August 4, 2026 • 51 mins
When an astrologer tells Mangesh that he’ll (probably) die early, he takes it in stride. But his family and friends (not to mention all the Don’t Die longevity influencers on his FYP) feel differently… and besides, if science can keep his brain sharp and his tennis game strong for longer, why not take advantage? So he visits Dr. Nir Barzelai, the world’s leading aging researcher, and Dr. Ron Primas, an elite longevity doctor, to figure out what he should do. Plus: A chat with Ken Reid from TV Guidance Counselor about age in pop culture, from the Golden Girls to “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up.”
Disclosure: The experts we spoke with want to be clear that although they have some minor quibbles with Bryan Johnson, they’re grateful for the fact that he’s started the conversation on longevity. Any insinuation that he’s got weird vibes is ours.
- Listen to Ken Reid’s podcast, TV Guidance Counselor
- Learn more about Nir Barzelai’s Longevity Genes Project and his book, Age Later
- Learn more about Ron Primas’s longevity and concierge medicine practice
- Read Cynthia Kenyon’s groundbreaking 1993 study of worm longevity
- Check out the Ray Kurzweil Library
Special thanks to Azadi Records and Bliss Samsa for their beautiful tracks, and Botany for the score.
Episode collage art by Vahini Shori.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
Warning, Despite Mangessa's grandmother's greatest wish, he is one not
a doctor, and nothing in this episode should count as
medical advice. You will, however, hear about looks maxing colonialism,
and there will be references to the Golden Girls and
the Odyssey. There will also be disclosure of one or
more annoying astrological predictions, as well as adult language and
(00:33):
mention of suicide, So sensitive listeners take care.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
Oh my god, Cliver.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
Yes, I'm gonna live twice. I'm mongaish and I am
so happy here. I've had a heck of a year.
So let me catch you up real quick. Anna, would
you pull up the deck? Scun Valley loves a deck
(01:13):
like this. This is a show about longevity. These are
some things I heard over and over again. We can
still be doing a triathlon at ninety, here, hundred.
Speaker 4 (01:25):
The maximum lifespan just keeps increasing faster than you age,
and then somebody figures out how to stop us from
dying permanently.
Speaker 5 (01:35):
Longevity sort of feels like this rarefied you know, tech
pro brainchild of the already wealthy, already healthy individuals that
somewhat selfishly want to live in extra A few decades.
Speaker 3 (01:46):
I think death is a great evil, and I think
it takes people away from us way too soon. See,
everyone wants to live forever. This is me as a
kid reading.
Speaker 6 (01:58):
Three two one contact.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
I liked it because it was filled with weird science
and discoveries and facts. The very matter that makes this
is me now, still obsessed with weird science and discoveries
and facts. Except for my hair is gray, my face
is rounder. I'm lucky to have a wife and kids
who make me smile.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
You don't look bad. You know you have ontap potential, right, And.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
I guess I'm supposed to be a grown up. But
I can't believe I'm forty seven. I mean, I do
get more tired. My reflexes aren't what it used to be.
But my spirit that's a different story. I always have
a pen on me for doodling. When I sit at
(02:54):
the front of a bus, I like to inch my
toe slowly over the do not cross line because it's harmless.
Speaker 6 (03:03):
Also, I don't really like being told what to do.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
This is my childhood friend Chathan. He's a rule breaker too.
I'm actually a superhero now one years I know that
live for you to come back and so how I
can scale walls and a lecture a vision.
Speaker 6 (03:20):
Now there's a new peptide.
Speaker 3 (03:22):
He's lost way has loads of energy. And honestly, I
don't want to live forever. But what Chathan has that
sounds appealing. That's where my journey begins. This is a
longevity doctor I saw while working on this show.
Speaker 7 (03:38):
This is how much that you have. It's like nine kilograms,
which is a lot. You know, you're almost on the
O B side.
Speaker 3 (03:47):
This is a genetics expert telling me trauma lives in
your epigenetics. For eight generations, we see Indians aging pastor
probably because of generational traumas due to colonization. So even
if I take a lot of pills, colonialism kind of
screwed me.
Speaker 6 (04:04):
This is my great grandmother. She saw it.
Speaker 3 (04:08):
All colonial rule, world wars, partition, independence, generations of family
both entering and passing. When I was a kid, I
thought she was the coolest. She was funny and surly
and drank strong coffee with her morning newspaper. She loved
Calvin and Hobbes and hated to lose its scrabble. The
(04:31):
fact that she lived to one hundred and three felt
like an achievement. But these days, when I talked to
biopunks and longevinots, one hundred three barely seems worth bragging about.
This is a graph of people who've lived past one
hundred and twenty.
Speaker 6 (04:49):
There's only one of them.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
Jeane Cowmant from France. She was a smoker. This is
a graph of the number of people scientists expect to
live past their one hundred and tens in the year
twenty eighty. That's three hundred thousand people right there. These
(05:12):
are some old people we ask for advice.
Speaker 8 (05:14):
And I'll look in the mirror and I get my
girl a rink, say you look all right, girl, We
can do this.
Speaker 3 (05:20):
I learned my lessons from my grandmother and my dad.
Speaker 9 (05:24):
Keep it moving, to live forever.
Speaker 10 (05:26):
It's just a fantasy, so yeah, I might as well.
Speaker 9 (05:28):
Can I fly too?
Speaker 3 (05:33):
This is a biohacker who injected himself with cow brains
just to see the effect.
Speaker 4 (05:39):
We've got all these peptides right here, and I'm gonna
inject this one into him and I go yeah.
Speaker 3 (05:48):
This is a scientist who thinks some men are overdoing
it and.
Speaker 9 (05:52):
Are like horoscopes for tech ropes.
Speaker 3 (05:57):
And this is where I find myself eventually talking to
a startup founder who lives on an island populated mostly
by monkeys. She's going to make her dad heart attack
proof and she wants to do the same for you.
So I'm like, wait, could I grow him a new
heart that will never develop heart disease because I genetically
engineered at them?
Speaker 5 (06:15):
Like stage one.
Speaker 3 (06:18):
This year, my friends and I set out to make
a show about longevity. I wanted to go to blue
Zones and MIT and meet people at the fringes who
are developing new drugs and new therapies. I wanted to
investigate the line between substance and snake oil. And here
from folks implanting computer chips into their arms and the
young scientists trying to replace their brains with a totally
(06:40):
new one, one cell at.
Speaker 4 (06:42):
A time, not people who just talk about the future
but are brave enough to actually do it.
Speaker 3 (06:56):
This is a show about life, but really it's a
story about time. The time we have, the time we
think we have, and the ways as human beings we're
still asking for an extension. From Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio, I'm
monga'sha Together. Welcome to Skyline Drive, How to Live Forever
(07:46):
chapter one The New fifty. If you asked me in
third grade, Missus Fletcher was the definition of old You
remember Missus Fletcher.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
Right, I'm tallen and I can't get up.
Speaker 3 (08:04):
For sending help immediately Missus Fletcher.
Speaker 11 (08:06):
He will be called a law.
Speaker 3 (08:07):
Back in the nineteen eighties, these life call commercials were
always on TV, and they really drilled into this idea
that anyone who was older and living alone was constantly
on the precipice of some massive accident. In home accidents
last year, over three million people were disabled.
Speaker 12 (08:26):
One hundred thousand either suffered permanent disabilities or die.
Speaker 3 (08:30):
Stairs, slippery floors, a bunched carpet. These were all treated
like murder weapons, and the commercials were so melodramatic you
can see why they became a national punchline. I'm folling.
All that's to say, I've been thinking about those commercials
(08:51):
a lot, and it's made me wonder did old age
on TV look older than it does now? So I
called on my friend the communie Ken read.
Speaker 10 (09:01):
I'm more or lesson whenevery issue of TV Guide magazine
like a normal person.
Speaker 3 (09:05):
Ken has been making his podcast TV Guidance Counselor for
more than a decade, so he seemed like the perfect
person for me to run my theory by. I'm about
to turn forty seven, and I was trying to imagine,
like what was old age on TV as a kid,
Like what was my perception of it? And the thing
I kept coming back to was that I've fallen and
(09:26):
I can't get up commercial.
Speaker 10 (09:28):
Yeah, yeah, that was what we all had to look
forward to, being alone and injured and your your family
doesn't remember your care about you anymore.
Speaker 3 (09:38):
Just to be clear, this was never how I pictured
my own old age as a third grader. I just
assumed I'd be living this very able bodied, Sherlock Holmes
esque life, you know, like playing music and chess, solving
mysteries with my best friend, wearing a lot of tweed.
Not exactly life called territory. I mean, I didn't know
about this, and I don't know if you did before,
(09:58):
but when I did some research, which like it was
a true story, like the woman who played Miss Fletcher
was named Edith for and she had actually fallen. Yeah,
although it was a dramatic recreation, I don't think she
hit her head on every step like she does in
the actual part.
Speaker 9 (10:15):
Of the recreation.
Speaker 10 (10:16):
But yeah, and it's it's funny for a lot of reasons.
That's such a weird snapshot because a it's pre internet,
pre cell phone, so like, I think people younger than
us now would be like, why do you need that
if you fall? Like, doesn't your phone automatically send in
the military?
Speaker 6 (10:31):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (10:31):
No, Like you look at that commercial and you think
this woman is not leaving her house, like maybe she
gets escorted to like a piano recital or something every
once in a while.
Speaker 10 (10:40):
Yeah, I mean you and I were the same exact age.
I'll most my birthdays in June and I'll be forty
seven somehow, and my dad's in his early seventies, and yeah,
I mean, obviously he doesn't look like a seventy something
year old woman from the mid eighties generally, but I
don't think of them in the same way. And part
of its perception as well.
Speaker 3 (10:57):
I was looking back and I didn't realize that, like
Funker On, all the family dies at like age fifty
of a stroke. Yeah, Like the idea that they used
to kill off the loved characters who are not that
much older than me feels bonkers. Or here's another example,
as a kid. The Golden Girls seemed like the oldest
(11:18):
people on TV. Three senior citizens and one of their
mothers talked away in Florida. I just assumed they were
in their seventies moving that you.
Speaker 13 (11:26):
Can't teach an old ad new drigs.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
And if anyone knows about tricks.
Speaker 3 (11:32):
But when I researched it, Rue McClanahan, who played Blanche,
was just fifty one, you.
Speaker 10 (11:39):
Know, likea mona from Who's the Best? Prime example, right.
Speaker 3 (11:43):
The whole joke on that was.
Speaker 10 (11:46):
Like she's sex crazy. So she's an old lady and
she's like fifty.
Speaker 3 (11:51):
Maybe what's hard to swallow though, isn't just that fifty
was considered old age. It's also how fragile fifty used
to seem.
Speaker 10 (12:00):
When you go back and look at clapper ads, they're
mostly focused on old people at the beginning, because why
wouldn't they be. It's like, hey, you're old, you can't
get up and turn all light off?
Speaker 6 (12:10):
Amazing.
Speaker 3 (12:11):
I mean, I remember the clapp for Phenomena, but I
had not realized that it was targeted at old people.
Speaker 10 (12:15):
That's really oh yeah. The first few ads it's like
old people in craftmatic chairs clapping, so because they're falling
asleep in their chair, like they want to shut the
light off, you know, because he'll live alone. And you're
really old at fifty.
Speaker 3 (12:28):
But think about what those mid fifties look like now.
Matt Damon as Odysseus is not feeble. He's fifty five
and ripped and in the best shape of his life.
But also think about how much better we all look.
Our skin is better, the air quality is better. There's
less pollution. We haven't been exposed to homes full of
(12:50):
cigarette smoke. Our food has less transfats, and those are
hard won battles that turned into real public health winds.
Speaker 6 (12:59):
We also care more.
Speaker 3 (13:01):
We use moisturizers and I creams and inject things like botox,
and that shows up not just in how we look,
but in the stories we tell. Ken told me that
TV shows about seniors took a turn too. It used
to be that stories about older people focused on struggle.
Speaker 10 (13:19):
It was almost like all your resources are gone. Now
everyone you knew was gone, so you need help because
it's just.
Speaker 6 (13:26):
Like nice, just you.
Speaker 10 (13:28):
Yeah, And then they kind of focused it on second
chances or like a second act.
Speaker 3 (13:36):
And now it seems like everyone's pushing for third and
fourth acts. But at some point doesn't every story have
to end.
Speaker 6 (14:10):
Chapter two?
Speaker 3 (14:13):
Another prediction making a show is a funny thing. On
one hand, I don't think I've listened to Skyline Drive
since we made it, at least not the hard parts.
Speaker 9 (14:26):
Situation doesn't look good for father.
Speaker 11 (14:28):
There is a risk to father, and you should take
every possible care.
Speaker 3 (14:35):
Back then, I thought I was making a show about astrology,
and then my dad passed and the show ended up
being about something else about death and how to accept,
to grieve, how to hope again, and also how astrology
was this prism to do all of that. But I
have re listened to the interviews, and there's something wonderful
(14:56):
about having these records of chats with my mom or
my friend and things we said but I don't remember.
And recently, looking back through old recordings, I stumbled into
something odd tape of a tantric astrologer I met in Chennai.
For me, this was one of the most meaningful parts
(15:17):
of the show. That year, I had heard a prediction
about my dad's death and it came true. And as
part of this astrologer's apprenticeship, he had to predict the
exact time his father would die, and that came true
as well.
Speaker 12 (15:31):
And he told me, I said, Guru, I am asking
you when I willn't die. I'm asking you you'd see
a tenn And unfortunately, yeah, I was the person who
told that you'll have a kardi cuarist.
Speaker 3 (15:46):
It may sound silly or fantastical, but in that moment
I felt so connected to him by this strange, invisible
string of our shared experience. He told me what sadness,
how he didn't want to be accurate about his father
but he was, and how certain fates etched into the
stars are undeniable. That's the part I remember. But as
(16:10):
I really listened, I heard another part of our conversation,
a part I'd forgotten.
Speaker 12 (16:15):
So from twenty thirty four or ten month till twenty
thirty nine, after month, you will retain what you are
then boom, end of this life. Sorry to say this.
Speaker 3 (16:30):
It turns out that July twenty ninth, twenty thirty nine
is a critical date. And if I somehow happen to
make it past that, you.
Speaker 12 (16:38):
May live for four to five years.
Speaker 7 (16:42):
What that will be some kind of issues.
Speaker 3 (16:45):
So if I trust his interpretation of the stars, I
have an expiration date of sixty four years, which you know,
not bad, could be worse, or at least that's what
I thought when I told my except maybe I regret
sharing my revelation with Lizzie because while I fell asleep
(17:06):
pretty quickly after my bedtime confession, the conversation kept her
up and she can't let it go, so we talked.
Speaker 6 (17:13):
About it a little later.
Speaker 3 (17:14):
I don't know if you notice you keep laughing.
Speaker 14 (17:16):
I don't think I've laughed once. I don't find this
funny at all.
Speaker 3 (17:19):
I mean, either it'll happen or it won't happen.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
Right.
Speaker 14 (17:22):
If you're deflecting, you're deflecting because my beef is not
with the fact that he predicted it, and you are
mad that he predicted it.
Speaker 3 (17:28):
I don't know. If I get sixty four years a wife,
that's okay.
Speaker 14 (17:33):
It's wonderful like to not take things for granted and yeah,
and be present and be present. But no, I'm not
okay with that, especially because our children would not be
very old at that point.
Speaker 15 (17:44):
I mean, I'm not saying it wouldn't be hard. Obviously,
it would be difficult when.
Speaker 9 (17:47):
You were in your forties.
Speaker 14 (17:50):
So you want your children to have less time with
their father than you have hit with your father.
Speaker 15 (17:54):
No, but like in the context of like, I don't know,
we made space Ninja suits on a snow day, but
like we we've done so many fun things and so
many weird things, and it's just been like very joys
and so I'm sure it would be difficult, but like,
I don't regret things that I've done.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
No, of course not.
Speaker 14 (18:13):
I'm just saying I'm voting for you sticking your own Okay, okay.
Speaker 3 (18:23):
But it isn't just Lizzy. You as feelings about my
early departure. She and my friend Chathan started talking about
this prediction.
Speaker 14 (18:30):
One Gush's general attitude about all of this is like, yeah,
that's fine, what's.
Speaker 11 (18:36):
Wrong with him?
Speaker 6 (18:37):
So why would he be?
Speaker 9 (18:38):
Why you be okay with that?
Speaker 3 (18:40):
So, of course Chathan wants to talk to me. I
am a little concerned about your health. I think we're
at this age where like we don't get a whole
lot more free passes.
Speaker 6 (18:49):
As we both approach our mid forties, right, our.
Speaker 11 (18:53):
Early fifties is what we're fucking approaching.
Speaker 3 (18:55):
Yeah, our health is like a slow burn in terms
of decline.
Speaker 6 (19:00):
I don't know if this is true.
Speaker 3 (19:01):
But I feel like I played a lot more sport
than you, and so like I feel like I wore
down my body more than you might have. So I
guess my lack of athletic ability is finally coming to
my veny, like I was good at math and bad
at sports, and finally like that's like working out for me. Somehow,
Everyone's got thoughts, even my kid Ruby, Why are you.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
Damning a podcast that like helps you find out when
own who's gonna die? Like, isn't that sad?
Speaker 3 (19:33):
I mean, that would be a sad podcast. But even
when we corrected Ruvi about the topic, they still had
an opinion.
Speaker 14 (19:42):
Do you want to live longer than you might?
Speaker 2 (19:45):
Yeah? I do. I think you shouldn't take what your
life are granted.
Speaker 14 (19:49):
Do you want to live a long time?
Speaker 2 (19:51):
I would like to live long. I think it would
be nice, But I also think it would be sad
to grow and like have a lot of people who
you love like leave.
Speaker 14 (19:59):
Yeah, you don't think you'd want to be the last
one left?
Speaker 6 (20:02):
No, I'm a lot like Ruby.
Speaker 3 (20:08):
I figure when it's over, it's over, And I've never
really thought about negotiating for extra time. The thing is, I.
Speaker 6 (20:17):
Do love to push a deadline. I'm a writer, after all.
Speaker 3 (20:20):
Plus I was semi famous in high school for being
able to get teachers to push back tests for our classes.
So maybe you'll fall back on old habits when I
get to sixty.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (20:31):
What I do know is I feel out of sync
with my social feeds. The noise is just oppressive. With
influencers and looks, maxers and billionaires and talking heads all
chattering about a zepic and life acts and living forever,
you just cannot escape it. So it's comforting to hear
(20:52):
my kid talking about the future the way I do.
Speaker 14 (20:57):
Do you have an idea of how old you'll be
when you're very old?
Speaker 8 (21:00):
I want to get to my late eighties and hopefully nineties,
But I don't want to like hang on by to
I just to live longer. I want to like enjoy
it's done joy.
Speaker 2 (21:14):
I mean, look at joe'snaka dude. She doesn't need longevity.
Speaker 3 (21:17):
She's like it's rash, Chapter three, one hundred candles.
Speaker 11 (21:52):
There are a few things I want to talk with
you about before we start. For example, I usually work
like that down top shirts.
Speaker 3 (22:01):
Okay, is that better for age?
Speaker 2 (22:03):
I think?
Speaker 11 (22:04):
I think it's I want to reflect youth. H Okay, okay.
Speaker 3 (22:11):
Doctor Near barzilaias seventy has a boyish charm with the
mischievous sense of humor. On his office wall, there's an
awesome powers poster that his students have photoshopped him into
because there's a clear resemblance. But a superspy looks aren't
the reason I'm talking to Near. Near has been obsessed
with one problem since he was a kid.
Speaker 11 (22:30):
What happens that you grow up and then you get old?
Speaker 3 (22:34):
Which is funny to me, like, what's the wonder? Isn't
that life? But not to Near, which put him ahead
of the curve when it was time to choose a
residency after med school.
Speaker 11 (22:44):
And there were no ages. Right, I'm one of the first,
so there was nobody that I could go and say
train me.
Speaker 9 (22:51):
We had to kind of invent it.
Speaker 3 (22:55):
He started in endochronology, the study of hormones, because he
had a hunch that since hormone go up as we
grow and then go down as we age, and.
Speaker 11 (23:03):
I thought, wow, maybe if you just supplement those hormones,
you'll stop the aging process, which proved to be largely wrong. Okay,
but it gave me enough knowledge to know how to
ask the next questions.
Speaker 3 (23:18):
And then fast forward. He's the director of the Aging
Center at the Albert Einstein School of Medicine in the Bronx.
Speaker 11 (23:25):
When you don't have a lot of competition, you can
become a leader.
Speaker 3 (23:28):
Reading Bust here says the modern science of aging gero
science really kicked off with one observation.
Speaker 11 (23:35):
If you take any animal and give some of the
brothers or sisters to eat whatever they want, and the
others you caloric restrict them, they live much healthier and
much longer.
Speaker 3 (23:48):
This was one of the original breakthroughs in aging science.
Longevity researchers at places like UCSF, MIT and the Buck Institute,
we're trying to understand why low calorie diets made worms
and mice and other creatures live longer, and they uncovered
key mechanisms of aging, from telemere attrition to cellular damage,
(24:08):
things that later became part of what we now call
the hallmarks of aging. Because by itself, starve the mice
and they live longer isn't exactly useful medical insight.
Speaker 11 (24:19):
Because of course, telling people to eat forty percent less
is not going to work.
Speaker 3 (24:24):
And along the way, they started to understand something wildly
important that had nothing to do with mice diets. This
thing we all know on an intuitive level that not
all people age at the same rate, meaning your driver's
license and your blood panels might not say the same thing.
Speaker 11 (24:42):
There's a biological agent and chronological age, and a seventy
five year old woman can be with all systems totally
fucked up, and a ninety year old person that maybe
a little bit of antibiotics you can get to age hundred.
Speaker 3 (24:57):
Also, as your biological age increases, so does your risk
for the big four diseases of aging, cancer, Alzheimer's, heart disease,
and diabetes.
Speaker 11 (25:08):
This biology of aging drives diseases. In other words, it's
not that you get disease and you get told. You
get told with the years, and this biology brings out
the disease.
Speaker 3 (25:21):
This is the biggest idea behind the current longevity of revolution.
If you can slow aging, maybe you can keep sickness
at bay a little longer and death even further off.
I want to talk to nir especially because he founded
the Longevity Genes Project, a landmark study of over five
(25:41):
hundred centenarians and their children to witness the benefits of
slow aging up close. Neir knows this one hundred and
six year old in finance who still goes to work
every day, siblings who've reached one hundred and nine centenarians
who were smokers and overweight, and by studying all these
low agers in the wild, Near realized he could figure
(26:03):
out how to learn the secrets of aging well and
make drugs and other recommendations to help those of us
born without those lucky genes.
Speaker 11 (26:12):
So we had thirty five years to realize and those
centenarians have realized probably twenty of those So what can
we learn from them?
Speaker 3 (26:22):
And what they learned is a few things. They learned
that there's a strong genetic factor, as in, if your
parents lived a long time, you're pretty likely too as well.
And it doesn't even have to be both parents, it
can even be one grandparent. And that there are some
strong links about having high HDL. Though near his feelings
(26:42):
about cholesterol.
Speaker 11 (26:44):
If it is very boring subject, I want to get
over get that.
Speaker 3 (26:52):
But there was another learning from his centenarians that truly
stunned him.
Speaker 11 (26:58):
They were sick very little time at the end of
their lives. Of our centenarians thirty percent didn't have any
disease and didn't take any medications.
Speaker 3 (27:07):
If you can crack this longevity code, you can reduce
not only medical costs, but also suffering. And honestly, if
there's a correlation between extending my life and not spending
my final years getting sick or in hospitals, I'm in.
Before I take my leave, I have one more question.
One thing I was curious about is your own aging.
Speaker 11 (27:32):
And why would you be curious about my own aging.
I'm seventy years old. I have no interest in retiring. Okay,
I feel like I'm in the prime of my activities.
But I'm also practicing very aggressively longevity medicine. So how
am I doing that? I have a longevity doctor, okay,
(27:52):
because I don't want to have a fool as a client.
Speaker 3 (27:55):
Right Chapter four, The Other Shoe. Doctor Ron Primus's office
(28:35):
is on the upper east Side with a view of
Central Park and a mini waterfall.
Speaker 6 (28:41):
But the thing that.
Speaker 3 (28:42):
Really catches my eye a framed profile of doctor Primus
from some years ago titled the Doctor is Out celebrating
his work doing house calls for the rich and famous. Allegedly,
doctor Primus was one of the inspirations for that USA
TV show Royal Pains, and I do feel like royalty.
(29:03):
Doctor Primus has generously waved his fees, but when my
producer asks about costs for the test he runs, the
staff doesn't know offhand because clients here aren't concerned with prices.
As Doctor Primus enters the room, he's asking his assistant
about his meals. He's on this very specific feed schedule.
He tells me he's short and trim and good looking.
(29:25):
And as he organizes his desk and pulls out a laptop,
I launch in with the big question why longevity.
Speaker 7 (29:33):
Everybody's got a story right, right, And like my mother
died when I was a kid of leukemia, My grandmother
died of leukemia. How father died of leukemia, and so
I was always waiting for the able.
Speaker 9 (29:42):
To shoot a drop.
Speaker 6 (29:42):
And then he goes to med school.
Speaker 7 (29:45):
I mean, clearly you have patients that have genetic propasity
for cancer and things like that. But you know, barring
those patients, almost everybody else is in there of their
own device, like handguns, you know, car accents, drinking and
driving whatever.
Speaker 9 (29:58):
Just I was like, it's gotta be better way.
Speaker 3 (30:00):
So he gets into preventive medicine and public health, ends
up directing an AIDS clinic, but then he has a revelation.
Speaker 9 (30:09):
I've read Ray Kurzweale's book with Terry Grossman called Transcend
and I was like, right, this makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 3 (30:17):
And this, this is what leads doctor Primus to fall
down the longevity rabbit hole. This glimpse into a not
so distant future. Kurzweil, as the computer scientist and futurist too,
among other things, helped popularize a concept that would come
to be known as longevity escape philosophy.
Speaker 11 (30:41):
If you're diligent, you'll use up a year of your
longevity with the year passing, but you'll get back a
full year in past twenty.
Speaker 9 (30:49):
Twenty nine, you'll get back more than a year. I
feel like should go back with some time.
Speaker 3 (30:57):
It's a heavy concept, but the idea basically not aging
or getting time back, it's one that feels less far
fetched than an age of AI and the miracle drugs.
But just hearing the name Ray Kurzweil makes me realize
how embedded and twined with Silicon Valley ideology, the whole
(31:18):
longevity movement seems to be as doctor Premus digs deeper
into the field and starts testing out ideas he sees.
The impact on himself.
Speaker 7 (31:34):
Was, Oh, I was about fifty pounds bigger than this
at my heaviest and no matter what I was, like,
could not lose the weight.
Speaker 3 (31:41):
By his early thirties, Doctor Primus is very dialed in
on optimizing his health. He's mastered his diet, exercise, sleep.
Speaker 7 (31:49):
Because of all of this my personal health trajectory. Like,
I'm like the post a boy for longevity.
Speaker 3 (31:54):
Right.
Speaker 7 (31:55):
So Brian Johnson spends like what couple million dollars a
year on himself, right, and I spend nothing.
Speaker 3 (32:01):
Just to break here for a second. Every single person
I've told about this podcast has wanted to talk to
me about Brian Johnson, and I feel like in every
conversation he's just this looming WWE character getting hyped backstage
for his walk in Ladies and Gentlemen, making his way
(32:24):
to the ring from the biohacking lab of the future,
the founder of the Don't Die movement, A man so
incredible he doesn't chase greatness.
Speaker 6 (32:32):
He tracks it by the millisecond.
Speaker 3 (32:34):
While you mortals are still asleep, He's awake at four
thirty am optimizing human existence. When you are having a
second cup of coffee, he's finishing dinner at eleven.
Speaker 6 (32:44):
In the morning because science said so.
Speaker 3 (32:48):
Piles of pills and powders every day, precision workouts, blood therapies,
red light therapies. Because he could eat for pleasure, he
could sleep for comfort, he could choose not to keep
track of every erection he has every night. Instead, this
human machine lives for data. So hide your sugar, lock
up your process cars. Because stepping into the ring tonight,
(33:08):
it is the blueprint, the hooper, biohacker, the man hooper
uses to die. Wid Johnson, Brian Johnson is so pervasive
in culture that somehow even my kid Ruby knows about him.
Speaker 14 (33:33):
Yeah, I know, what do you know about Brian?
Speaker 8 (33:35):
He's doing all this stuff And didn't he like take
his kids like blood right to make him feel be younger?
Speaker 2 (33:44):
Do I think? Again, that's a lot to do, Like
I think, are you going to give any blood? No?
Speaker 14 (33:49):
I don't think he wants to curated to myself.
Speaker 3 (33:53):
All that's to say, Brian Johnson has single handedly done
more to popularize the idea of living forever than any
other modern human and he supposedly slowed his aging to
a reported point five oh three, aging half a year
for every year he lives. That's all according to the
dunid in paste clock, the gold standard for tracking how
you're aging biologically. But doctor Primus says it doesn't take
(34:18):
one hundred pills and two million dollars a year to
compete with that, not even close.
Speaker 7 (34:23):
I just train really hard, I eat really healthy, I
sleep eight hours a day, I take a bunch of supplements,
and my dunit in pace of aging is only point
sixty five and his is something like point six too,
So I'm like close to him, and I do almost
nothing that he does.
Speaker 3 (34:40):
Doctor Primus tells me that his clientele fall into two groups.
It's either these Brian Johnson inspired men in the thirties
who want to live forever, or people in their eighties
and nineties who want to live as well as long
as they can. It turns out people like me are
an outlier, not a lot of forty seven year roles
in that mix. Then the exam begins. Over the course
(35:07):
of the next hour, doctor Primus starts peppering me with questions.
We go through some of my family history, which I'm
expecting any alcoholism. Uh, yeah, there's there's alcoholism in the family,
poor my dad's side. Any suicides, yes, I debate how
(35:30):
deep I need to go to tell him about my
genius cousin my age who took his life. We're one
of my grandaunts who jumped down a well. The fact
is my family never talked about addiction or depression, so
I don't really know how to get into it with him.
We talk about my dad's cancer and how much I drink,
(35:54):
Not that much these days. Also, what else friends of
my family, diabetes, high blood pressure.
Speaker 9 (36:02):
This brings me to the next question.
Speaker 7 (36:04):
So do you have a fire stingleisher or a fire
blanket in your kitchen when you cook?
Speaker 9 (36:08):
Yes? And do you go to sleep belt in the
car all the time even an uber or taxi?
Speaker 6 (36:14):
Yeah, you're going to bike it all rarely.
Speaker 9 (36:17):
Do you have a helmet yes? Any firearms in the house.
Speaker 7 (36:22):
No, you know people have in the end to make
sure you keep the safety on, and yeah, sort of thing.
Speaker 9 (36:27):
It's important.
Speaker 3 (36:29):
It's funny. These are such simple questions, but also so
different from the fifteen minute cursory checkup I'm used to getting.
Is this a glimpse into what preventive care could look
like for everyone. None of this costs any money. What
it costs is time. How many lives would be saved
if everyone's doctor asked them these questions. When we finish,
(36:55):
we go into another room. I put on a paper
gown and we do a series of tests. Some have
me standing on something that looks like a scale, driving
onto what feels like a handlebar of a bike. Some
are blood draws, some are just routine eye and ear things.
It takes about twenty minutes and then we walk out.
It's December eighth, and I'm feeling pretty good in the
(37:16):
exam room. My eyes and ears checked out, my lung
sounded fine. There didn't seem to be any irregularities. And
sure I was expecting like maybe a little note that
I'm getting older, maybe a pat on the back for
playing tennis and walking so much. Instead I hear this, so.
Speaker 9 (37:33):
You're fat mess.
Speaker 7 (37:34):
And next, this is how much that you have totally
and it's like nine kilograms, which is a lot. You know,
you're almost on the ob side. Waste circumference is definitely
high for you. This is body composition trut You want
to be down there, not there, so it just takes
some work.
Speaker 3 (37:51):
The whole thing is kind of a gut punch. I'm
hearing about how unhealthy I am. He's encouraging, but also
sounding the alarm. I need to control the things I
can control and start putting real effort into them or
risk losing years. He tells me to intermit fast and
to start tracking everything. As he's telling me all this,
(38:13):
I feel overwhelmed.
Speaker 9 (38:17):
You track your data at all?
Speaker 7 (38:19):
I feel like a watch and whoop or biostrap work
really well.
Speaker 9 (38:23):
You should wear a bluepless monitor just to kind of
stay on top of it.
Speaker 7 (38:26):
Your aplutment at like sixty two degrees and work with
ound with like listening, schedule and try and not yet
so you feel.
Speaker 9 (38:34):
A great trains being quite sure and start vacation so
you got your work cut out a little bit.
Speaker 3 (38:45):
I'm skeptical I can pull this off, like I could
take a pill.
Speaker 6 (38:49):
A pill is easy.
Speaker 3 (38:50):
I can show up for injections, but sleeping at regular
times for eight hours, breaking my day for cold plunges,
finding time to exercise. How am I going to do
any of that? Then I think about what's at risk
and who's giving me the advice? Doctor Primus tells me
(39:10):
he had an older patient who was very high functioning
and had the markers for Alzheimer's, and then he had
a sudden decline.
Speaker 9 (39:17):
I was like, wow, something's wrong.
Speaker 7 (39:19):
He went off the cliff like he literally was good, good, good,
then bam.
Speaker 9 (39:23):
So I was like, look, we got to do something
about this.
Speaker 3 (39:26):
So doctor Primus teams up with his friend Neir, who
is also his patient, and they send the man to
a third friend in Tel Aviv.
Speaker 7 (39:33):
Neir has a friend called Shaya Friday. There, Shai has
this protocol for Alzheimer's patients using hyperbaric and he had
intensive four months daily hyperbaric.
Speaker 9 (39:44):
I put him on a kto diet.
Speaker 3 (39:45):
And then with a tweak to his diet, daily sessions
in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber, and a regimen of games
and apps to stimulate his brain. Doctor Primus tells me,
then just four months.
Speaker 7 (39:56):
He's completely back to normal. All of the testing that
they did sh dramatic improvements.
Speaker 3 (40:01):
And as I gather my things to leave, I keep
returning to the story. Maybe it's just that an anecdote
and end of one, but I can't stop being excited
by the possibilities. So I started thinking about bellying up
to my to do list from Doctor Primus. And then
as I'm walking out into the brisk December air, I
(40:23):
get one more gentle nudge towards the future. We bump
into another of doctor Primus's patients, this man who looks
to be in his eighties. He tells us his mother
is also a client. She's one hundred and six and
it's hard to keep up with on the dance floor.
Speaker 6 (40:40):
I really don't want to go to the gym, But being.
Speaker 3 (40:43):
Able to dance until the end of your life, that
seems like a wonderful thing. Fifty too much, Chapter five,
(41:26):
The Odyssey of it All. So remember that part where
my wife and my child were complaining about me being
okay with my life Sentence of sixty four. There's one
more thing I need to tell you. Every few years,
whenever we could afford it, my mom would take us
to India for a whole summer. For us, India was
(41:48):
this bizarro world with completely different rules, a place of
pure chaos and colors. At the edges of my grandparents
lush garden, beyond Bogan Villa and the tall Gaman tree,
you could spot mongoose and beautiful gray longer monkeys. At night,
(42:08):
you sneaked into bed under these lacey mosquito nets that
hung from the bed frames like some Victorian relic. And
of all the people in the house, I was most
enamored with my grandfather, who bridged all these incredible worlds.
I love that he was this gentleman who studied botany
at Oxford and kept volumes of national geographics on the bookcase,
(42:30):
and played weekly.
Speaker 6 (42:31):
Bridge games with his friends on the verandah.
Speaker 3 (42:35):
And I loved how magical time with him could be,
Like late one night, how he woke me up and
led me outside to peek it at Bethlehem Lily, this
flower he'd been cultivating that only opens once a year
in moonlight. We're hearing him talk about his adventures as
(42:57):
a chief of forestry, how he'd briefly fostered heard some
bear cubs at home because he found them abandoned in
the woods, Or how he'd killed a king kobra that
was attacking him, how he tried to shoot it as
it raced towards him, and when he missed, he took
his rifle and turned it around and swung it like
a cricket bat, knocking the creature out. But more than
(43:22):
any of that, I love that he was so loving
and sensitive too, that he had this deep empathy for others.
When I was nine, he was taking a bus to
visit assault mine. He breathed in deeply and in a
minute disappeared from a heart attack. When I heard the news,
(43:46):
I was devastated. On the bus where he passed away.
The young man recognized the initials and last name on
his briefcase and stayed to lend a hand. His father
had been in the forestry service too, Mayaja had helped
him when he became disabled and couldn't work. And I
(44:08):
always thought, if you can do that in seventy two years,
if you can live in a way that your grandkid,
several continents away, growing up in a completely different culture,
wants to mirror the best parts of you, well, then
maybe sixty or seventy years is enough. That feels like
enough time. And that's how I felt and lived my
(44:30):
life forty seven years in fact, happy to savor the
time I have, making the most of it.
Speaker 6 (44:38):
But then there's this, I.
Speaker 14 (44:41):
Would prefer for you to plan on and work as
if we're going to live you much longer.
Speaker 3 (44:48):
Lives together How can I ignore that? Because what if
Chathin and Near and doctor Primus and yes, even that
WWE wrestler dooming in the back of my head are right?
What if I could prove the strologer wrong and defeat
death by a year or ten or twenty. Doesn't my
(45:10):
family deserve that?
Speaker 6 (45:15):
Right now, they.
Speaker 3 (45:16):
Are scientists using dancing molecules to make paraplegic mice walk again.
There are geneticists curing babies of lifelong diseases before they'll
take their first steps. They are entrepreneurs designing new drugs,
delivering miracles and labs. And there are world leaders talking
on hot mics about how they might extend their lives
and reigns by seventy five years or longer. And I
(45:41):
don't know if there's a pill or an injection or
a transplant that's going to give us an endless life,
But I keep hearing about these secrets that only scientists
and the elite know about right now.
Speaker 4 (45:53):
They sometimes don't like going on the record just because
of the nature.
Speaker 9 (45:57):
Of what they do.
Speaker 3 (45:58):
And since I still have a little time on my hands,
I might as well chase.
Speaker 6 (46:03):
Those secrets down. This season on How to Live forever,
so you have.
Speaker 3 (46:21):
A testable brain essentially in the futured day. Right, Okay,
gentle you guys, that totally does work.
Speaker 14 (46:26):
People were just filling up their bottles.
Speaker 4 (46:28):
I learned about Da Vinci writing his notebooks mirrored, so
that just seemed like the pure most symmetric form of
just physically developed.
Speaker 12 (46:35):
Sixteen floors, but eight of them are themed. We have
a floor for AI, floor for crypto, floor for longevity
and so on.
Speaker 3 (46:43):
I told them I'm new to the building and was
here for an event, and he asked me, quite blankly,
if I want to live forever from twenty two to
twenty five, I have frozen blood samples and data of
how my plasma proteins and also my immune cells have changed.
The more muscle loss.
Speaker 12 (47:02):
You're almost there.
Speaker 3 (47:03):
So want to age in MAA right now?
Speaker 13 (47:06):
You can kind of see the appeal of it. You
want to try and get as much as you can,
But then you're also downplaying every single other element of
your existence. Our families and the people we work with,
and the people that we see in the street, you know,
are those maybe the more important parts of our existence.
Speaker 9 (47:22):
Everybody holds each other up with their arms.
Speaker 7 (47:24):
They're holding each other up so they can do these
more difficult movements.
Speaker 3 (47:28):
One of the cool things about def is that it
completes the story. I mean, I want to say, is
it really a story without?
Speaker 2 (47:33):
And then.
Speaker 6 (47:49):
Yes, I'm going to live you. We did it.
Speaker 3 (47:52):
Thank you so much for listening. I feel so lucky
to be making a show. I have so many feel
to thank. Skyline Driver is a production of Kaleidoscope and
iHeart Podcast. This show is hosted and written by Me
Mongish particular, with a ton of help, like so much
help from these wonderful Evans Lizzie Jacobs aka and my wife,
who I'm so lucky to have conned into leading this
(48:13):
production and spending a lifetime with me. I also have massive,
massive help from the most talented and most cat loving
Mary Philip Sandy and the unbelievably tapped in science producer
Mark Steven Allen, who knows everyone from congressman to exile
journalists to superstar kids in Brooklyn who have put magnets
into their ends. Mark Lotto is the very very best
(48:36):
story editor who had to go away to our hammock
on an island just to handle editing me. That's how
rough it is. This episode was mixed by our genius
Kyle Anna from Computer Seni Productions, with lush and wondrous
scoring from Botany Spencer.
Speaker 6 (48:50):
How can we do this without you?
Speaker 3 (48:52):
Also the beautiful Indian hip hop This courtesy of Azadi Records,
who is so amazing, and there are gorgeous tracks from
the artist Samsa Mo and Nathan.
Speaker 6 (49:02):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 3 (49:03):
If you want to hear more, we made you a mixtape, you.
Speaker 6 (49:06):
Just have to check out the show notes.
Speaker 3 (49:08):
Additional production research support from the wonderful Lucas Riley. The
show is executive produced from iHeart but my good friends
Ali Perry and Katrina Norvel. The show would not have
happened without the support of my friends a kaleidoscope, starting
with my business partner pal oswa Lishan, who somehow still
believes in the show. Juliane Nutter is our head of
studio and has been bearing with me and passing along
(49:30):
so many great story notes. Costas Linos, thank you so
much for keeping the lights on with a smile, making
everything go smoothly.
Speaker 6 (49:38):
Costas, you are the best.
Speaker 3 (49:40):
Kate Osborne for getting the show off the ground. Thank you,
Kate rachel Strom. We owe you so Big, You are
the very best lawyer and neighbor and human. Also Christy David, Gina,
Dara calypso L Viney for coming out from retirement to
do the beautiful collage art again, anyone who led ahead.
Speaker 6 (50:00):
There are way too many of you.
Speaker 3 (50:01):
I also want to give a little special thanks to
all the kiddos who bore with us through this production.
Henry Ruby, my two little maniacs who now yell off
the record at me at the dining table. Also Julian Brendel,
lou Litleenzo and Pearl Etour. All my friends at iHeart,
including Bob Connell, will carry Nicki, Jason, Jerry and Moore
(50:21):
my New York and Atlanta Cruz.
Speaker 6 (50:23):
There are too many to name.
Speaker 3 (50:25):
Also Shanta Sullah, my family in India, my family in
the States. The very very biggest thank you to Josh
Clark from the legendary podcast Stuff.
Speaker 6 (50:34):
You Should Know.
Speaker 3 (50:35):
Josh read this episode's warning and he once told me
he hated his voice until someone told him he sounded
like a muppet. So from one muffet to another, thank
you so much. I just want to say thank you
to my teachers, missus Leary and miss Anderson, who were
just two of the greatest elementary school teachers ever. They
made me believe my talents, made fall in love with
creative projects, and for some reason, they still listen and
(50:57):
root for me. The world needs more tea fatures and
people like you. And just one last thank you to
my Amma, my dad, lovely fandomschaticular who I thank my
lucky stars for.
Speaker 6 (51:08):
Thank you so much for listening
Warning, Despite Mangessa's grandmother's greatest wish, he is one not
a doctor, and nothing in this episode should count as
medical advice. You will, however, hear about looks maxing colonialism,
and there will be references to the Golden Girls and
the Odyssey. There will also be disclosure of one or
more annoying astrological predictions, as well as adult language and
(00:33):
mention of suicide, So sensitive listeners take care.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
Oh my god, Cliver.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
Yes, I'm gonna live twice. I'm mongaish and I am
so happy here. I've had a heck of a year.
So let me catch you up real quick. Anna, would
you pull up the deck? Scun Valley loves a deck
(01:13):
like this. This is a show about longevity. These are
some things I heard over and over again. We can
still be doing a triathlon at ninety, here, hundred.
Speaker 4 (01:25):
The maximum lifespan just keeps increasing faster than you age,
and then somebody figures out how to stop us from
dying permanently.
Speaker 5 (01:35):
Longevity sort of feels like this rarefied you know, tech
pro brainchild of the already wealthy, already healthy individuals that
somewhat selfishly want to live in extra A few decades.
Speaker 3 (01:46):
I think death is a great evil, and I think
it takes people away from us way too soon. See,
everyone wants to live forever. This is me as a
kid reading.
Speaker 6 (01:58):
Three two one contact.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
I liked it because it was filled with weird science
and discoveries and facts. The very matter that makes this
is me now, still obsessed with weird science and discoveries
and facts. Except for my hair is gray, my face
is rounder. I'm lucky to have a wife and kids
who make me smile.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
You don't look bad. You know you have ontap potential, right, And.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
I guess I'm supposed to be a grown up. But
I can't believe I'm forty seven. I mean, I do
get more tired. My reflexes aren't what it used to be.
But my spirit that's a different story. I always have
a pen on me for doodling. When I sit at
(02:54):
the front of a bus, I like to inch my
toe slowly over the do not cross line because it's harmless.
Speaker 6 (03:03):
Also, I don't really like being told what to do.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
This is my childhood friend Chathan. He's a rule breaker too.
I'm actually a superhero now one years I know that
live for you to come back and so how I
can scale walls and a lecture a vision.
Speaker 6 (03:20):
Now there's a new peptide.
Speaker 3 (03:22):
He's lost way has loads of energy. And honestly, I
don't want to live forever. But what Chathan has that
sounds appealing. That's where my journey begins. This is a
longevity doctor I saw while working on this show.
Speaker 7 (03:38):
This is how much that you have. It's like nine kilograms,
which is a lot. You know, you're almost on the
O B side.
Speaker 3 (03:47):
This is a genetics expert telling me trauma lives in
your epigenetics. For eight generations, we see Indians aging pastor
probably because of generational traumas due to colonization. So even
if I take a lot of pills, colonialism kind of
screwed me.
Speaker 6 (04:04):
This is my great grandmother. She saw it.
Speaker 3 (04:08):
All colonial rule, world wars, partition, independence, generations of family
both entering and passing. When I was a kid, I
thought she was the coolest. She was funny and surly
and drank strong coffee with her morning newspaper. She loved
Calvin and Hobbes and hated to lose its scrabble. The
(04:31):
fact that she lived to one hundred and three felt
like an achievement. But these days, when I talked to
biopunks and longevinots, one hundred three barely seems worth bragging about.
This is a graph of people who've lived past one
hundred and twenty.
Speaker 6 (04:49):
There's only one of them.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
Jeane Cowmant from France. She was a smoker. This is
a graph of the number of people scientists expect to
live past their one hundred and tens in the year
twenty eighty. That's three hundred thousand people right there. These
(05:12):
are some old people we ask for advice.
Speaker 8 (05:14):
And I'll look in the mirror and I get my
girl a rink, say you look all right, girl, We
can do this.
Speaker 3 (05:20):
I learned my lessons from my grandmother and my dad.
Speaker 9 (05:24):
Keep it moving, to live forever.
Speaker 10 (05:26):
It's just a fantasy, so yeah, I might as well.
Speaker 9 (05:28):
Can I fly too?
Speaker 3 (05:33):
This is a biohacker who injected himself with cow brains
just to see the effect.
Speaker 4 (05:39):
We've got all these peptides right here, and I'm gonna
inject this one into him and I go yeah.
Speaker 3 (05:48):
This is a scientist who thinks some men are overdoing
it and.
Speaker 9 (05:52):
Are like horoscopes for tech ropes.
Speaker 3 (05:57):
And this is where I find myself eventually talking to
a startup founder who lives on an island populated mostly
by monkeys. She's going to make her dad heart attack
proof and she wants to do the same for you.
So I'm like, wait, could I grow him a new
heart that will never develop heart disease because I genetically
engineered at them?
Speaker 5 (06:15):
Like stage one.
Speaker 3 (06:18):
This year, my friends and I set out to make
a show about longevity. I wanted to go to blue
Zones and MIT and meet people at the fringes who
are developing new drugs and new therapies. I wanted to
investigate the line between substance and snake oil. And here
from folks implanting computer chips into their arms and the
young scientists trying to replace their brains with a totally
(06:40):
new one, one cell at.
Speaker 4 (06:42):
A time, not people who just talk about the future
but are brave enough to actually do it.
Speaker 3 (06:56):
This is a show about life, but really it's a
story about time. The time we have, the time we
think we have, and the ways as human beings we're
still asking for an extension. From Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio, I'm
monga'sha Together. Welcome to Skyline Drive, How to Live Forever
(07:46):
chapter one The New fifty. If you asked me in
third grade, Missus Fletcher was the definition of old You
remember Missus Fletcher.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
Right, I'm tallen and I can't get up.
Speaker 3 (08:04):
For sending help immediately Missus Fletcher.
Speaker 11 (08:06):
He will be called a law.
Speaker 3 (08:07):
Back in the nineteen eighties, these life call commercials were
always on TV, and they really drilled into this idea
that anyone who was older and living alone was constantly
on the precipice of some massive accident. In home accidents
last year, over three million people were disabled.
Speaker 12 (08:26):
One hundred thousand either suffered permanent disabilities or die.
Speaker 3 (08:30):
Stairs, slippery floors, a bunched carpet. These were all treated
like murder weapons, and the commercials were so melodramatic you
can see why they became a national punchline. I'm folling.
All that's to say, I've been thinking about those commercials
(08:51):
a lot, and it's made me wonder did old age
on TV look older than it does now? So I
called on my friend the communie Ken read.
Speaker 10 (09:01):
I'm more or lesson whenevery issue of TV Guide magazine
like a normal person.
Speaker 3 (09:05):
Ken has been making his podcast TV Guidance Counselor for
more than a decade, so he seemed like the perfect
person for me to run my theory by. I'm about
to turn forty seven, and I was trying to imagine,
like what was old age on TV as a kid,
Like what was my perception of it? And the thing
I kept coming back to was that I've fallen and
(09:26):
I can't get up commercial.
Speaker 10 (09:28):
Yeah, yeah, that was what we all had to look
forward to, being alone and injured and your your family
doesn't remember your care about you anymore.
Speaker 3 (09:38):
Just to be clear, this was never how I pictured
my own old age as a third grader. I just
assumed I'd be living this very able bodied, Sherlock Holmes
esque life, you know, like playing music and chess, solving
mysteries with my best friend, wearing a lot of tweed.
Not exactly life called territory. I mean, I didn't know
about this, and I don't know if you did before,
(09:58):
but when I did some research, which like it was
a true story, like the woman who played Miss Fletcher
was named Edith for and she had actually fallen. Yeah,
although it was a dramatic recreation, I don't think she
hit her head on every step like she does in
the actual part.
Speaker 9 (10:15):
Of the recreation.
Speaker 10 (10:16):
But yeah, and it's it's funny for a lot of reasons.
That's such a weird snapshot because a it's pre internet,
pre cell phone, so like, I think people younger than
us now would be like, why do you need that
if you fall? Like, doesn't your phone automatically send in
the military?
Speaker 6 (10:31):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (10:31):
No, Like you look at that commercial and you think
this woman is not leaving her house, like maybe she
gets escorted to like a piano recital or something every
once in a while.
Speaker 10 (10:40):
Yeah, I mean you and I were the same exact age.
I'll most my birthdays in June and I'll be forty
seven somehow, and my dad's in his early seventies, and yeah,
I mean, obviously he doesn't look like a seventy something
year old woman from the mid eighties generally, but I
don't think of them in the same way. And part
of its perception as well.
Speaker 3 (10:57):
I was looking back and I didn't realize that, like
Funker On, all the family dies at like age fifty
of a stroke. Yeah, Like the idea that they used
to kill off the loved characters who are not that
much older than me feels bonkers. Or here's another example,
as a kid. The Golden Girls seemed like the oldest
(11:18):
people on TV. Three senior citizens and one of their
mothers talked away in Florida. I just assumed they were
in their seventies moving that you.
Speaker 13 (11:26):
Can't teach an old ad new drigs.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
And if anyone knows about tricks.
Speaker 3 (11:32):
But when I researched it, Rue McClanahan, who played Blanche,
was just fifty one, you.
Speaker 10 (11:39):
Know, likea mona from Who's the Best? Prime example, right.
Speaker 3 (11:43):
The whole joke on that was.
Speaker 10 (11:46):
Like she's sex crazy. So she's an old lady and
she's like fifty.
Speaker 3 (11:51):
Maybe what's hard to swallow though, isn't just that fifty
was considered old age. It's also how fragile fifty used
to seem.
Speaker 10 (12:00):
When you go back and look at clapper ads, they're
mostly focused on old people at the beginning, because why
wouldn't they be. It's like, hey, you're old, you can't
get up and turn all light off?
Speaker 6 (12:10):
Amazing.
Speaker 3 (12:11):
I mean, I remember the clapp for Phenomena, but I
had not realized that it was targeted at old people.
Speaker 10 (12:15):
That's really oh yeah. The first few ads it's like
old people in craftmatic chairs clapping, so because they're falling
asleep in their chair, like they want to shut the
light off, you know, because he'll live alone. And you're
really old at fifty.
Speaker 3 (12:28):
But think about what those mid fifties look like now.
Matt Damon as Odysseus is not feeble. He's fifty five
and ripped and in the best shape of his life.
But also think about how much better we all look.
Our skin is better, the air quality is better. There's
less pollution. We haven't been exposed to homes full of
(12:50):
cigarette smoke. Our food has less transfats, and those are
hard won battles that turned into real public health winds.
Speaker 6 (12:59):
We also care more.
Speaker 3 (13:01):
We use moisturizers and I creams and inject things like botox,
and that shows up not just in how we look,
but in the stories we tell. Ken told me that
TV shows about seniors took a turn too. It used
to be that stories about older people focused on struggle.
Speaker 10 (13:19):
It was almost like all your resources are gone. Now
everyone you knew was gone, so you need help because
it's just.
Speaker 6 (13:26):
Like nice, just you.
Speaker 10 (13:28):
Yeah, And then they kind of focused it on second
chances or like a second act.
Speaker 3 (13:36):
And now it seems like everyone's pushing for third and
fourth acts. But at some point doesn't every story have
to end.
Speaker 6 (14:10):
Chapter two?
Speaker 3 (14:13):
Another prediction making a show is a funny thing. On
one hand, I don't think I've listened to Skyline Drive
since we made it, at least not the hard parts.
Speaker 9 (14:26):
Situation doesn't look good for father.
Speaker 11 (14:28):
There is a risk to father, and you should take
every possible care.
Speaker 3 (14:35):
Back then, I thought I was making a show about astrology,
and then my dad passed and the show ended up
being about something else about death and how to accept,
to grieve, how to hope again, and also how astrology
was this prism to do all of that. But I
have re listened to the interviews, and there's something wonderful
(14:56):
about having these records of chats with my mom or
my friend and things we said but I don't remember.
And recently, looking back through old recordings, I stumbled into
something odd tape of a tantric astrologer I met in Chennai.
For me, this was one of the most meaningful parts
(15:17):
of the show. That year, I had heard a prediction
about my dad's death and it came true. And as
part of this astrologer's apprenticeship, he had to predict the
exact time his father would die, and that came true
as well.
Speaker 12 (15:31):
And he told me, I said, Guru, I am asking
you when I willn't die. I'm asking you you'd see
a tenn And unfortunately, yeah, I was the person who
told that you'll have a kardi cuarist.
Speaker 3 (15:46):
It may sound silly or fantastical, but in that moment
I felt so connected to him by this strange, invisible
string of our shared experience. He told me what sadness,
how he didn't want to be accurate about his father
but he was, and how certain fates etched into the
stars are undeniable. That's the part I remember. But as
(16:10):
I really listened, I heard another part of our conversation,
a part I'd forgotten.
Speaker 12 (16:15):
So from twenty thirty four or ten month till twenty
thirty nine, after month, you will retain what you are
then boom, end of this life. Sorry to say this.
Speaker 3 (16:30):
It turns out that July twenty ninth, twenty thirty nine
is a critical date. And if I somehow happen to
make it past that, you.
Speaker 12 (16:38):
May live for four to five years.
Speaker 7 (16:42):
What that will be some kind of issues.
Speaker 3 (16:45):
So if I trust his interpretation of the stars, I
have an expiration date of sixty four years, which you know,
not bad, could be worse, or at least that's what
I thought when I told my except maybe I regret
sharing my revelation with Lizzie because while I fell asleep
(17:06):
pretty quickly after my bedtime confession, the conversation kept her
up and she can't let it go, so we talked.
Speaker 6 (17:13):
About it a little later.
Speaker 3 (17:14):
I don't know if you notice you keep laughing.
Speaker 14 (17:16):
I don't think I've laughed once. I don't find this
funny at all.
Speaker 3 (17:19):
I mean, either it'll happen or it won't happen.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
Right.
Speaker 14 (17:22):
If you're deflecting, you're deflecting because my beef is not
with the fact that he predicted it, and you are
mad that he predicted it.
Speaker 3 (17:28):
I don't know. If I get sixty four years a wife,
that's okay.
Speaker 14 (17:33):
It's wonderful like to not take things for granted and yeah,
and be present and be present. But no, I'm not
okay with that, especially because our children would not be
very old at that point.
Speaker 15 (17:44):
I mean, I'm not saying it wouldn't be hard. Obviously,
it would be difficult when.
Speaker 9 (17:47):
You were in your forties.
Speaker 14 (17:50):
So you want your children to have less time with
their father than you have hit with your father.
Speaker 15 (17:54):
No, but like in the context of like, I don't know,
we made space Ninja suits on a snow day, but
like we we've done so many fun things and so
many weird things, and it's just been like very joys
and so I'm sure it would be difficult, but like,
I don't regret things that I've done.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
No, of course not.
Speaker 14 (18:13):
I'm just saying I'm voting for you sticking your own Okay, okay.
Speaker 3 (18:23):
But it isn't just Lizzy. You as feelings about my
early departure. She and my friend Chathan started talking about
this prediction.
Speaker 14 (18:30):
One Gush's general attitude about all of this is like, yeah,
that's fine, what's.
Speaker 11 (18:36):
Wrong with him?
Speaker 6 (18:37):
So why would he be?
Speaker 9 (18:38):
Why you be okay with that?
Speaker 3 (18:40):
So, of course Chathan wants to talk to me. I
am a little concerned about your health. I think we're
at this age where like we don't get a whole
lot more free passes.
Speaker 6 (18:49):
As we both approach our mid forties, right, our.
Speaker 11 (18:53):
Early fifties is what we're fucking approaching.
Speaker 3 (18:55):
Yeah, our health is like a slow burn in terms
of decline.
Speaker 6 (19:00):
I don't know if this is true.
Speaker 3 (19:01):
But I feel like I played a lot more sport
than you, and so like I feel like I wore
down my body more than you might have. So I
guess my lack of athletic ability is finally coming to
my veny, like I was good at math and bad
at sports, and finally like that's like working out for me. Somehow,
Everyone's got thoughts, even my kid Ruby, Why are you.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
Damning a podcast that like helps you find out when
own who's gonna die? Like, isn't that sad?
Speaker 3 (19:33):
I mean, that would be a sad podcast. But even
when we corrected Ruvi about the topic, they still had
an opinion.
Speaker 14 (19:42):
Do you want to live longer than you might?
Speaker 2 (19:45):
Yeah? I do. I think you shouldn't take what your
life are granted.
Speaker 14 (19:49):
Do you want to live a long time?
Speaker 2 (19:51):
I would like to live long. I think it would
be nice, But I also think it would be sad
to grow and like have a lot of people who
you love like leave.
Speaker 14 (19:59):
Yeah, you don't think you'd want to be the last
one left?
Speaker 6 (20:02):
No, I'm a lot like Ruby.
Speaker 3 (20:08):
I figure when it's over, it's over, And I've never
really thought about negotiating for extra time. The thing is, I.
Speaker 6 (20:17):
Do love to push a deadline. I'm a writer, after all.
Speaker 3 (20:20):
Plus I was semi famous in high school for being
able to get teachers to push back tests for our classes.
So maybe you'll fall back on old habits when I
get to sixty.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (20:31):
What I do know is I feel out of sync
with my social feeds. The noise is just oppressive. With
influencers and looks, maxers and billionaires and talking heads all
chattering about a zepic and life acts and living forever,
you just cannot escape it. So it's comforting to hear
(20:52):
my kid talking about the future the way I do.
Speaker 14 (20:57):
Do you have an idea of how old you'll be
when you're very old?
Speaker 8 (21:00):
I want to get to my late eighties and hopefully nineties,
But I don't want to like hang on by to
I just to live longer. I want to like enjoy
it's done joy.
Speaker 2 (21:14):
I mean, look at joe'snaka dude. She doesn't need longevity.
Speaker 3 (21:17):
She's like it's rash, Chapter three, one hundred candles.
Speaker 11 (21:52):
There are a few things I want to talk with
you about before we start. For example, I usually work
like that down top shirts.
Speaker 3 (22:01):
Okay, is that better for age?
Speaker 2 (22:03):
I think?
Speaker 11 (22:04):
I think it's I want to reflect youth. H Okay, okay.
Speaker 3 (22:11):
Doctor Near barzilaias seventy has a boyish charm with the
mischievous sense of humor. On his office wall, there's an
awesome powers poster that his students have photoshopped him into
because there's a clear resemblance. But a superspy looks aren't
the reason I'm talking to Near. Near has been obsessed
with one problem since he was a kid.
Speaker 11 (22:30):
What happens that you grow up and then you get old?
Speaker 3 (22:34):
Which is funny to me, like, what's the wonder? Isn't
that life? But not to Near, which put him ahead
of the curve when it was time to choose a
residency after med school.
Speaker 11 (22:44):
And there were no ages. Right, I'm one of the first,
so there was nobody that I could go and say
train me.
Speaker 9 (22:51):
We had to kind of invent it.
Speaker 3 (22:55):
He started in endochronology, the study of hormones, because he
had a hunch that since hormone go up as we
grow and then go down as we age, and.
Speaker 11 (23:03):
I thought, wow, maybe if you just supplement those hormones,
you'll stop the aging process, which proved to be largely wrong. Okay,
but it gave me enough knowledge to know how to
ask the next questions.
Speaker 3 (23:18):
And then fast forward. He's the director of the Aging
Center at the Albert Einstein School of Medicine in the Bronx.
Speaker 11 (23:25):
When you don't have a lot of competition, you can
become a leader.
Speaker 3 (23:28):
Reading Bust here says the modern science of aging gero
science really kicked off with one observation.
Speaker 11 (23:35):
If you take any animal and give some of the
brothers or sisters to eat whatever they want, and the
others you caloric restrict them, they live much healthier and
much longer.
Speaker 3 (23:48):
This was one of the original breakthroughs in aging science.
Longevity researchers at places like UCSF, MIT and the Buck Institute,
we're trying to understand why low calorie diets made worms
and mice and other creatures live longer, and they uncovered
key mechanisms of aging, from telemere attrition to cellular damage,
(24:08):
things that later became part of what we now call
the hallmarks of aging. Because by itself, starve the mice
and they live longer isn't exactly useful medical insight.
Speaker 11 (24:19):
Because of course, telling people to eat forty percent less
is not going to work.
Speaker 3 (24:24):
And along the way, they started to understand something wildly
important that had nothing to do with mice diets. This
thing we all know on an intuitive level that not
all people age at the same rate, meaning your driver's
license and your blood panels might not say the same thing.
Speaker 11 (24:42):
There's a biological agent and chronological age, and a seventy
five year old woman can be with all systems totally
fucked up, and a ninety year old person that maybe
a little bit of antibiotics you can get to age hundred.
Speaker 3 (24:57):
Also, as your biological age increases, so does your risk
for the big four diseases of aging, cancer, Alzheimer's, heart disease,
and diabetes.
Speaker 11 (25:08):
This biology of aging drives diseases. In other words, it's
not that you get disease and you get told. You
get told with the years, and this biology brings out
the disease.
Speaker 3 (25:21):
This is the biggest idea behind the current longevity of revolution.
If you can slow aging, maybe you can keep sickness
at bay a little longer and death even further off.
I want to talk to nir especially because he founded
the Longevity Genes Project, a landmark study of over five
(25:41):
hundred centenarians and their children to witness the benefits of
slow aging up close. Neir knows this one hundred and
six year old in finance who still goes to work
every day, siblings who've reached one hundred and nine centenarians
who were smokers and overweight, and by studying all these
low agers in the wild, Near realized he could figure
(26:03):
out how to learn the secrets of aging well and
make drugs and other recommendations to help those of us
born without those lucky genes.
Speaker 11 (26:12):
So we had thirty five years to realize and those
centenarians have realized probably twenty of those So what can
we learn from them?
Speaker 3 (26:22):
And what they learned is a few things. They learned
that there's a strong genetic factor, as in, if your
parents lived a long time, you're pretty likely too as well.
And it doesn't even have to be both parents, it
can even be one grandparent. And that there are some
strong links about having high HDL. Though near his feelings
(26:42):
about cholesterol.
Speaker 11 (26:44):
If it is very boring subject, I want to get
over get that.
Speaker 3 (26:52):
But there was another learning from his centenarians that truly
stunned him.
Speaker 11 (26:58):
They were sick very little time at the end of
their lives. Of our centenarians thirty percent didn't have any
disease and didn't take any medications.
Speaker 3 (27:07):
If you can crack this longevity code, you can reduce
not only medical costs, but also suffering. And honestly, if
there's a correlation between extending my life and not spending
my final years getting sick or in hospitals, I'm in.
Before I take my leave, I have one more question.
One thing I was curious about is your own aging.
Speaker 11 (27:32):
And why would you be curious about my own aging.
I'm seventy years old. I have no interest in retiring. Okay,
I feel like I'm in the prime of my activities.
But I'm also practicing very aggressively longevity medicine. So how
am I doing that? I have a longevity doctor, okay,
(27:52):
because I don't want to have a fool as a client.
Speaker 3 (27:55):
Right Chapter four, The Other Shoe. Doctor Ron Primus's office
(28:35):
is on the upper east Side with a view of
Central Park and a mini waterfall.
Speaker 6 (28:41):
But the thing that.
Speaker 3 (28:42):
Really catches my eye a framed profile of doctor Primus
from some years ago titled the Doctor is Out celebrating
his work doing house calls for the rich and famous. Allegedly,
doctor Primus was one of the inspirations for that USA
TV show Royal Pains, and I do feel like royalty.
(29:03):
Doctor Primus has generously waved his fees, but when my
producer asks about costs for the test he runs, the
staff doesn't know offhand because clients here aren't concerned with prices.
As Doctor Primus enters the room, he's asking his assistant
about his meals. He's on this very specific feed schedule.
He tells me he's short and trim and good looking.
(29:25):
And as he organizes his desk and pulls out a laptop,
I launch in with the big question why longevity.
Speaker 7 (29:33):
Everybody's got a story right, right, And like my mother
died when I was a kid of leukemia, My grandmother
died of leukemia. How father died of leukemia, and so
I was always waiting for the able.
Speaker 9 (29:42):
To shoot a drop.
Speaker 6 (29:42):
And then he goes to med school.
Speaker 7 (29:45):
I mean, clearly you have patients that have genetic propasity
for cancer and things like that. But you know, barring
those patients, almost everybody else is in there of their
own device, like handguns, you know, car accents, drinking and
driving whatever.
Speaker 9 (29:58):
Just I was like, it's gotta be better way.
Speaker 3 (30:00):
So he gets into preventive medicine and public health, ends
up directing an AIDS clinic, but then he has a revelation.
Speaker 9 (30:09):
I've read Ray Kurzweale's book with Terry Grossman called Transcend
and I was like, right, this makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 3 (30:17):
And this, this is what leads doctor Primus to fall
down the longevity rabbit hole. This glimpse into a not
so distant future. Kurzweil, as the computer scientist and futurist too,
among other things, helped popularize a concept that would come
to be known as longevity escape philosophy.
Speaker 11 (30:41):
If you're diligent, you'll use up a year of your
longevity with the year passing, but you'll get back a
full year in past twenty.
Speaker 9 (30:49):
Twenty nine, you'll get back more than a year. I
feel like should go back with some time.
Speaker 3 (30:57):
It's a heavy concept, but the idea basically not aging
or getting time back, it's one that feels less far
fetched than an age of AI and the miracle drugs.
But just hearing the name Ray Kurzweil makes me realize
how embedded and twined with Silicon Valley ideology, the whole
(31:18):
longevity movement seems to be as doctor Premus digs deeper
into the field and starts testing out ideas he sees.
The impact on himself.
Speaker 7 (31:34):
Was, Oh, I was about fifty pounds bigger than this
at my heaviest and no matter what I was, like,
could not lose the weight.
Speaker 3 (31:41):
By his early thirties, Doctor Primus is very dialed in
on optimizing his health. He's mastered his diet, exercise, sleep.
Speaker 7 (31:49):
Because of all of this my personal health trajectory. Like,
I'm like the post a boy for longevity.
Speaker 3 (31:54):
Right.
Speaker 7 (31:55):
So Brian Johnson spends like what couple million dollars a
year on himself, right, and I spend nothing.
Speaker 3 (32:01):
Just to break here for a second. Every single person
I've told about this podcast has wanted to talk to
me about Brian Johnson, and I feel like in every
conversation he's just this looming WWE character getting hyped backstage
for his walk in Ladies and Gentlemen, making his way
(32:24):
to the ring from the biohacking lab of the future,
the founder of the Don't Die movement, A man so
incredible he doesn't chase greatness.
Speaker 6 (32:32):
He tracks it by the millisecond.
Speaker 3 (32:34):
While you mortals are still asleep, He's awake at four
thirty am optimizing human existence. When you are having a
second cup of coffee, he's finishing dinner at eleven.
Speaker 6 (32:44):
In the morning because science said so.
Speaker 3 (32:48):
Piles of pills and powders every day, precision workouts, blood therapies,
red light therapies. Because he could eat for pleasure, he
could sleep for comfort, he could choose not to keep
track of every erection he has every night. Instead, this
human machine lives for data. So hide your sugar, lock
up your process cars. Because stepping into the ring tonight,
(33:08):
it is the blueprint, the hooper, biohacker, the man hooper
uses to die. Wid Johnson, Brian Johnson is so pervasive
in culture that somehow even my kid Ruby knows about him.
Speaker 14 (33:33):
Yeah, I know, what do you know about Brian?
Speaker 8 (33:35):
He's doing all this stuff And didn't he like take
his kids like blood right to make him feel be younger?
Speaker 2 (33:44):
Do I think? Again, that's a lot to do, Like
I think, are you going to give any blood? No?
Speaker 14 (33:49):
I don't think he wants to curated to myself.
Speaker 3 (33:53):
All that's to say, Brian Johnson has single handedly done
more to popularize the idea of living forever than any
other modern human and he supposedly slowed his aging to
a reported point five oh three, aging half a year
for every year he lives. That's all according to the
dunid in paste clock, the gold standard for tracking how
you're aging biologically. But doctor Primus says it doesn't take
(34:18):
one hundred pills and two million dollars a year to
compete with that, not even close.
Speaker 7 (34:23):
I just train really hard, I eat really healthy, I
sleep eight hours a day, I take a bunch of supplements,
and my dunit in pace of aging is only point
sixty five and his is something like point six too,
So I'm like close to him, and I do almost
nothing that he does.
Speaker 3 (34:40):
Doctor Primus tells me that his clientele fall into two groups.
It's either these Brian Johnson inspired men in the thirties
who want to live forever, or people in their eighties
and nineties who want to live as well as long
as they can. It turns out people like me are
an outlier, not a lot of forty seven year roles
in that mix. Then the exam begins. Over the course
(35:07):
of the next hour, doctor Primus starts peppering me with questions.
We go through some of my family history, which I'm
expecting any alcoholism. Uh, yeah, there's there's alcoholism in the family,
poor my dad's side. Any suicides, yes, I debate how
(35:30):
deep I need to go to tell him about my
genius cousin my age who took his life. We're one
of my grandaunts who jumped down a well. The fact
is my family never talked about addiction or depression, so
I don't really know how to get into it with him.
We talk about my dad's cancer and how much I drink,
(35:54):
Not that much these days. Also, what else friends of
my family, diabetes, high blood pressure.
Speaker 9 (36:02):
This brings me to the next question.
Speaker 7 (36:04):
So do you have a fire stingleisher or a fire
blanket in your kitchen when you cook?
Speaker 9 (36:08):
Yes? And do you go to sleep belt in the
car all the time even an uber or taxi?
Speaker 6 (36:14):
Yeah, you're going to bike it all rarely.
Speaker 9 (36:17):
Do you have a helmet yes? Any firearms in the house.
Speaker 7 (36:22):
No, you know people have in the end to make
sure you keep the safety on, and yeah, sort of thing.
Speaker 9 (36:27):
It's important.
Speaker 3 (36:29):
It's funny. These are such simple questions, but also so
different from the fifteen minute cursory checkup I'm used to getting.
Is this a glimpse into what preventive care could look
like for everyone. None of this costs any money. What
it costs is time. How many lives would be saved
if everyone's doctor asked them these questions. When we finish,
(36:55):
we go into another room. I put on a paper
gown and we do a series of tests. Some have
me standing on something that looks like a scale, driving
onto what feels like a handlebar of a bike. Some
are blood draws, some are just routine eye and ear things.
It takes about twenty minutes and then we walk out.
It's December eighth, and I'm feeling pretty good in the
(37:16):
exam room. My eyes and ears checked out, my lung
sounded fine. There didn't seem to be any irregularities. And
sure I was expecting like maybe a little note that
I'm getting older, maybe a pat on the back for
playing tennis and walking so much. Instead I hear this, so.
Speaker 9 (37:33):
You're fat mess.
Speaker 7 (37:34):
And next, this is how much that you have totally
and it's like nine kilograms, which is a lot. You know,
you're almost on the ob side. Waste circumference is definitely
high for you. This is body composition trut You want
to be down there, not there, so it just takes
some work.
Speaker 3 (37:51):
The whole thing is kind of a gut punch. I'm
hearing about how unhealthy I am. He's encouraging, but also
sounding the alarm. I need to control the things I
can control and start putting real effort into them or
risk losing years. He tells me to intermit fast and
to start tracking everything. As he's telling me all this,
(38:13):
I feel overwhelmed.
Speaker 9 (38:17):
You track your data at all?
Speaker 7 (38:19):
I feel like a watch and whoop or biostrap work
really well.
Speaker 9 (38:23):
You should wear a bluepless monitor just to kind of
stay on top of it.
Speaker 7 (38:26):
Your aplutment at like sixty two degrees and work with
ound with like listening, schedule and try and not yet
so you feel.
Speaker 9 (38:34):
A great trains being quite sure and start vacation so
you got your work cut out a little bit.
Speaker 3 (38:45):
I'm skeptical I can pull this off, like I could
take a pill.
Speaker 6 (38:49):
A pill is easy.
Speaker 3 (38:50):
I can show up for injections, but sleeping at regular
times for eight hours, breaking my day for cold plunges,
finding time to exercise. How am I going to do
any of that? Then I think about what's at risk
and who's giving me the advice? Doctor Primus tells me
(39:10):
he had an older patient who was very high functioning
and had the markers for Alzheimer's, and then he had
a sudden decline.
Speaker 9 (39:17):
I was like, wow, something's wrong.
Speaker 7 (39:19):
He went off the cliff like he literally was good, good, good,
then bam.
Speaker 9 (39:23):
So I was like, look, we got to do something
about this.
Speaker 3 (39:26):
So doctor Primus teams up with his friend Neir, who
is also his patient, and they send the man to
a third friend in Tel Aviv.
Speaker 7 (39:33):
Neir has a friend called Shaya Friday. There, Shai has
this protocol for Alzheimer's patients using hyperbaric and he had
intensive four months daily hyperbaric.
Speaker 9 (39:44):
I put him on a kto diet.
Speaker 3 (39:45):
And then with a tweak to his diet, daily sessions
in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber, and a regimen of games
and apps to stimulate his brain. Doctor Primus tells me,
then just four months.
Speaker 7 (39:56):
He's completely back to normal. All of the testing that
they did sh dramatic improvements.
Speaker 3 (40:01):
And as I gather my things to leave, I keep
returning to the story. Maybe it's just that an anecdote
and end of one, but I can't stop being excited
by the possibilities. So I started thinking about bellying up
to my to do list from Doctor Primus. And then
as I'm walking out into the brisk December air, I
(40:23):
get one more gentle nudge towards the future. We bump
into another of doctor Primus's patients, this man who looks
to be in his eighties. He tells us his mother
is also a client. She's one hundred and six and
it's hard to keep up with on the dance floor.
Speaker 6 (40:40):
I really don't want to go to the gym, But being.
Speaker 3 (40:43):
Able to dance until the end of your life, that
seems like a wonderful thing. Fifty too much, Chapter five,
(41:26):
The Odyssey of it All. So remember that part where
my wife and my child were complaining about me being
okay with my life Sentence of sixty four. There's one
more thing I need to tell you. Every few years,
whenever we could afford it, my mom would take us
to India for a whole summer. For us, India was
(41:48):
this bizarro world with completely different rules, a place of
pure chaos and colors. At the edges of my grandparents
lush garden, beyond Bogan Villa and the tall Gaman tree,
you could spot mongoose and beautiful gray longer monkeys. At night,
(42:08):
you sneaked into bed under these lacey mosquito nets that
hung from the bed frames like some Victorian relic. And
of all the people in the house, I was most
enamored with my grandfather, who bridged all these incredible worlds.
I love that he was this gentleman who studied botany
at Oxford and kept volumes of national geographics on the bookcase,
(42:30):
and played weekly.
Speaker 6 (42:31):
Bridge games with his friends on the verandah.
Speaker 3 (42:35):
And I loved how magical time with him could be,
Like late one night, how he woke me up and
led me outside to peek it at Bethlehem Lily, this
flower he'd been cultivating that only opens once a year
in moonlight. We're hearing him talk about his adventures as
(42:57):
a chief of forestry, how he'd briefly fostered heard some
bear cubs at home because he found them abandoned in
the woods, Or how he'd killed a king kobra that
was attacking him, how he tried to shoot it as
it raced towards him, and when he missed, he took
his rifle and turned it around and swung it like
a cricket bat, knocking the creature out. But more than
(43:22):
any of that, I love that he was so loving
and sensitive too, that he had this deep empathy for others.
When I was nine, he was taking a bus to
visit assault mine. He breathed in deeply and in a
minute disappeared from a heart attack. When I heard the news,
(43:46):
I was devastated. On the bus where he passed away.
The young man recognized the initials and last name on
his briefcase and stayed to lend a hand. His father
had been in the forestry service too, Mayaja had helped
him when he became disabled and couldn't work. And I
(44:08):
always thought, if you can do that in seventy two years,
if you can live in a way that your grandkid,
several continents away, growing up in a completely different culture,
wants to mirror the best parts of you, well, then
maybe sixty or seventy years is enough. That feels like
enough time. And that's how I felt and lived my
(44:30):
life forty seven years in fact, happy to savor the
time I have, making the most of it.
Speaker 6 (44:38):
But then there's this, I.
Speaker 14 (44:41):
Would prefer for you to plan on and work as
if we're going to live you much longer.
Speaker 3 (44:48):
Lives together How can I ignore that? Because what if
Chathin and Near and doctor Primus and yes, even that
WWE wrestler dooming in the back of my head are right?
What if I could prove the strologer wrong and defeat
death by a year or ten or twenty. Doesn't my
(45:10):
family deserve that?
Speaker 6 (45:15):
Right now, they.
Speaker 3 (45:16):
Are scientists using dancing molecules to make paraplegic mice walk again.
There are geneticists curing babies of lifelong diseases before they'll
take their first steps. They are entrepreneurs designing new drugs,
delivering miracles and labs. And there are world leaders talking
on hot mics about how they might extend their lives
and reigns by seventy five years or longer. And I
(45:41):
don't know if there's a pill or an injection or
a transplant that's going to give us an endless life,
But I keep hearing about these secrets that only scientists
and the elite know about right now.
Speaker 4 (45:53):
They sometimes don't like going on the record just because
of the nature.
Speaker 9 (45:57):
Of what they do.
Speaker 3 (45:58):
And since I still have a little time on my hands,
I might as well chase.
Speaker 6 (46:03):
Those secrets down. This season on How to Live forever,
so you have.
Speaker 3 (46:21):
A testable brain essentially in the futured day. Right, Okay,
gentle you guys, that totally does work.
Speaker 14 (46:26):
People were just filling up their bottles.
Speaker 4 (46:28):
I learned about Da Vinci writing his notebooks mirrored, so
that just seemed like the pure most symmetric form of
just physically developed.
Speaker 12 (46:35):
Sixteen floors, but eight of them are themed. We have
a floor for AI, floor for crypto, floor for longevity
and so on.
Speaker 3 (46:43):
I told them I'm new to the building and was
here for an event, and he asked me, quite blankly,
if I want to live forever from twenty two to
twenty five, I have frozen blood samples and data of
how my plasma proteins and also my immune cells have changed.
The more muscle loss.
Speaker 12 (47:02):
You're almost there.
Speaker 3 (47:03):
So want to age in MAA right now?
Speaker 13 (47:06):
You can kind of see the appeal of it. You
want to try and get as much as you can,
But then you're also downplaying every single other element of
your existence. Our families and the people we work with,
and the people that we see in the street, you know,
are those maybe the more important parts of our existence.
Speaker 9 (47:22):
Everybody holds each other up with their arms.
Speaker 7 (47:24):
They're holding each other up so they can do these
more difficult movements.
Speaker 3 (47:28):
One of the cool things about def is that it
completes the story. I mean, I want to say, is
it really a story without?
Speaker 2 (47:33):
And then.
Speaker 6 (47:49):
Yes, I'm going to live you. We did it.
Speaker 3 (47:52):
Thank you so much for listening. I feel so lucky
to be making a show. I have so many feel
to thank. Skyline Driver is a production of Kaleidoscope and
iHeart Podcast. This show is hosted and written by Me
Mongish particular, with a ton of help, like so much
help from these wonderful Evans Lizzie Jacobs aka and my wife,
who I'm so lucky to have conned into leading this
(48:13):
production and spending a lifetime with me. I also have massive,
massive help from the most talented and most cat loving
Mary Philip Sandy and the unbelievably tapped in science producer
Mark Steven Allen, who knows everyone from congressman to exile
journalists to superstar kids in Brooklyn who have put magnets
into their ends. Mark Lotto is the very very best
(48:36):
story editor who had to go away to our hammock
on an island just to handle editing me. That's how
rough it is. This episode was mixed by our genius
Kyle Anna from Computer Seni Productions, with lush and wondrous
scoring from Botany Spencer.
Speaker 6 (48:50):
How can we do this without you?
Speaker 3 (48:52):
Also the beautiful Indian hip hop This courtesy of Azadi Records,
who is so amazing, and there are gorgeous tracks from
the artist Samsa Mo and Nathan.
Speaker 6 (49:02):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 3 (49:03):
If you want to hear more, we made you a mixtape, you.
Speaker 6 (49:06):
Just have to check out the show notes.
Speaker 3 (49:08):
Additional production research support from the wonderful Lucas Riley. The
show is executive produced from iHeart but my good friends
Ali Perry and Katrina Norvel. The show would not have
happened without the support of my friends a kaleidoscope, starting
with my business partner pal oswa Lishan, who somehow still
believes in the show. Juliane Nutter is our head of
studio and has been bearing with me and passing along
(49:30):
so many great story notes. Costas Linos, thank you so
much for keeping the lights on with a smile, making
everything go smoothly.
Speaker 6 (49:38):
Costas, you are the best.
Speaker 3 (49:40):
Kate Osborne for getting the show off the ground. Thank you,
Kate rachel Strom. We owe you so Big, You are
the very best lawyer and neighbor and human. Also Christy David, Gina,
Dara calypso L Viney for coming out from retirement to
do the beautiful collage art again, anyone who led ahead.
Speaker 6 (50:00):
There are way too many of you.
Speaker 3 (50:01):
I also want to give a little special thanks to
all the kiddos who bore with us through this production.
Henry Ruby, my two little maniacs who now yell off
the record at me at the dining table. Also Julian Brendel,
lou Litleenzo and Pearl Etour. All my friends at iHeart,
including Bob Connell, will carry Nicki, Jason, Jerry and Moore
(50:21):
my New York and Atlanta Cruz.
Speaker 6 (50:23):
There are too many to name.
Speaker 3 (50:25):
Also Shanta Sullah, my family in India, my family in
the States. The very very biggest thank you to Josh
Clark from the legendary podcast Stuff.
Speaker 6 (50:34):
You Should Know.
Speaker 3 (50:35):
Josh read this episode's warning and he once told me
he hated his voice until someone told him he sounded
like a muppet. So from one muffet to another, thank
you so much. I just want to say thank you
to my teachers, missus Leary and miss Anderson, who were
just two of the greatest elementary school teachers ever. They
made me believe my talents, made fall in love with
creative projects, and for some reason, they still listen and
(50:57):
root for me. The world needs more tea fatures and
people like you. And just one last thank you to
my Amma, my dad, lovely fandomschaticular who I thank my
lucky stars for.
Speaker 6 (51:08):
Thank you so much for listening
kill switch News
Hosts And Creators
Oz Woloshyn
Karah Preiss
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