The Rich Roll Podcast - Sergey Young on The Science of Growing Young

Episode Date: August 16, 2021

What if I told you that there was a Russian millionaire who wants to help you live to be 150-years-old? This isn’t science fiction—it’s ‘immortality science’. It’s the science of lifespan ...extension. The science of what today’s guest calls growing young. Meet Sergey Young, the exceedingly bright and optimistic chemical engineer turned investment banker turned venture capitalist committed to not only funding cutting-edge lifespan extension breakthroughs but also ensuring that such advancements are affordable and accessible to all. Named one of the Top 100 Longevity Leaders in the world, Sergey is an XPRIZE Foundation Board Member, the founder of the $100M Longevity Vision Fund, and a development sponsor of the Age Reversal XPRIZE, which is a global competition designed to find a cure for aging. Yes, you read that right—a cure. He’s also the author of the new book hitting shelves everywhere August 24, 2021 (and now available for pre-order) entitled, The Science And Technology Of Growing Young, which is a fascinating demystification of the longevity landscape, a primer on the science and technology developments aimed at healthspan enhancement, and a practical guidebook outlining the many things we all can and should be doing now to live vibrantly to 100 and beyond. Today we run the gamut on longevity, including near and long-term science & technological advancements like the advent of bio-tracking wearables, body digitization, and the role of artificial intelligence in revolutionizing medical diagnostics and early disease detection. We also cast a future gaze into the insanely wild far horizon of age-reversal science, digital avatars, telexistence, 3-D organ printing, and AI-brain integration. Pivoting to the immediately practical, we also converse about the many things we can and should all be doing now to extend not just our lifespan, but our healthspan—things like eating a plant-based diet, prioritizing exercise, sleep, relationships, and spending time in nature. But the most interesting aspects of this exchange are the moral and philosophical dilemmas that surface in the conversation around human lifespan extension—and the urgency with which we need to be thinking very deeply about the many profound implications of these advancements. Brilliant, charming, and quite funny, it’s an honor to share Sergey’s wisdom with you today. Break out the pen and notepad. You’re going to want to take notes on this one. To read more click here. You can also watch listen to our exchange on YouTube. And as always, the podcast streams wild and free on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Enjoy! Peace + Plants, Rich

Transcript
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Starting point is 00:00:00 When I see the future, it's a future when we will have an opportunity to redefine what human body and mind means. So my future is about our ability to regenerate organs, ability to alter our genes. And we already know 3,000 genes in our DNA which are responsible for aging processes, which starts probably after the age of 20, 25. My mantra is to live 200 years in a 25-year-old body. I'm a great believer of the psychological aspect of aging. This change into this mental paradigm has changed my life a lot because every morning I wake up, I have like three-fourths of my life ahead of me. I can dream, I can think big, I can actually change the world in a positive way. Increase of the lifespan is happening. 100 years ago, the average lifespan on Earth was, what, 35 years.
Starting point is 00:00:55 Right now, again, for developed countries, it's 75. No one ever had a debate, like, can we allow this to happen or not? So, in a way, this is a trajectory and what i would like to do is for us to start a conversation start a thinking process about how the world should change how our relationship with modern nature should change how our ethical norms social constructs needs to change we have created technologies to extend our life we have created technologies to extend our life but we haven't created the life that we want to extend hi this is Sergei Young and this is Rich Roll Podcast
Starting point is 00:01:41 The Rich Roll Podcast. What would life be like if you could live to 150, 150 years old healthily? Well, what about 200? What about beyond that? Well, this is not science fiction, but it is science, the science of lifespan extension, the science of what today's guest calls growing young. And it's a very interesting science in that it, of course, conjures up some very important questions, questions with profound philosophical, moral, ethical, psychological, environmental, and economic implications. But for Sergei Young, a very smart and engaging and optimistic chemical engineer turned investment banker turned venture
Starting point is 00:02:34 capitalist, this science and all the questions it begets is not an academic thought experiment because cutting-edge lifespan extension breakthroughs are very much on the horizon, all in lockstep with his commitment to accelerating these advancements and making them affordable and accessible to all. Named one of the top 100 longevity leaders in the world, Sergey is the founder of the $100 million Longevity Vision Fund. He's an XPRIZE Foundation board member and a development sponsor of the Age Reversal XPRIZE, which is a global competition designed to find a cure for aging. He's also the author of the new book, The Science and Technology of Growing Young, which is a really fascinating demystification of the longevity landscape. It's a look at the near and less near future advancements
Starting point is 00:03:32 and possibilities that await us in this space. And of course the practical and many things we can all and should be doing now to live healthily to 100 and beyond. This one is pretty wild and it's coming right up, but first. We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in
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Starting point is 00:05:36 When you or a loved one need help, go to recovery.com and take the first step towards recovery. To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. Okay, Sergey Young. Longevity, anti-aging, growing young. We cover it all today.
Starting point is 00:05:58 What is longevity? And how near-term technology advancements, things like wearables, body digitization, and AI are revolutionizing medical diagnostics and early disease detection. We discuss the insanely wild far horizon of age reversal science, things like digital avatars,
Starting point is 00:06:21 tele-existence, 3D organ printing, AI brain integration. It's insane what's happening. Also, we of course talk about what we can and should all be doing now to extend, not just our lifespan, but our health span, which is stuff we talk about here all the time. Things like eating a plant-based diet,
Starting point is 00:06:42 prioritizing exercise, sleep, relationships, time and nature. But the most interesting aspect of this one, at least for me, was wrestling with the moral landscape this presents, the ethical questions that life extension surfaces. And the urgency with which we need to be thinking very deeply right now about the many
Starting point is 00:07:08 profound implications of these advancements. So with that being said, let us now slide down the longevity rabbit hole. This is me and Sergey Young. Sergey, nice to meet you. Thank you for doing this, driving up here. Been looking forward to meeting you. Thank you for doing this, driving up here. Been looking forward to meeting you. Hi, Rich. Hi, everyone. It's good to have you. I'm very excited.
Starting point is 00:07:30 Excited to talk about all this kind of stuff. But before we get into any of this, I gotta know. I mean, I can't believe your last name is Yang. Yeah. As somebody of Russian descent, that can't be your real last name. You have a stage name. Yes, I do.
Starting point is 00:07:45 And when people ask me about that, I'm really upfront. So this is the true. I started to spend a lot of time in US in the last five years, since I've developed the passion to change the world. And US is a biggest inefficiency that we have healthcare wise it's like the most inefficient healthcare system in a world with 18% of GDP spent on lifespan, which is constantly declining in the last five years.
Starting point is 00:08:12 So, and then I, so I use my Russian family name and then the whole conversation, like every first 20 minutes of every conversation was, what about your litter? What about the country? What about vodka? What about bears on the street? So can I have this conversation?
Starting point is 00:08:30 Yes, I can, right? So, but then you start with almost like negative consideration and then you turn it to neutral and positive. And it's like hard work on the first 30 minutes of every conversation. And it was pretty detrimental for my mission, right? Because what I want to concentrate on about bright future, what we can do today,
Starting point is 00:08:49 what are the choices that we're facing today, rather than explaining this whole Russia story. So what I thought, and I was just looking at Tony Robbins, he said, I've created this Tony Robbins guy. So I Googled him. So apparently his family name is not Robbins. Oh, I didn't know that.
Starting point is 00:09:04 Okay, that was the case for me. And I thought, name is not Robbins. Oh, I didn't know that. Okay, that was the case for me. And I thought, well, if Tony can do it, right? I met a beautiful Chinese lady when we were discussing age reversal, X Prize competition, and her family name was Yang. I am married man, so I just borrowed the name from her and I'm like, you have a beautiful family name. And she said, well, come on, Sergey, we all have like our different names here because I will, if I will run on my link one, four, it's just very difficult to integrate into the culture. So I thought, okay, I can do it as well. So what I've done, uh, and for Russian men
Starting point is 00:09:39 to change the family name, it's, it's like, it's a big decision. So what I've done just to, again, make it comfortable, for me, I registered a trademark, Sergey Young. I'm 100% owner of this. Yeah. And I just give myself an opportunity to use that. So that's the story. Listen, you're in Los Angeles right now. Oh, yeah.
Starting point is 00:10:01 This is like, this ain't nothing but a thing here. Yeah, yeah. But again, it's not something that I hide from, but it's really turned my conversation from explaining the past to creating the future. And this is what I wanted to do. Right, so we're gonna get into all things longevity, the near future, the crazy ladder future that awaits us,
Starting point is 00:10:25 the current state of affairs, and all of which is broken down beautifully near future, the crazy ladder future that awaits us, the current state of affairs, and all of which is broken down beautifully in your new book, Growing Young, which I'm really enjoying. It's actually a much breezier read than I was expecting. Like you have your scientific, you know, rabbit holes that you go down from time to time, but overall it's kind of a page turner for the subject matter that you're tackling
Starting point is 00:10:45 with all of this. It is. The biggest challenge was to just to keep it simple. And we literally took out the chapter on theories of aging because in the end of the day, we don't have like the theory and it was 40 pages of hard science. So in the end, we just end up with explaining the hallmarks
Starting point is 00:11:04 like what are the roots of aging and confirming that we still don't have an answer. Yeah, well, aging, anti-aging, longevity are themes that we've explored pretty extensively here on the show. I've had your friend David Sinclair a couple of times and I've had Dan Buettner, the blue zones guy here. Like we talk about this a lot,
Starting point is 00:11:26 but one area that we haven't really kind of cast our glance on is this future imagining that the book opens up with, which is right out of a movie. Like walk me through, like, to me, it feels quite Pollyanna, but I wanna hear your perspective on this sort of optimistic perspective that you have on how all of this could play out in the next 50, 100, 200 years.
Starting point is 00:11:52 Okay, so I call it four horizon or like horizon three. So, well, first of all, I must say that I'm waiting for this with combination of excitement and fear as well. There's so many things that we need to solve on this planet before we actually can enjoy living in a human body 2.0 version. So that's one. Two is a bit far away.
Starting point is 00:12:19 It's 25 to 50 years from now. We don't need to decide everything on how it will look like. But when I see the future, it's a future when we will have an opportunity to redefine what human body and mind means. And for me, it's a very positive problem. So we're gonna switch from biological view of human body
Starting point is 00:12:40 into more engineering view, like an old car metaphor, when you can extend resource of the old car, just replacing like the parts. So my future is about our ability to regenerate organs, ability to alter our genes. When we, and we already know 3000 genes in our DNA, which are responsible for aging processes, which starts probably after age of 20, 25 in our life. My future is about internet of body. When we are full of sensors who are helping us
Starting point is 00:13:18 to prevent diseases by identifying the very early stage of it, like a cancer or heart disease, et cetera. And we live in there. So we already have some wearables. Yeah, you got a bunch on you right now, right? Yeah, I have, yeah. You're covered in wearable technology.
Starting point is 00:13:35 That's a Zio patch, right? So that's- What does that mean? So basically it's just doing electrocardiogram of your heart for seven days in a row. And it's very reliable way to monitor your heart performance rather than one of AKG that you can do. It's well, it's just seven days and nights
Starting point is 00:13:57 of your heart work. So you just, it's recorded here on the CEO page. It doesn't sync to an app on your phone or anything like that. Not yet, but in a few years time, there's no obstacles for this to integrate. Like, you know, I have glucose monitor here. And I'm not- Is that from Levels?
Starting point is 00:14:16 Do you have the Levels one? Yeah, I'm actually, I order Levels, but right now I think it's a different producer. I just had my annual checkup this Tuesday. I'm 49, everything is fine. I can run another 151 years. But then, so coming back to your question, Rich. So for me, the future is also about internet of body,
Starting point is 00:14:37 about our ability to detect the disease before it's even manifest itself, developed itself. My future is about helping people who are suffering today from neurodegenerative diseases by supplementing and helping their brain to work through brain computer AI integration. So for me, it's not a cyborg thing. For me, it's an opportunity to help people in their 80s, 90s,
Starting point is 00:15:07 to actually have a clear mind and enjoy their life, not to be in a fragile stage. And well, the other piece of it is human avatars. We are Longevity Vision Fund in my fund, which supports affordable and accessible version of longevity and digital health. We look at few human avatars projects, but we still undecided whether it's going to be like robotic avatar route or virtual avatar route. Because virtual, it's just much easier to replicate ourselves in a virtual world. I just couldn't really accept that as a person, as a human being.
Starting point is 00:15:42 So I would love us to stay in the real world, but well, that might be there. So there's plenty of things which are gonna happen. Well, I wanna walk through all of these technological advances in a serial fashion, but before we wade any deeper into this, perhaps we should define our terms a little bit. How do you think about longevity? Cause that means different things to different people.
Starting point is 00:16:05 Yeah, that's true. Well, remember I'm really interested in developing a solution which are accessible for as many people as possible. So my definition of longevity is intentionally broad. Whatever increase the average health span and lifespan on earth is longevity for me. And there's a lot of reasons behind that,
Starting point is 00:16:32 partly because aging is not considered as disease in official terms. So you couldn't really invest in aging and have your investments protected, pay off your billions of dollars if you want to invest in that. But partly because you need to invest in that. But partly because you need to be intentionally broad
Starting point is 00:16:47 and work with the health span to make sure the years that we add to someone's life are healthy and happy years and not necessarily like you're just adding five to 10 years in the end of that. So that's my definition of longevity. So in terms of kind of where we're at right now and what we're on the cusp of, there's a variety of buckets here.
Starting point is 00:17:08 And it's super interesting. You know, you're talking about your wearables, you know, I'm wearing a whoop strap. I think you have an aura ring on. Yeah, I do. So you would have four, three or four. Well, you also have an Apple watch, so that's doing whatever it's doing.
Starting point is 00:17:21 We're only gonna see the expansion of these devices and the refinement of them until we reach some inflection point where all our biomarkers are not only getting tracked in real time, they're getting uploaded to some cloud and they're being computed alongside these other massive data sets.
Starting point is 00:17:40 The numbers are getting crunched and some AI is getting a really refined glimpse or picture of what human health is. And that of course leads us into this new field of not only early detection, but early diagnosis and the ability to kind of catch things before they even get to a certain point where they become malignant or problematic
Starting point is 00:18:02 for the human body. When you have a less, well, pretty lower chances of recovery, like stage four cancer is probably 20 to 30% recovery rates. Stage one, early detected cancer gives you 93 to 100% recovery chances. So that's the case. But I mean, you're right.
Starting point is 00:18:20 This is the future that we aiming for, we're working towards. So with that, I mean, there's all sorts of, there's a whole ethical sort of discussion that I wanna have with you, but we can kind of table that right now. This is my favorite topic here. Yeah, I love this. Morality of immortality.
Starting point is 00:18:35 No, this is, yeah, I read that chapter twice because this is what I really wanna talk about with you. But what are we looking at in the next five or so years in terms of where this wearable technologies, because some of it's better than others. You can tell that this is in a, to kind of extend the age metaphor and its embryonic state in terms of its maturity and its ability
Starting point is 00:18:58 to really provide you with accurate information that has a practical application for the individual. Obviously the data is what's most important to the companies that are creating these, but in terms of how we use this data to improve our lives, like where's that heading and kind of what's next in terms of what we can expect. Well, that's just a lot of thoughts around this question.
Starting point is 00:19:21 So one is one third of the world data is healthcare related. Well, that's a lot, right? And this is great, that's a great opportunity. Second is, well, it's almost like an anecdote. I think it was UK health regulator who just prohibited the purchase of fax machines for hospitals. And like, when was the last time you've I mean, you've seen fax machine.
Starting point is 00:19:46 That's more of a glimpse into like where we're at in terms of modernizing our systems. Well, that's again, every risk is an opportunity. So both in US and UK, up to, in some of the cases, up to 70% of the data transfer is happening through fax machine. And that's, I think it's ridiculous. It is. So in the future, data is an opportunity. And I do believe that, and I'm always saying that, the largest healthcare companies on earth in 10 years time gonna be Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, or whatever the big tech who are interested
Starting point is 00:20:20 and engaging in their healthcare space. So the change will come not from us or the old players doing new things. The change will come from new players doing new things. And that is exactly the beauty of wearables and its ability to collect data and then store it in cloud and then artificial intelligence pre-analyze that. So think about like wearables that we have.
Starting point is 00:20:46 I do believe that in the next two to three years, we'll add few important features to measure like our glucose, to measure our blood pressure. And then if you add it to what you can measure today, well, I do think it's 90 to 95% of the health data you need to measure on ongoing basis about your body. There's little human interaction needed in actually analyzing all of that.
Starting point is 00:21:13 Even today, like liquid biopsy, early cancer diagnostic companies just run exactly the same procedure, data, cloud, AI, and then feedback loop to you. And well, I do think it's an opportunity and it's gonna be much more kind of friendly, integrated version of wearables for all of us. And again, this will help us to fight,
Starting point is 00:21:38 as I call, killer monster diseases, like heart disease, cancer, diabetes. And it's probably after age of 50, these three diseases are responsible for about 70, 75% of that. So, and they're all preventable. Moreover, the cost of all of this gonna decrease exponentially. So, we at Longevity Vision Fund,
Starting point is 00:22:02 when we invest in technologies like this, the optimization gain is not 10 to 20%, but 10, 20, 50 times against current technology. So it's much more efficient and cheaper version of the healthcare and the paradigm gonna be like super preventive, super personalized rather than one size fits all at ridiculous prices.
Starting point is 00:22:25 I feel like the pandemic really accelerated this process. It was like gasoline on this fire from telemedicine to obviously the introduction or the heightened interest of the tech giants getting into this. Of course, Amazon being the obvious player who's gonna move in here in a big way. I just know from wearing a whoop strap, like, oh, you get emails like,
Starting point is 00:22:50 pay attention to your respiratory rate. If you see a wild swing, that could be an early indicator of being sick. And I think this is only going to be more ubiquitous. I mean, levels, when you look at it, they're predicting something like 30% of Americans are gonna be diabetic or pre-diabetic by 2050. So blood glucose monitoring is gonna be just basically
Starting point is 00:23:11 something that most people are gonna be doing, especially as the price point comes down. Yeah, well, that's amazing. And if you look at the whoops of this world, this will transform itself from being like activity tracker to our very own personalized healthcare device. So that's why I was not a big fan of wearables even three to four years ago.
Starting point is 00:23:33 I really just forced myself to use it like a warring whoop that you're having just to make sure I start to collect the data and form like a database of my own health indicators. So this is just going to change our ability to control our health, but also it gives us an opportunity to take responsibility back. Because think about this, I do believe like 95% of our health choices today are delegated to other companies and other players.
Starting point is 00:24:05 And they not necessarily doing this in our own interest from regulators to big food producers, healthcare providers, the overall healthcare system. It's a sticky wicket. I mean, it's a tangled knot of vested interests and cronyism and just a massive Byzantine bureaucracy that well-intentioned politicians are always trying to make malleable and always come up short.
Starting point is 00:24:31 I mean, I know that's a big part of your mission is like, how do we revamp healthcare? How do we create a system that is compatible with this modern age and the power of these technologies that we have to revolutionize how we think about not just aging, but preventing and diagnosing and treating disease. Yeah, I agree with you.
Starting point is 00:24:51 And what we have today is I call it the system of collective irresponsibility, because no one is really responsible for making sure you have healthy choices along your life road. And it's partly because we don't feel that we can manage that. And I do think the arrival of wearables, of more data-driven medicine,
Starting point is 00:25:14 give us this opportunity to feel in control, to feel responsible for health choices. Yeah, I mean, so much of it is environmental though, because those healthy choices are not as easily accessible as the vending machine or the drive-through. Oh, this is my biggest pain, right? And I do think it's really unfair to the people, specifically here in US, right?
Starting point is 00:25:35 When we spend 18% of GDP on healthcare, again, at least three out of last five years, lifespan was decreasing. We're like the only developed country on earth, which has its lifespan decreasing. And what is happening? Like 70% of antibiotics is consumed not by people, but poor animals.
Starting point is 00:25:58 Animals. Yeah. And so I just had a chat with the CEO and head of science at Human Longevity Center in San Diego when I do my annual checkup. And I was just asking guys, what is your biggest worry about US nation? And I kind of thought it's a sugar
Starting point is 00:26:16 because we just consume enormous amount of sugar against our interest in the form of, well, different foods, but mostly sugar drinks and to my surprise they said you know what Sergey the the biggest problem is actually antibiotics resistant developed by the fact that people just have still have this habit to consuming meat and fish which is made in very cruel industrial terms and has things which shouldn't be there like growth hormones, antibiotics, equally bacteria. And it's so calorie-contensive.
Starting point is 00:26:53 It actually works against your longevity because there's a lot of disagreement in the science world what actually today, what actually give you an opportunity to extend your life. But there's almost one agreement that decreasing your calories intake is the best way to add at least two, four, five healthy and happy years.
Starting point is 00:27:13 And like just consuming this whole animal protein thing, increase your calorie intake by what, 50 to 100%. So if you're on a plant-based, well, that's like the easiest way for you to manage this whole thing without torturing yourself with like everyday choices. Can I eat that or not? So for me, default choice,
Starting point is 00:27:32 I'm like as plant-based as possible. Because even if I eat like a half of this table of vegetables, I'm still gonna be fine. And it's just healthy on so many fronts for your mind and your body. So I run on vegetables. All right, now you're speaking my language. Okay, yeah, I always do.
Starting point is 00:27:49 I'm all about that. So we're on the same page as far as that is concerned. I'm interested in how, I mean, you have a lens on the US healthcare system, where we've gone awry. How does that square with how Russia handles it? Like what are the differences there? Yeah, so I'm more knowledgeable in how it's done in UK
Starting point is 00:28:10 because I'm part of UK parliamentary group on national longevity strategy and Singapore, because I have a lot of friends. I'm actually doing a presentation in July to Singapore authorities to make the first countrywide longevity program for the whole country. I'm actually, my resolution for this year
Starting point is 00:28:31 to find a country which I can change. And so that's why I'm working with UK and Singapore. Well, Singapore spends 5% of its GDP on healthcare. And this is together with Japan, this is the highest average lifespan lifespan you have in the world. So compare it with like 18% that we spend here. So that's one. Two is we need to accept that
Starting point is 00:28:55 to stay on longevity bridge and enjoy all these technologies that I have in a near horizon, in horizon two, which will be available to us widely in five, 10, 15 years. You need to make a change today, right? To be healthy and happy in 15 years time to enjoy all of this.
Starting point is 00:29:14 And a lot of these choices are about your own lifestyle. So what is your diet? What is the level of your physical activity? How peaceful is your mind? Because every time we talk about our own health, we tend to defer to physical health, while mental is equally important to that. So that's why when we do a change program for huge corporation, and again, it's all pro bono. Everything I do in longevity is me sharing the best of me with the world. So when we do a program,
Starting point is 00:29:49 like a corporate longevity program, largest I've done was for 300,000 people in like 29 countries. We just work through the five buckets. One is like annual checkup. And the composition of this has changed dramatically in the last five years, bad habits like no smoking, no alcohol, a lot of this kind of stupid mistakes
Starting point is 00:30:12 that we do in terms of the bad habits. Third is about diet changing, everything in the vending machines, in the canteen. So people have more plant-based choices. And I was also actually insisting that they have like vegetables Fridays and Mondays, but I haven't find any big company who are just comfortable with narrowing down the choice
Starting point is 00:30:36 to vegetables only, but I'm, you know, this is- It's tough, we can't get the fast food restaurants out of a lot of the hospitals. Oh yeah. I mean, it's insane, right? Or schools. Right. Yeah, so that's the third one.
Starting point is 00:30:47 Fourth is physical activity. Leveraging variables, even the current version of whoops or feed beats or Apple watch to measure the steps, like 10,000 steps a day. And that builds up like department by department, business unit to business unit, country competing with country who's done more steps. That's exciting. And fifth is peace of mind, which is a lot of things. I call it think and grow young, which is sleep. And I know you have Matthew Walker on your podcast.
Starting point is 00:31:18 His book changed my whole approach to sleep. It's crazy, right? It is. I was just looking at my sleep hours as like endless credit where I can borrow the hours. And apparently, I think this research came up like last month that if you sleep like five to six hours a day, your chances to get Alzheimer's is like 40% higher. So then it's meditation because we all have extremely high cortisol level. Our body and mind were never designed to handle amount of stress that we have here. And like having access to constantly negative news that we have around us is pretty bad.
Starting point is 00:31:59 And then it's a lot of different things like act of kindness, sense of purpose that you have. It's very important as well. So it's a little bit longer answer, but all of these five buckets are important as well because human body and mind are probably the most complex thing on this planet. Sure, and yet the, sorry to step on your words there,
Starting point is 00:32:19 but of the protocols you just mentioned, they're all very rudimentary, elementary, simple things that we can do now. We can talk about all the crazy future devices and wearables and the genetic engineering that we're gonna get into, but fundamentally right now, do these things, take care of yourself in the best way that you know how to,
Starting point is 00:32:40 and most people are already aware on some level of all of these things. It's a matter of implementing them into your life. But the one piece, the one bucket there that you mentioned that I'm not sure we've talked enough about, at least on this podcast, is this idea of getting these, consistently getting checkups
Starting point is 00:32:58 so that if you have a problem, you're in an early detection phase. And I think that's in part informed by on some level, a distrust of the medical establishment. I mean, your own personal story of going to the doctor and just being prescribed, you're like, here take this and you're good. The inquiry doesn't really extend beyond that, right?
Starting point is 00:33:18 Hopefully as scanning and testing diagnostics improve we'll be better at that early detection phase. But I just know for myself, I'm like, when I go to the doctor, he's gonna take my blood, he's gonna say whatever. I'm like, what am I really gonna get out of that? Am I really gonna put myself in a position where if I do have some latent condition
Starting point is 00:33:39 and it's early phase that it will even be detected? Yeah, so things have changed dramatically in this field. Like right now, I mean, you can do like full body MRI and the current version of these devices is like as precise as possible. They actually upgrade the software there every six months. So just a few years ago, when I started to do my checkups, it was radiologists looking
Starting point is 00:34:05 for my scans and human being without support from computer is successful in terms of detecting probably, yeah, as far as I recall, 38% of early stage cancer cases, just based on the review of the scans. But if you empower this radiologist with artificial intelligence, and it's not either or, it's not mutually exclusive, like people think. It's actually a combination of human and artificial intelligence. Success rate is 98 to 99%. Well, that's amazing. And it's also, it's becoming less invasive, right? Just a few years to check colon cancer. It's like few thousand dollars procedure. It's invasive, you do it under sedation. Right now we have Cologuard, $19 and that's it.
Starting point is 00:34:53 And it's as precise as the procedure you do a few years ago. And it's just amazing how, like for $19, how you can avoid like one of the largest risk of your life, getting a colon cancer. Because usually it's manifest itself at a very late stage. So a lot of discoveries is actually stage four cancer when recovery rates are very low. And, or this thing like, you know,
Starting point is 00:35:20 ZioPatch, which will kind of measure the work of your heart. So I do think it's time for us to change our view on what is actually almost any healthcare provider has to offer to us because of the speed of technological development and scientific development is just accelerated. Right, it is crazy how humans, I mean, once you, if you were to get cancer,
Starting point is 00:35:46 you would spend any amount of money that you have in order to eradicate it, but we won't spend the $19 for the test. Yeah, I actually find it really counterintuitive and every proactive treatment is at least 10 to 20 times cheaper than treating like post-factum, treating disease at the late stage. And then recovery rates,
Starting point is 00:36:10 like in terms of impact on the quality of your life, it's just amazing. So my father had lung cancer back in 2005 and he survived, but the guy just shrunk in size by one third and his quality of life never recovered. And this is not the type of longevity that we all want to have.
Starting point is 00:36:33 So we just influence our health in an advanced manner. Well, that's one, I mean, it's a separate issue and separate aspect of that. I don't know if you want to go to that. The version of medicine that you will find in the hospital next door is 17 years old. Well, that's the time between approval of something until it gets kind of distributed
Starting point is 00:36:58 and available in the healthcare system. So think about, you just, you go there and like what is offered to you is dated what in year 2000. Well, that's another problem. I'm still kind of thinking how to solve it. But again, it is about different players disrupting this whole thing. It's not about making efficient current system.
Starting point is 00:37:18 Yeah, sure. So you can't just focus on the technological innovation without tackling the regulatory landscape. I mean, that is, those things go hand in hand because you'll never get out of the gate with anything in terms of implementation if you can't deal with the regulatory. And that's perhaps the bigger hurdle here.
Starting point is 00:37:38 You do have all these startup companies who are coming on board. I presume a lot of them will end up getting absorbed by the larger tech companies as they consolidate here. But the governmental piece is really the Mount Everest of enacting positive change. Yeah, that's true. Well, the biggest change that we can do is just accepting
Starting point is 00:38:00 in regulatory terms, accepting aging as disease, because this will give you like a framework for investment. Because I'm always saying that longevity and age reversal is like a next cancer case. We're right in the middle of winning the war against cancer. Think about 20 years ago, people were deferring the date of their cancer screening because if they had a cancer, it's almost like a kiss of death. people were deferring the date of their cancer screening
Starting point is 00:38:25 because if they had a cancer, it's almost like a piece of that. Yeah, there's a psychological piece there. Most people are just like, I don't wanna know, or I'm too afraid to find out because then suddenly my life's gonna change. And I'll just pretend it doesn't exist. So we, again, early stage cancer diagnosis gives you 93 to 100% chances to recover.
Starting point is 00:38:47 And we still have this kind of old 20 years old mentality to face that. Well, you're talking about classifying aging as a disease. That's something I talked about with David on the show about, I mean, there's a hurdle in just getting people's minds around that, right? Which is, I would suspect, one reason why you wanna go to a smaller country
Starting point is 00:39:07 like Singapore or what have you, where you can run kind of a pilot program, easier to sort of test the waters and enact change in a smaller situation rather than just trying to combat the powers that be in Washington. Yeah, that's true. Kind of like how, is it El Salvador or Ecuador
Starting point is 00:39:26 where Bitcoin just became like legal tender? Yeah. Like it's just, you know, do it in a smaller country and then, you know, the dominoes begin to fall from there. Yeah, that's true. But on that idea of aging as a disease, like where are we in terms, like if you go to Capitol Hill and you're, you know, testifying before Congress on these issues,
Starting point is 00:39:46 like getting those people to wrap their heads around that, I mean, good luck. Oh yeah, it was probably the most difficult challenge I've ever faced. And we all longevity related, scientific and technological community are struggling with that. And again, I still don't know the answer. But what I do know
Starting point is 00:40:07 that with the age, your chances to get heart disease, cancer, diabetes are exponentially higher. Look at the recent COVID example. Unfortunately, COVID were detrimental for the old part of population. So there's a clear case behind it. Because if you go to Walgreens or CVS today and you ask for drug against aging, they will think you're crazy or they will send you to cosmetics or supplements. And this is counterintuitive. So I do think we would need to change it.
Starting point is 00:40:40 Good news, I think it was back in 2018, World Health Organization actually had a special code for aging and like age-related diseases risk in its global, like a directory of diseases. And I do think it was just consistent work in terms of establishing dialogue with Washington DC and what FDA or any other government bodies has to offer and has to listen. It's just, it's going to be there. So I don't really know when will happen. If you ask me, I do think there's just some few smaller countries in the
Starting point is 00:41:18 world will accept this, will create the viable economic model for investments in longevity. And this will happen because cancer today is $100 billion of research and development money funded every year to fight cancer. And that's why six out of 10 US biggest revenue drugs are oncology drugs. Back in 2008, it was statins.
Starting point is 00:41:43 Remember my story, Viagra and only one oncology drug. Right now it's six out of 10. So the same should happen in fighting aging and age-related disease. Right now, longevity is one or two billion dollar investments every year. So when I set up Longevity Vision Fund with a hundred million dollars, this is not my money, this is money of investors. People thought that we know, we're just crazy. We became, imagine, largest longevity-focused fund in the world with $100 million in financial industry terms. This is the most insignificant amount of money they can have.
Starting point is 00:42:17 And again, people thought we're just, we're doing a lot of stupid things. But things have changed in the last two to three years. And again, I agree with you, Rich, that COVID has accelerated a lot of stupid things, but things have changed in the last two to three years. And again, I agree with you Rich, that COVID has accelerated a lot of the mind shift and basically created a showcase of so many different technologies, which can help us from virus genome sequencing that we've done in couple of days.
Starting point is 00:42:48 I mean, that was the next thing I wanted to talk about. The other piece, you know, in this near horizon, in this effort to kind of normalize the idea of growing to 150 years old, in addition to the wearables and the big data sets and the early, the diagnostics and the early detection is this genetic engineering piece. Yeah, so before we go into like technological and scientific aspect of that,
Starting point is 00:43:10 there's a huge ethical debate and trade offs that we need to sort out before we actually embrace that. In fact, my belief that in 10, 20 years time, when the science and technology will be there, ethics and regulation will not be there to embrace and accept that. That's gonna be our biggest obstacles. And that's why morality of immortality discussion
Starting point is 00:43:33 is so important. How do we need to change the world for us to embrace the idea of living longer? Again, separate topic. So think about what has happened in gene editing and gene therapy front in the last 10 to 20 years. We've been able to sequence our genome. Right now we know 3000 genes, which are responsible for the aging processes in our body. And just probably a decade ago, gene therapy was a tool to help people with rare genetic diseases. Some of them,
Starting point is 00:44:07 it was group of 100 or 200 people all around the world suffering from this extremely rare genetic disease. So this is where we were 10 plus years from now. So then probably five years ago, the portfolio of gene therapies against rare genetic disease really expanded against rare disease. So right now, we can help 400 million people who suffer from rare diseases all around the world. It's called rare, but it's not rare at all. It's 400 million people on this planet. That's a lot. And then we just see in the cases of gene therapy addressing much broader issues like vaccines that we have against COVID
Starting point is 00:44:51 are typical example of gene therapy. We just don't recognize that this is the move which kind of help us to happen and to address COVID or there's the other drug, I don't want to kind of mention its name, which lowers your cholesterol level, not statin. You just do this every six months. And it's the addressable market for this
Starting point is 00:45:11 is 40% of people on this planet who has elevated cholesterol level. So we just, in the course of 10 plus years, we've moved from something very niche, risky, to the tool and the technology which can help half of the planet. And this is how fast the pace of the progress is. But again, when I think about gene editing and gene therapy,
Starting point is 00:45:40 I'm more focused on helping people who suffer rather than going into a sci-fi territory. and therapy are more focused on helping people who suffer rather than going into kind of sci-fi territory. Like Gattaca territory. When people think, you know. I mean, this is a part of it. We might have to have the morality discussion sooner rather than later because it really does impact
Starting point is 00:45:59 everything that we're talking about. I mean, when you're talking about genetic engineering, it wasn't that long ago where it costs billions of dollars to do this mapping and now it's very cheap and fast and affordable, but it continues to, you know, grow and expand and evolve. And now we're into this prime editing phase of it, right? Which is kind of the evolution of,
Starting point is 00:46:21 explain what that is because it's pretty wild. Yeah, so there's number of, okay, so when we talk about gene editing, we have the technology which is in use is like a CRISPR. So there's like almost like genetic scissors which cut the part of your DNA, which is not working and replace it with the other. While it's been basically a revolution
Starting point is 00:46:52 in terms of our ability to change our genetic code, there's so many different technologies which has been developed since that, right? For example, like speak to David Sinclair. He is a big fan of epigenetic reprogramming. And the fact is that you don't really need to change the composition of DNA. You can just silence or in opposite,
Starting point is 00:47:19 give an opportunity to certain genes to express itself. And that's a nicer and more safe way to address your genetic problem. Or, well, the way genes are like influencing what is happening in our body is just, you know, proteins, right, the creation of different proteins with the different functions. So you can have like a viral vector,
Starting point is 00:47:45 well, that's the actual term, which just goes into the cell with the different genetic materials, which produce the protein, which you're missing in your body, which basically the trigger for disease or your dysfunction or your shorter life, et cetera. And there's so many things
Starting point is 00:48:06 happening in gene editing and gene therapy world. Like you can take, take your immune cells, like T cells and reprogram them outside human body. It will be yours. So, and then you just, you know, make sure it, it, they come back to you and they fight cancer. This is like the definition of immuno-oncology. And I know quite a few of people who actually weren't really untreatable 10 years ago, but right now with this personalized version of genetic and when your own T cells are fighting your own cancer cells,
Starting point is 00:48:42 it's just really mind blowing. Yeah, I mean, it's this weird stew of miraculous and terrifying. Cause the idea that we're going in and we're snipping DNA or we're muting or silencing certain sequences and activating others. It just makes me, there's a part of me that cringes inside because behind it all,
Starting point is 00:49:07 there is a certain human spirit to be celebrated, but also a hubris that I'm not sure is as checked as maybe it should be. You know what I mean? We always go into these things thinking, well, it's a binary thing. We turn this gene off or whatever it is, and it'll have this A to B kind of impact,
Starting point is 00:49:24 but we're not very good at looking at these things from a more holistic perspective and realizing all the downstream implications of these things that we just didn't understand or realize because we jumped before we stepped. So I do believe in the collective wisdom and you are not alone. So if you ask, I think it was a study done five years ago in US and the collective wisdom and you are not alone. So if you ask, I think it was a study done five years ago
Starting point is 00:49:47 in US and UK. So when people has been offered the chance to extend their lifespan, if they can, by 10 or 20 years. So we've got more than 65% people say no. So even if you say it's healthy and happy years, we have a lot of limiting beliefs and it's a lot of things that we even don't know what we don't know about this whole thing. So one of the challenges in our space is like, how do we define that? How do we communicate that this is an
Starting point is 00:50:19 opportunity? How do we manage the risk? And again, as I say, in the morality of immortality chapter, we have created technologies to extend our life, but we haven't created the life that we want to extend. And there's so many ethical trade-offs that we need to solve in terms of our own health and in terms of the health of the planet before the idea of life extension will be interesting and positive for you and for so many people
Starting point is 00:50:51 and here in the US or people on the planet. I mean, I know you're an optimist with all of this stuff, but when I kind of cast my gaze across history, I don't see human beings being very good at grappling with the ethical implications of technological innovation because it's almost as if it's our biological imperative to continue to iterate and invent and progress. And we give lip service to the idea of should we
Starting point is 00:51:21 or should we not do this, but ultimately it's gonna happen no matter what, right? And I'd like to think that, yes, we're gonna put together a Manhattan Project type brain trust to really think about, you know, the profound, unbelievably profound implications of this vein of science. And hopefully there's lots of smart people like yourself
Starting point is 00:51:43 who are thinking about this and working on it, but it's so intertwined with every other challenge that we're facing and every other existential threat to the future of the planet and humanity that I can easily descend into a more despairing view of how this is gonna play out. I agree. So world shouldn't consist of Sergey Yanks.
Starting point is 00:52:05 Yeah, because I'm like super optimistic guy. Yeah, I need to be super optimistic to fight the problem, which we haven't solved through the history of evolution or the history of science, right? So that's one, there's always the, we need a balancing act from the public, right? From people who are much more skeptical about this because they are not coming up with answers.
Starting point is 00:52:30 They coming up with great questions. And this is what we, so my concern is that we're working on this science and technology of that and no one is working on the ethical side of it. And please don't make me responsible for that. I think it's our common problem. And I also agree with you, Rich, that we don't have a choice.
Starting point is 00:52:48 I mean, this is happening. It's not like we can sit down and decide what is gonna happen and we'll just accept the fact or approve this whole thing. This is happening. Silver tsunami is happening. Development of gene editing
Starting point is 00:53:03 and gene therapy technologies is happening. Increase of the lifespan is happening. Development of gene editing and gene therapy technologies is happening. Increase of the lifespan is happening. 100 years ago, the average lifespan on earth was what, 35 years. Right now, it's again for developed countries, it's 75. No one ever had a debate, like, can we allow this to happen or not? So in a way, this is a trajectory.
Starting point is 00:53:23 And what I would like to do is for us to start a conversation, start a thinking process about how the world should change, how our relationship with mother nature should change, how our ethical norms, social constructs needs to change. I would nominate Yuval Noah Harari to be in charge of that inquiry. Yeah, but we need to have a diversity of opinions.
Starting point is 00:53:51 I think Yuval has a little bit more like a dramatic view of our future, specifically just which derives from change in healthcare and like gene editing technologies. But again, I mean, it's not up to me to decide, but it's just, it's our collective problem. It's our collective discussion. It's our collective choice, right?
Starting point is 00:54:15 Right. Yeah. And the same goes to, again, like using plastics or allowing dictatorships to happen, or just how we think about social constructs like marriage. All of which are in play and in flux as these technologies become more mature. I mean, beyond this shorter window, the shorter horizon, the other section of your book is about
Starting point is 00:54:43 this more expanded horizon of things that, you know, they're kind of in their infant state that you're predicting are gonna be realities. And I don't know how long the window is here, but it gets pretty crazy, right? It is. We're talking about, you know,
Starting point is 00:54:59 not just things like organ regeneration and, you know, growing new body parts, like the way that we're cultivating cellular meat right now, like organ regeneration and growing new body parts like the way that we're cultivating cellular meat right now. But the idea of tele-existence and AI brain integration and uploading your consciousness to the cloud, like the stuff that is truly of science fiction and some kind of utopian Philip Dick
Starting point is 00:55:22 meets Aubrey de Grey scenario. Yeah, but it's just like, well, let's just balance that. So imagine our conversation happening back in 1990. I mean, we humans are really bad with like predicting the future. So in a way, I don't wanna predict the future which should be like as precise as 100%. The only reason why I'm trying to predict the future with, which should be like as precise as 100%. The only reason why I'm trying to predict the future and highlight all these technologies is for us to start thinking and making these choices today to make sure that we are comfortable with, you know, all this
Starting point is 00:55:59 scientific, technological, societal progress that we have. Because to solve a problem of plastic, to solve a problem of industrial production of meat, you don't need to wait for 2050. It should be solved right now. And I'm happy there's just a lot of technologies and innovations happening in this space, like plant-based meat, right? Which will change the landscape pretty significantly. But again, for me, it's a wake-based meat, right? Which will change the landscape pretty significantly.
Starting point is 00:56:27 But again, for me, it's a wake up call, like predicting the future is a wake up call that we need to have today. I have Bruce Friedrich coming tomorrow, who's from this organization called the Good Food Institute. And he's at the center of this whole cellular meat and plant-based meat technology innovation.
Starting point is 00:56:44 Indeed, but on this idea, like it's such an amazing provocative, I call it a thought experiment. You would call it a future reality to just consider the implications of living to 200 and beyond that, the possibility of being immortal. I mean, these are questions that humanity is reckoned with and wrestled with, you know,
Starting point is 00:57:05 as far as we've been a thing, right? And the idea of should we is really amazing, right? And you kind of walk through, like let's have the ethical conversation. Like, should we do this? Like what happens to humanity? What happens to the human psyche when you wake up in the morning
Starting point is 00:57:26 and you have a choice for just how long you wanna live? There's a few things there. One, I just want it to be upfront. I'm not a big fan of immortality, right? Because I do think if you take out the death from the human life cycle, we are not gonna be humans. Life is meaningless in lockstep with its preciousness. Yeah, exactly.
Starting point is 00:57:49 So that's my thought. Well, the second thought, I think it's very unlikely that we will have a moment in our life when we will reach the point when you just, in one day you decide, are you gonna be immortal or not? It's gonna be serious of your life extension decisions, which you do like every five to 10 years. So that's change your perspective.
Starting point is 00:58:12 You would actually be much more in control to define the quantity, but also the quality of your life. So this is what's going to happen in the future, which actually raises one of the questions that I ask in the book. So your decision to extend your life or not is considered in our society and culture is considered suicide or playing God.
Starting point is 00:58:36 And then my related question, like will we have like a bravery to make this decision? When I think about this in my own terms, I would just hate the idea of like, I need to decide on my own about this. So this actually makes my mind- It's hard to imagine, unless you're in that situation, how you would process that.
Starting point is 00:59:01 Exactly, so that's just, and it's again, it's just one of the questions, there's more process that. Yeah, exactly. So that's just, and it's, again, it's just one of the questions. There's more of that. So if we're gonna be living 200 years, for example. Like paint the picture of what this looks like. Yeah, so then, so what's gonna happen with our marriages? So right now, depending on the country,
Starting point is 00:59:18 two thirds of the marriages going through divorce in the first three, five or seven years after the wedding. So what will happen with the family, right? With marriage as institution, will we consider more like a kids raising partnership thing? And again, I don't know the answer. Are we gonna be married for 150 years?
Starting point is 00:59:42 Yeah, so it's very difficult to imagine. So, and this is, or think about your career. Should our life consist of several beautiful mini lives? Well, that's the question. And just a lot of constructs in our society are not really supporting this whole idea of a longer life. And I do think since, as we discussed, our lifespan increased twofold in the last hundred years,
Starting point is 01:00:11 I don't we've done any kind of rethinking on how our society is structured in this regard. Yeah, I mean, there's so many questions. There is the question of, you know, what is the meaning of all of this if it proceeds indefinitely? Like what is God? What is faith?
Starting point is 01:00:31 There's the more practical considerations of how does this impact the environment of a planet that subsists on, you know, a limited amount of resources. We're talking about living longer, which means more people. You have a whole thing about, you know, a limited amount of resources, we're talking about living longer, which means more people. You have a whole thing about, you know, reducing the birth rate and this notion that actually population's going to decrease, which I struggle with, you know,
Starting point is 01:00:55 comprehending or understanding or agreeing with. So, we'll just talk a little bit about this. So, there's a good study, I think published last, well, early last year. So if you look at reproduction rates all around the planet, for every woman, it's below two. So that's basically less than two kids or family. I don't remember the figure for US, but it's probably somewhere around 1.5. Like, in some of the places like Poland, it's actually 1.3. So we are, if you look at it, and you put all of this in a mathematical model, the population of Earth is going to peak at somewhere around 10 or 11 billion by year 2050.
Starting point is 01:01:39 And then it's going to decrease. The population of population of China gonna decrease from 1.4 billion to 800 million people by the end of this century. And the same will happen everywhere with exception of Africa. They still have African continent and countries there. They still have pretty high reproduction rates. The foundation of that idea is premised on raising the standard of living, right?
Starting point is 01:02:07 Like the more that you educate people, the more that you, and this is why Paul Hawkins' big thing in Drawdown is educating girls. So the more educated the women are, the less likely they are to have as many children. So as you raise that floor, then you're looking at one or two kids at most. If you get it down to one, then we're in a declining population situation. Well, if you're looking at one or two kids at most. If you get it down to one,
Starting point is 01:02:25 then we're in a declining population. Yeah, well, if you're going down to, because remember they need to do a job like for her and her husband. And obviously there's a different trend. We can see, we see decoupling like our reproductive function from our kind of life, just a lot of technological front in terms of our ability to have babies
Starting point is 01:02:50 without actually being your mother of this. But what I was about to say is this whole thing is happening and our reproduction rate has been in decline and simply because people have more choice. There are just more alternatives and it's good that they're using that. But again, you don't want to live in a world,
Starting point is 01:03:17 like I think it was Singapore figure, like 25% of the population of Singapore is already 65 plus. So you need to respond to that. Same happening in Japan, same will happen in US. So we need to work with the increasing quality of life of the people who are in all stage. And the way to address that is addressing health span
Starting point is 01:03:41 because we need to increase health span in parallel with what is happening now, increase of the lifespan as well. So that's one. And there's external component to that. Your own health is important, but the health of the planet is important as well. Because many of us behave in a way that we just ignore, we don't take responsibility for what's our relationship with mother nature is because simply the old mentality is like, I will not be alive then. And this thing will be sorted out by my kids and grandkids.
Starting point is 01:04:16 Sure, so the idea, if you're gonna be around a lot longer than you're more invested in. Again, remember I'm like idealist, right? So the idea is that I get that part. The idea is that if we face a problem, we're gonna live with consequences of our own action. I think this will drive a much larger feeling and sense of responsibility for what we're doing.
Starting point is 01:04:38 So, yeah. But if you're a dude and you're around for 200 years and you had a kid 50 years ago who doesn't talk to you anymore, maybe you think maybe I should have another one, right? Or if you're around for 200 years and you had a kid 50 years ago who doesn't talk to you anymore. Maybe you think maybe I should have another one, right? Or if you're a woman and you're in this future situation that you're imagining where you could actually toggle your biological age and I wanna be 25 or whatever.
Starting point is 01:04:58 And you're fertile for 200 years. Are you only gonna have one or two kids? Yeah, we're gonna have multiple generation of kids. And they're all gonna be living that long. So I don't know, the math seems... Yeah, so I've done the math. So I was just planning, I'm visualizing a lot because I do believe like my mantra is to live 200 years
Starting point is 01:05:19 in 25 years old body. So that's, I'm great believer of psychological aspect of aging. It's actually this changing to this paradigm, mental paradigm has changed my life a lot because every morning I wake up, I have like three fourth of my life ahead of me. I can dream, I can think big,
Starting point is 01:05:36 I can actually change the world in a positive way. But so if you think about this one, so the math is if I'm gonna have in my like 150 years old party, so I just did a calculation. And if I will invite only immediate family and immediate friends, it's gonna be like 15,000 people party when I turn 150.
Starting point is 01:06:02 Oh my God. I'm trying to wrap my head around this. So one thing that comes to my mind when I, the more I think about this is the mental health piece of this. My instinct is that it would provoke an existential crisis in many, because in tandem with these innovations will come
Starting point is 01:06:27 basically an economy driven by AI and robots who are performing a lot of the jobs that we don't have. And maybe we have a universal basic income situation, but like where are people gonna find meaning in their lives? And when they're gonna be living so long, how do you anchor that quest or whatever it is that gets people excited when they wake up in the morning to go out and be in the world?
Starting point is 01:06:49 How does that get anchored in a timeline that has become so extended? Like, I don't know that we can even predict what that would feel like. Yeah, I agree. And again, I can talk only in terms of opportunities in the future, which kind of this picture of the future give us today. I'm also, again But I do think it's an opportunity for us, for us, and I know it sounds idealistic, to connect to ourselves. Because I do believe that if you take out the noise of the environment and our social norms and social pressure,
Starting point is 01:07:39 we are much better, we are much, we, humans are kind, okay? So that's the opportunity to relate to your heart, to your mind, to realize your dreams, to do the things that you always were dreaming of doing. So that's my opportunity to talk about this. I hear that. Well, let's talk about the economic implications of all of this, because the other piece, which is kind of a Gattaca thing, right?
Starting point is 01:08:03 Or what was that other movie where they were all up in like some orbiting spacecraft where they were sleeping in pods and I can't remember. But anyway, as this plays out in science fiction, typically there's gonna be a huge underclass and there will be the 1% who have access to this type of technology to be, if not immortal, live for a very long time in beautiful bodies and have access
Starting point is 01:08:29 to all of these privileges that the rest of us don't. The example that you illustrate in the book is or the kind of thought experiment is the dictator who basically refuses to step down is gonna be there forever. Yeah. The power differential and the gonna be there forever. Yeah. The power differential and the economic implications of this.
Starting point is 01:08:48 Yeah, so I do believe that everything we've seen in terms of scientific and technological progress in the course of like every invention in the course of 10 to 20 years becoming like super affordable. So think about the smartphone example, like a cellular phone, like 25, 30 years ago,
Starting point is 01:09:09 it was thing which cost you like $10,000, probably more, it was like super heavy. Right now, if you go to like electronic market in China, you're gonna pay like $9 for the working version of the smartphone. So that's why, or think about Cologuard example, which helps to identify colon cancer. It's extremely early stage.
Starting point is 01:09:31 Well, this is a test which costs $19. So I do believe that technological and scientific innovation give us an opportunity not to increase the gap, but also to empower and bring technologies and inventions, which will improve everyone's life. But again, like we just, we keep coming back to that. So my, I'm always, it's funny.
Starting point is 01:10:00 So I have a mission of changing 1 billion lives and it's always gonna be one person in the audience who just stand up and say, Sergey, why only 1 billion? We have 7 billion people on the planet and you forgot about the rest. So I like when people kind of make me responsible for like all problems of this world.
Starting point is 01:10:21 But in a way, I'm on a mission to bring affordable and accessible version of health to everyone at the fraction of cost against what we pay today. Think about, you know, even if we, every technology that we invest in is like 10, 20 times cheaper than today's equivalent. So think about us releasing like 9% of US GDP
Starting point is 01:10:48 and spending on some other things, right? Education, housing, helping, you know, making people happier. I think the opportunity is there. And I don't really gonna accept the idea of, well, Sergey, well, this is your thought, well, let's just like, how are you gonna solve it? gonna accept the idea of, well, Sergey, well, this is your thought. Well, let's just like, how are you gonna solve it? I accept the idea.
Starting point is 01:11:08 Guys, there's something happening and this is gonna happen whether we want it or not, like twofold increase of a lifespan that we've seen in the last hundred. Well, let's have a dialogue. Let's be active. Let's be responsible. Let's make sure we take back control and responsibility
Starting point is 01:11:26 for our own health and the health of our planet. So that's the idea. Yeah, in other words, you're confident that these difficult questions and problems that this will bring up are solvable. Yeah, I do. Like everything we solved so far, right? In the human history.
Starting point is 01:11:43 And we always have a tendency to look like a negative side of things. We always have a tendency to think binary. This is black, this is white, this is mutually exclusive. Like I'm seeing a lot of doctors and they're like, what will happen? AI will replace me. Again, my premise is that it's not mutually exclusive.
Starting point is 01:12:04 It's actually very complimentary. Like there's a company called Intuitive Surgical. This is huge company. They produce like surgical robots and they are brilliant in terms of doing surgeries on heart. And it was the head of one of the clinics, a large modern clinic here in the US. So, and they, before they brought the first surgical robot,
Starting point is 01:12:26 there was just a lot of doctors who were just saying like, this thing will replace me. Imagine what has happened. So they bought this robots and they, right now, they're doing four or five times more surgeries that they've done before. People are extremely busy. They hired like 50% more staff
Starting point is 01:12:47 to handle the new inflow of patients because the cost of it decreased exponentially. The success rate of this increase exponentially. So this is the type of thing which is awaiting for us there. But so coming back to your statement, I do believe we will sort it out,, I do believe we will sort it out, but I do believe we will sort it out, not just sitting and waiting,
Starting point is 01:13:09 but taking active positions and taking responsibility to solving this and many other ethical questions. Right. Among those ethical questions being privacy rights, as we sort of amp up the extent to which we're, making ourselves Guinea pigs or available
Starting point is 01:13:28 for all of this data, which is then being harvested, where do our rights sit? And if we've learned anything from the advent of big tech and the explosion of social media, not exactly the organizations that we feel comfortable trusting with having our best interest when it comes to these issues.
Starting point is 01:13:51 Yeah, that's true. Well, that's why we have more regulation there. I think we need to represent our interest in a better way. And specifically structurally, if you look at US, on the business side, there's so many things happening
Starting point is 01:14:06 on like Pan-American level or like on a global level, because Google, Amazon, Facebook are global companies. And the level of regulation is usually like on a state level or on a country level. So there's a huge structural mismatch
Starting point is 01:14:22 about like the power of regulators, which just represent our rights and our opinion and the global nature and the scale of this business. Right, and the relationship with privacy rights changes based on country borders. Oh yeah, so that's kind of one thing. The other thing, and I know it might sounds unpopular for some of our audience, we already made this choice.
Starting point is 01:14:47 So, I mean, you're wearing, whoop, I'm wearing Apple Watch, you know, and the convenience of using that devices for us are much bigger than any compromise on privacy that we get. Having said that, it does not mean that we shouldn't regulate this. We shouldn't be more protective about this whole thing. So in the end, when I'm having friendly conversation,
Starting point is 01:15:17 I'm telling people, you've already made this choice. Yeah, it's unsatisfying to hear that though. Cause I feel like it shouldn't be on us. And just because we sort of mindlessly stumbled into a situation when we really weren't fully apprised of the implications of it, we shouldn't have to continue to pay that toll. Yeah, that's true.
Starting point is 01:15:38 And well, I agree with that. And that's just another question that we need to solve because I don't wanna, you know, my like genetic data can put me in a very disadvantaged position in terms of my ability to get affordable insurance. However, affordable like version of healthcare that we're trying to create,
Starting point is 01:15:58 well, it's just another ethical question. And again, that's why I think it's important to start this discussion now and not to wait until this will produce the undesired and disastrous outcome. The other really interesting question on this ethics discussion is the future of evolution. Like what does natural selection look like when we can purchase our longevity and that decision is based on economic factors or access factors more than anything else.
Starting point is 01:16:43 And the more I think about that, the more it appears clear that the evolutionary imperative of the human being is to give birth to this artificial intelligence that then becomes subject to the laws of natural selection in a different way, right? Like we've kind of played ourselves out and now much like, you know, whatever analogy you wanna use,
Starting point is 01:17:10 like a caterpillar to a butterfly or whatever, we're becoming something else. And the book kind of, you know, basically illustrates that. Yeah, well, that's, yeah, that's an interesting thing to realize for us. And I do believe however dramatic it sounds for us, but it's just a part of evolutionary cycle. And it's been always the case, right?
Starting point is 01:17:36 And no one, animals didn't really sit down and discuss like, will we allow homo sapiens? No, it doesn't matter what we think about it. Like this is just what's happening. And this is what we're going to do. It is. But also the other thing, Rich, which I wanted to mention here,
Starting point is 01:17:55 don't you think it's happening already with us saving people with genetic disease? I mean, our cell phones are, you know, they're not implanted into our brains, but, you know, most of us won't leave, won't go anywhere without it. It is an appendage. Yeah, I'm actually,
Starting point is 01:18:12 and there's another risky aspect of that. Like our over-reliance on technology is, I do think it open ups the other risk area. Like, you know, what will happen with, if something will just really like a black Swan or something will happen in terms of the ability of this devices to operate like a huge electromagnetic wave from the space, something happening on the sun.
Starting point is 01:18:38 We're so overly dependent. We're like unprepared to live in our today's world when you can use your hands to grow your tomatoes as well. Yeah, so then, well, that's the other case, but I do believe that we changed the law of evolution many decades ago with us and I'm cool with that. Saving people who would like 100 years ago would just die because of their genetic disease
Starting point is 01:19:03 or because they couldn't really fight with virus uh this is happening and that's why and i do believe if you want to be positive about this i'm not sure you want but um in in the history of evolution this skill and the talent which is required to to win and in evolutionary process has been always different. I mean, in one stage, you should be like super hunter. On the other stage, you should just be good in agriculture. In the other stage, you should be good in like working in a factory, like repetitive job. Right now, you can have like diversity of options,
Starting point is 01:19:39 like how you use your talent. And you shouldn't really suffer because you were unlucky in genetic lottery. So I do believe we have more choices, but again, having more choices gives you more like responsibility on your shoulders, which particular one you choose and how like eco-friendly this for people around you and the planet.
Starting point is 01:20:03 As we move towards these digital avatars and tele-existence, it gets super crazy in terms of being able to essentially be in two places at one time or transport your consciousness and whether or not we're gonna be able to have brain transplants or virtual reality experiences that are so real that our physical bodies are no longer carrying the meaning
Starting point is 01:20:29 that we attribute to them. The extension of that moral landscape inevitably leads to grappling with the very nature of consciousness itself, because that's the one thing that humans will always protect. Where is my consciousness? Where does it live? Can it be transported? And if my body withers, can it be, you know,
Starting point is 01:20:54 basically moved into something else, right? And in order to figure that out, we have to understand what consciousness itself is, right? And that becomes like a rabbit hole with no end. So how do you think about those kinds of questions? Yeah, so again, remember our main focus is horizon two, like what to make sure that we have affordable and accessible version of technologies
Starting point is 01:21:19 in five to 10 years from now. But what I can say, I just hate the idea of us living in the virtual world. to 10 years from now. But what I can say, I just hate the idea of us living in the virtual world. I do believe that I would like us to enjoy ourselves as humans in this immaterial world for as much as possible. So that's why we not investing in human avatars. We were looking like-
Starting point is 01:21:41 Explain what that is for people that don't know. Yeah, so there's actually, so our idea was that, okay, well, let's invest in human avatars and see how this technology can change our lives. So we look at number of robotic avatars company first. So there's two types of avatar. One is robotic avatar.
Starting point is 01:21:58 You have like a copy of the robot and then you basically can send this robot only like a North Pole or to Mars and right here on the other device, you just have like the same experience, just but not being present on Mars, similar to what we've seen in Avatar movie. In fact, I had an opportunity to discuss the ethics
Starting point is 01:22:20 of the future and human avatars with Peter Jackson. What did he have to say? Yeah, he's basically saying that we humans tend to dramatize the future and the negative outcomes of technology. He says that we've been wired by mother nature to look for negative stuff, because this is your, like you're just managing the risk of existence.
Starting point is 01:22:45 Yeah, in a way. And he always, and this is what I use as well. He said like, but just thinking about people who would really need this, like people who just, you know, like do firefighting, people who wants to discover and do like scientific discovery on Mars, but don't wanna spend like three discovery on Mars, but don't want to spend like three years
Starting point is 01:23:05 on a space shuttle, like, you know, commuting here and there. People in need, people who are really disadvantaged in genetic lottery. And for them, this is the opportunity to enjoy life, to have meaningful impact here. So that's his view. So coming back to avatars. So that's his view. So coming back to avatars. So we were looking at this and apparently to my surprise, and it was pretty shocking, but we find out that the other version of avatars,
Starting point is 01:23:37 which are virtual avatars, is much cheaper to create. And we've seen examples then. You can basically like recreate the person in the virtual world and it's much cheaper. And again, with a different like VR, AR technology, you can actually enjoy this. There's a very interesting clip on YouTube when South Korean mother meeting her daughter. Well, it's explain in the book, meeting her daughter who died in the age of five because of the rare disease in the virtual world.
Starting point is 01:24:12 It's eight minutes clip done by South Korean TV where mother actually meet this girl in the virtual environment. I'm father of four. I basically stopped watching this after the first minute because I was just crying. It's heartbreaking. So essentially a digital avatar of the daughter
Starting point is 01:24:31 who had been passed away was assembled using archival footage or photographs or something like that? Yeah, just like photos or videos. And some kind of algorithm was able to figure out how this child would act vis-a-vis the mother. Exactly, yeah. And then 99- It's kind of terrifying. Yeah, it is, yeah.
Starting point is 01:24:49 So again, it's just heartbreaking. So then the question is, what are we gonna do with that? And that's why we are not investing in avatar space because I still can really handle the idea of efficiency of the virtual world. Like it took like a couple of years to my social media team to like push me into social media, to like LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, because my real life is so interesting.
Starting point is 01:25:18 I don't want to like create a virtual side of me. Having said that, well, these are the technologies that we have. So the unfortunate outcome of this for me is that the speed and efficiency of virtual world provides more opportunities for us to recreate ourselves and extend our resource than the material world. But again, let's kind of think how Peter Jackson addresses that. He says, okay, well, Sergey, who was like the men and the
Starting point is 01:25:53 women who had an enormous impact on your development when you were young. And I was always thinking about one of my granddads. And I would love to have an opportunity to have his advice in the virtual world once a quarter when I'm really in a kind of difficult life situation and there's even a company I think it's called Wisdom AI who is helping to recreate
Starting point is 01:26:18 like an artificial version of particular role models. And for you to have an opportunity to have advice through the wisdom of generations, rather than trying to solve a problem
Starting point is 01:26:34 that you're completely unprepared to solve. So again, it's up to us. Are we trying to use this technology for good or for bad? It's almost like for nuclear energy, right? You can create a nuclear bomb or you can create like a nuclear energy plant for that. Or you can use this for creating the best version
Starting point is 01:27:00 of the health scanning device, which will help to save millions lives. So it's all up to us. Or we ignorantly innovate our own shelf life. And we innovate ourselves right out of existence, like the Terminator dystopia of AI becoming sentient and humanity paying the price. I agree.
Starting point is 01:27:26 For all of this stuff. Well, the way our conversation goes, I think I don't wanna be like a guy who just embrace all of this. So don't gonna kill the messenger, right? I do wanna say, guys, this is happening. We need to think about this. We need to take collective responsibility for our choices.
Starting point is 01:27:47 Because if you just let it be done by default, by market or commercial forces, it's gonna be disastrous version of the future. What's your sense of how we accomplish that? Because I do think there needs to be a global congregation of incredibly bright people, philosophers, scientists, technologists, politicians, people from various walks of life who could contribute
Starting point is 01:28:12 to this brain trust of trying to figure out how to responsibly usher in a technology that's more powerful than anything we could possibly imagine. Like as you're telling the story about the Korean mother and the daughter, I'm starting to have a greater appreciation for not just like when we're talking about longevity and aging, we're talking about time, right?
Starting point is 01:28:33 And our relationship with time, which is kind of a human conceit in many ways. Like it's a malleable conceit. But when we start talking about virtual worlds, that changes our relationship with space as well, like and distance and everything, all the physical laws that govern our daily lives suddenly become very different.
Starting point is 01:28:57 And trying to really understand what that means seems like a very difficult equation to square. It is. Well, it's difficult for me as well. But I do think that every little step that we can take just to increase awareness of that, that's important. And educating our regulators, government people, societies is super important.
Starting point is 01:29:23 And I do believe that choice about healthy version of our future starts today. So it comes down to, well, however distant are problems that we just discussed, there's so many things that you can do today, like just reestablish your relationship with mother nature, make healthy choices in terms of, are you supporting industrial food production, are you supporting industrial food production
Starting point is 01:29:47 or are you supporting organic food production? Are you more plant-based and therefore it's more friendly for your body and for the planet, for the communities and the health of the nation? Are you doing a lot of acts of kindness? Are you sharing the best of you with the world and therefore help a lot of acts of kindness? Are you sharing the best of you with the world? And therefore help a lot of people
Starting point is 01:30:07 to achieve their own potential realization and social be like happy version of themselves because we need to be in healthy and happy state to appreciate that today and to make sure this healthy and happy state extends in the future. Yeah, I like that. I mean, that's all we can do right now as individuals, right? On top of everything in here,
Starting point is 01:30:31 one thing we haven't gotten to yet in this discussion around longevity isn't just arresting the aging process. It's this idea of, I mean, it's literally the title of your book, like growing young, like the reversal of aging. So can you kind of parse those two things when you say growing young,
Starting point is 01:30:49 like what exactly are you talking about? Yeah, so remember what we started is like average lifespan on earth increased from what 35 to like, or at least in developed countries from 35 to like 75 years. But then the upper limit of lifespan, it's still the same. It's somewhere around 120 years. So the oldest person on earth was this beautiful French woman who died, I think back in 1999
Starting point is 01:31:18 in the age of 122 years. And this has been unchanged through the whole history. So then the question is, how do we change that? And so far the way we've done, we increase our lifespan and health span has been avoiding early deaths. But that's like the only thing that we've done. And even the focus of today discussion is like,
Starting point is 01:31:41 well, let's just not die from cancer. Let's not die from heart disease, from diabetes. And we're facing actually the next wave and next barrier was just neurodegenerative disease comes which come in the latest stage of our lives somewhere around eighties or nineties which we still need to solve. But it's again, it's just, so the average lifespan increase
Starting point is 01:32:01 because we avoiding early death. So that's the modus operandi. Right, because a lot of those stats are driven by infant mortality as well, right? Well, that's like the biggest problem that we've been solving. So, but what is happening with the technologies and science breakthroughs,
Starting point is 01:32:21 which are available to us today, which is in like a work in process today we will soon have an ability to reverse aging even like there was a very small studies done with you know eight people who actually managed to reverse their aging based on set of biomarkers but a very small number but and again it's it sounds impossible and ridiculous today, but this has actually happened. You can grow young. You can change your set of biomarkers to be younger.
Starting point is 01:32:53 Like even today, like when I had my studying story, when I rejected the idea of taking the PLT the rest of my life and change my diet, became plant-based, doing physical exercises, taking omega-3 and it's like even a vegan version of that available, right? So you can be vegan and taking different supplements.
Starting point is 01:33:17 I reduce my biological age by probably three to five years. So that's already happening. We just have this lifestyle intervention and this will be contributed and complimented by our ability to influence genetic diseases or our genetic setup, by our ability to regrow and replace organs.
Starting point is 01:33:38 Actually, the two most difficult ones is actually brain and heart. Isn't it symbolic? And, or having longevity in appeal, right? We have so many longevity and age-related disease kind of drug candidates at the moment, like with forming. Generic drug has been there for 50, 60 years, pretty safe. We still need to run a trial,
Starting point is 01:34:01 but what is it in terms of creating age reversal effect, right, or life extension effect, but this is still in development stage. But again, there's a lot of ideas how we can reverse our aging. And some of these species on earth, they don't have an aging process. So the way they die is like metaphorically,
Starting point is 01:34:25 like being hit by a bus, right? So there's no, in terms of our biological setup, we don't necessarily need to age. But again, and I do think it was the theme of our conversation today, before embracing technology and science of a traversal there's much bigger issues that we need to solve. Yeah, 100%.
Starting point is 01:34:50 Create a life that we want to extend. Yeah, 100%. And we like to talk a lot about the minutiae or the 1%. That's gonna, you know, some supplement that we can take. But in truth, the real mover here is how you're living your life on a daily basis. And it's not sexy. It's not, you know, there's no hack involved with that.
Starting point is 01:35:10 It's just, you know, good habits. It's everyday choice. That are practiced every single day. I agree. And I know that David is, you know, a friend and a colleague in all of this, David Sinclair. But one of the things that, I wouldn't say you disagree on, but where you're a little bit different in terms of focus
Starting point is 01:35:28 is David, he loves to talk about sirtuins and regulating mTOR and resveratrol and metformin, as you just mentioned, and NMN and NAD and all that kind of stuff. I think it's too early. Yeah. Yeah, and again, I think the mental trick, what it does, you're gonna start to believe in this magic pill,
Starting point is 01:35:48 which will solve all the problem for you. And the problem is like, rather than changing your life and the life of people and health of people around you, you just like waiting for this magic pill to arrive or you can buy it in the form of NMN or midforming. And I do think it's just, it changed your mentality rather than taking responsibility and changing the world, changing your health.
Starting point is 01:36:13 You just like sit and wait until something magical will happen. And I'm a little bit against that. I also think I'm chemical engineer by my first degree. So that's why I just rejected the idea of having statins for the rest of my life. And this is where my longevity journey started. I just do believe that a lot of things need to be tested
Starting point is 01:36:38 in a proper way before we can embrace that. And in the meantime, we just need to look at the livers that we can actually control today. We can embrace that. And in the meantime, we just need to look at the livers that we can actually control today and we can change today. So I think the downside of believing in like magic pill or magic supplement is that it's just another excuse for us to be irresponsible. Yeah, it divorces you from responsibility.
Starting point is 01:37:03 Yeah, I would agree with that. It's amazing how many things work well in mice that they can't figure out how to make in larger mammals, because there's crazy stuff happening with mice. Yeah, yeah, they're just, I think they extend it. Just in the research. There was a study last week, right? Like 28 or like 30% life extension.
Starting point is 01:37:23 So, well, let's discuss that. I do, the beauty of progress is that right now, instead of kind of working with animals, right now there's a lot of development in terms of synthetic models, like almost computerized model or artificially grown biomaterial, which will give us an opportunity to do testing
Starting point is 01:37:44 without actually involving animals. And I love that. I also like the fact that it's actually more precise representation of humans. So then you don't like going to the nature and trying to pick up like in a pretty cruel way, someone who's going to replace and like diminish the risk of losing human life, you create in the computer model, like or biological model where you can test like the substance in a very, well, I think like eco-friendly way.
Starting point is 01:38:19 So I'm not sure we, you know, put a lot of emphasis on this in the book, but I do think it's important to realize that there's so many ethical things and problems that we can solve by looking at technological progress as an opportunity to be, you know, more in harmony, if you want, in a balance with the world around us. So I'm not that kind of optimistic about research, which has been done on animals. I'm more optimistic, I'm kind of future guy,
Starting point is 01:38:57 probably today guy. So I'm more optimistic that with the progress, which we have in today, we can actually do much faster, more representative trials without actually involving animals or other creatures on this planet who were not designed to help us to extend our life. Yeah, of course not. It's a mindset or a philosophical shift
Starting point is 01:39:27 to approach these problems from a perspective of balance and symbiosis, as opposed to we're the apex predator and we're just gonna lay our template on this planet and make it work for our own self-interest, which is really the prevailing sensibility by which we've, you know, pursued, you know, life on earth.
Starting point is 01:39:50 And so there is a little bit of a spiritual awakening or a mindset revolution that has to take place to pursue the solution to these problems from that more kind of empathetic, compassionate perspective. But one thing you mentioned that just popped into my mind when you were talking about, again, back to the South Korean mother and the daughter and the advent of virtual reality and the like,
Starting point is 01:40:20 is this amazing opportunity to expand the aperture on empathy. Because so many of our problems and our conflicts are driven by a lack of understanding of where someone else is coming from or what their life experience is. And if you could put on a headset or tap into some technology
Starting point is 01:40:39 that would allow you to experience what it's like to be in a Syrian refugee camp right now or to swim with great white sharks under the water, whatever the case may be, I think there's a potential that could unify us in a way that would be very helpful in solving some of these problems. Yeah, I agree with you.
Starting point is 01:40:57 And I think, well, if you wanna, I mean, COVID is a disaster, right? But if you wanna look at the positive side of it, because we stayed home and we were driving less, look at the amount of biodiversity that we have around us. Bounce back pretty quick. It just, and it was like just a few months and like I'm living next to the park.
Starting point is 01:41:19 Just I've never seen the birds, which I've seen during the COVID. I mean, they're still there. They just sing every morning I wake up and I just stay there. It's just, it's been so beautiful. And I do think it just show us the opportunity. Like if we are mindful about our choices today,
Starting point is 01:41:36 mother nature will not wait for 10 or 20 years, like gene editing technology to give you a kind of favor, to give you like a positive feedback. And I love that. So yeah, I don't know why I'm kind of talking about it. I just got so excited about this whole thing. I'm just, it's, and again, it's just our opportunity to reconnect, to be more human,
Starting point is 01:42:00 you know, to look at the positive side of us and not only in relationship relationship like human to human, but also in relationship with nature around us. The holistic nature of it all. Yeah. Of the companies that your fund is invested in, what's got you excited? Like what's happening right now
Starting point is 01:42:21 that people who are listening might be interested in hearing about? Yeah, so remember we discussed that we can regrow organs and that's actually a huge problem today. Like if you need a liver transplantation, you need to wait for six, nine, 12 month. A lot of people just gonna really last for that long. And it's $800,000 procedure.
Starting point is 01:42:45 And like, and I think a lot of kind of foreign organs in transplanted in human body get rejected because of the autoimmune reaction. So like Genesis is a company based in Pittsburgh. What they do, they split the donor liver in 50 to 70 pieces. So that's not one donor helping one recipient. It's just one donor helping 50 to 70 people. They use this very simple laparoscopic operation.
Starting point is 01:43:14 They put it in your lymph node. It's actually here. That's like the best place. And then your liver regrows in your body, taking the function of your kind of existing liver and supporting it. Wow, so the lymph node or the lymph tissue provides like the habitat for these cells to grow.
Starting point is 01:43:33 Yeah, so crazy. Yeah, and they're like, I haven't checked it, but like this guy- Are they like pluripotent stem cells or they're liver cells? Yeah, it's the liver cells. They obviously stimulate that. And lymph node is good, it's the liver cells. They obviously stimulate that.
Starting point is 01:43:47 And leaf knot is good because it's just intersection of so many like fluids inside our body. But what is important, they had like 100% success, but the human trial is already happening. So it's not like the technology that we need to wait for like 10 years, it can change the thing and the opportunity for us to replace on functioning organs, right? And increase the quality of people who are like
Starting point is 01:44:16 really suffer today or like 3D bioprinting. Well, that's amazing. Yeah, you don't need to like hunt for organs, you know, at peaks or at other humans, right? And this is like barbaric. It's wild. Yeah. I know there's a company in Israel
Starting point is 01:44:32 that's doing 3D printing of cultured meat, I believe right now for human consumption. It would logically follow that at some point they'll figure out how to 3D print or sell culture a human heart. Why is like, I'm sure it's ridiculously complicated, but inevitably as technology unfolds, like why would that not be possible?
Starting point is 01:44:56 Yeah, I think it would be possible. Right now, like the problem is like every organ is like super integrated in our body, right? We are comprehensive holistic system. So specifically for the heart, you just need to print just enormous amount of, is it capillaries? Like a smaller vessels?
Starting point is 01:45:12 Capillary. Yeah, capillaries, yeah. To integrate it. And that's actually works against you because the complexity of this 3D model, like to be integrated in the body is there. But this is all solvable in like 10, 20 years. So, and I think there's a number of cases
Starting point is 01:45:29 in today's conversation when our barbarian practices, right? Can be changed with the beauty and the progress of technology and science as well. And this is where I see the opportunity. So lab grown meat is like super expensive today. So did what like using sun for generation, for electricity generation. Solar power.
Starting point is 01:45:59 Yeah, solar power, yeah, thank you. Was super expensive 20 or 30 years ago. Right now it's just like almost everywhere. So this is gonna happen. I don't know how the world will look like in 20 to 30 years, but I do think today is the time to decide how it's gonna look like in the future. Which brings you to the XPRIZE.
Starting point is 01:46:20 So you're on the, I don't know what your exact function is. Yeah, I'm an innovation board of, I'm a group of crazy people who would like to solve world's biggest problems through XPRIZE Foundation. Yeah, and the focus being on this aging question, right? So the idea is you put it out to the world and technologists and smart people come up with solutions
Starting point is 01:46:42 and then you and Peter or a board of people make a decision as to who gets these funds to pursue that idea. Well, it's a little bit different. So what we do, and we've done probably two XPRIZE competition with Elon Musk as well. You go like a guy like Elon Musk, you take, well, the recent XPRIZE earlier this year competition,
Starting point is 01:47:03 you take like a100 million from Elon, you go to the world and say, guys, the first team is going to create the technology for in this case, like carbon removal to remove CO2 from the atmosphere in a minimum viable product, we'll get $100 million. It's a little bit more complicated than this
Starting point is 01:47:23 because you have like a short list of 10 teams, they get like 1 million each. And like the final team, like the ultimate winner will have like $100 million. And it's gonna take the prize. So you have two, three, 400 teams all around the world, usually it's 50 plus countries competing for this prize using their own resources their own ideas their
Starting point is 01:47:46 own creativity their own network to solve this big problem and and it's been this is how we why we have uh partly uh private space industry because the first x-price right now we know it as a virgin galactic was creation of first private spaceship and uh or idea with Age Reversal XPRIZE competition, and I'm sponsoring the design of that, is we combined like the most brilliant minds on the planet, like George George, David Sinclair, Aubrey de Grey, Steve Howard, the inventor of the first biological clocks, when you use a set of biomarkers to define your biological age.
Starting point is 01:48:25 And we design in the competition where you use a set of biomarkers to define your biological age. And we design in the competition where you have a set of biomarkers and it's like an intervention or the drug or technology or the piece of science who will help you to not to age, right? Or even reverse your set of biomarkers in the course of 12 months in the current regulatory environment.
Starting point is 01:48:46 Obviously, I mean, to be safe, it should fit the regulation that we have today in US. So in the end, it's obviously, it's a big group of scientists who's gonna decide like, what are the 10 most promising and most effective technologies or inventions which will help us to reverse aging
Starting point is 01:49:06 as a way to tackle age reversal diseases and as a way to extend productive and efficient stage of our life. And then obviously they get like a certain mini prizes, like a million dollars, which they will use to fund the second stage of competition and like refine their own, we call it intervention or technology
Starting point is 01:49:31 or scientific discovery. And then the ultimate winner can get a hundred million dollars. So the beauty of this idea, this is all pro bono as you understand. So the beauty of that, you pay for result. And so we have like Coral Restoration XPRIZE now. When they looking at the challenge of helping corals to like regrow or we just finished,
Starting point is 01:49:56 I think it was back in 2019, the other XPRIZE with Elon Musk called Global Learning XPRIZE. Then we developed the, well, winning team, who won $15 million, developed the app, which is open-sourced, can be put on any smartphone, on tablet, like the cheapest one, even the old one,
Starting point is 01:50:16 distributed to kids in Africa or people in prison for them with zero adult support to become literate in English or Swahili in their own language in the course of 12 months. Isn't it beautiful when you have technology, right? And like the application, which is free for everyone, for people to become like a wiser and more talented and hopefully more kind version of themselves.
Starting point is 01:50:48 That's very cool. Can you talk about what's percolating up right now? What is percolating up is like, what's the barrier? No, what is, are there, I'm sure you're like looking at submissions at the moment or what, like where's the status of that? No, we're not, so we're actually looking for a hundred million dollars.
Starting point is 01:51:03 Okay, so you're putting it together. It's earlier than that. So I spend my personal money on the design stage. It took us like a year and a half because, well, that's a pretty risky competition to run. We just wanna make sure that we don't put it and then necessary is like human lives. And it's again, human aging is such a complex problem.
Starting point is 01:51:25 So it took us a while and quite a bit of money. Again, my personal contribution to that, to design the XPRIZE. So we're now in dialogue with few of the sponsors who are actually happy to put 50 to $100 million to support the SPRIZE. And if you look at the profile of these people, they all pretty rich.
Starting point is 01:51:47 And they, at the moment of their life, when they realize you can't really take it all, you know, when you're gonna die. And like, there's a limit of what you can consume. Majority of them is like, you know, I don't wanna yacht, I don't wanna private plane. I'm like, I just don't wanna, you know, I want to change the world.
Starting point is 01:52:06 I wanna make the world better. And that's, if you think about this, like helping people to fight heart disease, cancer, diabetes for the price of a hundred million, it's just incomparable with economic effect, with increase of our quality of our life and increase of our efficiency and also giving us the opportunity to dream more
Starting point is 01:52:28 and just be more connected in this world. Yeah, I think that's a good place to end it. But in the meantime, go outside, eat more plants. Please. Love your family, love your neighbor, put your feet in the dirt, right? Get a good night's sleep. And do your annual health checkups. Health checkups, that's right.
Starting point is 01:52:50 Cool, man. Well, thank you for coming here and talking to me today. The book is Growing Young, the Science and Technology of Growing Young. You can pick it up everywhere. It's available August 24th. And I appreciate you coming to. Thank you.
Starting point is 01:53:04 I've learned a lot. That was super fun. So best of luck. Thanks for each. Peace. Plants. That's it for today. Thank you for listening.
Starting point is 01:53:23 I truly hope you enjoyed the conversation. To learn more about today's guest, including links and resources related to everything discussed today, visit the episode page at richroll.com where you can find the entire podcast archive, as well as podcast merch, my books, Finding Ultra,
Starting point is 01:53:43 Voicing Change in the Plant Power Way, as well as the Plant Power Meal Planner at meals.richroll.com. If you'd like to support the podcast, the easiest and most impactful thing you can do is to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, and on YouTube, and leave a review and or comment. Supporting the sponsors who support the show is also important and appreciated. And sharing the show or your favorite episode with friends or on social media is of course awesome and very helpful. And finally, for podcast updates, special offers on books, the meal planner, and other subjects, please subscribe to our newsletter, which you can find on the footer of any page at richroll.com. Today's show was produced and engineered by Jason Camiolo
Starting point is 01:54:32 with additional audio engineering by Cale Curtis. The video edition of the podcast was created by Blake Curtis with assistance by our creative director, Dan Drake. Portraits by Davy Greenberg, graphic and social media assets, courtesy of Daniel Solis, Dan Drake. Portraits by Davy Greenberg, graphic and social media assets, courtesy of Daniel Solis, Dan Drake, and AJ Akpodiete. Thank you, Georgia Whaley,
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