June 30, 2026 • 57 mins
On a whirlwind trip to the Bay Area, Mangesh reconnects with a childhood friend who’s experimenting with new ways to optimize his health. Then, he heads to the heart of San Francisco to meet the investors, startup founders, tinkerers, and biopunks who are taking longevity science into their own hands. Plus: Skyline Drive’s first-ever musical number, about the bizarre Honduran charter city of Próspera.
- Read more about Próspera from Wired and Bloomberg
- Visit the Frontier Tower website
- Check out Elliot Roth’s work
- Learn more about Illumicell
- Learn more about Muse Bio
- Listen to more of David Nagler’s music
- Check out Allie Oops on Tiktok
Special thanks to Azadi Records and Bliss Samsa for their beautiful tracks, and Botany for the score.
Episode collage art by Vahini Shori.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
Hey, it's Evan Ratler from shell Game here with a warning.
Despite Mongsh's grandmother's greatest wish, he is one hundred percent
not a doctor and nothing in this episode should count
as medical advice. Also, mong Gosh, this is my AI clone.
Did you really think I'd send the real me to
do this job? Okay, enjoy this fall.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
When I knew I wanted to make a show with
my wife and friends about how to live forever, I thought,
let me take advantage. Let's go to a blue zone
in Greece, or use this as an excuse to go
travel to South Korea where those eighty year old grandmothers
free dive into freezing water for sea Ursians. And then
(01:18):
I heard about Prospera, this quote unregulated paradise located on
the island of Roatan in Honduras. The charter city has
become a haven for startup founders and crypto bros. And
I thought, that's it, That's where we've got to go.
So why is it that I'm sitting in the commons
(01:39):
room of a biopunk house in San Francisco instead of
loafing on a beach spearfishing with Longevonots. I'm asking myself
the same question, but I'm pretty sure Lee has some answers.
Speaker 3 (01:52):
When I landed there, it's a bizare world.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
A few minutes ago, Lee was sitting on an easy chair,
legs sprawled over one of the arms, working on a laptop.
But on hearing me say the word Prospera, I saw
his face light up and I knew he wanted to talk.
Speaker 3 (02:10):
My name's Lee Parnell from the UK over in San
Francisco at the moment, but for the previous year I
was helping out a lot in biotech, including in Prospera.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
The thing is, do I want to interrupt Lee's story
about Prospera with a makeshift Broadway number? No, obviously not,
but that's what goes through my head every time someone
in this house mentions prosper like people tap dancing across
the stage, muttering pro Prospera, Prospera. Did someone say Prospera.
Speaker 4 (02:44):
Have you considered escaping bureaucracy via catamaran? Well you're in
luck because Prospera is now accepting fissionaries. Surfers had billionaires
named Steve.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
Oh my god, it's starting.
Speaker 4 (03:02):
I was drowning in compliance bang bying head against a
wall when an.
Speaker 5 (03:06):
Angel whispered, bro let's abolish it all. Wanna code beside volcanoes.
Keep your startup dreams alive. You can launch a hedge
fun Tuesday and be drunk on shrimp by.
Speaker 6 (03:17):
Five VC money a pounds here the tax rate might
be five percent, so just sell a little bit corn
and tell your landlord to get back.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
Big takes in every shack ros constitution, watch.
Speaker 7 (03:41):
Your back, Rose.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
Dice, zero drama, pros range your networth, use more commas.
Speaker 4 (03:52):
Prospero made result in accelerated disruption, chronic networking, and an
uncontrollable urge to slip the word deregulation into conversation.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
So factually he's in his thirties, his head shaven, he
rocks a beard, and he's about my height, but athletic like,
built for adventure sports, a rock climbing, free diving, skydiving,
all of which he does. He tells me. Prosperous sort
of happened by accident to him. He was burned out
after successfully exiting his startup, and then a friend dangled
(04:26):
an offer.
Speaker 3 (04:28):
One of my really close friends was like, you need
to come to Honduras.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
She's like, look, it's a three.
Speaker 3 (04:33):
Month holiday that will pay for you, and if you
enjoy it, you can stay.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
Lee was brought out to teach young founders how to fundraise.
He looked at it as an adventure, but as he
tells it, it ended up being in education in libertarianism.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
I really liked that all ideas were on the table,
that it was an open discussion, and there was some
there's some with out of the field, out of the
box stuff, but at least he gets the conversation going.
As my firm belief that you're allowed to do whatever
you want your body as long as you don't harm others,
(05:12):
and that's where like a deregulation approach I think is good.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
But I was curious between hearing about the instagram sunsets
and this bustling community of startup founders, I asked him
why isn't he still there? Partially, it seems like the
charm wore off.
Speaker 3 (05:33):
For like a few months before I was like, oh
my god, this is okay, there's a lot here. After
that three months I decided I didn't want to stay
on an island for that long.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
But also what he was looking for in Prospero, he
actually found elsewhere.
Speaker 3 (05:48):
When I came to America last year, I was like, Okay,
this is a new perspective of.
Speaker 7 (05:52):
The world.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
To people like Lee. San Francisco is actually where the
for starters. You don't have to help start a government
from scratch. But also there's an unusual alchemy in America.
Speaker 3 (06:09):
Especially in San Francisco, because you've got AI and Longevity,
two very significant monumental shifts, and money, lots of money.
People always talk about San Francisco just being money, and
I'm like, no, no, it's not about money, because there's
money everywhere. It's kids with money. Like a lot of
(06:32):
people have the imaginations and they want to explore and
do amazing things like a child. This is how I
think most really good companies appear is an overactive imagination,
and people aren't telling them no, They're telling them to
go for it.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
Go for it. As I bop around from biopunk houses
to longevity labs, I keep hearing this notion over and
over that no one is going to save you, doctors,
government institutions. This is a world that believes these are
outdated ideas, no longer deserving of our trust. And if
you're going to beat the aunts you have to go
(07:10):
for it from Kaleidoscope and iHeart podcasts. I'm Mongish articular.
This is Skyline Drive How to Live Forever, Chapter one,
(07:58):
My Friendly Neighborhood's spider Man.
Speaker 8 (08:03):
As a personality, I'm more of an experimental being than
the average citizen, So I like to try new things
to see if I can upgrade my life in some way.
Speaker 7 (08:13):
It's sort of a fun thing.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
That is my friend Shathan. We grew up together in Delaware,
and back when we were in elementary school, he would
do the most audacious thing I'd ever seen any kid do.
He would invite you out to lunch and he had
no money, but you would go into roy Rogers on
Main Street in New York, go up to the front
and ask for plates and tap water, and then he
(08:35):
would disrupt the Fixen's bar. He drew it like in
all you could eat Salad bar, and then he would
proudly serve it to you like we weren't going to
get kicked out of the place. But Jathan's also one
of the most brilliant people I know. He has a
PhD in artificial intelligence from Berkeley, and he always has
(08:57):
something He's excited to tell you about whether it's like
a better ice cream machine, a new style of kombucha,
a new way to email that uses less fingerstrokes. So
it's no surprise that he's also my first friend to
tell me about injectibles.
Speaker 9 (09:14):
I'm actually a superhero now my cage, I know for
you to come back and see how I can scale
walls and a xpray vision. Now there's a new peptide,
but don't share us with your listeners.
Speaker 2 (09:25):
It's like a super secret. Peptides I'm realizing are one
of those terms like blockchain or subprime mortgages, where everyone
talks about them and most of us are just nodding along,
pretending like we understand. So as a treat, here is
Ali Oops, a six foot seven only fans star to
(09:46):
explain peptides to you.
Speaker 10 (09:51):
Peptides are short chains of amino acids that signal cells
to do something like prepare skin tissue, turn a hormone
up or down, or trigger I mune activity, insulin and
golp ones.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
They're peptides.
Speaker 10 (10:04):
Our bodies make them naturally, but it turns out we
can make them synthetically too. People inject peptides with needles
so they can enter the bloodstream without being broken down
by the digestive system. Popular uses are for muscle gain,
fat loss, skin collagen, injury recovery, and many more. Common
(10:25):
side effects and injectables include redness and swelling up the
injection point, headaches, dizziness, and mild gastro issues.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
Anyway, back to Chathan today. Chatham lives in marin a
beautiful fairy ride away from San Francisco, in this cliff
side bungalow that looks over a sea of redwoods. Do
you find that? Like in California, it's a pretty common
question to ask what your peptide stack is or things
like that, like is that a common entry at parties?
Speaker 11 (11:00):
You know, I mean the commin entry of parties at
California is does what's your spirit animal?
Speaker 2 (11:04):
And I'm shocked that you.
Speaker 7 (11:05):
Don't know that. Among days after coming out here this
many times.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
Curve it the frog this fine. Apparently, like many of
his friends, Jathan has started taking red a true tide,
a synthetic peptide that's in phase three testing, meaning it's
in clinical trials, but you can't get it prescribed yet,
so early adopters are sourcing it from the gray market.
REDDA is basically a third generation of GLP one, targeting
(11:31):
three hormone pathways instead of just one to affect greater
weight loss. But I mean, in your experience, are there
any downsides? Like how is going to the bathroom?
Speaker 7 (11:41):
How is going to the bathroom like taking a pooh?
Speaker 2 (11:43):
Yeah, it's fine, no issues.
Speaker 11 (11:49):
There is something about it, like I definitely like what
the fuck am I doing? You know, like injecting myself
with these things. There's a psychological sort of hump with it.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
Chathan's been searching for something his whole adult life. He's
moved fluidly from corporate jobs and startups to dropping out
to live in ashrooms or go work with a shaman.
And when he stopped finding comfort in western medicine, he
went looking for new answers.
Speaker 11 (12:22):
Started working with a functional medicine doctor ex Tremere's a
lotles psychedelics in a healing capacity.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
Mouth taping. Put a piece of tape over your mouth.
You literally can't open your mouth and you're forced to breathe.
Speaker 5 (12:32):
Through your nose.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
It was like mind blowing, how much better I felt?
For years, as Chathan kept looking for ways to heal himself,
I worried about him a lot, but Chathan's also been
worrying about me.
Speaker 11 (12:50):
I think we're at this age where this is like
actually a pretty important flection point when we kind of
transition into a new kind.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
Of chapter in life.
Speaker 11 (12:59):
A lot of the types of things that we're talking
about do add up, and they can be really intense,
and so I would be a huge fan of you
taking charge of that does not be peptides.
Speaker 2 (13:11):
But so I'll just leave it there. I can't say
that I try everything Jathan does. Safety third is a
value he picked up from burning men. But I do
admire how he lives his life. He's always collecting and
savoring new experiences, dipping into some new subculture, befriending the
chefs who serve brunch at some hidden Thai temple, or
(13:35):
bringing me to a hippie cheers where they serve cacau
elixers and dance wildly and also close shop at ten pm.
I feel like a.
Speaker 11 (13:45):
Silicon val, like a lot of people are really into
like all this crazy longevity stuff, and I think there's
a certain correlation between people who have a more like
tech oriented mindset and to take that same lens to
their well being. So I think that I share that
this optimizing sort of mentality to my own biology.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
Of course, as much as Tathan has evolved and optimized
and is open about getting REDDA on the gray market,
he's still a first gen kid at heart. I mean, like,
have you told your parents?
Speaker 7 (14:17):
No? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (14:18):
Do you think you will?
Speaker 7 (14:20):
I'm might.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
Chapter two, startup founder healed myself on Google Maps. Frontier
Tower is marked by a little astronaut icon. But as
we had I get distracted by how bleak The scene
(15:02):
is empty bottles and syringes, people in tattered clothes passed out,
and I can see why. Mandana, my producer, told me
this is an area she doesn't feel safe walking through
at night. But then we're at the tower where stepping
through the entrance with you to another world. Inside it's
(15:27):
like a startup embassy from the future. People are dressed artfully.
Everyone's young and beaming and full of energy. Elliott, the
founder of the biopunk community, greets us in the foyer.
Speaker 12 (15:39):
We have fifteen stories upon here, fifteen stories of good.
Speaker 13 (15:45):
And then I.
Speaker 10 (15:47):
Ended up implanting the card hand.
Speaker 2 (15:50):
Oh you did, but instead of using a magnetic key
card to work the elevator, he waves his hand against
the reader, using an implanted computter chip to let us in.
The tiny chip about the size of a grain of
rice is the same tech used to power tap to
pay cards and phones, and it's actually one of a
(16:12):
few subdermal implants that Elliott has.
Speaker 7 (16:15):
This figure.
Speaker 14 (16:19):
So distortion to my guitar.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
I'm grinning because this is exactly what I've been longing
for young scientists and biopunks, people experimenting on themselves with implants,
pushing boundaries, modeling a future for the rest of us.
Elliott has to run to a meeting, so he introduces
me to Lawrence. Welcome, Thank you. Lawrence Ion is a
(16:43):
founder of Viva City, where death is optional. It's a
city which for now exists only here on the Frontier
Tower's eleventh floor. Lawrence is short, crim wears glasses. He
also has this gentle Romanian accent, and he reminds me
a little of Dexter from Dexter's laboratory.
Speaker 15 (17:05):
I spent most of my time. I don't really have
a reason to be anywhere else in San Francisco because
everyone just comes by here.
Speaker 7 (17:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
As he tells us the towers history, Lawrence tours us
through the building floor by floor.
Speaker 15 (17:19):
We're building a new society with this vertical village. Three
years ago we started a new movement, of a new
kind of gathering to explore what would feel like to
live with like many people in a new city, an
intentional city.
Speaker 2 (17:36):
And so the building is split up into themed floors,
each treated like its own neighborhood with its own flavor.
Speaker 15 (17:43):
Each one is a community of itself, so it's a
community of communities. We have a floor for ai, floor
for crypto, floor for longevity and so on. Have robotics.
We have a gym and a sauna and a little
dragon as well, a live dragon.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
I was curious what he meant by a dragon, but
another tower introduced me. Turns out it was a beardy,
like the class pet at Ruby's pre k.
Speaker 12 (18:06):
What's the dragon's name Splash Splash, Yes, super cute.
Speaker 16 (18:11):
He doesn't like baths, so he tries to jump out
of them, so that's why his name is Splash.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
There's also a Moroccan style tea lounge and a floor
for music and arts, because, as he tells me, every
civilization needs culture. There's a basement that's used for robot battles,
but also peptide raves. Instead of Kickball sign up sheets
on the wall. There are flyers to mess around with
gene therapy. As Lawrence tells it, to co work at
(18:39):
the space. You apply to a floor if your choosing.
If you're into bitcoin, the crypto floor is for you.
If robotics is your jam, there's a community on that
floor waiting for you. Elliot runs a wet lab on
one floor where you can actually run experiments and play
with crisper and gene editing. My favorite floor is the
(19:03):
Maker's lab, where Lawrence has one of the leads point
out a few things.
Speaker 7 (19:07):
This is Tony, one of.
Speaker 17 (19:09):
The So my name is Tony, and I really like
building things, honestly. Basically I started with a three D printer,
and then one thing led to another, and then we
just had a crap ton of machines. I like to
tell folks we have the capability of going from rocks
to machines that think, which is just a really fun
thing to be able to say and actually mean.
Speaker 2 (19:31):
So growing up, my dad had pieces of stereos and
computers he was building or taking apart scattered around the house.
Our garage was filled with carpentry tools, so this, It
actually feels like my world. They're handbuilt arcade machines and
electronic signs and three D printed gizmos all around me,
and I'm surrounded by this spirit of invention. Looking at
(19:54):
the shelves, I feel like a kid in a toy store.
I just want to pull everything down and play. And
if I live close by, I might even consider ponying
up the two hundred and thirty dollars a month to
use it. Before long, we end up back on floor eleven,
the Longevity Floor where Lawrence works. He isn't a founder
of this tower of fun, but he is kind of
(20:15):
like the mayor, and he's excited to show us a
doctor's office cramped full of biohacking equipment hiding in the back.
Speaker 15 (20:23):
So here in the clinic, apart from the doctor consultations,
he also supervises and does sessions with HBOT, these hyperbaric
oxygen therapy chambers.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
So there's a doctor here who comes in and.
Speaker 7 (20:38):
Consultation.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
Yeah, for anyone within the building outside. Amazing. Yeah, that's the.
Speaker 15 (20:46):
Frontier tower. Citizens get the better pricing, and Longevity Floor
members get some sessions for free every month.
Speaker 2 (20:55):
I have a sense of why Lawrence is so passionate
about this intentional community that he's cultivated in this tower.
But I want to understand why he cares so much
about longevity, Like why is it that he wants to
extend his life so badly? I'm so curious, Like, what
is it that drives a person to this space?
Speaker 15 (21:16):
Yeah, I was born with a genetic disease. It's called
MT multiple hairly theiry exostoses there's these bone tumors. I
have dozens of them still. But I had a lot
of surgeries growing up. I spent a lot of time
in hospitals.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
You know, one of the best pieces of advice anyone
ever gave me is if you don't see something in
the world that you want, make it. But even then,
I'm surprised by how many people I've met on this trip,
many people in this building who've launched a company because
they wanted to heal themselves, including Lawrence. Lawrence tells me
(22:09):
how so much of his youth was spent staring at
hospital ceilings, how he knows what it's like to be frail,
and how he's still in a lot of pain.
Speaker 15 (22:19):
I initially wanted to become a doctor, but I was
I had a hard time talking to people kind of
on the spectrum and wouldn't be able to really talk
to strangers.
Speaker 2 (22:29):
He quickly realizes he has an aptitude for computers, for
creating games in new worlds, virtual places where he can
escape his body. Before long, he's recruited to Silicon Valley,
and today Lawrence has his fingers in all sorts of
startup eyes. He tells me about a researcher who's using
a cryptotoken called cryo Rat to fund his attempt to
(22:51):
bring a frozen rat back to life.
Speaker 15 (22:54):
I see chronics as like an ambulance through time to
a future hospital where they can bring it back and
fix whatever was wrong with you.
Speaker 2 (23:03):
So the Paronis is advanced enough to be able to
pull that off.
Speaker 15 (23:06):
Yet there are amazing results on cryo preservation. And also
we've brought back organs and some organisms.
Speaker 2 (23:16):
From the latest I've read scientists have brought a piece
of brain tissue from a mouse's brain back from deep freeze,
which is incredible, but still it's a ways off from
that time ambulance. And then Lawrence tells me about his
dreams of the singularity.
Speaker 15 (23:33):
I think we cannot predict what happens after that explosion.
Speaker 2 (23:37):
This hypothetical, and Off talked about moment when AI will
make technology move so quickly and so much faster than
ever before that it's going to be near incomprehensible for mankind.
I'm sympathetic to the idea of why someone who might
have felt crapped in an imperfect body would be excited
about the possibility of shedding his.
Speaker 15 (23:58):
I'm super curious to see what how weapons once we
have brainwashing interfaces and we can communicate a peed of thought,
and yeah, I don't even know what could be right
like people a few thousand years ago, hunter gatherers, or
even like Kevman like, I'm sure they couldn't imagine the
things we do right.
Speaker 2 (24:15):
Now here at Frontier Tower, it feels like there are
two ideas in competition. There's this pervasive sense that you
need to take the world and all its flaws into
your own hands because no one is coming to save you.
And also there's a belief that some godly AI will
be the solution, that AI is coming with all the
(24:36):
answers to save us. And I don't quite know how
to square those ideas. But Lawrence still hasn't answered my
original question, so I ask him again, why is it
that he wants to live forever?
Speaker 15 (24:50):
I just know that I love life and I wouldn't
want to die as long as I'm healthy. I think
east I want to live tomorrow, and I'm pretty sure
tomorrow I want to live another day. And if you
use mathematics proof by induction, you probably don't are not
ever going to want to stop as long as you're healthy.
Speaker 2 (25:13):
Lawrence isn't alone in San Francisco. I'll meet dozens of
young people who have only just started living, people who
grew up feeling isolated and lonely and have taken heroic
doses of mushrooms to combat their depression and chase their
founder dreams, and have been drawn here like a summer
camp for brilliant folks and oddballs who finally found one another.
(25:38):
And now they're happy, and they want to stretch that
feeling out for as long as they can before Mandana
turns the recorder off. I have one final question, how
old are you?
Speaker 7 (25:53):
Well?
Speaker 15 (25:54):
I could say that I'm one hundred and twenty, but no,
I'm thirty.
Speaker 2 (25:57):
One thirty one. I wonder if Laurence ever thought he'd
make it to the stage, and then I wonder if
he's ever contemplated just how far away thirty one is
from Forever Chapter three. The Vitalists, Manda Da and I
(26:47):
have been sitting in this same little studio on Longevity
Floor conducting interviews for four or five hours. Now the
sun has gone down. Members have started to leave for
the day. But there are a few more important people
I need to meet, including Adam Grease. Adam is one
of the most important founders, organizers, and evangelists in this
(27:08):
radical longevity scene. But right now I'm waiting for him
to complete his first sentence. As he talks, he closes
his eyes like a vessel, waiting for each perfect word
to hit his tongue before he delivers it.
Speaker 18 (27:27):
So I'm a tech entrepreneur and also a longevity revolutionary.
Speaker 2 (27:52):
Revolutionary is the right word. Adam started the Vitalism movement,
which views defeating death as its core more duty, and
he also runs Vitalist Bay, a pop up festival that
feels like a woodstock of the longevity movement. So what
is a vitalist and how do you define that?
Speaker 18 (28:13):
I think the most important parts of it are that
death is humanity's core problem and aging it's primary agent,
and this is quite an iconoclastic position. Most people wouldn't
agree that death is humanity's core problem. They would think
(28:34):
that perhaps suffering is the core problem, and this distinguishes vitalists.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
The story of vitalism is rooted in COVID. As the
first wave of the pandemic hit the US, Adam could
see things would go into lockdown and that there wouldn't
be a quick fix. So he makes this big short
style bet in the markets.
Speaker 18 (28:55):
And I predicted when the lockdowns would happen, and I
made this big return. But the experience was also really
traumatizing and shocking in that the implication of that bet
succeeding was the millions of people were likely going to die.
Speaker 2 (29:12):
That bet lined his pockets handsomely, but it also filled
him with dread. Suddenly death didn't seem distant or abstract.
Adam had always strived to be healthy, but his focus
shifted to realizing he didn't want to die, that we
didn't have to die.
Speaker 18 (29:31):
It was that experience during COVID which pushed me over
that hump, in the sense that it became very evident
that nobody was coming to the rescue.
Speaker 2 (29:40):
So Adam did something. He quit his job to focus
on longevity. But instead of investing and waiting to see
if he could affect some sliver of change, he wanted
to create real urgency around defeating death. And to do
this he realized he had to catalyze something big and public,
(30:01):
because death, he believes, can be conquered. We just need
an apollo project of longevity to take root and for
this country to unite behind a common goal.
Speaker 18 (30:11):
This is immense knowledge, capital, stock, history, connections, and so forth.
We just wanted to benefit as many people as possible.
Speaker 2 (30:21):
But as he talks about the history of movement building
and his theory of change, he mentions Soros and the
Koch Brothers, tech libertarians and others who have had a
disproportionate influence.
Speaker 18 (30:35):
It's usually not one person, but it's not a popular movement,
like the neocons were never like a popular movement. They
had their for profits Halliburton, Lockheed, Martin, Exon Mobile, They
had people in government, Dick Cheney, George W. Paul Wolfovitz,
et cetera. They had their nonprofit Heritage and Cato Institute,
and they had their media initiatives and so forth.
Speaker 2 (30:57):
And this is the path he wants vitalism to take.
Speaker 18 (31:01):
And so the way we think about it is like
the longevity and the vitalist idea should also try to
impact attention in this way. I mean this, we're not
inventing anything.
Speaker 2 (31:14):
Adam, like so many people I've interviewed in the space,
believes no one is coming to save us. You've heard
him say it. But also he's worried about what happens
if we give AI too much power.
Speaker 18 (31:27):
In the age of AI, we're going to have super intelligence,
and what is it trained on? A culture of death?
Speaker 2 (31:34):
AI, he points out, is trained on our libraries of knowledge.
So if you ask an LLM about death, that defines
it in the way humans have for generations that death
gives life, meaning that death is natural. So if you
give AI the power to make decisions.
Speaker 18 (31:51):
Now imagine, just in a very simplistic scenario, five years
from now, you have some super AI and the AI
needs to evaluate whether to allow you know, half of
humanity to die. It would look into its LM knowledge
graph and it would see, well, you know, death isn't
that bad. Some humans think death is fine. Let's kill
(32:12):
off half of humanity.
Speaker 2 (32:18):
I really don't know how to process this.
Speaker 14 (32:21):
That if we are training the AI on a death
accepting culture, we are literally committee suicide. Not figuratively, we
are literally walking into suicide because this AI will consider
death to be.
Speaker 2 (32:34):
Fine, despite his healthy fear of suicide by AI. Adam
doesn't think the answer is becoming one with computers, you know,
the way Lawrence does, dreaming of integrating tech and entwining
it with his body, and Adam worries that extreme body
(32:56):
replacement maybe on a fast track.
Speaker 18 (32:59):
This is a stone's throwaway from where we are right now,
and when we're able to take a quadriplegic and say, hey,
you know what, what if you could walk, but we
have to chop off your biological leg, but we'll give
you a bionic lag would they take it? I mean,
I don't know. I think that day is coming pretty close.
(33:20):
And to me that notion is extremely scary because you're
starting to treat our core biology as just replaceable parts.
And once you start doing that, the question is where
do you draw a line.
Speaker 2 (33:44):
I am too old fashioned to want to put a
chip in my brain, at least while I'm healthy. I'm
too worried about the safety of it. Could it be hacked.
Could someone see the virus onto it? But also I'm
a little skeptical that I'll ever have to confront the decision.
I read about a single shot that was supposed to
cure your allergies twenty years ago. Were nighttime contacts that
(34:06):
were supposed to reshape your cornea as you slept, to
give you perfect vision. I'm still putting on glasses every morning.
So Adam hopes that vitalists like him will embrace their
humanity and focus on living forever in a human body.
Speaker 18 (34:26):
Just to recast if you want to live longer, you know,
to kind of echo Jordan Peterson, what do you mean
by you? What do you mean by longer? I wish
more people were thinking about because if we love what
(34:48):
being human is, then in a way, it's much more
likely that we will stay more human as we are
now if we solve aging than in any other alternative.
Speaker 2 (35:02):
This is perhaps the most revolutionary thing about Adam. He's
the leader of a movement to defeat death. Who wants
to stay human, who wants to forever be human.
Speaker 18 (35:14):
I don't think anybody is internalizing how fast and meaningful
this is likely going to be, because what will happen
in the alternative is that we will likely become cyborgs.
Speaker 2 (35:42):
Chapter four, A Brief and Incomplete Guide to the Biopunk.
Speaker 12 (35:48):
I wanted to prove my chem teacher wrong, and I
wanted to make like dragons or something like that, and
like engineer them so they breathe fire, right, And so
I started looking at this experiment to make glowing frogs.
Speaker 2 (36:00):
That's Elliott Roth, founder of Biopunk Studios. I asked him
how he first fell in love with science, and he's
telling me about a high school biology project.
Speaker 12 (36:09):
There was a recent Nobel Prize in two thousand and
eight where it was all around his glowing avatar like protein,
and I decided to start filling around with these frogs
to see if I could make anything work. What he
didn't know is that they were an invasive species. And
so that was the first time that my parents got
a letter from the federal government saying you can't import
(36:29):
these frogs.
Speaker 2 (36:30):
There are more times time.
Speaker 12 (36:36):
There's a time with the NBI where I was like,
don't worry about that was that was something else.
Speaker 2 (36:42):
I bumped into Elliott a few times today. He's the
guy with the NFC implanted in his hand, and in
my very few interactions, I've learned that one he takes
after his mom.
Speaker 12 (36:53):
I grew up with a wonderful but very overbearing Jewish mother.
Speaker 2 (36:57):
And so he worries when you're not fed. He asked
me a few times now if I want a granola
bar or if he can pop out to get me
some food. Two he wears a tiny DNA double helix
on his neck as a reminder.
Speaker 12 (37:11):
As a means of realizing that I'm human, you know,
and like it's kind of something, kind of core part
of me.
Speaker 2 (37:18):
And three, when I complimented him on his rock star
black and white outfit, which is comprised of black jeans,
black T shirt, a checkered black and white short sleeve
button down, along with one white shoe and one black shoe,
he explains that everything he wears is thrifted or gifted, and.
Speaker 12 (37:37):
So I was given this by somebody really really close
to me. These shoes were thrifted. This was given to
me by somebody who's really close because I worked in
algae and so.
Speaker 2 (37:46):
The biopunk House had a wonderful feel to it, like
a grand old art storm that had been repurposed to
contain big ideas a place not just to rest your head,
but to work and be inspired. Elliott and his colleague
and I have taken great care in curating the personalities,
and more than a few of the founders told me
the joy of when you're tired of thinking about your
(38:07):
own projects. How good it feels to help a new
friend out by giving some thoughts or perspective. Also, I
didn't get to meet all the residents, but some definitely
sounded pretty wild. Wait wait, wait, tell me more about
the black Boys.
Speaker 8 (38:22):
There are two male founders working on Blood and they're
going to be living together.
Speaker 16 (38:27):
It's either going to be it'll be the best of
times and the worst of times that have vampires.
Speaker 2 (38:33):
So it's a scene. But right now I'm excited to
dig into Elliott's story. It turns out it all starts
in college.
Speaker 12 (38:43):
So I start working in this lab and I show
up every single day and they just make me wash dishes.
That's really all they do.
Speaker 2 (38:50):
But it was more than that. Elliott had his ideas
ripped from him while being sidelined from the work, and
when he complained.
Speaker 12 (38:56):
To a supervisor, he was like, you know, that's just
kind of the way it works. Like this is how
academia is, and I'm like, well, then academia sucks.
Speaker 2 (39:04):
Man College, it turns out is just another disappointing institution
that isn't coming to save you. But then Elliott has
an idea, what.
Speaker 12 (39:15):
If we just start collecting lab gear. Made friends with
the salvage yard guy. I figured out that he really
liked salta dancing, so I got him like salsa dancing
tickets and ended up collecting lab gear and putting in
in this garage space. And in like three years we
collected about half million dollars with lab equipment and started
doing projects.
Speaker 2 (39:40):
I love the spirit so much. I know it's so different,
but it feels a little like how we started Mental
Flaws from our dorm room. I sent out a dozen
internship applications to magazines and I didn't get a response.
So I figured the only way I'd ever get my
name in print was teaming up with my friends and
doing it scrappy. Making friends with a guy at Kinko's
(40:01):
and bringing him pizza and Beard let us design in
the back for cheap, ripping expensive software, tricking people at
national bookstore chains into believing that we were professionals, so
that they would stalk our non existent magazine. We collaged
illustrations and made bad jokes no one else would ever
publish because it made us laugh. Every night until four
(40:24):
or five am. We were upwriting and designing and making.
And I don't know that I could ever be a
longevity revolutionary, but a biopunk that feels like my speed.
Speaker 12 (40:41):
I think punk really in the punk ethos is all
about rebelling against an existing system for mutual aid.
Speaker 2 (40:48):
For Elliott, biopunk is for everyone. He recognizes that there's
a whole world of people who don't feel comfortable in
their body, and he wants to empower them all to
use the lab to change that. He tells me how
excited he is about a new seminar he's giving on
hormone replacement therapy.
Speaker 12 (41:05):
In the same room, you will have these cool transkits.
You're going to have these perimenopausal, menopausal housewives and bodybuilders.
And I think that's just such a fascinating mix and
blend of different backgrounds.
Speaker 2 (41:18):
And he understands why age is another reason people are
willing to experiment, Like when.
Speaker 12 (41:22):
You get old, you look in the mirror and you're
like that, that's not who I remember myself to.
Speaker 2 (41:27):
Be because to him, everything that's happening in the community
he's building is about being your authentic self.
Speaker 12 (41:34):
I mean, I think biotechnology is inherently trans right, Like
it's all about how do you change in modify biology.
Speaker 2 (41:41):
But he worries about people experimenting without information. Not everyone
was trying to modify frogs in high school. So he
brings people together for teachings in the coolest ways he
can dream up, like peptide raves.
Speaker 12 (41:55):
We realize that many people were quietly doing science by Reddit,
and what that means is that they go online, they
find some sort of weird online supplier. They say, hey,
this is going to fix me, and then they get
it shipped in the mail and they inject some random
thing and then they feel horrible and instead, rather than
(42:17):
having this happen in secret, what we did is we say,
let's do like a little bit of like an educational
show and tell, where we show you how to source test,
do blood draws. You know, understand your own diagnostics compounds,
and inject properly. Because I'm not telling people to go
inject these things definitely not. What I'm saying is that
(42:39):
if you were to do this, there is a particular
way in which you can do it safely and the
rave part. Then afterwards we had a dance.
Speaker 2 (42:47):
Party too much. Chapter five, Women on the Frontier.
Speaker 13 (43:31):
I think now everybody's focused on like peptizes, RI scans.
I think one of the most controversial topics I called
MRI scans are like horoscopes for tech ros.
Speaker 2 (43:46):
That's Jala's Oudakova. I just sat down with her and
her friend Juliette Humor, who works in the building. Well,
Juliet's a new friend.
Speaker 19 (43:54):
We met at the semi finals filming.
Speaker 2 (43:57):
Jaylah bounces between her home and Zurich and her labs
at Harvard where she runs her startup at Loomisseell and
Juliette is the founder of another startup, muse Bio. The
two met on a reality YouTube show where founders pitch
for a million dollars in investment and they hit it off.
Speaker 19 (44:13):
Plus our work is like, I want to use her
equipment for our tech law just yeah, really aligned, and
she's awesome. Yeah, we're really quick.
Speaker 13 (44:22):
And last week I was actually hosting dinner, so I
smuggled fifteen kilos of Swiss cheese.
Speaker 2 (44:28):
Every place I'd been before Frontier Tower seemed noticeably male,
and then Prospera. Everyone who visited told me the same thing,
that it's eighty percent men. And while Elliott has improved
the ratios significantly since I visited, when I was there,
the Biopunk residency was one hundred percent men. Elliott tells
(44:49):
me that he'd set it up as fifty to fifty
and he'd worked hard to recruit women across the globe,
but then the US government put a block on visas.
So aside from Roxanna, who helps run the program, the
house was entirely men. But here in Frontier Tower the
mix is noticeably more balanced. You feel it all around you,
on every floor and right off the bat. Juliette is
(45:12):
reminding me how common longevity practices aren't one size fits all.
Speaker 19 (45:17):
These trends on intrinten fasting and cold plunging, like the
results that are advertised are advertised as like ubiquitous among
people men and women, but they're actually significantly different and
pretty detrimental, Like women are just generally not set up
for inter written fasting.
Speaker 20 (45:36):
That's pretty detrimental to their.
Speaker 2 (45:38):
Healthy But I want to know more about how Juliette
found her way into this scene.
Speaker 19 (45:44):
This is might take a set minute here, I tell you.
Speaker 2 (45:47):
But at twenty three, juliet suffered a freak injury when
an ordinary sneeze revealed this underlying spinal condition.
Speaker 19 (45:55):
And I was immobilized for several years, just like immobilism, Yeah,
like in bed, could barely move and sit, couldn't twist.
Speaker 2 (46:04):
But when she looked for solutions, she realized that the
only answers were surgeries with very low success rates and
ones that would have to be repeated every four or
five years.
Speaker 19 (46:14):
I wasn't satisfied with the options that the doctors were
providing me, and I found that stem cells was an
option I couldn't afford what was currently available.
Speaker 2 (46:24):
And so Juliete's trying to figure out how to embrace
this new body. She'd studied chemistry and microbiology and college,
and she's working in biotech, so she's got the right background.
But then she starts going to conferences for inspiration.
Speaker 19 (46:38):
And I was actually the conference that I met Elliot
at where I saw this presentation of the research findings
on stem cells and menstrul blood.
Speaker 2 (46:47):
Juliette is immediately fascinated with this idea of harvesting stem
cells from period blood to use it in therapeutics. She
grew up nearby in Napa in a family of entrepreneurs,
and for all her life her parents have been making
grape seed oil.
Speaker 19 (47:01):
They make a value product from some waste product. So
I've had the concept of circular economies, and.
Speaker 2 (47:08):
So something's percolating, this idea of pulling value from something
that's seen as waste. And then later in the conference,
she meets a Ukrainian scientist who lights a fire.
Speaker 19 (47:18):
She's like, if you have an ounce of passion, an
ounce of expertise, an ounce of willingness to do something like,
go fucking do it. And she told me about how
the largest population of victims of war are burned victims.
Your chance of surviving burn wounds goes up twenty percent
of us stem cells during the healing process. I had
(47:39):
just seen this mensrul blood stem cell presentation and my
partner at the time was a burn survivor, and I
had this back injury that I needed stem cells for,
and so as a scientist, I was like, I need
to dive into this research.
Speaker 2 (47:53):
So that's what Julia has done with muse Bio. She's
created a company to harvest stem cells for menstrual blood,
and she actually won that startup competition on the promise
of this technology.
Speaker 19 (48:04):
And it makes perfect sense. I mean, like this source
of cells, this function is to allow for the development
of new human in nine months, and when it's not
doing that, it's regenerating that organ in the adult human
body without any scarring.
Speaker 2 (48:17):
And it's the only organ that does that. Juliete tells
me that they've set up donor collections at places like
Frontier Tower. They give them goodie bags and menstrual cups
and chocolates. They also compensate them forty dollars per donation,
and they offer STI testing. But what's most evident in
all of this is that men in science weren't looking
at or thinking about menstrual blood as a potential solution,
(48:41):
because why would they.
Speaker 19 (48:43):
Everybody is really focusing on the egg. Yeah, you know,
we've kind of optimized the embryo of the egg, but
no one's looking at the nest.
Speaker 2 (48:50):
But Juliette did look, and that allowed her to discover
something completely revolutionary.
Speaker 19 (48:56):
What we're seeing is that this cell line wasults in
scarfree healing. It's anti fibrotic, like no other stem cells
scar scarfree healing. So no other stem cell line does this.
Speaker 2 (49:12):
That's remarkable and so so what when did you manage
to start getting the therapy for yourself or like.
Speaker 19 (49:17):
The I I so it hasn't happened yet.
Speaker 2 (49:24):
To me, this is the most heartbreaking part of it all.
Oh you're still suffering.
Speaker 19 (49:29):
Yeah, I'm still intending to heal myself. But we are
coming out with an aesthetic product.
Speaker 2 (49:36):
Actually that Juliette is still in pain, that she's made
these incredible leaves forward, that she's looking where no one
else would to find a well spring of potential. But
in the end, what she has is a skin cream.
(49:57):
But Juliette will keep working. She has too, because until
now no one has come to save her. But if
she can light the path forward, maybe others will.
Speaker 19 (50:09):
So in essence, the esthetic product is a demonstration of
what is possible in the parts of us that we
cannot see.
Speaker 2 (50:32):
My trip to the Bay has taken it out of me.
Two days packed with interviews, racing from Palo Alto to Marin,
from one side of San Francisco to the other. So
right now I am completely dazed. I was skeptical of
Frontier tower. How much was for show, But I am
genuinely inspired by the people here, the community inside this building,
(50:56):
young scientists and makers and people who felt like outs
in their youth but now belong. As Jayla tells me,
this space is different.
Speaker 13 (51:09):
Everyone is so supportive of yours, like the network pulls
you in and it keeps giving and giving and giving.
They don't know any other place in the world that
is like this. So you know, we're based out of Harvard,
We're like in this ecosystem in Boston. Obviously they're in
biotech focused, but it's also very elitists. It also doesn't
pull you in. The inns are much more difficult, and.
Speaker 2 (51:34):
I do think there's something to that. This is not academia.
You don't have to apprentice your way up to test
your ideas. It is a frontier tower, not an ivory
one built with the spirit that science is for everyone.
But it isn't, not really, because as Mondona and I
left the building, we felt the starkness between the tower
(51:57):
and the city outside. We talked about it over the phone.
Speaker 20 (52:01):
Back onto the streets of market in San Francisco, where
you're met with people huddling getting high. You know, kind
of this loneliness on the streets. There's so much promise
in this building and future and people kind of having
plans about a new world. But you know, I exit
(52:24):
this building just wondering, like, who can actually go kind
of gallivant on an island and play with bitcoins and
medical advancements.
Speaker 2 (52:47):
It's hard for me not to think about doctor William
Hre and his analogy of the two worms. How evolutions
split a species into one group of halves and another
of have.
Speaker 20 (52:58):
Nots seems like such a privilege and so far away
from some of the actual realities that are existing around it.
They're definitely a bubble onto their own I wouldn't call
it a vertical village. I would call it a floating island,
like it's its own prospera in the middle of San Francisco.
Speaker 2 (53:38):
Next time on How to Live Forever, I find myself
drawn to the other side of the country, in the
middle of another ocean, following a dark trail of whispers
about stealthy schemes for cloning and organ transplants.
Speaker 16 (53:52):
I've seen him do things in our lab that I'm
afraid to name because I think they sound like miracles.
Speaker 2 (54:25):
Let's do the credits. Skyline Drive is production of Kaleidoscope
and iHeart Podcast. The show is hosted and written by
Me Mongish Hearticular with a ton of help. Lizzie Jacobs
is my partner in life who made this episode happen
during a snowpocalypse while I was sipping vegan longevity juice
in California. I also have massive, massive help from the
most talented and most cat loving Mary Phillip Sandy and
(54:49):
Guy who Knows a Guy signs producer Mark Steven Allen,
who is to thank for so many interviews in this episode.
Mark Lotto is the very best story editor and somehow
gave me the best note while also editing two other
incredible books and a million other things. Also producing on
this app and on Mike the wonderful Mondana Mofidi, who
(55:10):
helped me navigate Frontier Tower and managed one really, really
long and challenging day of production. There are two s
any things we did during this episode because of a
few insanely talented and kind friends who helped out. The
musical Prospero was composed by David Nagler, a guy who
can turn literally anything into an incredible song, and Jim Leha,
(55:31):
an unparalleled artist and friend who lent his gorgeous voice.
Thank you so much, Jim. Then there's Ali Oops, friend
of the pod and budding surfing influencer who helped us
make Peptides worth listening to. If you want to hear
more from Ali, go to Ali Oops on OnlyFans. This
episode was mixed by the absolutely brilliant Joe Ploured. Thank
(55:52):
you so much Joe for making this sound so beautiful,
with a appropriately unnerving score from Botany. Also, there are gorgeous
tracks from the artist Bliss Samsa Nathan. Thank you so
much for helping out with this episode. If you want
to hear more, we made you a mixtape. Just check
out the show notes.
Speaker 7 (56:10):
This show is.
Speaker 2 (56:11):
Executive produced from iHeart by my good friends Ali Perry
and Katrina Norvel from Kaleidoscope. We've got my co founder
Ozwa Liishin. Costas Linos for keeping the lights on with
a smile. Costas, You're the best. Julia Nutter, our head
of studio, Rachel Strom, a famously great lawyer, neighbor and human.
Also Christy David, Dara Agne, Sheena Calypso, al Viahiny for
(56:33):
the beautiful collage art. There are a lot of you.
I also want to give a little special thanks to
all the kiddos, Henry and Ruby, my two little Maniacs.
Also Julian Grendel, lou Baby, leon Enzo and Pearl e Tour.
All my friends at iHeart, including Bob Connell, Will Kerrie, Nikki, Jason,
Jerry and Moore. Also Shanthan Soro, my family in India,
(56:54):
my family and the States. The very very biggest thanks
to Evan Ratliffe for doing the intro to today's show
or evans Ai Clone who I guess did it? If
you haven't listened to the new season of Shell Game,
it is honestly one of my favorite things that came
out in the last year. Please go check it out.
And just one last thank you to my Amma, my dad,
(57:16):
Lalita who I thank my lucky stars for always Thank
you so much for listening.
Hey, it's Evan Ratler from shell Game here with a warning.
Despite Mongsh's grandmother's greatest wish, he is one hundred percent
not a doctor and nothing in this episode should count
as medical advice. Also, mong Gosh, this is my AI clone.
Did you really think I'd send the real me to
do this job? Okay, enjoy this fall.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
When I knew I wanted to make a show with
my wife and friends about how to live forever, I thought,
let me take advantage. Let's go to a blue zone
in Greece, or use this as an excuse to go
travel to South Korea where those eighty year old grandmothers
free dive into freezing water for sea Ursians. And then
(01:18):
I heard about Prospera, this quote unregulated paradise located on
the island of Roatan in Honduras. The charter city has
become a haven for startup founders and crypto bros. And
I thought, that's it, That's where we've got to go.
So why is it that I'm sitting in the commons
(01:39):
room of a biopunk house in San Francisco instead of
loafing on a beach spearfishing with Longevonots. I'm asking myself
the same question, but I'm pretty sure Lee has some answers.
Speaker 3 (01:52):
When I landed there, it's a bizare world.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
A few minutes ago, Lee was sitting on an easy chair,
legs sprawled over one of the arms, working on a laptop.
But on hearing me say the word Prospera, I saw
his face light up and I knew he wanted to talk.
Speaker 3 (02:10):
My name's Lee Parnell from the UK over in San
Francisco at the moment, but for the previous year I
was helping out a lot in biotech, including in Prospera.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
The thing is, do I want to interrupt Lee's story
about Prospera with a makeshift Broadway number? No, obviously not,
but that's what goes through my head every time someone
in this house mentions prosper like people tap dancing across
the stage, muttering pro Prospera, Prospera. Did someone say Prospera.
Speaker 4 (02:44):
Have you considered escaping bureaucracy via catamaran? Well you're in
luck because Prospera is now accepting fissionaries. Surfers had billionaires
named Steve.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
Oh my god, it's starting.
Speaker 4 (03:02):
I was drowning in compliance bang bying head against a
wall when an.
Speaker 5 (03:06):
Angel whispered, bro let's abolish it all. Wanna code beside volcanoes.
Keep your startup dreams alive. You can launch a hedge
fun Tuesday and be drunk on shrimp by.
Speaker 6 (03:17):
Five VC money a pounds here the tax rate might
be five percent, so just sell a little bit corn
and tell your landlord to get back.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
Big takes in every shack ros constitution, watch.
Speaker 7 (03:41):
Your back, Rose.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
Dice, zero drama, pros range your networth, use more commas.
Speaker 4 (03:52):
Prospero made result in accelerated disruption, chronic networking, and an
uncontrollable urge to slip the word deregulation into conversation.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
So factually he's in his thirties, his head shaven, he
rocks a beard, and he's about my height, but athletic like,
built for adventure sports, a rock climbing, free diving, skydiving,
all of which he does. He tells me. Prosperous sort
of happened by accident to him. He was burned out
after successfully exiting his startup, and then a friend dangled
(04:26):
an offer.
Speaker 3 (04:28):
One of my really close friends was like, you need
to come to Honduras.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
She's like, look, it's a three.
Speaker 3 (04:33):
Month holiday that will pay for you, and if you
enjoy it, you can stay.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
Lee was brought out to teach young founders how to fundraise.
He looked at it as an adventure, but as he
tells it, it ended up being in education in libertarianism.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
I really liked that all ideas were on the table,
that it was an open discussion, and there was some
there's some with out of the field, out of the
box stuff, but at least he gets the conversation going.
As my firm belief that you're allowed to do whatever
you want your body as long as you don't harm others,
(05:12):
and that's where like a deregulation approach I think is good.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
But I was curious between hearing about the instagram sunsets
and this bustling community of startup founders, I asked him
why isn't he still there? Partially, it seems like the
charm wore off.
Speaker 3 (05:33):
For like a few months before I was like, oh
my god, this is okay, there's a lot here. After
that three months I decided I didn't want to stay
on an island for that long.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
But also what he was looking for in Prospero, he
actually found elsewhere.
Speaker 3 (05:48):
When I came to America last year, I was like, Okay,
this is a new perspective of.
Speaker 7 (05:52):
The world.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
To people like Lee. San Francisco is actually where the
for starters. You don't have to help start a government
from scratch. But also there's an unusual alchemy in America.
Speaker 3 (06:09):
Especially in San Francisco, because you've got AI and Longevity,
two very significant monumental shifts, and money, lots of money.
People always talk about San Francisco just being money, and
I'm like, no, no, it's not about money, because there's
money everywhere. It's kids with money. Like a lot of
(06:32):
people have the imaginations and they want to explore and
do amazing things like a child. This is how I
think most really good companies appear is an overactive imagination,
and people aren't telling them no, They're telling them to
go for it.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
Go for it. As I bop around from biopunk houses
to longevity labs, I keep hearing this notion over and
over that no one is going to save you, doctors,
government institutions. This is a world that believes these are
outdated ideas, no longer deserving of our trust. And if
you're going to beat the aunts you have to go
(07:10):
for it from Kaleidoscope and iHeart podcasts. I'm Mongish articular.
This is Skyline Drive How to Live Forever, Chapter one,
(07:58):
My Friendly Neighborhood's spider Man.
Speaker 8 (08:03):
As a personality, I'm more of an experimental being than
the average citizen, So I like to try new things
to see if I can upgrade my life in some way.
Speaker 7 (08:13):
It's sort of a fun thing.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
That is my friend Shathan. We grew up together in Delaware,
and back when we were in elementary school, he would
do the most audacious thing I'd ever seen any kid do.
He would invite you out to lunch and he had
no money, but you would go into roy Rogers on
Main Street in New York, go up to the front
and ask for plates and tap water, and then he
(08:35):
would disrupt the Fixen's bar. He drew it like in
all you could eat Salad bar, and then he would
proudly serve it to you like we weren't going to
get kicked out of the place. But Jathan's also one
of the most brilliant people I know. He has a
PhD in artificial intelligence from Berkeley, and he always has
(08:57):
something He's excited to tell you about whether it's like
a better ice cream machine, a new style of kombucha,
a new way to email that uses less fingerstrokes. So
it's no surprise that he's also my first friend to
tell me about injectibles.
Speaker 9 (09:14):
I'm actually a superhero now my cage, I know for
you to come back and see how I can scale
walls and a xpray vision. Now there's a new peptide,
but don't share us with your listeners.
Speaker 2 (09:25):
It's like a super secret. Peptides I'm realizing are one
of those terms like blockchain or subprime mortgages, where everyone
talks about them and most of us are just nodding along,
pretending like we understand. So as a treat, here is
Ali Oops, a six foot seven only fans star to
(09:46):
explain peptides to you.
Speaker 10 (09:51):
Peptides are short chains of amino acids that signal cells
to do something like prepare skin tissue, turn a hormone
up or down, or trigger I mune activity, insulin and
golp ones.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
They're peptides.
Speaker 10 (10:04):
Our bodies make them naturally, but it turns out we
can make them synthetically too. People inject peptides with needles
so they can enter the bloodstream without being broken down
by the digestive system. Popular uses are for muscle gain,
fat loss, skin collagen, injury recovery, and many more. Common
(10:25):
side effects and injectables include redness and swelling up the
injection point, headaches, dizziness, and mild gastro issues.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
Anyway, back to Chathan today. Chatham lives in marin a
beautiful fairy ride away from San Francisco, in this cliff
side bungalow that looks over a sea of redwoods. Do
you find that? Like in California, it's a pretty common
question to ask what your peptide stack is or things
like that, like is that a common entry at parties?
Speaker 11 (11:00):
You know, I mean the commin entry of parties at
California is does what's your spirit animal?
Speaker 2 (11:04):
And I'm shocked that you.
Speaker 7 (11:05):
Don't know that. Among days after coming out here this
many times.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
Curve it the frog this fine. Apparently, like many of
his friends, Jathan has started taking red a true tide,
a synthetic peptide that's in phase three testing, meaning it's
in clinical trials, but you can't get it prescribed yet,
so early adopters are sourcing it from the gray market.
REDDA is basically a third generation of GLP one, targeting
(11:31):
three hormone pathways instead of just one to affect greater
weight loss. But I mean, in your experience, are there
any downsides? Like how is going to the bathroom?
Speaker 7 (11:41):
How is going to the bathroom like taking a pooh?
Speaker 2 (11:43):
Yeah, it's fine, no issues.
Speaker 11 (11:49):
There is something about it, like I definitely like what
the fuck am I doing? You know, like injecting myself
with these things. There's a psychological sort of hump with it.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
Chathan's been searching for something his whole adult life. He's
moved fluidly from corporate jobs and startups to dropping out
to live in ashrooms or go work with a shaman.
And when he stopped finding comfort in western medicine, he
went looking for new answers.
Speaker 11 (12:22):
Started working with a functional medicine doctor ex Tremere's a
lotles psychedelics in a healing capacity.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
Mouth taping. Put a piece of tape over your mouth.
You literally can't open your mouth and you're forced to breathe.
Speaker 5 (12:32):
Through your nose.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
It was like mind blowing, how much better I felt?
For years, as Chathan kept looking for ways to heal himself,
I worried about him a lot, but Chathan's also been
worrying about me.
Speaker 11 (12:50):
I think we're at this age where this is like
actually a pretty important flection point when we kind of
transition into a new kind.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
Of chapter in life.
Speaker 11 (12:59):
A lot of the types of things that we're talking
about do add up, and they can be really intense,
and so I would be a huge fan of you
taking charge of that does not be peptides.
Speaker 2 (13:11):
But so I'll just leave it there. I can't say
that I try everything Jathan does. Safety third is a
value he picked up from burning men. But I do
admire how he lives his life. He's always collecting and
savoring new experiences, dipping into some new subculture, befriending the
chefs who serve brunch at some hidden Thai temple, or
(13:35):
bringing me to a hippie cheers where they serve cacau
elixers and dance wildly and also close shop at ten pm.
I feel like a.
Speaker 11 (13:45):
Silicon val, like a lot of people are really into
like all this crazy longevity stuff, and I think there's
a certain correlation between people who have a more like
tech oriented mindset and to take that same lens to
their well being. So I think that I share that
this optimizing sort of mentality to my own biology.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
Of course, as much as Tathan has evolved and optimized
and is open about getting REDDA on the gray market,
he's still a first gen kid at heart. I mean, like,
have you told your parents?
Speaker 7 (14:17):
No? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (14:18):
Do you think you will?
Speaker 7 (14:20):
I'm might.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
Chapter two, startup founder healed myself on Google Maps. Frontier
Tower is marked by a little astronaut icon. But as
we had I get distracted by how bleak The scene
(15:02):
is empty bottles and syringes, people in tattered clothes passed out,
and I can see why. Mandana, my producer, told me
this is an area she doesn't feel safe walking through
at night. But then we're at the tower where stepping
through the entrance with you to another world. Inside it's
(15:27):
like a startup embassy from the future. People are dressed artfully.
Everyone's young and beaming and full of energy. Elliott, the
founder of the biopunk community, greets us in the foyer.
Speaker 12 (15:39):
We have fifteen stories upon here, fifteen stories of good.
Speaker 13 (15:45):
And then I.
Speaker 10 (15:47):
Ended up implanting the card hand.
Speaker 2 (15:50):
Oh you did, but instead of using a magnetic key
card to work the elevator, he waves his hand against
the reader, using an implanted computter chip to let us in.
The tiny chip about the size of a grain of
rice is the same tech used to power tap to
pay cards and phones, and it's actually one of a
(16:12):
few subdermal implants that Elliott has.
Speaker 7 (16:15):
This figure.
Speaker 14 (16:19):
So distortion to my guitar.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
I'm grinning because this is exactly what I've been longing
for young scientists and biopunks, people experimenting on themselves with implants,
pushing boundaries, modeling a future for the rest of us.
Elliott has to run to a meeting, so he introduces
me to Lawrence. Welcome, Thank you. Lawrence Ion is a
(16:43):
founder of Viva City, where death is optional. It's a
city which for now exists only here on the Frontier
Tower's eleventh floor. Lawrence is short, crim wears glasses. He
also has this gentle Romanian accent, and he reminds me
a little of Dexter from Dexter's laboratory.
Speaker 15 (17:05):
I spent most of my time. I don't really have
a reason to be anywhere else in San Francisco because
everyone just comes by here.
Speaker 7 (17:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
As he tells us the towers history, Lawrence tours us
through the building floor by floor.
Speaker 15 (17:19):
We're building a new society with this vertical village. Three
years ago we started a new movement, of a new
kind of gathering to explore what would feel like to
live with like many people in a new city, an
intentional city.
Speaker 2 (17:36):
And so the building is split up into themed floors,
each treated like its own neighborhood with its own flavor.
Speaker 15 (17:43):
Each one is a community of itself, so it's a
community of communities. We have a floor for ai, floor
for crypto, floor for longevity and so on. Have robotics.
We have a gym and a sauna and a little
dragon as well, a live dragon.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
I was curious what he meant by a dragon, but
another tower introduced me. Turns out it was a beardy,
like the class pet at Ruby's pre k.
Speaker 12 (18:06):
What's the dragon's name Splash Splash, Yes, super cute.
Speaker 16 (18:11):
He doesn't like baths, so he tries to jump out
of them, so that's why his name is Splash.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
There's also a Moroccan style tea lounge and a floor
for music and arts, because, as he tells me, every
civilization needs culture. There's a basement that's used for robot battles,
but also peptide raves. Instead of Kickball sign up sheets
on the wall. There are flyers to mess around with
gene therapy. As Lawrence tells it, to co work at
(18:39):
the space. You apply to a floor if your choosing.
If you're into bitcoin, the crypto floor is for you.
If robotics is your jam, there's a community on that
floor waiting for you. Elliot runs a wet lab on
one floor where you can actually run experiments and play
with crisper and gene editing. My favorite floor is the
(19:03):
Maker's lab, where Lawrence has one of the leads point
out a few things.
Speaker 7 (19:07):
This is Tony, one of.
Speaker 17 (19:09):
The So my name is Tony, and I really like
building things, honestly. Basically I started with a three D printer,
and then one thing led to another, and then we
just had a crap ton of machines. I like to
tell folks we have the capability of going from rocks
to machines that think, which is just a really fun
thing to be able to say and actually mean.
Speaker 2 (19:31):
So growing up, my dad had pieces of stereos and
computers he was building or taking apart scattered around the house.
Our garage was filled with carpentry tools, so this, It
actually feels like my world. They're handbuilt arcade machines and
electronic signs and three D printed gizmos all around me,
and I'm surrounded by this spirit of invention. Looking at
(19:54):
the shelves, I feel like a kid in a toy store.
I just want to pull everything down and play. And
if I live close by, I might even consider ponying
up the two hundred and thirty dollars a month to
use it. Before long, we end up back on floor eleven,
the Longevity Floor where Lawrence works. He isn't a founder
of this tower of fun, but he is kind of
(20:15):
like the mayor, and he's excited to show us a
doctor's office cramped full of biohacking equipment hiding in the back.
Speaker 15 (20:23):
So here in the clinic, apart from the doctor consultations,
he also supervises and does sessions with HBOT, these hyperbaric
oxygen therapy chambers.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
So there's a doctor here who comes in and.
Speaker 7 (20:38):
Consultation.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
Yeah, for anyone within the building outside. Amazing. Yeah, that's the.
Speaker 15 (20:46):
Frontier tower. Citizens get the better pricing, and Longevity Floor
members get some sessions for free every month.
Speaker 2 (20:55):
I have a sense of why Lawrence is so passionate
about this intentional community that he's cultivated in this tower.
But I want to understand why he cares so much
about longevity, Like why is it that he wants to
extend his life so badly? I'm so curious, Like, what
is it that drives a person to this space?
Speaker 15 (21:16):
Yeah, I was born with a genetic disease. It's called
MT multiple hairly theiry exostoses there's these bone tumors. I
have dozens of them still. But I had a lot
of surgeries growing up. I spent a lot of time
in hospitals.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
You know, one of the best pieces of advice anyone
ever gave me is if you don't see something in
the world that you want, make it. But even then,
I'm surprised by how many people I've met on this trip,
many people in this building who've launched a company because
they wanted to heal themselves, including Lawrence. Lawrence tells me
(22:09):
how so much of his youth was spent staring at
hospital ceilings, how he knows what it's like to be frail,
and how he's still in a lot of pain.
Speaker 15 (22:19):
I initially wanted to become a doctor, but I was
I had a hard time talking to people kind of
on the spectrum and wouldn't be able to really talk
to strangers.
Speaker 2 (22:29):
He quickly realizes he has an aptitude for computers, for
creating games in new worlds, virtual places where he can
escape his body. Before long, he's recruited to Silicon Valley,
and today Lawrence has his fingers in all sorts of
startup eyes. He tells me about a researcher who's using
a cryptotoken called cryo Rat to fund his attempt to
(22:51):
bring a frozen rat back to life.
Speaker 15 (22:54):
I see chronics as like an ambulance through time to
a future hospital where they can bring it back and
fix whatever was wrong with you.
Speaker 2 (23:03):
So the Paronis is advanced enough to be able to
pull that off.
Speaker 15 (23:06):
Yet there are amazing results on cryo preservation. And also
we've brought back organs and some organisms.
Speaker 2 (23:16):
From the latest I've read scientists have brought a piece
of brain tissue from a mouse's brain back from deep freeze,
which is incredible, but still it's a ways off from
that time ambulance. And then Lawrence tells me about his
dreams of the singularity.
Speaker 15 (23:33):
I think we cannot predict what happens after that explosion.
Speaker 2 (23:37):
This hypothetical, and Off talked about moment when AI will
make technology move so quickly and so much faster than
ever before that it's going to be near incomprehensible for mankind.
I'm sympathetic to the idea of why someone who might
have felt crapped in an imperfect body would be excited
about the possibility of shedding his.
Speaker 15 (23:58):
I'm super curious to see what how weapons once we
have brainwashing interfaces and we can communicate a peed of thought,
and yeah, I don't even know what could be right
like people a few thousand years ago, hunter gatherers, or
even like Kevman like, I'm sure they couldn't imagine the
things we do right.
Speaker 2 (24:15):
Now here at Frontier Tower, it feels like there are
two ideas in competition. There's this pervasive sense that you
need to take the world and all its flaws into
your own hands because no one is coming to save you.
And also there's a belief that some godly AI will
be the solution, that AI is coming with all the
(24:36):
answers to save us. And I don't quite know how
to square those ideas. But Lawrence still hasn't answered my
original question, so I ask him again, why is it
that he wants to live forever?
Speaker 15 (24:50):
I just know that I love life and I wouldn't
want to die as long as I'm healthy. I think
east I want to live tomorrow, and I'm pretty sure
tomorrow I want to live another day. And if you
use mathematics proof by induction, you probably don't are not
ever going to want to stop as long as you're healthy.
Speaker 2 (25:13):
Lawrence isn't alone in San Francisco. I'll meet dozens of
young people who have only just started living, people who
grew up feeling isolated and lonely and have taken heroic
doses of mushrooms to combat their depression and chase their
founder dreams, and have been drawn here like a summer
camp for brilliant folks and oddballs who finally found one another.
(25:38):
And now they're happy, and they want to stretch that
feeling out for as long as they can before Mandana
turns the recorder off. I have one final question, how
old are you?
Speaker 7 (25:53):
Well?
Speaker 15 (25:54):
I could say that I'm one hundred and twenty, but no,
I'm thirty.
Speaker 2 (25:57):
One thirty one. I wonder if Laurence ever thought he'd
make it to the stage, and then I wonder if
he's ever contemplated just how far away thirty one is
from Forever Chapter three. The Vitalists, Manda Da and I
(26:47):
have been sitting in this same little studio on Longevity
Floor conducting interviews for four or five hours. Now the
sun has gone down. Members have started to leave for
the day. But there are a few more important people
I need to meet, including Adam Grease. Adam is one
of the most important founders, organizers, and evangelists in this
(27:08):
radical longevity scene. But right now I'm waiting for him
to complete his first sentence. As he talks, he closes
his eyes like a vessel, waiting for each perfect word
to hit his tongue before he delivers it.
Speaker 18 (27:27):
So I'm a tech entrepreneur and also a longevity revolutionary.
Speaker 2 (27:52):
Revolutionary is the right word. Adam started the Vitalism movement,
which views defeating death as its core more duty, and
he also runs Vitalist Bay, a pop up festival that
feels like a woodstock of the longevity movement. So what
is a vitalist and how do you define that?
Speaker 18 (28:13):
I think the most important parts of it are that
death is humanity's core problem and aging it's primary agent,
and this is quite an iconoclastic position. Most people wouldn't
agree that death is humanity's core problem. They would think
(28:34):
that perhaps suffering is the core problem, and this distinguishes vitalists.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
The story of vitalism is rooted in COVID. As the
first wave of the pandemic hit the US, Adam could
see things would go into lockdown and that there wouldn't
be a quick fix. So he makes this big short
style bet in the markets.
Speaker 18 (28:55):
And I predicted when the lockdowns would happen, and I
made this big return. But the experience was also really
traumatizing and shocking in that the implication of that bet
succeeding was the millions of people were likely going to die.
Speaker 2 (29:12):
That bet lined his pockets handsomely, but it also filled
him with dread. Suddenly death didn't seem distant or abstract.
Adam had always strived to be healthy, but his focus
shifted to realizing he didn't want to die, that we
didn't have to die.
Speaker 18 (29:31):
It was that experience during COVID which pushed me over
that hump, in the sense that it became very evident
that nobody was coming to the rescue.
Speaker 2 (29:40):
So Adam did something. He quit his job to focus
on longevity. But instead of investing and waiting to see
if he could affect some sliver of change, he wanted
to create real urgency around defeating death. And to do
this he realized he had to catalyze something big and public,
(30:01):
because death, he believes, can be conquered. We just need
an apollo project of longevity to take root and for
this country to unite behind a common goal.
Speaker 18 (30:11):
This is immense knowledge, capital, stock, history, connections, and so forth.
We just wanted to benefit as many people as possible.
Speaker 2 (30:21):
But as he talks about the history of movement building
and his theory of change, he mentions Soros and the
Koch Brothers, tech libertarians and others who have had a
disproportionate influence.
Speaker 18 (30:35):
It's usually not one person, but it's not a popular movement,
like the neocons were never like a popular movement. They
had their for profits Halliburton, Lockheed, Martin, Exon Mobile, They
had people in government, Dick Cheney, George W. Paul Wolfovitz,
et cetera. They had their nonprofit Heritage and Cato Institute,
and they had their media initiatives and so forth.
Speaker 2 (30:57):
And this is the path he wants vitalism to take.
Speaker 18 (31:01):
And so the way we think about it is like
the longevity and the vitalist idea should also try to
impact attention in this way. I mean this, we're not
inventing anything.
Speaker 2 (31:14):
Adam, like so many people I've interviewed in the space,
believes no one is coming to save us. You've heard
him say it. But also he's worried about what happens
if we give AI too much power.
Speaker 18 (31:27):
In the age of AI, we're going to have super intelligence,
and what is it trained on? A culture of death?
Speaker 2 (31:34):
AI, he points out, is trained on our libraries of knowledge.
So if you ask an LLM about death, that defines
it in the way humans have for generations that death
gives life, meaning that death is natural. So if you
give AI the power to make decisions.
Speaker 18 (31:51):
Now imagine, just in a very simplistic scenario, five years
from now, you have some super AI and the AI
needs to evaluate whether to allow you know, half of
humanity to die. It would look into its LM knowledge
graph and it would see, well, you know, death isn't
that bad. Some humans think death is fine. Let's kill
(32:12):
off half of humanity.
Speaker 2 (32:18):
I really don't know how to process this.
Speaker 14 (32:21):
That if we are training the AI on a death
accepting culture, we are literally committee suicide. Not figuratively, we
are literally walking into suicide because this AI will consider
death to be.
Speaker 2 (32:34):
Fine, despite his healthy fear of suicide by AI. Adam
doesn't think the answer is becoming one with computers, you know,
the way Lawrence does, dreaming of integrating tech and entwining
it with his body, and Adam worries that extreme body
(32:56):
replacement maybe on a fast track.
Speaker 18 (32:59):
This is a stone's throwaway from where we are right now,
and when we're able to take a quadriplegic and say, hey,
you know what, what if you could walk, but we
have to chop off your biological leg, but we'll give
you a bionic lag would they take it? I mean,
I don't know. I think that day is coming pretty close.
(33:20):
And to me that notion is extremely scary because you're
starting to treat our core biology as just replaceable parts.
And once you start doing that, the question is where
do you draw a line.
Speaker 2 (33:44):
I am too old fashioned to want to put a
chip in my brain, at least while I'm healthy. I'm
too worried about the safety of it. Could it be hacked.
Could someone see the virus onto it? But also I'm
a little skeptical that I'll ever have to confront the decision.
I read about a single shot that was supposed to
cure your allergies twenty years ago. Were nighttime contacts that
(34:06):
were supposed to reshape your cornea as you slept, to
give you perfect vision. I'm still putting on glasses every morning.
So Adam hopes that vitalists like him will embrace their
humanity and focus on living forever in a human body.
Speaker 18 (34:26):
Just to recast if you want to live longer, you know,
to kind of echo Jordan Peterson, what do you mean
by you? What do you mean by longer? I wish
more people were thinking about because if we love what
(34:48):
being human is, then in a way, it's much more
likely that we will stay more human as we are
now if we solve aging than in any other alternative.
Speaker 2 (35:02):
This is perhaps the most revolutionary thing about Adam. He's
the leader of a movement to defeat death. Who wants
to stay human, who wants to forever be human.
Speaker 18 (35:14):
I don't think anybody is internalizing how fast and meaningful
this is likely going to be, because what will happen
in the alternative is that we will likely become cyborgs.
Speaker 2 (35:42):
Chapter four, A Brief and Incomplete Guide to the Biopunk.
Speaker 12 (35:48):
I wanted to prove my chem teacher wrong, and I
wanted to make like dragons or something like that, and
like engineer them so they breathe fire, right, And so
I started looking at this experiment to make glowing frogs.
Speaker 2 (36:00):
That's Elliott Roth, founder of Biopunk Studios. I asked him
how he first fell in love with science, and he's
telling me about a high school biology project.
Speaker 12 (36:09):
There was a recent Nobel Prize in two thousand and
eight where it was all around his glowing avatar like protein,
and I decided to start filling around with these frogs
to see if I could make anything work. What he
didn't know is that they were an invasive species. And
so that was the first time that my parents got
a letter from the federal government saying you can't import
(36:29):
these frogs.
Speaker 2 (36:30):
There are more times time.
Speaker 12 (36:36):
There's a time with the NBI where I was like,
don't worry about that was that was something else.
Speaker 2 (36:42):
I bumped into Elliott a few times today. He's the
guy with the NFC implanted in his hand, and in
my very few interactions, I've learned that one he takes
after his mom.
Speaker 12 (36:53):
I grew up with a wonderful but very overbearing Jewish mother.
Speaker 2 (36:57):
And so he worries when you're not fed. He asked
me a few times now if I want a granola
bar or if he can pop out to get me
some food. Two he wears a tiny DNA double helix
on his neck as a reminder.
Speaker 12 (37:11):
As a means of realizing that I'm human, you know,
and like it's kind of something, kind of core part
of me.
Speaker 2 (37:18):
And three, when I complimented him on his rock star
black and white outfit, which is comprised of black jeans,
black T shirt, a checkered black and white short sleeve
button down, along with one white shoe and one black shoe,
he explains that everything he wears is thrifted or gifted, and.
Speaker 12 (37:37):
So I was given this by somebody really really close
to me. These shoes were thrifted. This was given to
me by somebody who's really close because I worked in
algae and so.
Speaker 2 (37:46):
The biopunk House had a wonderful feel to it, like
a grand old art storm that had been repurposed to
contain big ideas a place not just to rest your head,
but to work and be inspired. Elliott and his colleague
and I have taken great care in curating the personalities,
and more than a few of the founders told me
the joy of when you're tired of thinking about your
(38:07):
own projects. How good it feels to help a new
friend out by giving some thoughts or perspective. Also, I
didn't get to meet all the residents, but some definitely
sounded pretty wild. Wait wait, wait, tell me more about
the black Boys.
Speaker 8 (38:22):
There are two male founders working on Blood and they're
going to be living together.
Speaker 16 (38:27):
It's either going to be it'll be the best of
times and the worst of times that have vampires.
Speaker 2 (38:33):
So it's a scene. But right now I'm excited to
dig into Elliott's story. It turns out it all starts
in college.
Speaker 12 (38:43):
So I start working in this lab and I show
up every single day and they just make me wash dishes.
That's really all they do.
Speaker 2 (38:50):
But it was more than that. Elliott had his ideas
ripped from him while being sidelined from the work, and
when he complained.
Speaker 12 (38:56):
To a supervisor, he was like, you know, that's just
kind of the way it works. Like this is how
academia is, and I'm like, well, then academia sucks.
Speaker 2 (39:04):
Man College, it turns out is just another disappointing institution
that isn't coming to save you. But then Elliott has
an idea, what.
Speaker 12 (39:15):
If we just start collecting lab gear. Made friends with
the salvage yard guy. I figured out that he really
liked salta dancing, so I got him like salsa dancing
tickets and ended up collecting lab gear and putting in
in this garage space. And in like three years we
collected about half million dollars with lab equipment and started
doing projects.
Speaker 2 (39:40):
I love the spirit so much. I know it's so different,
but it feels a little like how we started Mental
Flaws from our dorm room. I sent out a dozen
internship applications to magazines and I didn't get a response.
So I figured the only way I'd ever get my
name in print was teaming up with my friends and
doing it scrappy. Making friends with a guy at Kinko's
(40:01):
and bringing him pizza and Beard let us design in
the back for cheap, ripping expensive software, tricking people at
national bookstore chains into believing that we were professionals, so
that they would stalk our non existent magazine. We collaged
illustrations and made bad jokes no one else would ever
publish because it made us laugh. Every night until four
(40:24):
or five am. We were upwriting and designing and making.
And I don't know that I could ever be a
longevity revolutionary, but a biopunk that feels like my speed.
Speaker 12 (40:41):
I think punk really in the punk ethos is all
about rebelling against an existing system for mutual aid.
Speaker 2 (40:48):
For Elliott, biopunk is for everyone. He recognizes that there's
a whole world of people who don't feel comfortable in
their body, and he wants to empower them all to
use the lab to change that. He tells me how
excited he is about a new seminar he's giving on
hormone replacement therapy.
Speaker 12 (41:05):
In the same room, you will have these cool transkits.
You're going to have these perimenopausal, menopausal housewives and bodybuilders.
And I think that's just such a fascinating mix and
blend of different backgrounds.
Speaker 2 (41:18):
And he understands why age is another reason people are
willing to experiment, Like when.
Speaker 12 (41:22):
You get old, you look in the mirror and you're
like that, that's not who I remember myself to.
Speaker 2 (41:27):
Be because to him, everything that's happening in the community
he's building is about being your authentic self.
Speaker 12 (41:34):
I mean, I think biotechnology is inherently trans right, Like
it's all about how do you change in modify biology.
Speaker 2 (41:41):
But he worries about people experimenting without information. Not everyone
was trying to modify frogs in high school. So he
brings people together for teachings in the coolest ways he
can dream up, like peptide raves.
Speaker 12 (41:55):
We realize that many people were quietly doing science by Reddit,
and what that means is that they go online, they
find some sort of weird online supplier. They say, hey,
this is going to fix me, and then they get
it shipped in the mail and they inject some random
thing and then they feel horrible and instead, rather than
(42:17):
having this happen in secret, what we did is we say,
let's do like a little bit of like an educational
show and tell, where we show you how to source test,
do blood draws. You know, understand your own diagnostics compounds,
and inject properly. Because I'm not telling people to go
inject these things definitely not. What I'm saying is that
(42:39):
if you were to do this, there is a particular
way in which you can do it safely and the
rave part. Then afterwards we had a dance.
Speaker 2 (42:47):
Party too much. Chapter five, Women on the Frontier.
Speaker 13 (43:31):
I think now everybody's focused on like peptizes, RI scans.
I think one of the most controversial topics I called
MRI scans are like horoscopes for tech ros.
Speaker 2 (43:46):
That's Jala's Oudakova. I just sat down with her and
her friend Juliette Humor, who works in the building. Well,
Juliet's a new friend.
Speaker 19 (43:54):
We met at the semi finals filming.
Speaker 2 (43:57):
Jaylah bounces between her home and Zurich and her labs
at Harvard where she runs her startup at Loomisseell and
Juliette is the founder of another startup, muse Bio. The
two met on a reality YouTube show where founders pitch
for a million dollars in investment and they hit it off.
Speaker 19 (44:13):
Plus our work is like, I want to use her
equipment for our tech law just yeah, really aligned, and
she's awesome. Yeah, we're really quick.
Speaker 13 (44:22):
And last week I was actually hosting dinner, so I
smuggled fifteen kilos of Swiss cheese.
Speaker 2 (44:28):
Every place I'd been before Frontier Tower seemed noticeably male,
and then Prospera. Everyone who visited told me the same thing,
that it's eighty percent men. And while Elliott has improved
the ratios significantly since I visited, when I was there,
the Biopunk residency was one hundred percent men. Elliott tells
(44:49):
me that he'd set it up as fifty to fifty
and he'd worked hard to recruit women across the globe,
but then the US government put a block on visas.
So aside from Roxanna, who helps run the program, the
house was entirely men. But here in Frontier Tower the
mix is noticeably more balanced. You feel it all around you,
on every floor and right off the bat. Juliette is
(45:12):
reminding me how common longevity practices aren't one size fits all.
Speaker 19 (45:17):
These trends on intrinten fasting and cold plunging, like the
results that are advertised are advertised as like ubiquitous among
people men and women, but they're actually significantly different and
pretty detrimental, Like women are just generally not set up
for inter written fasting.
Speaker 20 (45:36):
That's pretty detrimental to their.
Speaker 2 (45:38):
Healthy But I want to know more about how Juliette
found her way into this scene.
Speaker 19 (45:44):
This is might take a set minute here, I tell you.
Speaker 2 (45:47):
But at twenty three, juliet suffered a freak injury when
an ordinary sneeze revealed this underlying spinal condition.
Speaker 19 (45:55):
And I was immobilized for several years, just like immobilism, Yeah,
like in bed, could barely move and sit, couldn't twist.
Speaker 2 (46:04):
But when she looked for solutions, she realized that the
only answers were surgeries with very low success rates and
ones that would have to be repeated every four or
five years.
Speaker 19 (46:14):
I wasn't satisfied with the options that the doctors were
providing me, and I found that stem cells was an
option I couldn't afford what was currently available.
Speaker 2 (46:24):
And so Juliete's trying to figure out how to embrace
this new body. She'd studied chemistry and microbiology and college,
and she's working in biotech, so she's got the right background.
But then she starts going to conferences for inspiration.
Speaker 19 (46:38):
And I was actually the conference that I met Elliot
at where I saw this presentation of the research findings
on stem cells and menstrul blood.
Speaker 2 (46:47):
Juliette is immediately fascinated with this idea of harvesting stem
cells from period blood to use it in therapeutics. She
grew up nearby in Napa in a family of entrepreneurs,
and for all her life her parents have been making
grape seed oil.
Speaker 19 (47:01):
They make a value product from some waste product. So
I've had the concept of circular economies, and.
Speaker 2 (47:08):
So something's percolating, this idea of pulling value from something
that's seen as waste. And then later in the conference,
she meets a Ukrainian scientist who lights a fire.
Speaker 19 (47:18):
She's like, if you have an ounce of passion, an
ounce of expertise, an ounce of willingness to do something like,
go fucking do it. And she told me about how
the largest population of victims of war are burned victims.
Your chance of surviving burn wounds goes up twenty percent
of us stem cells during the healing process. I had
(47:39):
just seen this mensrul blood stem cell presentation and my
partner at the time was a burn survivor, and I
had this back injury that I needed stem cells for,
and so as a scientist, I was like, I need
to dive into this research.
Speaker 2 (47:53):
So that's what Julia has done with muse Bio. She's
created a company to harvest stem cells for menstrual blood,
and she actually won that startup competition on the promise
of this technology.
Speaker 19 (48:04):
And it makes perfect sense. I mean, like this source
of cells, this function is to allow for the development
of new human in nine months, and when it's not
doing that, it's regenerating that organ in the adult human
body without any scarring.
Speaker 2 (48:17):
And it's the only organ that does that. Juliete tells
me that they've set up donor collections at places like
Frontier Tower. They give them goodie bags and menstrual cups
and chocolates. They also compensate them forty dollars per donation,
and they offer STI testing. But what's most evident in
all of this is that men in science weren't looking
at or thinking about menstrual blood as a potential solution,
(48:41):
because why would they.
Speaker 19 (48:43):
Everybody is really focusing on the egg. Yeah, you know,
we've kind of optimized the embryo of the egg, but
no one's looking at the nest.
Speaker 2 (48:50):
But Juliette did look, and that allowed her to discover
something completely revolutionary.
Speaker 19 (48:56):
What we're seeing is that this cell line wasults in
scarfree healing. It's anti fibrotic, like no other stem cells
scar scarfree healing. So no other stem cell line does this.
Speaker 2 (49:12):
That's remarkable and so so what when did you manage
to start getting the therapy for yourself or like.
Speaker 19 (49:17):
The I I so it hasn't happened yet.
Speaker 2 (49:24):
To me, this is the most heartbreaking part of it all.
Oh you're still suffering.
Speaker 19 (49:29):
Yeah, I'm still intending to heal myself. But we are
coming out with an aesthetic product.
Speaker 2 (49:36):
Actually that Juliette is still in pain, that she's made
these incredible leaves forward, that she's looking where no one
else would to find a well spring of potential. But
in the end, what she has is a skin cream.
(49:57):
But Juliette will keep working. She has too, because until
now no one has come to save her. But if
she can light the path forward, maybe others will.
Speaker 19 (50:09):
So in essence, the esthetic product is a demonstration of
what is possible in the parts of us that we
cannot see.
Speaker 2 (50:32):
My trip to the Bay has taken it out of me.
Two days packed with interviews, racing from Palo Alto to Marin,
from one side of San Francisco to the other. So
right now I am completely dazed. I was skeptical of
Frontier tower. How much was for show, But I am
genuinely inspired by the people here, the community inside this building,
(50:56):
young scientists and makers and people who felt like outs
in their youth but now belong. As Jayla tells me,
this space is different.
Speaker 13 (51:09):
Everyone is so supportive of yours, like the network pulls
you in and it keeps giving and giving and giving.
They don't know any other place in the world that
is like this. So you know, we're based out of Harvard,
We're like in this ecosystem in Boston. Obviously they're in
biotech focused, but it's also very elitists. It also doesn't
pull you in. The inns are much more difficult, and.
Speaker 2 (51:34):
I do think there's something to that. This is not academia.
You don't have to apprentice your way up to test
your ideas. It is a frontier tower, not an ivory
one built with the spirit that science is for everyone.
But it isn't, not really, because as Mondona and I
left the building, we felt the starkness between the tower
(51:57):
and the city outside. We talked about it over the phone.
Speaker 20 (52:01):
Back onto the streets of market in San Francisco, where
you're met with people huddling getting high. You know, kind
of this loneliness on the streets. There's so much promise
in this building and future and people kind of having
plans about a new world. But you know, I exit
(52:24):
this building just wondering, like, who can actually go kind
of gallivant on an island and play with bitcoins and
medical advancements.
Speaker 2 (52:47):
It's hard for me not to think about doctor William
Hre and his analogy of the two worms. How evolutions
split a species into one group of halves and another
of have.
Speaker 20 (52:58):
Nots seems like such a privilege and so far away
from some of the actual realities that are existing around it.
They're definitely a bubble onto their own I wouldn't call
it a vertical village. I would call it a floating island,
like it's its own prospera in the middle of San Francisco.
Speaker 2 (53:38):
Next time on How to Live Forever, I find myself
drawn to the other side of the country, in the
middle of another ocean, following a dark trail of whispers
about stealthy schemes for cloning and organ transplants.
Speaker 16 (53:52):
I've seen him do things in our lab that I'm
afraid to name because I think they sound like miracles.
Speaker 2 (54:25):
Let's do the credits. Skyline Drive is production of Kaleidoscope
and iHeart Podcast. The show is hosted and written by
Me Mongish Hearticular with a ton of help. Lizzie Jacobs
is my partner in life who made this episode happen
during a snowpocalypse while I was sipping vegan longevity juice
in California. I also have massive, massive help from the
most talented and most cat loving Mary Phillip Sandy and
(54:49):
Guy who Knows a Guy signs producer Mark Steven Allen,
who is to thank for so many interviews in this episode.
Mark Lotto is the very best story editor and somehow
gave me the best note while also editing two other
incredible books and a million other things. Also producing on
this app and on Mike the wonderful Mondana Mofidi, who
(55:10):
helped me navigate Frontier Tower and managed one really, really
long and challenging day of production. There are two s
any things we did during this episode because of a
few insanely talented and kind friends who helped out. The
musical Prospero was composed by David Nagler, a guy who
can turn literally anything into an incredible song, and Jim Leha,
(55:31):
an unparalleled artist and friend who lent his gorgeous voice.
Thank you so much, Jim. Then there's Ali Oops, friend
of the pod and budding surfing influencer who helped us
make Peptides worth listening to. If you want to hear
more from Ali, go to Ali Oops on OnlyFans. This
episode was mixed by the absolutely brilliant Joe Ploured. Thank
(55:52):
you so much Joe for making this sound so beautiful,
with a appropriately unnerving score from Botany. Also, there are gorgeous
tracks from the artist Bliss Samsa Nathan. Thank you so
much for helping out with this episode. If you want
to hear more, we made you a mixtape. Just check
out the show notes.
Speaker 7 (56:10):
This show is.
Speaker 2 (56:11):
Executive produced from iHeart by my good friends Ali Perry
and Katrina Norvel from Kaleidoscope. We've got my co founder
Ozwa Liishin. Costas Linos for keeping the lights on with
a smile. Costas, You're the best. Julia Nutter, our head
of studio, Rachel Strom, a famously great lawyer, neighbor and human.
Also Christy David, Dara Agne, Sheena Calypso, al Viahiny for
(56:33):
the beautiful collage art. There are a lot of you.
I also want to give a little special thanks to
all the kiddos, Henry and Ruby, my two little Maniacs.
Also Julian Grendel, lou Baby, leon Enzo and Pearl e Tour.
All my friends at iHeart, including Bob Connell, Will Kerrie, Nikki, Jason,
Jerry and Moore. Also Shanthan Soro, my family in India,
(56:54):
my family and the States. The very very biggest thanks
to Evan Ratliffe for doing the intro to today's show
or evans Ai Clone who I guess did it? If
you haven't listened to the new season of Shell Game,
it is honestly one of my favorite things that came
out in the last year. Please go check it out.
And just one last thank you to my Amma, my dad,
(57:16):
Lalita who I thank my lucky stars for always Thank
you so much for listening.
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