Speaker 1: The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast
Speaker 1: by night, all day.
Speaker 2: Mr. Sinclair, good to see you again.
Speaker 1: Dr. Sinclair?
Speaker 2: Doctor.
Speaker 1: I'm kidding.
Speaker 2: It's better that way, right? Yeah, do you ever introduce
Speaker 2: yourself as doctor?
Speaker 1: Never.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a kind of a, it's a weird thing
Speaker 2: because you're allowed to.
Speaker 1: I'm actually a Sir David from Australia.
Speaker 2: Are you a sir?
Speaker 1: Yeah, but it's kind of a joke. I don't really.
Speaker 2: How does that work out? Did you get knighted or
Speaker 2: some shit?
Speaker 1: The Queen's representative gave me some Australian version of a knighthood.
Speaker 1: But I get to put AO at the end of
Speaker 1: my name.
Speaker 2: AO?
Speaker 1: Yeah, Order of Australia.
Speaker 2: Oh.
Speaker 1: But it actually makes no difference to my life. So
Speaker 1: it's just an extra couple of letters.
Speaker 2: It's kind of cool.
Speaker 1: I'm honored, for sure. But it's just a joke.
Speaker 2: Well, it's kind of anybody, sir. You meet a guy
Speaker 2: at the gas station. How you doing, sir?
Speaker 1: It's like, wow, how does he know? Right.
Speaker 2: You don't say how you're doing, King. Yeah. Right.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm David. I'm Australian. So in Australia, if you
Speaker 1: have any ego, you get beaten up in the playground.
Speaker 2: That is true. Australia is the land of the tall
Speaker 2: poppy syndrome. They don't they don't fuck around. They don't
Speaker 2: like you getting a big head in Australia.
Speaker 1: That is that is true. I like to go back there, though,
Speaker 1: because it's a level playing field. Nobody cares who you are.
Speaker 2: I love the people there. Australian people are some of
Speaker 2: my favorite people. They're awesome. They're very friendly and fun.
Speaker 2: It's a great place to be. It's just too far
Speaker 2: to get there. It's such a haul. Oh, no.
Speaker 1: If you just, you know, whiskey in an Ambien and
Speaker 1: you're there without.
Speaker 2: Is that what you do?
Speaker 1: I used to. I've gone clean. I don't drink much
Speaker 1: at all anymore.
Speaker 2: What does that mean? How often does he drink much
Speaker 2: at all? Celebrations. Do you want to drink right now?
Speaker 1: No, it would be a bad look. I've got the
Speaker 1: coffee that you gave me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is Laird Superfood Coffee. So Laird Hamilton. It's
Speaker 2: black rifle coffee mixed with his superfood stuff, which is–
Speaker 2: this one is turmeric. So it's turmeric and I think
Speaker 2: it has coconut milk in it and some other jazz.
Speaker 2: That's great.
Speaker 1: Anti-inflammatory. Yes.
Speaker 2: Which I know you're all about.
Speaker 1: Yes, as a prophet of longevity. Yes.
Speaker 2: Is that another title of you?
Speaker 1: Yes, you can call me Sir David the Prophet. How
Speaker 1: about that?
Speaker 2: Sir David, the prophet. Dr. Sir David, the prophet of longevity.
Speaker 1: That'll do.
Speaker 2: So there's a lot. Let's just jump right into it
Speaker 2: because there is a lot going on in the longevity space.
Speaker 1: Thank you for having me back on.
Speaker 2: My pleasure.
Speaker 1: And by the way, I also want to thank you for,
Speaker 1: I think this is fourth time on, which is amazing.
Speaker 1: Thank you. Congrats on all your success. Thank you. It's
Speaker 1: been wonderful to see. Also, the book that I wrote,
Speaker 1: which you first had me on to promote, has done
Speaker 1: so well. And it's really because of you. And the book, Lifespan,
Speaker 1: became a bestseller. Not just that, but it's now been
Speaker 1: read millions of times around the world. It's in 40 languages.
Speaker 2: Well, that's phenomenal, and it's my pleasure.
Speaker 1: And that's not a promo. As you know, you don't
Speaker 1: make any money from books really. But I'm just honored
Speaker 1: that it was read by so many people around the
Speaker 1: world because it wasn't an easy read. It was high-tech science.
Speaker 2: Well, people are very interested, especially nowadays. I think I've
Speaker 2: never– I can't recall a time– In my life where
Speaker 2: optimizing your health and longevity has been more of a
Speaker 2: subject that people are interested in.
Speaker 1: Well, I think that's largely because not to keep blowing
Speaker 1: smoke up your rear, but largely because of what you
Speaker 1: did in the book. So the book went global and
Speaker 1: it was right in 2019 and the pandemic hit. And
Speaker 1: I think most people saw their own mortality at that point.
Speaker 1: Most people under the age of about 70 didn't even
Speaker 1: think about dying, but then pandemics like shit, I could die.
Speaker 1: And I saw the book take off. You launched it.
Speaker 1: But yeah, since then, a lot of people have jumped
Speaker 1: on the bandwagon and now longevity is, I hear this
Speaker 1: everywhere I go. It's everything.
Speaker 2: It's everywhere. People are constantly talking about different modalities. How
Speaker 2: often do you cold plunge? Are you sauna? What about
Speaker 2: the red light? What do you think? Is this legit?
Speaker 2: Is that legit? Like this, everybody's optimizing everything constantly all
Speaker 2: the time, but The reason why it's caught on is
Speaker 2: because if you do follow some of the protocols, you
Speaker 2: will feel better. And so that's the ultimate goal. Longevity
Speaker 2: is wonderful, but feeling better in the moment currently, like
Speaker 2: living your life, should be primary. Longevity, I think, is
Speaker 2: if you're optimizing your life and you feel better, you
Speaker 2: will live longer. It's all part of it. So if
Speaker 2: you follow the longevity principles and the ideas behind it,
Speaker 2: you certainly will live better right now.
Speaker 1: You will and it's not even that hard. There are
Speaker 1: basic things, five basic things you can do or avoid
Speaker 1: and you can live another 15 years. It's really not
Speaker 1: that hard and that's what I'm excited about telling millions
Speaker 1: of people today is– and maybe we can go over
Speaker 1: the kind of things that people can do easily to
Speaker 1: live longer.
Speaker 2: Well, I definitely want to do that. But I also
Speaker 2: want to talk about like what is the current state
Speaker 2: of science today? uh, as applied to longevity treatments? Like,
Speaker 2: cause I know that there's some pretty groundbreaking stuff that's
Speaker 2: in the pipeline right now. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's so since 2019, a lot of what we talked
Speaker 1: about has come true, which is the amazing thing. We, uh,
Speaker 1: we're speculating 2019 that we could potentially reverse aging. And
Speaker 1: that was a sin to say that as a scientist
Speaker 1: publicly in those days, I put it in the book. Um,
Speaker 1: And it's actually come true since then, certainly for the lab,
Speaker 1: for mice, monkeys. And now we have a human clinical trial,
Speaker 1: the first potential human age reversal technologies in people right now.
Speaker 2: Listen, it completely seems logical. The idea that that at
Speaker 2: one point in time would have been heresy in science
Speaker 2: to discuss it. That seems crazy. Like if people get
Speaker 2: old and we understand the mechanism, why couldn't we reverse it?
Speaker 1: Well, I think for a long time we had to
Speaker 1: accept it in the way that cancer used to be
Speaker 1: accepted 200 years ago probably. There was nothing you could
Speaker 1: do about it. And then my colleagues and I found
Speaker 1: that aging has a root cause that's the same in
Speaker 1: pretty much every cell in the body and that we
Speaker 1: could control that and that there were genes that not
Speaker 1: only slowed it down, but in 2020 we had a
Speaker 1: big publication that showed we could actually safely for the
Speaker 1: first time reverse that process like reinstalling software in the
Speaker 1: cell to make it work again.
Speaker 2: And so what is the– is that using CRISPR? Like
Speaker 2: what are you using to– Well.
Speaker 1: We deliver genes into the body like CRISPR. I have
Speaker 1: a little prop here I brought.
Speaker 2: What is that?
Speaker 1: In my pocket here. This is a representation of how
Speaker 1: we deliver the age reversal genes. It's a virus-like capsule
Speaker 1: that we make in the lab. And this is what's
Speaker 1: going into the patients right now, into their eyes initially.
Speaker 2: Whoa.
Speaker 1: The eye is a good place to start.
Speaker 2: How do you pick the people to get on these tests?
Speaker 1: They volunteer. I was really fortunate to see the first
Speaker 1: patient get dosed earlier this year. And that person bravely
Speaker 1: volunteered to be the first person to get trillions of
Speaker 1: these injected into his eye to see if it could
Speaker 1: cure his glaucoma loss of vision.
Speaker 2: I bet if you have glaucoma, you're probably like, listen,
Speaker 2: what's the worst that could happen? Well, exactly.
Speaker 1: He pretty much was totally blind in one eye, and
Speaker 1: so there's really nothing that he has to lose. There's
Speaker 1: a risk that something might go wrong, but not really.
Speaker 1: The good news is, and I can report to everybody
Speaker 1: around the world, that nothing's gone wrong so far. Everything's
Speaker 1: proceeding according to plan, and we're at a turning point, potentially,
Speaker 1: in human history, if it works.
Speaker 2: So I interrupted you, but explain this little virus transport system.
Speaker 1: For those of you listening, I've got a little rubber
Speaker 1: ball with spikes on it. It looks a bit like COVID,
Speaker 1: but don't be scared of it. It's not a pathogenic virus.
Speaker 1: It's actually a domesticated version of a virus. And this
Speaker 1: little plastic ball has little adapters. These red balls on
Speaker 1: the surface of the big ball target it to the
Speaker 1: cells in the back of the eye. And you can
Speaker 1: change the balls to target different tissues. We could change
Speaker 1: that outside. little spike and target it to the liver,
Speaker 1: which we've done, and cured mice of their fatty liver
Speaker 1: disease as well. But this one's for the eye. And
Speaker 1: within that big ball is a protein capsule. And inside
Speaker 1: the protein capsule is our DNA special delivery, which we
Speaker 1: call OSK or ER100. ER100 is epigenetic reprogramming 100, the
Speaker 1: drug that we know when we put it into human cells,
Speaker 1: it makes them younger. And then they work like they
Speaker 1: were young again.
Speaker 2: This sounds like the beginning of a horror movie. You
Speaker 2: know what I mean? Like the scientist is on a
Speaker 2: talk show. The scientist is explaining it. And everyone's at
Speaker 2: home like with their coffee like, wow. This is wonderful.
Speaker 2: We're going to get younger again. Don't worry.
Speaker 1: It's all going to work out.
Speaker 2: 28 days later, garbage in the streets, cars on fire.
Speaker 2: The guy's waking up from a coma, doesn't know what happened.
Speaker 1: He goes outside.
Speaker 2: These optimized humans are eating each other. I admit. I admit.
Speaker 1: It is science fiction. And I even have to pinch
Speaker 1: myself that it's actually happening. But we've done a lot
Speaker 1: of safety studies and this trial is FDA approved because
Speaker 1: they've looked at all the data.
Speaker 2: Well, God knows they never fuck anything up.
Speaker 1: I figured you might say that.
Speaker 2: Perfect. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, it's in the eye. So that's why we start
Speaker 1: with the eye. It's enclosed. It's not going to spread.
Speaker 1: Nobody's going to grow another eye.
Speaker 2: And so these trillions of cells that you're putting.
Speaker 1: Into the eyes the little capsule the virus.
Speaker 2: I shouldn't call them cells trillions of capsules that you're
Speaker 2: putting into the eye what are they doing for glaucoma.
Speaker 1: Well what they're doing is there are three genes in
Speaker 1: this DNA package and I called them OSK OSK are
Speaker 1: three special genes that we found safely reprogram cells and
Speaker 1: reboot the backup copy of youth, which we now believe
Speaker 1: exists in our body. That's a big deal, that there's
Speaker 1: a backup copy of youth. Even an old person, I
Speaker 1: don't see an old person anymore on the street. I
Speaker 1: just see a person that needs to be rebooted. These
Speaker 1: OSK genes... You just see.
Speaker 2: Wait a minute, hold on. When you see old people,
Speaker 2: you don't see old people, you just say, Oh, that
Speaker 2: poor person needs to be rebooted.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: You're doing the perfect job for you. Like your personality
Speaker 2: is perfectly suited for your occupation if that's how you
Speaker 2: actually look at people.
Speaker 1: Well, I do. And the reason is that we all
Speaker 1: have this backup copy that the DNA, the instructions to
Speaker 1: be young that made us into who we are as
Speaker 1: kids is still in our bodies, almost largely intact. You
Speaker 1: just need to read it again. And that's why reinstalling
Speaker 1: software or– I used to use the analogy of a CD.
Speaker 1: Kids these days probably don't know what a CD is.
Speaker 1: It's a little plastic circle like a record that we
Speaker 1: used to put 20 songs on. It was awesome at
Speaker 1: the time.
Speaker 2: I think most people know.
Speaker 1: I'm kidding. I'm kidding. It's a bit of a silly joke.
Speaker 2: Maybe a 10-year-old does it.
Speaker 1: When I teach kids at Harvard, most of them have
Speaker 1: never held a CD.
Speaker 2: Isn't that wild?
Speaker 1: Yeah. They're not coming back but albums definitely. So think
Speaker 1: of it like an album that you scratch and the
Speaker 1: scratch is– like aging, and we are getting rid of
Speaker 1: the scratches with these three genes, OSK. So let me
Speaker 1: tell you how these three genes work, we found. There
Speaker 1: was a person whose name is well known in science
Speaker 1: circles called Shinya Yamanaka, from Japan, obviously. And he discovered
Speaker 1: that there was a set of four genes that could
Speaker 1: reliably make adult cells, like skin cells, into stem cells.
Speaker 1: And he deservedly won the Nobel Prize for that in 2006.
Speaker 1: But that wouldn't be useful here. If I turned you
Speaker 1: into a bunch of stem cells, you'd probably die within
Speaker 1: a few minutes. So we don't want to do that.
Speaker 1: And cancer is also a potential. So it took us about, well,
Speaker 1: from 2019, it took us a while to figure out
Speaker 1: that if we leave out one of the Aminoka genes
Speaker 1: and just use three, OSK, leave out the other one
Speaker 1: called M, we'd get safe age reversal, about 75%, 80%
Speaker 1: back to youth. but no further. We don't go back
Speaker 1: to zero, which is what Yamanaka did. And instead of
Speaker 1: cells losing their identity, which is what a stem cell
Speaker 1: has no identity, we regain identity. So it's actually, I
Speaker 1: could draw graphs, but it doesn't really help listeners. But basically,
Speaker 1: old age is losing identity of your cells. So they
Speaker 1: don't work. They forget how to work. That's what we
Speaker 1: think old age is in my lab. And stem cells
Speaker 1: have no identity. It was like a very early embryo.
Speaker 1: In between, our cells have a lot of identity. They
Speaker 1: function beautifully. We're in our 20s. We're at peak. And
Speaker 1: what we've done is we've figured out how to go
Speaker 1: back towards youth, get these cells to work like they
Speaker 1: did again, get the backup copy somewhere it exists. We're
Speaker 1: looking for it. And now cells actually behave like they
Speaker 1: did when we were 20. And if it works, we're
Speaker 1: going to have glaucoma patients seeing for the first time.
Speaker 1: And that's the beginning of a whole cascade of drugs
Speaker 1: that I want to develop for diseases of aging and
Speaker 1: eventually whole body rejuvenation.
Speaker 2: So the initial experiments are on glaucoma because it's a
Speaker 2: contained thing. The eyeball is a contained thing and you
Speaker 2: could do it that way?
Speaker 1: Yeah. My student, Wan Cheng Lu, who was doing this
Speaker 1: in 2017, I said, let's do the liver. Let's rejuvenate
Speaker 1: the liver. And he said, no, the eye is a
Speaker 1: good idea. And he was right. So that's exactly why
Speaker 1: we chose that first.
Speaker 2: But just think about how many people have vision problems.
Speaker 1: It's 40 million just in the U.S. for glaucoma. Macular
Speaker 1: degeneration is even more. And in the lab, we can
Speaker 1: cure that as well in the mice.
Speaker 2: Now, macular degeneration and glaucoma, these are diseases of aging, right,
Speaker 2: you would say? Or glaucoma is a disease?
Speaker 1: Oh, yeah.
Speaker 2: What about people that have had eyeball injuries and things
Speaker 2: like that? Is there a backup copy of the eyeball
Speaker 2: where you could sort of reformat the eyeball structure?
Speaker 1: You should come work in my lab. at least come visit.
Speaker 2: I would love to visit.
Speaker 1: And the reason I say that is that's the exact
Speaker 1: question that we're asking. Hmm. We showed that even if
Speaker 1: you injure, say a nerve, uh, whether it's peripheral on,
Speaker 1: in your arm or in your brain or in the eye,
Speaker 1: like the optic nerve, we can regrow those back to
Speaker 1: where they were. And actually in 2020 on the cover
Speaker 1: of nature magazine, there was the picture of an eye.
Speaker 1: And in the, in the paper we published, you could
Speaker 1: see the nerves regrowing back. Um, And so we think
Speaker 1: that injury is also treatable. Actually, a group in China
Speaker 1: just took our technology, this OSK stuff, put it into
Speaker 1: mice that had bad joints, and it regrew their muscle
Speaker 1: and their bone back to normal.
Speaker 2: Whoa.
Speaker 1: And so we're also looking at treating injury, back injury, joints, osteoarthritis.
Speaker 2: That would be phenomenal because there are so many people
Speaker 2: that are suffering from arthritis and so many. I know
Speaker 2: so many people with injuries, like martial arts injuries. I
Speaker 2: have one. My left knee is fucked up. It's annoying.
Speaker 2: I keep it together. I've got it like– I maintain it,
Speaker 2: but it's always an issue. I have to stay on it.
Speaker 1: And there's little you can do, like stem cells, a
Speaker 1: little bit of relief.
Speaker 2: Stem cells give you relief, but not– once you're dealing
Speaker 2: with cartilage damage and you're dealing with the– I had
Speaker 2: a meniscus surgery where they took out a piece of
Speaker 2: my meniscus. And I had my ACL reconstructed on that
Speaker 2: knee as well. So it's just an issue. But it
Speaker 2: works pretty good for like what it should be. Like
Speaker 2: if we were living in the 1930s, I'd be a cripple.
Speaker 1: Hang in there because we're going to be in a
Speaker 1: world where we can rebuild parts of the body, including joints.
Speaker 2: The problem with that is like how does that apply
Speaker 2: to athletics? We're going to have fucking super soldiers in
Speaker 2: every sport. There's going to be people in every sport
Speaker 2: that could. Do what Michael Jordan did and like leap
Speaker 2: from halfway across the basketball court and dunk.
Speaker 1: That's probably coming and there may be DNA tests to
Speaker 1: see if you've got these OSK genes inserted. And we're
Speaker 1: working on it, working on a drink and a pill.
Speaker 2: As well for– A drink and a pill?
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean we're now eight years ahead of what
Speaker 1: the public realizes.
Speaker 2: Really?
Speaker 1: In my lab at Harvard, yeah.
Speaker 2: A drink and a pill and what's a drink and
Speaker 2: a pill going to do?
Speaker 1: Well, right now it's in mice so we've still got
Speaker 1: a ways to go. But when we give– the drink
Speaker 1: to mice, they get rejuvenated.
Speaker 2: You just give it to 80 year olds. If you're
Speaker 2: on the way out, like let's fucking go. Like give
Speaker 2: it a chance.
Speaker 1: This is what the FDA is for. They forbid that.
Speaker 2: Yeah. That's what we need to get rid of them.
Speaker 2: Get rid of the FDA and just give it to
Speaker 2: old people. If I was an old guy and I
Speaker 2: was like hanging in there and I'm walking around with a,
Speaker 2: and you're like, look, this drink and a pill might
Speaker 2: kill you or you might be like a 30 year
Speaker 2: old again. I'm like, let's fucking go.
Speaker 1: Well, I get emails a lot. I've had to take
Speaker 1: my emails off public access because there's a lot of
Speaker 1: people that want this.
Speaker 2: Oh, I'm sure.
Speaker 1: There was one guy that wouldn't leave the building until
Speaker 1: he saw me. So it's getting to that point.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a little bit of that, right? People get
Speaker 2: a little selfish like it's all about them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and actually the U.S. government blocked an investment from
Speaker 1: a foreign country into one of my companies because they
Speaker 1: were afraid of super soldiers.
Speaker 2: Ooh, what country?
Speaker 1: Well, they were afraid of technology getting out. Which country?
Speaker 2: Could I guess? Sure.
Speaker 1: China. It wasn't.
Speaker 2: Was it?
Speaker 1: No, no.
Speaker 2: Russia?
Speaker 1: It was somewhere in between here and China. Oh, well,
Speaker 1: that's pretty vague. It's a little sensitive. But, yeah, the U.S.
Speaker 1: government does have the ability to block foreign investment, and
Speaker 1: they did in this case. $ 160 million they blocked.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: That was a painful episode.
Speaker 2: So they were worried that people were going to actually
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Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Do you know about the Russian experiments that they did
Speaker 2: during World War II where they were trying to come
Speaker 2: up with a chimpanzee-human hybrid?
Speaker 1: Tell us.
Speaker 2: Yes. So it's very difficult obviously to get information out
Speaker 2: of the former Soviet Union as to what their top
Speaker 2: secret programs were. But there seems to be an indication
Speaker 2: that there was actual real research to try to– because
Speaker 2: obviously Russia lost an incredible amount of people in World
Speaker 2: War II. I mean tens of millions of soldiers died
Speaker 2: in World War II from Russia. And I think they said,
Speaker 2: wouldn't it be great if it wasn't people? And so
Speaker 2: they were doing experiments with hybridization. And they were trying
Speaker 2: to combine human beings and chimpanzees to create a, you know,
Speaker 2: a stable of super soldiers that were like some hybrid hominin.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a scientist in New York who does this
Speaker 1: for a living.
Speaker 2: What? He does that for a living?
Speaker 1: Well, he's not creating them, but I've seen... I was
Speaker 1: on stage with him. He made hybrid embryos. They didn't
Speaker 1: reach birth rate.
Speaker 2: See, the thing is if that guy is doing that
Speaker 2: and he's ethical and he lives in America and we
Speaker 2: have rules and regulations and the FDA and all that
Speaker 2: good stuff, what the fuck is going on in other
Speaker 2: countries where they don't have that?
Speaker 1: Right, right. Well, there's genetic engineering of humans already and
Speaker 1: certainly selection.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 1: Even parents today in the US can– if they have
Speaker 1: the money, they can select.
Speaker 2: Well, people select.
Speaker 1: Even based on intelligence.
Speaker 2: People select for hotness. They select for tallness. They select
Speaker 2: for intelligence.
Speaker 1: It's like Gattaca.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 1: It's a great movie if you haven't seen it.
Speaker 2: It is a great movie. Yeah. So see if you
Speaker 2: could find that Russian hybridization program. It never happened, I
Speaker 2: don't think. I don't think they did it. But there's
Speaker 2: actually a guy who was also involved in a gigantic
Speaker 2: fertility scam. Not a scam per se, but he was
Speaker 2: a doctor. that was supposed to be doing fertility treatments
Speaker 2: with women. Like, you know, like if you went with
Speaker 2: your wife to a doctor and said, hey, we're having
Speaker 2: a hard time getting pregnant. And well, David, I just
Speaker 2: need some of your sperm and I'll take your wife's egg.
Speaker 2: We'll make you a nice baby. And he was using
Speaker 2: his sperm on everybody, on everybody. Everybody gets mine.
Speaker 1: One of my kids partners is from someone in the
Speaker 1: US who had hundreds of babies.
Speaker 2: Dude, there is a ton of those guys. As I
Speaker 2: was doing research for this, I started looking up all
Speaker 2: these stories and I said, wait, this is a different story?
Speaker 2: The same thing? There's been a ton of these doctors
Speaker 2: from fertility clinics that use their own sperm. Just insane.
Speaker 2: But this one doctor that did that also claimed that
Speaker 2: he impregnated an orangutan. Yeah. Like how? How did you
Speaker 2: do that? Soviet doctor Joseph Stalin. Dictator. Dictator. Obviously. Wanted
Speaker 2: to rebuild the Red Army in the mid-1920s. With Planet
Speaker 2: of the Apes-style troops by crossing humans with apes, Stalin
Speaker 2: is said to have told Ivanov, I want a new,
Speaker 2: invincible human being, insensitive to pain, resistant and indifferent about
Speaker 2: the quality of the food they ate. Which is crazy.
Speaker 2: The only legitimate source of the claim comes from a
Speaker 2: 2002 paper in the academic journal Science in Context. by
Speaker 2: the Russian historian of science, uh, Kirill Rassianov. Rassianov's, uh,
Speaker 2: study follows the ill-fated attempt by the Russian psychologist or
Speaker 2: physiologist rather, uh, Ooh, that was that word. Ilya Ivanov
Speaker 2: to crossbreed humans with anthropoid apes. His research offers an
Speaker 2: important warning about the ethical abuses. Did you do it?
Speaker 2: What happened? Um, The alleged quote from Stalin is not
Speaker 2: found in the paper and there's no evidence of Stalin
Speaker 2: ever made such a statement. Yeah. I don't know. However,
Speaker 2: why the Soviets would find such a human chimp hybridization
Speaker 2: program in the first place and what could be learned
Speaker 2: from this sordid tale of ethical misconduct is an important
Speaker 2: topic and fascinating in its own right. That's an interesting
Speaker 2: way of phrasing it, like a sordid tale of ethical misconduct.
Speaker 2: However– If you are going to go to war, would
Speaker 2: you rather have human-made orcs fight for us or Johnny Robinson,
Speaker 2: who grew up down the street, who's a nice kid,
Speaker 2: who just really wanted money for college, and so he
Speaker 2: signed up for military service, and you're going to fly
Speaker 2: him over to fight this war that maybe he doesn't
Speaker 2: need to die in when you can have these monsters
Speaker 2: that you made in a lab fight?
Speaker 1: Yep, and the average ape can kill a human with
Speaker 1: one punch. Easy. So they're much stronger than we realize.
Speaker 2: That's what I'm talking about. Let's go.
Speaker 1: Well, we're in the process of building, you know, anthropoid
Speaker 1: robots that I think will be recruited to the army.
Speaker 2: Yeah. That's going to be weird. Like our robots beat
Speaker 2: your robots. So give us your oil. How's that going
Speaker 2: to work?
Speaker 1: And if we all have one at home, what stops
Speaker 1: the government recruiting them all?
Speaker 2: Right. And also what's the real problem is going to be?
Speaker 2: We both know the real problem is going to be
Speaker 2: sex robots.
Speaker 1: Is it a problem?
Speaker 2: It's going to be a problem for people that don't
Speaker 2: have a sex robot. People won't leave home. It's going
Speaker 2: to be a problem with people that want a regular person,
Speaker 2: and there's none available because everybody's got a sex robot.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, it comes with fewer strings attached.
Speaker 2: It also comes with the same problems that AI comes with, right,
Speaker 2: where AI says, David, you're amazing. Everything you do is wonderful.
Speaker 2: You should be so proud of yourself. I love that.
Speaker 2: No real– we would all love that. But that's not healthy, right?
Speaker 1: You're so big.
Speaker 2: This is one of the reasons why actual real relationships
Speaker 2: between human beings are good. It's because you do things
Speaker 2: that are annoying. You don't realize they're annoying. And then
Speaker 2: your wife or your husband or whatever it is tells you, hey,
Speaker 2: you're fucking annoying. And you're like, I'm sorry. I'll– I'll
Speaker 2: fix that. I didn't mean to. I didn't. That's not
Speaker 2: what I was trying to do. I was in my
Speaker 2: own head. I was thinking about myself. You're right. I
Speaker 2: was selfish. You get better. It's like how people grow.
Speaker 2: Like relationships are important to help people grow. Not with AI.
Speaker 2: Like you can fart in my face any day, David.
Speaker 2: I don't mind at all. Your farts are amazing.
Speaker 1: I know the problem is they're going to be way
Speaker 1: smarter than us too.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: I don't know how people are going to say, go
Speaker 1: stack the dishwasher to one of these robots. They're smarter
Speaker 1: than all humans combined.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but they're not going to mind stacking. They're smart
Speaker 2: enough to– They're going to.
Speaker 1: Be bored out of hell and they're going to beat
Speaker 1: us up.
Speaker 2: They don't care. They're not going to mind doing like
Speaker 2: menial tasks. But while you're doing it, you can go,
Speaker 2: explain to me quantum entanglement. So while they're filling up
Speaker 2: the dishwasher– They're going to go F you one day.
Speaker 2: Well– If you have a particle and the particles– Yeah.
Speaker 1: I just invented a cure for aging.
Speaker 2: Right. Well, look at what it's done with mathematics. Like
Speaker 2: just over the last couple weeks, they've solved more than
Speaker 2: 50 program or 50 mathematical equations that they have struggled
Speaker 2: for decade upon decade to try to solve. And AI
Speaker 2: is like, oh, I got it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, biology is a little bit more complicated, but already
Speaker 1: AI is doing a lot of the science that we
Speaker 1: used to do in my lab. In fact, what we
Speaker 1: just recently did in a couple of months would have
Speaker 1: taken about 160 years to complete.
Speaker 2: What?
Speaker 1: And it's only getting faster. Eventually someone can make a
Speaker 1: drug on their phone.
Speaker 2: Say that again.
Speaker 1: Two months instead of 160 years.
Speaker 2: Well, what exactly was it that you had to do?
Speaker 1: Oh, so this drink and the pill that we're looking for,
Speaker 1: that's not easy. So we have some candidate molecules. We
Speaker 1: have a cocktail that works. Are you taking this stuff?
Speaker 2: Not yet. You're thinking about it? Yeah. No one could
Speaker 2: stop you.
Speaker 1: Well, that is true. That is true. But it would
Speaker 1: be a bad look if I died. So maybe I
Speaker 1: wouldn't do it. What? You're not going to die. Come on.
Speaker 1: I don't think so. We've done a lot of safety
Speaker 1: tests and it looks really safe. But I'm not going
Speaker 1: to publicly do anything against the law.
Speaker 2: Of course.
Speaker 1: It would be in private, of course.
Speaker 2: Of course.
Speaker 1: Not publicly. I'm at a stage where I have to
Speaker 1: be a good boy because I've got the world watching.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 1: A lot is at stake.
Speaker 2: Yes. A lot is at stake.
Speaker 1: And if this trial– If there's any issues, it's not good.
Speaker 2: You've got to dot your I's and cross your T's
Speaker 2: and follow every– I understand that. But please explain again
Speaker 2: because I'm being rude. I interrupted you. When you're telling
Speaker 2: me that in two months it did something that would
Speaker 2: have required 160 years of work, like what do you
Speaker 2: exactly mean by that?
Speaker 1: Yeah, and now it would probably be impossible in thousands
Speaker 1: of years because what we do is we're looking for molecules,
Speaker 1: a single molecule that can replace this cocktail. So you
Speaker 1: need a molecule to do three or four activities in
Speaker 1: the cell. Finding one activity is what pharmaceutical companies do.
Speaker 1: It takes hundreds of millions, if not billions, to make
Speaker 1: a drug. We know that, right? My little lab of
Speaker 1: 20 people and students, young kids, are trying to make
Speaker 1: one drug do three or four different things. That's beyond
Speaker 1: the reach of pharmaceutical experience at least five years ago.
Speaker 1: So what we do is we've teamed up with a
Speaker 1: group at St. Jude's Hospital where they can take– it
Speaker 1: was $ 10 billion. Now it's a trillion theoretical and also
Speaker 1: drug– known drugs. With my hands, I'm showing a big funnel.
Speaker 2: You're really good at podcasts. You're like helping out the
Speaker 2: audio people and everything. I love it.
Speaker 1: I relaunched my podcast. That's why.
Speaker 2: Oh, that's why. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Lifespan, David Sinclair. Shameless plug. So this funnel– is full
Speaker 1: of a trillion molecules and we have to come down
Speaker 1: to one. How do we do that? Well, we don't
Speaker 1: look for a trillion molecules at the bench. That would
Speaker 1: take 160 or thousands of years with the case of
Speaker 1: a trillion molecules, even with robots, even with a lot
Speaker 1: of graduate students. So we do it inside the computer.
Speaker 1: We just use a lot of compute and we dock
Speaker 1: each of these molecules against the enzymes that we now
Speaker 1: know how they work, thanks to Google DeepMind solved the
Speaker 1: problem of how do all our proteins look, 20,000 of them.
Speaker 1: And there's a lot of compute. But out the other end,
Speaker 1: a couple of months later, we have 200 molecules that
Speaker 1: we can now test in the lab within a few weeks. Actually,
Speaker 1: next week, we're testing these 200 against human cells. And
Speaker 1: we've also got AI helping us to tell us if
Speaker 1: the human cells go from 92 years old back to 20.
Speaker 1: We can tell that just by looking at them, thanks
Speaker 1: to the AI.
Speaker 2: Is there a way to stop that? from turning you
Speaker 2: into a baby? Because that's what I would worry about.
Speaker 1: Yes.
Speaker 2: Yes. I don't want to be a baby again. Right.
Speaker 1: Some people are already there.
Speaker 2: I'd like to cut it off at like– I was
Speaker 2: pretty good at 25.
Speaker 1: I'm going to get attacked for saying this, but that
Speaker 1: is what we do in the lab. We take 92-year-old
Speaker 1: cells and they stop at 20-something. Wow.
Speaker 2: Why would you get attacked for that?
Speaker 1: Because on the internet, people take a clip and they say,
Speaker 1: Sinclair says we can all go back to being 20 again.
Speaker 1: You suffer from this too, right? They take a clip
Speaker 1: and it's out of context. And I'm just saying cells
Speaker 1: from humans, skin cells, we take them back to 25.
Speaker 1: All my students can do this. In fact, if you
Speaker 1: had these little genes, OSK, in your garage, you could
Speaker 1: do this experiment. It's not hard at all to reverse aging.
Speaker 1: The question is, how do you safely make it a drug?
Speaker 1: And that's been the hard part over the last 10 years.
Speaker 2: So how would it be able to regulate this reduction
Speaker 2: or reversal of aging and stop it at 20-something years old?
Speaker 1: Well, that's what took so long. It wasn't obvious that
Speaker 1: these three Yamanaka genes called OSK were the right cocktail.
Speaker 1: My student, who I mentioned, Wen Cheng, he was struggling.
Speaker 1: He was trying a lot of different genes. Most of
Speaker 1: them from embryos because we know embryos have to do
Speaker 1: a reset in the first week of life. Otherwise, they
Speaker 1: stay the age of the parents. And he found that
Speaker 1: leaving out one of the Aminaka genes was the trick.
Speaker 1: And now that we know it, it's super easy. But
Speaker 1: in those days, he was ready to quit.
Speaker 2: How did he find that out?
Speaker 1: Well, he tried lots of different combinations, hundreds in human cells.
Speaker 1: And you look at the cells to see if they
Speaker 1: get younger. And then we can measure molecularly that they
Speaker 1: get younger.
Speaker 2: And are you measuring them by the length of their telomeres?
Speaker 1: Yeah. Partly, but actually a better measure is the chemicals
Speaker 1: that are added and subtracted off DNA itself called methyls.
Speaker 1: And it's just a carbon molecule with three hydrogens. Very
Speaker 1: simple molecule. But what cells do is they use these
Speaker 1: methyls to tag genes to be switched off. So when
Speaker 1: we're growing as an embryo, the cells that want to
Speaker 1: become neurons will shut off all these other unwanted genes
Speaker 1: like liver genes and skin genes. And the ones that
Speaker 1: don't get this methyl chemical stay on for our life.
Speaker 1: And that's how nerve cells develop and stay healthy. But
Speaker 1: what happens during aging– a friend of mine, Steve Horvath,
Speaker 1: discovered that you can use this as a clock. These chemicals,
Speaker 1: they change over time. And we found that that happens
Speaker 1: largely due to DNA damage going in the sun, these
Speaker 1: kind of things. We could use this to rapidly age
Speaker 1: a mouse, which we published in 2023.
Speaker 2: Oh, so like maybe like some nefarious state actor, like
Speaker 2: some– Russian spy could, like, inject something in your coffee
Speaker 2: and you would turn 99 overnight?
Speaker 1: We know how to do that.
Speaker 2: Whoa. Yeah. That's the dark side of this. It is.
Speaker 2: You could spike your husband's drink. Fuck that dude. And
Speaker 2: turn him into an old man.
Speaker 1: Hey, what did you do?
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Someone tweeted the other day, if a 92-year-old could be
Speaker 1: 25 again, would you have sex with them?
Speaker 2: And my response was– Imagine how much they know.
Speaker 1: But would they have sex with you? Right.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: That's the better question.
Speaker 2: That's the question. They'd be looking for another 20-year-old.
Speaker 1: Right. So anyway, how do we do it? We can
Speaker 1: measure those chemicals and determine how old a cell is
Speaker 1: or a human. I could take your skin cells from
Speaker 1: your mouth or your blood and tell you.
Speaker 2: How old you are. I wonder if people would be
Speaker 2: so disturbed by like old rich guys dating young women
Speaker 2: if that was the case. You couldn't tell if they
Speaker 2: looked young. Because people get very mad at that. You
Speaker 2: ever notice?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: You see some real old decrepit dude with a hot
Speaker 2: young wife and people are like, God damn it. They
Speaker 2: get really mad. Right.
Speaker 1: Right now the best way to do that is to
Speaker 1: have a big bank account, but eventually you'll actually.
Speaker 2: Look young again. Right, but people still get grossed out.
Speaker 2: I wonder if they would get grossed out if he
Speaker 2: looked 20. They'd be like, he's praying. He has so
Speaker 2: much more years of knowledge and information. It's not fair.
Speaker 2: I don't care if he looks 20. That's a 99-year-old man.
Speaker 1: That day will come. That day will come where you
Speaker 1: will not be able to tell how old somebody is
Speaker 1: by looking at them. You'll have to do a test
Speaker 1: for these genes. Wow.
Speaker 2: I wonder if people still lie about their age if
Speaker 2: that's the case. I wonder if no one will care.
Speaker 2: Like you would probably lie the other way. Like I'm 80.
Speaker 1: It's right.
Speaker 2: Tom's over there telling everybody he's 80.
Speaker 1: That's right. Well, when we live for hundreds of years,
Speaker 1: people will do that. They'll be proud of their age.
Speaker 2: Do you know anything about ancient civilizations and some of
Speaker 2: the weirdness of the records of like ancient Sumer?
Speaker 1: Well, only really what I've learned from listening to you.
Speaker 2: Well, it's– there's– what's really weird is the ancient king's
Speaker 2: lists because– so– OK.
Speaker 1: OK.
Speaker 2: The theory, the theory among these alternative archaeologist types is
Speaker 2: that there was a very advanced civilization that existed on
Speaker 2: Earth tens of thousands of years ago and we're probably
Speaker 2: wiped out by comet impact. And what we have today
Speaker 2: is a rebuild of civilization. There's not a linear progression
Speaker 2: from caveman to us and that at one point in
Speaker 2: time we had reached great heights. This explains the pyramids.
Speaker 2: This explains Machu Picchu, Sacsayhuaman, some megalithic structures that don't
Speaker 2: make any sense, the Trilithon stones in Baalbek Lemadon that
Speaker 2: are hundreds and hundreds of tons, that are massive, that
Speaker 2: are nine meters off the ground. No one understands exactly
Speaker 2: how they placed them. When you look at the Sumerian
Speaker 2: kings list, it gets very weird because there's kings that
Speaker 2: reigned for thousands of years. And then you have the flood.
Speaker 2: And then after the flood, the age of these people
Speaker 2: drops pretty dramatically. And the rains are– after a few
Speaker 2: hundred years become normal, become like a normal person, like
Speaker 2: 50 years, 30 years, like that. But thousands of years before.
Speaker 2: And then people are looking at it like, OK, is
Speaker 2: this just myth? Is this poor record keeping? Do they
Speaker 2: have just these hyperbolic– elevated stories about these kings. They
Speaker 2: were so amazing. They reigned for 30,000 years. Or had
Speaker 2: they achieved, not just in building, because in building, we
Speaker 2: know they'd achieve incredibly complex structure, like the pyramid, for instance,
Speaker 2: like they had insane engineering somehow or another, the ability
Speaker 2: to move these 500 ton stones from hundreds of miles away. Like,
Speaker 2: how did they do this? We don't really know, but
Speaker 2: we know that they did it. Did they also have
Speaker 2: the kind of technology that you're talking about right now?
Speaker 2: Because if it's possible today– and if that is– I
Speaker 2: mean it makes it very difficult because it goes against
Speaker 2: what you would call like the modern narrative that they're
Speaker 2: teaching in universities in terms of the timeline of human history.
Speaker 2: But if that changes and we have undeniable evidence, well,
Speaker 2: it looks like these people were far more advanced than
Speaker 2: we thought and there probably was some sort of a
Speaker 2: reset of civilization. What else had they accomplished and had
Speaker 2: they gotten involved in genetic engineering? Had they figured out
Speaker 2: a way to extend lifespan? And if they did, imagine
Speaker 2: all the work that you've accomplished in your– you're 57 now?
Speaker 2: About to be 57? You look great by the way.
Speaker 2: You really do. Look at your hair. It's so dark.
Speaker 2: It's incredible.
Speaker 1: People speculate it's all fake but it's actually– it's not.
Speaker 1: But anyway, happy birthday to you.
Speaker 2: Thank you very much.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I don't look as good as you though.
Speaker 1: Yes, you do. Physically, you're way better than me.
Speaker 2: That's different though. My face looks older. You look very
Speaker 2: young for your age. You know why? Why?
Speaker 1: Because I've spent all my time in a lab and
Speaker 1: I haven't gone outdoors for a while.
Speaker 2: I'm sure that helps. That does help. But my point is,
Speaker 2: imagine if you had 500 years to do research, not
Speaker 2: just 57 years. Imagine if you could continue learning and
Speaker 2: growing and they did develop some sort of a life
Speaker 2: extension technology where you could not just be older but
Speaker 2: be healthier than you've ever been before and live for
Speaker 2: a thousand years, you would get so much done. I
Speaker 2: mean the exponential increase in technological innovation that we would
Speaker 2: have in this society would be absolutely mind-blowing.
Speaker 1: Exactly, exactly, exactly. This is a really important point.
Speaker 2: And that might be what these alternative history people think.
Speaker 2: That might be what had taken place tens of thousands
Speaker 2: of years ago.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, I'm a Harvard scientist, so I'm not going
Speaker 1: to say anything that isn't.
Speaker 2: Of course. That's for me.
Speaker 1: Yes.
Speaker 2: That's where I live.
Speaker 1: That's why I shut up. But you did make some
Speaker 1: really important points. One is that ancient civilizations have always
Speaker 1: been way more advanced than we think.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 1: Dinosaurs are a lot more real than we make them look.
Speaker 1: We always get things wrong looking back in time and
Speaker 1: looking forward in time. But the other thing that you said,
Speaker 1: which is really important, is that if we do have
Speaker 1: extension of human lifespan like the Bible and these civilizations
Speaker 1: suggest– then how will you think about your life if
Speaker 1: being 100 is, you know, you're still in your prime?
Speaker 1: You do things very differently. Who would you marry? What
Speaker 1: career would you think about? You might have multiple lifetimes,
Speaker 1: multiple marriages, multiple families. And that will happen. It's not
Speaker 1: really a question of if anymore. It's like asking the
Speaker 1: Wright brothers, will we fly? Yeah, we built the glider.
Speaker 1: We're going to fly around. The question is, will we
Speaker 1: build a Concorde? Will we go to space? And I
Speaker 1: think that will happen.
Speaker 2: Yeah. No, I think so too. I think– well, certainly
Speaker 2: one thing that we know is there's a giant difference
Speaker 2: between people who are 57 years old today versus 57
Speaker 2: years old in the 1930s. It's just a giant difference,
Speaker 2: a giant difference in your physical ability, your health.
Speaker 1: We'd be old men.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we would be old men. And what– I mean
Speaker 2: when I was a child, I thought of people– I'm
Speaker 2: almost 59. I'll be 59 in a week. I used
Speaker 2: to think of a 59-year-old as being basically dead. Like
Speaker 2: you're barely getting around. You're probably tired all the time.
Speaker 1: Looking to retire soon.
Speaker 2: Yeah, looking to retire. You got no energy. I'm filled
Speaker 2: with energy. I'm constantly doing– how old is he?
Speaker 1: 60.
Speaker 2: That's what it says. Oh, no. I don't know if
Speaker 2: that's accurate. I bet that's accurate. They had no fucking vitamins.
Speaker 2: Nobody knew what the proper nutrients you should take were.
Speaker 2: Nobody knew the– What was really important in terms of
Speaker 2: like resistance training and sleep and red light therapy and
Speaker 2: all that jazz.
Speaker 1: And they were doing all the bad stuff like heavy smoking, drinking.
Speaker 2: Not sleeping a lot. Yep, not sleeping a lot. And
Speaker 2: pesticides and all kinds of terrible shit. 60-year-old. What? That
Speaker 2: guy's 60? That's crazy. No way. I don't know, man.
Speaker 2: Come on. Shut up. That guy's fucking 28 years old.
Speaker 2: There's no way. That guy's 60? Is that real? I
Speaker 2: will have to follow up.
Speaker 1: I doubt it. I doubt it. How about that guy
Speaker 1: that looks 50 and he says, everyone thinks I'm 18. Like, yeah, sure.
Speaker 2: What's that?
Speaker 1: There's a guy on Instagram, which I occasionally visit, and
Speaker 1: he obviously looks old. Like, he looks over 40.
Speaker 2: Oh, he's a crazy person.
Speaker 1: And he says... People think I look 18. It's like,
Speaker 1: are you crazy?
Speaker 2: Well, there's a lot of crazy people out there. Well,
Speaker 2: that's body dysmorphia.
Speaker 1: There must be.
Speaker 2: Bodybuilders, they think they're tiny. A lot of people are crazy. Yeah.
Speaker 2: A lot of people have a distorted perception of what
Speaker 2: they look like.
Speaker 1: Yeah. The plastic surgery industry is massive. It's just growing
Speaker 1: and growing. You can see it on the street, LA especially.
Speaker 1: But imagine a world where if I'm successful, you can
Speaker 1: take a pill. Your doctor could get it or eventually
Speaker 1: it's a cream. on your face and you literally get younger.
Speaker 1: We do this in mice already. The mice get younger.
Speaker 1: Is it going to work in humans? I think it's
Speaker 1: just a matter of time.
Speaker 2: So in the mice, uh, experiments, what have you achieved?
Speaker 1: Well, a lot, you know, I can reveal here, uh,
Speaker 1: some of it, uh, for the first time we, this,
Speaker 1: this pill that we give them to drink actually, cause
Speaker 1: they can't chew the mice within four weeks with this cocktail.
Speaker 1: It has three components, which are top secret, My lab
Speaker 1: is sworn to secrecy. After four weeks, we give it
Speaker 1: to them three days a week, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, weekends off.
Speaker 1: Within those four weeks, they get better physically, mentally. Excuse me.
Speaker 1: So we put them through tests.
Speaker 2: Just in a couple of days?
Speaker 1: No, three days a week for a month.
Speaker 2: Oh, okay. I found this guy's Instagram. This is the guy?
Speaker 2: He went viral last year. He's being 59 years old. What?
Speaker 2: It seems so not real.
Speaker 1: He looks like he's maybe 30.
Speaker 2: Exactly. He might have just amazing genetics. Well, look at
Speaker 2: Yoel Romero. There are people that are freaks. He's from Singapore.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Wow. Twando, Kwando Tan. And he's 60 years old?
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's been gone... Without facelifts?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know. He certainly doesn't look like he's
Speaker 2: out of facelifts. Yeah, right. His skin is fucking incredible.
Speaker 1: Yeah. But he's probably never been in the sun.
Speaker 2: Except for this video. It could be a full AI
Speaker 2: account that's trolling everyone. I don't... No. That's possible, too. Like,
Speaker 2: look at that picture right there. Like, that looks a
Speaker 2: little AI-ish. Go back to that one again. Keep your
Speaker 2: pants on, Jamie. Relax, relax. That looks very AI, doesn't it?
Speaker 2: I'm just saying it could be. It's all. His 59th birthday.
Speaker 2: His whole thing is that he's young. 58 looks half
Speaker 2: his age. Wow. I mean.
Speaker 1: This will be normal.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is 2024, so it's not. This has been
Speaker 2: going on for a while. Okay, so this is pre-AI. Yeah,
Speaker 2: if it's fake, then he would have been. called out now,
Speaker 2: I feel like.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: So he might just be a genetic freak. Could be. Yep.
Speaker 2: Which is interesting, right? Like, do you guys study the different... Like,
Speaker 2: you know, unfortunately, certain people that have like pale people,
Speaker 2: for instance, with thin skin, they age hardcore. They go.
Speaker 1: And there are those kids that get old in their teens.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: We study that as well. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: That's weird. We're reversing that too. But yeah, we do
Speaker 1: study the genetics of aging.
Speaker 2: That's the real... application for it where people are going
Speaker 2: to be excited about it. People that have that, what
Speaker 2: is it called? Progeria?
Speaker 1: Progeria, exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And so we have mice that have this same
Speaker 1: gene mutation and they get old really quickly and we're
Speaker 1: giving them the drink right now.
Speaker 2: And so in the drink, you give it to them
Speaker 2: how often and for a month?
Speaker 1: It's once a day, every other day, three days a
Speaker 1: week for a month. And yeah, in normal old mice,
Speaker 1: we see them fitter, stronger, better memory. They run around
Speaker 1: the cage.
Speaker 2: In just a month.
Speaker 1: It's amazing. We only did a month because it was
Speaker 1: Christmas holiday season. We didn't, we didn't want to go
Speaker 1: for longer, but, uh, it worked in four weeks. I'm shocked.
Speaker 1: Even these genes require six to eight weeks to work
Speaker 1: for revision, uh, recovery of vision.
Speaker 2: And so this, this is working on a different pathway.
Speaker 1: Well, here's the cool thing. We, we think it's working
Speaker 1: through the same mechanism, the reboot, the reinstallation of software. Um,
Speaker 1: the drink. Because there are genes called TETs. There are
Speaker 1: three of them in the body. And they do something...
Speaker 1: Spell that? T-E-T. Capital T-E-T. There's one, two, three. And
Speaker 1: these are genes that make enzymes that remove these methyls
Speaker 1: off the DNA. So they control the clock. And if
Speaker 1: we get rid of those genes, our system doesn't work.
Speaker 1: We cannot restore vision. And our pill doesn't work without
Speaker 1: removing and altering those chemicals. So In other words, it's
Speaker 1: not just because the chemicals make the cell healthier. It's
Speaker 1: actually resetting this clock on the DNA.
Speaker 2: Whoa.
Speaker 1: And that was the big deal. I said whoa when
Speaker 1: my student told me. And that's why I think it
Speaker 1: got the cover of Nature magazine, which is we're actually
Speaker 1: looking at the clock of life. And we've realized that
Speaker 1: this clock that goes around, this biological clock, isn't just
Speaker 1: a clock. When you move the hands of the clock,
Speaker 1: time goes backwards for the body. meaning the clock is aging,
Speaker 1: and aging is the clock. Wow.
Speaker 2: What is it? You don't really know in terms of humans,
Speaker 2: but is there any indication that improves cognitive function in mice? Yes.
Speaker 1: I can say without a doubt that other labs and
Speaker 1: ours have shown that when you reverse the age of
Speaker 1: the brain in a mouse, it gets better at learning.
Speaker 1: And we even have some hints, and we're going to
Speaker 1: publish this, that lost memories come back.
Speaker 2: Whoa.
Speaker 1: So Alzheimer's patients, I believe, still have memories. They just
Speaker 1: cannot access them. And that one day we can reverse
Speaker 1: Alzheimer's disease by making the brain young. And using that approach,
Speaker 1: making the whole body young, we can cure diseases that
Speaker 1: are currently incurable.
Speaker 2: Holy shit.
Speaker 1: Well, young people don't get Alzheimer's.
Speaker 2: Why?
Speaker 1: Because the body can tackle the problem. The young body
Speaker 1: can heal itself. So my approach is make the body young.
Speaker 1: It will heal itself in every way.
Speaker 2: Well, do you have children?
Speaker 1: Three.
Speaker 2: Yeah. One of the things that's just phenomenal is watching
Speaker 2: them heal. Yeah. I'm like it is so– it's so
Speaker 2: wild but also you envy them so much because they
Speaker 2: get cut and it's like two days later. Like where's
Speaker 2: your cut? It's fucking gone? Like that's crazy. My daughter
Speaker 2: had a cutter. She fell and knocked her head and
Speaker 2: she had this like dark spot on her head like
Speaker 2: where she got injured. It was like four or five days.
Speaker 2: It was gone. And I was like, that fucking thing
Speaker 2: would be with me for four months. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And the good thing is if we rub our cocktail
Speaker 1: on the skin of the mice, they heal like they're
Speaker 1: young again.
Speaker 2: Oh, so that would be like a great application for
Speaker 2: ladies who want the beauty treatment on the face, right?
Speaker 1: That's where we're headed.
Speaker 2: Whoa.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And we're working on hair. We can grow human
Speaker 1: hair on mice now.
Speaker 2: Really?
Speaker 1: That took a few years. And now we can check
Speaker 1: if we can regrow hair and make it dark again.
Speaker 2: You can grow human hair on mice.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I'm not allowed to– actually, I did post it
Speaker 1: on Instagram and the university said get that down. But
Speaker 1: it exists. We grow it from stem cells, from human
Speaker 1: stem cells. We make little balls of hair. It takes
Speaker 1: a few months. We open up the ball to make
Speaker 1: a flat piece of skin, human skin, and we put
Speaker 1: that in the back of a mouse that can accept
Speaker 1: human skin. And then you get black tufts of hair
Speaker 1: from humans in a mouse.
Speaker 2: Could you get any kind of hair? Like could I
Speaker 2: get an afro? I just want to get one that
Speaker 2: pisses people off. I would love an afro, like a
Speaker 2: Colin Kaepernick type, just a big crazy one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we can grow hair. We can do that. We're
Speaker 1: one of the few labs that can grow this hair.
Speaker 1: So I thought about doing that for a company, but
Speaker 1: I think hair transplants would just be easier.
Speaker 2: Oh, right. So you would grow hair in a lab
Speaker 2: and then transplant those hairs?
Speaker 1: We can do that, yeah.
Speaker 2: Oh, well, that's the thing because I got a hair transplant.
Speaker 2: But the way I describe it, it's like taking people
Speaker 2: that are really healthy and moving them into a town
Speaker 2: where everyone's dying. Because, like, you're taking hair from back
Speaker 2: here where it's going to stay and you're putting it
Speaker 2: up here where it's all falling out.
Speaker 1: Oh, it didn't thrive?
Speaker 2: What's that?
Speaker 1: It doesn't thrive if you move it?
Speaker 2: Oh, it thrives, but everybody else dies.
Speaker 1: Oh, shit.
Speaker 2: You know, you can only take so much from the
Speaker 2: back of your head and move it to the top
Speaker 2: of your head. That's why a lot of guys with
Speaker 2: hair transplants look goofy because you have, like, this strong
Speaker 2: hairline in the front and it goes back like that
Speaker 2: and then everything else looks like chaos.
Speaker 1: Oh, that sucks. You know what I take? for my hair?
Speaker 2: What do you take?
Speaker 1: Among other things. Viagra.
Speaker 2: Viagra?
Speaker 1: Yeah, actually. I shouldn't say the brand name.
Speaker 2: That's why I take it for my hair.
Speaker 1: That's what I tell everybody. That is true. It's low dose,
Speaker 1: 7 milligrams a day of Tadalafil. And it's good for
Speaker 1: a lot of things.
Speaker 2: I know it's good for endurance. Yeah. Yeah, because I
Speaker 2: know athletes who take it for endurance, they probably take
Speaker 2: it to fuck too. Let's not kid ourselves.
Speaker 1: Well, it's a nice benefit. When a paper just came
Speaker 1: out about its role in preventing cancer, I tweeted what's
Speaker 1: not to love. People love that tweet. But the point
Speaker 1: is actually last week they found that these drugs in
Speaker 1: mice and seemingly in people who take these drugs are
Speaker 1: actually resistant. certain types of cancer is like head and
Speaker 1: neck cancer.
Speaker 2: Interesting.
Speaker 1: So they're turning out to.
Speaker 2: Be really important. Because it improves blood flow?
Speaker 1: Well, two reasons that are not related to blood flow,
Speaker 1: but they're related to what's called nitric oxide signaling, which
Speaker 1: is what helps dilate blood vessels in all your body,
Speaker 1: including your penis. The other two mechanisms, one showed that
Speaker 1: tadalafil is good for exposing the tumor to the immune system.
Speaker 1: There are certain cells called MDSCs that protect the tumor
Speaker 1: from getting attacked and the drug stops that. So now
Speaker 1: the tumors shrink in mice and seemingly in people, in tumors.
Speaker 1: And then the second mechanism is really interesting. It seems to,
Speaker 1: this was Sedanafil, so this is now Viagra, found that
Speaker 1: the cancer is, a lot of cancers thrive on cholesterol
Speaker 1: and this blocks the ability of cancer cells to use cholesterol.
Speaker 2: I thought they thrived on glucose.
Speaker 1: That too, exactly. So you want to be in ketosis
Speaker 1: if you've got The tumor in general. So fasting is good.
Speaker 1: But now it looks like these ED drugs might be
Speaker 1: good for it as well.
Speaker 2: Fascinating. And wasn't– I think Viagra was a– it was
Speaker 2: an accident, right? Wasn't it a blood pressure medication?
Speaker 1: It's a good story. It was for angina, right? It
Speaker 1: was for your heart. But the story goes that women
Speaker 1: especially and the men didn't want to give up the
Speaker 1: drugs that they had left over. It was amazing. I
Speaker 1: think it was 75% had a positive reaction for erections
Speaker 1: and without it, 22. So it's very clear that it
Speaker 1: was working.
Speaker 2: Interesting. And so how does it help hair?
Speaker 1: Well, we don't know for sure, but there's a lot
Speaker 1: of evidence that part of the reason hair dies out
Speaker 1: and stops growing is a lack of blood flow. And
Speaker 1: the minoxidil that people put on their hair helps with that.
Speaker 2: Right. Interesting. And then DHT inhibitors. Yes.
Speaker 1: Exactly.
Speaker 2: Also help.
Speaker 1: That B-dutesteride people can take orally.
Speaker 2: The problem with that is my friend had severe depression
Speaker 2: when he took that. Yeah. It really fucked him up.
Speaker 2: And he didn't realize because he didn't understand that that
Speaker 2: was– he was like, what is wrong with me? And
Speaker 2: he was getting suicidal. And then he got off of
Speaker 2: it and it just went away. And he's like, oh
Speaker 2: my God, I can't believe that. This episode is sponsored
Speaker 2: by BetterHelp. You've probably heard about BetterHelp before, but maybe
Speaker 2: you haven't heard from those who have actually used BetterHelp.
Speaker 2: That feedback can tell you everything you need to know.
Speaker 2: Go to betterhelp.com slash reviews and check out the feedback
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Speaker 2: It's easy to see why. To get started, all you
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Speaker 1: Well, I'm taking it for a number of reasons, including
Speaker 1: my hair and my prostate, to see if I can
Speaker 1: keep it from growing. but fortunately I haven't had that
Speaker 1: side effect.
Speaker 2: It depends, right? It varies biologically depending on the person.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's important when either of us says that drug's good,
Speaker 1: that drug's bad. People realize that you have to test
Speaker 1: it with doctor's supervision.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was where I was going to get to.
Speaker 2: Because different medications have different reactions or different people's reactions
Speaker 2: to medications, they vary quite wildly. So before you make
Speaker 2: this public, Like how do you determine whether or not
Speaker 2: this is going to be safe for a wide variety
Speaker 2: of people to reverse aging?
Speaker 1: Oh, my drug, our drug that we're making. Well, we
Speaker 1: will test it on a lot of people before it
Speaker 1: goes out into the wide world.
Speaker 2: And you've started testing it on people so far? Yeah.
Speaker 1: There are people right now who have this– these genes
Speaker 1: in their eye.
Speaker 2: And how's it going?
Speaker 1: I'm not allowed to say.
Speaker 2: Can you wink twice if it's great? No.
Speaker 1: I would say that everything's on target.
Speaker 2: Okay. That's good to hear.
Speaker 1: Nothing bad to report.
Speaker 2: Nothing bad to report.
Speaker 1: I think those might be the words I'm allowed to say.
Speaker 2: And is that the only clinical trials you've used with
Speaker 2: any of these applications for humans?
Speaker 1: So far, that was the first. Glaucoma and also sudden blindness.
Speaker 1: It's called Nyon, which is now twice as more prevalent
Speaker 1: because of the GLP-1 drugs.
Speaker 2: Really?
Speaker 1: It's not well known. Obviously, companies don't want to Talk
Speaker 1: about it. But yes, sudden blindness has doubled seemingly because
Speaker 1: of these meds.
Speaker 2: Holy shit. Sudden blindness has doubled because of GLP-1s?
Speaker 1: Due to nion, which is like a stroke in your eye.
Speaker 1: And then your other eye can go, which is pretty scary.
Speaker 1: And there's nothing you can do about it. Hopefully our
Speaker 1: drug does work for those people.
Speaker 2: And obviously correlation does not equal causation, but it seems
Speaker 2: to be. Yeah.
Speaker 1: There's a scientist at Harvard. You could look up his work,
Speaker 1: Joe Rizzo. It looks like it's repeatable across the planet. Wow.
Speaker 2: That's terrible because there's so many people out there that
Speaker 2: are just telling everyone they should get on GLP-1s. I've
Speaker 2: seen that by online people, like online podcasters saying everyone
Speaker 2: should get on GLP-1s. It's groundbreaking technology. This is amazing.
Speaker 2: It's going to transform society. I'm like, We just started
Speaker 2: taking these. What the fuck are you saying? Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's not risk-free. Same with ED drugs.
Speaker 2: Here it goes. Recent studies suggest that a potential rare
Speaker 2: link between GLP-1 receptor agonist medication such as Ozempic, Wagovi, blah, blah, blah,
Speaker 2: and a condition called non-arteritic anterior– what's that word? Ischemic? Ischemic.
Speaker 2: Ischemic optic neuropathy. An eye stroke can cause sudden painless
Speaker 2: loss of vision– Well, very low is like– What does
Speaker 2: that mean? More than 10,000 people. One in 10,000? Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's– No, total of 10,000. Oh, total of 10,000 so far.
Speaker 2: How many people are taking this stuff? I think it's
Speaker 2: pretty– the drugs were 68.6 times more likely to develop
Speaker 2: this and eight times more likely to develop diabetic. What
Speaker 2: is that? We only got the blurb. Oh my God. Then. Wow. Yeah, man,
Speaker 2: these things are just, they're just rolling out. And the
Speaker 2: people that are like super enthusiastic and also, uh, They
Speaker 2: have some sort of a financial interest in promoting these things,
Speaker 2: which oftentimes does seem to be the case with a
Speaker 2: lot of these people. They have either stock in these
Speaker 2: companies or some sort of a stake in them. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's true.
Speaker 1: I will say to counter that, that the GLP-1 drugs
Speaker 1: have probably saved millions of lives already and they're pretty common.
Speaker 1: I think 10 percent of people are trying them and
Speaker 1: 25 percent want to.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean they don't work for everybody. I have
Speaker 2: a good friend of mine that had a terrible reaction
Speaker 2: from it and he was hospitalized. Oh, no. Yeah. I
Speaker 2: know other people where it's completely transformed their life and
Speaker 2: they've lost a ton of weight, particularly people that just–
Speaker 2: for whatever reason, the food addiction was so incredibly strong
Speaker 2: that whatever– their constitution, the way they're designed, the way
Speaker 2: they're built, the way they've evolved as a human being,
Speaker 2: they weren't capable of overcoming it. They take the GLP-1s
Speaker 2: and then they sort of start getting moving. And then
Speaker 2: they lose all the weight. They start feeling better. They
Speaker 2: start making a lot of other positive changes. You get
Speaker 2: that momentum, which I always talk about, which is one
Speaker 2: of the most important things for transforming your life. Everyone
Speaker 2: wants to talk about discipline. I think discipline is the primary.
Speaker 2: That's the main engine. But one of the things that
Speaker 2: comes along with any kind of an exercise program or
Speaker 2: a changing your life program, where you start getting positive results,
Speaker 2: is momentum. And momentum is absolutely huge.
Speaker 1: Thank you.
Speaker 2: Because then you start feeling.
Speaker 1: That's so important.
Speaker 2: This is good. So I think GLP-1s are fantastic for
Speaker 2: getting people going.
Speaker 1: Yes. Everybody should hear this. It's really important. I'll give
Speaker 1: you my example. It's a classic case. I couldn't fast
Speaker 1: for more than about a day. I wanted to do more.
Speaker 1: I know that three days fasting is good. A week
Speaker 1: can be even better. But I couldn't do it. I
Speaker 1: don't have a lot of willpower when it comes to
Speaker 1: this kind of stuff. I tried a JLP1 receptor agonist,
Speaker 1: I gave it, and it was easy. I didn't even
Speaker 1: feel like I needed to snack at night, which is
Speaker 1: one of the things that I and many people suffer from.
Speaker 1: But the fact that I could do it, I went
Speaker 1: off the drug. I didn't need it. But now I
Speaker 1: can fast for– I went for two weeks a couple
Speaker 1: of months ago. It's easy now. Now that I know
Speaker 1: that I can do it mentally, it's not hard at all.
Speaker 2: The momentum.
Speaker 1: Exactly. I know what's possible.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. That's fascinating. Are you still on a plant-based diet? Mostly. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I just had a conversation with a friend of mine
Speaker 2: about this. I don't know how much of the information
Speaker 2: that he was telling me was totally accurate. But what
Speaker 2: he was saying was that he was told before he
Speaker 2: did fasting that one of the best– because he's a runner.
Speaker 2: He said one of the best ways to get into
Speaker 2: fasting is to get your body into ketosis first. He
Speaker 2: said– and what he thinks is that a carnivore-based diet
Speaker 2: and what he was told was a good way. If
Speaker 2: you could do that for a few weeks, it mitigates
Speaker 2: your appetite. Like one of the things that happens with
Speaker 2: a lot of these diets that regulate insulin resistance is
Speaker 2: that when you get used to consuming just fats and protein,
Speaker 2: you don't have the kind of hunger pangs that you
Speaker 2: have with carbohydrates. Like when I– if I go in
Speaker 2: a bad streak and I'm eating pizza and pasta and
Speaker 2: I've done that in the past, I don't really do
Speaker 2: that much unless I'm on vacation. In the past though,
Speaker 2: what I would get hungry, I would get crazy hungry.
Speaker 2: Like I've got to eat now. I don't get that
Speaker 2: at all anymore because I'm mostly on a carnivore-based diet.
Speaker 2: Mostly what I eat– like you look at the bulk
Speaker 2: of my diet. It's meat and fermented vegetables. It's meat
Speaker 2: and like– Kimchi and sauerkraut and stuff along those lines.
Speaker 2: And when I eat like that, my hunger is very
Speaker 2: easy to control. And I've gone 24 hours like it's nothing,
Speaker 2: not eating. It's like not a problem at all. But
Speaker 2: that's the most I've ever fasted is 24 hours.
Speaker 1: Okay. Well, see if you can go for three. It's
Speaker 1: really worth it. You feel really great. Ketosis is wonderful.
Speaker 2: That's what everybody says. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And you go into what's called deep cleansing. It's called
Speaker 1: chaperone-mediated autophagy or CMA. Okay. And a friend of mine
Speaker 1: in New York, Maria Corvo, studies this. And it cleans
Speaker 1: out a lot of the old proteins in your body.
Speaker 1: So ketosis doesn't just make you feel good. You're actually
Speaker 1: renewing your protein in your body and rebuilding it. And
Speaker 1: so I do that as an anti-aging thing.
Speaker 2: What I find is the biggest benefit is mental acuity.
Speaker 2: It has a giant impact when I stick to the
Speaker 2: diet in terms of my ability to form sentences, recall information,
Speaker 2: and just be present in podcasts.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So in my podcast, what you do is really
Speaker 1: quite difficult. You make it look easy. So when I'm
Speaker 1: doing my podcast, and often it's solo, so it's challenging,
Speaker 1: I forget things. I have to remember hundreds of papers
Speaker 1: for these things. They're quite hard. Either I'm going to fast,
Speaker 1: and if I don't remember to fast, I did an experiment.
Speaker 1: I took some ketones. You can drink these things, right?
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: There's the one– the little drink I think was.
Speaker 2: Ketone IQ.
Speaker 1: Ketone IQ.
Speaker 2: Yeah, fantastic stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. I use that.
Speaker 2: I love that stuff. I do that. I take that
Speaker 2: before I do UFC broadcasts.
Speaker 1: A lot of times.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I actually took some before.
Speaker 2: That's great for podcasts as well. One of the more
Speaker 2: difficult things that I do is the UFC commentary because
Speaker 2: it's six hours. It's six hours of talking on air live. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and about fights. And I'm also recalling fights. And I'm
Speaker 2: also– I'm seeing positions. So I have to remember in
Speaker 2: my mind how this is finished because like in jiu-jitsu,
Speaker 2: there might be– I don't know how many positions there are.
Speaker 2: There's thousands. And there's moves where I'm like, what is
Speaker 2: he doing? What is he doing? Oh, that's that. That's
Speaker 2: the Peruvian necktie. I'm looking at his arms. Your brain
Speaker 2: is– I am exhausted at the end of six hours
Speaker 2: and fucking starving. Like after the UFC is over, I
Speaker 2: can eat so much food. I'm so hungry.
Speaker 1: But you take a little drink?
Speaker 2: I take a little ketone. A little ketone IQ. Cool.
Speaker 2: I take nootropics. I drink this stuff. My friend Derek
Speaker 2: makes this. It's Gorilla Mind. It's a nootropic.
Speaker 1: Oh, I got to try that.
Speaker 2: So it's a nootropic cocktail with caffeine in it. This
Speaker 2: stuff is really good for a podcast. I also take
Speaker 2: Alpha Brain. Alpha Brain Black Label is phenomenal for that.
Speaker 2: There's a bunch of different ones that I take. The gum, NeuroGum.
Speaker 2: NeuroGum is excellent for that too. But I just do
Speaker 2: fucking everything I can to maximize.
Speaker 1: My– So that's how you do it.
Speaker 2: All right. Yes.
Speaker 1: Secret is now out.
Speaker 2: All right.
Speaker 1: But what you do is amazing. And I thought you
Speaker 1: were on modafinil or something.
Speaker 2: No. I've taken that before in the past. But the
Speaker 2: problem with that stuff is I think I like it
Speaker 2: too much and I want to take it all the time.
Speaker 2: You know when I used to take that? If I
Speaker 2: had a gig in San Diego and I drive home
Speaker 2: after the gig and it was like 1 o'clock in
Speaker 2: the morning when I'm done. And then I'm like, I'll
Speaker 2: just go home. It's only two and a half hours.
Speaker 2: And I start making the drive and you just get
Speaker 2: so tired. But if I take NuVigil or ProVigil before
Speaker 2: I do that, I would be able to drive. No problem.
Speaker 2: Put a book on tape on. What's that?
Speaker 1: Can you sleep after that?
Speaker 2: Oh, yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: It doesn't seem to affect your ability to sleep, which
Speaker 2: is really interesting. It's not like caffeine. Do you do it?
Speaker 2: Do you take it at all?
Speaker 1: I'm a definite for talks when I'm traveling.
Speaker 2: Does it help you?
Speaker 1: Definitely.
Speaker 2: Like in what way?
Speaker 1: It gets rid of my jet lag and I can focus.
Speaker 1: My brain often is either scattered or filled with facts
Speaker 1: that causes me like now to not be able to
Speaker 1: talk properly. But if I'm on it, which I'm not,
Speaker 1: I'm on point every time.
Speaker 2: For me, the best thing for jet lag is exercise.
Speaker 2: There's something about rigorous exercise. It doesn't even have to
Speaker 2: be long. It just has to be where my heart
Speaker 2: rate gets really elevated, like above 150 beats per minute
Speaker 2: for a 15, 20 minutes. Like I have to really
Speaker 2: go hard where I'm sweaty and breathing heavy, you know,
Speaker 2: especially if I jack it up to like 180, 190,
Speaker 2: like I'm doing like Tabata sprints on an airdyne bike,
Speaker 2: that kind of stuff completely resets me.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Hard kettlebell workouts. Like I'll do like a hard series
Speaker 2: where minimal amount of rest in between. So I'm really
Speaker 2: pushing it. Once I relax, I'm back. It's like it,
Speaker 2: whatever it is where your body just needs to like,
Speaker 2: shake it up and like get all of it out
Speaker 2: of your system it's like now i feel completely normal.
Speaker 1: Yeah well you might remember last time we talked about
Speaker 1: hormesis yes what doesn't kill you makes you stronger and
Speaker 1: that's what you're doing you're putting your body into survival
Speaker 1: mode so one of the reasons i mostly plants why
Speaker 1: i take nmn and these other molecules is to mimic
Speaker 1: that i don't work out like you do um i
Speaker 1: should but i don't and why don't you uh i
Speaker 1: think partly because i've Tell myself I'm too busy, which
Speaker 1: is bullshit. I need a partner who will motivate me.
Speaker 1: I think that would help.
Speaker 2: Maybe just get a trainer.
Speaker 1: That's a solution.
Speaker 2: You got some cheddar. Get a trainer.
Speaker 1: I got some cheddar. Oh, is that money?
Speaker 2: Money, yeah.
Speaker 1: No, I can definitely afford one. Yeah, you know, it's
Speaker 1: on me. Actually, I will own that.
Speaker 2: I just was explaining this to my friend last night.
Speaker 2: He was like, I got to start working. I'm like,
Speaker 2: just get a trainer. Get a trainer, someone who's good,
Speaker 2: and that way they'll develop a program for you. All
Speaker 2: you have to do is just show up and do
Speaker 2: what they tell you to do. Just do it. And
Speaker 2: it's mindless. You can just go through what they tell
Speaker 2: you to do and you'll just– trust the process. You'll
Speaker 2: improve radically.
Speaker 1: All right. All right. Here's what we're going to do.
Speaker 2: Okay. I'm going to take– Here's what we're going to do.
Speaker 2: You're going to get me a jug of that fucking juice.
Speaker 1: We'll swap, all right? And you'll be my trainer?
Speaker 2: I'll be your trainer. I will. I've done that before
Speaker 2: with my comedian friends. Really? Sure. Then I do it
Speaker 2: the right way where I take him through it very easy.
Speaker 2: I don't have him work out hard at all, especially
Speaker 2: in the beginning. Everything is nice and easy. It's like
Speaker 2: a little bit of strain. You're not going to be
Speaker 2: exhausted afterwards, and we build you up. I'm a firm
Speaker 2: believer in not overtaxing the system on people that are sedentary.
Speaker 2: I really think it's a slow, gradual process. I think
Speaker 2: you have to get better the same way you got
Speaker 2: sick over time. You can make radical changes in a
Speaker 2: short period of time. Don't get me wrong. And even
Speaker 2: just a little bit of moderately rigorous exercise a few
Speaker 2: days a week will– a few days a week. will
Speaker 2: give you great improvements. But I'm not one of those
Speaker 2: guys who's like, you know, we're going to do two
Speaker 2: hours today and you're going to go to failure and
Speaker 2: you're going to be throwing up in a garbage pan.
Speaker 2: You're not going to do that again the next day.
Speaker 2: I want you to do it again the next day.
Speaker 2: I want you to have a nice workout where, you know,
Speaker 2: you're doing like 10 push-ups and 10 sit-ups and 10
Speaker 2: bodyweight squats and then we're going to do some of
Speaker 2: these kettlebell cleans and kettlebell, nothing hard. Like everything's going
Speaker 2: to be like, whew, okay, you put it down, you're fine.
Speaker 2: And I want you to leave rejuvenated like you feel
Speaker 2: like oh that was like exhilarating nothing crazy and then
Speaker 2: we'll slowly start to add a little bit over time
Speaker 2: that's what i think the right thing to do with
Speaker 2: people who don't work out all the time you can't
Speaker 2: just jump in and you know.
Speaker 1: It's like fasting and skipping meals you just can't do
Speaker 1: a day or three without practicing.
Speaker 2: Well it's also you're going to get injured and this
Speaker 2: is one of the main things that happens to people
Speaker 2: that dive right into the deep end of the pool
Speaker 2: when they start working out is they get hurt they
Speaker 2: get muscle pulls they get They got all these different
Speaker 2: things that happen because I think you just pushed your
Speaker 2: body too quickly. It's like you're in boot camp. Like, well,
Speaker 2: you don't have to be in boot camp. This is
Speaker 2: not the way to do it. The way to do
Speaker 2: it is slowly build up and trust the process. Slowly.
Speaker 2: Start by, if you're overweight, like my friend Jelly Roll,
Speaker 2: he lost 250 pounds. What did he do? Started walking.
Speaker 2: Just started walking. Walking around the neighborhood. Walk around the block.
Speaker 2: Walk upstairs. Just slowly. And then change the diet and
Speaker 2: then add some stuff. Next thing you know, you're doing this.
Speaker 2: And write it all down, too. That's the other thing.
Speaker 2: Write down what you're going to do and write down
Speaker 2: how you feel. And then keep doing that. And if
Speaker 2: you can do that all the time, you'll start developing this, like,
Speaker 2: momentum that we were talking about. Right. Like, okay, I'm
Speaker 2: on the course. I'm on a process. But it doesn't
Speaker 2: have to be like you're exhausted and then you go
Speaker 2: to the lab and you're like, I can't even fucking concentrate.
Speaker 2: You know, I was doing Tabata sprints on the Airdyne machine. Like,
Speaker 2: this is crazy.
Speaker 1: Well, that's– it's really good advice and I'm going to
Speaker 1: take you up on it. So let's say I'm lucky
Speaker 1: enough to come on the show again.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I'll wear a tight t-shirt.
Speaker 2: Let's go.
Speaker 1: Right. So 20 million people.
Speaker 2: You're going to have to get off that fucking goofy
Speaker 2: plant-based diet.
Speaker 1: Well, let's speak about that because that's one of the
Speaker 1: things we disagree on. I'm on a plant-based diet because
Speaker 1: I've seen a lot of work on animals at least
Speaker 1: that plants promote longevity. I eat a lot of protein.
Speaker 2: It's interesting because you're not an animal. You know that, right?
Speaker 1: I'm not a mouse.
Speaker 2: You're not a mouse.
Speaker 1: I'm definitely an animal, but I'm not a mouse.
Speaker 2: I agree. Meat is the most nutrient-dense food that's available.
Speaker 1: I love meat. I love meat.
Speaker 2: She eats it all the time. I believe that there are.
Speaker 1: Two states that we can be in. I should try meat,
Speaker 1: and then we can see if it works.
Speaker 2: You'll feel great.
Speaker 1: Because I've been measuring myself with rings and blood tests.
Speaker 2: For the last 20 years. You should try elk. I'll
Speaker 2: get you an elk steak.
Speaker 1: I'd love to try it.
Speaker 2: It sounds good. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I'm not against meat.
Speaker 2: I will eat it. You'll eat it and you'll be like, whoa. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Don't get me addicted to meat.
Speaker 2: You feel it right away. Like, oh. Oh, your synapses
Speaker 2: start firing. Your body starts like, yes, this is what we.
Speaker 1: Wanted, David. Well, here's some science, which is what I do.
Speaker 1: There are two states. This is my theory. There's the
Speaker 1: abundance mode, which is very good for health. You'll build muscle.
Speaker 1: You'll heal better. That's meat. Right. Killed a mammoth. There's
Speaker 1: adversity mode, which is. We're out of meat. We've got
Speaker 1: to eat roots and berries. That's adversity. We've got to run, running, exercise,
Speaker 1: eating less. That's adversity. Both are good for you. This
Speaker 1: one is pro-survival. This one is pro-growth. This one is longevity.
Speaker 1: This one is you're going to be stronger, fitter.
Speaker 2: How do you determine that though in terms of like
Speaker 2: what is longevity versus what is just like health and
Speaker 2: vitality currently?
Speaker 1: Well, it's based on the last 30 years of research
Speaker 1: in a variety of animals.
Speaker 2: This doesn't have to do with the blue zones, does it?
Speaker 1: No.
Speaker 2: Because you know that's a horse shit, right?
Speaker 1: I read that recently, yeah.
Speaker 2: Isn't that nuts? It's unfortunate.
Speaker 1: It's a lot of fraud. Well, records are hard.
Speaker 2: Well, it's not just hard. A lot of it is
Speaker 2: actual fraud where people are getting checks for their grandpa
Speaker 2: and grandpa was dead. So they weren't writing it into
Speaker 2: the government. They didn't expose– like this was the problem
Speaker 2: with Okinawa in particular is that they would have to–
Speaker 2: in order for these people to get taken off the list,
Speaker 2: they would have to inform the government that this person
Speaker 2: died and they just didn't do it. And so they
Speaker 2: had this list of people that they were counting in
Speaker 2: their census that were like so old. Like this is crazy.
Speaker 2: What are you people doing? Everyone is 100 years old.
Speaker 1: The oldest person in the world apparently, 122. There's a theory,
Speaker 1: not proven, that the oldest person in the world was
Speaker 1: actually the daughter who was faking it to get taxes
Speaker 1: or avoid taxes I think it was in France. I
Speaker 1: hope that that's not true.
Speaker 2: I bet it's true. People are full of shit.
Speaker 1: Well, either way, the maximum human lifespan is around 117, 118.
Speaker 1: Which is still a lot more than we live.
Speaker 2: And what's really crazy is none of those people are
Speaker 2: doing everything right.
Speaker 1: Exactly.
Speaker 2: They're all smoking cigarettes and drinking wine and having a
Speaker 2: good time. And that's a factor that we really need
Speaker 2: to take into consideration. Loneliness and isolation and sadness are
Speaker 2: one of the greatest contributors to poor health outcomes. It's
Speaker 2: number one. Is it really? Yeah.
Speaker 1: Robert Voldinger at Harvard had a study for I think
Speaker 1: it was 40 years. World War II vets. They looked
Speaker 1: at everything, blood pressure, cholesterol. The number one thing that
Speaker 1: predicted longevity in those men was having a reliable partner.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Not just a reliable partner. Someone that you love.
Speaker 1: That's true.
Speaker 2: Someone that you like want to be around all the time.
Speaker 2: You enjoy them. You still enjoy their company, which is possible.
Speaker 2: Most people don't believe that's possible.
Speaker 1: Well, you're a role model in that.
Speaker 2: I love my wife. I– Have fun with her. Like
Speaker 2: we– I've been with her for a long– I've been
Speaker 2: married for 17 years. I enjoy her. I enjoy hanging
Speaker 2: out with her. She's cool. Like she's a– and I
Speaker 2: have friends that aren't in situations like that. And it's
Speaker 2: so bad when you're– like I have a friend who
Speaker 2: just– we were actually talking last night. He just got
Speaker 2: out of a crazy relationship where he was dating this
Speaker 2: girl for seven years. It was chaos and this and that.
Speaker 2: And I said to him– and he was like, I–
Speaker 2: he's 40– And he goes, I don't think I'm ever
Speaker 2: going to have a relationship again. He goes, it was
Speaker 2: so bad. He goes, being single feels so good. And
Speaker 2: I said, there's an old saying, it's so much better
Speaker 2: to be alone than to wish you were alone. And
Speaker 2: he's like, yes, that's it. Because he was like with
Speaker 2: this crazy lady. And he was like, I just wish
Speaker 2: I was free. And he finally got free. And now
Speaker 2: he's like, I think I'm ruined. And I'm like, it
Speaker 2: doesn't have to be like that. You can find someone
Speaker 2: that you actually love. And you really enjoy their time.
Speaker 2: You enjoy being with them. It's possible.
Speaker 1: There's good people out there.
Speaker 2: But you've got to also be someone that that kind
Speaker 2: of person wants to be with. That's the other thing.
Speaker 1: For sure. And stress of relationship. We've seen in studies
Speaker 1: that clock with those chemicals on the DNA, it accelerates
Speaker 1: when you're under stress or going through a breakup.
Speaker 2: Oh, yeah. Oh, God.
Speaker 1: You see it too.
Speaker 2: Oh, I've seen people going through divorces and it just
Speaker 2: like– it takes decades off of their life. They just
Speaker 2: look wrecked. And it takes a year or two for
Speaker 2: them to like achieve equilibrium again. It's hard.
Speaker 1: It is. It is. I went through that actually just
Speaker 1: during COVID when our family got shoved in a house together. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was brutal. It was unexpected too.
Speaker 2: Wow. That's the stress test, right?
Speaker 1: It was super stress. It was super stress. It's funny
Speaker 1: that you said that. Without the pandemic, we might have
Speaker 1: been able to make it. But forcing us all to
Speaker 1: be in one little house with no internet working well,
Speaker 1: it was tough. But in any case, I'm great now.
Speaker 1: I'm very happy. But I do know how bad it
Speaker 1: can get and it's brutal.
Speaker 2: Yeah, bad relationships can fucking wreck people. I mean it
Speaker 2: can wreck your health. But also it's not just relationships
Speaker 2: in terms of your significant other, husband, wife, partner, whatever
Speaker 2: you want to call it. But also bad relationships at work.
Speaker 2: Like if you have a tyrant for a boss– And
Speaker 2: every day you're getting– you're working overtime and you're getting
Speaker 2: yelled at and you're on the phone and you're at
Speaker 2: home trying to keep up with work and you never
Speaker 2: get– like that kind of relationship where you have like
Speaker 2: this like antagonistic, terrible relationship with people that you work with,
Speaker 2: that's bad too.
Speaker 1: Oh, for sure.
Speaker 2: Your body doesn't differentiate between romantic relationships and those kind
Speaker 2: of relationships are almost equally bad.
Speaker 1: Cortisol will be high.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: This will accelerate here. I used to keep fish. I
Speaker 1: was one of those people at school. And the fish
Speaker 1: that got picked on by the dominant fish was small,
Speaker 1: lacked color, lived short. It's biology. If you're picked on
Speaker 1: and you're stressed, you're going to age faster. Fortunately, I
Speaker 1: think you're probably the same. At my age, I've managed
Speaker 1: to weed out most of the jerks and I don't
Speaker 1: work with them at all. I've got a great partner
Speaker 1: who we have a hobby of longevity together. So I'm
Speaker 1: lucky in that regard now.
Speaker 2: You found a new one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, longevity specialist. Imagine that.
Speaker 2: Congratulations. Well, that's nice too, right? Find someone who just
Speaker 2: like thinks the way you think and has similar likes
Speaker 2: and interests. Yeah, that definitely can help. Yeah, I know
Speaker 2: a lot of my friends that are in really good relationships,
Speaker 2: their significant other has the same hobby as them, you know,
Speaker 2: like whatever it is. They both like to climb mountains
Speaker 2: or whatever the fuck it is. Find a thing. But
Speaker 2: that helps too. So you actually enjoy spending time together
Speaker 2: doing something that you're both really excited about. That helps too.
Speaker 1: So relationships is one. And the other four major ones
Speaker 1: from that study were don't smoke, don't drink, get enough rest,
Speaker 1: and get exercise. And that was enough to extend by
Speaker 1: 15 years.
Speaker 2: But what about those old people that live forever and
Speaker 2: do smoke and drink? Because that's kind of weird.
Speaker 1: Well, they're at 0.01%. They're not examples of what– Is.
Speaker 2: That really what it is?
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: It's just– So the majority of people who get old
Speaker 2: and live to like centenarians, like what are the common
Speaker 2: things that they have?
Speaker 1: The big one is that they don't stress a lot.
Speaker 1: They usually have a good sense of humor.
Speaker 2: Interesting.
Speaker 1: Right. They haven't been overweight and they say that they
Speaker 1: typically– couldn't remember when they last got sick.
Speaker 2: I wonder how much time Twitter takes off your life.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we should study that. It's already taken a lot
Speaker 1: off mine.
Speaker 2: It does.
Speaker 1: And if you read the comments even more.
Speaker 2: Yep, exactly. I'm so much happier since I swore off
Speaker 2: of all that stuff. It's just not good for you.
Speaker 2: It's really, really bad for you. It's also, you're constantly
Speaker 2: dealing with the problems of the whole world, which I
Speaker 2: think is a lot. for a human being that lives
Speaker 2: in a community, in a neighborhood. That shit that's happening
Speaker 2: over there really shouldn't be a primary focus of your life,
Speaker 2: like where you're in the moment actually doing your life.
Speaker 2: It's not the same. You're not in the same area
Speaker 2: as this problem. But yet this problem is overwhelming your
Speaker 2: all day long life.
Speaker 1: And you're in fight or flight constantly.
Speaker 2: All day. All day. And you're worried about the climate. Oh,
Speaker 2: my God. Like there's so much. There's so much that
Speaker 2: freaks people out that it really shouldn't be affecting you
Speaker 2: at all. Exactly.
Speaker 1: And actually the world doesn't change if you don't read it.
Speaker 2: That's the key. But then you're like, well, you're passing
Speaker 2: off the responsibility to other people. You should get involved. Like,
Speaker 2: you should get involved. I'm going to be over here.
Speaker 1: That's right. Well, if you focus on doing something good
Speaker 1: and you're good at it.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 1: Like yourself. I think that you don't need to be
Speaker 1: doing more than that.
Speaker 2: You can't focus on everything. And anybody who tells you
Speaker 2: you can is a fool. Or anybody who tells you
Speaker 2: what you should or shouldn't be focusing on is a fool. Yeah.
Speaker 1: A few years ago someone at a talk that I
Speaker 1: gave said you should be working on climate change.
Speaker 2: Fuck off.
Speaker 1: I said after I cure aging, I'll get to climate change.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Why don't you go to China and tell them
Speaker 2: to stop making coal factories? Shut the fuck up. Just
Speaker 2: shut up. No. You're not going to fix it.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Somebody is. Somebody is working on it and that's
Speaker 2: their goal and God bless them. Good luck.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, what I try to spend my day is
Speaker 1: efficiently helping the world so that people ask me why
Speaker 1: do I study aging in the first place. And it
Speaker 1: really is that I'm trying to please my grandmother like
Speaker 1: some of us. She was the one that told me
Speaker 1: that I need to make the world a better place
Speaker 1: and she's gone now.
Speaker 2: That's what she said to you?
Speaker 1: When I was four. Wow. It's been that ever since.
Speaker 1: She told me two things. Humans are evil. She lived
Speaker 1: through World War II in Hungary and the Russians came
Speaker 1: in and raped everybody, she said. Wow. And then– so
Speaker 1: she escaped to Australia and then she said that the
Speaker 1: other issue is that we don't do enough as humans
Speaker 1: to better the world. And so I had that stuck
Speaker 1: in my mind. She also, by the way, said, oh,
Speaker 1: we all die. And I thought that's not really fair,
Speaker 1: is it? And that set me on this path.
Speaker 2: Make the world a better place and we all die.
Speaker 2: And you're like, ah.
Speaker 1: And what I've noticed with my kids is that even
Speaker 1: if you tell them that, They forget about it because
Speaker 1: it's brutal to think about death every day. Yeah. But
Speaker 1: for some reason, it's just stuck in my head. And
Speaker 1: every day, I'm like another 150,000 people are going to
Speaker 1: die today due to aging-related diseases. So my lab is mission-oriented.
Speaker 1: If we are a day late with something, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of people that are suffering potentially avoidable diseases.
Speaker 2: That's why it's sort of understandable that people show up
Speaker 2: outside of your lab and like, I need to talk
Speaker 2: to you. I need this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, blind people want to get in the trial.
Speaker 2: It's big.
Speaker 1: And I think if the trial works, it's going to
Speaker 1: be a very strange world, especially for my lab and
Speaker 1: for me. But we'll see. And even if it doesn't
Speaker 1: work this time, the science is strong enough that we'll
Speaker 1: figure it out. We will do this. It's just a
Speaker 1: question of when.
Speaker 2: And so do you think that AI is going to
Speaker 2: have a significant impact on the kind of improvements that
Speaker 2: you're able to.
Speaker 1: It already is. We're going super fast. And AI has
Speaker 1: revolutionized biology. It's revolutionizing everything, of course. But particularly in
Speaker 1: biology where we used to have to read 15 papers
Speaker 1: a day. Now we can read a million if we want.
Speaker 1: It's totally different.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's super brain. A 19-year-old came to my lab
Speaker 1: this summer and the lab grows from 20 to 40 people.
Speaker 1: And we're trying to figure out how do these three
Speaker 1: genes reset the cell? How does the cell remember what
Speaker 1: it was 30, 40 years ago? Where's that information stored
Speaker 1: in the cell? And I've got this theory that there's
Speaker 1: some new biology. There's a record in the DNA somewhere.
Speaker 1: And I gave him that task. I said, can you
Speaker 1: just go to the databases of the whole world, look
Speaker 1: at all the data that's there, exabytes of data, and
Speaker 1: see if my prediction is true, or at least you
Speaker 1: can get evidence for it. Two weeks later, he came back,
Speaker 1: and the whole team, not the whole team, but five
Speaker 1: other people were smiling. We have to show you something, David.
Speaker 1: I come in my office. We sat down. He shows
Speaker 1: up on the board on this LCD screen. I think
Speaker 1: we found the smoking gun for what your theory suggests.
Speaker 1: And he used AI to process all that data. And
Speaker 1: the AI came back and said, yeah, you're probably right.
Speaker 1: And it's a 19-year-old straight out of high school who
Speaker 1: did this. That did something that the whole field and
Speaker 1: all these professors and all these fancy sirs could not
Speaker 1: figure out until now.
Speaker 2: That is phenomenal. That's so promising. It's so exciting.
Speaker 1: It is. I mean the future really does belong to
Speaker 1: people who can wrangle AI even on their phone. I
Speaker 1: think people on their phones are going to be making
Speaker 1: medicines or at least designing them.
Speaker 2: Or bombs.
Speaker 1: That's the problem. And bioweapons.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: You recently had– was it Anna on the show? She'll
Speaker 1: talk about bioweapons and this kind of stuff. That is
Speaker 1: a big worry. I actually had to disclose to the
Speaker 1: US government when I first got here that I did
Speaker 1: have the capability of making a bioweapon.
Speaker 2: The Annie Jacobson episode that we just did on bioweapons
Speaker 2: was absolutely terrifying. Yeah. She's– I mean she scared the
Speaker 2: shit out of the world with her nuclear war book
Speaker 2: and now she's scaring everybody with her bioweapons book.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's scary.
Speaker 1: It is. What I've got is a database of all
Speaker 1: known pathogens and new ones that could come. So I'm
Speaker 1: trying to do my bit there to help the world
Speaker 1: if it happens again, pandemic or something unnatural.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, that would be– I mean– When you think
Speaker 2: about diseases that people get that just like wreck their
Speaker 2: entire body, if you really do have an original copy
Speaker 2: somewhere in their genome of what they look like as
Speaker 2: a healthy person and you could switch that back on
Speaker 2: with a factory reboot. I mean we could potentially get
Speaker 2: rid of all diseases, which is just bananas.
Speaker 1: And injuries, fixed injuries, grown new limbs potentially. There's a
Speaker 1: new paper that just came out a few days ago.
Speaker 1: that showed that the tips of the fingers of baby
Speaker 1: mice can be coaxed once they've healed over as a
Speaker 1: stub to regrow part of the finger.
Speaker 2: Haven't people done that before?
Speaker 1: Yeah, they found just two factors were enough. So it's
Speaker 1: not that hard. The point is we've got the instructions
Speaker 1: to be young and to regrow body parts in our body.
Speaker 1: We just don't use them.
Speaker 2: That's nuts. So like a salamander can grow an extra
Speaker 2: leg or a leg that gets chopped off. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I believe we still have that capability. We just don't
Speaker 1: use it. It just didn't make sense to regrow a limb.
Speaker 1: It was quicker and safer to just heal it over
Speaker 1: as a stub and move on. But salamanders, which get
Speaker 1: their limbs presumably eaten pretty often, maintain that ability. So
Speaker 1: give us– I wouldn't say that we could evolve this,
Speaker 1: but I think using a combination of our technology plus
Speaker 1: this new technology that we're seeing come out where these
Speaker 1: two factors can grow new limbs, I don't see a
Speaker 1: reason why we can't. become like a deadpool where injury
Speaker 1: doesn't hurt us aging can't hurt us and we can
Speaker 1: regrow body parts.
Speaker 2: How far do you think we are away from being
Speaker 2: able to regrow body parts oh.
Speaker 1: I mean realistically probably a couple of decades but i
Speaker 1: i've seen enough that's not that far i've seen enough
Speaker 1: to know that it's doable a.
Speaker 2: Couple of decades ago was 2006.
Speaker 1: Well things are going super fast i mean 10 years
Speaker 1: ago we didn't even know aging was irreversible and now
Speaker 1: it's in humans.
Speaker 2: That's nuts think of that. Well, 2019 when you came here,
Speaker 2: there was no AI. Right.
Speaker 1: 2019, it was an idea that we had just got
Speaker 1: the result in mice, and I divulged that to the world.
Speaker 1: Then it was published, and then we're in humans now.
Speaker 1: So if it works, then it's going to be a
Speaker 1: very different world.
Speaker 2: And you feel very confidently that some of this stuff
Speaker 2: is going to work?
Speaker 1: Well, it's going to work. I don't know if this
Speaker 1: trial is going to be successful, but there's going to
Speaker 1: be a lot of people doing these trials. I have
Speaker 1: some competition now. Do you know about that? No. Uh,
Speaker 1: so since I started my company, Life Biosciences, which is
Speaker 1: doing the trials with ER100, others have joined in, in
Speaker 1: the party. Uh, so Jeff Bezos and others have started
Speaker 1: Altos Pharma. Um, they are based in three cities around
Speaker 1: the world. They have a few billion dollars to catch up. Um,
Speaker 1: Sam Altman has RetroBio and, uh, Let's see. Brian Armstrong
Speaker 1: from Coinbase, the CEO, started one called New Limit and
Speaker 1: they've got a lot of money, all billions.
Speaker 2: Do you think it's good that there's all these people
Speaker 2: involved in this?
Speaker 1: I welcome it. Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: I'm not doing this for my own personal benefit. I
Speaker 1: want humanity to be changed the way it could be.
Speaker 2: And the more people like Jeff Bezos, the more people
Speaker 2: with a large bank account that are invested in this,
Speaker 2: the better.
Speaker 1: Fantastic.
Speaker 2: And of course, a guy like Bezos, he's balling out
Speaker 2: of control. Why wouldn't he want to live forever?
Speaker 1: Well, what's left if you've got everything else?
Speaker 2: Well, also it's like if you've got the amount of
Speaker 2: money that he has and you can tackle all these
Speaker 2: different issues like his space program that he's working on,
Speaker 2: all these different things. Like, of course, why wouldn't you
Speaker 2: want to do cool things? Like what's cooler than being
Speaker 2: able to grow limbs?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: What's cooler than being able to cure all diseases and
Speaker 2: reverse aging?
Speaker 1: Well, I don't think there's much cooler. That's why I'm
Speaker 1: doing it because that I think can be the biggest
Speaker 1: gift to humanity is what you just said. So I
Speaker 1: don't know if I'll achieve it. Probably not in my lifetime.
Speaker 1: But at least I've moved the needle and pushed the
Speaker 1: ball globally in that direction.
Speaker 2: I wonder if we're going to get to a point
Speaker 2: in time where we can engineer consciousness in terms of
Speaker 2: like find out– like you find out someone is a sociopath.
Speaker 2: You find out someone is a kleptomaniac or someone is
Speaker 2: an arsonist. Like whatever it is. Like if you could
Speaker 2: figure out like what these little flaws are in the
Speaker 2: way the mind works. If we can completely map it
Speaker 2: out and go, oh, this is the error. This is
Speaker 2: where you're not making these two connections. Of course.
Speaker 1: Of course. It's all just biology and engineering. There's nothing
Speaker 1: that stops us. And this is the century that we
Speaker 1: are able to control our own biology. Starting with cancer,
Speaker 1: heart disease and aging.
Speaker 2: A true utopian world of peaceful people living in harmony.
Speaker 1: But healthy.
Speaker 2: Not peaceful?
Speaker 1: I don't think world peace– I think curing aging is
Speaker 1: easier than world peace.
Speaker 2: Well, if everybody achieved a state of consciousness that allowed
Speaker 2: them to understand that we're all in this together.
Speaker 1: Yeah, how do we do that?
Speaker 2: Mushrooms.
Speaker 1: Mushrooms.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, there are certain companies working on this.
Speaker 2: I know. That's what's interesting, right? Like Eli Lilly is
Speaker 2: involved in pharmaceuticals. Well, the pharmaceutical company rather is involved
Speaker 2: in psychedelics.
Speaker 1: They just bought a tie.
Speaker 2: I think it was like $ 3. 8 billion. So they're all
Speaker 2: in with real capital. Yeah. I love it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, me too.
Speaker 2: That's great.
Speaker 1: I love that they're doing that. We need more of that.
Speaker 1: There's too much depression. Anxiety in the world.
Speaker 2: And drug addiction. I mean that's why I went to
Speaker 2: the White House and got the president to get involved
Speaker 2: in this executive order on Ibogaine.
Speaker 1: Yes.
Speaker 2: Because I've talked to so many people that have had
Speaker 2: their life completely turned around with Ibogaine. So many people
Speaker 2: that were opioid addiction and also brain injuries, oddly enough.
Speaker 2: Brain injuries, all sorts of TBI and CTE issues. that
Speaker 2: they've had like phenomenal results from this iboga tree, you know,
Speaker 2: which is so crazy that this thing had been around
Speaker 2: for so long and is a schedule one substance in
Speaker 2: the United States for no reason whatsoever. There's no risk
Speaker 2: of addiction. There is no recreational use of it. It's
Speaker 2: a horrible experience. I've not done it, but apparently it's
Speaker 2: fucking terrible. And it lasts for like 24 hours. Like
Speaker 2: no one's going to be doing that for funsies. Right.
Speaker 1: Well, the question I think That comes up with all
Speaker 1: of these drugs is do you have to have the
Speaker 1: trip and experience the craziness?
Speaker 2: To get the benefits.
Speaker 1: To get the benefit. And I don't think so. I
Speaker 1: think you should be able to separate them.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, they've actually figured this out with LSD. Yeah. Right?
Speaker 2: Do you know about this? No. Okay. So they've engineered
Speaker 2: a different version of LSD that doesn't give you the
Speaker 2: hallucinogenic effects but does give you the benefits in terms
Speaker 2: of like the cognitive effects.
Speaker 1: The Atai guys or someone else?
Speaker 2: I don't know what company has done this. See if
Speaker 2: you can find that, Jamie.
Speaker 1: I think it might be a time.
Speaker 2: But what they've essentially done, and I think it's basically
Speaker 2: in the lab work stage right now. I don't think
Speaker 2: that's applied to humans yet. But what they've done is
Speaker 2: engineered a version of LSD that has all the positive
Speaker 2: effects that LSD has in terms of, like, introspection, being
Speaker 2: able to, like, rethink and remap and reset the way
Speaker 2: you view things, but without, like, Watching people's face melt
Speaker 2: and thinking that demons are eating you and all the
Speaker 2: weird stuff that comes with it.
Speaker 1: Outstanding. It should happen with psychedelics the way it's happened
Speaker 1: with all medicines, right? We start with something from the
Speaker 1: bark of a willow tree and then we have aspirin.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: We're not eating bark anymore.
Speaker 2: Right. But sometimes the bark is the really way to go, right? Unfortunately,
Speaker 2: sometimes that's the part of the problem is these pharmaceutical
Speaker 2: drug companies, they patent– these natural compounds and use petroleum-based
Speaker 2: synthetic methods of creating these medications now that they can
Speaker 2: sell and profit wildly off of. Whereas really the best
Speaker 2: way to do it is actually to get the plant.
Speaker 2: It's true.
Speaker 1: There's the whole issue though that if it's not approved,
Speaker 1: then it's the Wild West. You don't know what you're getting.
Speaker 2: Right. That's true too.
Speaker 1: We need a middle ground. We need something you can
Speaker 1: get fast on the market that's known to be safe.
Speaker 2: So what we're going to need is mind reading because
Speaker 2: we need to know if people are full of shit.
Speaker 2: That's what we're going to need.
Speaker 1: We're going to need– Got to work on that.
Speaker 2: Yes. I think that's going to change humanity more than anything.
Speaker 1: I think you've got a good bullshit detector.
Speaker 2: It's OK. There's a few people that have snuck through, unfortunately.
Speaker 2: Some people, they get through and they're like, it takes
Speaker 2: a while. And you're like, ah, shit.
Speaker 1: They're never coming back on the show.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, there's that. The show, you learn a lot
Speaker 2: from a person in about three hours. You can kind
Speaker 2: of– after a while, you can kind of see little things.
Speaker 2: And you have to be forgiving and you have to
Speaker 2: be charitable. And some people are just nervous and they
Speaker 2: misstate things or they exaggerate things or they forget something.
Speaker 2: They get it wrong. But then there's people that are
Speaker 2: just– essentially, they really don't care about anybody but themselves.
Speaker 2: And some of those people are really good at pretending
Speaker 2: to be people. They're really good at pretending. You know,
Speaker 2: they're really good at pretending to be like a normal person. Oh,
Speaker 2: here's the LSD thing. Research has recently engineered an LSD
Speaker 2: analog called, how do you say it, plus minus JRT,
Speaker 2: that appears to keep many of the LSD's brain beneficial
Speaker 2: and cognitive effects while dramatically reducing and possibly eliminating its
Speaker 2: hallucinogenic trip in animal studies. So it's almost the same
Speaker 2: molecule as LSD, but scientists swap the positions of just
Speaker 2: two atoms in the structure. The subtle change makes JRT
Speaker 2: bind more selectively to serotonin receptors in a way that
Speaker 2: promotes neuroplasticity, growth and repair of synapses, but minimizes hallucinogenic signaling.
Speaker 2: That's incredible. Antidepressant, look at this. Strong antidepressant effects at
Speaker 2: doses reported to be around 100 times more potent than
Speaker 2: ketamine in standard rodent tests. Cognitive benefits. Improved cognitive flexibility
Speaker 2: and performance in tasks modeling the negative and cognitive symptoms
Speaker 2: of schizophrenia. Holy shit. That's incredible.
Speaker 1: When and where do we get it?
Speaker 2: Well, I think it's fairly recent. It's a UC Davis study.
Speaker 2: They just developed it. Oh, it's in my– Shout out
Speaker 2: to our AI sponsor Perplexity for providing us with this information.
Speaker 2: This is again– I mean like we could just get
Speaker 2: this information now through AI. Like I mean this– the
Speaker 2: AI for our show has been gigantic. I mean just
Speaker 2: the ability to just ask it a question instead of
Speaker 2: Google searching and having to go through all these different
Speaker 2: fucking articles. What does it say? What is that? Who's right?
Speaker 2: What's this one? What's the website? You just ask– AI
Speaker 2: and perplexity just gives us all the information. So proceedings
Speaker 2: from National Academy of Science researchers at California of San
Speaker 2: Diego Davis, excuse me, University of California Davis reported the
Speaker 2: creation of JRT, chemically modified version of LSD. So this
Speaker 2: is like what year? So 2025, so last year. So
Speaker 2: it's exciting. Five years away, but still.
Speaker 1: You're right.
Speaker 2: Is that the timeline?
Speaker 1: At a minimum, usually it takes that long But that's exciting.
Speaker 1: At least the principle is there that you don't need
Speaker 1: to hallucinate.
Speaker 2: Well, how about for schizophrenia? That's incredible.
Speaker 1: You need something.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, that is incredible because that is one
Speaker 2: of the saddest things, to watch somebody fall into the
Speaker 2: grips of schizophrenia. Yeah. I've seen people fall in and
Speaker 2: come out, which is interesting.
Speaker 1: I thought for the bullshit detector, we could have an
Speaker 1: AI that either dings or has a green or a
Speaker 1: red on your forehead.
Speaker 2: I'm pretty good at it, but I think no one's
Speaker 2: perfect at it. And I think ultimately, if we get
Speaker 2: to a place... whether it's a technological innovation or what
Speaker 2: have you, where we can actually read the contents of
Speaker 2: someone's thoughts. I don't think that's outside the realm of possibility.
Speaker 1: You'd need an implant, I think.
Speaker 2: Elon says the Neuralink is going to be able to
Speaker 2: pull that off.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: You're going to be able to talk without using words.
Speaker 2: I'm like, what? I think he's right though. I think
Speaker 2: if we all like lock into a hive mind and
Speaker 2: then– If we develop– like through AI, if we develop
Speaker 2: a universal language worldwide.
Speaker 1: Well, we already have that.
Speaker 2: What do we have?
Speaker 1: Well, the new headphones from a big company that I
Speaker 1: won't name. You can translate.
Speaker 2: Translate. Yes. Translate. But it's translating to English. If we
Speaker 2: just all– the problem with that is there's context. There's
Speaker 2: all sorts of different things that Other cultures, different languages,
Speaker 2: when it's deciphered and changed and translated into English, you
Speaker 2: lose a lot of the meaning and the context is weird.
Speaker 2: If we develop a universal language.
Speaker 1: That would be ideal. English is a good substitute. I
Speaker 1: was shocked. I'm always shocked traveling globally how many people
Speaker 1: can just speak English now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's pretty amazing. It's because America rules. You're welcome.
Speaker 1: Well, we have to thank Britain for that. America should
Speaker 1: say you're welcome.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're cute. They did a good job of starting
Speaker 2: it out, but we took the ball.
Speaker 1: And spread it all over the world. So who's next? China?
Speaker 2: God, I hope not. I don't want to learn Chinese.
Speaker 2: That's too hard. It's all fucking characters. That's ridiculous. Even
Speaker 2: people that I know that can speak Mandarin, they can't
Speaker 2: write it. To get to that level, I have a
Speaker 2: couple friends that speak fluent Mandarin and they can't write it.
Speaker 2: Writing it is.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, the students in my lab who come from China,
Speaker 1: they're being picked on by by the immigration, but they
Speaker 1: don't want to go home. They love it here.
Speaker 2: I'm sure because they're stealing all your secrets and they
Speaker 2: bring it back home.
Speaker 1: Well, there's that. There's a lot of regulation on that
Speaker 1: now as a scientist.
Speaker 2: Oh, yeah. Oh, I can imagine. Yeah. I mean, it
Speaker 2: has to be because that is an actual real threat.
Speaker 1: Exactly. So the people that come through my lab have
Speaker 1: to be vetted now.
Speaker 2: Right. But the people that come over here and experience
Speaker 2: the kind of freedom that you have in America. Oh, yeah.
Speaker 1: I came here from Australia. Australia is pretty free, but
Speaker 1: compared to Australia, America is so different.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I can't go back.
Speaker 2: What's the big difference?
Speaker 1: That I feel I can do anything I want if
Speaker 1: I just put my mind to it. There's not social barriers.
Speaker 1: There's not monetary barriers, at least for a white male
Speaker 1: like me, who's got a degree. I know it's not
Speaker 1: for everybody, but I feel like if I want to,
Speaker 1: Start a company. I've got a great idea. I can
Speaker 1: do that here. Fat chance you'll do that in Australia.
Speaker 1: People aren't willing to invest in great ideas down there.
Speaker 1: Not often.
Speaker 2: That's a bummer. Do you think that changes anytime soon?
Speaker 1: No. The US is so unique. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: money flowing. People are willing to place a bet and
Speaker 1: even lose the money. That's rare. Australians, most of the world,
Speaker 1: if not all, people are scared to lose their money
Speaker 1: if they have it. Here, it's like, okay, I risked it.
Speaker 1: I helped the world. I feel good. It's a very
Speaker 1: generous country, very. And I love it here. When I
Speaker 1: arrived here, I just felt, ah, I'm home.
Speaker 2: I love hearing that from people that have come from
Speaker 2: somewhere else because it kind of reaffirms why people in
Speaker 2: America are so proud of what this country is.
Speaker 1: It should be, yeah.
Speaker 2: And that's why it bums me out when people are
Speaker 2: so mad at America in terms of– I get looking
Speaker 2: in terms of foreign policy and some of the things
Speaker 2: that are wrong with America. But just in overall, this
Speaker 2: experiment in self-government is pretty remarkable. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I watched the TV show. Was it The American Experiment?
Speaker 1: It came out for the anniversary, the 250th.
Speaker 2: I haven't seen it.
Speaker 1: You've got to see it.
Speaker 2: What's it on?
Speaker 1: It's the founding fathers and their lives and how they
Speaker 1: were fighting and what was going on behind the scenes.
Speaker 1: They were just young kids. They were in their 20s, 30s.
Speaker 2: I know. Isn't that nuts? Yeah.
Speaker 1: Just Benjamin Franklin was the old dude. But they were
Speaker 1: so young. But they were in the middle of it.
Speaker 1: They kind of realized they were making history. But so
Speaker 1: many things could have gone wrong We would not have
Speaker 1: had the United States if just a few votes went
Speaker 1: one way or the other.
Speaker 2: A few wars.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: A few different battles that they had. Exactly.
Speaker 1: The US was losing the war against Britain badly.
Speaker 2: Yeah. They burned the White House down. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: We don't thank the French enough actually.
Speaker 2: I know. Right? Somehow they became our enemy. Yeah. Remember
Speaker 2: during the Gulf War, they turned French fries into freedom
Speaker 2: fries because people hated the French? Yeah.
Speaker 1: But everyone hates the French because they're so arrogant. Sorry, French.
Speaker 1: I have some friends who are good friends.
Speaker 2: I think generally when people are arrogant, it's because they
Speaker 2: did something fucking awesome.
Speaker 1: Well, in the 1800s, they did. They conquered Europe. Not
Speaker 1: sure if that's awesome.
Speaker 2: Here's a fun perplexing search I just did. I said,
Speaker 2: do Americans have a risk gene? A risk gene? Yeah.
Speaker 2: One of the best studied variants in the dopamine receptor
Speaker 2: gene DRD4, specifically the 7-repeat-7R version- It's associated in some
Speaker 2: studies with novelty-seeking impulsivity and higher financial or social risk-taking.
Speaker 2: I wonder if I have that gene. For sure. Probably not.
Speaker 2: Who knows? The 7R variant is unevenly distributed around the world.
Speaker 2: In populations across the Americas, it shows up in roughly
Speaker 2: 48% of chromosomes studied, while in East Asia, it's found
Speaker 2: in only about 2%. Whoa, that's crazy.
Speaker 1: It all comes down to genetics.
Speaker 2: Evolutionary work suggests it became more common in groups that
Speaker 2: migrated further after leaving Africa. And those lineages are strongly
Speaker 2: represented in the Americas today. That actually makes... I was
Speaker 2: thinking of the people that had the balls to fucking
Speaker 2: come here. You don't have to do that much, but
Speaker 2: you can still have balls to gamble and... Yeah.
Speaker 1: That must be it. But then Australians should have it.
Speaker 2: That completely– well, sort of. You guys got forced there.
Speaker 2: They moved everybody over there because they were criminals. Right.
Speaker 1: This DDR gene that you just saw, was it DDR4?
Speaker 1: I know a bit about it because I'm writing it
Speaker 1: in my next book. DRD4? Thanks, Jamie. I call this
Speaker 1: the FU gene because I'm trying to figure out what
Speaker 1: makes humans special over other animals. And this is one
Speaker 1: of them that we are. seekers of explorers and uh
Speaker 1: it's it turns out turns out that this gene is
Speaker 1: turned on in teenagers it gets eventually switched off not
Speaker 1: totally but that might be why teenagers say fu to
Speaker 1: their parents but it's a way genetically to get them
Speaker 1: out of the nest like oh i can't stand these
Speaker 1: parents they suck they're idiots i'm out of here that's
Speaker 1: in this in this gene.
Speaker 2: Well it's also um I, as a parent, have been
Speaker 2: very aware of not doing that to my kids, like
Speaker 2: not forcing them into something that they don't want to
Speaker 2: do or pushing them in any general direction, but rather
Speaker 2: encouraging them to seek out their interests and encouraging them
Speaker 2: to just like take chances. And if I ever correct them,
Speaker 2: if I ever get upset about something, one of the
Speaker 2: first things that I tell them is I've done everything
Speaker 2: that you've done. I've made every mistake. I've fucked up.
Speaker 2: You're smarter than me. I've fucked up everything. I've lied
Speaker 2: to my parents. I lied to teachers. I've done everything
Speaker 2: that you're doing. So this is not a unique thing.
Speaker 2: I'm just telling you from my own personal experience and
Speaker 2: my perspective, this is why I think because I love
Speaker 2: you and I want you to do well in life.
Speaker 2: I just want you to recognize this. And that's how
Speaker 2: I correct my kids.
Speaker 1: I love that.
Speaker 2: It's never like you listen to me because I'm your father.
Speaker 1: There's none of that shit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: The old way we were raised.
Speaker 2: I hate that shit.
Speaker 1: It doesn't work.
Speaker 2: No. And it makes you resentment. But also probably makes
Speaker 2: you want to do better than your parents. So it
Speaker 2: motivates you in a certain way. My parents were not
Speaker 2: risk takers at all. And my whole life I've been
Speaker 2: like a wild risk taker.
Speaker 1: Really same. Yeah, I was resentful that my father didn't
Speaker 1: have enough ambition. Now he's a great guy. We're best
Speaker 1: friends actually. It's been the greatest thing for me. But
Speaker 1: one of the things I did with my kids, you're
Speaker 1: reminding me, is he's 19. He's a well-built guy because
Speaker 1: we were going to the gym for a number of years.
Speaker 1: I tried to train him in health. But he spent
Speaker 1: the summer with me. He's literally still working for me
Speaker 1: this summer to help with the podcast and the magazine
Speaker 1: we're about to launch. And Benjamin's his name. He's the
Speaker 1: best kid. But he slacked off. He was like, Ben,
Speaker 1: I put you in charge of social media. You haven't
Speaker 1: posted in a week. What's going on? Well, you know,
Speaker 1: I slept in. So I had to think, am I
Speaker 1: going to get mad at him like I would a
Speaker 1: normal employee or do I treat him differently? And I
Speaker 1: decided to treat him differently probably because he's my son.
Speaker 1: But I didn't want to ruin the relationship. But what
Speaker 1: I did was I said, you know, I really think
Speaker 1: you can do better. I think everything you've done, the weightlifting,
Speaker 1: the calculus, you're amazing. But in this, you're not. So
Speaker 1: what's going on? And it worked. We've become closer. He's
Speaker 1: really into it. He's doing a good job now.
Speaker 2: That's great.
Speaker 1: So that's the way to do it, I think. You
Speaker 1: can't be too hard on them. Can't say you fucked up.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean that kind of can work but it's
Speaker 2: a blunt instrument and it doesn't work on everybody and
Speaker 2: it also develops resentment. And they also– they miss out
Speaker 2: on experiencing your perspective as a– like for them to
Speaker 2: understand that you are just a person who has lived
Speaker 2: longer than them. And that you can help them navigate
Speaker 2: this road.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you don't have to make the same mistakes.
Speaker 2: That we did. That's why you're helping them. You're talking
Speaker 2: to them about this not because you're just a mean
Speaker 2: dad who likes to fucking tell the kids what to do.
Speaker 2: Because we've all experienced that. I mean I had friends
Speaker 2: growing up whose fathers would fucking scream at them and
Speaker 2: throw things and beat them. And it's like, God. And
Speaker 2: then you just grow up fucking traumatized and always resentful
Speaker 2: and angry. Instead of just recognizing that like, oh, I'm
Speaker 2: so fortunate that my parents have this perspective where they
Speaker 2: can explain to me why I'm going through what I'm
Speaker 2: going through and how they got through it.
Speaker 1: Like a mentor. You're not their best friend. You're their mentor.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 1: Best friend doesn't work either.
Speaker 2: No, that doesn't work either because that just allows too
Speaker 2: much shenanigans. You have to have some rules. You have
Speaker 2: to have some sort of regulations.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And your kids turned out well. What's that?
Speaker 1: How'd your kids do?
Speaker 2: Oh, they're great. Great. I'm so, so lucky. So fucking lucky.
Speaker 2: I mean, I feel so fortunate. They're so smart and
Speaker 2: ambitious and driven. And so it's wild. It's wild to watch,
Speaker 2: you know, and talented. And it's, um, and also like
Speaker 2: we never went through that period where, um, they hit
Speaker 2: teenage years and they hate you like that. Well, God,
Speaker 2: that's so nice. I mean, my youngest, she'd get upset
Speaker 2: at me sometimes about certain things, but she bounces back quickly.
Speaker 2: It's never like some kids where they just grow to
Speaker 2: hate their parents.
Speaker 1: The RD4 gene. Maybe they don't have a strong one.
Speaker 2: I don't know about that. I think it's how you
Speaker 2: communicate with them. I really do. I think that's a
Speaker 2: big factor. You have to communicate with them like you
Speaker 2: truly care about their development. And the most important thing
Speaker 2: I think is that I always tell them, whatever you've done,
Speaker 2: whatever mistake you've made, I made way worse mistakes. I
Speaker 2: was like I am not coming at you from a
Speaker 2: flawless person. I'm not coming at you from the perspective
Speaker 2: of someone who like you're an idiot. I figured that out.
Speaker 2: You should figure it out. Like no. Whenever– from the
Speaker 2: time they were really little, anytime I had to correct them,
Speaker 2: I said I did everything that you're doing. Everything.
Speaker 1: I threw my food on the floor too.
Speaker 2: Yes. All the above. Whatever fucking stupid thing you've done
Speaker 2: as a kid, I guarantee you.
Speaker 1: That is great advice. Really great advice. So I hope
Speaker 1: everyone listening hears that because I actually had to learn
Speaker 1: the hard way. My first kid, I did what my
Speaker 1: parents did. did which was you can't say that yeah
Speaker 1: and my first is a lot more rebellious and distant
Speaker 1: than my third for that reason interesting yeah it actually
Speaker 1: is really true i've seen it.
Speaker 2: Yeah and it's i thought it was going to kill
Speaker 2: their motivation but it doesn't at all i thought like
Speaker 2: making things easy for them and not being strict. Like
Speaker 2: maybe it's good to be strict because then you just
Speaker 2: have this determination to show everybody. I don't think that
Speaker 2: was my thing as a child. Like I'll fucking show you.
Speaker 2: But I don't think everybody needs that. I think you're
Speaker 2: much better off having a healthy relationship with ambition where
Speaker 2: you're excited about things because you're passionate about them and
Speaker 2: you find great reward in being creative or being enthusiastic
Speaker 2: about something.
Speaker 1: Exactly. And open their eyes to the world that exists.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 1: We used to do work experience. You go and do
Speaker 1: a job and that's your work experience. The reason I
Speaker 1: wanted my son Ben to work with me is he
Speaker 1: can see what it's like to be an entrepreneur and
Speaker 1: build something and be excited. And work is super fun
Speaker 1: when you get into it. I think a lot of
Speaker 1: kids just don't get that experience. They don't know what's possible.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: And just showing them the world is what we can
Speaker 1: do as parents.
Speaker 2: That's awesome. Yeah. And You know, I mean, some people
Speaker 2: don't have that at home, unfortunately, but that's one of
Speaker 2: the cool things about the world that we live in
Speaker 2: is that kids today have access to so many different
Speaker 2: perspectives now because of the internet. There's so many different
Speaker 2: podcasts and YouTube conversations and different things where they can
Speaker 2: just take a little tool from that, just take a
Speaker 2: little piece from that and apply it to the way
Speaker 2: they interact with the world. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Um, For sure. And I would encourage parents to give
Speaker 1: their kids stuff to read. We talked about social media,
Speaker 1: how that's just addictive. I saw how my kids wanted
Speaker 1: to just scroll through their phones and read. And if
Speaker 1: they can't read a book, give them a magazine. I
Speaker 1: subscribe to Nat Geo, National Geographic, for my kids. And
Speaker 1: I think get them used to reading. It's going to
Speaker 1: be a lost art if we don't.
Speaker 2: I know. Isn't that nuts? I maybe read 10% of
Speaker 2: the things that I consume. I consume so much in
Speaker 2: audio just for time reasons because there's so much time
Speaker 2: where I'm driving my car or I'm working out or
Speaker 2: I'm in the sauna or I'm in the hyperbaric chamber
Speaker 2: or I'm in the red light therapy.
Speaker 1: That's reading three years.
Speaker 2: It is similar, but I think it's only like 70%
Speaker 2: of reading. I don't think it's 100%. I don't think
Speaker 2: you get the full effect, but it's still way better
Speaker 2: than not doing it. But I'm aware that like sitting
Speaker 2: there concentrating, actually reading a book without hearing another person's
Speaker 2: voice talking, there's another mechanism. There's another thing that's going on.
Speaker 2: It's a different way you interact with the material, whether
Speaker 2: it's nonfiction or fiction.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I like the fact that I can listen to
Speaker 1: you and I'm doing something else. I don't have to
Speaker 1: sit down. I can move, go for a walk.
Speaker 2: For me, it's just I have too many interests. I
Speaker 2: have way too many things that I do. So it's
Speaker 2: very hard for me to just allocate a certain amount
Speaker 2: of time to sit there in silence and read.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I use reading to fall asleep. That's a good way.
Speaker 2: It does do that, right? It's kind of nuts how
Speaker 2: well it does that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Although I am finding it's harder to read now that
Speaker 1: my eyes aren't young.
Speaker 2: I need some of my gene therapy myself.
Speaker 1: I've tried that. Does it work for you?
Speaker 2: Oh, yeah. Oh, I mean– People are skeptical about this
Speaker 2: and they think I'm full of shit. No, I don't
Speaker 2: need reading glasses anymore. Really? Yes. I had reading– I
Speaker 2: always have these fucking things laying around. I don't even
Speaker 2: use them anymore. That's awesome.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a lot of science now for red light.
Speaker 2: It's real. I can tell you as a regular user
Speaker 2: for multiple years, it took a while. It took like–
Speaker 2: I was waiting for it in the beginning like, what
Speaker 2: the fuck? And not only that, in the beginning because
Speaker 2: I don't close my eyes in the red light bed,
Speaker 2: I thought it was making things blurrier. I was like,
Speaker 2: oh my god, am I fucking up my eyesight like
Speaker 2: listening to these assholes? But no, it just took a while.
Speaker 2: And then over the course of like many months, I
Speaker 2: started seeing some small improvements. And then I started seeing
Speaker 2: some pretty big improvements over the course of about a year.
Speaker 2: Whereas now, it's not– my eyes aren't perfect. They aren't
Speaker 2: like they were when I was 20. But they are
Speaker 2: way better than they were when I was 50.
Speaker 1: How often did you have to do that?
Speaker 2: I do it three times a week minimum. That's what
Speaker 2: I try to do. But sometimes I'll do it five
Speaker 2: days a week. I just get in there and it's
Speaker 2: 20 minutes. I lay in a light bed, close my eyes,
Speaker 2: open my eyes, whatever. It seems to work on your
Speaker 2: vision even if you wear a blindfold.
Speaker 1: What about people that can't afford a bed? Can you
Speaker 1: get little devices? Yes.
Speaker 2: You can get– well, there's a company called– it's called Juve, right? J-U-U-V.
Speaker 2: Is that the name of the company? They were our
Speaker 2: sponsor at one point in time. That's how I started it.
Speaker 2: They had– it's just a light panel that you stand
Speaker 2: in front of. Oh, yeah.
Speaker 1: I've got one of those.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And that works too. But this one, the one
Speaker 2: that I got, a red and near infrared light therapy devices, JOOV, J-O-O-V-V,
Speaker 2: medical grade light therapy devices. I had one of those
Speaker 2: and that's when I started seeing benefits. But the big
Speaker 2: one that I got, I got from Gary Brekka from
Speaker 2: his company and it's a like a fucking tanning bed
Speaker 2: and you lie in it and that one's amazing but
Speaker 2: that's expensive but i don't think you have to have
Speaker 2: that for that those kind of improvements also improves collagen
Speaker 2: your skin makes you look better and um the but
Speaker 2: for me the most obvious and profound was the improvement
Speaker 2: in my vision.
Speaker 1: Well it makes sense the the science behind red light
Speaker 1: wasn't there 10 years ago and people were questioning it
Speaker 1: but now we know if you shine certain wavelengths like
Speaker 1: near infrared on cells The mitochondria, which are important for
Speaker 1: reversing aging or slowing it, get revved up. It's actually
Speaker 1: related to Viagra. Long story, but Viagra and red light
Speaker 1: have something in common, and it does help mitochondria. And
Speaker 1: that's very important for the eye. The mitochondria are actually
Speaker 1: the most important in any part of your body. The
Speaker 1: eye is the most important part. And part of the
Speaker 1: reason we lose our vision is the mitochondria don't make
Speaker 1: enough energy for the eye.
Speaker 2: How come you haven't done red light therapy before then?
Speaker 1: Well, I do, but not. routinely so I have one
Speaker 1: of those bricks that I turn on while I'm in
Speaker 1: the shower and I have a red light cap for
Speaker 1: my hair which there's some evidence.
Speaker 2: My wife has one of those it works a little
Speaker 2: bit she looks like a fucking alien.
Speaker 1: What I do is I yeah it does it looks
Speaker 1: a little bit silly it's weird I don't wear it
Speaker 1: in public but I do lower it and I look
Speaker 1: at it and it shines in my eyes and on
Speaker 1: my face in the hopes that it might help.
Speaker 2: Yeah they have one that you wear like Dr. Doom
Speaker 2: like fits over your face and like blast red light
Speaker 2: in your whole face.
Speaker 1: I definitely feel a bit weird afterwards and I can
Speaker 1: see speckles, but I think the science says that it
Speaker 1: can help.
Speaker 2: Well, all I know is my own anecdotal experience. And
Speaker 2: for me, it has radically improved my vision.
Speaker 1: That's a good tip.
Speaker 2: Yeah. It stopped. It was, my vision was degrading. Like
Speaker 2: it was, it was pretty odd. Like I first started
Speaker 2: using like reading glasses, like a one X, like it
Speaker 2: made it a little better. I'm like, Oh, there's a
Speaker 2: little better. It makes it clear. And then I went
Speaker 2: to two and And then I was using 2.5. Right.
Speaker 2: And it made it better. But it was like, God,
Speaker 2: this is annoying. And then if I would try to
Speaker 2: like read an email and I didn't have my reading glasses,
Speaker 2: I couldn't read shit. Now, crystal clear.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: No problem at all.
Speaker 1: Well, so my latest show is about the eye and
Speaker 1: how to protect the eye's health. And so there's a
Speaker 1: lot you can do actually, supplements, red light, other things.
Speaker 2: I take supplements for it too. I should mention that.
Speaker 2: I take– I have no affiliation with these people, but
Speaker 2: Pure Encapsulations makes a supplement called Macular Support, and I
Speaker 2: take that. And it's a combination of lutein and a
Speaker 2: few other things.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there was a trial a while ago that showed
Speaker 1: that taking xanthine and others, astaxanthine, lutein, they're good for
Speaker 1: the eye. So you can get products like that.
Speaker 2: Do you take it?
Speaker 1: Not that brand, but yes, I take something similar.
Speaker 2: And has it helped you at all? I don't know.
Speaker 1: I haven't done an experiment.
Speaker 2: Right. Well, if you weren't taking it, maybe you would
Speaker 2: have more degeneration.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, you know, I've got near perfect vision. I
Speaker 1: don't need glasses.
Speaker 2: Do you really?
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Near perfect?
Speaker 1: Near perfect. I mean, I think low light.
Speaker 2: Low light is with me. Where I'll go to a
Speaker 2: restaurant with my kids and they can read the menu.
Speaker 2: And I'm like, that is so embarrassing. You can read that?
Speaker 2: How do you even read that? I can't read shit.
Speaker 2: Do you know why? Why?
Speaker 1: Well, this is what I think. So we know from
Speaker 1: my lab's work that the retina, because it has tens
Speaker 1: of thousands of endings that pick up the light, as
Speaker 1: you get older, those nerves lose their identity and they're
Speaker 1: not working as well. And what we do is with
Speaker 1: our therapy, we can restore those nerves back to being
Speaker 1: functional nerves. And that's why mice and monkeys that lose
Speaker 1: their retinal function get their perfect vision back again. We're reminding...
Speaker 1: those cells that have forgotten how to work so in
Speaker 1: your eye and my eye we're 22 months apart that
Speaker 1: those nerves about half of them have forgotten how to
Speaker 1: work properly so we want to fix that and go
Speaker 1: back to being young it's not that our nerves are
Speaker 1: gone they're not dead they're right there and we can
Speaker 1: restore them and that's going to be true for a
Speaker 1: lot of organs is that the cells are still there
Speaker 1: they just need to be reminded how to work again what.
Speaker 2: Are the potential negative consequences of this kind of work
Speaker 2: like when you when you sit up at night and
Speaker 2: you worry i hope it doesn't do this Is it cancer?
Speaker 2: Is that the big one? Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's– though we've done a lot of work to allay
Speaker 1: real fears. It is possible that if we go too young,
Speaker 1: we can cause dysplasia which is cells doing what they
Speaker 1: shouldn't or if they multiply and spread, that would be cancer.
Speaker 2: If you make the cells too young. Like what I
Speaker 2: was saying before about don't turn me into a baby. Right.
Speaker 1: We don't want to go there. That's what Yamanaka did
Speaker 1: and got the Nobel for it. But that's not good here.
Speaker 1: But we never see our cells turn into stem cells again.
Speaker 1: We can't. We had mice that we left the gene
Speaker 1: therapy on for 21 months in the eye and 19
Speaker 1: months in the whole body of the animal. And if anything,
Speaker 1: they had less tumors than the ones that didn't get treated.
Speaker 1: And we actually know from a wonderful student in my lab, Nalat,
Speaker 1: she's a PhD student. She found that when you turn
Speaker 1: on these three same genes, not in the eye, but
Speaker 1: in cancer cells and tumors growing in mice, human cancers
Speaker 1: growing in mice, they shrink. So we think it might
Speaker 1: actually help for cancer as well, which was a nice surprise.
Speaker 2: Wow. That's incredible.
Speaker 1: It makes sense, right? If you wake up a cancer
Speaker 1: cell and it says, crap, I shouldn't be growing. I
Speaker 1: should be a liver cell or something similar. Now it
Speaker 1: kills itself. So we see that. Cells wake up. They
Speaker 1: realize what they were 30 years ago. And then they
Speaker 1: kill themselves.
Speaker 2: What is on the horizon in terms of like what
Speaker 2: would you like to accomplish or would you like to
Speaker 2: work on that you can't do currently?
Speaker 1: Well, lots, lots. Funding in my lab got completely cut
Speaker 1: last year and we've managed to survive through donations.
Speaker 2: Why did the funding get cut? Was it a USAID thing?
Speaker 1: You remember there was a spat between Harvard and the
Speaker 1: federal government? All of the funding to Harvard Medical School
Speaker 1: got covered.
Speaker 2: Was that during the time where the president was defending
Speaker 2: those anti-Semitic comments on campuses?
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, allegedly.
Speaker 1: I'm not getting into the politics. No need to.
Speaker 2: Get into politics. But during that whole thing, yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So what we– I almost had to fire most
Speaker 1: of the people in my lab during that episode. It
Speaker 1: was quite scary. But I raised– So now my lab
Speaker 1: survives on donations, not on federal government money. Thank you, friends.
Speaker 1: Thank you, thank you.
Speaker 2: Well, the thing is you've accomplished enough where people are like,
Speaker 2: I think he's on to something and I want to
Speaker 2: live forever.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm lucky. Most scientists can't raise money like that.
Speaker 1: So really, really it's a blessing. And now I'm raising
Speaker 1: money through a foundation to help other scientists survive. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it's been a blessing. But your question was what do
Speaker 1: I wish I could do?
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I wish I could go faster. I wish I could
Speaker 1: try multiple approaches so we don't just have one shot
Speaker 1: on goal. It's going slower than I would want with
Speaker 1: a big injection of cash. We could do a lot
Speaker 1: of trials, a lot of different tissues. We could do
Speaker 1: a whole body rejuvenation as well.
Speaker 2: Do you have a website where people can donate?
Speaker 1: I do. It's Lifespan.com.
Speaker 2: So if you go to Lifespan.com, there's a link there.
Speaker 1: We have a foundation and we're raising money for this
Speaker 1: type of research.
Speaker 2: Is it tax deductible?
Speaker 1: Depends on how big the donation is. For $ 10, you
Speaker 1: get the new magazine that we're putting out and you
Speaker 1: learn all about how to live longer. I'm hoping to
Speaker 1: build the world's largest longevity community of millions of people
Speaker 1: who can learn how to really live longer and build
Speaker 1: healthcare from the ground up because top down from the
Speaker 1: government hasn't worked. Actually, I have a gift for you.
Speaker 2: What do you got?
Speaker 1: I made something for you that's unique. This is for you, Joe,
Speaker 1: as a thanks to all the support you've given me
Speaker 1: and the scientists over the years.
Speaker 2: First edition. Lifespan magazine, ladies and gentlemen. Look at that.
Speaker 1: It's written by scientists.
Speaker 2: What a great cover. It's like a velvet cover. What
Speaker 2: is this material?
Speaker 1: I figured you might like that. Inside is the magazine.
Speaker 2: What is this material? It's beautiful. Velour. Velour.
Speaker 1: Oh, velour, of course. At great expense. No, the magazine
Speaker 1: doesn't come with velour. That's just special for Joe as
Speaker 1: a thank you present.
Speaker 2: Thank you very much.
Speaker 1: Most science out there is written by reporters who don't
Speaker 1: know what they're talking about. And so we wrote this
Speaker 1: for the public, and you can believe whatever you read
Speaker 1: in there.
Speaker 2: All right. Beautiful. And it's velour, so you have to
Speaker 2: trust it.
Speaker 1: So that's at Lifespan.com. You can subscribe. Get that every
Speaker 1: month just for $ 10.
Speaker 2: I like the take at the bottom. Life's too short.
Speaker 2: Let's fix that.
Speaker 1: That's our slogan.
Speaker 2: That's a great slogan.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: That's an awesome slogan.
Speaker 1: So it's a community. It's the show. My show is
Speaker 1: also called Lifespan on YouTube. But the magazine is a
Speaker 1: passion project. I want to put out something that people love.
Speaker 1: It's beautiful. It's like National Geographic. By the way, just today,
Speaker 1: this is no joke. It seems crazy. But my lab's
Speaker 1: research is on the cover of National Geographic.
Speaker 2: Oh, that's awesome.
Speaker 1: That just came out today. They heard, by the way,
Speaker 1: at NatGeo, they said, you going on Joe Rogan? I went, yeah.
Speaker 1: They goes, all right, we'll put it out early. So
Speaker 1: you can now read about my lab's research on NatGeo
Speaker 1: as well today.
Speaker 2: That's very cool. That's very cool. So you would just
Speaker 2: like to do more, have more funding, do more. That's
Speaker 2: the thing that you wish you could be working on now,
Speaker 2: just having more different, more different. studies and tests running concurrently.
Speaker 1: We could go so fast with AI because it's spitting
Speaker 1: out new drug candidates all the time that we can't test.
Speaker 1: It takes years to get through. So with money, we
Speaker 1: could do a lot more trials and put these through
Speaker 1: different diseases much faster.
Speaker 2: If you had no regulations, like an island of Dr.
Speaker 2: Moreau type deal?
Speaker 1: Well, at the risk of getting kicked out of my university, theoretically,
Speaker 1: we could very safely do more animal studies And with
Speaker 1: those best candidates, put them into humans quicker. Right now,
Speaker 1: it takes years. It's taken us close to 10 years
Speaker 1: to go from the first discovery in my lab in
Speaker 1: Nature magazine to now. But that's too slow. There are
Speaker 1: people dying, 150,000 a day on this planet. It's terrible.
Speaker 1: So I would love to have the resources, you know,
Speaker 1: like Jeff Bezos and others. My company, by the way,
Speaker 1: even though we lead the pack of all these guys,
Speaker 1: we're really small. We're a pretty small little outfit in Boston.
Speaker 1: We've raised a lot less money. But because I think
Speaker 1: we're focused, we have. And we started earlier. We're doing
Speaker 1: pretty well.
Speaker 2: That's the big one. You started earlier. You have a
Speaker 2: lot of momentum on your side.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think we could have a big impact on
Speaker 1: aging in our lifetime with more money directed in general
Speaker 1: at the field, not just me, but spread it. And
Speaker 1: so the money that we raise from the magazine is
Speaker 1: going to support Other labs as well and students who
Speaker 1: can find these medicines quicker.
Speaker 2: So if you– in a perfect world and you had
Speaker 2: unlimited resources, you would just run a bunch of different
Speaker 2: clinical trials and studies concurrently?
Speaker 1: Yeah. AI is feeding us molecules. We put them into mice.
Speaker 1: We go to monkeys. We go to humans and it
Speaker 1: would just be fast. One of my friends, Alex Zakharonkov,
Speaker 1: he has a similar company but not on exactly what
Speaker 1: we do, not on reprogramming. But he's able– I think
Speaker 1: he's on his 35th drug. But he's driven by AI
Speaker 1: and robots. His whole lab is robots. At least he
Speaker 1: says they are. And then he goes into humans. And
Speaker 1: his company is worth billions. That approach applied to what
Speaker 1: we do would be incredible.
Speaker 2: That's best-case scenario. That would be incredible. Well, I'm hoping
Speaker 2: through this conversation that people are going to reach out.
Speaker 2: And I'm hoping through this conversation that people are realizing like, oh, well,
Speaker 2: so much work has been done and so many breakthroughs
Speaker 2: have been made. If they had more access to resources,
Speaker 2: more access to different– whatever you need and that you
Speaker 2: could run all these different studies.
Speaker 1: We could. Our budget in my lab is only– it's
Speaker 1: almost three and a bit million. It's not much compared
Speaker 1: to what impact it could have on the planet, which
Speaker 1: is trillions of dollars saved. Just in the U.S.
Speaker 2: Alone.
Speaker 1: So it's a little bit of donation or getting a magazine.
Speaker 1: The impact would be life-changing for all of us. Who
Speaker 1: doesn't age? Who doesn't get diseases?
Speaker 2: Right. And who doesn't want to feel better?
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: It's also like so much– you can get so much
Speaker 2: more done if you feel better.
Speaker 1: Well, we take it for granted until we feel sick
Speaker 1: and then it's like, oh, I forgot what it's like
Speaker 1: to feel well.
Speaker 2: Exactly. Exactly. I had a day a week and a
Speaker 2: half ago. Where I came back from Italy. I was
Speaker 2: a little jet lagged. I didn't sleep right. And I
Speaker 2: worked out really hard a bunch of days in a row.
Speaker 2: And I was working constantly. And then I had one
Speaker 2: day I was like, I kind of feel like shit.
Speaker 2: Like I better not do anything today. And, you know,
Speaker 2: after I was done work, I just watched TV and relaxed.
Speaker 2: And I was like, I can't wait to feel better again.
Speaker 1: Well, imagine what it's like being old.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 1: And frail. Yes. That's every day.
Speaker 2: Yes, or sick.
Speaker 1: And right now you can't do anything about it.
Speaker 2: Yes. Yeah. And while you're healthy, you take it for granted,
Speaker 2: and that's the real sin. You're like, ah, I'm fine.
Speaker 2: I'm great. I mean, this is what people do when
Speaker 2: they go out drinking, right? They take advantage of the
Speaker 2: fact that it's worth it for a good time to
Speaker 2: just poison myself for a night.
Speaker 1: Well, it's not worth it because that also accelerates uh
Speaker 1: aging but big time right that's what i tell my
Speaker 1: kids who like alcohol like most kids you know you
Speaker 1: might feel better in a few days but the memory
Speaker 1: of that is going to be in your body yeah
Speaker 1: you can drink it's you know it's fine to get
Speaker 1: drunk once in a while uh but not a lot
Speaker 1: not constantly i used to drink once a day and
Speaker 1: i do not do that anymore because the The data
Speaker 1: is incontrovertible that it affects the brain, even the size
Speaker 1: of the brain, if you drink constantly.
Speaker 2: I took eight months off of no alcohol at all
Speaker 2: and I felt a lot better. I started drinking again
Speaker 2: one night. I went to dinner with my wife and
Speaker 2: had a margarita. I was like, ooh, I think I'm back. Ah, really?
Speaker 2: So I drink now, but I do not get drunk.
Speaker 2: I haven't gotten drunk. This was over a year ago.
Speaker 2: It was when I had a drink again, I think.
Speaker 2: I think it was a year. I'm not sure. But
Speaker 2: the point is I have not been drunk. Since then.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I will have a glass of wine with dinner or
Speaker 2: I will have like a shot of whiskey before I
Speaker 2: go on stage, like a little bit. But I do
Speaker 2: not get drunk anymore. It's just not worth it to me.
Speaker 2: The feeling afterwards is so terrible. The morning– and especially
Speaker 2: for me because I work out so much. When I
Speaker 2: wake up, it's like that workout is going to get done, OK?
Speaker 2: Whether I feel like shit or not, that workout is
Speaker 2: going to get done and this is going to be rough.
Speaker 1: And then you got the sweats.
Speaker 2: It's horrible.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: Versus– When I feel great, I love the workout. I'm excited.
Speaker 2: Like I look forward to it. Even when it's hard,
Speaker 2: when it's over, I'm like, whew, all right, let's eat.
Speaker 2: And I don't feel bad. I feel good. And it's like,
Speaker 2: why am I giving up that for a few hours of,
Speaker 2: you know, it's just not worth it. It's not worth it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, you're funny even without alcohol, but I'm not. So
Speaker 1: I've lost a lot of my humor. But there's nothing
Speaker 1: better than feeling great, right?
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 1: Nothing better than feeling great. of working on your health
Speaker 1: and your longevity, you'll enjoy it. It shouldn't be a chore.
Speaker 2: It'll also directly affect the other things that you love
Speaker 2: because you will have more energy. Your life energy, your
Speaker 2: vitality is so important for anything you're doing, whether it's
Speaker 2: a creative thing or an intellectual thing, like anything that
Speaker 2: you're doing, if you have more energy, You'll be able
Speaker 2: to apply more energy to that thing. It's that simple.
Speaker 2: You're building a bigger gas tank for yourself. You're building
Speaker 2: a larger engine. And that's what you're doing.
Speaker 1: Exactly. Mentally, physically, you can do so much when you
Speaker 1: feel good. You jump out of bed. If you wake
Speaker 1: up and you're tired, woozy, your eyes are puffy, that's
Speaker 1: not how it should be when you wake up. And
Speaker 1: sleep is important for longevity, of course. If you're getting
Speaker 1: good deep sleep, then you should wake up and you
Speaker 1: feel great.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 1: Yes. You don't even necessarily need a cup of coffee,
Speaker 1: but it's not bad if you have one.
Speaker 2: I like coffee. I'm not going to stop drinking it.
Speaker 2: I don't give a fuck what anybody says. Right.
Speaker 1: It's good.
Speaker 2: And there's also like conflicting information. Some people say it's
Speaker 2: good for you. There's benefits.
Speaker 1: It's good for you. Come on. That's what I say. No,
Speaker 1: it really is. Anyone that says it's not doesn't read
Speaker 1: the literature.
Speaker 2: Well, I would imagine an overabundance of caffeine is not good.
Speaker 2: Too much is not good. But that's– It's true for everything.
Speaker 2: Too much salt will kill you. Yeah, exactly. If you
Speaker 2: eat a pound of salt, you'll be dead in an hour. Right.
Speaker 1: And you can get away with very little sleep actually
Speaker 1: as long as it's deep sleep because what it's doing
Speaker 1: is clearing out the misfolded proteins in your brain and
Speaker 1: the toxins. We know this, the glymphatic system. And if
Speaker 1: you get deep sleep for an hour, you're actually going
Speaker 1: to wake up much cleaner, healthier. And what I've been
Speaker 1: able to do with some work is figure out how
Speaker 1: to get deep sleep every night. Efficiency on these rings
Speaker 1: that say above 90 sometimes.
Speaker 2: I like you say rings because you're wearing two Aura rings.
Speaker 2: Different companies.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: Why do you wear two different rings?
Speaker 1: Because when I've got two, neither of them is correct.
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 1: The truth is some of them are really good for sleep.
Speaker 1: The others are good for heart. And so this one
Speaker 1: is my heart and this is my sleep.
Speaker 2: What is the difference in the companies? Which one's which?
Speaker 1: You don't mind me saying who they are?
Speaker 2: No, I don't care.
Speaker 1: This is an Aura, the fat one.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: And then the thinner one is called Ultra Human.
Speaker 2: Ultra Human.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And which one is good for what?
Speaker 1: Well, I find Aura really good for sleep. That's their specialty.
Speaker 1: And then the heart for Ultra Human, my cardiac age.
Speaker 2: Oh, okay. So it's just like giving you data all
Speaker 2: the time?
Speaker 1: Yeah, and they're getting even better because they– I don't
Speaker 1: get paid by these companies, but– I do like that
Speaker 1: they pop up with AI information now. Have you noticed
Speaker 1: that da-da-da or I noticed that you ate a meal
Speaker 1: last night that spiked your glucose? And this one I
Speaker 1: have a monitor on right now so I can see
Speaker 1: what's going on anyway. But yeah, they're.
Speaker 2: Becoming like a– You are fucking monitored, bro.
Speaker 1: I am.
Speaker 2: Two rings and a patch?
Speaker 1: It's a hobby. It's a hobby. But you learn a
Speaker 1: lot and I put one of these on my son
Speaker 1: and he stopped eating bad food for a long while.
Speaker 2: Really? Because he was just recognizing the impact that it.
Speaker 1: Had on his body. It's good for kids. Now, I
Speaker 1: wouldn't say slap it on a kid without pediatrician recommendation,
Speaker 1: but it was amazing what happened when he could see
Speaker 1: the crap that was going in his mouth was doing
Speaker 1: to his blood sugar.
Speaker 2: Really?
Speaker 1: It was amazing. I think it's a great learning tool,
Speaker 1: if nothing else.
Speaker 2: Right. Just to have actual data. I know a lot
Speaker 2: of people, it's changed their opinion on alcohol, particularly the
Speaker 2: Oura ring when they look at their sleep.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Because even just a couple of drinks before you go
Speaker 2: to bed, like a couple of drinks at dinner, and
Speaker 2: then you realize like, oh, God, my sleep was all
Speaker 2: fucked up because of those drinks.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Lay off the modafinil too, for me anyway.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Some modafinil fucks with your sleep as well? Yeah.
Speaker 1: I have to work really hard to sleep well. There's
Speaker 1: quiet time. There's relaxation. The lights are dimmed. I think
Speaker 1: about a happy place rather than work. I had to
Speaker 1: do that because for 50 years I was burning the
Speaker 1: candle at all ends. I was really burnt out and
Speaker 1: so I've fixed that now. I don't worry.
Speaker 2: So are you one of those guys that like dims
Speaker 2: the lights in your house a couple hours before you
Speaker 2: go to bed and prepare– stay off your phone, all
Speaker 2: that stuff?
Speaker 1: Well, I don't stay off my phone as much as
Speaker 1: I want to, but yes.
Speaker 2: Do you wear red light glasses or anything like blockers?
Speaker 1: I used to. I haven't found a big difference for myself.
Speaker 1: But interesting fact that isn't well-known. If you block blue
Speaker 1: light during the day or just stay indoors, there's a
Speaker 1: guy in Japan who says that what happens is you
Speaker 1: get short-sightedness.
Speaker 2: Really?
Speaker 1: Because the mice that lack the ability to sense violet
Speaker 1: light get myopia, short-sighted. And he's got a device that
Speaker 1: indoors you can shine this. But our modern world, the LEDs,
Speaker 1: and being indoors means we barely get violet light. And
Speaker 1: that would be so interesting if that's what's causing... Our
Speaker 1: staff have to wear glasses.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: And he claims that people that live out in the
Speaker 1: countryside that see blue light all the time because they
Speaker 1: go out don't have as much need for glasses.
Speaker 2: That actually makes sense. Well, particularly artificial light and then
Speaker 2: also light that's from a close source. Like one of
Speaker 2: the things that if I do– if I'm tired and
Speaker 2: I lay in bed and I try to read something
Speaker 2: online on my phone, it hurts my eyes. The room
Speaker 2: is dark. It irritates my eyes where it never irritates
Speaker 2: my eyes normally. But it's like at the end of
Speaker 2: the day, I guess I'm more fatigued. And you're trying
Speaker 2: to focus on the screen. So like now think about
Speaker 2: that when people are doing it all day long. Maybe
Speaker 2: you're doing it at work where you have to stare
Speaker 2: at a computer monitor from three feet away or closer.
Speaker 2: And then you're looking at your phone all the time
Speaker 2: or you're working from a tablet or you're watching television.
Speaker 2: It's like you're constantly staring at these light sources that
Speaker 2: are artificial.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and also keep in mind that the muscles have
Speaker 1: to focus. You don't naturally look this far. You naturally relax.
Speaker 1: You see out there. But to look here, your muscles
Speaker 1: here have to be straining for hours, and they get
Speaker 1: very tired. And I guess eventually they age to a
Speaker 1: point where you cannot keep it up. And sometimes I
Speaker 1: do this to see better, though.
Speaker 2: Well, it all makes sense if you think about it,
Speaker 2: particularly like if your eyes are accustomed to only focusing
Speaker 2: on things that are close. I mean that was what
Speaker 2: they would say about reading when people would have glasses. Oh,
Speaker 2: you fucked up your vision reading, which I used to
Speaker 2: think was nonsense. But I was like, well, it kind
Speaker 2: of makes sense if you spend all day long focusing–
Speaker 2: even though it's on a screen, you're spending all day
Speaker 2: long focusing on a book that's only a foot from
Speaker 2: your face. Yeah. It does make sense.
Speaker 1: And the lens gets really inflexible.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: And I'm seeing this with my father. He's otherwise in
Speaker 1: perfect health at 87, which is amazing. But it's his
Speaker 1: eyes that are failing him.
Speaker 2: Maybe you should get him a red light bed.
Speaker 1: That's a great idea.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I'm going to do that. He's arriving tonight actually from Sydney.
Speaker 1: He's an amazing guy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, get him a red light bet, man, because I'm
Speaker 2: telling you there's not a thing that I've done that's
Speaker 2: impacted me in a more obvious way than that in
Speaker 2: terms of like something that's hugely important.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm going to do it. I mean he's into science.
Speaker 1: He's been taking NMN, resveratrol, metformin, exercising. He goes to
Speaker 1: the gym two or three times a week.
Speaker 2: Oh, that's great. Yeah.
Speaker 1: He's a role model at 87 with no diseases, no
Speaker 1: aches or pains.
Speaker 2: That's awesome.
Speaker 1: And he's traveling the world. He was in Japan two
Speaker 1: weeks ago.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: Coming to Boston.
Speaker 2: That's so cool. I love hearing about people that are
Speaker 2: older that just keep on top of it and stay
Speaker 2: active and stay alive and enjoy life.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. He's a great role model. And what it
Speaker 1: shows is he was an average guy until he was
Speaker 1: in his 60s. And he figured he was going to
Speaker 1: die in his 70s probably because everyone in my family
Speaker 1: dies young because we've got pretty bad genes. But he's
Speaker 1: just taken life by the horns and just is running
Speaker 1: with it and has not physically aged. except for his
Speaker 1: eyes in the last 20 years.
Speaker 2: That's incredible.
Speaker 1: And that's not an exaggeration. Anyone who's seen him knows
Speaker 1: he walks, he moves, he travels, he does everything like
Speaker 1: he was when he was 40.
Speaker 2: Things like resistance exercises are so important because it maintains
Speaker 2: bone density, maintains muscle mass. Maintains your ability to just
Speaker 2: get around and do things.
Speaker 1: That's the other reason to do that. I mean, you're
Speaker 1: going to be really strong when you're older and you
Speaker 1: won't fall. And if you do fall, you'll bounce. You
Speaker 1: won't break a bone. And he's like that. He's been
Speaker 1: working out at the gym, mostly strength training, but balance
Speaker 1: as well. It's very important to maintain balance. He's better
Speaker 1: at the gym than me at 87.
Speaker 2: That's incredible.
Speaker 1: That just shows how weak I am. Yeah, I got
Speaker 1: to go to the gym. How about next time if
Speaker 1: you have me on?
Speaker 2: You're going to be buff. We'll get you a trainer.
Speaker 2: You're in Massachusetts. There's a ton of trainers out there.
Speaker 1: Great.
Speaker 2: It's a deal. We'll find you someone. We'll find you someone.
Speaker 2: Three days a week. That's all you need. The other days,
Speaker 2: you could do stuff elective. Do stuff that you want.
Speaker 2: But three days a week, get a personal trainer and
Speaker 2: work out with them.
Speaker 1: You're on.
Speaker 2: All right.
Speaker 1: I will let you know when it's going or you
Speaker 1: help me. I can hear though that there's probably a
Speaker 1: few million people right now screaming, David, just go to
Speaker 1: the lab. Forget about the gym.
Speaker 2: You need to Well, it will help your lab work.
Speaker 2: It will help everything. It will help the amount of
Speaker 2: research you're able to do. You'll have more energy. You'll
Speaker 2: be more excited about things. I'm sure you've seen those
Speaker 2: MRI cross-sections of people's tissue where they take like a
Speaker 2: 70-year-old man who's sedentary versus a 70-year-old man who's a
Speaker 2: marathon runner. It's fucking extraordinary.
Speaker 1: I've seen my own. There's too much fat in the muscle.
Speaker 1: Got to get rid of it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. It's really extraordinary when you see those images.
Speaker 2: Like those really bring it home.
Speaker 1: And the bone changes. Bone turns to fat too, parts
Speaker 1: of the bone. So you've got to have the strength
Speaker 1: training for sure.
Speaker 2: 100%. Keep your bones strong. Yeah, 100%. Strength training is–
Speaker 2: that's mandatory.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And then do you do a lot of aerobic exercises?
Speaker 2: Yes. Good. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I saw the training bike.
Speaker 2: Oh, yeah. Well, you saw my hypoxia machine that I
Speaker 2: just got installed today. Yeah. Yeah. The– The hypoxia thing,
Speaker 2: what it does is it replicates 14,000 feet above sea level.
Speaker 2: And you train in it. And it also has a
Speaker 2: heat element so you could ramp the heat up to
Speaker 2: 115 degrees. So 115 degrees and 14,000 feet above sea level.
Speaker 2: What's that? Machu Picchu kind of stuff? Yeah. You're going
Speaker 2: to hell. That's what it is. You're going straight to hell.
Speaker 1: It'll feel like it. But it should work, right? Hypoxia
Speaker 1: is great for muscle.
Speaker 2: Yes, and for adaptation. That's the big thing. And my
Speaker 2: friend Roman who installed it, who's one of the guys
Speaker 2: from the company, they're very specific with this protocol in
Speaker 2: terms of monitoring your heart rate, when to do it,
Speaker 2: when to push, how much time to spend and how
Speaker 2: you do it. And it's very scientific in terms of
Speaker 2: the application on athletes. And my friend Adam Greentree turned
Speaker 2: me on to it, fellow Australian. And he's a big
Speaker 2: hunter and does a lot of mountain hunting. And he
Speaker 2: said there's nothing he's ever done that's had more of
Speaker 2: an impact on his cardio. So it's been phenomenal.
Speaker 1: Sounds wonderful, actually. There's a lot of science behind that.
Speaker 1: You probably know it. The best results are when people
Speaker 1: are either having too much oxygen or not enough. And
Speaker 1: you might say, well, that's weird. Why does it matter? Well,
Speaker 1: you got to get out of your comfort zone, hormesis
Speaker 1: we keep talking about. And there's a big study in
Speaker 1: Israel where they put people in these hyperbaric chambers.
Speaker 2: I've done that protocol. Yeah. Yeah. 60 sessions of 90
Speaker 2: minutes over 90 days.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I have one in my house.
Speaker 1: You do?
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Because the data is intercontrovertible, better wound healing, better memory.
Speaker 2: Increase in telomere length. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I saw that one. That's the Israel study.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 1: What I thought was interesting was when I went over
Speaker 1: there myself and sat in that thing, they made a
Speaker 1: joke over there in Israel, by the way. They said,
Speaker 1: this gas chamber here that you're going into, made by Germans.
Speaker 1: I thought, that's not a funny joke. Don't say that again. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I probably shouldn't have shared that. I did go into
Speaker 1: the chamber. And what I found out was that they
Speaker 1: believe what I believe, which is it's not so much
Speaker 1: the high pressure that's good for you. It's the coming down.
Speaker 1: that mimics hypoxia, which your room will mimic. So the
Speaker 1: lack of oxygen or the perceived lack of oxygen from
Speaker 1: a high state is the benefit.
Speaker 2: Interesting.
Speaker 1: And that makes a lot of sense. You're going to
Speaker 1: grow new blood vessels, just like Viagra is going to
Speaker 1: open things up. We actually had a paper, 2012, that
Speaker 1: found that one of the supplements that I take, which
Speaker 1: everyone knows about NMN, could allow animals to grow new
Speaker 1: blood vessels by getting rid of a protein that accumulates
Speaker 1: with aging. The bottom line is we could mimic this
Speaker 1: lack of blood vessels with this pill, but by exercising,
Speaker 1: it's the same. What I really believe, which is barely
Speaker 1: talked about in the medical establishment, is that a major
Speaker 1: reason we get sick when we get older is lack
Speaker 1: of blood flow. It's rarely talked about, right? Vascular dementia,
Speaker 1: second largest cause of dementia in the world, blood flow.
Speaker 1: And it's the easiest to reverse. You just do exercise
Speaker 1: or take one of these PDE5 inhibitors, Viagra. Or you
Speaker 1: take my stuff, which is NMN, which we think also works.
Speaker 2: Or all the above, which is probably the best approach.
Speaker 1: I'm two out of three. Hopefully soon three out of three.
Speaker 1: But yeah, to protect your brain, which is the most
Speaker 1: important because you don't want to be old and demented.
Speaker 1: That's worse than anything. Keep the blood flowing in your body.
Speaker 1: Remember that. Blood flowing is important. Yes.
Speaker 2: Couldn't agree more. David, you're a treasure. I really appreciate you.
Speaker 2: Thank you for being here.
Speaker 1: You've been so kind. And thank you for getting the
Speaker 1: word out here about the great science that's going on.
Speaker 2: Oh, my pleasure, dude. I'm so happy there's someone like
Speaker 2: you out there doing this. I mean, it's such an
Speaker 2: enormous benefit to people that are listening to the world.
Speaker 2: And you're doing– you're literally doing God's work.
Speaker 1: We'll try to do more.
Speaker 2: Thank you very much. Thank you, sir. Lifespan.com is the website. Please, folks,
Speaker 2: if you're so inclined, go donate. It'll really help. It'll
Speaker 2: change the world. David, love you too. Thank you. Bye, everybody.