is going to help us do that. Yes, absolutely. Just had a quick moment of thank God for that.

Good. I think that's my first moment. I was my first moment. Yeah. I think having arrived here today and you told me, how scared you were. Yeah. And you wanted to be reassured.

Yes. I in some ways may have reinforced some of the concerns that you had because it would be naive to suggest they don't exist. Yeah. And I actually think it gives more credibility to the fact that I am on balance and AI optimist, the fact that I do recognise the challenges as well. Because they are real. This is a whole new world.

And human error has always existed in everything from love to war and everything in between. And AI error will also exist. The mistakes it makes will be very different to human mistakes. They may be some very futuristic mistakes and we may be less accepting of what a machine does wrong than a human. But self-driving cars should be safer than humans driving. We won't be as accepting of accidents that happen.

There's no one who's got to live with it for the rest of their life. There's a whole world of new thinking that's to come. But there's also incredible promise and especially when it comes to health care, incredible hope. I mean, this idea, I'm still kind of marvelling at the heart health and the difference that that can make to people. But these injections... Do you know Johann Hari?

I know who Johan Hari is. He wrote a brilliant book called Magic Pill. Have you read it? Yes, I have. Very good. Yeah, it was so fascinating because it had the pros and the cons about it. But now I think even since the book was written,

so much more has been discovered. Yeah. Something in that book that I loved actually was the point that for many people, food is a comfort blanket, what happens when the comfort blanket gets taken away? Therapy. Yeah. With chat, GPT.

Well, is it, you know, if somebody is watching this and they feel like they do want to talk to someone and perhaps they can't afford to go and see a therapist or the NHS has got such long waiting times to have therapy, is there an app or that you have? the documentary. Weiser that have designed for this purpose. Tell me about Wiser. I mean, I know this isn't an advert because you're

not paid by Wiser. No, no, of course not. And there are other platforms out there as well. But Wiser is available. It's a chatbot. There's a free-to-use version. There's an upgraded version where you can interact with a human therapist. And if it sees somebody is in acute stress, it will escalate it, saying

that they need to go to a suicide line, for example, and it has those protocols in place for safety. But it also offers someone to talk to 24-7. appointments with humans can be hard to come by. And I don't think anybody is trying to claim that an AI chatbot is overall better than a human, but there are some instances where people may feel more comfortable to talk to the AI than a human. And this has been seen within certain communities, within the trans community, this has been something.

And this is something which I think we need to recognise the AI does actually serve a purpose in being there 24-7 when anybody needs it. And it's not replacing a human, it's not doing the job a human does, but often it's an alternative to nothing. Yes. So AI has a role there when it's used safely and sensibly. And the risk is, of course, that people just feel it's easier or preferable to go to one of the platforms like Claude or ChatGPT where you just have an instant chat and that's where they want to do it. And when I did some research into this, and I looked at what people were talking about online in Reddit communities, a lot of people were doing this. And the reason that they were doing that rather than using these safe, built-for-purpose platforms was because they felt it was more engaging conversation. So we really need to address human behaviour amidst this.

We want the AI systems to be perfect. We also need to make sure that we use it in the right ways. And that it's safe. Yeah. I mean, it's utterly mind-blowing thinking about the future. and I was thinking about people using AI as company or for comfort or to go to in a moment of darkness. And then I was thinking, but what's funny is that this darkness,

sometimes you were talking earlier about technology, creating this mental health epidemic in young people because you're constantly connected to your phone, you're constantly findable, traceable, contactable. And I started thinking about starting a hippie commune with no phones. Like somebody going to the country for the weekend, you know, or staying in an Airbnb somewhere for a weekend to just get away from a wall. We'll turn into a leave your phone at the gate in the lockable thing

and come and spend the weekend on our commune. with animals and ho-downs and line dancing or clubbing or... People would feel slightly anxious maybe about doing it but it would be amazing for so many of us before the benefit. It'd be mad, wouldn't it?

I'd love that. What, no phone... I went to a club the other night where everybody had to lock their phone at reception. No phones in the club. It was brilliant. I mean, number one, I guess,

like people, you know, you could dance like no one's watching because no one was watching. It was... Absolutely. It was mega. You know, you could go in some outrageous outfit because there's not going to be photographic evidence for your boss to see. You could, I don't know, it was like so free. It is. And we can all really benefit from that.

The weird thing is, there's this anxiety, I think, of what if something bad happens? Well, many years ago we didn't use to have to. smartphones and people were the way of contacting you. Yeah, but that was what was so nice. We didn't know if something bad happened. Well, yeah, maybe it's beneficial. Weirdly, I feel like I'm also very caught up in the news cycle. I listen to the news so many times a day.

What would I do if I didn't do that? Well, I'd probably have a better day. So there's a lot to be said for it. And that importance of human interactions, and actually, when it comes to technology's passing this and it's not taking away from these really important human interactions, one of the big things is frictionless technology. So, for example, if you've got an elderly relative and you're worried about their safety at home,

they don't necessarily want a camera on wheels following them around, seeing what they're up to, because they feel like they were being spied on. It's a little bit creepy and it's very there. Whereas if you had a sensor on the fridge that tracked how many times they were opening it, so you could assess when they were eating or having a cup of tea, and you had a sensor in the bathroom, so you knew how often they were going in there, and you had a full sensor, so you knew if they'd fallen over. You're collecting that data pretty seamlessly. they're not feeling it.

The AI is digesting what's going on. You're getting an alert if something seems amiss if the patterns have changed. And it's these kind of ways that AI can be built into what's going on around us and the technology can be used in a frictionless way. So in terms of looking after older relatives, that's something. But there's also, when you talk about loneliness and companionship and the importance of that, and it is something that's so crucial. and we really must remember, I think, when talking about technology and what it does, what it means for us, our behaviour, how we feel about it every day.

And one thing that I filmed with, which I think was possibly surprising, was a robotic puppy that looked like a cute furry Labrador. How like a cute furry Labrador did it? You knew it wasn't real. Jim Fenton puppet shop had created it. So it was, you know, it's pretty nice. It was better than an average company toy. If Jim Henson made it, I am going to love it. I wish it was here today. It's called Jenny.

And it can sit down on the floor or it can sit down on a table next to you. And its sound is the recordings of a 12-week-old Labrador puppy. And they've tried to make it move, the little head movements, just like an actual puppy does to make it as true to life as possible. and when you stroke it, it would react in the way a sweet-loving, well-behaved puppy would. Now, I took this to a care home in the US. And I thought it was really cute. I thought it was a really nice bit of tech.

And I filmed with plenty of robot dogs that don't really look like dogs, apart from the fact they have four legs. Plenty of humanoids. And we all have this emotive response, but it's clearly not a person. But the thing with the dog was, it really made people feel many of the things that having a dog pop into vogue. visit could have done. And I believe that was the case. People were so happy. They were so drawn to it. They were stroking it. They were chatting about it. They were smiling.

They were laughing. And there was one group of people who were at the early stages of dementia. There was another group of people who weren't. And just seeing the joy that this dog could bring them. And it was a bit of tech. And this is an environment

where they couldn't have a real dog. The dog is designed for that. I was just thinking, why wouldn't you get a real dog? I think if you've got somebody with Alzheimer's, you can't look after, you'd forget to feed it. Although I do have to say there was one point where this went terribly wrong. They had to reboot it. The technology froze.

And luckily, I sort of stood around to the side so no one would see it because it was like having to put it down for a moment and bring it back to life. So you don't want to see the resuscitation of the dog. But there are benefits that you can get from things that, look, I am not suggesting, and I think any real dog lovers will be hearing this probably wanting to shout at the podcast. Of course it's not the same as my dog. And of course, it's not the same as having a dog.

But for somebody who can't take your way that. Can't have one. Exactly. And so it may seem odd to have that engagement with the technology. And the founder was really quite forcefully saying, we're not trying to trick anybody at all into believing it's a real dog. We're trying to make it as realistic as possible so you get the benefits. And I saw how happy those people seem to be made by it.

That's not me playing with a gadget. doing a review, which I do on plenty of things, assuming how people might feel, that was actually seeing it. I mean, what is interesting, let's face it, as parents, I'm sure all of us have bought our kids one of the little yappy play dogs, you know, and that made our kids happy because it's like having a little dog, but not having dogs. You know, that's it. It's so much easier.

Yeah. I mean, I personally, I love real dogs, but I can see if somebody can't look after a dog, that, yeah, that would be amazing. Yeah, and these kind of pets are now being used for children with developmental disorders. There's lots of different purposes where they're being used to try and help soothe and engage in ways that a real pet might do but isn't necessarily practical. In writing your book, I know this is a big ask really for you to think about, but what was your biggest kind of maybe overall discovery? We've talked about the cancer stuff and how we need to close this gap on health span and lifespan. I think I felt like I learned a lot from Mildred who...

Oh, I'd like to go back to Mildred. I don't want to be Mildred. And I understand completely what Mildred's saying. Yeah. I don't want to be 103 and in great health, but just not have the zest and people that I love dying. Yeah, exactly. And losing my kids.

I don't want that. I want to go, basically. If you hear a story on the news that I have, pop my clogs on a dance floor, dancing to EDM music at a festival with no phone. With no phone. Be happy for me. And know that I've had a fab life. But I started this podcast to try and help people live a life that they love so that they can die happy.

I want everybody to have that opportunity. And yeah, that's where I, that's how I want to go. So tell me about what Mildred did for you. Yeah, well, this is it. And I spent a week filming with Brian Johnson, the tech entrepreneur, who's spending millions, doing everything trying to reverse his biological age, which is fascinating and fun. And each individual thing rooted in science, it's all really interesting. I've been to the leading universities across the US, seen the latest research, things like being able to identify depression on the brain in an fMRI scan. And then I went to Loma Linda. I met a lady who was

99 who had just been to the gym and amazing, absolutely amazing. I was waiting for her and they said, oh, she's not back from the gym yet. Incredible, I want to see her. Good. Not yet, I'll wait another 50 years. But it was utterly brilliant. But Mildred was the solid reality check of all of this.

This is what science and innovation makes possible. But what do we, the humans, the most important bit of all of this, want out of our lives? Well, we want to feel 40 at 80. We ideally want to suddenly fall off a metaphorical cliff. We want to be able to be healthy as we can for as long as possible. We don't want to spend decades in drawn out decline. And I think that is where this idea of longevity and future health is something that all of us can agree on, that it's not just for the elite, it's not some wild expectation.

We would like to be able to live very healthily and well until 85, 90, whatever seems realistic. There are plenty of people who might want to go just about into their hundreds, but Mildred really, really told me that it's not just about existing, it's about living. And at the very end of the interview, she slightly furiously said, it's very important that you must eat well, you must have a good lifestyle, but I'm not all about you must absolutely do this, this and this. And then I said, what, you've got to live.

And she said, yes, you've got to live. Wow. That's a beautiful place to end this interview. Say, thank you, Lara. It's been absolutely fascinating. And I do feel better about it. And I do also realize that, you know, your book, I think because it's based in science with all the papers and you've done the research so we don't have to, you know, we know it's safe to read. We know it's factual.

Yeah. It's definitely got all the facts in there. And I hope it's easy. to digest in a really easy day-to-day way within human stories and what it means for you. Thank you so much for having me. Oh, well, thank you. You're amazing.