August 5, 2026 • 59 mins
How far would you go to extend your life? While this has always been a focus of the rich and powerful, recent scientific breakthroughs may make an extended lifespan -- or even immortality -- a reality. And with that possibility comes a host of deep ethical and economic implications, from the idea of cloned human organs to how societies can (or can't) deal with a world where no one dies. In tonight's interview segment, Ben, Noel and Dylan welcome Mangesh Hattikudur, the creator of Skyline Drive: How to Live Forever, for a wide-ranging exploration of the past, present and future of the search for immortality.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Hello, and welcome back to the show. My name is Nol.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
Our pal Matt is on adventures and will be returning soon.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
They call me bet.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
We're joined as always with our super producer, Dylan the
Tennessee pal Fagan.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Most importantly, you are you. You are here.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
That makes this the stuff they don't want you to know.
Ed Noel, I know we've been talking a lot about
some classic rock stuff in previous episodes, So riddle me this.
Who wants to live forever?
Speaker 4 (00:56):
It's the other nol the lesser Noel Gallagher of the
Gallagher Brothers family. Now he's way more famous than me,
you and I is who wants to live forever? And
we're going to We don't just want it, We're going to.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Yeah, we're gonna manifest it. Dude.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
This is a question for the ages over the past
few millennia, just what's a couple thousand years between friends?
Civilization has tried all, dude, all sorts of stuff to
stave off mortality, and in recent decades, as you and
Matt and Tennessee and I have discussed in previous episodes,
science has made some extraordinary and terrified breakthroughs into what
(01:37):
we call longevity studies.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
Hey did I tell you I finally got a blood boy? Oh? No, around,
We're just connected, oh intravenously.
Speaker 4 (01:45):
I'm just kind of siphoning off his life for us,
his youthful energy, and I feel like a million bucks
never felt better.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
That's yeah, Okay, are you gonna put him in frame?
His name is no later episode Steve.
Speaker 4 (01:58):
Okay, I mean that's no no, no, no, no, no no no.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
I can't have people know too much about Steve.
Speaker 3 (02:03):
This is okay, yeah, keep it secret, Canty Steve. So
we know that new medicine, new treatments are all over
the horizon, especially for investors. We know about organ transplants
and cloning, the kind of stuff that makes you really
question what it means to be human. Luckily, we are
(02:24):
not diving into tonight's topic alone. We are thrilled, friends
and neighbors to be joined by one of our old,
dear friends. He's not old, We've just known each other
for a while. The award winning co founder of Kaleidoscope, and,
among many other things, the creator of the hit podcast
Skyline Drive, How to Live Forever, Man Gesh How to Couture.
(02:48):
Thank you for joining us, Dude, I am so thrilled.
Speaker 5 (02:52):
I love that we get to hang out.
Speaker 6 (02:55):
On camera because we haven't been able to do it
in person in a while.
Speaker 5 (02:58):
And I miss you guys to be good.
Speaker 4 (03:00):
Gonna be saying and speaking about camera? What kind of
life extension technology are you tapped into?
Speaker 1 (03:05):
Man?
Speaker 2 (03:05):
You look great.
Speaker 5 (03:07):
I'm suspicious for the filter.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
I think that that must be. That's about what most
of us can.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
Afford, to be honest, So, Mengesh, Is it okay if
we call you Mango in this one?
Speaker 5 (03:19):
Of course? Are you kidding? We're friends you don't have.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
To hide from.
Speaker 4 (03:25):
Okay, so don't you call him that. That's only close
personal friends like us.
Speaker 3 (03:30):
We had to earn it. Uh so uh, you have
done so much stuff. A quick peek behind the curtain.
We knew Noel, Matt and myself we knew a lot
about your work before we ever met in person. There
was a very awkward moment you and I had when
you we started working together, and I showed you what
(03:54):
are your books Mental Flaws? And you asked. You were
so polite and in person bull, You said, Ben, do
you want do you want us to sign this book?
And then I revealed that you had already signed it,
and I sort of walked away backwards because they didn't know.
Speaker 5 (04:10):
What to do.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
Ah.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
Yes, the Homer Simpson Bush mood. Love it.
Speaker 5 (04:14):
Yeah, just so, I don't think I would have offered
to sign it.
Speaker 6 (04:18):
I think Will is very happy to sign anything that's
put in front of it.
Speaker 4 (04:24):
Also, yeah, now he's now he's signing big contracts and
making billion dollar deals with TikTok and stuff.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
As we know everybody.
Speaker 6 (04:34):
When we first started, like menal plus, we made this
like little video of like like just how our personalities
had blossomed and and and we did this thing where
like someone was pulling over to ask for directions and
this is so long ago that people had maps, and
like they showed this map to Will and he's like,
of course, he just signs it.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
Incredible, incredible. We love that dude too.
Speaker 4 (04:54):
And he of course was your partner in Mental Flaws
and y'all work together on part time genius still from
time to time, and we love it when new episodes
of that Drop Mego. You and I worked together back
in the day on one of our very first true
crime shows. We worked on together, Happy Face, And uh,
you know you've moved on to do amazing things with
your company Kaleidoscope, and that I'm.
Speaker 6 (05:16):
Gonna say just I mean, like I'm sure people know this,
but like you're just an insane and so talented musician
and and and the soundtrack for Happy Face, like we
talked about together, like.
Speaker 5 (05:29):
It's so crazy that this is an audio medium and.
Speaker 6 (05:33):
Uh, there's so little actual music in it, like so
much of it as stock and stuff like that. And
you'd already been playing in this with with with previous
stuff at house stuff works. But like we made such
a rich soundtrack for that, and it was really you
for that set the tone of that show, and people
were asking if they could buy it. I mean, it
was it was incredible.
Speaker 4 (05:54):
It was It was these lovely musicians from Athens called
Hope for a Golden Summer that were who I had
known from when I lived there back in the day,
and it was just that fit was perfect.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
And yeah, I do wish.
Speaker 4 (06:03):
It was available, but I'm really proud of those those folks.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
For for the work that.
Speaker 6 (06:07):
It was lush and gorgeous and and and when I
did my first season of Skyland like that, That's what
I was thinking, was like, like, what are the influences
that that I had growing up? And I had these
cousins who were always like going to matinees at CBGB's
and like had introduced me to like all this like
shoegaze and and then like rap and and and then
(06:28):
my being Indian, like I didn't want to just have
like the the stock sitar and and thub blood tracks
right like, like I wanted real fresh music and and
so like i'd say, there's a direct line from working
with you to like the way some of these things feel.
Speaker 4 (06:43):
It's very kind and it sounds fantastic. And we're burying
the lead here a little bit. We should probably talk
right away just about the subject matter around this season
of Skyline Drive how to Live Forever, And then a
little later we're going to get into something. I think
Ben and I are both excited to talk about this
idea of the organ trail.
Speaker 5 (07:02):
Yeah, totally.
Speaker 6 (07:03):
I mean I can just just to take us back step,
like the first season ended up, I wanted to do
something about astrology, because astrology was this thing that like,
you don't believe it in the US, but but or
it has become more and more popular, but certainly as
a kid, it was this thing that was a complete joke.
And then when you go to India, people are basing
their entire lives on it, Like people were having c
(07:25):
sections and ordering gynecologists to like their obg y ns
to deliver a baby within a ninety second window because
they felt that was what would make the you know,
the life of this child the best possible. And for me,
like being first generation in the US, like it was
one of these things where I always had to translate
(07:48):
each other's cultures to to you know, like go to
India and have to be the translator for US culture
and US like for India. And I wanted to make
a show that wasn't for believers or skeptics, but was
just really uh fascinating with the topic and all the
sort of like strange aspects from Reagan and his nuclear de.
Speaker 5 (08:07):
Proliferation, like.
Speaker 6 (08:09):
Linking back to his astrologer basically telling him that this
is the moment he should do it. To baseball teams
in California deciding whether or not they're certain between two players.
Managers were actually using astrologers to dictate like which players
they'd use, and they don't go on the record on this,
but like they it is true and and so you know,
(08:32):
I wanted to do this whole lark and then I
and then I went to this astrologer and Queens had
this like really wonderful reading, but in it he told
me my dad was going to fall ill. And then
thirty minutes after it, like my dad texted me that
this metastatic cancer had spread through his body and only
(08:53):
lived for three weeks after that. And so like it started,
it was this idea of like what happens when you
don't leave in astrology, but astrology keeps.
Speaker 5 (09:01):
Happening to you. And I didn't know where to go
from there.
Speaker 6 (09:08):
You know, I love that I did this season, and
I thought it was a fascinating topic that you pull
people into this sort of cultural phenomenon. And as I
was looking through old tapes, I noticed that that an
astrologery had told me that I probably would only live
to sixty maybe sixty four at the latest, and no
(09:28):
fire them. Yeah, but that's you know. So I found
this old tape and at the same time, I realized that, like,
you know, when you turn there are two moments in
your life, one in your sort of mid forties and
one in your early sixties where your body goes through
(09:49):
precipitous declients. And so being forty six, I've started feeling,
you know, like that, you know, I don't recover the
way I used to, Like my body is a little
more achy there, you know, my metabolismally isn't the same.
But feeling that and then realizing there's this explosion of
science around us, right and this whole new wave of
(10:12):
really often wealthy people who are invested in science, who
think that they're going to live forever, and they have
this real sense that, like you know, they missed the
age of exploration and they want to be around for
to sail the stars essentially, and they're hoping that various therapies,
(10:34):
life extension techniques, et cetera will have them live well
into their mid hundreds, and many people think that they'll
live more than that.
Speaker 3 (10:44):
So let's stay on this for a second, Mangesh, because
we have in our research, we had the weird moment
that happens to a lot of us nowadays, where we say, Okay,
we're listening to this amazing story for the ears right,
this is amazing fact based storytelling. And then we have
(11:06):
that moment where we look at each other and go,
oh wait, we could just call Manes and ask him.
Speaker 4 (11:13):
So this is also I mean, we talk about so
much of this stuff just organically over the years.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
I mean, we're all.
Speaker 4 (11:18):
Incredibly fascinated by life extension technology is like red meat
for critical thinking conspiracy discussions.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
So it's so awesome to see you.
Speaker 4 (11:27):
Kind of point your laser focused research brain at that
topic and it gives us so much to think about and
then to chew on.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
So yeah, second thing that, Yeah.
Speaker 3 (11:36):
You travel in the course of this season. You travel
to all sorts of places physically and cognitively. You're talking
to some of the world class experts at elite research
institutions like Harvard and MIT and so on, and then
you're also going a little off the grid to biohacker communities,
(11:58):
to what I'm still convinced is a very strange commune.
And you've got to tell us really quickly, in your
exploration of what you call longevinauts, what are some of
the most surprising things you learned.
Speaker 6 (12:14):
Yeah. I mean for us, it really started from a
place of not picking apart the stuff by really just
trying to understand and understand people's motivations and this very
human sense of wine.
Speaker 5 (12:29):
To live forever.
Speaker 6 (12:30):
I think what's fascinating about it is that it stretches
so many spaces, right, Like, Like one of the things
we did was we ended up talking to two philosophers
who were debating whether endless life could be a meaningful one.
Speaker 5 (12:42):
And and to me, like the fact that like one.
Speaker 6 (12:46):
Of the California like the University of California systems, like
he's like a like a dean and this emeritus like
he's arguing that you could have an endless life that's meaningful.
Is incredible, right, And and then the other person who's
considered this, like he's at Cambridge and he's this philosopher
(13:11):
who is called a mortality curmudgeon, thinks that you could
have a radically extended life. But like life changes so
often every one hundred years, like that you know, you
could be considered a good brit because you were a colonist,
you know, like you could be considered a good brit
because you were the head of a household and someone
(13:34):
who controlled his wife and family, but now you know,
you're someone who has to change diapers and things like that,
and like the changing morality and customs and ideas make
it very hard to cling onto what a good and
meaningful life is. And watching these two people debate is
just like stunning, right, and so like, just on the
philosophical side of it, my roommate in college was a
(13:57):
philosophy major, and everyone was always like, you know, what
are you going to do with a philosophy major when
you grow up? And now you go to Silicon Valley
and every single thing hints on philosophy, right, like like
can should you upload your your life and your consciousness?
And is that a version of you? There are twenty
(14:19):
versions of you? Right, Like if you you know, we're
going to talk about organ replacement and body replacements and clones,
and like every single thing touches on ethics and it's
all philosophy, and it's it's fascinating that like in some
ways that's where the show started with how there's always
been the sense not only like a perpetual sense of
snake oil that was marketed to people, but also this
(14:43):
sense that there's always been a quest to live forever,
whether that's through religion and the idea of a soul
or like you know, reincarnation, ideas of elixirs.
Speaker 5 (14:56):
Right, Like, all.
Speaker 6 (14:56):
These things are ancient ideas that that sort of of
perpetuated our lives because we can't figure out how to
accept our life stopping.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
Well, you know, it's funny really quickly.
Speaker 4 (15:10):
I've been super enjoying the new season of Interview with
the Vampire, the Vampireless stat The songs are fantastic. But
one thing that vampire lore and you know, fiction has
always bumped up against is like, what is it like
to live forever? Functionally speaking, to see all the ones
that you love pass away and have to kind of
reinvent yourself over and over and over again. And it
(15:31):
does seem that inevitably these individuals sort of head towards
a life of nihilism and hedonism. And it just feels
like the Silicon Valley mentality of it all has a
little bit of that in it as well, this idea
of like, well, yeah, living forever sounds great, but then
what do you do with that life? And it's sort
of you start seeing like the Elon musks of the
(15:53):
world where it just feels like enough is never enough.
And I'm fascinated by the philosophical side of what living
forever even looks like.
Speaker 6 (16:01):
I think you're absolutely right, right, there's this like incredible
philosophical side to it. There's a side of like, you know,
is it natural and not natural to do this? Right?
Speaker 5 (16:10):
Like that's always been a part of it.
Speaker 6 (16:12):
I think the other thing that ends up coming up
before we even get to the science of it is
the economics of it, right, like the idea that you
can end up with, you know. I talked to this guy,
Will Maher who's at Harvard, and he's in the Public
policy school there and and health school there and and.
Speaker 5 (16:30):
He is brilliant.
Speaker 6 (16:32):
And one of the things he was talking about is that,
you know, when you're testing longevity science and ideas of
like metabolism, fasting, et cetera, you are often working with
parasites and and and two types of worms, these sea
elegance and then these the other type of worms called
the Loa loa and the two worms are almost functionally identical,
(16:54):
and the ways you can play with them are identical,
except that the sea elegant has a very very short lifespan,
and the loa Looa has this enormous lifespan, and and
it's because one of them lives in a costed environment
the other doesn't. And and what's he ses is essentially
the splitting of species. That's that you know, may happen
(17:16):
with with the ways that longevity, the ways that people
uh in these communities are moving to islands like Prospera,
and these exit communities where where they they'll be siloed
and they'll and the ways that the rest of us
will emerge, the ways the rest of our health will
be taken care of, could be vastly different. And that's
(17:37):
also really stunning.
Speaker 3 (17:39):
That's a great point. Let's let's hang there for a second,
because we've had some very interesting conversations with old professors
of ours about the exact points you're bringing up, not
just the idea of a species driven kind of inequality
right or island effect, but also the hard cold truth
(18:02):
that historically most societies are designed with the assumption that
people die at a certain time, right. And we see
this in we see this in populations that are maybe
not hitting what we call like their sustainable reproduction rate
right where the population is largely getting older and even
(18:26):
now without amazing sci fi immortality, we see countries having
to ask serious questions about what happens when they're demographics
are up ended and the economic inequality aspect of this
is one of one of my favorite parts of your
(18:47):
exploration in this season of Skyline Drive, because we're not
just focusing on the science, right, We're not just throwing stats.
We're talking about, as you said, sure, philosophy, what it
means to be human and uh, with that, i'd like
to bring uh break some attention to one of our
(19:09):
favorite parts of your Organ Trail episode. You plucked something
that we clocked as well. Man, our buddy Daddy v
Over in Russia is apparently trying to live forever.
Speaker 4 (19:23):
There's some there was some hot mic conversations, right uncle,
That's that's what what hipped me to this. But I
would love to know more because that was really the
only time that that's across my radar. But yeah, it
makes sense, but how how exactly is he getting into
this world?
Speaker 6 (19:40):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (19:40):
We had this just so you know, make We had
this moment where we were talking about this hot mic
story that Noel mentioned and eventually we shrugged our shoulders,
and we said, you know, maybe that's just like those
guys version of small talk.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
Yeah, the way that we shows as your blood boy,
what's your life? Exactly? Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3 (20:00):
So could you tell us a little bit more about
this Live Forever initiative or what's going on with Vladimir Putin?
Speaker 5 (20:09):
Yeah?
Speaker 6 (20:09):
So, I mean what's funny is that, like I had
done this interview with Russian journalists who had worked at
a publication called Proect, and he has actually been banned.
He's excommunicated essentially from from Russia. And and the reason
(20:30):
is is because he was reporting on Putin's health and
and Putin's health is so secretive, right, so much of
his identity is based on him being shirtless, him being like,
you know, hunting and this virility right completely, and and
and I don't know if you ever saw this, but
(20:51):
there's this incredible photo journalist who had like gone around
and taken all these pictures of kids who were putin
stands essential and like in in their rooms. Where these
like photos of like Putin shirtless. It was like it
was basically like lad so pro act, right, he's writing
(21:11):
for this thing, and and and he is discovering all
this stuff, and and along the way he realizes that
like Putin has uh, there's a whole team of people
around Putin all the time. And and he realizes that
actually they're all doctors and and and he and there
are these periods where Putin will disappear and they show
(21:32):
old coverage in in the Kremlin. Uh. But he finds
that not only is Putin traveling to his houses, but
in various places around Russia, but near them in the hotels,
there are these contracts that he finds where twelve doctors
are staying at a time. And and so what they
(21:53):
discovered through various like means was was that like that
Putin was getting various types of cancer treatments and surgery, uh,
including a thyroid surgery, et cetera. So they kind of
cracked the wall on on on what is going on
with Putin's health, but what he hadn't quite figured out
(22:14):
and hadn't quite pinned. And along the way there are
other crazy things, right like like Putin's taking baths in
in deer, in this dear blood extract and in Siberia
right like like they're there are all all sorts of
things that are sort of like folk ideas that circulate
to show his virility. But what happens is that like he,
(22:36):
he knows that his daughter, Putin's daughter is is very
into genetic manipulation and and and and epigenetics type of stuff.
Speaker 5 (22:44):
And and uh.
Speaker 6 (22:45):
And it doesn't quite come out until a little later,
but there's this conversation that takes the world by storm, right.
It's this hot mic between Putin and Uh and she
and you realize that Putin has always been obsessed with longevity,
that he does not want to let go of control.
This is well speculated and well reported on within Proect
(23:06):
et cetera. And then what comes out on the Wall
Street Journal is that Putin has basically invested in two
different types of organ farms for humans.
Speaker 5 (23:18):
And in the in the leaked.
Speaker 6 (23:23):
Conversation, Putin and she are basically saying that you can
continue living to one hundred and fifty if you keep
replacing your organs, right, if you continuously cycle them out,
kind of like parts of a car. And they laugh,
but they both acknowledge it's true. What hadn't been known
was that Putin had been investing in this for quite
a while now, and that he has this twenty five
(23:45):
billion dollars initiative that supposedly for all people, but really
is for one person.
Speaker 3 (23:49):
Okay, just like when he a few years back the
government of Russia created a law that said any Russian president,
whoever they may be, is immune from prosecution for us.
You know what, like who whomever? That guy or the lady.
Maybe this is okay, this gets us to the hot
(24:11):
button issue here, because anybody who's a fan of science
fiction has read about the idea of cloning organs, and
we know that there are already tremendous serious issues with
the organ transplant industry as it stands today, right, exploitation
(24:31):
of the poor, the fact that even in the best
of situations, a transplant may not take for one reason
or another. But it seems like the idea of cloning
organs comes with its own bevy of ethical albatrosses. So
real quick for us, Mango, can you tell us I
(24:53):
know this is a softball, but people need to hear it.
Can you tell us a little bit about the headline
issues with cloning human organs?
Speaker 6 (25:05):
Well, I mean, like you said, they're just the medical issues, right,
Like the the idea of trying to take an organ
from someone who was a foreign person in a way
and a foreign body and and inserted into you like
like makes the ability to host the organ more difficult.
So the idea is that cloning, obviously, like makes it
(25:27):
more smooth. If if I've got a clone of myself
that has been built to replace my heart, that that's that,
I guess makes the surgery more smooth and and hopefully
the implementation. But obviously the ethics of whether that clone
has consented is very difficult. The pain you're putting the
(25:49):
clone into. Also the idea that these clones don't grow
in petri dishes. They have to be birth, and so
the idea that someone is giving birth to a clone
of me for the specific purpose of organ donation, you know,
is really tricky ethically. I mean, I think you know
(26:11):
that I was talking to one person who was saying, like,
you know, we for a long time believe that any
sort of transplantation was unnatural, right like hearts, and we
we have a hard time surrendering to autonomous cars in
a way, right like, So maybe this is just something
that we will grow accustomed to because there's a need
(26:32):
for in the future.
Speaker 5 (26:33):
And then on.
Speaker 6 (26:34):
The other side of it, there's a whole bunch of
people whould say, like, these science fiction books were written
for the express purpose of letting us know that these
are the dangers and implications, and instead these people have
taken the wrong lessons. All these people who grew up
on this science fiction have like picked up on the
wrong ideas for the wrong reasons, and so.
Speaker 3 (26:52):
Kind of like naming a company palante here.
Speaker 5 (26:55):
Exactly.
Speaker 4 (26:56):
Oh yeah, Well, there's so many examples of these like
Silicon Valley types not getting the whole point of the
science fiction that they're obsessed with, and naming things after
like what is ultimately dystopian like cautionary Tales, you know,
like I forget the exact series that he's into, but
it's like he kind of seems to have missed the point.
I do wonder though, I mean, obviously we're not quite
(27:18):
there yet in terms of like fully, you know, birthing
clones in order to harvest their organs, and of course
the ethical questions there are many.
Speaker 2 (27:26):
We do have.
Speaker 4 (27:27):
Examples though of like you know, growing in a human
ear on a lab rat or various like lab grown organs.
Harvesting things like that, Is that to you a little
less ethically fraught or do you feel like that's sort
of the middle ground. Is that maybe where some of
this research should go into.
Speaker 6 (27:46):
That may be, yeah, and that is one of is
creating a basically a pig farm where the pigs are
growing the organs for us within them and harvested for that, right,
And you can see how that's a clear sort of
middle ground between the two spaces. I also think that,
you know, the mice stuff is really fascinating in terms
(28:09):
of on one hand, like the transfer isn't significant, right,
Like it's not clear, like the amount of advances you
can make in mice and the way that transfers to
human is so small in some ways, it's only like
twenty percent or something. But on the other hand, like
what's been starting to be Like as I started this,
(28:30):
it's funny because now the odyssey is a big thing,
But when we started this, we were thinking, like, oh,
what if we treated this kind of like an odyssey, right,
like where we first went to the land of Boston
where it was real science and and sort of science
that government was funding and science for everyone right in
a way, And and then we left those shores and
went to California, where there was wildness and then we
(28:52):
went to let you know, and we're trying to build
this story that way in a sense and and then
ultimately returning home. But the thing about like the science
I saw on an MIT in particular that was stuying
to me was that, like there were all these non
invasive techniques that ended up being really incredibly fruitful. And
(29:14):
so like one was I walked into this lab of
this brilliant neuroscientist named Lewisie and you walk into the
MIT labs and they've got a little screen with what
looks like mice at a rave And I was like,
why is there a strobe light and mice going on
and whatever? And she said that basically, they figured out
(29:36):
that if you flash lights at a certain frequency and
you have certain pulses, that you can reduce the effects
of Alzheimer's on people. And like so it started in
mice and that's transferred to humans and now there's going
to be a mask that people can wear and headphones
and through that pulsing, basically like your symptoms of Alzheimer's
(30:00):
will decrease, which is just unbelievable, right, And this is like,
you know, before we even get to the science fiction
of it all, This non invasive therapies are incredible. And
then the other thing she was doing is like without
growing clones, she had figured out like how to create
something called my brain, which was creating these organoids of
your brain using six stem cells that basically mimicked your brain,
(30:24):
and so they could give it different medicines and therapies
and see how your body specifically would react, so you
don't need like a brain transfer or whatever. Like from
I realized brain transfer. We actually talked to someone who
is uh is trying to replace a brain cell by cell.
But but I mean, this is just miraculous medicine. And
(30:46):
the fact that like if you have Alzheimer's or nergent
generative diseases that you know, in a lab they could
replicate your brain and figure out which medicine and which
specific cocktail is perfect for you.
Speaker 3 (30:58):
That's fascinating.
Speaker 7 (30:59):
It is Hey, tennessee Pealt here. Noel Ben and Minguesh
will be back right after a word from our sponsors.
Speaker 3 (31:11):
One quick point we have to make, which doesn't spoil
the show too too much. We were talking about this
off air, you Nolan myself at some parts of this investigation,
especially in the Oregon Trail episode. Dude, you sound like
a spy and you one of the nicest, most personable
(31:32):
folks that we know, so the best questions, right, So
the question becomes, we see this multiple times right in
that episode of particular, but in a lot of your
other explorations in this season of Skyline Drive. We have
to ask why are so many people so hagey about
(31:55):
this stuff? Like I remember the moment where you said, Okay,
this guy gave me a lot of good information. But
whomever they were, they were not comfortable beat on air,
so I got my cousin to do voiceover.
Speaker 6 (32:10):
There are so many people who will tell you off
camera like what they are hearing in this space, But
don't they both want access to sort of like they
want to be on that island, right, They want to
have access to the better life, et cetera. They want
to be able to have their companies funded. But then
you hear about these like mansions where people use words
like eugenics without any sort of worry and and they
(32:33):
actually think it's a good thing to be able to
use it, like it has no connotation from the past,
and and like it's really crazy to like hear the
sort of ways people are thinking about the future and
the ways that people think about a future that isn't inclusive.
Speaker 5 (32:52):
And I'm saying the way is.
Speaker 4 (32:54):
That not The elephant in the room though, that this
is not for everybody, that this is like it's so
research funding dependent and like who is who are the
ones that are providing that money and then literally doing it,
So it's just for them, and they're like, you know,
in their community. I mean, this is important research that
could save lives of everybody in the world, but it's
(33:16):
not for everybody in the world.
Speaker 5 (33:18):
I think.
Speaker 6 (33:19):
I think one of the craziest things to me was realizing,
like what this is like in practice, right where where
you have a researcher who was at Yale, the superstar
who was publishing NonStop papers, right goes to work for
Alto's labs there for four or five years, hasn't published
a paper since, you know, like and I mean there's
maybe one paper that was a holdover or whatever.
Speaker 5 (33:40):
But the fact that.
Speaker 6 (33:41):
Like all of this is being done in private in
a way where none of us will be able to
access it unless we pay you know, extraordinary amounts of money, right, Like,
is difficult to stomach and the idea that, like the
way that the story is told is like, oh, we're
doing something that's good for humanity, it's good for the world,
(34:04):
this is for everyone, et cetera. When you know that
the barriers to entry are going to be significant.
Speaker 2 (34:11):
Look at space tourism.
Speaker 4 (34:12):
I mean you could you could draw a parallel with
space tourism and like who is that for? And this idea,
this is for the better men of all, But it's
just the Katie Perrys of the world that are doing
on TV and making such a pr stunt out of it.
But it's like you or I can't afford to do
that as a bit of a joy ride. But it
seems like there's parallels there. But this is much more consequential.
Speaker 6 (34:34):
And we could also think about smallpox one hundred percent,
And I think there are two things there, right, Like
one is that there are actually a lot of medicines
that could be used widely, right like met foreman is
one that that is very very cheap. It can be
very beneficial for everyone over like fifty right, like can
(34:55):
lengthen our lives supposedly, but they can't get the money
for studies or research for it because you can't patent
it anymore, right, Like it's too cheap, no one can
make the money off it, and so like no one
will fund it, and that becomes a real difficulty. And
so you have people who are trying to make an
economic argument for why to invest in longevity drugs. But
(35:18):
those arguments are like, well, if you can get someone
who's in their sixties to work for five more years,
ten more years, whatever it is, right, then that's benefit.
And it's strange that the only way that we'll invest
in something that is really for humanity and to reduce
suffering is through making the argument that these people should
(35:40):
continue working, right, And so's that's one thing. But ben
to your earlier point, right, like you were saying about smallpox,
and the idea that like we got these extra thirty
years of life come from things that affect everyone, whether
it's like smoking policies, or like hygiene or or like
(36:03):
vaccines or seatbot laws, right, Like these things have affected
all of us and given us all a better life ultimately,
And and so like the idea that like we're going
to prolong our lifespans by not including everyone is is
kind of tricky and and uh and ultimately false, I think.
Speaker 3 (36:22):
Yeah, ultimately self defeating. You know, there's a there's this
thing that we've been wrestling with on this show quite recently,
which is that technological innovation is key, right, it drives
the human experiment forward. But that technological innovation only is
(36:44):
only worthwhile if society evolves in step with it. Right,
So if we had a smallpox vaccine, for instance, that
was limited to the one percenters of their day, then
smallpox would still be a huge problem happening constantly to
everyone who wasn't wealthy. And with this, we have to ask,
(37:08):
you know, given the secrecy, right, given the fact that
people are moving, as you said in stealth mode, everybody
wants to be on the island. If the research continues
as it continues now, right, and there's no interruption, civilization
doesn't collapse or anything like that, do you think, to
(37:30):
nol and ize earlier questions here, do you think that
we're looking at a dystopic society? Like is there a
possibility of true speciation? You know, I.
Speaker 5 (37:42):
Don't know exactly.
Speaker 6 (37:43):
What I do know is that, like you know, in
a time when billionaires used to pass away and their
legacy was philanthropy, right, like that you would leave money
to create a library, all the betterment of society, et cetera. Right,
if the prospect of you living to two hundred, three hundred,
(38:07):
et cetera, is there, there's no incentive to like share
any of your wealth, Right, it just becomes more about hoarding.
And and if that becomes the the way that of
the future, right like, it becomes very difficult to imagine
how the capital gets spread in a way that the
(38:28):
lesser thans or the other halves.
Speaker 5 (38:34):
Benefit.
Speaker 6 (38:35):
I mean, I think that I think it's a real question.
I think it's one that like scientists are flagging right now.
And and I think that on the other hand, right, like,
you see a place like Prospera and it doesn't have
the sort of which is an island in off Honduras
where it's basically this libertarian paradise and it's created to
(38:58):
move medical trials much faster and operates on bitcoin and
all these things. They can attract enough people to actually
create a civilization there, And so like, I don't you know,
on one hand, maybe you get this like elite.
Speaker 2 (39:15):
Group.
Speaker 6 (39:15):
On the other hand, how big is that and how
does the rest of society, Like, how do they even
function as a society is confusing to me.
Speaker 4 (39:22):
We talked about that on a Strange News episode not
terribly long ago, about that community, and I just to
remember some of those questions coming up. I mean, you know,
it reminds me of just the way that like you know,
AI or machine learning, whatever you want to call it,
has the potential to replace so many jobs, and that's
being pushed forth as like a feature, not a bug,
(39:42):
because of course then those jobs can be parlayed into
other jobs and then everyone's going to be benefit from
it in the end. But that just seems very high
in the sky, especially if there is no groundwork laid
to actually take care of the people, you know, in
the face of this new technology that could replace quote
quote menial jobs, Like where are those people gonna go?
Speaker 2 (40:02):
What are the people gonna do?
Speaker 4 (40:03):
If there's no universal basic income or some sort of
societal safeguard, then those people are just gonna be left
out in the cold. And that seems to be the
case too with this life extension technology, Like what happens
to the rest of us who would become like mortals
At this point, you know, it just seems like there's
no framework in place to protect those people, and that
is to me, ben I think where that notion of
(40:23):
the dystopian version of these things goes. And it seems
like the super wealthy are always they're the ones that
are doing all the biggest damage to the economy, for
the regular people, to the environment, for the regular people,
because they've got their bunkers set up, they're gonna be okay,
their family line is going to be protected.
Speaker 2 (40:41):
Like, how do we safeguard against that?
Speaker 3 (40:44):
Yeah, you can't eat money, right, But that's one of
the things that maybe escapes the oligarchical class in Noll.
I think that's such such a phenomenally accurate, important and
disturbing point. We have to we have to take this
to a little bit of a personal note for you here, Mango,
(41:06):
knowing what you know now after these investigations, this spy
level research as well, Uh, would you ever consider going
to some of those gray market solutions for a new organ.
Speaker 2 (41:22):
I don't for a family member.
Speaker 4 (41:24):
I could see it if someone was gonna pay, if
it was yeah, I'm sorry, I don't mean to to
just that's the only way you know, And you've even
heard like in in Asia, for example, there's all these
films about black market organ trading rings and about people
that can't get the through the proper channels, going through
these gangs and things to get, you know, a liver
for their loved one. I mean, I could just see
in desperation, maybe it would be attractive, But I don't know, man,
(41:49):
what do you what do you think?
Speaker 2 (41:50):
Mango?
Speaker 6 (41:50):
And that's what that market is right now, right like
it is not it is not farming organs for wealthy
people so they can just like replace things while they're
still working but starting to decline, right it is the
desperation that drives that space right now.
Speaker 2 (42:09):
But I don't, I mean, I don't.
Speaker 6 (42:14):
It's hard for me to imagine that knowing the consequences
and the difficulties of like obtaining the organs, how you
facilitate the like given everything else, right, the ethics of it,
even the logistics of it are really difficult to like manage,
right like it's but I don't think. I don't think
(42:34):
i'd feel comfortable playing in that space. I mean, on
the other hand, right like, if you take it at
a much much much lower level, right like the market
for peptides and red a true tide et cetera. Right,
is a gray market, and people are very comfortable with that.
There's no ethical there's less of an ethical consequence with
those things, right, or.
Speaker 4 (42:53):
Even compounded GLP one drugs, like people that can't get
it through the pharmaceutical industry and then through insurance, they
do these compounded labs, which are you know, kind of
rowned upon them by your physician and they'll say, I
don't know what's in those, but people are still you know,
chomping at the bit to get those because they're significantly
more affordable. And I just think there's a parallel there
(43:13):
as one mentioning the peptides and a lot of these
quote unquote new super drugs that are like changing people's lives.
Everyone wants them. You got to you got to be
able to get them, and they're going to get them
in one way.
Speaker 6 (43:23):
And and and it's it's just fascinating to see like
how many people between I think COVID and and the
distrust of uh, the government and and the ways that
like people who should have been adults weren't adults, you know,
for for for the rest of the country, et cetera. Right,
Like there's a real distrust well said and so you
(43:44):
have people who are like PhDs and economics and like
like people who are like people who are just taking
their health in their own hands, right, And and it's
interesting to see like people use chat ept as their
doctors and they you know, they they they put all
their information in and all their blood tests and they
do all the work themselves. But then they come up
(44:05):
with their own solutions to problems. And I don't think
that's gonna slow down.
Speaker 4 (44:09):
To dude, I didn't know that you could do this.
I'm so sorry, Mango. I just got a body scan.
I've been like on a bit of a fitness kick,
and I got one of these Dexa scans that like
shows you your body content, fat content, visceral fat, muscle,
bone density, all that stuff, much more precisely than.
Speaker 2 (44:23):
Like you know, at home kind of body scanner scale
could do.
Speaker 4 (44:27):
And I was very curious about some of the aspects
of it that I didn't fully understand and I didn't realize.
Speaker 2 (44:33):
I did ask KATGBT about it, and.
Speaker 4 (44:35):
It asked me to upload the document and I did,
and it analyzed the crap out of it.
Speaker 2 (44:40):
And I know it's a slippery slope.
Speaker 4 (44:42):
I know it's there's maybe some knock on consequences of
using it and being that transparent and putting your personal
stuff in there, But there is part of the benefit
of it that does outweigh the sketchy parts of it.
And I don't trust my physician to a certain degree
because they're just churning and burning, moving people through the
system in and out. It doesn't feel like there's any
(45:03):
kind of personal touch. And like, you know, my father
passed away due to inattention by physicians, and so yeah,
I relate to that.
Speaker 2 (45:14):
I truly relate.
Speaker 6 (45:15):
I don't. I don't think that's an uncommon thing, right Like,
as as as doctors have less and less time for us, right, like,
that that becomes the thing. It's it's funny, right, like,
on one hand, how much information is good information?
Speaker 5 (45:26):
Right?
Speaker 6 (45:26):
Like, because I did a DEXA scan too, I had
a doctor talk me through it all the elements, and
then I was talking to like a woman in Silicon
Valley and she was like, I just think all these
scans are horoscopes for tech bros. Right and and and
You're like, at a certain point, there's like so much
information that you know, like like and it's not you know,
(45:48):
you're chasing like little strands of things that may or
may not be determinative. The other thing is like I
talked to a professor who's working on body clocks and
and these like clocks that tell you how your organs
are aging, et cetera. And I did two of these,
and right now you can send your same information to
(46:09):
the same place and get too wildly different. Right the
clocks are not accurate at all. And I was asking him, like,
where in the technology are we? Like are we at
the like the Lisa the Apple two CE, Like where
are we He was like, We're not even the garage yet, Like,
and and the idea that like we're basing so much
of our medicine on and our ideas and our diagnosis
(46:31):
on these things that are like completely inaccurate, is is
we're not you know, they might be directionally accurate, but
not like you can't replicate them.
Speaker 4 (46:41):
I'm looking for trends. I'm not making life or death
chain choices based on the scan. I was just curious,
and I'm going to continue doing the work that I'm
doing and working out and all of that, but it's
just neat to be able to track trends and know
that you're making progress rather than necessarily being pinpoint accurate
or causing me to make some sort of life, you know,
medical decisions.
Speaker 2 (47:02):
I'm was more curious. There are some people do take
it as gospel.
Speaker 6 (47:06):
I did the same thing, right, and it was helpful.
It was like interesting to see, like and confirm things
that I'd guessed and and and to like pay attention
to other things that I hadn't thought about, right, like,
that's it is valuable. It's not that and and and
I think you're right about the AI thing. I mean,
like health insurance is going to be eaten by AI
because they made doctors inaccessible and inattentive, right, Like, it
(47:30):
is something that it's a it's a situation that has
you know, self propelled itself.
Speaker 7 (47:37):
We're going to take one more quick break and then
won't be back with more from Nash.
Speaker 5 (47:46):
I've got a step is back.
Speaker 3 (47:48):
You're really quickly bansh up because we're using some terms
that are very familiar to us, and we may arguably
be a bit bubbled after looking into this.
Speaker 2 (47:59):
Uh, could you you could could.
Speaker 3 (48:01):
You describe for everybody what a gray market is and
then tell us a little bit about what if any
legislation is in you know, in the mix or up
and coming regarding organ transplants. Yeah.
Speaker 6 (48:15):
So so a gray market is kind of the space
between a black market and the regular market that just
isn't being paid attention to that closely, and and so
you can get away with Like one of the things
I did on the show was in this quest to
understand if wealthy people are doing organ transplants, people like
(48:38):
Putin et cetera. Right, Like, we went to this white
hat hacker who who showed us just how easy it
is to get drugs online from you know, very expensive
cancer drugs to to to peptides to what testosterone right testosterone,
to various IV drugs.
Speaker 5 (48:57):
I mean, like it was it was surprising.
Speaker 6 (48:59):
And what I thought was like, oh, this all exists
on the dark web, right, like places that that are
super secretive and and and ilicit in in in a
major way. What I hadn't realized was that like you
can just order them online fairly easily, and and they're
all these sites that guide you to like which bank
(49:20):
accounts to use, which uh which FedEx ups, which which
transfer systems to use, like how to get it close
to your house but not to your house, so it's
not pointed like, but there's a massive, massive market for
all the drugs that that are being and mostly pharmaceuticals,
not like cocaine right like like, but but things that
(49:42):
are legal somewhere but aren't legal here, and and the
transfer of that right there. And so that's how I've
been referring to the gray market.
Speaker 5 (49:50):
And so it's like my.
Speaker 6 (49:51):
Friends in California who are doing various peptide stacks, et cetera,
and ordering them from China and Russia. They're not under
any great scrutiny from the police or or Interpol or
anything like that. But but and it and it's so
common that a lot of people are doing it. But
but people who these are people who paid their taxes
(50:11):
and and you know, otherwise live by by all the
rules of society in terms of organ transplants in that space,
et cetera. I think that the current administration and and
some of where this stuff blends with MAHA, has has
increased a sort of right to try movement, right where
(50:35):
one of the libertarian ideals is that as long as
you're not hurting other people, you should be able to
experiment on your own body and uh, and that and
sort of the speed of which drugs you can use
at which phases of clinical trials, et cetera. And and
the access to that is something that has increased. And
and there are drugs right now that are in the
(50:57):
approval process. But people have seen the New York Times
write about them, they've seen communities online using them, and
so they know these drugs are going to be released
in the next year, like red a true tide, right,
And all these people are taking it in Silicon Valley
(51:18):
because they feel like it's safe enough at this point,
and there's a great market for drugs like that.
Speaker 4 (51:23):
And who are you to tell me what to do
with my body, big government, they say, I mean, I'm
kind of with you on that for sure.
Speaker 3 (51:30):
Two, when you are exploring this stuff again, we're not
blowing smoke here, folks. This is a home run and
we've listened with rapt attention. When you are exploring this stuff,
you have a lot of conversations that make it to
air where you're asking people investors, tech bros. Or the
(51:55):
tech techarate and researchers. You're saying, well, what is the future,
what is the future of longevity? And in this case
the organ trade look like. So one of the questions
we have to close on here is when the audience
is exploring this story with you, what do you hope
(52:17):
what do we hope people take away from it?
Speaker 5 (52:20):
That's a really good question.
Speaker 6 (52:21):
I mean, I think we are ultimately choosing what We're
watching a lot of futures be laid out in front
of us and trying to figure out which ones we
want to indulge in. Right which is the future we
want to live in? And I think that things are
moving at such a clip in so many ways that's
(52:42):
hard to tell what's real and what's hype. And I
think that even you know, I chase down this story
about cloning, which is really that this company R three
Bio has. It's been using a deck in Silicon Valley
(53:03):
about full body replacement. And the idea is that instead
of transferring organ by organ, which is a laborious process
and as we talked about, like the organs don't always
take what if you could just transplant your head onto
a younger version of yourself. And the pitch was that
(53:24):
they would be in the very distant future that one
of the possibilities is that they could clone a version
of you and create it with no sentience, so all
the brain function was knocked out. But ultimately it would
be a body for you the billionaire, to transfer your
(53:49):
head onto this new body, and aside from moisturizing your face,
et cetera. Right, there's very little to worry about because
it's just one surgical snip. Right, and we've seen, you know,
since the seventies, people have been have known that you
can take like one monkey's head and put it on
another monkey's body and see like the eyes move and
(54:10):
the mouth open and like, you know, and it can
live for eleven days, twelve days. The idea is that
you know, now sciences has advanced so much that one
surgical snip and and you know, various things the blood
brain barrier like would allow the advance of this technology.
And supposedly they've done it with mice. I don't know
(54:31):
if it's true or not. Like it's hard to it's
hard to get real answers from some of these people
because they are in stealth mode. But as soon as
you know, I talked to this person, and then Wired
did a story about them, and then MIT did a
story and then but in the time in between they've
sort of walked back everything they claim to have done
and claim they're doing because it's so scary. And I
(54:54):
think that's the other hard part is that a lot
of a lot of people working on these technologies aren't
very good at reading the room in terms of what
They're very good at reading what the bitcoin billionaires are
are interested in the future. They're not good at reading
the room for the rest of us.
Speaker 3 (55:15):
And I'm sorry I kept darkly chuckling there, guys, because
as soon as you said the head transplant thing, I
was just picturing a future TMC article where they're like.
Speaker 2 (55:28):
Here's the dead giveaway.
Speaker 3 (55:29):
You know, it's the scar right there by the neck,
and it's the fact that the head is eighty and
the body's.
Speaker 2 (55:35):
Twenty four and it's got the neck bolts. It's got
to the next bolts. Yeah, also very futurama ahead.
Speaker 5 (55:42):
And we couldn't stop thinking about that.
Speaker 2 (55:44):
I mean, man, we could, you know, we could go on,
you know, we could go on and on about this.
Speaker 6 (55:49):
I mean the thing is right, like, like the steps
before there are really fascinating because they're thinking about, like, well,
you can't test on primates, so what if you could
do this with a sea of primates and create these
clones and have these testable like primates that there's no sentience, right,
you could come up with vaccines for something like COVID
in a matter of weeks because you can test them
(56:09):
and use AI like cooked up to these bodies and
and you know, like that's interesting. I don't know if
that's a future that will happen soon or never, or
or in a very long time, but but you know,
on one hand, these people are thinking about like really
fascinating applications. On the other hand, it's hard to know
like at what point which futures will accept and which
(56:33):
futures biology will actually allow for.
Speaker 3 (56:35):
Well, so yeah, nailed it, Yes, And I think that's
where we get to We get to our rabbit hole. Folks,
please join us in our exploration skyline drive how to
Live Forever and then, guess, thank you so much for
being first off, for being one of the coolest dudes
(56:56):
we know, but also more importantly, thank you for bringing
this to disturbing story to light.
Speaker 5 (57:01):
You have to meet more people. You have to start
meeting more people.
Speaker 2 (57:06):
Come on, you know, I'm so thrilled.
Speaker 6 (57:10):
I'm sorry Matt wasn't here, but I love just seeing
Dylan on the screen too. Is my favorite Tennessee as.
Speaker 2 (57:17):
You call it, but Tennessee, Pa, Yes, Tennessee it is.
Speaker 5 (57:24):
It is wonderful to be here.
Speaker 6 (57:26):
I love you guys, love your show, and honor to
be chatting with you.
Speaker 2 (57:30):
The pleasure is at least.
Speaker 3 (57:34):
Yes, yes, we did the math man guess how to
getur Folks Skyline Drive. The newest season, How to Live Forever,
is available now wherever you find your favorite shows. We
would love to hear your thoughts. Is this a brave
new world for better or worse? How will the research continue?
(57:54):
Should it continue?
Speaker 2 (57:56):
How far would you go to live Forever? Yeah? Let
us know?
Speaker 4 (57:59):
Find us on line at the handles Conspiracy Stuff or
Conspiracy Stuff Show, depending on which social media platform is
your favorite. You can also give us a phone call.
Why not do that one A three three std WYTK.
Leave a voice message I believe you got three minutes ish,
give yourself a cool nickname.
Speaker 2 (58:17):
Make sure to let us know.
Speaker 4 (58:18):
We can use your voice on the show, and you
might just hear yourself one of our weekly listener mail episodes.
If you don't want to do any of that, why
not just send us a good old fashion email.
Speaker 3 (58:29):
We are the entities that read each piece of correspondence
we receive. Be well aware, yet out afraid. Sometimes the
void rights back. We like mangesh love random facts. It's
actually a big part of our friendship. So if you
would like to send us a random fact, we will
send one to you in return. So join us out
(58:49):
here with the dark conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2 (59:11):
Stuff they Don't Want You to Know is a production
of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3 (59:15):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Hello, and welcome back to the show. My name is Nol.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
Our pal Matt is on adventures and will be returning soon.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
They call me bet.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
We're joined as always with our super producer, Dylan the
Tennessee pal Fagan.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Most importantly, you are you. You are here.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
That makes this the stuff they don't want you to know.
Ed Noel, I know we've been talking a lot about
some classic rock stuff in previous episodes, So riddle me this.
Who wants to live forever?
Speaker 4 (00:56):
It's the other nol the lesser Noel Gallagher of the
Gallagher Brothers family. Now he's way more famous than me,
you and I is who wants to live forever? And
we're going to We don't just want it, We're going to.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Yeah, we're gonna manifest it. Dude.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
This is a question for the ages over the past
few millennia, just what's a couple thousand years between friends?
Civilization has tried all, dude, all sorts of stuff to
stave off mortality, and in recent decades, as you and
Matt and Tennessee and I have discussed in previous episodes,
science has made some extraordinary and terrified breakthroughs into what
(01:37):
we call longevity studies.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
Hey did I tell you I finally got a blood boy? Oh? No, around,
We're just connected, oh intravenously.
Speaker 4 (01:45):
I'm just kind of siphoning off his life for us,
his youthful energy, and I feel like a million bucks
never felt better.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
That's yeah, Okay, are you gonna put him in frame?
His name is no later episode Steve.
Speaker 4 (01:58):
Okay, I mean that's no no, no, no, no, no no no.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
I can't have people know too much about Steve.
Speaker 3 (02:03):
This is okay, yeah, keep it secret, Canty Steve. So
we know that new medicine, new treatments are all over
the horizon, especially for investors. We know about organ transplants
and cloning, the kind of stuff that makes you really
question what it means to be human. Luckily, we are
(02:24):
not diving into tonight's topic alone. We are thrilled, friends
and neighbors to be joined by one of our old,
dear friends. He's not old, We've just known each other
for a while. The award winning co founder of Kaleidoscope, and,
among many other things, the creator of the hit podcast
Skyline Drive, How to Live Forever, Man Gesh How to Couture.
(02:48):
Thank you for joining us, Dude, I am so thrilled.
Speaker 5 (02:52):
I love that we get to hang out.
Speaker 6 (02:55):
On camera because we haven't been able to do it
in person in a while.
Speaker 5 (02:58):
And I miss you guys to be good.
Speaker 4 (03:00):
Gonna be saying and speaking about camera? What kind of
life extension technology are you tapped into?
Speaker 1 (03:05):
Man?
Speaker 2 (03:05):
You look great.
Speaker 5 (03:07):
I'm suspicious for the filter.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
I think that that must be. That's about what most
of us can.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
Afford, to be honest, So, Mengesh, Is it okay if
we call you Mango in this one?
Speaker 5 (03:19):
Of course? Are you kidding? We're friends you don't have.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
To hide from.
Speaker 4 (03:25):
Okay, so don't you call him that. That's only close
personal friends like us.
Speaker 3 (03:30):
We had to earn it. Uh so uh, you have
done so much stuff. A quick peek behind the curtain.
We knew Noel, Matt and myself we knew a lot
about your work before we ever met in person. There
was a very awkward moment you and I had when
you we started working together, and I showed you what
(03:54):
are your books Mental Flaws? And you asked. You were
so polite and in person bull, You said, Ben, do
you want do you want us to sign this book?
And then I revealed that you had already signed it,
and I sort of walked away backwards because they didn't know.
Speaker 5 (04:10):
What to do.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
Ah.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
Yes, the Homer Simpson Bush mood. Love it.
Speaker 5 (04:14):
Yeah, just so, I don't think I would have offered
to sign it.
Speaker 6 (04:18):
I think Will is very happy to sign anything that's
put in front of it.
Speaker 4 (04:24):
Also, yeah, now he's now he's signing big contracts and
making billion dollar deals with TikTok and stuff.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
As we know everybody.
Speaker 6 (04:34):
When we first started, like menal plus, we made this
like little video of like like just how our personalities
had blossomed and and and we did this thing where
like someone was pulling over to ask for directions and
this is so long ago that people had maps, and
like they showed this map to Will and he's like,
of course, he just signs it.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
Incredible, incredible. We love that dude too.
Speaker 4 (04:54):
And he of course was your partner in Mental Flaws
and y'all work together on part time genius still from
time to time, and we love it when new episodes
of that Drop Mego. You and I worked together back
in the day on one of our very first true
crime shows. We worked on together, Happy Face, And uh,
you know you've moved on to do amazing things with
your company Kaleidoscope, and that I'm.
Speaker 6 (05:16):
Gonna say just I mean, like I'm sure people know this,
but like you're just an insane and so talented musician
and and and the soundtrack for Happy Face, like we
talked about together, like.
Speaker 5 (05:29):
It's so crazy that this is an audio medium and.
Speaker 6 (05:33):
Uh, there's so little actual music in it, like so
much of it as stock and stuff like that. And
you'd already been playing in this with with with previous
stuff at house stuff works. But like we made such
a rich soundtrack for that, and it was really you
for that set the tone of that show, and people
were asking if they could buy it. I mean, it
was it was incredible.
Speaker 4 (05:54):
It was It was these lovely musicians from Athens called
Hope for a Golden Summer that were who I had
known from when I lived there back in the day,
and it was just that fit was perfect.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
And yeah, I do wish.
Speaker 4 (06:03):
It was available, but I'm really proud of those those folks.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
For for the work that.
Speaker 6 (06:07):
It was lush and gorgeous and and and when I
did my first season of Skyland like that, That's what
I was thinking, was like, like, what are the influences
that that I had growing up? And I had these
cousins who were always like going to matinees at CBGB's
and like had introduced me to like all this like
shoegaze and and then like rap and and and then
(06:28):
my being Indian, like I didn't want to just have
like the the stock sitar and and thub blood tracks
right like, like I wanted real fresh music and and
so like i'd say, there's a direct line from working
with you to like the way some of these things feel.
Speaker 4 (06:43):
It's very kind and it sounds fantastic. And we're burying
the lead here a little bit. We should probably talk
right away just about the subject matter around this season
of Skyline Drive how to Live Forever, And then a
little later we're going to get into something. I think
Ben and I are both excited to talk about this
idea of the organ trail.
Speaker 5 (07:02):
Yeah, totally.
Speaker 6 (07:03):
I mean I can just just to take us back step,
like the first season ended up, I wanted to do
something about astrology, because astrology was this thing that like,
you don't believe it in the US, but but or
it has become more and more popular, but certainly as
a kid, it was this thing that was a complete joke.
And then when you go to India, people are basing
their entire lives on it, Like people were having c
(07:25):
sections and ordering gynecologists to like their obg y ns
to deliver a baby within a ninety second window because
they felt that was what would make the you know,
the life of this child the best possible. And for me,
like being first generation in the US, like it was
one of these things where I always had to translate
(07:48):
each other's cultures to to you know, like go to
India and have to be the translator for US culture
and US like for India. And I wanted to make
a show that wasn't for believers or skeptics, but was
just really uh fascinating with the topic and all the
sort of like strange aspects from Reagan and his nuclear de.
Speaker 5 (08:07):
Proliferation, like.
Speaker 6 (08:09):
Linking back to his astrologer basically telling him that this
is the moment he should do it. To baseball teams
in California deciding whether or not they're certain between two players.
Managers were actually using astrologers to dictate like which players
they'd use, and they don't go on the record on this,
but like they it is true and and so you know,
(08:32):
I wanted to do this whole lark and then I
and then I went to this astrologer and Queens had
this like really wonderful reading, but in it he told
me my dad was going to fall ill. And then
thirty minutes after it, like my dad texted me that
this metastatic cancer had spread through his body and only
(08:53):
lived for three weeks after that. And so like it started,
it was this idea of like what happens when you
don't leave in astrology, but astrology keeps.
Speaker 5 (09:01):
Happening to you. And I didn't know where to go
from there.
Speaker 6 (09:08):
You know, I love that I did this season, and
I thought it was a fascinating topic that you pull
people into this sort of cultural phenomenon. And as I
was looking through old tapes, I noticed that that an
astrologery had told me that I probably would only live
to sixty maybe sixty four at the latest, and no
(09:28):
fire them. Yeah, but that's you know. So I found
this old tape and at the same time, I realized that, like,
you know, when you turn there are two moments in
your life, one in your sort of mid forties and
one in your early sixties where your body goes through
(09:49):
precipitous declients. And so being forty six, I've started feeling,
you know, like that, you know, I don't recover the
way I used to, Like my body is a little
more achy there, you know, my metabolismally isn't the same.
But feeling that and then realizing there's this explosion of
science around us, right and this whole new wave of
(10:12):
really often wealthy people who are invested in science, who
think that they're going to live forever, and they have
this real sense that, like you know, they missed the
age of exploration and they want to be around for
to sail the stars essentially, and they're hoping that various therapies,
(10:34):
life extension techniques, et cetera will have them live well
into their mid hundreds, and many people think that they'll
live more than that.
Speaker 3 (10:44):
So let's stay on this for a second, Mangesh, because
we have in our research, we had the weird moment
that happens to a lot of us nowadays, where we say, Okay,
we're listening to this amazing story for the ears right,
this is amazing fact based storytelling. And then we have
(11:06):
that moment where we look at each other and go,
oh wait, we could just call Manes and ask him.
Speaker 4 (11:13):
So this is also I mean, we talk about so
much of this stuff just organically over the years.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
I mean, we're all.
Speaker 4 (11:18):
Incredibly fascinated by life extension technology is like red meat
for critical thinking conspiracy discussions.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
So it's so awesome to see you.
Speaker 4 (11:27):
Kind of point your laser focused research brain at that
topic and it gives us so much to think about and
then to chew on.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
So yeah, second thing that, Yeah.
Speaker 3 (11:36):
You travel in the course of this season. You travel
to all sorts of places physically and cognitively. You're talking
to some of the world class experts at elite research
institutions like Harvard and MIT and so on, and then
you're also going a little off the grid to biohacker communities,
(11:58):
to what I'm still convinced is a very strange commune.
And you've got to tell us really quickly, in your
exploration of what you call longevinauts, what are some of
the most surprising things you learned.
Speaker 6 (12:14):
Yeah. I mean for us, it really started from a
place of not picking apart the stuff by really just
trying to understand and understand people's motivations and this very
human sense of wine.
Speaker 5 (12:29):
To live forever.
Speaker 6 (12:30):
I think what's fascinating about it is that it stretches
so many spaces, right, Like, Like one of the things
we did was we ended up talking to two philosophers
who were debating whether endless life could be a meaningful one.
Speaker 5 (12:42):
And and to me, like the fact that like one.
Speaker 6 (12:46):
Of the California like the University of California systems, like
he's like a like a dean and this emeritus like
he's arguing that you could have an endless life that's meaningful.
Is incredible, right, And and then the other person who's
considered this, like he's at Cambridge and he's this philosopher
(13:11):
who is called a mortality curmudgeon, thinks that you could
have a radically extended life. But like life changes so
often every one hundred years, like that you know, you
could be considered a good brit because you were a colonist,
you know, like you could be considered a good brit
because you were the head of a household and someone
(13:34):
who controlled his wife and family, but now you know,
you're someone who has to change diapers and things like that,
and like the changing morality and customs and ideas make
it very hard to cling onto what a good and
meaningful life is. And watching these two people debate is
just like stunning, right, and so like, just on the
philosophical side of it, my roommate in college was a
(13:57):
philosophy major, and everyone was always like, you know, what
are you going to do with a philosophy major when
you grow up? And now you go to Silicon Valley
and every single thing hints on philosophy, right, like like
can should you upload your your life and your consciousness?
And is that a version of you? There are twenty
(14:19):
versions of you? Right, Like if you you know, we're
going to talk about organ replacement and body replacements and clones,
and like every single thing touches on ethics and it's
all philosophy, and it's it's fascinating that like in some
ways that's where the show started with how there's always
been the sense not only like a perpetual sense of
snake oil that was marketed to people, but also this
(14:43):
sense that there's always been a quest to live forever,
whether that's through religion and the idea of a soul
or like you know, reincarnation, ideas of elixirs.
Speaker 5 (14:56):
Right, Like, all.
Speaker 6 (14:56):
These things are ancient ideas that that sort of of
perpetuated our lives because we can't figure out how to
accept our life stopping.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
Well, you know, it's funny really quickly.
Speaker 4 (15:10):
I've been super enjoying the new season of Interview with
the Vampire, the Vampireless stat The songs are fantastic. But
one thing that vampire lore and you know, fiction has
always bumped up against is like, what is it like
to live forever? Functionally speaking, to see all the ones
that you love pass away and have to kind of
reinvent yourself over and over and over again. And it
(15:31):
does seem that inevitably these individuals sort of head towards
a life of nihilism and hedonism. And it just feels
like the Silicon Valley mentality of it all has a
little bit of that in it as well, this idea
of like, well, yeah, living forever sounds great, but then
what do you do with that life? And it's sort
of you start seeing like the Elon musks of the
(15:53):
world where it just feels like enough is never enough.
And I'm fascinated by the philosophical side of what living
forever even looks like.
Speaker 6 (16:01):
I think you're absolutely right, right, there's this like incredible
philosophical side to it. There's a side of like, you know,
is it natural and not natural to do this? Right?
Speaker 5 (16:10):
Like that's always been a part of it.
Speaker 6 (16:12):
I think the other thing that ends up coming up
before we even get to the science of it is
the economics of it, right, like the idea that you
can end up with, you know. I talked to this guy,
Will Maher who's at Harvard, and he's in the Public
policy school there and and health school there and and.
Speaker 5 (16:30):
He is brilliant.
Speaker 6 (16:32):
And one of the things he was talking about is that,
you know, when you're testing longevity science and ideas of
like metabolism, fasting, et cetera, you are often working with
parasites and and and two types of worms, these sea
elegance and then these the other type of worms called
the Loa loa and the two worms are almost functionally identical,
(16:54):
and the ways you can play with them are identical,
except that the sea elegant has a very very short lifespan,
and the loa Looa has this enormous lifespan, and and
it's because one of them lives in a costed environment
the other doesn't. And and what's he ses is essentially
the splitting of species. That's that you know, may happen
(17:16):
with with the ways that longevity, the ways that people
uh in these communities are moving to islands like Prospera,
and these exit communities where where they they'll be siloed
and they'll and the ways that the rest of us
will emerge, the ways the rest of our health will
be taken care of, could be vastly different. And that's
(17:37):
also really stunning.
Speaker 3 (17:39):
That's a great point. Let's let's hang there for a second,
because we've had some very interesting conversations with old professors
of ours about the exact points you're bringing up, not
just the idea of a species driven kind of inequality
right or island effect, but also the hard cold truth
(18:02):
that historically most societies are designed with the assumption that
people die at a certain time, right. And we see
this in we see this in populations that are maybe
not hitting what we call like their sustainable reproduction rate
right where the population is largely getting older and even
(18:26):
now without amazing sci fi immortality, we see countries having
to ask serious questions about what happens when they're demographics
are up ended and the economic inequality aspect of this
is one of one of my favorite parts of your
(18:47):
exploration in this season of Skyline Drive, because we're not
just focusing on the science, right, We're not just throwing stats.
We're talking about, as you said, sure, philosophy, what it
means to be human and uh, with that, i'd like
to bring uh break some attention to one of our
(19:09):
favorite parts of your Organ Trail episode. You plucked something
that we clocked as well. Man, our buddy Daddy v
Over in Russia is apparently trying to live forever.
Speaker 4 (19:23):
There's some there was some hot mic conversations, right uncle,
That's that's what what hipped me to this. But I
would love to know more because that was really the
only time that that's across my radar. But yeah, it
makes sense, but how how exactly is he getting into
this world?
Speaker 6 (19:40):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (19:40):
We had this just so you know, make We had
this moment where we were talking about this hot mic
story that Noel mentioned and eventually we shrugged our shoulders,
and we said, you know, maybe that's just like those
guys version of small talk.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
Yeah, the way that we shows as your blood boy,
what's your life? Exactly? Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3 (20:00):
So could you tell us a little bit more about
this Live Forever initiative or what's going on with Vladimir Putin?
Speaker 5 (20:09):
Yeah?
Speaker 6 (20:09):
So, I mean what's funny is that, like I had
done this interview with Russian journalists who had worked at
a publication called Proect, and he has actually been banned.
He's excommunicated essentially from from Russia. And and the reason
(20:30):
is is because he was reporting on Putin's health and
and Putin's health is so secretive, right, so much of
his identity is based on him being shirtless, him being like,
you know, hunting and this virility right completely, and and
and I don't know if you ever saw this, but
(20:51):
there's this incredible photo journalist who had like gone around
and taken all these pictures of kids who were putin
stands essential and like in in their rooms. Where these
like photos of like Putin shirtless. It was like it
was basically like lad so pro act, right, he's writing
(21:11):
for this thing, and and and he is discovering all
this stuff, and and along the way he realizes that
like Putin has uh, there's a whole team of people
around Putin all the time. And and he realizes that
actually they're all doctors and and and he and there
are these periods where Putin will disappear and they show
(21:32):
old coverage in in the Kremlin. Uh. But he finds
that not only is Putin traveling to his houses, but
in various places around Russia, but near them in the hotels,
there are these contracts that he finds where twelve doctors
are staying at a time. And and so what they
(21:53):
discovered through various like means was was that like that
Putin was getting various types of cancer treatments and surgery, uh,
including a thyroid surgery, et cetera. So they kind of
cracked the wall on on on what is going on
with Putin's health, but what he hadn't quite figured out
(22:14):
and hadn't quite pinned. And along the way there are
other crazy things, right like like Putin's taking baths in
in deer, in this dear blood extract and in Siberia
right like like they're there are all all sorts of
things that are sort of like folk ideas that circulate
to show his virility. But what happens is that like he,
(22:36):
he knows that his daughter, Putin's daughter is is very
into genetic manipulation and and and and epigenetics type of stuff.
Speaker 5 (22:44):
And and uh.
Speaker 6 (22:45):
And it doesn't quite come out until a little later,
but there's this conversation that takes the world by storm, right.
It's this hot mic between Putin and Uh and she
and you realize that Putin has always been obsessed with longevity,
that he does not want to let go of control.
This is well speculated and well reported on within Proect
(23:06):
et cetera. And then what comes out on the Wall
Street Journal is that Putin has basically invested in two
different types of organ farms for humans.
Speaker 5 (23:18):
And in the in the leaked.
Speaker 6 (23:23):
Conversation, Putin and she are basically saying that you can
continue living to one hundred and fifty if you keep
replacing your organs, right, if you continuously cycle them out,
kind of like parts of a car. And they laugh,
but they both acknowledge it's true. What hadn't been known
was that Putin had been investing in this for quite
a while now, and that he has this twenty five
(23:45):
billion dollars initiative that supposedly for all people, but really
is for one person.
Speaker 3 (23:49):
Okay, just like when he a few years back the
government of Russia created a law that said any Russian president,
whoever they may be, is immune from prosecution for us.
You know what, like who whomever? That guy or the lady.
Maybe this is okay, this gets us to the hot
(24:11):
button issue here, because anybody who's a fan of science
fiction has read about the idea of cloning organs, and
we know that there are already tremendous serious issues with
the organ transplant industry as it stands today, right, exploitation
(24:31):
of the poor, the fact that even in the best
of situations, a transplant may not take for one reason
or another. But it seems like the idea of cloning
organs comes with its own bevy of ethical albatrosses. So
real quick for us, Mango, can you tell us I
(24:53):
know this is a softball, but people need to hear it.
Can you tell us a little bit about the headline
issues with cloning human organs?
Speaker 6 (25:05):
Well, I mean, like you said, they're just the medical issues, right,
Like the the idea of trying to take an organ
from someone who was a foreign person in a way
and a foreign body and and inserted into you like
like makes the ability to host the organ more difficult.
So the idea is that cloning, obviously, like makes it
(25:27):
more smooth. If if I've got a clone of myself
that has been built to replace my heart, that that's that,
I guess makes the surgery more smooth and and hopefully
the implementation. But obviously the ethics of whether that clone
has consented is very difficult. The pain you're putting the
(25:49):
clone into. Also the idea that these clones don't grow
in petri dishes. They have to be birth, and so
the idea that someone is giving birth to a clone
of me for the specific purpose of organ donation, you know,
is really tricky ethically. I mean, I think you know
(26:11):
that I was talking to one person who was saying, like,
you know, we for a long time believe that any
sort of transplantation was unnatural, right like hearts, and we
we have a hard time surrendering to autonomous cars in
a way, right like, So maybe this is just something
that we will grow accustomed to because there's a need
(26:32):
for in the future.
Speaker 5 (26:33):
And then on.
Speaker 6 (26:34):
The other side of it, there's a whole bunch of
people whould say, like, these science fiction books were written
for the express purpose of letting us know that these
are the dangers and implications, and instead these people have
taken the wrong lessons. All these people who grew up
on this science fiction have like picked up on the
wrong ideas for the wrong reasons, and so.
Speaker 3 (26:52):
Kind of like naming a company palante here.
Speaker 5 (26:55):
Exactly.
Speaker 4 (26:56):
Oh yeah, Well, there's so many examples of these like
Silicon Valley types not getting the whole point of the
science fiction that they're obsessed with, and naming things after
like what is ultimately dystopian like cautionary Tales, you know,
like I forget the exact series that he's into, but
it's like he kind of seems to have missed the point.
I do wonder though, I mean, obviously we're not quite
(27:18):
there yet in terms of like fully, you know, birthing
clones in order to harvest their organs, and of course
the ethical questions there are many.
Speaker 2 (27:26):
We do have.
Speaker 4 (27:27):
Examples though of like you know, growing in a human
ear on a lab rat or various like lab grown organs.
Harvesting things like that, Is that to you a little
less ethically fraught or do you feel like that's sort
of the middle ground. Is that maybe where some of
this research should go into.
Speaker 6 (27:46):
That may be, yeah, and that is one of is
creating a basically a pig farm where the pigs are
growing the organs for us within them and harvested for that, right,
And you can see how that's a clear sort of
middle ground between the two spaces. I also think that,
you know, the mice stuff is really fascinating in terms
(28:09):
of on one hand, like the transfer isn't significant, right,
Like it's not clear, like the amount of advances you
can make in mice and the way that transfers to
human is so small in some ways, it's only like
twenty percent or something. But on the other hand, like
what's been starting to be Like as I started this,
(28:30):
it's funny because now the odyssey is a big thing,
But when we started this, we were thinking, like, oh,
what if we treated this kind of like an odyssey, right,
like where we first went to the land of Boston
where it was real science and and sort of science
that government was funding and science for everyone right in
a way, And and then we left those shores and
went to California, where there was wildness and then we
(28:52):
went to let you know, and we're trying to build
this story that way in a sense and and then
ultimately returning home. But the thing about like the science
I saw on an MIT in particular that was stuying
to me was that, like there were all these non
invasive techniques that ended up being really incredibly fruitful. And
(29:14):
so like one was I walked into this lab of
this brilliant neuroscientist named Lewisie and you walk into the
MIT labs and they've got a little screen with what
looks like mice at a rave And I was like,
why is there a strobe light and mice going on
and whatever? And she said that basically, they figured out
(29:36):
that if you flash lights at a certain frequency and
you have certain pulses, that you can reduce the effects
of Alzheimer's on people. And like so it started in
mice and that's transferred to humans and now there's going
to be a mask that people can wear and headphones
and through that pulsing, basically like your symptoms of Alzheimer's
(30:00):
will decrease, which is just unbelievable, right, And this is like,
you know, before we even get to the science fiction
of it all, This non invasive therapies are incredible. And
then the other thing she was doing is like without
growing clones, she had figured out like how to create
something called my brain, which was creating these organoids of
your brain using six stem cells that basically mimicked your brain,
(30:24):
and so they could give it different medicines and therapies
and see how your body specifically would react, so you
don't need like a brain transfer or whatever. Like from
I realized brain transfer. We actually talked to someone who
is uh is trying to replace a brain cell by cell.
But but I mean, this is just miraculous medicine. And
(30:46):
the fact that like if you have Alzheimer's or nergent
generative diseases that you know, in a lab they could
replicate your brain and figure out which medicine and which
specific cocktail is perfect for you.
Speaker 3 (30:58):
That's fascinating.
Speaker 7 (30:59):
It is Hey, tennessee Pealt here. Noel Ben and Minguesh
will be back right after a word from our sponsors.
Speaker 3 (31:11):
One quick point we have to make, which doesn't spoil
the show too too much. We were talking about this
off air, you Nolan myself at some parts of this investigation,
especially in the Oregon Trail episode. Dude, you sound like
a spy and you one of the nicest, most personable
(31:32):
folks that we know, so the best questions, right, So
the question becomes, we see this multiple times right in
that episode of particular, but in a lot of your
other explorations in this season of Skyline Drive. We have
to ask why are so many people so hagey about
(31:55):
this stuff? Like I remember the moment where you said, Okay,
this guy gave me a lot of good information. But
whomever they were, they were not comfortable beat on air,
so I got my cousin to do voiceover.
Speaker 6 (32:10):
There are so many people who will tell you off
camera like what they are hearing in this space, But
don't they both want access to sort of like they
want to be on that island, right, They want to
have access to the better life, et cetera. They want
to be able to have their companies funded. But then
you hear about these like mansions where people use words
like eugenics without any sort of worry and and they
(32:33):
actually think it's a good thing to be able to
use it, like it has no connotation from the past,
and and like it's really crazy to like hear the
sort of ways people are thinking about the future and
the ways that people think about a future that isn't inclusive.
Speaker 5 (32:52):
And I'm saying the way is.
Speaker 4 (32:54):
That not The elephant in the room though, that this
is not for everybody, that this is like it's so
research funding dependent and like who is who are the
ones that are providing that money and then literally doing it,
So it's just for them, and they're like, you know,
in their community. I mean, this is important research that
could save lives of everybody in the world, but it's
(33:16):
not for everybody in the world.
Speaker 5 (33:18):
I think.
Speaker 6 (33:19):
I think one of the craziest things to me was realizing,
like what this is like in practice, right where where
you have a researcher who was at Yale, the superstar
who was publishing NonStop papers, right goes to work for
Alto's labs there for four or five years, hasn't published
a paper since, you know, like and I mean there's
maybe one paper that was a holdover or whatever.
Speaker 5 (33:40):
But the fact that.
Speaker 6 (33:41):
Like all of this is being done in private in
a way where none of us will be able to
access it unless we pay you know, extraordinary amounts of money, right, Like,
is difficult to stomach and the idea that, like the
way that the story is told is like, oh, we're
doing something that's good for humanity, it's good for the world,
(34:04):
this is for everyone, et cetera. When you know that
the barriers to entry are going to be significant.
Speaker 2 (34:11):
Look at space tourism.
Speaker 4 (34:12):
I mean you could you could draw a parallel with
space tourism and like who is that for? And this idea,
this is for the better men of all, But it's
just the Katie Perrys of the world that are doing
on TV and making such a pr stunt out of it.
But it's like you or I can't afford to do
that as a bit of a joy ride. But it
seems like there's parallels there. But this is much more consequential.
Speaker 6 (34:34):
And we could also think about smallpox one hundred percent,
And I think there are two things there, right, Like
one is that there are actually a lot of medicines
that could be used widely, right like met foreman is
one that that is very very cheap. It can be
very beneficial for everyone over like fifty right, like can
(34:55):
lengthen our lives supposedly, but they can't get the money
for studies or research for it because you can't patent
it anymore, right, Like it's too cheap, no one can
make the money off it, and so like no one
will fund it, and that becomes a real difficulty. And
so you have people who are trying to make an
economic argument for why to invest in longevity drugs. But
(35:18):
those arguments are like, well, if you can get someone
who's in their sixties to work for five more years,
ten more years, whatever it is, right, then that's benefit.
And it's strange that the only way that we'll invest
in something that is really for humanity and to reduce
suffering is through making the argument that these people should
(35:40):
continue working, right, And so's that's one thing. But ben
to your earlier point, right, like you were saying about smallpox,
and the idea that like we got these extra thirty
years of life come from things that affect everyone, whether
it's like smoking policies, or like hygiene or or like
(36:03):
vaccines or seatbot laws, right, Like these things have affected
all of us and given us all a better life ultimately,
And and so like the idea that like we're going
to prolong our lifespans by not including everyone is is
kind of tricky and and uh and ultimately false, I think.
Speaker 3 (36:22):
Yeah, ultimately self defeating. You know, there's a there's this
thing that we've been wrestling with on this show quite recently,
which is that technological innovation is key, right, it drives
the human experiment forward. But that technological innovation only is
(36:44):
only worthwhile if society evolves in step with it. Right,
So if we had a smallpox vaccine, for instance, that
was limited to the one percenters of their day, then
smallpox would still be a huge problem happening constantly to
everyone who wasn't wealthy. And with this, we have to ask,
(37:08):
you know, given the secrecy, right, given the fact that
people are moving, as you said in stealth mode, everybody
wants to be on the island. If the research continues
as it continues now, right, and there's no interruption, civilization
doesn't collapse or anything like that, do you think, to
(37:30):
nol and ize earlier questions here, do you think that
we're looking at a dystopic society? Like is there a
possibility of true speciation? You know, I.
Speaker 5 (37:42):
Don't know exactly.
Speaker 6 (37:43):
What I do know is that, like you know, in
a time when billionaires used to pass away and their
legacy was philanthropy, right, like that you would leave money
to create a library, all the betterment of society, et cetera. Right,
if the prospect of you living to two hundred, three hundred,
(38:07):
et cetera, is there, there's no incentive to like share
any of your wealth, Right, it just becomes more about hoarding.
And and if that becomes the the way that of
the future, right like, it becomes very difficult to imagine
how the capital gets spread in a way that the
(38:28):
lesser thans or the other halves.
Speaker 5 (38:34):
Benefit.
Speaker 6 (38:35):
I mean, I think that I think it's a real question.
I think it's one that like scientists are flagging right now.
And and I think that on the other hand, right, like,
you see a place like Prospera and it doesn't have
the sort of which is an island in off Honduras
where it's basically this libertarian paradise and it's created to
(38:58):
move medical trials much faster and operates on bitcoin and
all these things. They can attract enough people to actually
create a civilization there, And so like, I don't you know,
on one hand, maybe you get this like elite.
Speaker 2 (39:15):
Group.
Speaker 6 (39:15):
On the other hand, how big is that and how
does the rest of society, Like, how do they even
function as a society is confusing to me.
Speaker 4 (39:22):
We talked about that on a Strange News episode not
terribly long ago, about that community, and I just to
remember some of those questions coming up. I mean, you know,
it reminds me of just the way that like you know,
AI or machine learning, whatever you want to call it,
has the potential to replace so many jobs, and that's
being pushed forth as like a feature, not a bug,
(39:42):
because of course then those jobs can be parlayed into
other jobs and then everyone's going to be benefit from
it in the end. But that just seems very high
in the sky, especially if there is no groundwork laid
to actually take care of the people, you know, in
the face of this new technology that could replace quote
quote menial jobs, Like where are those people gonna go?
Speaker 2 (40:02):
What are the people gonna do?
Speaker 4 (40:03):
If there's no universal basic income or some sort of
societal safeguard, then those people are just gonna be left
out in the cold. And that seems to be the
case too with this life extension technology, Like what happens
to the rest of us who would become like mortals
At this point, you know, it just seems like there's
no framework in place to protect those people, and that
is to me, ben I think where that notion of
(40:23):
the dystopian version of these things goes. And it seems
like the super wealthy are always they're the ones that
are doing all the biggest damage to the economy, for
the regular people, to the environment, for the regular people,
because they've got their bunkers set up, they're gonna be okay,
their family line is going to be protected.
Speaker 2 (40:41):
Like, how do we safeguard against that?
Speaker 3 (40:44):
Yeah, you can't eat money, right, But that's one of
the things that maybe escapes the oligarchical class in Noll.
I think that's such such a phenomenally accurate, important and
disturbing point. We have to we have to take this
to a little bit of a personal note for you here, Mango,
(41:06):
knowing what you know now after these investigations, this spy
level research as well, Uh, would you ever consider going
to some of those gray market solutions for a new organ.
Speaker 2 (41:22):
I don't for a family member.
Speaker 4 (41:24):
I could see it if someone was gonna pay, if
it was yeah, I'm sorry, I don't mean to to
just that's the only way you know, And you've even
heard like in in Asia, for example, there's all these
films about black market organ trading rings and about people
that can't get the through the proper channels, going through
these gangs and things to get, you know, a liver
for their loved one. I mean, I could just see
in desperation, maybe it would be attractive, But I don't know, man,
(41:49):
what do you what do you think?
Speaker 2 (41:50):
Mango?
Speaker 6 (41:50):
And that's what that market is right now, right like
it is not it is not farming organs for wealthy
people so they can just like replace things while they're
still working but starting to decline, right it is the
desperation that drives that space right now.
Speaker 2 (42:09):
But I don't, I mean, I don't.
Speaker 6 (42:14):
It's hard for me to imagine that knowing the consequences
and the difficulties of like obtaining the organs, how you
facilitate the like given everything else, right, the ethics of it,
even the logistics of it are really difficult to like manage,
right like it's but I don't think. I don't think
(42:34):
i'd feel comfortable playing in that space. I mean, on
the other hand, right like, if you take it at
a much much much lower level, right like the market
for peptides and red a true tide et cetera. Right,
is a gray market, and people are very comfortable with that.
There's no ethical there's less of an ethical consequence with
those things, right, or.
Speaker 4 (42:53):
Even compounded GLP one drugs, like people that can't get
it through the pharmaceutical industry and then through insurance, they
do these compounded labs, which are you know, kind of
rowned upon them by your physician and they'll say, I
don't know what's in those, but people are still you know,
chomping at the bit to get those because they're significantly
more affordable. And I just think there's a parallel there
(43:13):
as one mentioning the peptides and a lot of these
quote unquote new super drugs that are like changing people's lives.
Everyone wants them. You got to you got to be
able to get them, and they're going to get them
in one way.
Speaker 6 (43:23):
And and and it's it's just fascinating to see like
how many people between I think COVID and and the
distrust of uh, the government and and the ways that
like people who should have been adults weren't adults, you know,
for for for the rest of the country, et cetera. Right,
Like there's a real distrust well said and so you
(43:44):
have people who are like PhDs and economics and like
like people who are like people who are just taking
their health in their own hands, right, And and it's
interesting to see like people use chat ept as their
doctors and they you know, they they they put all
their information in and all their blood tests and they
do all the work themselves. But then they come up
(44:05):
with their own solutions to problems. And I don't think
that's gonna slow down.
Speaker 4 (44:09):
To dude, I didn't know that you could do this.
I'm so sorry, Mango. I just got a body scan.
I've been like on a bit of a fitness kick,
and I got one of these Dexa scans that like
shows you your body content, fat content, visceral fat, muscle,
bone density, all that stuff, much more precisely than.
Speaker 2 (44:23):
Like you know, at home kind of body scanner scale
could do.
Speaker 4 (44:27):
And I was very curious about some of the aspects
of it that I didn't fully understand and I didn't realize.
Speaker 2 (44:33):
I did ask KATGBT about it, and.
Speaker 4 (44:35):
It asked me to upload the document and I did,
and it analyzed the crap out of it.
Speaker 2 (44:40):
And I know it's a slippery slope.
Speaker 4 (44:42):
I know it's there's maybe some knock on consequences of
using it and being that transparent and putting your personal
stuff in there, But there is part of the benefit
of it that does outweigh the sketchy parts of it.
And I don't trust my physician to a certain degree
because they're just churning and burning, moving people through the
system in and out. It doesn't feel like there's any
(45:03):
kind of personal touch. And like, you know, my father
passed away due to inattention by physicians, and so yeah,
I relate to that.
Speaker 2 (45:14):
I truly relate.
Speaker 6 (45:15):
I don't. I don't think that's an uncommon thing, right Like,
as as as doctors have less and less time for us, right, like,
that that becomes the thing. It's it's funny, right, like,
on one hand, how much information is good information?
Speaker 5 (45:26):
Right?
Speaker 6 (45:26):
Like, because I did a DEXA scan too, I had
a doctor talk me through it all the elements, and
then I was talking to like a woman in Silicon
Valley and she was like, I just think all these
scans are horoscopes for tech bros. Right and and and
You're like, at a certain point, there's like so much
information that you know, like like and it's not you know,
(45:48):
you're chasing like little strands of things that may or
may not be determinative. The other thing is like I
talked to a professor who's working on body clocks and
and these like clocks that tell you how your organs
are aging, et cetera. And I did two of these,
and right now you can send your same information to
(46:09):
the same place and get too wildly different. Right the
clocks are not accurate at all. And I was asking him, like,
where in the technology are we? Like are we at
the like the Lisa the Apple two CE, Like where
are we He was like, We're not even the garage yet, Like,
and and the idea that like we're basing so much
of our medicine on and our ideas and our diagnosis
(46:31):
on these things that are like completely inaccurate, is is
we're not you know, they might be directionally accurate, but
not like you can't replicate them.
Speaker 4 (46:41):
I'm looking for trends. I'm not making life or death
chain choices based on the scan. I was just curious,
and I'm going to continue doing the work that I'm
doing and working out and all of that, but it's
just neat to be able to track trends and know
that you're making progress rather than necessarily being pinpoint accurate
or causing me to make some sort of life, you know,
medical decisions.
Speaker 2 (47:02):
I'm was more curious. There are some people do take
it as gospel.
Speaker 6 (47:06):
I did the same thing, right, and it was helpful.
It was like interesting to see, like and confirm things
that I'd guessed and and and to like pay attention
to other things that I hadn't thought about, right, like,
that's it is valuable. It's not that and and and
I think you're right about the AI thing. I mean,
like health insurance is going to be eaten by AI
because they made doctors inaccessible and inattentive, right, Like, it
(47:30):
is something that it's a it's a situation that has
you know, self propelled itself.
Speaker 7 (47:37):
We're going to take one more quick break and then
won't be back with more from Nash.
Speaker 5 (47:46):
I've got a step is back.
Speaker 3 (47:48):
You're really quickly bansh up because we're using some terms
that are very familiar to us, and we may arguably
be a bit bubbled after looking into this.
Speaker 2 (47:59):
Uh, could you you could could.
Speaker 3 (48:01):
You describe for everybody what a gray market is and
then tell us a little bit about what if any
legislation is in you know, in the mix or up
and coming regarding organ transplants. Yeah.
Speaker 6 (48:15):
So so a gray market is kind of the space
between a black market and the regular market that just
isn't being paid attention to that closely, and and so
you can get away with Like one of the things
I did on the show was in this quest to
understand if wealthy people are doing organ transplants, people like
(48:38):
Putin et cetera. Right, Like, we went to this white
hat hacker who who showed us just how easy it
is to get drugs online from you know, very expensive
cancer drugs to to to peptides to what testosterone right testosterone,
to various IV drugs.
Speaker 5 (48:57):
I mean, like it was it was surprising.
Speaker 6 (48:59):
And what I thought was like, oh, this all exists
on the dark web, right, like places that that are
super secretive and and and ilicit in in in a
major way. What I hadn't realized was that like you
can just order them online fairly easily, and and they're
all these sites that guide you to like which bank
(49:20):
accounts to use, which uh which FedEx ups, which which
transfer systems to use, like how to get it close
to your house but not to your house, so it's
not pointed like, but there's a massive, massive market for
all the drugs that that are being and mostly pharmaceuticals,
not like cocaine right like like, but but things that
(49:42):
are legal somewhere but aren't legal here, and and the
transfer of that right there. And so that's how I've
been referring to the gray market.
Speaker 5 (49:50):
And so it's like my.
Speaker 6 (49:51):
Friends in California who are doing various peptide stacks, et cetera,
and ordering them from China and Russia. They're not under
any great scrutiny from the police or or Interpol or
anything like that. But but and it and it's so
common that a lot of people are doing it. But
but people who these are people who paid their taxes
(50:11):
and and you know, otherwise live by by all the
rules of society in terms of organ transplants in that space,
et cetera. I think that the current administration and and
some of where this stuff blends with MAHA, has has
increased a sort of right to try movement, right where
(50:35):
one of the libertarian ideals is that as long as
you're not hurting other people, you should be able to
experiment on your own body and uh, and that and
sort of the speed of which drugs you can use
at which phases of clinical trials, et cetera. And and
the access to that is something that has increased. And
and there are drugs right now that are in the
(50:57):
approval process. But people have seen the New York Times
write about them, they've seen communities online using them, and
so they know these drugs are going to be released
in the next year, like red a true tide, right,
And all these people are taking it in Silicon Valley
(51:18):
because they feel like it's safe enough at this point,
and there's a great market for drugs like that.
Speaker 4 (51:23):
And who are you to tell me what to do
with my body, big government, they say, I mean, I'm
kind of with you on that for sure.
Speaker 3 (51:30):
Two, when you are exploring this stuff again, we're not
blowing smoke here, folks. This is a home run and
we've listened with rapt attention. When you are exploring this stuff,
you have a lot of conversations that make it to
air where you're asking people investors, tech bros. Or the
(51:55):
tech techarate and researchers. You're saying, well, what is the future,
what is the future of longevity? And in this case
the organ trade look like. So one of the questions
we have to close on here is when the audience
is exploring this story with you, what do you hope
(52:17):
what do we hope people take away from it?
Speaker 5 (52:20):
That's a really good question.
Speaker 6 (52:21):
I mean, I think we are ultimately choosing what We're
watching a lot of futures be laid out in front
of us and trying to figure out which ones we
want to indulge in. Right which is the future we
want to live in? And I think that things are
moving at such a clip in so many ways that's
(52:42):
hard to tell what's real and what's hype. And I
think that even you know, I chase down this story
about cloning, which is really that this company R three
Bio has. It's been using a deck in Silicon Valley
(53:03):
about full body replacement. And the idea is that instead
of transferring organ by organ, which is a laborious process
and as we talked about, like the organs don't always
take what if you could just transplant your head onto
a younger version of yourself. And the pitch was that
(53:24):
they would be in the very distant future that one
of the possibilities is that they could clone a version
of you and create it with no sentience, so all
the brain function was knocked out. But ultimately it would
be a body for you the billionaire, to transfer your
(53:49):
head onto this new body, and aside from moisturizing your face,
et cetera. Right, there's very little to worry about because
it's just one surgical snip. Right, and we've seen, you know,
since the seventies, people have been have known that you
can take like one monkey's head and put it on
another monkey's body and see like the eyes move and
(54:10):
the mouth open and like, you know, and it can
live for eleven days, twelve days. The idea is that
you know, now sciences has advanced so much that one
surgical snip and and you know, various things the blood
brain barrier like would allow the advance of this technology.
And supposedly they've done it with mice. I don't know
(54:31):
if it's true or not. Like it's hard to it's
hard to get real answers from some of these people
because they are in stealth mode. But as soon as
you know, I talked to this person, and then Wired
did a story about them, and then MIT did a
story and then but in the time in between they've
sort of walked back everything they claim to have done
and claim they're doing because it's so scary. And I
(54:54):
think that's the other hard part is that a lot
of a lot of people working on these technologies aren't
very good at reading the room in terms of what
They're very good at reading what the bitcoin billionaires are
are interested in the future. They're not good at reading
the room for the rest of us.
Speaker 3 (55:15):
And I'm sorry I kept darkly chuckling there, guys, because
as soon as you said the head transplant thing, I
was just picturing a future TMC article where they're like.
Speaker 2 (55:28):
Here's the dead giveaway.
Speaker 3 (55:29):
You know, it's the scar right there by the neck,
and it's the fact that the head is eighty and
the body's.
Speaker 2 (55:35):
Twenty four and it's got the neck bolts. It's got
to the next bolts. Yeah, also very futurama ahead.
Speaker 5 (55:42):
And we couldn't stop thinking about that.
Speaker 2 (55:44):
I mean, man, we could, you know, we could go on,
you know, we could go on and on about this.
Speaker 6 (55:49):
I mean the thing is right, like, like the steps
before there are really fascinating because they're thinking about, like, well,
you can't test on primates, so what if you could
do this with a sea of primates and create these
clones and have these testable like primates that there's no sentience, right,
you could come up with vaccines for something like COVID
in a matter of weeks because you can test them
(56:09):
and use AI like cooked up to these bodies and
and you know, like that's interesting. I don't know if
that's a future that will happen soon or never, or
or in a very long time, but but you know,
on one hand, these people are thinking about like really
fascinating applications. On the other hand, it's hard to know
like at what point which futures will accept and which
(56:33):
futures biology will actually allow for.
Speaker 3 (56:35):
Well, so yeah, nailed it, Yes, And I think that's
where we get to We get to our rabbit hole. Folks,
please join us in our exploration skyline drive how to
Live Forever and then, guess, thank you so much for
being first off, for being one of the coolest dudes
(56:56):
we know, but also more importantly, thank you for bringing
this to disturbing story to light.
Speaker 5 (57:01):
You have to meet more people. You have to start
meeting more people.
Speaker 2 (57:06):
Come on, you know, I'm so thrilled.
Speaker 6 (57:10):
I'm sorry Matt wasn't here, but I love just seeing
Dylan on the screen too. Is my favorite Tennessee as.
Speaker 2 (57:17):
You call it, but Tennessee, Pa, Yes, Tennessee it is.
Speaker 5 (57:24):
It is wonderful to be here.
Speaker 6 (57:26):
I love you guys, love your show, and honor to
be chatting with you.
Speaker 2 (57:30):
The pleasure is at least.
Speaker 3 (57:34):
Yes, yes, we did the math man guess how to
getur Folks Skyline Drive. The newest season, How to Live Forever,
is available now wherever you find your favorite shows. We
would love to hear your thoughts. Is this a brave
new world for better or worse? How will the research continue?
(57:54):
Should it continue?
Speaker 2 (57:56):
How far would you go to live Forever? Yeah? Let
us know?
Speaker 4 (57:59):
Find us on line at the handles Conspiracy Stuff or
Conspiracy Stuff Show, depending on which social media platform is
your favorite. You can also give us a phone call.
Why not do that one A three three std WYTK.
Leave a voice message I believe you got three minutes ish,
give yourself a cool nickname.
Speaker 2 (58:17):
Make sure to let us know.
Speaker 4 (58:18):
We can use your voice on the show, and you
might just hear yourself one of our weekly listener mail episodes.
If you don't want to do any of that, why
not just send us a good old fashion email.
Speaker 3 (58:29):
We are the entities that read each piece of correspondence
we receive. Be well aware, yet out afraid. Sometimes the
void rights back. We like mangesh love random facts. It's
actually a big part of our friendship. So if you
would like to send us a random fact, we will
send one to you in return. So join us out
(58:49):
here with the dark conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2 (59:11):
Stuff they Don't Want You to Know is a production
of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3 (59:15):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff They Don't Want You To Know News
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Matt Frederick
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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