If We Add Years To Life What Adds Life To Years

Living longer sounds like the ultimate win, until you ask the question most people skip: what are we doing with the extra time? I’m joined by filmmaker David Donnelly, creator of Forever Young, to talk about the very real longevity revolution now unfolding across AI-driven medicine, biomarkers, and precision healthcare. The film’s vision of seamless health tracking feels futuristic, but David makes the case that many of these tools are already here in early form, and AI is rapidly removing old bottlenecks in research and clinical decision-making.

We dig into the practical framework that keeps the hype in check: healthspan vs lifespan. Extending life without extending vitality is a bad deal, and we talk about “aging cliffs,” why “normal” lab ranges can still mean “not healthy,” and how biomarkers like the Horvath Clock changed what scientists can measure. David also shares what surprised him most after years filming at places like the Buck Institute, plus where he remains skeptical, including escape velocity and techno-immortality narratives.

Then we zoom out to the part that hits hardest: mental health is health. If loneliness, anxiety, and depression keep rising, longer lives can become longer suffering. We unpack community and purpose as core longevity levers, what blue zones get right, how geography and zip code shape outcomes, and what a sane first step looks like for anyone feeling behind: baseline blood work, trusted guidance, and steady fundamentals. Subscribe, share this with a friend who will challenge your thinking, and leave a review with your biggest question about the future of longevity.

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Transcript

The Longevity Revolution’s Big Questions

SPEAKER_00 0:00

This revolution is real. Like this revolution is happening, and we're not prepared for it necessarily in many ways. But then it started creating more questions in a direction that I didn't necessarily expect, which were more existential. What are the consequences of this revolution that's happening? What is the point of living longer if anxiety and depression continue to rise, especially in the United States? Are we just gonna have a lot of miserable, lonely, anxious people living longer? Uh, does that sound like a good scenario? What can we do about, you know, longevity inequity? How can we make sure this technology gets down to as many people as possible? Otherwise, you know, we're gonna have pretty much like despeciation, two different species of humans that are, you know, one like superhumans and the other ones that don't have the same access.

SPEAKER_01 0:45

This is the Longevity Loop Podcast, and I'm your host, Brent Wallace. In every episode, I bring you the leading voices in longevity, plus my own insights, put the world's best strategies directly into your hands, making elite longevity strategies accessible to everyone, regardless of your background. So let's jump into the loop starting right now. All right, everyone. Welcome back to the Longevity Loop podcast, where we try to separate what actually moves the needle in health from expensive, well, it's never the pun today. You know, I usually say expensive wellness theater, and uh that's appropriate since we have a filmmaker on the podcast today. But my name is Brent Wallace, and we're digging into the future of longevity today. Uh, super excited about this episode, super excited about the movie we're talking about. It's called Forever Young. Uh, it's it's kind of like the future of medicine, AI-driven medicine, and really what the possibilities are with all kinds of experts from the Buck Institute, all kinds of cool, I mean, awesome film. We're gonna get into it. And uh, and also what will actually happen if we actually start living a lot longer. So we have filmmaker David Donnelly on the podcast with us today. And right before we jump into talking to David here, just a quick reality check that before the internet starts self-prescribing itself all kinds of like, okay, diagnosis and whatever, I'm not a doctor, I'm not pretending to be one. David's not a doctor, he's not pretending to be one. The show is not personal medical advice, it's not a diagnosis, not treatments, none of that stuff. Longevity medicine, as if you watch the film, it's highly precisioned, very much just for each individual thing. So if you hear something today that's like, man, that sounds cool, check with your doctor first, or go find a longevity doctor, which it might be even better, talk to them about it. So, nothing in this podcast is a clinician patient relationship, and you know, take what's useful, because there's going to be a lot of useful stuff in here, and then talk with your doc before you change anything that affects your health. So, with all of that out of the way, David, welcome to the longevity loop. Thank you so much for having me. Yeah, well, I'm super excited to have you. You are the first filmmaker. I've had authors, I've had all kinds of great people, and um, I'm really excited to talk to you because I geek out on longevity documentaries. Like I just, you know, the one when Bryant Johnson comes, I'll check it out. I mean, there's just been so many of them over the years that just like I I love them. Um, so just breaking right into the film, um, like I said before we started recording, I got to watch it, but I need to watch it again because I watched it with my five-year-old, and obviously, longevity isn't necessarily a subject that a five-year-old is super.

SPEAKER_00 3:42

I don't think he's our target market for the film.

unknown 3:44

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:45

Well, even just like you said in the movie, which was uh I I forget what Doctor, I think it was Nier, was talking about it was about, you know, you don't actually age until after 30, which was a uh a kind of a new concept. Yeah, that was Dr.

SPEAKER_00 3:56

Verdon who said that at the CEO of the book.

AI Biomarkers And Near-Future Healthcare

SPEAKER_01 3:58

Okay, yeah. So that was a completely new. I was like, wow, like I've never heard of that. So that's gonna be fun to uh you know kind of dig into. But you open the film with uh a future of medicine, you know, with the with the AI, the biomarkers, you know, everything just feeling seamless. Like I like I was again seeing the scene of like you pee into the toilet and it monitors your pee, and then it adjusts your vitamins the next day for you know what was found on that and your sleep and all that. So how close are we to that world really?

SPEAKER_00 4:33

I think that's already happening, just not in the same way. I think that now um there's so many different ways to get um customized base data that and then um have tailored solutions. Uh obviously, you know, concierge medicine and there's different levels that that you can do that, but um, there's nothing I think too crazy that's in the science fiction part of the film. So the film does have a science fiction narrative um interlaced with the documentary um itself, with uh real people, you know, and the idea is uh, you know, pose a create a portrait of a near future and um show people what that might be like and uh the the hopes and also the challenges of of that future world. But a lot of the technologies that we talk about are already in their infant stages. Um and the artificial intelligence is is pretty much putting you know gasoline on that fire. And so the amount of acceleration is happening so rapidly. The amount of papers that are coming out, the amount of new drugs that are being created, because they can run virtual experiments that can, you know, infinitely create new molecular structures and compounds and see how that impacts um, you know, people without harming them because it's all digitized. So it's all very exciting. Um, and I think there's these different technologies that are also starting to merge. So, you know, if we see breakthroughs in the energy sector, um, or if we see breakthroughs in wearables and other areas, then they start to kind of come together. And I think that's ultimately what our day day-to-day life is gonna look like in the near future is having a lot of these different technologies as they're combined and have them all funneled uh into uh into our own kind of health customized uh day-to-day AI.

SPEAKER_01 6:25

Yeah, that's that that is one thing that I got from the film is that every scientist, doctor, clinician, you know, smart person that was on there, that was like kind of the always their thing. Is like now with the the AI available to actually process all the information, like that bottleneck is is is is removed. And I'll be honest, like I it's one of those things when I watch movies like this, I'm like, am I too old? You know, it's like I I'm watching it, I'm like, that is like, you know, is this gonna be too late for me? Is this something that's gonna happen, you know, like and later? But it does seem it's it's happening so fast, so rapid, that I I I do feel that this will be there for you know, my lifetime to like kind of extend that, you know, like health span for sure, you know. Like as one of the the scientists, I think, for the Buck Institute was talking about, she was talking about like, let's figure out health span first, and then once that's tackled, you know, then we can worry about like, you know, extending that to 100 years.

SPEAKER_00 7:29

Yeah, yeah. The idea is that there's all you know, this sector is so huge that there's this wide cast of characters. And just like any revolution, because this is a revolution, it is a scientific revolution that is historical in nature, that is changing and and challenging what it means to be human in our lifetime. And so, you know, whether you like it or not or how involved you are with it, it is happening to some extent. But there's people that are really pushing things to the extreme. And then there's also people that are doing just hard science, very pragmatic work day to day. And their focus is on simply providing more years that you can have with your loved ones without the the chronic illnesses and the disease that are so debilitating and um and and really hard as we're aging to watch our parents and the people that we care about go through to try to make those years better and healthier. And then there's people that are focused on, and that's health span, just the the but you know, the the more years you have alive that are healthy to where you know you're mobile, you can spend time with your loved ones, your mind is intact. Um, and then there's lifespan, which is species-oriented. You know, how how long, what is the maximum amount that our species can live, which it varies of what scientists think, but somewhere probably around 120, 122. Um, and then there's people trying to push that. And so they're different approaches, and there's also those are different goals that people are solving. And they're each helping solve the other's goal by pursuing their own. If they can improve lifespan, then whatever those technologies are will ultimately also likely increase your health span. And if we can increase health span um to where we can stay healthier longer as these new technologies come out, um, then that also eventually will hopefully increase our lifespan. But these are big questions, you know, like how long can our bodies actually live regardless of of how healthy we are before they just, you know, like a car that ends which engine just, you know, stops, stops running. So they're really interesting questions. But I want, I always say to people, like, you have to understand what the difference is because those scientists aren't doing the same kind of, they're not necessarily doing the same work. They're they're taking completely different approaches to a similar problem.

SPEAKER_01 9:38

Yeah. I mean, which is great, right? I mean, like, you don't want like all things because you you don't, you know, it's like that, yeah. I'm sure you've heard like the beginner's mindset, right? So if someone comes in with a beginner's mindset, they might actually think about something in a completely different way than the normal route of thinking about things. And so you take that, and then there can be rich results that come from that, and it could be a dead end too, you know. But like, yeah, especially with longevity, you know, there's so many, you know, I feel like it's very compartmentalized a little bit now, where it's like, you know, it's like, okay, let's fix eyesight, you know, like, okay, so you got scientists and teams working on that, and then it's like, okay, let's fix, you know, bone health, or, you know, I mean, whatever it might be. Um, so did you feel making the film what did you think about that? Is as far as like, you know, is it too late for someone who's in their 40s, 50s, 60s? Um, did you do you have any notions of that?

SPEAKER_00 10:31

Or do you think it's gonna be I'm in my 40s, so I hope not. Um but um no, it uh I think the main thing, of course, if you're younger and I think you start to understand the fundamentals, um, the the pillars of longevity, and you start to apply those, then prevention, having an aggressive approach towards preventing the onset of aging will help you live longer because once this onset occurs like an avalanche, then it starts to have just a cascade of debilitating effects and it happens very quickly. There's these things called aging cliffs, which are two periods in your life, which we now know, to where you're aging faster than normal. One of those is around my age, which is your mid-40s, another one is in your early 60s. And so if you're not prepared and you're not preventative in your approach, then those are going to impact you and have a more disproportionate impact on your future um than other times in your life. And so certainly that's that's going to matter. But um, I don't think anybody's too old to to start to, you know, and involve or start their longevity journey. Uh different people are at different kinds of levels, but uh it's it's gonna have it's really important to have a customized approach and to be working with someone who knows what they're doing in order to do that. So the the risks are aligned and hedged based upon your goals and your age and your own health.

SPEAKER_01 11:53

Yeah. Yeah. That's uh yeah, that's the cool thing. Like I, you know, I'm just I I'm just working in longevity day-to-day. I have a marketing company called Longevity Clinic Marketing that I work with clinicians, you know, day and day, helping them with them their marketing. And one thing that I see is there's so many longevity clinics coming online with just different specialties and stuff. And so I I love seeing it. I mean, I love seeing it from my business side of things, but I just love seeing it from just a humanity standpoint is that like kind of this old model of medicine, it it is getting to look a little long in the tooth, you know. And I think Peter Atia coined it medicine 3.0, 2.0, something along those lines. I think 3.0 is what he calls it.

Why Normal Lab Ranges Mislead

SPEAKER_00 12:34

Yeah, I think I think that's uh and and it's very much needed, and and it is happening too, by the way. I mean, we definitely have to reinvent it. And I I will say that, you know, the work that you're doing and connecting people with those kind of doctors and uh is very important because right now, especially in the United States, if you get your blood work done and you take it to someone who's just traditionally trained, um, your results or even just algorithmically, it might say that, hey, you're within range for this particular, you know, for for whatever this test was. What most people don't realize, which I did through making the film, which really blew me away, is that sick in America is sorry, let me rephrase that. Normal in America may not be healthy. In fact, it's more likely that normal might be sick. And that you have to reframe that that's such a huge thing to reframe how you think about your own results and your own path. You have to focus on what's going to optimize your own health. It it did so the comparisons that we make are very important to how we treat our own uh goals. And that was really kind of a uh epiphany for me. I was like, wow, you know, you you you think you're, you know, you might be in decent shape and you're looking and everything's kind of oh, like there's no red flags, right? So don't need to make many changes in your life. And then you pull back the lens a little bit more and you say, okay, well, what am I comparing this against? You know, uh people that are gonna be really in bad shape by the time they're in their 60s or something. Like maybe that's not what, you know, I need to think bigger than that. And that's what this revolution is all about. It's it's a new paradigm shift of of an approach to individualized health.

SPEAKER_01 14:14

Yeah, that's such a great reframe there, because it's it's like I don't want to be compared to the average, you know, anything, you know, like American or just health in general. And so when I do uh, you know, just one of the big things that I the challenge I see is that people don't know what they don't know, right? So I mean longevity medicine is getting a lot more press. And I mean, thanks to people like you making awesome movies, it's it's coming to Apple TV, as we discussed uh this summer. Um there's no release date yet, but it'll be there. And we'll talk about, you know, how you can watch the film, you know, at the at the end of the episode. But you know, the the more longevity medicine gets into the zeitgeist, it it's just gonna be more because one of the big challenges that I see the clinics, it's people don't know what they don't know. So they don't know, they're like, yeah, I want to be healthy, but they don't know exactly how to find a doctor that is working with precision medicine or optimal health. It's just like they'll just go get like the magazine of like, oh, here's the top docs magazine that they probably don't realize that doctors pay to get in that, and then just like, okay, like there's the, you know, the hospital, that's the best doctor, let's go there. Not realizing that they're still kind of in that older model that's just I mean, yeah, you can get a great doc and they might be able to help you a little bit, but they're not going to be able to give you the precision medicine that is a longevity doctor or even a functional medicine doctor that is, you know, like working with hormone optimization and all these things.

SPEAKER_00 15:37

So well, it's it's uh they're it it's so hard to become a doctor. I have so much um, you know, I was pre-med initially in college before organic chemistry made me realize that I really didn't want to be a doctor as much as everybody else has. Um but I'm fascinated by what they have to go through. Um I have a lot of friends that are that are doctors, and I just I have so much respect for what they have to go through to, you know, to get um to get a to get the license to practice medicine in in the United States. And I think it's very challenging for them right now, too. Um, there's a lot of fear of um malpractice insurance. There's uh a lot of pressure to constantly get patients in the door. But you know, the longevity revolution, what's happening now is there, uh especially when it comes to you know pharmaceuticals, um, you know, uh pharmaceuticals or interventions, it allows you to uh reapply um or or or use drugs that have already been um uh applied for certain diseases now to aging itself or to disease, which uh is not necessarily something that is happening mainstream yet. Um, whether it's something as simple as metformin or, you know, rapamycin, uh which is a little bit, you know, probably more aggressive on somebody's scale if they want to go that route. But um there's all these things that we know with scientific studies because they've already existed for decades for for use for various uh uh ailments. Um, but now they're being applied to to aging itself, to which um is is you know, is is a new way to look at things. But uh you're not gonna be able to get a lot of these uh treatments or or drugs prescribed by going just to uh an average uh traditionally trained doctor. And um they they shouldn't have to do that necessarily. If that's not what they're specializing in, um, you know, then then I understand that.

SPEAKER_01 17:32

So yeah, totally. Yeah, it it it's it's a big ask to go to a normal PCP and try to get a metform prescription. It's like, wait, do you have diabetes? No, I just heard, you know, good luck. I heard a podcast that I should be taking it. Yeah, totally.

SPEAKER_00 17:49

Um yeah, but that's that's it's just uh so this whole kind of learning about this whole world, which I knew nothing about when I started making the film almost four years ago, um, just really in inspired me to look at things differently. And I hope that the people that watch it, you know, feel the same way.

A Skeptic Starts Filming Real Science

SPEAKER_01 18:06

Yeah, so let's get into that. So you didn't start this as a longevity guy, right? Like, so what pulled you into this in the first place? Was there a personal reason this topic grabbed you? Was it a relationship? Like, what was it?

SPEAKER_00 18:18

I don't know, maybe a midlife crisis. Uh no. Uh I think um, no, I just I think like a lot of people, I started seeing all this stuff pop up in my feeds uh about longevity and about these different breakthroughs that were constantly happening and just seeing this word over and over again. I'm just like, okay, what does this even mean? And immediately, you know, as a filmmaker, especially as a documentarian, I was like, okay, how much of this is BS? Yeah, that was really something that I was like, okay, this is everybody's trying to sell me supplements or, you know, what's going on. And um, the more I looked into it, I'm like, it seems like there's some real, some real stuff happening here that's, you know, that that needs to be looked into further. And so the first place we filmed was the Buck Institute, um, which was the perfect first place to film. It's like this cathedral-like structure in the mountains of Nevado, California. Some of the smartest people in the field doing great work. Um, and immediately after three days of filming there, I was like, oh my gosh, this is this is a huge story. And um, despite all of the other, you know, documentaries in the past that might be focused on an individual or you know, the immortalists or, you know, the people of the different past, I was like, this is real science, it's happening. And most people have no idea that this place like the Bach Institute even exists. Um, and then I I I knew we were onto something. And then three and a half years later, we have forever young.

SPEAKER_01 19:42

So it it sounds like I guess, you know, excuse my inner ignorance and like filmmaking, but it's like you had an idea, right? You're like, okay, I've seen this on my film or or you know, on my feeds and it's coming up. What is it? You did a little bit of investigating into it, just like you know, it's like because obviously there is a lot of BS out there, you know, and so many false promises. I mean, since I've been alive, like, oh my god, like so many things, like, hey, we're gonna, you know, and you're like, oh wow, that was completely fake, not um not real. So when you first took this on, you know, you're like, hey, were you at the Buck Institute just interviewing people, or is that just kind of the beginning process before you just chose to make the movie about it?

Anxiety Equity And The Cost Of Longer Lives

SPEAKER_00 20:25

Um, that was our first shoot, and um, I didn't know where the story was gonna go. I didn't know if it was gonna be maybe a series or if it was a feature-length documentary, or what it was I didn't know the exact direction. Sometimes people make a documentary, especially now with kind of the commercialization of the art form. They kind of they they have an idea of where the story's gonna go. You know, maybe it's a celebrity documentary, or it's like an expose, or it's about an event that you heard about in the news that is now being, you know, retold. But um, the way I like to tell stories is not to know exactly where it's gonna go, um, because I'm just personally curious about something. So it kind of takes away the fun if I know the ending of the story. And so we just started asking questions and then really let the science drive the story. And um, after the buck, I met uh at the buck, I met Dr. James Johnson, who's the producer of the film, became the producer of the film at that point. And um, he is just a biotech investor, a retired surgeon, and someone that guided us along the way every step to make sure that the film had scientific integrity and that we weren't misleading people, and that we also were getting access to the right scientists that most people have never heard of. So our cast, I'm a lot of them are going to be in the history books, and most people will never know their names. Um, it's it's not like there's all these celebrities that are in the film. We have the people that are actually doing work that. Uh you know, our our kids and grandkids will be reading about. Um, Dr. Steve Horvath is one of those. Um, you know, the Horvath Clock, who pretty much launched the biomarker revolution prior to his discoveries, we had no real way to quantify uh our biological age. Um, so it made it very hard to see what treatments and drugs were working and which ones weren't. Now that we have biomarkers, of which now there's dozens of them, we have the ability to um to do experiments um because science, you have to have the data to be able to know what's working and what's not. And these are all things that have happened within our lifetime. So, you know, it's really just the beginning uh of this revolution. And and um, there's Dr. Richard Miller who does amazing work with Rapid Mecin um at the University of Michigan. He's another one. I don't think a lot of people have probably heard of him, and he's doing fantastic work. Um, but the scientists, uh, a lot of times, you know, they're not great at PR and communication and getting out there. They're really good at science. And so we got which is how I like it, by the way. You know, yeah. Uh it's it's very rare that someone's really good at the science and is also, you know, uh going on TV shows or something all the time. But um I think uh putting together the kind of this this cast, um, and then also having Dr. Johnson and Dr. Thomas Lewis, who's a psychiatrist um uh in uh Northern California as well, um, having these two people kind of guide us along the path um and and also ask the bigger questions of not just pretty early on, we had established that this revolution is real, like this revolution is happening, and um we're not prepared for it necessarily in many ways. But then it started to um create more questions in a direction that I didn't necessarily expect, um, which were more existential. What are the consequences of this revolution that's happening? Um What is the point of living longer if anxiety and depression continue to rise, especially in the United States? Are we just gonna have a lot of miserable, lonely, anxious people living longer? Uh, does that sound like a good scenario? Um what can we do about uh, you know, longevity and equity? How can we make sure this technology gets down to as many people um uh as possible? Um, otherwise, you know, we're gonna have pretty much like despeciation, two different species of of humans that are, you know, one like superhumans and the other ones that don't have the same access. And um, I do think that there's a lot of promise and optimism in that. I'm not one of these dystopians. I do think that it's already amazing to see how that's happening. Um uh, but there's a lot of questions. Um if we are living longer, what is what creates a sense of urgency and purpose? Um, if suddenly, you know, you retire and you have four decades instead of two decades, you know, the concept of retirement wasn't created for for how long we're we're already currently living and going to be living. Security, education, relationships, you know, are you gonna be married for a hundred years? I hope you do married. You know, just a uh theoretical question. But um you can see my point. Like no one's no one's asking those questions. And I think that those questions are just as important as the scientific ones. So it's it's not just can we live forever, uh, but can we build a world to where we want to live forever? To me, that's such an important question. And I did I saw an opportunity to help ask those questions in this space because I didn't see a lot of those conversations happen.

SPEAKER_01 25:40

Yeah. Yeah. One of my early podcasts here on the longevity loop, we talked to a financial advisor who specializes, actually works with longevity doctors because the conversation, as you said, completely changes if it's like two decades to four decades of retirement. Like that's a completely different economic outlook for any country, much less the world, of people living longer, you know, especially with, you know, pensions, social security, and all those things. And yeah, those are very real questions. And we dove pretty deep into that as far as like, hey, if you're planning to be around till 100 years, you know, that that's a long life, you know, and completely possible now. And what does that look like financially? Because again, like we alluded to, like, people are getting grumpier and more depressed. You know, it's like nobody's gonna want to be in a rest home for 40 years. Like, so you know, so like what does that future look like?

SPEAKER_00 26:35

So and mentally too. Um, you know, the number one fear that people have um in old age right now is uh dementia, which has surpassed cancer. So if you can keep the body healthier longer, but then you have problems with the mind, um, that's also a huge issue. So these are really serious questions that have to be answered because we're in the middle of this thing. So like it's happening one way or the other.

unknown 26:59

Yeah.

Japan’s Aging Future And Care Robots

SPEAKER_00 27:00

So that's that's also why we wanted to make the film the kind of to be a wake-up call. Like, yes, you know, you can have access to this information, this knowledge is there, um, if you, especially if you want to self-educate. But um the consequences we need to start thinking about societally, not just individually. So there's an individual element, which, you know, now we know that if you want to take more accountability for your life, that your lifestyle has a much greater influence on your longevity than we ever possibly realized, which is now scientifically backed, not just like ancient wisdom that gets passed down. No, right, yeah. But, you know, the societal questions that we have to ask are are huge. I mean, we filmed in Japan, as you see in the movie, and you know, they they have a labor shortage because they've got this aging population and they don't have enough young people to take care of them. And so they've introduced robots to take care of of these um these people. And they love this robot. They get excited and they've got little pet robots as well, like pet cats and pet dogs that they, you know, and they're sitting there and they purr and stuff. And I'm just like, like, what the hell is going on? You know, I'm like jet lagged, it's like 12-hour time difference. I'm looking around, I'm like, this just doesn't even feel real. And then you pull back and you look at the math um demographically, and we're in the same scenario as they are. We're just a cut maybe a little bit behind, but we're at scale. Japan's a small country. So that same thing is gonna be happening to us. Like, where do you hear that being talked about? As like, hey, sound the sound the alarms. We gotta deal, we gotta deal with this problem. Like, we're we're way behind, you know. Um, it's these are big questions to ask. Are robots gonna make people more lonely? Are they gonna make them less lonely? Is it gonna help solve the problem? How do we integrate this? You know, how how do you get data on something and then bring it into people's lives when the consequences are so severe? Um Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:48

So because it seems like everything, uh at least leading up to now, like the technology part of it, I mean, there's some great parts of it too, but also seems like it's very damaged, especially with like say social media and like kind of like that world, seems like it's more damaging to people's mental health than it is thriving, making them thrive. And so I think that's a a big problem that's gonna be have to be solved too. And just, yeah, I mean, people I think we're getting there.

SPEAKER_00 29:11

I think there's been a lot of on that aspect of it, which I'm also very passionate about. I think we're we've made a lot of progress there, especially especially in the last, just in the last couple months alone, with realizing the that we've been using entire generations as guinea pigs. But but that also affects longevity because we have to rethink leisure. Um, when we're talking about um, especially with the growth of AI and how that's impacting the labor force, for example. Well, work is going to look a lot different. It's already looking a lot different than it did in the past. But especially now if we don't have the same kind of jobs or if we have an extended retirement period, essentially like an extra act of life instead of a three-act life, now we're getting like a fourth act of life. What you do with that time has to be planned in advance. Um, and what do you get? What do you just like watch Netflix all day? I mean, it's gonna destroy the brains, which we now know uh brain rot is a real thing and uh also associated with, you know, increasing rates of dementia. So, you know, leisure has to be sustained, big being part of a community, which is one of the fundamentals, which it doesn't get enough attention as well, relationships and sense of sense of community as well as purpose and meaning. Um, as we see this this decline in in religion as well right now, um, there's a gap, uh there's a void of people that we're living longer, we're redefining our belief system, our value systems. Uh, to me, that's a really exciting conversation to be a part of.

Loneliness Community And Blue Zone Lessons

SPEAKER_01 30:38

Yeah, for sure. I mean, I always think of it as purpose, right? It's like, you know, like I remember, you know, doing meditation retreats and, you know, just kind of more on the spiritual side of things. Um, and always like, what's your purpose? You gotta have a purpose, you know, and and as this guy go, Oh yeah, I don't know what my purpose is. And then now it's like, as I have a family that's like, okay, now I know my purpose. But a lot of that is, you know, like you're saying, is like if you don't have a purpose and you're just living like, yeah, what are you gonna do? Just watch TV all day? No, you're not gonna do that. Like you you need a purpose, you need something that drives you to, you know, whether that's community or like community, like I mean, obviously there's tons of different ways, but you know, always the blue zones, you know, like there's so many blue zone documentaries out there, and that's always the fourth thing is community. It's community, community, you know, it's like you see these old guys smoking, playing bowling or whatever, like, wait, I thought smoking bad for you.

SPEAKER_00 31:31

I I know, you know, I I actually I was really fascinated by uh I'm I I think Dan Butner's really doing amazing work and really sharing a lot of great information with people. I I'm I'm a big fan of of his books and also of the documentary series. I did spend some time in some of the blue zones to try to observationally see, you know, what what can I notice, you know, in some of these places. And so I spent some time in Acaria uh and and you know, I'm walking down this mountainous um area every morning to go down and get some coffee. And the one thing I always noticed was groups of people sitting together having coffee every morning, sitting by the water in the harbor, just having some espresso and talking and laughing, and then, you know, and then see the same people as they're sitting there talking and laughing, people of different ages coming down on a moped or whatever, beeping the horn, hey, hey, hey, back and forth. I mean, that that was it was simple. Uh, I mean, it's it's it's it that um that that that was very noticeable, you know. You didn't see a lot of you didn't see a lot of technology, you didn't see a lot of doctor's offices. I don't think I saw one, but that was um uh tangible. Like you could feel, you know what I mean? You could feel that that sense that these people are are there's a friendship or sense of community that's there. Um and that's so, so important, which we now know, for example, loneliness is the equivalent of smoking a pack of cigarettes a day. Yeah. It's it's really damaging. How do you identify it? How do you solve it? Um, especially in our kind of individualized culture in the United States. Um, once again, these are these are important questions. And they don't necessarily they don't have easy solutions because they're not scientific solutions, they're societal solutions, right?

SPEAKER_01 33:15

Yeah, they're less prescriptive, is like, go find some friends. It's like, uh, oh, okay, you know, that's like your doctor telling you to lose weight or whatever. It's just like, okay, well, well, how, you know, is is what it is. And you know, and that's that's one thing me and my wife always talk about too, is like, you know, like having, you know, growing up 20s, 30s, you know, the bar was like how we, you know, go down to the pub, have some, you know, happy hour drinks with some friends and get a little tipsy, start talking to everyone, and like, you know, it just felt great, you know, because you're just like, this is so much fun. And then as you age kind of out of that, or most people do, you know, you realize, okay, maybe I shouldn't be drinking so much. It's not super great. You know, it's something I recently gave up. And, you know, then you got family, and it's just like, well, how do we associate now? You know, is it, you know, and just like what you said, like I was like so there. You're just like walk down the hill, get some espresso next to the harbor, have some people ride by on mopeds, bikes, wave to you. You know, it's like like, you know, I I viscerally felt that because I'm like, I've had those experiences, you know, where you're hanging out at a coffee shop and a couple friends ride by on bikes, like, hey Brent, what's up? You know, like, oh, you guys get guys going on a bike ride today, you know, and it's just like it feels so good, it's so energizing. And you're just like, oh man, this is awesome. Drinking, you know, hanging out with everyone, knowing the barista. Like, yeah, it's like people need more of that in their lives. Like, I mean, for sure. And it just for the longevity, you know, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 34:36

I mean, it's uh, and also as you get older too, you know, your friends they move to different places, and you know, people end up having different sets of lives. The demand might be having demanding jobs to where they're not spending a lot of time uh outside with their friends anymore because it's just their jobs and their families, or they might be for me, for example, I travel so much. Um, that's been pretty challenging, and now I'm realizing that you know, I need to tone that down a little bit and need to find other creative solutions. But um, that takes its toll, you know. But it also is is a reason now to where, you know, you can reconnect with your friends and say, hey guys, this is about our health. We need to get together at least once every, you know, once, once or twice a year. Um, it's important that we that we have that. And uh uh that to me is is is a realization that same thing needs to be prioritized. Um much harder than it, much, much harder to execute than it is to just say it needs to be done, though. People's schedules and and lives get, you know, they they get busy. And uh unfortunately, that does, you know, we we do have a massive loneliness problem. It's also not just people, you know, that have families that and demanding jobs and as they get older, it's also younger people are just feeling incredibly isolated. So it's it's everywhere. One of the creative solutions that I've heard is finding ways to have more intergenerational friendships in the United States, which we don't have enough of. Um, other cultures do use that as a way to offset this loneliness. If you've got people that are in different demographics that are both having similar problems, putting them together, whether through its mentorships or some kind of activities, can solve two problems at the same time. But um, once again, that's easier said than done. I mean, these ideas require an entire paradigm shift. I mean, we're living through a time right now where we have to start rethinking day-to-day life. Our our daily existence right now was created for for people that um that were living much shorter lives than we were and that had much different sets of problems than than we do. And so it it's time to start rethinking all of that. Um, and that to me is what's really exciting because we get to be a part of that conversation.

How Adults Actually Make New Friends

SPEAKER_01 36:52

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we we talk about that uh again, something me and my wife talk about so much is like, how do you make friends later in life? Because, like you said, people move away, you move away, you know. I mean, we've moved three or four times in the last you know, five years, and and we're always able to make friends, you know, especially through schools. School's a great outlet. The school we're part of here is a Waldorf school, and they've got a dad's night and a mom's night, and so they really kind of facilitate some stuff. And then we always think about like run clubs. Run clubs is a great way, you know, there's young people and older people. And one thing, living here in Tucson is a little bit older population, and bike riding is huge here. And you see 80, probably even 90-year-olds like on e-bikes now, like going riding around and like joining like little bike ride groups is also another way. I feel like for at least in my experience, uh it's been a great social outlet where you meet totally 18-year-old just killers on the bike, and then 80-year-old men that have been, you know, just like, you know, and women too, you know, but it's it's just like one of these things, like you're like, this is truly like a broad spectrum of, you know, like um of people here, and you know, just like getting to know them and and and then again, the other thing that we've tried to implement, you know, on the community thing is like we bought a pizza oven a couple years ago, and we're like, let's have community pizza nights at our, you know, and that we invite, you know, like six, seven, eight people, you know, not big groups of people, but like kind of trying to foster those relationships and like hey, invite someone else over, like we'll make some pizzas and like hanging out on our back patio. And but yeah, I mean that just it's it's it's so it sounds like you're you're on top of that part of it, man.

SPEAKER_00 38:32

It's good for you. You've you've uh really you've got I'm impressed. That's that's that's pretty that's pretty that's pretty damn good for for how you're thought about it a lot, you know.

SPEAKER_01 38:41

I mean, that's the thing, and then you know, it obviously there's the longevity, the kind of cerebral part is like, yeah, I know this is good for me, but it's also just fun, you know. It's like and it's always it's always hard. You know, it's not always easy to say.

Zip Code Health And Lifestyle Design

SPEAKER_00 38:53

Yeah, it is it is awkward as you get older. It's kind of like you get that process of getting to know somebody. But but then you know, you also look at I think as you also get older, you just really don't care if it doesn't work out in the same way. You know, either you click with somebody or you don't. It's not um it's it's not the pressures aren't so, you know, it's it doesn't feel like uh, you know, that high school or or college, you know, popularity game anymore. It's just kind of like if, you know, if you click with somebody and it goes somewhere, then it's cool. And if not, it's not like you know, there's there's a lot of people out there um that might have a similar interest as yours. What is really relevant with when it comes to longevity is geography, which is pretty crazy. Um one of the primary indicators of how long you'll live in the United States is your zip code. And that's not just about wealth, although that's obviously a factor. Um, it's also about what kind of community that you live in. Um, you know, what is it someplace where you can walk and meet up with friends? Um, is it some place to where you have access to, you know, uh whether it's what kind of healthier foods and uh within walking distance, and how how long are you gonna be in a car every day? I mean, I I lived in California for quite some time. I remember living in Los Angeles in my 20s, and like, you know, if you wanted to see somebody and you live in, you know, West LA and then they lived in the valley, it's like you might as well like it it was like the same commitment as getting onto a flight or something like that. They, you know, you couldn't, oh God, you know, I gotta, it's like what am I gonna spend four hours in the car to go see this person? And so, and then, you know, in reality you live quite close, but then it's a cultural barrier and also the you know, the vehicles and driving and it's public transportation. Um, you know, the all these things factor into it. But um, making that decision of where you live is I think a much, much greater decision than people realize. If you have the ability to make to make that decision. Um which I you know a lot of people don't get to choose where where it is that they're they're living. But um, that isn't a pretty important thing that we now know when it comes to longevity.

Reversing Aging And What It Means

SPEAKER_01 40:53

Yeah, that lifestyle that lifestyle design piece is like you know, like what I guess the ika guy, you know, is like walkable, you know, yeah, I have a job, like it's you know, like the you know, affordability, you know, like it's these things, and then you're trying to find that sweet spot of of just like where all those things come together. So you spent what four years filming this? Like, so you spent some years around some pretty serious scientists. Going into this, did you think was just a bunch of BS or hype? And did you change your mind on anything before you started doing this?

Age Looping And Epigenetic Reprogramming

SPEAKER_00 41:33

I I I think I I I mean, I changed, I mean I I went in as a skeptic. I did not have any, you know, this film was independently financed. Uh, we didn't have corporate sponsors. Um, it was wasn't like we had an agenda. So there there was nothing driving us to say, uh, oh yeah, the revolution is real and that we think this is gonna really change what it means to be human. Um, that wasn't a conclusion that I had going into it. I was very much a skeptic, like, okay, how much could this really be? There's so many things that that blew me away. I can't just name one. I mean, if I put it in the film, it's probably because I found it interesting and thought it would connect the larger audience because we have over a hundred hours of footage that never made it into the film. The film itself was only 88 minutes. And so what you're seeing is a very small fraction of what we actually captured. Anything that's in the film, any sequence, we can go in to make a whole separate, you know, uh, which is why we have our Substack. We're going through a lot of the content that didn't make it in the film that I thought was incredibly powerful and still sharing that with people in shorter form. There's just so much stuff that it was it was overwhelming, which is why it took so long to to get through the footage and to try to find a way to package it to her. It wasn't confusing. I think our initial cut was maybe like four hours. And I'm like, either we're making a huge series or we gotta start trimming off trimming off the stuff because this is just, you know, this is just too much. Um I would say the big thing that is it's when you hear like, oh, you can reverse aging, that just sounds so crazy, you know? Because when you also when people make claims like that, they've got there's some people have said that and they've got in trouble for it or whatever. But we're really, really close. And it's conceptually what that means might not, it's not like Benjamin Button. That's not what people are saying when they're saying that. It's not like they can just make you young again. Well, when they're saying reversing aging, um, they're talking about a combination of all these different things, you know, delaying the onset through lifestyle, um, maintenance, and then pharmaceutical uh approaches to actually slow down the aging process or slowly reverse it. Um one of the wildest things that I heard uh is this philosophy called age looping. I don't know if you've heard of it. Um it's it's it's kind of where epigenetic reprogramming could go if if it continues to accelerate. At this pace. And the idea would be you go into an annual physical, and you know, likelihood are going to be bots are going to be examining your body. They're going to figure out what your body needs and give you kind of an epigenetic marker refresh. So they're going to be kind of commanding your genes of what to keep on and turn off to keep you healthy. And that might last, let's say, a year, and then you come back in another year, and then the same thing happens. And that's what's in the film as well. That science fiction storyline was really inspired by what's really happening now, which are people trying to do that. And the idea is that once you start this process, let's say you're the age of 35. And I say that because there was a study done where they asked a lot of people, what age would you like to stay at? If your age was locked physically, what age would you like to remain? And the answer was like 35. You get all kind of the stupid stuff done when you're in your 20s and you haven't had like a lot of the physical onset of things as you get older. So you imagine somebody who's 35 years old, they go in to start getting this epigenetic refresher. And then every year they come back in to get it again, and they're essentially looping from 35 to 36, back to 35 to 36, back to 35. That's it's a now that seems that is science fiction, of course, but I'm just saying it after making this, I don't feel like it's impossible. I guess is what I could say. I'm not saying it's happening now, but it wouldn't I I I don't see that as being something that's like radically crazy. Certainly three years ago I would have thought that was nuts.

SPEAKER_01 45:29

Yeah, I mean I feel like there's enough I mean, just you know, it's like I'm not a scientist or or a doctor, but you know, it's like you hear about things like exomes, and then I just had a a really cool um, his name is Dr. Jeff Gross. He's based in Las Vegas, and he's been talking about NK natural killer exomes and how this is kind of like the next level of like, and you're just like with cancer reprogramming, and it's just like, whoa, this is really cool stuff. And yeah, it's just incredible. So yeah, I mean it does sound far-fetched, and it doesn't, at least that I know of, exist now. My initial thing is that it kind of sounds almost like CRISPR, right? The the gene rote reprogram.

SPEAKER_00 46:09

Yeah, this is all yeah, this is this is all connected to that same uh that same concept. I mean, it's all really about our ability to manipulate genes, which we already have now a baseline to be able to do that.

SPEAKER_01 46:20

Yeah, yeah, which is super exciting. So, what what are you still skeptical about going into that? Did you do some of these kind of things hold, or did you get actually probably more spidey sense like, whoa, this is way out there?

Escape Velocity And Tech Immortality Doubts

SPEAKER_00 46:33

I'm still, I mean, the the idea of age looping for some reason, uh I don't know, I because I can just see where the where some of the science is going. And also, you know, for example, right now we have um there's like three different companies that are all you know racing to become the first FDA-approved anti-aging drug. I mean, that's happening right now. That's not even science fiction. There's human trials of it happening right now. David Sinclair, Light Biosciences, you got Calico Labs, which is Google. Um, I mean, like, so there's there's stuff that I think most people don't even realize is already in the works that has been in the works for a long time because it takes so long to get a drug approved. But just an anti-aging drug would be would be a huge difference in the paradigm moving forward. Um, the concept of escape velocity, which, you know, age looping would be an example of reaching escape velocity. Uh, but that is something that a lot of the I would say the extreme people when it comes to, you know, the longevity, I wouldn't say longevity, I would say they're immortalists. The idea of escape velocity is you live long enough to where the technology moves fast enough to where it can cure whatever problem is ailing your body. You know, imagine that you're a train and the train has to have tracks in front of it, right? Or else you die. Imagine that scenario. You have to be able to lay down the tracks faster than the train reaches that next level of tracks. So escape velocity is that the train is moving fast because that's your age. So you you can't stop time, right? The tracks have to be laid faster than when you reach the tracks before you get derailed. And AI is is really ramping up the ability to lay down those tracks faster to where it might be able to cure whatever you have. Um, but the concept is that as long as you can stay alive long enough to where the technology reaches that level of being able to solve whatever problem is ailing you, then you could live forever, which is escape velocity. And that to me, even though age looping I see is being realistic, and I know that escape velocity is a similar concept, for some reason I'm that I'm still skeptical on that. I don't know why. Maybe because I feel like that's more of a dystopian approach than the age looping. But um I that that I'm still a little bit skeptical of. And I know a lot of people are huge believers in that, especially Silicon Valley. I mean, they love they love this stuff right now because it's like, hey, this is a problem technology can solve. Um so uh yeah, that's probably the thing that I'm still trying to wrap my head around um a little bit more.

SPEAKER_01 48:59

Because Yeah, that's something oh, I was just gonna say that you just double clicking on that dystopian you know, thought is like, you know, because you you hear a lot, you know, with the tech people, it's like, oh, we're just gonna upload your consciousness to the cloud. And then I'm just kind of like, yeah, okay, so you know that that's the disconnect for me, and maybe that's what you're referring to as well.

SPEAKER_00 49:19

But I mean we we interviewed a guy in Japan who is mapping the human brain so he can digitize it, with that being the goal, you know. And you've got um Kris Wilde and the Singularity and a lot of people that are and that to me just doesn't I don't know, it uh yeah, I'm not there yet on that. I mean, I'm also you know, if if I was if I was 85, maybe I would feel differently. Once again, it's I think it's much different where you are in your personal life and your belief system. But um, I've still got some way to go on the escape velocity. I mean, you could also just still get hit by a car, you know what I mean? So right, yeah, that's ironic. Maybe it's a flying car at that point. I don't know. But um, but yeah, it's like that's that to me doesn't like get me excited about it as as much as you know, some of this basic stuff about fundamentals and understanding that, for example, if you can if you walk for a half hour a day, it decreases your chances of you know getting chronic illness or cancer by like 30 or 40 percent. Why? I mean, how do we not know that stuff growing up as kids? Because we weren't able to quantify it the way that we can quantify it now. And there's not this massive awareness of this yet that's coming about. Um, and and I I think that that needs to become, we need this massive awareness to get out there to let people know that this stuff is is is out there that can transform your life. And it's not all the crazy escape velocity theories. There's a lot of very basic things that we know, um, and and also drugs that um are different variations of of risk, but there's also ones that are relatively safe that we now know are are you know are are prop that may, I don't want to, you know, say uh say exactly you know what it is, but um there's there's just a lot to be excited about, put it, you know, put it that way, that aren't extreme views that are very pragmatic uh based in science.

SPEAKER_01 51:10

So yeah, well that that's the like the cool thing, you know, about like everything you're dealing with is like uber futuristic, right? Like you're just like you know, like, hey, you've got your AI on the counter that's like making you vitamins and you know, all this stuff. But yet, you know, and even just like the age looping thing. I think I remembered that part of the movie, you know, where someone's going in for the annual physical and kind of all this, yeah, you know, that's it. The graphic was like, I don't know, looks like fairy dust or something falling on them. Anyway, whatever. But but so many times it just comes down to the boring basics, right? It's just like go for a walk 20 minutes a day, and that's like as as powerful as you know any of these, you know, rapamycin, metformin, you know, the exome treatments, whatever these things are. That's like I feel like that's always like the spices on top of your meal. You know what I mean? It's like the the getting your sleep, you know, and you know, like in the Well, I I think I think I think the thing that both bothers me about escape velocity is that it's assuming that technology is going to solve the problem, but we are already seeing how technology has caused a lot of problems with this last run.

SPEAKER_00 52:16

So I just hope that we can learn from our mistakes moving forward. That's all. Because I mean, you know, if you have a serious um, you know, illness right now or some type of cancer that there's not an easy way to treat it, certainly having artificial intelligence right now to where there's all these vaccines that are being created, that's a lot of this is driven by virtual experiments, that's exciting, right? So that's the positive side. But once again, it comes back to the the question, what are we gonna do with all this time? And um, I hope that we can start to have more of those conversations just as much as we're talking about the, you know, what drugs and treatments that we can do. Totally, totally.

SPEAKER_01 52:52

I mean, like one thing I always say is like, well, you know, we're I'm I'm working on health span personally. But the thing is like what keeps me kind of like working on it, because it's o it's probably always gonna be an option, right? Like it's not gonna be something for someone's gonna force you to, you know, take care of your body. I mean, I'm assuming that's what it is. Maybe if it's easier to in the future, like, you know, like your movie laid out that was just you know, just like, okay, just the supplements are gonna be made for you, and like these things are just gonna become real realistic options. You know, like for me, it's like I want to go mountain biking with my son when I'm 80. You know what I mean? That's like that's the type of that is an awesome goal, man.

SPEAKER_00 53:28

And you know, and I'm right there with you. You know, I want to be very involved in my daughter's life, you know, when I'm in my 70s and 80s and 90s. Yeah. And and and also be very meant, be mentally sharp, which is a growing concern. And there's a lot of really promising research in that area too. So, and I think that that's an area we need, we need rethinking dementia right now. Um, there's a lot of great work on people that are approaching it from an inflammatory disease perspective, um, also from the lifestyle things that people can do to offset the risk or reduce it. Um, it's it's it's that to me is very optimistic as well. And that doesn't get that's an area that doesn't get enough um, I think, enough funding for research that's so important right now.

SPEAKER_01 54:12

Yeah. And it's also like one of the last things that comes up, even with like, and maybe it's just because the hype around everything, but it's always like the mental health part of it or brain health seems to be I'm I'm not gonna say an afterthought, but it's like when you go see a longevity doc, for instance, it's like, okay, let's check your testosterone, let's, you know, like your sl, you know, like this stuff, and then kind of like, oh yeah, by the way, let's put on some, you know, like let's do an EEG and like see how your brain's functioning or whatever. That's either not offered at a lot of longevity clinics, or it's you know, it's and and maybe that's the thing, is like everyone's uh, you know, is like, oh yeah, let's build our muscles and like keep our erections strong or sex drives or you know, I mean whatever it might be. Because that's the shiny, like cool thing. Yeah, let's go. But like, you know, but yeah, the mental health part of it is like if you don't have that, everything the wheels fall off the wagon, so to speak.

SPEAKER_00 55:01

I think it's clear that we're kind of in an existential crisis right now, um, culturally, um, not just nationally, just globally, because technology is moving so fast, we're still struggling to grasp it. And as Dr. Thomas Lewis says in the film, who's really like the heart of the film, who asks a lot of really important questions and who answers them brilliantly, um, you know, the story having an end is what gives the story meaning. Um that's our lives, you know, knowing that we're gonna have this. So even just the discussion of or the goal of, hey, can we live forever? Of course, people have been trying to do that, whether it's through religion or whether it's through, you know, Gilgamesh, one of the first stories that we've ever known to be written. Um, this isn't like a new, new thing or new quest, but uh ultimately a lot of those stories come up with the come up with the conclusion that for thousands of years, the conclusion has been the fact that we do die is what gives our lives meaning. And so if if if we're living longer and our distance from death is growing further, uh we're not watching how a lot of the the food that we eat is being um being killed for for us to be able to eat that. We don't see death as much as we used to, you know, even a hundred years ago, um, people are kind of being carted off. This is something happening like in the distance. It's not something that we're necessarily seeing every day. Um that is causing us to kind of not it's changing our relationship with we're own with our own mortality. And I think that's one of the reasons why we're we're having a lot of this anxiety and depression. And so having a clearer idea of that will I will help us kind of define our sense of purpose and meaning. But this muddies the water when it's out there, like, oh hey, like can we can we live? Is it possible that we can live forever, maybe in my lifetime, or reaches escape velocity? So there's a lot more to the you know to the story than just uh the science. So for me, Forever Young is also really it it's it's philosophical as as much as it is scientific.

SPEAKER_01 56:58

Yeah, that's super cool. Yeah, that's super cool. Yeah, I I've never thought about it from that way of it. Yeah, like death. And and just like, you know, you talk about to hunters a lot of times, that comes up, you know, it's like we're so disconnected from I mean, this is a little bit different than what you're just laying out, but we're just disconnected from death in this society, right? Like you don't go hunt your own animals or you don't, you know, like I I I forget what it is, but like used to be like what the living room and the sitting room used to be, like, you know, where they'd put like your dead grandmother for like a week so you could honor them.

SPEAKER_00 57:31

And some cultures still do so they some cultures still do that. That's still common in a lot of other cultures. But no, that's that's totally right. Um and also to the percentage of people that used to die at home with their loved ones, uh, to where even if you, you know, the kids were around uh now, you know, that's that's not as common as it was anymore. Yeah, of course that's hard and it's traumatic to watch that, but it's also um having that connection to to to mortality um is part of what it means to be human and part of growing up as well. And if that's kind of removed or tossed around to the side, um, then it also removes our sense of urgency to live the life that we want and to spend the time with the people that we feel like might not have all the time in the world. And so that sense of urgency being removed because of technology in many ways to me, um, is a core problem that has to be addressed in some form or another, in tandem with the revolution unfolding right now for the science behind longevity. This is why we had the death duela in the film. There's a very popular, what's called death positive movement happening globally to where, you know, people, you were talking earlier, like where do you meet people, find community? There's thousands of people around the globe that are going to coffee shops um for you know death positive conversations, just questioning about, you know, having having conversations. Um and they're not all necessarily religious. Those, you know, it's it's uh yeah, it's it's heavy, it's heavy to think about, but that's what we're living through. So if we don't focus on that part of it, I think it's gonna cause a lot of problems because the science part of it is happening. That science and technology stuff, you know, that that uh that that's that that's happening already. Now we need to start preparing ourselves for what that means. And uh that's not happening enough.

Scientists Disagree Yet The Shift Is Real

SPEAKER_01 59:25

Yeah, it's really getting like, you know, like this part of you know, to get to get us to evolve to that, because yeah, that's the thing. Exactly right. Yeah. You know, we we got the lizard brain to you know to catch us up to everything. So with all the scientists and all the all the brilliant minds that you had on your film, was there a was there a certain uh theme that kept on coming up again that you did you hear? Was there like kind of a common thread to like everything, you know, good, bad, positive, negative. Was there something that was just kind of a common theme that you'd see as you talk to all these individuals?

SPEAKER_00 1:00:03

Yeah, there there was a there was a couple well, I think the the common thing that I noticed was that there was no common theme with a lot of them, that they like to argue with each other about everything, which I loved. Because to me, that makes it fun. You know, they couldn't if you if they're not supposed to be able to agree on everything, you know, scientific revolutions are not neat, they're messy and they're chaotic, and you're not gonna know exactly where everything is gonna land until the dust settles. I mean, that's how science works. Um, if we look back at previous revolutions, whether it was Newton or Copernicus, I mean, look back. These people were considered absolutely nuts for the kind of things that they were saying was gonna happen. So you have to look at it in perspective. Um, that there is a lot of chaos and infighting and people making extravagant claims. Um, but we don't know exactly what's gonna come true and what's not gonna come true. So that was a common theme that I saw that everyone was kind of skeptic of somebody else and they couldn't really agree upon a lot. Um, even how do you define aging? You know, people have different answers as to what that might be. Um, then you got to remember they've they're all fighting for funding, you know, they're all they all have research that needs to get funded. They all have got their own approaches. Um and at the same time, uh, there are things that they do agree on. The only thing that they really do agree on is that this revolution is real, that the stars have aligned, that something special is happening in the science right now. And that to me was really empowering to hear that. Like we're living through that. That's the one thing they can all agree on, probably the only thing they can all agree on. Um there was a common theme of aging being multifactorial, uh, which really Dr. Verdon is a big believer in that it's all these things and it's gonna take a combination of approaches uh in order to reduce it or potentially reverse it in the future. And there's not gonna be like a magic pill. It's gonna take a lot of different things coming together and it's complicated, and it's not like we have um just you know one thing that's gonna solve it all. Other people don't agree with that, you know. But I would say that was more of the kind of uh, I think um with a lot of the scientists that we interviewed, it's there's it's it's there's all these things that uh we need to take in consideration if it comes to aging. It's not just like there's one thing that we can target in order to reverse it.

Longevity Inequality And How Prices Fall

SPEAKER_01 1:02:23

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, uh that I I I guess that makes sense when you have so many people working on just different like parts of you know, pieces of the pie saying, you know, it's like that there's gonna be a lot of like, you know, arguments. I mean, even just like you kind of brought up in the the movie, like the David Sinclair kind of controversy, you know, it's like people fall in like, yeah, they're pro-Sinclair and anti-Sinclair or something. And you know, it's like, yeah, that's pretty typical in like anything that's like, you know, a big, you know, important movement. Um one thing that you said earlier too in the you know, earlier on in our conversation was something about like kind of the you know, there's kind of like almost like two species gonna be involving, right? And and that's something that I've had people on the podcast um really talking about this. Um one author, Alex Kratosky, who wrote The Mortalists, and she's a BBC reporter, and and she really talks about that in depth, which I think is also a super, super important thing to talk about. So your thoughts, like, you know, it's not like who's gonna get left left behind. People are gonna get left behind. I mean, there's just no doubt, like how society is structured now at least. Uh, you know, people are gonna there's gonna be lots of has, has bins, and it's gonna be socioeconomic, most likely, um, unfortunately. Um, obviously there's things that we can do that don't cost money, but there's also the luxury of time and not being stressed. And, you know, I mean, it's not just dollars in your pocketbooks, you know, as I mean, just like going for, you know, again, it's like something that comes up. It's like, it's not just a matter of just going for a 20-minute walk. You can say that, or go get great sleep. Yeah, hey, those things are free, but people don't even have that luxury. You know, if you're a single mom.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:04

This is a big, this is this is a big uh it's it's it's certainly something that um we had a lot we have a lot of information on. And I took the approach of well, I've got my I I've got what I this is a really delicate situation to handle because there's one aspect of it, which is that part is there, everything is is correct. The right now your zip code is one of the major indicators of how long you're gonna live. And if you live in a poor area, there's uh a growing gap of your life expectancy versus if you live in a rich area. That is that is currently true. And that is something that needs to be handled. At the same time, the billions of dollars that are being now what's gonna become a trillion dollar sector um soon, which longevity and whole, the technologies and treatments that are happening in our current system, which is driving things faster than we ever thought possible as a species, historically, all of that stuff has started uh at a certain price point, whether it was like Apple selling super expensive computers that became cheaper over time, or even phones becoming more affordable for everybody. If you think of, you know, the Michael Douglas phone in Wall Street, how expensive that must have been at the time, which is now compared to virtually everybody, you know, has a has a phone or has access to it. That is the best system that I know of to be able to achieve those goals and then distribute that to a mass public. Those companies want mass consumers to have access to that product because it's gonna make them the most amount of money. Um, so that so that gives me a lot of hope and optimism. Um, you know, you look at a scanning company, you know, let's say like pre Nouveau, for example, it's very expensive for a lot of people right now to get one of those scans. That's gonna come down. Um, because if it doesn't, they're not gonna be able to scale. So um that to me, makes it a little bit more optimistic in our approach. And and also knowing, you know, like I said a lot, a big difference. One of the big differences in paradigm, uh, one of the big differences in how we think about aging connects um it is the difference between genetics and lifestyle. In the past, uh people thought if you had bad genes, you were kind of screwed. But, you know, as Dr. Eric Verdon says, um, your genes are not your destiny. You know, you you can now do these things to take more control over your future when it comes to your long-term health. And we now have a lot of science to back up exactly how this works biologically. We didn't have that science in those biomarkers, you know, until several decades ago. And so as a result of that, it's also empowering to people, regardless of where they are, especially if you look at the blue zones, the blue zones are not Beverly Hills and um you know the Upper East Side in Manhattan. Those are not blue zones. Yeah. So you know you've also got that aspect. A lot of the people that are so focused on trying to live forever um you know are are are are not in are not not also not necessarily lives that I personally want to replicate. I mean a lot of these people that you see their day-to-day lives they don't necessarily look like happy people to me or or lives that I would want to you know change places with. So the the idea of uh now with having access to information and self-education uh if you have the desire to dig into this stuff there's a lot less barriers to access this knowledge than there was previously and that gives me a lot of hope and optimism for the future and I think that's going to continue. But of course this is a this is a problem um I don't I don't have I didn't I don't have any I didn't interview anybody that has like a necessarily solution to it. I mean that's a huge that's a problem that we've been dealing with for a long time. So um I I do hope that we can just look at things historically and say yeah there is going to be a gap in time to where people can have access to these life-saving machines or treatments for example and then you know before they're available to more people um which makes you think of like Elysium right the movie with Matt Damon to where you know there's the system to where you can he can you can save somebody's life because it's like this healer that can solve any problem. We're not there yet uh but I don't necessarily believe that scenario because the way that these companies are getting funded is because of the scalability potential of them. So they they ultimately have to have to get into um as many households or into as many clinics as possible. So that gives me a little bit hope and and looking back historically and also that these changes are happening faster. So you know there's less time between this stuff. But yeah totally it is yeah and there's there's also there's also a lot of drugs that you can take that aren't necessarily known to a lot of people and the insurance won't cover them and they're super expensive. I won't go into details with those with with those but I mean that's also you know it's this it's the same thing. But um I don't that's that that's a whole different set of problems than what we really adjust in the film. But certainly that needs a lot of exploration and people that are devoted to solving that as well. But I do have more of an optimistic approach to that rather than you know a future dystopian. I'm much more concerned about the um the existential crisis that we're in which is all of us whether you're wealthy or not uh and so there's um yeah there's there's lots there's lots of approaches to to look at it but um you know it's one of the reasons why we did the Substack is we're examining a lot of these issues and getting information out to people that um are curious about things and being able to kind of break down these things that are happening into digestible form and um educating, inspiring and informing the larger public because there is a knowledge gap between what the scientists know um and what the public knows. And our mission is really to bridge that gap. That's why we made the film.

A Sane Start Bloodwork And Trust

SPEAKER_01 1:10:29

Yeah that's awesome. Yeah I mean I I I feel like even someone like me and I'm sure you feel like a little bit like this too, but it's like I'm in it every day and I still like there's still like so much stuff that like I don't know. You know it's like when you're when you're talking about like yeah there's some stuff that's super expensive. I'm like well what is it? Can you want to I wonder if I've heard about it you know there's something like that. But some for someone maybe listening that that might feel behind in all this right like I mean maybe someone's just getting turned on to longevity or or whatever. And I think you alluded to this a little bit but what's what's a sane next step not not necessarily an optimized step but like you know like what's a a step that someone could take that that might be feeling I don't know again it is it FOMO is it like it's just like oh man I'd really get to get this together. Like what what would you advise someone just to kind of look at it?

SPEAKER_00 1:11:24

Yeah no I listen I I I get it. And as someone that was going in as a skeptic that had no um you know no interest in how the story was going to turn out other than just the most honest story from a documentarian perspective. But I would say the first step um is to take full inventory of your own current state of health including blood work and these intangibles you know social life relationships connection um but take getting your blood work done regularly is now cheaper than ever. You can get it done at home with a lot of these different companies you know they've got this new technology this patent called Tasso, which lots of different companies use you put on your arm, you hit this little button and it fills up a little vial and you ship it off. You don't have to worry about the lab. Now that can't get all kinds of blood work but it can get certain types of core core metrics, core data in there. And then uh try to have uh apply that data into a broader paradigm with a trusted source. Would say that that that that is who do you trust is another reason why we made the movie. That's we even say it in there. How do you know who to trust when things are moving so fast and when there's so much going out there. That's a tough question. I would say like not, you know, you don't have to put your whole um belief system into uh into any one entity or individual but um certainly taking more time to self-educate and having a better understanding yourself um I think will pay off in the long run for anybody right now. You know you don't have to just take advice from some random person that you know you've never met in your life who's got millions of hits or views or whatever because something was popular. It's not that's not what I'm saying to do. But um trying to figure out who to trust is part of the process. Ultimately I think look what you're doing. You're connecting people to to longevity clinics. I mean that obviously um is something that's a great starting point as well uh having uh you know somebody that understands the medicine 3.0 to evaluate your current state I am not a doctor you know as I've said before yeah I I I tried to be one for about a year and a half in college and it didn't work out. Um and so uh thank God I think for the world and also for me personally. But um those are those are difficult those are difficult you know uh questions but the main thing is to just start with the fundamentals. And that's what I think is also great about the film. There's just a lot of fundamentals that are in there. There's these things we've always heard about that you should do but now we've got the ability to quantify their impact on our biology and on on the pace that we're aging. And so that to me is a really great starting point. Like just, you know, you don't even have to have all of these different wearables which I think are really cool by the way I'm not saying bit, but I mean there are things that you can just start doing and start slowly and and to incorporate you know into your life gradually but um it's harder for some people than others and also people are in completely different scenarios. So everybody is completely different. But I do like the idea of starting with hard data with blood work because that might inspire some people to make some changes immediately. Regardless of how young you are just get a baseline see where you are and and start doing some due diligence on that and then get feedback from that by a medical professional or maybe multiple ones and figure out you know which direction or if you want to use that to start your journey. But for me for example uh I hardly ever was getting my blood work done only if it was completely necessary. And I started doing it regularly in the last couple years and started making the film. And I've seen a lot of changes in my life and in my health as a result of that. But it was really terrifying at first. Because I think a lot of people they're like oh God what am I going to find? You know or like it's just like you can kind of just you know put it off there and say okay unless I have to and also especially if you don't like needles for example like me it's like you don't that's not like an appetizing option of something. If you don't have to do it, like why would you choose to do that? But but I think it is important to stay on top of it because um just even just getting basic blood work can start to reveal some things that you can see improvement. And that to me is also inspiring to where you can apply different things into your life and you can actually now see how that uh impacts it. So you know that what you're doing is going to give you more quality time with the people that you care about. And you can see those results I think quicker than a lot of people understand depending upon where where they're starting. Totally. And then and then for people that are really advanced in their longevity journeys um I think the cast of the film uh is is great for people to know those names and to know who they are. I mean trusted source of information Buck Institute great place to start I mean just doesn't get better than them. Einstein School of Medicine, Dr. Near Barzalai, um I mean everyone all these people in the film they're they're fantastic. And they are considered you know they're very well respected in their field for for being you know true to the science without making really um wild claims. But I also think it's important the people that are making you know the the the huge goals, you know, the moonshots I think that's important too. Push it further see how far we can go. It's just not the same it's not the same goal.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:52

So yeah they're gonna be more in the experimenting realm of things where it's like you want to rely on what is the most proven I don't know if that's the right word but yeah like more established things.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:04

So so and sorry so so summarize for three things that people could do get your blood work done uh look into the work that the Buck Institute is doing um follow the Forever Young Substack I think are great starting points um connecting with the longevity clinic which you can explain how to do much better than I can. Yeah I'm lucky in that I got to know a lot of the people throughout the filmmaking process so I'm I'm trying to get as much advice as I can uh in that process but yeah that's super badass.

Ten Years Ten Days Purpose Over Panic

SPEAKER_01 1:17:34

I I was just gonna add to the blood testing I I 100% agree like I get my blood tested every three months and it's been an eye opener from the fact that like you can really track things granularly but I will say that the the caveat at least for me make sure you're going to either a functional medicine doctor or a longevity doctor with these because if there is something like high cholesterol whatever a a normal doctor might say hey let's do statin or whatever. And that's not exactly the longevity route. A lot of times it's getting your body to take care of these things and you know there's supplements peptides different protocols let's say that can help address these things rather than prescribing something to kind of tape it over. So I would just say the caveat like blood testing hell yeah but if you're doing it with your primary care doc, they might look at something and give prescribe something that maybe is less than optimal and and maybe not again I'm not a doctor listen to them and it might be a good idea if you're going to that primary care to get a second opinion on those type of things. So let's lay on the plane here. I mean we I've had you here for for over an hour now this has been an amazing conversation. Just uh real quick I'd like to get your 10 years 10 day take is to something that I've been trying out with the podcast. Like what should people what should people care more about in the next 10 years? And then what also should they you know maybe stop obsessing over for the next 10 days you know like it's kind of like long term outlet outlook short term outlook.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:13

Okay so what should they be focused on the most and what they should stop obsessing over right?

SPEAKER_01 1:19:18

That's yeah like something short term and then something long term you know as far as like what should they be looking out to on the horizon. Like I mean obviously your film is probably just go watch go watch go watch your film that would address that but you know there there's also an art of saying no to things right it's not just like yes yes yes it's just like stop doing some things to stop the thing.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:40

I think short term uh we should stop obsessing over the the date the the dangers of AI is real and I'm not saying that people shouldn't be having those conversations especially when it comes to legally and culturally um there needs to be those conversations but as a personal individual just worrying about it all the time I don't think is going to do any good right now. It's happening we have to adapt to it. It doesn't mean that you have to become an expert on you know on on Claude in 24 hours. But I think the bigger fear that I have that I think we should be focused on short term is loneliness. I think that's the most important thing that we need to handle as individuals and as a society right now because that's a problem that is literally killing people and also damaging the lives of a lot of people, especially younger people as well. And that problem is getting worse and we don't have a handle on that. And through working on that process, we're going to help understand how to live in the time of AI and this digital world. So by focusing on the loneliness and finding a solution to that that to me helps the other thing that we're obsessed over which is just how many jobs are going to be lost to AI. These are those are real problems. I'm not I'm not minimizing the risk but um the loneliness thing for me is just we we gotta start dealing with that in in a better way. Long term um I think we should stop obsessing over oh god I have to I have to really think about this one. I think long term we should stop obsessing over the cure for death which is not the same as breaching escape philosophy or is uh and I don't mean the scientists I mean the you know the the average individual um might be waiting for that magic pill the the idea of a magic pill um to me and sure maybe there will be one that comes um it's very unlike there's gonna be like a cure all pill but um the for me the obsession needs to be more about a life of meaning and purpose uh just because um we have to first have a world where you want to live forever I think before we can have the opportunity to live forever or I think that should how it should should work. There's just a lot of sadness and um real just um there's a lot of things in the world right now and confusion and and I think a lot of people are lost right now looking for some sense of purpose and meaning. And I think long term we need to structure a society that allows them to find it in more helpful ways because they're gonna need it more than ever. One of them being because of loneliness. But if the focus is on the positive of how do we find our purpose and meaning same thing as what I said about the short term we're gonna help then the idea of living forever now becomes much more interesting if we're giving people reasons as to why we're doing that. And there's lots of creative ways um I love I would love to see more advancements happening um you know with with us going to Mars. I'm really interested in interplanetary exploration. I think those are exciting things. They make us feel like we're part of something bigger than ourselves. There's lots of ways that that can happen but I think um finding kind of that bigger purpose I mean look what's happening with the potential of extraterrestrial life. You know you got this big movie coming out Disclosure of Steven Spielberg Age of Disclosure which came out last year amazing document oh my God yeah great watch age of disclosure that's such a good I mean it that kind of that thing's open our mind and now of a sudden you know that seems uh now it once we we're a part of something and we're we're we're we've built a world that we is much more likely people do want to live forever in then uh then it's to me it's much more exciting think about can we live forever. But I think the the other question of you know do we do we do we live in a world to where we want to live forever um that to me still needs to be tackled.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:08

Yeah 100% yeah I mean who wants like well I mean like we're saying like we tied it to the rest home analogies like but also like yeah who wants to live in a in a world that's just like full of war and famine and just miserable you know like it's just it's just not good.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:23

But yeah there's just a lot of pain you know out there and you can feel it and um and I it's almost like uh focused on just trying to live forever when there's all this the the this pain that's happening right now there is a an element to me that's kind of like well let's let's try to you know increase the quality of life for um for more people first and that's why I think a lot of the science is so exciting because it it empowers people to have access to tools and resources that they that a lot that anyone can access um in order to get there. But I of course it's very exciting to think, you know, can we then there should be people that are focused on solving that problem. But um I just I just hope we can get past this initial obsession with digital technology right now that I think is is is really challenging uh our mental health and to get past that hurdle um is is gonna be really great um for for a healthy future because we got to have the mental health health mental health is health and so if we don't have that then um as I said earlier we're just gonna have a a a lot of anxious depressed people who are gonna be living longer.

Where To Watch Forever Young

SPEAKER_01 1:25:35

Yeah and and that's the ironic thing about that too is that it was promised that hey this is going to help you connect with people and I think that was like the initial thing that I was like you know what's it MySpace friendster or whatever the first ones were like heck yeah let's say like you know I can hang out with all my friends all the time now so I can connect with my friend in New York and whatever and it's just just I I don't know if it's devolved into something just more addictive and you know just like not not as great or or just it never was the promise that it was but anyway yeah just like get out and meet someone in real life. Yeah what's yeah then that which we now we know you know does increase longevity so yeah yeah I mean go and watch this film with some friends it's like I mean damn it's like please do a do a a a a watching party you know like a film party like we used to do those all the time too like fire up the projector in the backyard and fight some people over and like watch something super cool people can do that with your they can they can go to kinema to to do a viewing party or a virtual party so we do have that option. Okay cool yeah so I mean that leads me to the next thing it's like how can people find out more about you and the film uh the film you know obviously is going to be being released I mean you'll get into that but also the Substack is a great place to start now.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:51

Um yeah so so um foreveryoung.film people can go to the website and can uh learn about the film and we'll have release dates on there soon um you'll be able to pre-order it uh on Apple quite soon um there's also a link to our Substack that is on the website you can learn more about the cast um as well as uh a little bit of the story behind the film uh the Substack I think is a great place to start um you can join for free we already have a hundred articles and content pieces that are on there uh and we're tackling so many different things whether it is the new drugs that are coming out, emerging treatments, the existential crises that we're facing, um psychology of aging. We've got a unique um diverse demographic of people that are various ages that are all signed up. There's people that are interested in the future there's people that are interested in practical things they can do right now and exercise protocols and uh what things maybe they should look at on their blood work. There's just so many different things that we talk about on there. And um all of them are in a lens which Which is makes it easier for you to understand. It's not um we we are trying to make things digestible for for as many people as possible and to get it out there.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:09

That's awesome. Yeah, and I know your co-producers wrote an article for Spanner, which is uh, you know, like our you know longevity outlet, S-P-A-N-N-R.com. And that article is I'm gonna publish that coinciding when this podcast goes live too. So kind of make it like a little press release and and going live. So that will also be an amazing article. Um, so yeah, that's super cool. So David, I I super appreciate your time. I mean, this is I I love talking to people like you, and you know, they're just like just involved in this, getting your hands dirty, like putting it out there to the world. It's it's so cool. I'm so lucky to be talking to people like you. So just just thank you. And I I really enjoyed the film. And like I said, I need to re-watch it because again, sans kiddo, um, you know, so I can kind of like dig it in and and digest it a little bit. But yeah, I just really appreciate your time and and thanks for putting the film out there, man. I mean, that's five years. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:09

We had a lot of people that were came together to make it happen, and uh Dr. Lewis and Dr. Johnson who are gonna have that article on Spanner. Um, they're both brilliant people who've had a huge influence on my life. Um and so uh they um the I I hope that people take the time to read the article. And thank you so much. I uh equally enjoyed the the conversation and very grateful that you invited me to come on.

SPEAKER_01 1:29:33

Yeah, yeah. Well, thank you so much. So, to our audience, if this helped you think about your health in a better way, send it to someone else. Send it to a real smart person that would get a lot out of it. Um, you know, sharing it always helps, you know, get David's message out there about his movie Forever Young. It helps the podcast, it just share it. It only good things can come out of it, basically. And so uh, and yeah, and with that said, we'll catch you on the next Longevity Loop podcast. This is the Longevity Loop Podcast.