Interviews: Recent Episodes
Im a Mortal
Your Source for all Things Immortal.
Gathering perspectives related to aging, longevity, and immortality from Earth and beyond.
Join us as we see what various sciences, cultures, religions, and everything beyond views the idea of living longer and immortality.
Episode 30:
Jeff Greenberg is a Social Psychologist and a Regents Professor at the University of Arizona. He is one of the three developers of Terror Management Theory (TMT) alongside Sheldon Solomon and Tom Pyszczynski. In 2015, they authored The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life. Based on the works of Ernest Becker, TMT aims to explain why we feel death anxiety and how we manage this fear by creating meaning in our day-to-day lives. How do we attempt to deny death?
In this episode, we do a deep dive into TMT and how it has shaped the world around us. Why does history have so much conflict? Why do we defend our worldviews so strongly? How has technology impacted how we cope with death? How honest are we with ourselves about our own motivations? All this and more with Jeff Greenberg.
Mentioned Resources and Links:
The Worm at the Core
The Ernest Becker Foundation
Existential Psychotherapy by Irvin D. Yalom
The Broken Connection by Robert Jay Lifton
Flight from Death (Documentary)
Episode 29:
When did you first care about aging and longevity? For Nina, her passion for the field started at the age of 12.
Nina Khera is the Founder and CEO of Biotein a biotech startup focused on improving human healthspan, and is also an Incoming Freshman at Harvard College. She became a published scientist while working in the Gladyshev Lab, and has a toolbelt full of experiences in the Aging fields having worked extensively with bioinformatics, Artificial Intelligence, and Machine Learning tools. If she seems familiar, it's because she probably is, with her active involvement as a writer and speaker on multiple platforms and conferences.
Join us for a conversation with the brilliant young mind of Nina Khera from when she was 16 (Recorded in 2021) and her journey in the field of Aging. In this episode we begin with a deep dive into Nina's Career by discussing what garnered her interest in the longevity and aging field, inspirations, being a prominent panel speaker and the generational differences in the focus on aging. We then dig into the age bias in aging, her perspective and experiences in the longevity field, the creation of Biotein and the motivation behind it, the overlap and prioritization of curing diseases, Artificial Intelligence and its applications, and predictions of the aging field by 2050. Finally, we wrap up by asking Nina how her peers and youth in the future can take control of their own aging and get involved.
Mentioned Links and Resources:
Mentioned Resources and Links:
Nina's Personal Website
LinkedIn: Nina Khera
Biotein
Episode 28:
Brian Patrick Green is the Director of Technology Ethics at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics. Brian's work on ethics is extensive, covering transhumanism, artificial intelligence, space exploration, corporate ethics, and religion. He has published several articles and resources on ethics and also authored several books including Space Ethics (2021) and Religious Transhumanism and Its Critics (2022).
In this episode, we ask Brian to share his journey into the world of ethics and the issues that face us today with the regulation of rapidly developing technologies like artificial intelligence. We also delve into the ethics of life extension therapies. How much of a duty do nations have to their citizen's health? To what extent can additional life be covered and how does this change depending on the form of life extension? What is our responsibility to life when it comes to other species both on Earth and on other planets? We then cover questions of identity and what it means to be human. What about us can or should change? What are the biggest influences on human nature? Finally, we ask about Roman Catholic perspectives on additional life. We may have gone twice as long as the average episode but only for good reason!
Mentioned Resources and Links:
Space Ethics
Religious Transhumanism and Its Critics
Brian's Markkula Center Biography
Brian's Google Scholar Page
Journal of Moral Theology Special Issue on AI
Ethics in the Age of Disruptive Technology: An Operational Roadmap
Episode 27:
John Davis is a Professor of Philosophy at Cal State Fullerton and is the author of New Methuselahs: The Ethics of Life-Extension. With a book dedicated to answering all the questions about life extension, John Davis is your expert for philosophical and ethical discussion.
We might commonly ask ourselves are all lives equal but John Davis asks a very different question, are all deaths equal? And can life extension make them more or less equal? How will we feel this inequality on a day-to-day basis? We cover this and more including questions of identity, generational connection, and limitations on childbirth.
Episode 26:
Tina Woods describes herself as a Healthy Longevity Champion, and after our conversation with her, we cannot help but agree. Founding Collider Health is just the beginning of her experiences with an extensive history working with AI in Healthcare, being a part of multiple collectives and funds surrounding health aging, and focusing on innovation as a whole in the field.
Although recorded earlier, this episode carries just as much relevance in 2023 with us covering topics such as the Open Life Data Project, the NHS and its load on healthcare, food systems and the effects of common habits on our health, and many Worldly perspectives on Ai and public data collection.
Tune in for a great conversation and introspection alongside your favourite hosts!
Episode 25:
Sergey Young is the founder of Longevity Vision Fund (LVF), a venture capital fund that invests in technologies that will ultimately help people live longer and healthier. LVF has supported numerous companies including LyGenesis, Cambrian, Juvenescence, and Insilico Medicine. Sergey is also the author of "The Science and Technology of Growing Young" which covers the current longevity landscape and where we are heading in the future.
In this episode, Sergey discusses his process for choosing what technologies to invest in and shares his thoughts on what societal changes are needed for us to live healthy lives. Simply put, longevity doesn't start with a drug, it starts with ourselves and creating movements in our communities.
Mentioned Resources and Links:
Longevity Vision Fund
The Science and Technology of Growing Young
Sergey's Website
Episode 24:
Theodora Girgis is an Aerospace Engineering Student at the University of Toronto. As one might guess, Theodora is passionate about all things space with experience in astrophysics research at her university and an internship with the Canadian Space Agency. She is also one of the hosts of The Sound of Space, a podcast on space created by the University of Toronto Aerospace Team.
In this episode, Theodora discusses the limitations of space travel, the implications of extended life in space, how life extension might be perceived by peers in her program, whether radically extending lives conflicts with her faith, and much more.
Mentioned Resources and Links:
Connect with Theodora on LinkedIn
The Sound of Space
Episode 23:
Jeremy Cohen, Co-Founder of TalkDeath and an Assistant Professor at McMaster in the department of Religious Studies focuses on new religious movements seeking radical longevity and immortality, alongside the historical and cultural framework of changing North American relationships to technology and death.
Jeremy describes death across the scopes of religion, life extension, and what exactly a good death is. The conversation dives deep into life extension and immortality in the realms of religion, potential changes to religions with the advent of extended life, transhumanism and our personal opinions on cryonics and much more!
Mentioned Resources and Links:
Jeremy's Website
Jeremy's Twitter
Episode 22:
Judy Ford holds a Ph.D. in Genetics and Cell Biology and has been involved in health research for several decades with extensive work on the interplay between reproduction, genetics, and toxicology. Although retired, Judy now teaches about how lifestyle affects the aging process through her online courses and her book, Why We Age - Solving the Puzzle of Aging.
In terms of biology, Judy describes the contributions of diet and genetics to longevity, as well as the differences in extending life pre and post-menopause. She also veers into the hypothetical with discussions on economic productivity with age, overpopulation, and euthanasia. Finally, Judy also shares some ways to get involved in aging research such as citizen science projects!
Mentioned Resources and Links:
Judy's Website 1
Judy's Website 2
Judy's Book: Why We Age
Episode 21:
Aisha Musa holds a doctorate in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations from Harvard University with a specialization in Arabic and Islamic Studies. In the context of life extension, she authored the chapter, A Thousand Years, Less Fifty: Toward a Quranic View of Extreme Longevity, in the book, Religion and the Implications of Radical Life Extension.
In this episode, Aisha discusses interpretations of extreme life extension in the Quran, the compatibility between free will and destined death, what Islam teaches about the afterlife, and what Muslims may think of life-extending therapies.
Mentioned Resources and Links:
Aisha’s Website
Episode 20:
David Wood is chair of London Futurists, author of Vital Foresight, cofounder of Symbian and has over 25 years of experience in the tech industry and as a head of research. His experience alongside his foundation in mathematics and philosophy at University of Cambridge has led him to be the futurist he is today.
What is a futurist you might ask? Well in this episode David goes through a plethora of questions including plenty regarding what exactly a futurist is and how it is distinguished from transhumanism. David also describes problems with life extension, societal rejection, developments in technology and its co-occurrence in longevity as a field, humanity+ (Humanity Plus), and plenty more.
Mentioned Resources and Links:
David's blog
Vital Foresight
David's Twitter
Episode 19:
Bryan Caplan is a Professor of Economics at George Mason University and the author of several books including Open Borders: The Science and Education of Immigration and The Case Against Education.
In this episode, Bryan has a myriad of questions thrown at him. Alongside explanations on how life extension will change education, industry, birth rate, immigration, and insurance, Bryan also describes the motivation behind work and why a biologically immortal generation won’t exactly create the scenario of a dystopian gerontocracy.
Mentioned Resources and Links:
Bryan's EconLib Articles
Open Borders (Bryan’s book on Immigration)
Episode 18:
Igor Grossmann is a professor of Psychology at University of Waterloo, specializing in wisdom and how societies change. He studied at the University of Freiburg and University of Michigan receiving his Ph.D. in Social Psychology, and his work uses innovative methods like big data analytics, psychophysiology, and much more.
In this episode, Igor provides us with insight as to how our brain experiences time dependent on our life length, what is individualism and collectivism and how they might affect our perceptions of aging technologies, and if wisdom truly comes with age.
Mentioned Resources and Links:
worldaftercovid.info
onwisdompodcast.com
igorgrossmann.com
Igor's Youtube Channel
Episode 17:
Tarris Rosell is the Rosemary Flanigan Chair at the Center for Practical Bioethics and faculty at the Central Baptist Theological Seminary. With extensive experience providing bioethics education and consultation at Kansas City University and the University of Kansas Medical Center, Tarris provides some excellent perspectives on the things that must be considered when discussing immortality.
In this episode, Tarris explains how we ought to try and provide the same quality of healthcare to everyone, no matter their personal decisions in life. He also shares why the rejection of life extension is not the same as refusing life by comparing it to cases where people have opted to reject certain technologies and therapies. Finally, Tarris also gives some thought as to what Protestant Christians might think of life extension.
Mentioned Resources and Links:
Center for Practical Bioethics
Bioethics questions for Tarris
Theological questions for Tarris
Amani Lamps (Proceeds from Tarris' pottery go towards humanitarian projects)
Transcript:
Im a Mortal Episode 17: Tarris Rosell – Center for Practical Bioethics Transcript
Speakers: Tarris Rosell (Guest), Sufal Deb (Host), Marvin Yan (Host)
[MUSIC – Im a Mortal Theme]
Tarris Rosell 0:26
Thank you for allowing me to be on your podcast. My name is Tarris Rosell. My friends and family know me by Tarry, my nickname, so Tarry Roselle is good. I serve in the Rosemary Flanagan Endowed Chair at the Center for Practical Bioethics in Kansas City, Missouri. I am also faculty at Central Baptist Theological Seminary in Shawnee, Kansas.
Marvin Yan 0:55
Thank you for that wonderful introduction. This [podcast] being Im a Mortal, a play on the word “immortal”, one question we always ask our guests is, what does the word “immortal” or “immortality” mean to you?
Tarris Rosell 1:05
Literally, immortality means living forever. In my faith tradition, that doesn't mean, however, that one never dies. I'm Protestant Christian background, clergy actually. A lot of people in my faith tradition believe in immortality, personal immortality, but that is preceded by biological death. It's just that some of the doctrines would indicate that there's an ongoing spiritual existence that also will somehow result in a bodily resurrection as well. So, immortality is interrupted by physical death but there's an ongoing personal existence, that then in some doctrines, again, becomes bodily as well. Figuratively, immortality can mean something else more like the works that somebody has done. An artist, a writer or someone else who has influenced the world while they were alive, that their influence continues on after their death. I think many of us who may not strive for personal immortality in some physical, maybe even some spiritual sense, some of us would like to influence the world in positive ways such that our influence continues after death. In that sense, someone might be able to say that we are immortal.
Sufal Deb 2:38
Based on your description, both figuratively and physically, would you like to be immortal?
Tarris Rosell 2:44
I would like to make a difference in the world, while I live in this life, sufficiently that some part of that continues on long after I'm dead. I am a teacher and I believe and want that what I have taught and what I've instilled in my students, how I've modelled, my life will continue on in their lives, even more so in the lives of my children, my grandchildren, and others who my life influences. That's the kind of immortality that I strive for and would want.
Marvin Yan 3:26
That's a good definition. We've had a few answers, which is not the most common, about leaving a legacy or an impression on others.
Tarris Rosell 3:32
Yeah, leaving a legacy is a very good definition of that sort of figurative immortality.
Marvin Yan 3:38
Let's say, scientists somehow figure out how to cure a biological age. No one ever dies purely by age anymore. How do you think that's going to impact people in general?
Tarris Rosell 3:48
Okay, so that's a big "if". It's possible. We've already extended life significantly, in at least developed nations with greater resources. Less so in some other parts of the world where people still have very short lives. What if life could be extended, indefinitely? Yeah, I would say we ought to be careful what we wish for, if we're wishing for that kind of immortality. I could imagine that some of the things we value in life because it is limited, would go away. We do some things in life because life is so short. We invest our lives in things that matter to us, in part because life is short. If life wasn't short, one could get bored. One could have a loss of meaning in living, I could imagine. It's the same problem of thinking about spiritual or personal immortality in some religious sense. I'm not sure that everyone has thought through the implications of that. What would that kind of life be? Not necessarily beautiful and wonderful because there is something important about limitations; about having a beginning and an end. Without an end, it may not be all that we would hope for.
Sufal Deb 5:19
I will be jumping ship a bit. Obviously, when these technologies come out, we won't know much about them. They'll be novel technologies, we won't know the long-term effects, especially with something such as life extension. Are we going to wait around until we see if life could get extended? It's not exactly something we know. Do you think we should be providing these technologies before we know their effects and how they're going to be affecting the end of our lives?
Tarris Rosell 5:40
Of course, this is the same question that's asked anytime we push the envelope in science, especially Health Sciences technology. The same questions we were asked when organs were first transplanted. That's been an interest of mine for quite a long time, especially kidney transplant— heart and lung as well. Should we be doing that? I suppose one could still ask that question. For the most part, we, as a society, have answered that that was a good thing. It is a good thing. It helps provide life extension and improvement of quality of life for at least some hundreds of thousands of people. It didn't come about without some trial and error and without knowing how it was going to end. The same thing is asked in terms of genetic manipulation and genetic therapies. We don't know what we don't know. I would be inclined to say that doesn't mean that we shouldn't try things to improve life for people who are living now.
Within my faith tradition too, there's a value in helping to improve the quality of life for people and to reduce suffering. We ought to do that, to improve the quality of life for people and to reduce the suffering for people. How does that happen? It happens in a lot of different ways. We could probably do that best by simply making sure that every human in the world has clean water, clean air to breathe, and basic health care. Beyond that, if my family member needed a kidney, and that's happened in my extended family, I think it's a good thing that they are able to get a kidney from someone else and have their life improved in quality as well as life extension. We ought to be careful about what we don't know. We ought to not go into things with hubris, not paying attention to potential consequences.
That's why it's important that there be ethicists involved in technologies like the Human Genome Project, some percentage of that money went to hire ethicists, specifically to think about these questions about what might happen. What could happen? Is this a good idea? How could we do this better? We're asking these questions now for AI, Artificial Intelligence. One of my colleagues at the Center for Practical Bioethics is working a good bit right now. Most of his time is devoted to thinking through the ethics of AI technologies, trying to think about what might happen that wouldn't be good. What is happening that is discriminatory towards particular people, in terms of algorithms and outcomes. We do need to think about that, that doesn't mean that we don't do anything to enhance or extend life.
Marvin Yan 8:42
These technologies themselves aren't necessarily bad, but just the way we use them, just like all those movies, teaches about these things that could happen, we should think about them. Right now, you just mentioned that not everyone on Earth even has access to clean water. Yet, we're talking about something which is so far away from a basic necessity. One issue that we thought about was that some people may not be able to access these technologies, or even choose to not undergo them. I don't want a genetic enhancement, I don't want to live forever, I don't want to be some sort of cyborg, anything. Do you think we'll still be able to have a compatible society filled with people who choose to undergo all these sorts of treatments, and others who choose to forego all of them? Will there be too much inequality or too much of a divide in either mindset or in terms of how enhanced they are?
Tarris Rosell 9:30
I think it's right to worry about making current inequalities, disparities of health and health care even worse. About creating some enhanced population and unenhanced population either by choice or more likely not by choice, by just the ways that we discriminate already. Racism. But even more so by geography. Where you live and where I live, we can look at zip codes in Toronto or Kansas City. Depending on which zip code you live in, your life expectancy will be different. In Greater Kansas City, it's a difference of several years. Already, we have these disparities of life expectancy. It's not all death that happens at birth, infant mortality, that's part of it. It's also those who do grow up, but just don't live as long. African American males live significantly less number of years than white males in the United States. Of course, throughout the rest of the world, there are disparities by nation as well. It's very classist or casteist even. We have to worry about that if technologies then become available.
Your earlier guest talked about how cryopreservation of a body costs you $28,000 which, as she said, is nothing to someone who is wealthy, and therefore it's mostly wealthy people who have elected to do that. $28,000 is huge to the vast, vast majority of the world, and the vast majority of Canadians and U.S. Americans. That's just one sort of technology. Perhaps it gets developed and it becomes available by means of public health insurance or private insurers. It becomes available, like heart transplantation in the US is available to people of all socioeconomic statuses, with the exception of people who can't get insurance, which in our countries, primarily those who are here without the appropriate immigration status, which is a whole different justice issue. Let's say that it becomes available, the technology happens, one can extend their life dramatically. It, maybe, enhanced their lives dramatically, their health and it's going to be paid for.
I think we've already resolved the question of whether it ought to be mandatory or not because we already have life-enhancing and life-extending therapies. How we resolve that is ethically saying one has the right to choose, to refuse. One has the right to choose or refuse. I do ethics consultation for a hospital. It's a significant part of my job, contractually, with the Center for Practical Bioethics. Recently, there's a patient who is choosing to not be listed for a heart transplant for their own reasons. Many other cases I've consulted on situations where someone could have their life extended by some other therapy, including chemotherapy for cancer or ventilation, because their lungs aren't working well. My own mother received a dire cancer diagnosis many years ago, and she was going to die from her disease. It was just a matter of how long her dying would take, really. That's how she saw it but her oncologist saw it differently. She said we have chemotherapy and radiation options for you that could extend your life by six months to two years probably. My mother was relatively healthy otherwise. She looked like the picture of health for an 81-year-old, except for the cancer that was growing inside and it spread. My mother's response was, "I'm not afraid to die, I just don't want to hurt."
So, we respect someone's values in the US, Canada, and throughout the world. We have said that ethically, someone like my mother has the right to refuse life-extending therapies. She's not obligated to go on living when her disease process is going to kill her anyway. In fact, that could create problems with distinctions between suicidality or simply a refusal based on one's values. In my mother's case, it wasn't a question. She wasn't suicidal, she would want to live. She loved life, but she was going to die and it was not going to be pleasant. No matter what kind of palliative therapy and hospice care she had. It was going to be difficult. It wasn't hard to see that this wasn't suicidality, it wasn't a death wish. It was her exercising her right to refuse life-extending therapies. I think we've already resolved the question for the future in this regard. Certainly one should be able to opt-in or opt-out. But, it should be something that is not forced upon anyone, I would think.
Sufal Deb 15:01
We're gonna jump right back into this idea of the right to refuse and opt-in and opt-out, we have plenty of questions for you Tarry. Right before we dig into that stuff I'd like to ask, we have a lot of societies in our current world such as the Amish society or culture, or a lot of tribes and cultures in Papua New Guinea, which we leave in isolation. We let them have their own lifestyle without the advent of technologies and some might call westernization. If in theory, we were to be the population that does have life extension therapies should we have an obligation to create an alternative safe space or society for those who decide not to take it?
Tarris Rosell 15:34
Again, I'm trying to wrap my mind around that sort of a world. What we do know, just by looking at history, is that norms change, our notions of what's good and bad and then right and wrong. They change over time as options become available that weren't available previously. It's hard to know how our norms might change, how future generations or two, three or four from now might think about what's good and bad. Therefore, the rules that are created to attain the good and avoid the bad. Some other things don't change or not as much like we ought not to force things on people that they don't necessarily want. That's why we have these rules about not messing with tribal groups, ethnic groups, in other parts of the world that don't want to be messed with. When people do mess with them anyway, whether it's missionaries, anthropologists or politicians, we think it's wrong. We think that's a bad thing to do. Those are norms that will carry on into the future. If there are societies that don't want to be that don't want this thing, we probably will agree that we ought not to force it on them.
Then within societies, as well, I think it is also analogous to what we've already resolved as the right to choose or refuse. The problem could be that we end up with two different— we already have it. We have those who are the "haves" and the "have nots". Again, that's mostly not on the basis of choice, that's on the basis of resources and power. In the future, we ought to try to minimize that as new technologies become available that could enhance and improve and extend life. We ought to try to make those technologies available as a choice for anyone, as opposed to only those who are wealthy and powerful. We ought not to experiment— there's another problem. We ought not to experiment on those who are more vulnerable, since we don't know how it will turn out. We've done that before. We'll use black men in the southern United States to test out some therapies for sexually transmitted diseases. Or we'll use people in some ethnic group in Africa or Papua New Guinea, where we don't have IRB asking us, an institutional review board, Human Subjects Protection Board, requiring consents that enable people to know what they're saying yes to. We try things out on people who are unsuspecting, and less powerful, we ought not to do that. We can agree on a number of oughts and ought-nots well in advance because we've already been doing this relative to new technologies for hundreds of years.
Marvin Yan 18:34
On the topic of the right to choose and the right to refuse. Sufal and I, right now we're 20. At this age, let's say a life extension, or some sort of enhancement came out, and I'd opt for it, but maybe when I'm 200, I don't want it. I wanted to ask because I know you've had some experience in the healthcare field about this option of possibly undoing a technology. As far as I know, we don't always talk about if I have the option to reverse certain therapies done to me. I just wanted your take on if there's something similar to that in the current healthcare fields, and if we should have that option for something like life extension in the future?
Tarris Rosell 19:07
There are analogous situations. I'll never forget one case I consulted on some years back, involving an older gentleman who came into the hospital, walked in, wasn't carried in on a gurney. He walked in and asked for his pacemaker— an implantable device that sits under the skin. It's implanted, it is under the skin and with electrodes connected to his heart to handle the electrical part of the heart that keeps the heart beating at a steady pace. A pacemaker. He had a device— either two devices or one device that was a two in one, I don't remember which. One of them shocks— if his heart were to go into arrhythmia or tachycardia or just stop, it would shock him. That's one part of The device. The other part is the pacer that keeps the heart pacing at an even pace. The part of the device that shocks him, he had experience going off and shocking him. It's not clear as to whether or not it actually did or if it was something called "phantom shock". That he experienced the defibrillator as shocking him and he was tired of it, didn't want it to go off again. He asked that the defibrillator be turned off. The cardiologist that saw him Friday evening, when he came in, said, "Okay, I can do that, because it would be torture to have a defibrillator going off and shocking you or even experiencing that it did, even if it didn't. So, I can turn that off, ethically". He said, "I also want my pacemaker turned off."
Okay, so back up, a lot of people have pacemakers that aren't actually pacing until the heartbeat goes down below, say 60 or 50, or something like that. Then it starts working, it's just sitting there otherwise. There are other patients like this gentleman, who have had an ablation. The part of the heart that would normally control the electric impulses has been ablated, and it's not working at all anymore. He's 100%, dependent on the pacemaker to live. This is your situation of 200 years out, "Now, maybe I shouldn't have asked for this sort of life extension that keeps going on and on. I'm tired of this 200 years, I've experienced everything I want to experience. I'm done. Could it be reversed?" Oh, yes. It could be reversed. Should it be reversed? Well, that was the question the cardiologist had. We could turn off your defibrillator and then your pacemaker. We can do that. But should we? Would that be something like physician-assisted suicide. We got an ethics consult, met with the patient, family, physicians, and psychology, psychiatry, interviewed, the patient— decided he's not suicidal. He's just tired of being supported by machines.
That's been a crucial distinction. If it's a machine that's supporting life like a ventilator, dialysis, pacemaker, or defibrillator, whether it's inserted or external, like a ventilator, we have decided as a society that it's permissible, ethically permissible to stop those things. But, if it's an implanted kidney or heart, that's different. There's probably nobody that's going to explant a donor kidney or donor heart, nobody's going to do that. We would say it's permissible to refuse the medications that keep the heart from being rejected by the immune system. That would be a refusal of medication, we wouldn't like it as a healthcare team, but that would be ethically and legally permissible. It just depends. What did they do to you so that you've lived 200 years and could keep going? I would think it would probably be considered ethically permissible to stop or reverse that, analogous to the pacemaker, defibrillator, ventilator, stopping dialysis, since it's not an organic body part from somebody else unless it is.
Sufal Deb 23:49
I'm gonna ask a question that's more so on the opposite side of the story, you just told us, rather than the end of life, the beginning of life. Say, I'm a parent and I have a child. I would like this child to receive the same life extension, whether it’s genetic or orally administrative life extension therapy that I received. Should anti-aging and life extension therapy drugs be given at birth? If so— if not, what age should a child be or an adult be to be able to consent to drugs such as these?
Tarris Rosell 24:21
Okay, so again, I'm going along with your hypothetical, having jumped over the question of whether we ought to be doing this at all. I have some questions about whether we ought to and how much life is enough. But let's say that has been resolved and then agreed upon by society that it's okay to create these sort of life extension therapies. Then your question, the answer to it is going to depend on whether doing so has become as normal as immunizations or more like some people do and some people don't. That's the case with vaccines too, of course, especially now during a pandemic. The majority of people accept vaccines, immunizations, and childhood immunizations. Vast majority, which is why it all works for the rest of us. It's become normal. The question of whether I get my baby immunized isn't really very much of an ethics question for most parents. If it was something else, if a child needed a heart transplant, there too we would say if that was possible and would provide life extension for the child, maybe 15-20 years or longer— we wouldn't question that either and say, "Well, you need to wait until the child is 18". The child isn't going to live to 18. That matters too. If the child isn't going to live to the time where they could choose, with capacity to do so then we say it's in their best interest to help them live long enough, so that they can choose them. It might be that the child gets to be 18 or 20 years old, and says "Thank you, Mom and Dad, I know you meant well when you got a heart transplant for me, but the side effects, it's not perfect. It's not like changing out a carburetor in the car. I have to take immunosuppressive drugs and it's just not worth it to me anymore." Now they can choose, but they wouldn't have had that choice, to stop doing the immunosuppression that's required to keep the heart. They wouldn't be able to do that if the mom and dad hadn't made the choice in the child's best interest. It depends on how this all comes off, becomes normative, relatively it enhances and extends life, and everybody does it, then probably parents could be expected to do it, and questioned if they didn't. But if it's controversial, about half of us think this is the worst thing that ever came out of the lab, and the other half thinks it's the best thing, well, then we're going to say, "You should probably wait until the child has grown a bit because it's not like they're going to die." Not very many children die, at least in developed nations. Give them a chance to grow up and then if they want to get some life extension later on when they can choose at age 16, 18 or 20, then it's their choice.
Marvin Yan 27:17
As a follow-up, these are all worrisome questions, but some countries have an opt-in and opt-out policy in terms of organ donation. I was wondering, does your answer to whether this technology should be an opt-in or opt-out depend on how normalized it is? Are there other factors that we need to consider?
Tarris Rosell 27:36
With opting into organ donation, it's a little different, because then it's considering that your body parts belong to society. In more communal societies, like some in Europe, maybe Canada at some point, where there's a greater sense of solidarity. It's about us and not so much about me, that makes sense. In a society like the United States, which is very individualistic, a policy where your organs will be used unless you say no, that's not going to happen anytime soon. Not until the norms of society become much more communitarian rather than individualistic, and I don't see that happening. I see it going probably the other direction. I'm not sure that it's apples and apples that we're talking about. Unless the notion of life extension therapies is perfected to the point where we no longer will have to expend public resources to take care of people.
If I choose not to have my life extended or enhanced, that means that you, as a taxpayer, are going to end up having to pay for my having said no. Then we might say, "Well, that's not fair. You have the option of being healthier for longer and if you choose not to, maybe you should be taxed for that." I don't see that happening either. Maybe we should be forced to do it or maybe we should assume that you would want it unless you tell us no, I'm not sure that that would happen either. At least not in my society because there are all kinds of people who do things that cause their health to be bad. They make choices to smoke or vape and we still take care of them, we still pay for them using Medicaid and Medicare dollars. That happens in Canada as well. We don't say we're not going to take care of you or pay for your medical expenses just because you smoke. We might not like it, but we placed the value of caring for people in their time of need, over the value of people choosing things that would be healthier for them. Probably analogous to what you're thinking about, although it might not be, it's hard to say. Depends how it all works out, right?
Marvin Yan 30:09
Let's say the hypothetical life extension was getting rid of aging. Healthcare burden, a huge part of it is because of age-related diseases, right? Based on what you told me about standard of care, just because someone chooses not to undergo some sort of anti-aging therapy doesn't mean that they should receive any sort of substandard care, then. We should still care for them to the same extent, whether or not they accept technology or not.
Tarris Rosell 30:34
Yeah, yeah. Why should anyone receive substandard care intentionally? If care of other humans is a very, very weighty value, and it is, then we take care of people, regardless of how they came to us. Again, we might not like it. We might not like the young man that came in having ridden his motorcycle 120 miles an hour down the interstate, without a helmet. But, when he comes into our hospital we take care of him like he was our son or brother. Why? He's human, even though he was foolish. I think that's probably the same principle that ought to be factored in. If someone is— why would someone refuse life extension therapies or anti-aging therapies? Why? They don't trust that it's all going to work out well, or maybe because their faith perspective says this isn't right. We shouldn't be doing this, we're playing God. Maybe it's because they have other values that correlate with life limitations and they don't want to give them up. I think what we would do is say we ought to respect those [reasons] that are all reasonable but even unreasonable. Things like vaccine hesitancy, we still say, "Okay, we're probably not going to tie you down and stick the needle in your arm. Even though it frustrates us, even though it puts the rest of us at risk and our children." What we do is we try to be patient, we exercise the virtues of respecting your rights to even make poor decisions and even sometimes when it places other people at risk. It depends on how far it places other people at risk. In that scenario you're presenting, it's not like it places other people at risk, it might cost them more money because aging creates health issues that then cost money. It's usually not the patient that's paying for it all but society at large. I think we're weighing values that conflict with each other and ultimately if we're a good society, I think we'll weigh the values of respecting people's choices. Over against, maybe, our own annoyance that their choice costs us a bit more money.
Sufal Deb 32:56
Since you brought it up, there's a whole economic standpoint to the idea of living forever. As we get older, it costs us more money to pay for these medicines and these diseases. Don't you foresee insurance companies or things that pay out people as they pass away, to start charging exclusive taxes or additional costs just so that somebody can afford life insurance because they don't have life extension drugs? Since they're no longer taking these life extension drugs, they're going to die sooner. Why shouldn't they be charging them more money?
Tarris Rosell 33:25
That's a reasonable question. Anyone in insurance is going to do the calculation if there is a cost to them as an insurance company, which is ultimately a cost to all of those in their pool of insured persons. If that can be calculated against refusal of anti-ageism, or anti-aging therapies, they may well charge more or refuse clients on the basis of what they have chosen. There are some new laws in the United States about who you can refuse and pre-existing conditions and that sort of thing. But there have been situations— there still are, where an insurance company can refuse to insure someone who smokes, especially for insurance for long-term care. My spouse and I are getting older, so we decided to purchase long-term care insurance and they could choose to take us or not, depending on their perceived risk of doing so. I would expect that would happen.
Sufal Deb 34:32
Staying on the topic of money, I'm sure you've heard of the idea of a comfortable death. Typically, not everyone can afford a comfortable death, whether that be in a first-world country or a third-world country. It's expensive. With this idea of immortality, again, theoretically say it exists, I'm sure some people if they would like to age and die like they naturally would, they might be able to afford to undo therapy or something along the lines of that. But since medicine has some cost to it, whether it be through your insurance or through your government, do you think something like doing medical assisted suicide or euthanasia, in order to pass away might become a little bit more popular, since it would no longer require therapy to age and then pass away?
Tarris Rosell 35:10
I would think so, if one did not have natural death to end things, how is it going to end? Well, I suppose one could drive really, really fast, or do something else that would get you killed. There are lots of ways to die, other than from disease or aging. Young people die too, right? It would either be suicide or somebody helping you, right? For those who would prefer to have it done in a way that they were not directly responsible but someone else was. I think the appeal for medically assisted dying is in part— it's legal. Society has agreed, either by vote, by a court decision, or by legislation that it's permissible. Whereas suicide is looked at very unfavorably and in some faith traditions, it's a mortal sin, it's bad and wrong. Whereas, if you live in Canada, Oregon, Washington in the United States, or eight other jurisdictions where medically assisted dying is legal, you can go there and ask a physician to help you with this and a pharmacist. As long as you follow the rules and you meet the protocol, your death is ethically and legally permissible within that society, that part of the society. I think that might be an appeal for someone who can't die from pneumonia, cancer, or any of the other things that happen eventually, inevitably, if we don't die from an accident, gunshot, fire, or some other accidental death. Why wouldn't suicide and medically assisted suicide increase pretty dramatically?
Marvin Yan 37:00
We had two questions that were related in terms of justice-related systems. The question I had was— I know there's a big controversy over capital punishment and life in prison and if there's one that's better than the other, what's more ethical, what's better for economic burden. When I thought about it in terms of— let's say, people had the ability to live indefinitely, if either was ethical anymore? because life in prison indefinitely is torture. But at the same time, I feel like ending someone's life was already such a monumental decision, but ending their life knowing that they could have kept on going also seems terrible. I wanted your take on what do we do about a situation like that now? What's going to be the ultimate punishment from now on?
Tarris Rosell 37:47
Yeah, so capital punishment, death by the government, may seem terrible to you and me. It doesn't seem terrible to lots and lots of other people, which is why it still continues to exist. In many parts of the world, including the United States. In some parts of the United States, it's actually coming back. From my perspective, ethically regressing. The means of capital punishment are now being discussed in some states as possibly involving execution squads. People have talked about hanging. Things that we thought we had moved away from some of us that we've moved away from as a result of moral development as a society. That could probably be expected to increase if you had prisoners who had done horrible things, and some part of society, the majority still thinks that killing someone who has killed someone else is ethically permissible. There probably would be more capital punishment, life in prison would change dramatically as well, surely, on an economic basis. Why? It costs a lot of money to incarcerate someone, even if you're doing it very inhumanely and not feeding them much or [keeping them in] very, very poor conditions. It still costs tens of thousands of dollars in the US right now to house somebody in an incarcerated state. If someone's life was enhanced, they're in a relatively safe environment from accidental death, and they're not going to age out, I'll bet that society would figure out that life imprisonment was not something we're going to do anymore. So that we [don't] keep paying $100,000 a year for someone to just sit in prison and not have any usefulness to society. We'd do something else, hopefully, something more humane, like try to find other ways to keep society safe from people who are a threat to society otherwise, but doing so without incarceration or killing them.
Sufal Deb 40:05
On this idea of incarceration and justice to a certain degree, there's this whole juvie versus regular prison. A lot of that has to do with the fact that younger people have more of a chance to reform and re-educate themselves to be upstanding citizens. Yet, some people claim that with immortality, alongside immortality, we might have that idea of reversing aging. As a 20-year-old, I might want to reverse my age to a 15-year-old. If we have something like this, do you think people will still blame their poor decisions or their criminal negligence or something along the lines of that on their age? Will the entire Justice System readjust itself to work more on their chronological age rather than their biological age?
Tarris Rosell 40:49
Who knows what people would be thinking at that point, once there was a possibility of reversing aging? My first thought is, why would you want to do that? I am almost 64. I live with a partner who is roughly the same age and we often comment to one another, as we watch our young adult children grow up and think about life at 20, 30, or 40. We then say we're grateful for what we had a chance to experience and sure would not want to go back. I think there are a lot of people who would say, "Thank you, but no, thank you." Those who would make the choice to reverse their aging, who knows what excuses they might give for their behaviour at that point? I have to say, I don't know. It's an interesting hypothetical. But I start with, why would anybody choose to reverse and go back? I can't understand that.
Marvin Yan 41:51
Well, maybe this could be inspiration for some Netflix series, right? Where people change their age, the whole justice system has to figure out which one matters more, biological or chronological. Something more familiar, because you've done theology for a really long time, so we can't have you on without asking you a few questions about it. Earlier, you mentioned this idea of playing God, this is something that sort of troubled me because I was thinking, well, all the technologies, as you said, can be a net good for society. I imagine anyone, not necessarily Christians, would all say, this device, like the pacemaker you talked about, saves someone's life then it's good. At the same time, I was thinking, I don't know if there's a point where we have too much power or become too much like God, where we're playing with technologies and manipulating things that we really shouldn't. With your background in theology, I don't know if there are differences between different Christian denominations in terms of how they think about this, but would, at least Protestants, be accepting of some sort of life extension technology?
Tarris Rosell 42:49
Yeah, that's an interesting question. I suspect that Protestant Evangelical Christians would embrace life extension, as much or more than anyone else. That's interesting because that part of Protestant Christianity also tends to strongly believe in spiritual immortality in heaven with God. When therapy options are presented to Protestant Evangelicals, the value of life in this world, the sanctity of life, seems to weigh heavier than going to live with God. Now, that wasn't the case with my mother. She was a Protestant Evangelical. At the point where she was not going to live a healthy, comfortable life here, at that point, she was quite ready to give this life up, as in her thinking, to go live with God and be reunited with her family members, parents or siblings who had died before her. But what I've noticed, and others have noticed, other clinical ethicists that I've worked with is how often Evangelical Christians cling to this life, even when they're dying. Often they say, or their family members say "No, try to do resuscitation, even if it won't work. It's worth it to keep trying. Even if chemotherapy isn't going to work anymore, try it anyway." Now, I don't have any empirical evidence that Evangelical Christians do that more, but anecdotally, it seems like that's the case. There probably are some empirical studies that would give us data on that as well. I would say on the basis of my experience with at least Protestant Evangelical Christians, I think there would be an embracing of life extension therapies. But there's also surely some other folk within my faith tradition of Protestant Christianity, Evangelicals too, who would question whether or not this sort of immortality striving is really a good thing.
I think there's nothing wrong with wanting to live longer. To live a long life, in biblical language, is a blessing. A long life is a blessing. You read the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament, some of us call it, there are lots of stories about someone who has lived a long life, and that was considered a blessing from God. There's nothing wrong with wanting to live longer; to live a long life. What's wrong is when there are disparities of mortality of life years. As we talked about earlier, one can look at a zip code and there will be a significant disparity of life years, from one zip code to another. That's wrong. That's just wrong. We ought to work on equity. Wanting to live longer— if you live in one of those zip codes, I think wanting to live longer is wanting justice, wanting to live a life that is normatively available to others.
I think wanting to live longer at the expense of others— we've talked about the economics of some of this, I think when you live longer at the expense of others might not be wrong, either. If we understand ourselves to be interdependent, we're not islands. I don't have a problem with Medicare, Medicaid and my insurance, the pool of money from my insurance company, helping other people even when I have been blessed and my partner, we've been blessed with really good health. We've paid tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of dollars that have been paid into our insurance pool that has been used by other people. We don't have a problem with that. We're interdependent, we see that as our blessing being able to help someone else. I think wanting to live longer at the expense of other people's ability to live at all or to live a normal lifespan. I think that is wrong. If my getting life extension therapies or anti-aging therapies is at the expense of someone else getting clean water, there's something wrong with that. We need to question even the therapies that we already have that are incredibly expensive that provide life extension for a few people, when that money might have been used to provide basic health care, immunizations, clean water, clean air for some other child, perhaps, who dies young or doesn't live a normal lifespan because somebody else got very, very expensive therapies. That ethics problem still exists. I have to ask, from a theological, religious, faith, ethics perspective, how much life is enough? How many years would be enough? It's like money, how much money is enough? We already have a lot of empirical evidence that having more and more and more money does not make one happy.
Now, not having enough money for food, water, and keeping your kids sheltered is a problem. Once you have enough money for the basics of life, there's a lot of empirical evidence throughout the world to show that greater happiness does not correlate with more and more and more money. I suspect that that will be an analogy to apply to more and more and more life years. It strikes me frankly, as narcissistic to do cryopreservation. $28,000 or $2,800. Why would I want to do that? I would want to do that if I was so narcissistic that I could not imagine a world without me. The narcissist cannot imagine their own nonexistence, right? Personal nonexistence is an intolerable thought. I want to continue to live and live and live and live. Why wouldn't I? If I'm a narcissist, of course I would want to! Why? Because I am the world. That's the narcissist that's never grown out of the infantile state. For the infant, they are the world, then it's them and their mom, then it's them and their parents. We say that normal moral development enables us to notice and embrace more and more people outside of ourselves. The narcissist is still an infant, morally an infant, and therefore grasps at the extension of life and personal immortality, I think, out of narcissism.
There's healthy narcissism, we also have to care about our own life. It's sufficient to take care of ourselves to make sure that we're fed, get enough sleep, and preserve our life. Frankly, for me, I don't really have a hard time with mortality. I think even in my 40s, I would get on an airplane and think, "Okay, I don't need to really look"— until my children were grown I was looking for the safest place. But once my children were grown and didn't need me in the same way, I would think, "Okay, where's the least safe place? There's a whole lot of other people on this plane, who haven't had a chance at life like I have. Let me sit by the door where I can help people get out. Which means that I'm the last one, right? If I can sit at the exits and help people out, or if the tail is the least safe place, well, maybe I'll sit in the back because there's a whole lot of younger people on this flight who haven't had a chance and I've had a chance," I don't really understand the grasping, the appeal of personal immortality that some people seem to have. The only way I can think about it is that it arises from some sense of I am the world. It's infantile narcissism.
I don't think that spiritual immortality, these concepts of living with God and Heaven, are necessarily bad. They're probably ethically benign. Why? It helps a lot of people have hope, for a life hereafter when life in this world is not very pleasant. It helps them get through death and dying when their life isn't going to be extended, like my mother. It enabled her to die better, with greater hope. Grasping at immortality may not be ethically benign, but just simple narcissism. I would hope, as we talked earlier, that my life would go on, that my immortality would be in your lives from the conversations we have but even more so in the lives of my students, in the lives of my children, and my grandbaby. I invest in them and then when I'm gone, they carry on. Hopefully, something that I have invested in them will carry on as well. More than my name or my memory, but something else. That gives me great hope and great purpose in life. I don't need to live forever. I don't need any kind of personal immortality when I think in terms of investing in the lives of other people now, who will live after I've gone for a while.
Sufal Deb 52:55
I really like that answer, you really have a deepened thought right now. One of our last questions is if there's one thing you want this audience and all the listeners to take away from today's conversation, what would it be Tarry?
Tarris Rosell 53:06
There are worse things than getting old. There are worse things than dying, so be careful what you wish for because if you get it, you might wish you had not.
Marvin Yan 53:19
Yeah, there's plenty of folktales about that, that teaches that to you as a kid too. We haven't had someone who considers bioethics on a daily basis like yourself. There will definitely be listeners who want to learn more about you and your work. If they are interested, where can they go to learn more about you?
Tarris Rosell 53:34
They could email me at trosell@practicalbioethics.org. That's T-R-O-S-E-L-L at P-R-A-C-T-I-C-A-L dot O-R-G. If it's more specifically theological, my email address for the seminary is trosell@cbts.edu. If they want to learn more about the artist side of me, they can find me on Instagram @amanilamps. A-M-A-N-I-L-A-M-P-S, Amani Lamps. I'm a potter on the site, I make pottery and post my photos there. Everything that's posted on my Instagram account is available for a donation to livingloveinternational.org, which is a new international humanitarian organization that I am— a couple of my students and some of my colleagues have just launched in the last year and we hope to do collaborative work in parts of Africa. Everything that is donated for any of my pottery creations is a donation to livingloveinternational.org.
Marvin Yan 54:50
We'll definitely be putting all these links below so people can find your work, the pottery, and support what you're doing because Tarry, you are a good person doing all this stuff. On that note, we really appreciate you coming out to Im a Mortal, your source for all things immortal. Thanks for taking the time to speak with us today.
Tarris Rosell 55:06
Thank you so much for what you're doing.
[MUSIC – Im a Mortal Theme]
Episode 16:
Michael Trinh is an Immunology and Genome Biology student at the University of Toronto. He is also the Co-Founder of BioDojo, a community for students to learn about the frameworks for scientific innovation as well as providing them with a platform to learn about and engage with the biotech industry.
In this episode, Michael gives his thoughts on everything from immune memory and developments in synthetic biology to implications of genetic editing and problems of uploading a consciousness. Towards the end, Michael also gives some excellent advice on how undergraduate students can get involved in research themselves.
Mentioned Resources and Links:
BioDojo
Michael's Personal Website
Episode 15:
Liz Parrish is the CEO of BioViva, a company whose goal is to genetically modify humans so that the body continuously stays in a state of homeostasis, as well as a graduate from Buckinghamshire University for her International MBA.
In this episode, she provides insight on the work BIoViva is doing, various gene therapies, her acts as a pioneer, statins, telomerase, the benefits and deficits of medical tourism, and present and future technologies that can help extend life.
Mentioned Resources and Links:
BioViva
Episode 14:
Oliver Zolman is a Medical Doctor graduating from King's College London, and founder of 20one Consulting Ltd. With a Medicine Degree under his belt, alongside his vast experience with solving-level problems in health care and aging, Oliver provides a never heard before perspective on Im a Mortal about the field of Aging and Longevity.
In this episode, he shares and describes his Longevity Levels framework and the three levels, how sleep quantity and quality differ and affect our aging, more reasons for you to drink wine, and the longevity field's role in medicine and academia; all from a doctor's perspective.
Mentioned Resources and Links:
www.oliverzolman.com
Episode 13:
Bhagwati Gupta is a Professor in Biology and the Associate Dean of Graduate Studies for the Faculty of Science at McMaster University. With many years of research into the gene networks that control cell fate using microscopic worm models, Bhagwati provides a biologist’s perspective on why humans are designed the way they are.
In this episode, he shares the reason why we didn’t evolve to live forever, why some organisms live for a matter of days while others are biologically immortal, and how much your genetics determine your lifespan.
Mentioned Resources and Links:
Bhagwati’s McMaster Experts Page
Bhagwati’s Personal Site
Mac Worm Lab Website
Transcript:
Im a Mortal Episode 13: Bhagwati Gupta – Organism Lifespan and Genetics Transcript
Speakers: Bhagwati Gupta (Guest), Sufal Deb (Host), Marvin Yan (Host)
[MUSIC – Im a Mortal Theme]
Bhagwati Gupta 0:27
Hello, my name is Bhagwati Gupta. I'm a professor of biology at McMaster University. My lab at McMaster is now more than 15 years old and over the years we have undertaken different projects and published lots of papers. The main theme of our research is— basically two actually. One is how organs develop in animals, what genes and mechanisms, signaling mechanisms are involved, and how genes control animal behavior. Related to that, we have also gotten into a new, very exciting area of research more recently, which is how genes control the stress response. This is something that we feel would be a major thrust of my research in the future years. The stress response affects the health and lifespan of animals. That's something that I would be able to talk to you about. These research questions in my lab involve taking multidisciplinary approaches, and lots of collaborations with researchers, both from Canadian and international universities. The training in my lab, through these multidisciplinary approaches, has benefited lots of graduate and undergraduate students. Students have gone on to successful careers, both in academia and industry, which I'm very proud of.
Marvin Yan 1:53
Okay, one question we always ask at the beginning, regardless of the person's background is, what does immortality or the word immortal mean to you?
Bhagwati Gupta 2:00
That's a good question. The literal meaning of immortal or immortality is that you're living forever, right? But to me, it's more of a psychological or philosophical concept, because no organism can be immortal, right? It's more about being alive even if you're not physically alive, right? That's what immortal to me means. That would be by doing things like leading or participating in activities or making significant contributions that keeps your name alive, even after you're not physically living on Earth. Maybe a good example would be a famous scientist that I always admired, Albert Einstein, for his groundbreaking work related to relativity and the light. They're still relevant today. Einstein is not with us, but we still talk about him very regularly, right? So that's what immortal or immortality means to me.
Sufal Deb 2:54
I have a two parter question for you based on the answer. Number one is, if you had the chance, would you like to extend your life to, let's say, 500-1000 years? Additionally, would you like to be immortal, according to your definition?
Bhagwati Gupta 3:07
Yeah, according to my definition, immortal, yes. But in a physical sense, I would say I would be more interested in extending life, but not being really immortal. But also, extending life has a catch. There's no point in living longer if the quality of life is poor, right? One may be living longer, but bedridden, or need to rely on others to perform daily functions and that's not a good thing. Now, note that I'm not referring to being poor in terms of not having enough money, or a health condition that affects people in the early stage of life with lots of these genetic disorders people have— that's a completely different thing. What I mean is extending life, which I'm interested in, is having a better healthspan. In biological science or terms, we use something called healthy ageing. It's not only living longer, but also maintaining health span. You can carry out your normal activities reasonably well and be independent. Your muscles are functional, the neurons of your brain are active, and your physiological functions are in a good state. It's also worth mentioning— related to this is something that we talked about this physiological or biological age of living systems and chronological age. Chronological age is defined by when you were born and how old you are, whereas your biological age is how old your body behaves. These are two independent things and affected by lifestyle or medical interventions. For example, a poor lifestyle might result in one being younger based on their date of birth, but their body may be much older physiologically, and that's an important thing.
Marvin Yan 4:50
Okay, this is a good transition. In terms of age, a lot of scientists get asked this question, and people have a lot of different answers. They always have this question of, is biological ageing a disease, and we're just wondering what your take was on that.
Bhagwati Gupta 5:02
That's a good point. Ageing, I don't think is a disease. Ageing is the result of the breakdown of processes over time, and how much you use your organs, and so on. It's more a decline of cellular processes, molecular processes, and it is a natural thing. It's non-specific so all organs are affected in the body. Although, there might be times when some organ is accelerated more, aged more for whatever reason, and might then affect other parts of the body. But generally, this is an overall decline in the fitness of the organism. I like to think about it, that our genes and proteins, or molecules in our body, or cells are little machines, micromachines. They are continuously active, doing functions non-stop. They are continuously used and combined with external factors, such as the food that we eat, the environment that we live in, that cause these machines to slowly become less efficient with time. Why is that the case? There is a very interesting evolutionary aspect to that. We can elaborate on that more later on. Evolution basically selects living systems to allow them to just reproduce, so you can survive and propagate population growth. That is all that evolution selects. These little micromachines, and in turn the cells, organs and the whole body are just selected to be able to pass on our genes and reproduce. After that, those cells could die or become less efficient, organs could fail, and so on. Nature wouldn't care. In a way, ageing is a consequence of these machines being less efficient over time, because nature is not selecting them.
Sufal Deb 6:53
Just quickly, since we're on the topic of genes and we'll jump back later, why is it that we're programmed for our organs to age? Shouldn't our genes be thinking of refreshing our organs, or refreshing themselves, so we can live longer?
Bhagwati Gupta 7:05
Yeah, so that's also related to, as I said, about evolution selecting these machines to be efficient, for only a specific purpose, which is to pass on the genes and beyond that, it is not selected. It's like, we, as humans, make certain products or objects with certain purposes. If that purpose is served, we don't care how long the object is actually going to be functional or not. That's exactly what it is. Nothing— I would say philosophically, as well, that nothing is designed to last forever. Everything is just selected for a certain function, a certain purpose. That purpose is done and after that, it is no longer selected. If you want something to be functional forever and be in a good state, it needs to have a lot more elements to that, that make it more robust, over and over again. If something starts to break down, there has got to be some compensatory mechanism to make it functional. Those compensatory changes would actually have to occur during evolution. It creates changes in our genes, in the DNA, which changes the proteins that could remain functional. What has happened so far is that nature selected these proteins or molecules to perform certain functions and hasn't cared about making them robust forever. They do their job and over time they become less and less efficient. Then they fall apart.
Marvin Yan 8:29
As a follow-up to that, you explained that you only need your body to work for as long as you need to reproduce, right? But then, how is it that evolution has some animals living a matter of days, maybe even hours? I think there's some— Sufal, we talked about some other animals that are biologically immortal. Why are some [lifespans] so short and what's the point of having some creatures that are "biologically immortal"?
Bhagwati Gupta 8:55
It's puzzling why some animals, or some living things, like bacteria, live for only a few minutes, and other organisms can live for hundreds of years. It's an interesting question. I don't think there is a universal answer to that. So, why can you do that? Well, if you think about it, every living system has a unique environment that they live in. They have certain nutritional requirements, they have a certain competition for survival, their food sources are limited, their environment is more hostile, they have different levels of stress. Depending on the conditions that they are dealing with, it will impact the ability of these Micro Machines. If somebody is constantly dealing with distress and always having challenges. They would end up consuming a lot more energy in a small amount of time. Much smaller organisms are much more vulnerable. You would see they have a shorter lifetime. Basically over time, during evolution, these things have been selected to only perform certain functions. Nature has also selected them and allowed them to reproduce very fast, because they've only got such a short period of time to live. But humans, we have a longer period of time and that's because we are able to, during this time, grow, mature and reproduce. Then after that, whatever happens, is a consequence of how we treat our bodies.
There's also other components that come in. The kind of food that we eat, the exercise that we might do, or the better quality of life that we might have. All of those lifestyle changes that we have, those will contribute to how long you live, but as far as nature is concerned, it selected us only to reproduce. If you look at humans 100 years ago, the mean lifespan used to be very short. Then, as technology has evolved, medical science has become more and more advanced, the lifespan has consistently increased. Now, you see humans that can live over 100 years, some of them. Researchers have mapped what the risk factors are for people as they get older. As people get older, they're more susceptible to diseases, and as people get older, they can have one disease, two diseases, or three diseases. As they get older, they can have multiple problems. The risk factor continues to increase as people get older. Death is just stochastic, as they get older and have multiple risks. Sometimes, stochastically or randomly, one of the things just takes over and causes massive organ failure and could result in death.
Marvin Yan 11:35
One follow up to that, which is— if evolution just wants us to reproduce, make the next generation. Humans are the first example but we seem particularly bad because we can't reproduce for the first several years, more than a decade, right? Why is it that evolution hasn't made us all be able to reproduce within like a day or two?
Bhagwati Gupta 11:55
Yeah, that's another interesting, interesting question. If you look at different organisms, and how those organisms develop, you see the different levels of complexity, right? More complex systems need more time to develop. In the case of humans, it takes nine months for babies, starting from a fertilized embryo, to become fully mature. It takes that much time just because— even though Micro Machines are working continuously, just as fast as they do in adults, right? But it's just that the amount of work that they have to do is just enormous. It takes so many months for the fertilized embryo to become a mature baby. In order for us to be able to successfully give rise to babies, we have been selected to live at least long enough, that allows us to not only fertilize an embryo to give rise to babies, but also take various chance factors that take into consideration that one might not reproduce on day one, right? It might take several years to reproduce.
During evolution, all that matters is whoever is successful, the best fit will survive. If they're not successful, they would basically go extinct, right? Humans have survived because humans were able to reproduce in that period of time and were slowly selected as Homo sapiens. There are many related species to humans that came into existence, but then got lost. Nature has been working continuously to select the best population and Homo sapiens is the ultimate output of that. Now, that doesn't mean that the Homo sapiens humans might not evolve, there may be smarter humans, who knows? As technology continues to evolve and our brain works differently. Our body parts work differently, right?
If you think about that, the earliest humans used to just be hunters. They lived in the forest, they just hunted for food. Our bodies basically evolved to utilize whatever they ate to produce energy. The fat that is considered bad nowadays, well, it wasn't bad when humans evolved because humans might find an animal today that they could kill, but then they might go hungry for several days or weeks. The body evolved to utilize fat, that it would break down and produce energy when they're not getting food. There was no storage possibility but now we have a very good lifestyle, very safe, very secure. The body still recognizes fat as a premium product. When you see fatty stuff, your saliva gets going. You like fried chips, the body is still thinking that we're living in the stone age, but in reality, it's not. As a result, we're not breaking down fat as fast as the ancestors used to do, so fat accumulates in our body.
Things that we consume faster, carbohydrates or glucose, that break down like that. Our brain is designed to use glucose because it's an instant source of energy, but for the rest of the body, it's okay if you're moving a little bit slower. As long as there is no threat, and if there is a threat, obviously, you have to run fast to survive. But other than that, you can survive by breaking down fat, which takes more time to break, because it's a slower process, more energy-consuming process, and would allow animals to live longer. It's a very interesting evolutionary angle.
Sufal Deb 15:17
Okay, before we jump into other questions, I have a couple of thoughts I want to bring up and try to form into a question. Earlier, we were mentioning reproduction— and this isn't based on any hard data or statistics, but from what I've noticed, people tend to, especially in first world countries, value education over starting a family, which leads them to having children in the later years of their life. Obviously, for females, they don't have reproductive abilities after a certain point, they hit menopause. Is this trend of valuing education and career and having children later in their life than in the past, almost against what we should be doing genetically or to increase our fitness?
Bhagwati Gupta 15:54
Yeah, that's another interesting question. My colleague, Dr. Singh, Rama Singh, he works on the menopause-related. He would be able to give you more insight into that, but from what I know and based on his research and other people's research, menopause basically evolved because nature selected for females to reproduce at a certain age, and after that, they were not reproducing. Therefore, mutations accumulated in those genes and are no longer necessary for reproduction. Why spend all that energy maintaining those tissues and cells when they are no longer in use? If humans delay reproduction, because they have other things in their life that are more important, that they're more interested in, I wouldn't be surprised if menopause slowly shifts to an older stage, older age in life, because it is going to get slowly, slowly selected. The difficulty with understanding this concept is that evolution is a very slow machine. We, as humans, have a tendency to see results or want to see results very quickly, in a matter of minutes, or hours or days. For us, it's very hard to understand how could that be possible. But believe me, that's what has happened so far and it is continuing. Humans are continuously evolving, as we speak.
Marvin Yan 17:11
Okay, just jumping back before we move on to evolution. Earlier, you mentioned fat. I've seen that— I think it was my former TA, I don't know if he's Dr. Malik yet. You guys were featured on the McMaster website for your work on lipid metabolism. I was just wondering, what is the link between lipid metabolism and ageing?
Bhagwati Gupta 17:30
That's an interesting angle. Obesity is one of the highest risk factors for mortality. It has been found that, as I said, our body has evolved to utilize fat and convert that into energy. There are a lot of processes in our body that depend on fat, and not just energy, but also cells that are lipid bilayers, right? They need fat, the various other proteins that get modified and so on. There are many uses of fat. But if you have too much fat, then that's also bad, because cells will need to take care of it. What will they do? They start to accumulate those fat molecules in different forms. When they're just no longer able to, the fat would start to distribute in other parts of the body, which is what results in obesity. On the other hand, the faster breakdown of fat is also bad, because then you're losing energy much faster than needed. Lipid metabolism research that we've done is about balancing the energy. Production and consumption. Animals can grow, utilize fat, mature and live longer. If you disrupt either production or breakdown of fat, you end up with this imbalance, both of which are bad. While too much accumulation of fat, which is a poor breakdown, can result in obesity or other kinds of problems in cells, not just obesity, but other types of problems that cells will have because they can't modify their proteins and so on. But, also not having enough fat is also bad because the cells and tissues need that. In that sense that research is very interesting.
Sufal Deb 19:08
Obviously, you've studied lifespan a bunch. What is one of the most interesting things you have found while studying lifespan and age? How did it come about and what does it mean for humans like us?
Bhagwati Gupta 19:18
Our research on life span and ageing started from work that we did on one protein, which is generally a family of scaffolding proteins. Scaffolding proteins are proteins that have different domains. They actually are able to recruit other proteins to form bigger complexes. Then, these complexes will perform different functions. They act more like a docking site. They are able to bring in other— they act as a glue. We found that when you disrupt the function of this protein— and we did that in nematodes, but this protein is conserved in humans, too. When we disrupted the function of this protein in nematodes, what we found was that animals have a shorter life span. This means that they die faster. They have a higher level of distress, a variety of stress. We describe the stress in biological terms that are associated with organelles like the mitochondria, or the ER (Endoplasmic Reticulum), but also cytosolic stress that involves a role of the [unintelligible] protein, heat shock proteins that function to protect various proteins in the cells and other processes as well that this protein is involved in.
That was the initial work that got us into the stress response and the ageing field. That's something we found very interesting. Here is one protein, that when you don't have this protein functioning properly, a lot of these processes are disrupted. We did more work on this and we found that one of the processes that this protein controls is the functioning of muscles. You know that if the muscles aren't functioning properly, or degenerating faster, it could result in a lot of disorders and affect the mobility of animals. We found that this protein is— molecularly, whatever it does, ultimately results in the maintenance of the muscle function. If you don't have this, the muscles degenerate faster and that causes— somehow links to the stress level going up and causes animals to die because they're not able to move properly, not able to feed properly and all these other complications that happen that kill them. This aspect or function of this protein appears to be conserved in higher animal systems. We find that literature says that this protein also seems to be important for muscles in humans, we don't know if it plays exactly the same role and that is one of the areas that we are very interested in investigating. How much of this protein function will be conserved in humans, in terms of maintaining mobility, muscle health, and so on. We find that research very interesting.
Sufal Deb 21:49
You mentioned that you studied nematodes. Why nematodes? Are they ideal for studying ageing?
Bhagwati Gupta 22:46
Yeah, nematodes have been at the forefront of ageing research. In fact, most of the initial discoveries came from the nematode system, and that, I think, has to do with a few characteristics that the nematodes have that offer advantages. One is that they have a shorter life span; they live about 20 days or so. Whatever manipulations that you do, you see the results within a matter of two to two and a half weeks. The mean lifespan of nematodes is about 15 days or so. You get results very quickly, and it allows you to come up with newer questions and you can address those questions faster.
The other advantage that it has is that it has got a transparent body so you can see the organs, even in alive animals. If you're changing the function of a gene, manipulating genes, you can see how those genes are affecting different organs. Biologists or researchers really like to investigate where the genes are functioning, which organs. For that, we look at the localization and all of that we are able to do in live demos, because we have this green fluorescent protein. These are fluorescent proteins, and we don't have to sacrifice animals. We can examine where this fluorescent is located, which part of the body and we can then tell which tissues, which organs are utilizing these genes. Transparent-bodied animals are very advantageous.
Another thing is that it has a fully sequenced genome. As you know, the genome is very useful in inferring the function of genes, their networks, and lots of other things. Nematodes happen to be the very first multicellular organisms that were sequenced. The nematode sequence is of very high quality. Not only do we know the sequence, but we also understand a lot of those sequences, what proteins they make so all of these and many other experimental advantages, have made nematodes an excellent system for research on ageing and research on the stress response pathways.
Marvin Yan 24:01
We just talked about your research on ageing, and looking at ageing applied to humans, a lot of the leading researchers in the science field who are speaking out about how to possibly fix ageing. They're usually talking about the damage repair approach. I was just wondering what your take on it was, because this is more of a, "Let the proteins accumulate, and then we'll get rid of them" or "There's a cancer cell, we'll get rid of it", rather than starting from the genome or genetics level. What's your take on that approach?
Bhagwati Gupta 24:28
Yes, given that the pace of research can only be so fast, I believe that we have got to take a multidisciplinary approach as well as working on multiple fronts. In a shorter term, you not only want to gain a more fundamental understanding, which could then help develop drugs and so on, but you also want to take care of people who are getting older. You have got to find some quick-fix solution if there are, you know, say Alzheimer's or Parkinson's patients. These are also age-related neurodegenerative diseases, cancer, which is also an age-related disease, you have to find drugs, so you can treat people who are right now— directly something that improves the quality of life for those patients. But then, on the other hand, you have to embark on more fundamental research. What are the genes involved in this, what are their mechanisms, interacting partners, and so on? We can then target those proteins, those components with certain drugs, and then try to either establish their function, or if they are bad, then break down their function. They can have a more comprehensive approach, a more foundational approach to increasing the quality of life and the health span of animals. It has got to be multifactorial on different fronts.
Sufal Deb 25:42
How much do genetics play into the factor of living longer or just longevity in general?
Bhagwati Gupta 25:47
A lot, actually. We just talked about why different organisms have different lifespans. It's genetic factors, environmental factors, and the lifestyle of organisms. All of these come together to affect the lifespan. Genetics play a very important role. If our body is not capable of fighting certain infections, then you might not survive. Even in humans, there are variations. As we are dealing with COVID, the mortality rate is about 2% or 3%, something in that range. It varies from country to country. Also ethnic factors and geographical factors. The majority of people are actually fine, right? They don't have problems, so you wonder, "Why? It's the same virus getting into everybody's tissues and they're inside their body, but only a few people have symptoms, and very few actually end up developing serious diseases and die?"
Genetics play a very important role and there are variations. Even at that level, you might say philosophically, that nature is selecting. Whoever is weak is going to die and whoever is strong will survive. People who survive, presumably have a better genetic system, and they're able to now have more opportunity to pass on their genes to their offspring, who hopefully will have an even thicker genome, who will then in turn be able to pass on their genes. People who had a poor genetic system, less efficient have died, they were not able to pass on their genes. This is how basic evolution works, right? It slowly selects more efficient systems. Over a long period of time, you see a massive impact. For quite some time, these things happened within a threshold, you don't see a major impact. But after that, you see a sea of change, and the virus will probably not be able to infect populations that have survived and are resistant.
Marvin Yan 27:43
Okay, I have a bit of a personal question, and it's for my own understanding. So listeners who are listening, maybe you had the same question too, but we talked earlier a bit about cancer. I always thought cancer was more of a time-related thing. Even if you don't age, you always have a chance of developing cancer, just because— by chance, right? I always thought cancer was time-related and not age-related. But then how is cancer specifically an age-related disease rather than just being a function of time?
Bhagwati Gupta 28:10
Yes, so I think in your question, there was a little bit of an answer embedded so age is nothing but the passing of time, as time goes by, you're getting older. When you say that, "We want to extend life and then you're not ageing." Actually you are ageing, but it's just that your lifespan has become longer. So, yes, you're right, that cancer in the most fundamental sense— the ones that are caused by mutations in genes, because there are other types of cancers. Genetic cancers that can result from spontaneous mutations in genes as cells are dividing and DNA is replicating. It is definitely by chance, and early on Micro Machines are repairing those mutations. As time goes by the repair machinery also becomes less and less efficient. Just like somebody is making 10 mistakes and in the beginning, they're able to correct all those 10 mistakes. But as time goes by, they're correcting less and less mistakes. Whatever is left behind has a chance of doing something bad. Now it's not necessary that they will do bad things every time, but sometimes they could. Cancer is also by chance. It's a matter of time. As you get older, as time goes by, more and more chances are there that you're likely to hit some very important gene and that could result in the triggering of the cancerous disease. Yeah.
Marvin Yan 29:32
There are two questions. Could you briefly make the distinction between if cancer is a chronologically based age disease or is it a biologically based age disease? Then second is, let's say we do cure ageing, the actual biological ageing, not the chronological because we can't do that. But biological, does that mean to get rid of cancer we have to cure cancer separately? They're sort of related questions.
Bhagwati Gupta 31:29
Yes, so cancer typically is age-related. Unless— until there are other types of cancers that are genetic, and then caused by a BRCA mutation that makes women prone to those cancers. But generally, cancer— it's just by chance the mutations will occur. As people get older and older, their chances of accumulating some spontaneous mutations will increase. If you extend the lifespan, or biological age of people, you'd expect fewer chances of cancerous growth. In human cases, things are way more complicated because we are not only experiencing one type of environment, we live in a very complex environment.
On one hand, we want to extend our life, have better medications, exercises, and things like that. On the other hand, there are a lot of products that are developed for human consumption, and a lot of them involve chemicals. These chemicals are mutagens. We need more food because the human population is growing. How do you get more food? Well, you need to be agriculturally more efficient, which means more crops. You have to make sure that they're not infected with insects so a lot more pesticides are being used. Pesticides are toxic and can cause cancers in humans, right? People have lifestyles, right? They're drinking, they're having various other kinds of consumption. It's very complex for humans. We don't have a very simple lifestyle where we are experiencing one type of thing. I would say yes, scientifically, extending the lifespan should reduce the chances of cancers. But then there are these other environmental and lifestyle factors that are very hard to dissociate. It would be hard to say; the frequency will go down in the future.
Sufal Deb 31:47
Would you consider cancer as a barrier to living forever and if you do, what are some other things that might be a barrier to living forever?
Bhagwati Gupta 31:55
Well, so while you talk about cancer, in fact, cancer is not the most deadly disease when it comes to the survival of humans. If you go— most people you'll see would die of things like malaria, things like diabetes, other kinds of diseases. It's only in the developed countries where we're not having problems with those other diseases that are more prevalent in third world countries. If you go out there, look at the world statistics, cancer is not the deadliest disease, okay. Coming back to cancer, yes, we are able to extend the lifespan and with a better quality of life, you can reduce those chances. For a lot of the population living somewhere else, they're dealing with more basic fundamental issues, and they are more detrimental to them.
Marvin Yan 32:44
Related to this, obviously, if we could fix whatever mutation that causes cancer, then yeah, you would stop it. But on an evolutionary scale, we know that mutations are not bad, because that gives rise to fitness and all that. But as we live longer, how do you know how much to correct the human genome's mistakes and whatnot? Where would you draw the line in terms of genetic editing to help us live longer?
Bhagwati Gupta 33:08
Yes, this is something that has a lot of ethical issues in there, right? There's a lot of debates happening on how much one would want to correct the genome and now the technology, genome editing technology is available and researchers have even gotten a Nobel Prize this year for that. Where do you draw the line? To be honest with you? I'm actually not quite sure. Because, on one hand, I would say yes, we want to correct the genome to remove diseases like cancer or other diseases, sickle cell anemia, or other kinds of diseases where it is known that there are— Huntington's, where it's a single protein and things like that. Then on the other hand, whatever one person thinks is a bad thing, and therefore this should be fixed or could be fixed, for another person it could be a different perspective, right? They might see something that we might term them as more luxurious things that they want. "Oh, I want my baby to not be obese, okay, and therefore, correct all the genes that will make them obese, not make them obese." One might say, well, obesity is not necessarily going to kill them. Of course, it is a risk factor but for different people, there may be different needs and different desires. How do we reconcile these desires?
For some people, it could be a very basic, fundamental, real disease that is going to kill their babies. For some, it could be more luxurious, more superficial things, changing the colour of the skin, making them bigger, taller. They could be a better basketball player, right? This is not an easy question to answer. It will require the government to take an approach and will basically have to come down with some sort of law because I think that it is unethical to start tinkering with the human genome and start producing what we call “designer babies”. No matter what you say is a genuine need, there will always be a counterargument to that. Genuine needs differ from person to person, country to country, population to population, it's a very tough question. I would say that for anything, just to start with, we should not be messing up with the human genome. Let nature and evolution take care of it. When there is a law in place that says, "Yes, the genome could be modified,” we will see at that point what everyone agrees on, or what the majority agrees on.
Sufal Deb 35:35
We talked about this a little bit earlier regarding reproduction, and the later age of reproduction. With the trend of people reproducing less frequently, less willing to have five or six babies. Maybe one, two, not more than that, especially in developed countries. Are there any ramifications associated with having a slower generational turnover, because of these later babies— later life babies?
Bhagwati Gupta 35:56
Well, I would say not in our lifetime. In this shorter time span, how many years or hundreds of years does one go back to look at their lineage, right? You go to your grandparents, then great, great grandparents. After five or six generations, you probably don't even care, right? I don't see much of an issue that people are going to reproduce slower or less or later in life, because there are other things that come into play for humans that protect individuals. There's so much support system in place. Even if you're producing one offspring you have done your job, you passed on your genes. Back in the olden days, humans would reproduce way more, make more and more babies, because there was a lot more chance factor. The death rate was very, very high back in the old days but that's no longer the case. I think for modern humans, even one offspring means you've done your job. As long as the chain is there, your population is growing, your chain is growing. For nature, it's not about individual chains, it's about the human race. Nature cares about humans as a whole. We might be selfish thinking about "my race". But if you look at, say, bacteria or a colony of ants, they might have their own families but for them— for us, it's the whole ant. It's just the population so it's an interesting, interesting way of thinking, but that's what it is.
Marvin Yan 37:25
Listen, as long as you reproduce at some point, no evolutionary stagnation. We're good.
Bhagwati Gupta 39:15
Yes. I think so.
Marvin Yan 37:25
One final question before we start wrapping up— well a few questions before we start wrapping up. We've interviewed a lot of people so far, and they each have their own predictions of what's going to happen in the next 10, 20, or 100 years. Let's say, by 2050, right? By 2050, where do you see the progress in terms of longevity?
Bhagwati Gupta 37:45
I would say that— if I were to predict what might happen in the next 20 to 30 years, I would say that both lifespan and healthspan will be extended. Recently I was reading an article, which basically said that there is no limit to human lifespan. It is a topic that is quite debatable because there are people who believe that human life has reached its maximum. I mean, if you see how old people are living— there are many supercentenarians, right? If you plot them on a graph, age versus time, you see that it's plateauing. You don't see people living 150 years, for example, right? But then people do believe that with better quality of life, better health system, better support system, people could keep living longer. I think that will happen. Lifespan and healthspan will certainly be extended.
I mentioned the risk of death as age increases. People who are newborn babies or teenagers have a very, very low-risk factor versus people who are 80 years old. When they go past 80, 90, or 100, we don't understand why some people are living so long. What is in their body? There's a lot of research going on there. I would say, on the technology front, I expect to see a lot of developments supporting a better quality of life, better products, and there's a lot of research called Smart Systems, to monitor what's going on around people. The sensors that are checking all the time, are we walking correctly or not? Do we have a chance of falling down? Have we performed all our functions as we expected every day, and if there are changes? All kinds of things. I see that technology is improving a lot and helping the better quality of life. I will say drugs, there is lots of research happening on the front of developing drugs that would enhance the health and fitness of humans. I expect to see many of those coming in the next 20-30 years for sure. Yeah.
Sufal Deb 39:48
Speaking of the future, I'm sure there are a lot of students and younger individuals listening in right now. They're interested in tackling the biology of ageing and all these other fields. What is the best way for them to get involved? Is there a specific field that you think is more promising— or not more promising, but very interesting and might be of interest to someone listening?
Bhagwati Gupta 40:05
Yes. First of all, a lot will depend on the interests of individuals. If you're interested in the biological aspects of ageing, then, of course, you want to start out by reading some basic articles, and so on. There are lots of good articles that come in more general magazines, and so on. Then including some scientific papers as well. Start out with reading that, see where that kind of research is being done and try to communicate with those people to see if you could get involved. Then if you're interested, say, in the social aspect of ageing. How to manage the older population, how to provide resources to them. Even linking to government policies, how municipalities or cities handle the ageing population, and how that translates into better homes, a better quality of care. That's another angle of ageing. Then there's a technological angle, which I just mentioned, that people were more interested in engineering. To have that kind of inclination, they could look into technology development.
I will say, the first thing to start with, depending on the interest, is to try to find some general articles. There is a lot being written these days. Then from the general article, you have to go a little bit more into actual research papers. Then again, there are some magazines or even websites that provide more easy access to research without getting too complicated. Then you get into a little more and then start to see what is available closer to you that you could get involved with. The good thing now is that in the COVID time, Zoom and the Teams and other video channels have become more accessible. It might be possible to meet with someone who works on that. If you're passionate about that, people would look into you seriously. I mean for a researcher like me, I want to see how passionate a student is— or someone, not just necessarily a student. That could be people who are looking for a change in their career and they want to get involved. I'm interested in seeing how passionate the person is, if they have looked into my area of research, and are able to rationalize why they think that research is appealing to them. I'm sure that, not just me, but many of us would be willing to talk to them.
Marvin Yan 42:14
We've discussed a lot. Whether it be how much fat you should have or do your part and reproduce at some point. Is there one single takeaway you want listeners to have?
Bhagwati Gupta 42:22
I would say boiling down everything to one thing is obviously challenging. But I would say that I'm very interested in healthy ageing. I think that is the most important thing, not necessarily living longer. Whatever lifespan that you have, you're most fit, you're able to do things, and you're enjoying life. I would say whatever activities one does, they should look at them from the angle of healthy ageing. Whatever your diet is, whatever your lifestyle is, everything else, just try to make sure that you remain fit, you remain healthy. I think that's something that I'm more interested in.
Sufal Deb 42:57
Thank you for coming on. But before we wrap up, if somebody wants to talk to you or learn more about your work, where can they go?
Bhagwati Gupta 43:02
Yeah, I would say that there are several websites through which I can be accessed. We have a departmental website, if you go on the Biology McMaster website and look into researchers you will be able to find my name, my research and contact information. There's also— McMaster has a McMaster Experts website which is experts.mcmaster.ca and if you search my name you can find me there and contact me through that. We also have websites that we manage on our own. One is my own personal website which is bhagwatigupta.net. There is also our lab website www.macwormlab.net, which our students maintain. We have some research data there and names of trainees that are involved. Those are different, very different means. I guess the simplest thing nowadays could be just to go out and Google my name and through McMaster and build upon it. That would be the simplest. These other websites can give you more information about the research that we do for sure.
Marvin Yan 44:03
Okay, so then for all you guys listening, these links will be in the description below. Once again Bhagwati, thank you for coming on Im a Mortal, your source for all things immortal. We really appreciate you coming on to talk with us today.
Bhagwati Gupta 46:05
Thank you so much. I really enjoyed talking to you. It's been fun.
Sufal Deb 46:09
As did we, thank you.
Bhagwati Gupta 46:10
Take care.
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Episode 12:
Jose Cordeiro was trained as an engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) but has been widely involved in the energy, education, and robotics fields as well, among several others. Needless to say, Jose is always eager to talk about new emerging technologies and is a huge advocate in the anti-aging space.
In this episode, Jose gives numerous examples of how quickly advances in technology and medicine have arisen and how the rate of change will only be faster in the future. Jose also shares with us why we should be just as excited as he is about the future and how we can all have super intelligence, super longevity, and super happiness.
Mentioned Resources and Links:
Humanity+
Revolution Against Aging and Death (RAAD)
The Millenium Project
Episode 11:
Ilia Stambler is an advocate for life extension, holds a PhD, is the CSO of Vetek, and Author of "A History of Life-eA History of Life-extensionism in the Twentieth Century" and "Longevity Promotion: Multidisciplinary Perspectives", and so much more.
In this episode, we ask him about how Life Extension has been perceived in the past, the policies, advocacy, growth, multidisciplinarity, and development of the field, as well as about his experience in Israel and their efforts.
Mentioned Resources and Links:
Ilia's Website and Books
Vetek - Movement for Longevity and Quality of Life
Episode 10:
Calvin Mercer is a religious studies professor who has written numerous books and articles over the last decade on the implications of transhumanism and human enhancement, and how they pertain to religious affairs.
In this episode, we ask Calvin about the way religion will change and respond to developing technologies and how we should evaluate them. We also learn about a field called developmental psychology and discuss its relation to common rites of passage.
We are also happy to share Calvin’s latest book Religion and the Technological Future: An Introduction to Biohacking, Artificial Intelligence, and Transhumanism which was published in 2021 alongside co-author Tracy Trothen.
Mentioned Resources and Links:
East Carolina University Profile
Calvin's Latest Book: Religion and the Technological Future
Episode 9:
Dr. Joseph Geraci is the CSO of Neurosene Inc and Co-founder of NetraMark. As a mathematician, data scientist, medical scientist, and machine learning specialist, Dr. Geraci applies his knowledge to help physicians and scientists better understand phenomena such as cancer and aging.
Listen as he explains how we can extract meaningful data from even small patient datasets, why we need to redefine complex disorders like those in age-related diseases, and how AI will shape the future of healthcare.
Mentioned Resources and Links:
NetraMark
Nurosene
Dr. Geraci's LinkedIn
Transcript:
Im a Mortal Episode 9: Joseph Geraci – Nurosene, NetraMark, Data Science Transcript
Speakers: Joseph Geraci (Guest), Sufal Deb (Host), Marvin Yan (Host)
[MUSIC – Im a Mortal Theme]
Joseph Geraci 0:26
My name is Dr. Joseph Geraci. I am a mathematician, a medical scientist, a quantum machine learning specialist, and an entrepreneur. Until recently, I was the CEO of NetraMark Corp. It just got acquired by a company called Nurosene, its ticker symbol is MEND. NetraMark, which I've been developing over the last five years, is a unique way to understand patient populations for complex disorders. Stuff like oncology, neuropsychiatry, aging, and things like that. Diseases where it's difficult to label. One of the things that I've been focusing on heavily is in developing next-generation machine intelligence that can actually help prepare datasets to feed to machine learning. So we use machine intelligence in a very unique way. We use it to deal with heterogeneity, and understand the patient populations from the patient level in a very precise way. Then, this machine prepares novel data sets and it gets pushed into machine learning. The other thing we focus on is this cool platform we call NetraAI, which allows you to actually interact with complex patient populations. You can literally augment your ability to understand the disease state with a lot of precision. It's very cool. I'm also a professor of Molecular Medicine at Queen's University. I'm also a professor at Augusta University in Georgia, USA. That's me.
Marvin Yan 2:10
Okay. Wow, a man of many hats, I see. We definitely have a few questions coming up, especially on-- I think, last we spoke, Joe, we talked about your Alzheimers paper, we did read that. I do have some questions. Before we get there, given that our podcast is called, Im a Mortal, which is a bit of a play on the word "immortal". What does the word "immortal" or "immortality" mean to you?
Joseph Geraci 2:30
What it means to me is the ability to choose when to terminate my life. That's what it would mean to me to be immortal. Am I done? Instead of the current situation where we age, we break down, and we have little choice. There's a benefit to not having a choice, which is, I think, you live life more fully and you're forced to look deeply into the nature of reality. It can drive some very deep spirituality, which is very satisfying. That aside, it would be nice to choose when I die.
Marvin Yan 3:10
I'm curious, do you think we should all have the choice for when we pass, then?
Joseph Geraci 3:15
I don't know. I don't know. That's a great question. I think where-- the right that we should all have is, we should be able to reprogram ourselves so that a lot of the stuff that takes people down early gets eliminated. Maybe that is something that we can all agree upon. No more ridiculous neurodegeneration, no more cancer, no more of that type of stuff. Age-related disorders, wasting away. I think what we should focus on that aspect is aging really well, which some people do. It's one of the things I studied. We call them SuperAgers. I think that making everybody a SuperAger, I think that's the right-- there it is.
Sufal Deb 4:08
Joe, before we jump into everything about AI, your research, your company, and whatever else we want to talk about, I want to ask about your journey and how you got to where you are. In your intro, you mentioned things such as mathematics, oncology, neurodegenerative disease, physics, artificial intelligence, and I'm sure I could go on and on with some of your help. Where exactly did your journey begin? Where did your interest start?
Joseph Geraci 4:30
Yeah, so when I was a kid, I was very, very science-oriented. I won some science awards but the real place where it took off was when I begged my parents to buy me a computer from RadioShack when I was 11 and they did. I got this CoCo 2 computer with 16K of RAM or something. It was amazing. I just loved programming this thing, but I wanted to make it intelligent. I wanted it to be able to converse with me and so I tried to develop my own methods to do that when I was a kid. Eventually, I had this realization that the only way for a computer to start to emerge any semblance of intelligence is to give it the scaffolding so that you can leave this thing on, and it can learn from data. I had that realization when I was 12. I remember years later when I was doing machine learning, I'm like, "Hey, this is kind of the stuff I was doing when I was 12. I mean, just a lot less sophisticated. " I didn't know how to build the proper models and stuff but I had that paradigm.
Ever since then, I was just obsessed with mathematics and science. I ended up doing math degrees in my undergrad and in my master's. Then, during my Ph.D., I was asked to look at a problem in quantum computation and the US government became interested in one of my proposed solutions. The next thing I knew, I moved from Canada to the US and lived in Los Angeles. I was thinking about what are the outer limits that are going to be possible with this next generation of computations, quantum computation. That's where I got started. Then, once I did that work as a Ph.D. student and graduated, I switched to medicine. I did a postdoc in oncology, another postdoc in computer science, machine learning for medicine, and then another postdoc in neuropsychiatry. That was kind of my journey, I was always just hyper interested in computer science, biology, and medicine. I managed to merge them.
Marvin Yan 6:50
Oh, well, forgive me for prodding further, but I feel like I want to know a little bit more because I know just because you like k-nearest or decision trees doesn't mean you necessarily are into longevity or aging. At what point did the concepts of longevity or aging start to go on your radar?
Joseph Geraci 7:07
Yeah, no, that's great. What ended up happening was, cancer was an amazing place to start all this work because of the absolute complexity of the manifestations of this disease. Two people-- a doctor might say two people who have lung cancer, but they can be very different diseases, even though they're in the same tissue. We have these names for them: non-small cell, small cell, whatever, etc. That heterogeneity inspired me to: "How do I optimally look at these patient populations to help make good clinical decisions?" Then, I did the same thing in neuropsychiatry and then I met one of my investors of NetraMark, the CEO of Juvenescence. He introduced me to some applications.
Now, at the same time, when I was doing my cancer work with Igor Jurisica at the University of Toronto, there was an aging component. I was already playing with aging earlier on, I was trying to understand what happens during aging, how does this relate to cancer? There's an intimate relationship between aging and cancer. It's true as we get older there's a higher chance, but it's specifically because some of the machinery that starts to go wrong is pertinent for aging, specifically, the accumulation of errors. I can get into it. I started thinking about this even during my oncology training and then it was the CEO of Juvenescence that said, "Hey, this is what we're doing. Your technology can be very powerful for this because you can literally relabel these complex patient populations, let the machine label it for us and then we can use machine learning and so forth. Then we develop the relationship on that front." So, that was Greg Bailey, Dr. Greg Bailey, that pulled me back in.
Sufal Deb 9:13
I want to ask, what exactly is NetraMark?
Joseph Geraci 9:16
It's a technology company that truly has an agnostic-- it has a machine intelligence component technology in it that could be used for many things. We focused on pharmaceuticals because of my background in medicine and these complex datasets. Essentially what it is, it's a pharma-tech company, essentially now, that allows us to form these minor miracles. This is what we do. We do the following things. A pharmaceutical company comes to us and says, "We are having trouble understanding this patient population, can we have access to your technology?" We give them access and what we do is we put their dataset inside of it. What the machine does is-- we give them this thing called NetraAI, it's very cool.
It accelerates your research by up to 100 times. Literally, in 14 seconds, this thing can tell you about your-- I've seen it do it and it got it exactly right. These patients are going to respond this way and these patients are going to respond this way. It's very cool and it did it with very weak labelling. What it does is basically like a data microscope. It allows you to go in, zoom into the patients and say, "Hey, these people are together because of this reason and these people are together because of this reason." In other words, what happens is you give it simple labels that say, for example, these people are responders, these people are non-responders. The machine will shatter even those subtypes into further subtypes. Just because someone's a responder, they can be a responder for different reasons so that can influence your clinical trial in a major way. You can actually literally focus— it hands you a biomarker that says, "Hey, these people have a mechanism of response that matches your drug." This can be used for drug response, placebo response, safety, profiling, all kinds of things. Basically, NetraMark is allowing us to stop relying on these blocky observational names we give to disease and trading them in for mechanistic profiles instead. We have set tools like that, so that's one of our tools.
The other tool literally is used to look. We're having trouble using machine learning because there's something going on with our data set, it's overfitting and what we do is we allow-- something we call Shatter. We allow it to pass through our system and it basically creates labels for your dataset. It relabels it. This is the future of AI. Everyone understands we can-- if you have good data, you can use AI, it's simple. We now have to understand the hard parts of the data, so that's the part we've been starting to attack. How do you use intelligence, machine intelligence, to do this really difficult work of partitioning the data in such a way so that a gradient boost or a deep neural network can really do its job? Those are the two things. One is interactive augmented intelligence and the other one is like a big brother for machine learning. It's like you want to train a kid to ride a bicycle, you stand next to it and you prepare it. That's what some of our technology, that's what Shatter is doing now.
Marvin Yan 12:43
Oh, okay. Now, is my opportunity to ask about the Alzheimer's paper I read, because, once again, this is not an AI podcast or machine learning podcast. I know you've been on one or two of those. One of the things that I remember you saying was that in the realm of medicine, there aren’t huge datasets. You want thousands, tens of thousands, but really, you're getting, optimistically, a few 100 probably?
Joseph Geraci 13:05
That's optimistic. Yes.
Marvin Yan 13:07
Yeah, but I remember, in your Alzheimer’s paper, the dataset was actually pretty small as well, which is not surprising, of course.
Joseph Geraci 13:13
It was over 100 people. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marvin Yan 13:15
A few 100. I'm assuming that more data is always better, but I'm not sure if that's true. I also don't know if there's a minimum amount of data you need. How is it that you're able to get such results from such small datasets in the first place?
Joseph Geraci 13:29
No, no, it's a great question. Here it is. This is the way I've been thinking about statistics and machine learning. Statistics are great because you can gather confidence in an observation using statistics. Can I generate a significant p-value? Then say, "Okay, my observation is not just a fluke." Okay, so then there are two aspects to machine learning from my perspective.
One is the classic one, which is "I want to be able to build a model so I can make a prediction about an individual." For those of you who can't see, I'm holding up a pen. You show the pen to the AI, it says it's a pen, it learned what a pen is. If I hold up a ball and it says it's a ball. That's a prediction. When you have smaller datasets, you have to be careful because it doesn't gather enough of the distribution of what a pen is or what an Alzheimer's patient is in order to make really accurate predictions. What you can do is you can extract. You can get the machine to create hypotheses about your data and what we did is we invented a mathematical paradigm that allows the machine to extract observations from the data that collectively is significant. In other words, it's a hypothesis that you can really go out there and test or observe, or you can literally as a human say, "That's crap or that's junk."
I'll give you an example. I'll give you an example of crap and something to relate it to immortality, okay? Crap is that we got a perfect model for diabetes. Perfect! The machine handed us back two classes, it didn't even make any other-- it didn't discover anything. It's perfect right down to the number and we asked the machine, "Oh, cool what variables are you using?" Someone left in a variable called history of diabetes. The AI did its best and did perfectly because it was there. We were like, "Oh, crap, okay, that's not good."
Here's an example of-- this is an amazing example, we put in aging data, that we have at NetraMark. It's basically skin data sampled from a two-year-old up to a 96-year-old. It's gene expression so it's genetic and a very special type of genetic data. We asked the machine a stupid question, "Can you separate people who are over 50 from under 50?" What it did was that it basically created a data set that said, "Forget about all of these other people, they're all mixed." But, it pulled out the subpopulation. This is the magic, okay? It was able to ignore-- it forgot. This is what me and some next-generation machine learning people are starting to talk about. Can you get a machine to be like a human? To forget, to ignore the noise. What it did is it yanked out a group that everybody-- a pure group of over 50s or everybody was over 80, because it was able to recognize some signal that cohered all these people. No cheating, no internet, no labels, I just gave it a simple label, these people are over 50, these people are under 50. It said, "This is nonsense, except look at this hypothesis I just generated." The p-value of those people coming together by fluke is like 10 to the negative 17. It's going to allow you to generate a model based on the hypotheses that this thing can make because it knows how to forget and knows how to say "No, this is nonsense." This is what's necessary for the whole longevity space because the complexity is astounding when we age in different ways.
Sufal Deb 17:34
Before I jump into the original question I was going to ask, I wanted to ask, is there a reason you use the word "forget" rather than "filtering out?" Is there a significant difference between the two?
Joseph Geraci 17:45
I think it's some of our desire that's related to a lot of people in my space. You have to forgive me, I'm also a neuroscientist. We anthropomorphize. We love our tools. I think that-- see, forgetting is a very important thing. We're starting to refer to this process as forgetting, and you're right, it is filtering. It's basically saying that this is nonsense, but it's a forgetting mechanism because what it does is-- it's forgetting that allows you to relearn, to recapture and not overfit. I use that term because I want to sound cool.
Sufal Deb 18:24
Yeah, as somebody who works in a lab and has been working for quite some time now, I'm always told, any data is good data. Bad data is good data, more data is always good. Is more data always good with producing a predictive model? Is having more always necessarily beneficial?
Joseph Geraci 18:40
Okay. Yeah. This is a beautiful question. The answer is simple. Yes, more data is better. But, there's data that's just garbage, it was not collected right, it's contaminated. There's data that comes from machines that change every hour. We literally had our machine intelligence create a hypothesis about a bunch of MRIs and the hypothesis was-- it arranged everybody according to the time that they used their MRI in about 72-minute blocks because this thing was sliding for some reason. Something was wrong. Proteomics, same thing. You have to be careful. Yes, the more data the better simply because it's a truth that phenomena in our universe are distributed. Mathematicians and statisticians get excited about distributions because they describe the way data is distributed. If you can figure out very precisely how distribution is formed or what it's made out of, you can make really powerful predictions with that. The more data, the more full, the more complete the picture of the distribution. Unless it's all garbage, then you're not getting anything.
Marvin Yan 20:06
Okay, before Sufal starts asking more questions about data and whether it's good, bad, or how useful it is. We did touch on aging and I did want to elaborate more on it because when we talk about aging, depending on who you ask, some people are very strongly opposed to calling it a disease while other people are much on board with that. Joe, do you think we should define aging as a disease? Is it helpful in any sense?
Joseph Geraci 20:31
Yes. It's helpful because-- maybe not a disease. It's something like a disease. It's a syndrome. It's something we all approach because there's an internal failing. Like, what is "dis-ease"? Right. Dr. Joe's, as you know, if I put that hat on, it's like, "Yeah, you're messed up because something went wrong, and something's broken, or there's a genetic malfunction, or whatever." What happens? Is it the-- Okay, let's look at cancer, okay? Cancer-- let's be logical. We accept that cancer is a disease and it causes severe dis-ease. Cancer occurs for various reasons, but at the bottom, it's because there's some sort of genetic malfunction that creates a neoplasm. Often what happens is the apoptotic signal breaks down, which is the suicide signal. That's a very good example. All of the cigarette smokers out there, that's what you're doing to yourself. You're disabling the ability for your cells to commit suicide when they have errors. As this error accumulates you end up with a neoplasm, a tumour.
aging causes the same thing, you end up accumulating a bunch of errors, you end up with senescent cells, which release chemical signals you don't want. You end up accumulating errors on your genes and so forth. Proteins don't get translated properly. It's like a radio station going out of tune. If I come along and I give you a drug that puts you back in tune, the music comes back clear then it seems like I've just cured some "dis-ease". To me, it's the same thing, just because this disease is inevitable, doesn't mean it's not a disease. That's the problem, this inevitability. There's spirituality attached to it. There's all that. Which is fine, it's great and it could be the most important aspect of our lives. We don't know that. Death might be the most important. We don't know what we are, we're trapped between zero and 100. You can have spiritual practices and all that, that might infer something to you, but we don't know what we are. All that aside, it's an accumulation of errors that kills you. If not something else.
Sufal Deb 23:12
Related to curing aging, or curing aging as a disease, there are two sides to the same coin, one being curing individual diseases that come from aging, or are associated with aging, versus just stopping people from aging altogether. Do you think one is better than the other? Do you think solving all these age-related diseases individually would lead to us stopping our aging process?
Joseph Geraci 23:35
Yeah, so this question is important. We need to go after age-related diseases first because we can catalogue these things. Even Alzheimer's is extremely heterogeneous, as you can see from my paper. We can attack those first. They're in your face and they have to be dealt with. They're the obvious things. aging, the mechanisms behind aging itself, is going to require, in my opinion, a next-generation therapeutic technology, like gene editing or something like that, or nanotechnology. For example, there are companies now experimenting with tiny little vacuums that literally vacuum up toxins from intracellular spaces, the spaces in between yourselves. This can change the way we age. I think that the progression is going to be natural. There are certain groups now, which are going directly after aging as a mechanism. I think that what we're doing at NetraMark has to happen first, which is to create a map of disease. This goes back to your question of what we do. Really, that's what we do. We're creating maps of all these complex disorders, whether it's lung cancer, aging or whatever. ALS. That's what we're doing. We're creating these maps and we have to create a proper map of what aging-- there are so many things that can go wrong. I believe in going after the individual diseases right now, yes. We might be able to even drug some of these things.
Sufal Deb 25:15
If I can try to summarize what you said, do you think that we need to map out all these individual parts to be able to solve the bigger picture?
Joseph Geraci 25:22
Yeah.
Marvin Yan 25:24
To follow up then, given what you learned about Alzheimer's and that it's heterogeneous, do you think we're wrong about a lot of other age-related diseases, namely that they actually have multiple causes, rather than just one?
Joseph Geraci 25:35
Yes, I do believe that. I believe it's already damaged a lot of the work in this space. Thinking that one drug is going to cure Alzheimer's, dementia, mild cognitive impairment, or age-related major depression. Inflammation is a big part of all this, but is it the only part? It's a mess. It's a combinatorial mess.
Sufal Deb 26:05
I'll switch gears completely and shift to a topic that's been hot in the media and in research for quite some time, which is the idea of personalized medicine. Do you think health care, where it is today-- obviously, every region is different, but in general the level of subgroups that we personalize healthcare to, is that enough? If not, how far should we be going with personalizing health care?
Joseph Geraci 26:26
Yeah, it's not being utilized properly. The motivation for doing things the way they are is because it makes money for certain groups of people. Right now, precision medicine, I believe, is going to be a critical aspect of the medicine of the future. Simply because one drug does not fit all. We're not cutting things up to a granular enough perspective yet. I understand pharmaceutical companies want to maximize how much money they can make from a drug that they clear. But truly, this process is already happening. It's already happening in cancer, where certain people have to have a gene expression over a certain level in order to get the drug and they throw away a significant part of their market to do this, but they pass the clinical trial. It's starting to happen and no, we're not utilizing that enough. Digital biomarkers, guys, this is going to become a huge part of it. There are going to be things that you're going to be able to collect from your phone, from other things interacting with an app, with your watch that in combination is going to define your journey, your health journey throughout your life, if we can make this precise enough. This is where I'm starting to move towards. This is why I'm excited about joining Nurosene's team because what we're doing is we're collecting data from the app and from other gadgets that the person's wearing and we're merging it with our understanding of disease. Eventually, it's possible that a digital biomarker, a person that utilizes this in the proper way and puts in a lot of variables into this, might be able to identify subtypes of diseases that won't happen for years. Thereby, really helping individuals. We can trade this stuff in for genetic information and all that eventually.
Marvin Yan 28:32
In terms of the future of healthcare, I feel like I get what you're saying, but there's one point specifically, I know a lot of people will want me to explicitly ask, so I will ask it, which is about this fear of AI and all these models taking over the healthcare system. I think right now it's more so where the doctor or the physician may use these tools to help make a decision, but ultimately, they're using their medical expertise to make the final call. Do you see this ever changing where we no longer need physicians? Will what we call a physician now, will that role end up changing? What's your thought on that?
Joseph Geraci 29:08
I've learned to never say never. I'm not going to say, "Oh, no, never, we're always going to want to rely on human doctors." The power of a human physician is in their clinical experience, not in their creativity. It's not in how well they understand physiology. They gather clinical experience. That's why we take our kids to a physician, we trust them because they have experience. Now, machines are going to probably become smart enough one day to very accurately do this. The point here is cultural. How can we convince people to trust it? Is it possible that these children now-- not the millennials or the generation before the millennials. Is it possible that their trust in technology, the way they interact constantly, is going to be the driving force behind exactly what you're saying? If you ask a guy like me, I'm like, "No, never. No. Wow, we never know." But if you ask my daughter, she's gonna ask, "Yeah, well, how accurate is it?" She's become like this. It's become colder for her. She says, "Yeah, okay, maybe I'll try it." That's why I do not say never. A company is going to probably develop some diagnostic system that's going to be so good, but that's gonna take time. Time, time, time, time, time. But it's possible for certain things. The issue is data, how do we treat the data? I don't know, I don't know how to answer that question. No, I don't know. You got me thinking too much, now.
Sufal Deb 30:57
That's all right. That's the point of our podcast to get people thinking about these topics, somehow we got you thinking so, it's an accomplishment in my book. Since you mentioned the word "spirituality", I'll make a very corny transition and ask, have you ever crossed paths with religion in your own life? In our podcast, we spoke to a lot of people who are very knowledgeable in certain religions and we've talked to them about their ideas about their religion or their religious experiences and what they think of immortality. For you, can you tell us a little bit if you have crossed paths with religion in your life?
Joseph Geraci 31:29
I've always been attracted to Buddhism, Zen, Taoism and Hinduism. I've done quite a bit of study when I was a really young man on these topics. I even had the opportunity in my 30s, or young, early 30s, to sit with a Buddhist monk for a couple of years when I was living in Los Angeles. It was a transformative experience. I had all of these years of reading and practicing, in some sense, all of these different practices, including some Western mystical traditions. I was always attracted to it because my perception of science as a child didn't split from my conception of nature, God, or reality. This is really me as a kid, I didn't see any difference between God, a tree, and science. I was born a pantheist. I lived inside of God, so to speak. Then, it naturally evolved and then what happened is I spent years doing Buddhism, yoga, Jñāna yoga, Rāja yoga, studying Vivekananda and whoever else. When I started sitting with a Buddhist monk in Vipassana, I felt like all that scaffolding was torn away. All the scaffolding above God and above these-- the naive stuff. I had an experience where for a few moments, I was-- there was no ego-self. After passing through that experience, it altered me, my acceptance of death changed. That's the answer. The answer is that I don't want to die. I'm not insane. I still have-- I'm an egomaniac but there's an aspect of that experience that bled into how I perceive it, I'm a lot less stressed about it.
What came out of that, if I may, is that I had this realization that there's one consciousness, and that was split. This consciousness is split, like a fluid amongst vessels. A lot of our fear about death is just the vessel worrying about breaking, and not realizing that the fluids are going to pour into another vessel. I've spent a lot of time thinking about death. This is what happens when you're a very curious kid who dives into Eastern mysticism. You end up realizing death is all religion. That's why we have it because if we're immortal, we're gods. We're terrified about what's on the other side. I think it's an extreme, maybe an equal part. People talk about Dr. Joe, all my degrees and all this stuff, but an equal part that's hidden is this spiritual life where I really, really, really tried to focus on death. I would even read books that were meant for people who were dying. They knew they were going to die in six months. I put myself through those processes when I was quite young. So, I'm a mortal or immortal.
Sufal Deb 34:51
With everything you've learned and everything we've discussed, do you think any of the goals of extending life, ending aging, or trying to become immortal, are out of line with your own visions and goals, and your own mantras?
Joseph Geraci 35:06
No. No, no, no. It's arrogant to think that you can become this immortal being. But it's arrogant to think that the pursuit of this goal is not really, really worthy because, in the pursuit of it, we're going to discover things that are going to help multitudes of people. That's happening already. Starting to happen. These people that are focused on getting these mice to live seven times their age, we're learning critical things about disease and it's going to begin to drive therapeutics that go beyond our clumpy drug paradigm. That's one of the great things about NetraMark. These maps I'm talking about, if you hand these maps to a genetic engineer of the future, they're going to be like, "Oh, hey, there's a subtype of ALS that we can just get rid of, by just manipulating these seven genes. Boom! Done! The nerve that's retracting from the muscular junction, you can stop it!"
Now, to me, it's all the same thing. I just want to alleviate suffering. If I happen to live to 370, great! I'll take on-- I'll become a dancer for a while, then I'll become a scientist, then I'll become whatever, you know what I'm saying? So no, it doesn't-- I don't believe that just because I might have a belief that death is extremely important, it doesn't mean we have to live but be trapped between 0 and 100. Maybe 250 would be a good number. Now, I meet people all the time that hate this idea. What they say to me is, "I want to be a healthy 85-year-old. I want to turn off at 90 and be done. Don't want it anymore." That's the most common thing I hear. A few people are like, "No way. I want to live forever." But, those people are usually very wealthy. Their perception changes about what life is like. That's another— that's a socioeconomic discussion.
Marvin Yan 37:17
Okay, if other people share your sentiments, want to work on problems of aging and really want to make a difference. I know you're somewhat of a polymath, like a man of the Renaissance involved in so many fields, but if someone asks you for advice, "Joe, I am really interested in this, I want to make a difference. Where should I start?" What would you say to them?
Joseph Geraci 37:35
Yeah, there are multiple paths. It depends on your predisposition. If you're mathematical, I would recommend that you become a computer scientist with a bioinformatics background. Really get to understand machine learning and then dive deeply into biology. Then, find physicians to work with and create a company out of those relationships and that experience. If you're not inclined mathematically and you can't dive in at that level just because you don't care, but you have it in you to become a medical doctor, then go there and then find the people I just described. This is how to do it. Not everyone has to be ridiculous, like me, and spend 30 years in university, but you need to build those bridges. I was on a call with a massive pharmaceutical company yesterday. He said "Yeah, we had this meeting but these data scientists didn't want to talk to these other data scientists, and the physicians didn't want to talk to these people. They all have their own silos. Joe, can you come and talk to everybody?"
What happens is those silos have to break down. We need the physicians because we trust the physicians to gather data from our family members, from patients. We need computer scientists because they're going to be able to do stuff with the data. We need mathematicians because they're going to create novel ways of looking at the world. Mathematicians, physicists, whatever. This is the thing. Ultimately, I think it's the diffusion of-- let me be very general. Mathematics, computer science, and medical people-- biologists. That's the other way. Some people don't have to be physicians, but they can become a biologist that specializes in how aging occurs, and they work with these people. I recommend that everybody learn how to program computers. Learn how to program R and Python. I'm not talking about you becoming like one of my engineers here. We know how to do DevOps and all this ridiculous software engineering stuff. Just being able to be competent from that perspective. Even physicians should have that. At least so they understand where things are coming from. That's what I think we need to stop thinking we're all separate. We're all the same. It's science.
Sufal Deb 39:58
It's like the idea of unity, you've got to put together ideas to come up with a result.
Joseph Geraci 40:02
Yeah, right. It's unification. I know people can't see there's a Rubik's Cube. On the back of that Rubik's Cube, those are Maxwell's equations. This is a miracle. This is a unification of electricity and magnetism. This is where the universe opened up. It's in unification, unifying things that seem like they're apart where the magic occurred. As a theoretical-- as a mathematical physicist, this is what really turns me on. This is where things become very beautiful.
Sufal Deb 40:37
Joe, if there's one thing you want people to take away from today's conversation, what would it be?
Joseph Geraci 40:42
It's that they should invest in my company. No [laughs]. It's that the path towards extending life is going to have a lot of effects for other diseases that we care about. It's gonna affect our-- there are implications in psychiatry, implications in oncology, and there are implications in neurodegeneration, massive. I think it's a really great goal to get wrapped up in. I think longevity is an important goal because it's like space or it's like the Large Hadron Collider. This massively-- "Okay, can we figure out? Is there the Higgs boson?" In order to figure that out we've had to invent-- there had to be advances in metallurgy and in engineering that are going to have effects in other areas like medicine. This happens over and over. I think that this massive goal, aging x, is going to pull us towards a lot of discoveries about ourselves and improve our well-being, in many ways. Even though we might not hit that 1000 year lifespan that some people are talking about. Maybe we will.
Marvin Yan 42:03
Well, for people who want to learn more about your work and maybe support it, possibly with dollars. How can they do so? Where can they go?
Joseph Geraci 42:12
If they just Google Dr. Joseph Geraci NetraMark, you'll find me. I'm all over the place. This piece has been written about me recently. I'm on LinkedIn. Look up, Joseph Geraci Nurosene, NetraMark. Nurosene is this great company that's going to start-- we're just starting now to move to the next generation, which I was talking about earlier, which is using digital biomarkers to do all this great stuff we're talking about would be great. It can become a very affordable way to do precision medicine. When we get there. That's the way they can find me. Google me.
Sufal Deb 42:57
Perfect. For everyone listening, any links such as Nurosene or NetraMark will be down in the description below. Anything we discussed. Once again, thank you so much, Joseph, for coming on to Im a Mortal, your source for all things immortal. We really appreciate you taking the time to come and speak with us today.
Joseph Geraci 43:14
Thank you. It was awesome.
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Episode 8:
In today's episode, we interviewed Ron Cole Turner, who is an expert in theology education working with Protestant clergy in training. He has been teaching students in the Presbyterian and other Protestant traditions.
Listen now as we discuss topics about Christianity and its connection to immortality and theological questions.
Mentioned Resources and Links:
@RonColeTurner
Episode 7:
In today’s episode, we interviewed Livia Kohn, a Professor of East Asian Studies and Religion at Boston University. Livia has been studying Daoism since the 1970s and is today, one of the leading experts of the religion.
Listen now to learn about the Daoism, Daoists practices & techniques to live longer, the history of Daoism, and what Daoists think of life extension and immortality.
Mentioned Resources and Links:
Three Pines Press
Taming Time
Livia Tours Japan
Transcript:
Speakers: Livia Kohn (Guest), Sufal Deb (Host), Marvin Yan (Host)
[MUSIC – Im a Mortal Theme]
Livia Kohn 0:27
My name is Livia Kohn, Professor of East Asian Studies and Religion at Boston University. I've been retired for about 15 years, and I now run a publishing company called Three Pines Press. I also run organized tours, hiking tours to Japan, because in the course of my studies, which focused on Daoism, I spent 10 years in Kyoto, Japan, and I love to go back. I have a website called Livia Tours Japan. I also run the International Conference on Daoist studies for which we have a website and a Facebook page called Daoist Conference.
Marvin Yan 1:06
Thank you so much for being here.
Livia Kohn 1:07
Well, thank you for having me. This is a fascinating topic, and I'm very excited to talk about it.
Sufal Deb 1:12
Great, let's start off. Our podcast is called Im a Mortal, a little bit of a pun on the buzzword immortal. We like to ask all of our guests, what does the word immortal or immortality mean to you?
Livia Kohn 1:23
Oh, well, thank you for this very important question. I should start by saying that the whole question of immortality has been the milestone and key pillar of my career in Daoist studies. When I first started to get introduced to Daoism, I was at the University of California, Berkeley in the 70s. I had classes in Daoism and also in Chinese culture and language. Many people were telling me just how sophisticated the Chinese were, how complicated their language is and how high level their intelligence was. Then at the same time, I was reading books on Daoism, and I said, "All these Daoists, they want to become immortal. How dumb is that? There's something wrong here. I mean, they either highly intelligent or they're totally dumb." The solution I came up with is that we do not understand what they mean by immortality, because the intelligence of the Chinese cannot be doubted. I spent my entire career studying immortality, and for many different aspects. Immortality to me is one of four different phenomena relating to life. Our human life, our life time on this earth, we distinguish the lifespan, which is the biological limit that the species has, which is 120 years, and the life expectancy, which is the kind of life that as you're born in a certain culture in a certain year, you can expect to have.
Now from there, we have the phenomenon of longevity, which is an extension of somewhat–not too big, but somewhat extension of your life expectancy. If your life expectancy in this culture is, say, 75 years, and you're healthy, and vigorous–so longevity is not just length, it also means remaining vigorous, which is very important. Then you get to 80 or 85, then you're reaching longevity. Now, more recently, and also in traditional Daoism, we have the phenomenon of something called prolongevity. Prolongevity is an extension of this life expectancy and longevity going even beyond the lifespan. People who reach 120, 130, 150 are attaining prolongevity, and that's also a goal we have in the Daoist tradition. That's something that's becoming very relevant today, as more and more people get not only older and become–get over to be over 100, but get really old. Then there's immortality, which is a completely different kettle of fish, really, because then you're not dying at all. Even in prolongevity after 100 or 200, or in some cases several hundred years, you're still moving on and being transformed and you're dying. But in immortality, you do not die.
Sufal Deb 4:20
Out of all of these options, all these forms of longevity and even immortality itself, do you personally think you would want any of them? Or is it more, "I prefer the life I have so far"?
Livia Kohn 4:30
I like the life I have and I like longevity, especially with this increased vigor. I'd see in our kind of society, a lot of problems with prolongevity, partly because there's only going to be a select few people and this is a problem. People that are getting very old, it's like all your friends die and you're on your own and you're alone. Then you also have societal and cultural changes, and even if you're aging very slowly, if you're still aging, you miss the way things were. I'd like longevity, maybe up to 90 or so, but I'm really not too much of a fan. On the other hand, immortality in the Daoist tradition, which is what we'll be talking about some more, involves the attainment of a mystical–a quasi-mystical state, where you start to float along with the currents of the universe. Yes, your physical body at some point falls away, but you're attaining a spiritual kind of survival, a spiritual level of immortality, and that is something I'm also quite in favor of.
Marvin Yan 5:47
Before we jump more into what Daoists think of immortality, you've highlighted a brief point here. Do you mind just telling our listeners about what Daoism is and what Daoist believe in?
Livia Kohn 5:57
Yes, Daoism is the indigenous higher religion of China. It began about 500 BC, with a philosopher who was known as Lao Tzu and a classical text known as the "Book of Dao and Virtue" or "Tao Te Ching". It divides into three different categories or different types of practices and understanding. The first is the philosophical, where you think of Dao as the power that underlies the universe, the core energy of life, something that is at the origin of everything, but it also pervades everything.
So, Dao is like the flow of things, the natural flow of things, and we human beings, are part of this flow but we also have the power to get away from it. The idea of harmony of going with the flow is very important in the philosophy. The philosophical tradition has continued to the present day. There are still many translations and interpretations of the ancient texts. There are other philosophical writings that have been produced over the centuries. We have a very vibrant, philosophical, intellectual kind of tradition, we call it Literati Daoism or the intellectual dimension of it. Then we have an organized religion, which started around 200 ADs, in the wake of the philosophy, where the philosopher Lao Tzu is transformed into a representative of Dao. He becomes a deity that represents Dao. We have creation myths, where Dao becomes this God. We have all kinds of other deities. We have several layers of heaven. We have a priesthood ritual. Everything we associate with organized religion. In this group, in this organized religious setting, we have many different schools, where individual seekers go into altered states of consciousness and connect to some deities and receive information from the heavens and then start their own groups. Today, we have two major schools in the organized religious dimension of Daoism.
The Orthodox Unity, or Celestial Masters, which is the continuation of the original first Daoist group from the second century, and their headquarters is in southern China. They're very strong in Taiwan and Hong Kong, and they're increasingly stronger in the mainland. They're a lay group, so the priests are married. They're very much into community rituals, purifications, weddings, funerals. Many life events are being celebrated, like opening a business and things like this. They do Feng Shui for houses. It's a very community-oriented religion that comes with a lot of rituals and an organized hereditary essentially priesthood.
The other group is called Complete Perfection. Their headquarters is in Beijing. It's a monastic organization where people leave the household, become monks or nuns, and practice personal internal cultivation. Mostly internal alchemy and energy transformation. Their goal is the transcendence of this life and immortality. Immortality is very central to the monastic school. They also perform some rituals they're involved in. Several of the city God temples in mainland China are being run by Complete Perfection clerics, but their main thrust is monastic and towards immortality.
Then the third group of Daoists are what I call longevity or health practitioners. The Chinese technical term is Yangsheng, which means nourishing life. Those are the people who practice Tai Chi, Qigong and internal cultivation meditation. We don't belong to a particular sect. We usually are familiar with the philosophical readings and are inspired by philosophy, but they're not really all that intellectual about it. Those are people who are really into the kind of practices that we'll be talking about some more.
Sufal Deb 10:14
Just before we move on, when you say not intellectual about it, what exactly do you mean?
Livia Kohn 10:19
Well, I mean that they're really not sitting down and writing commentaries. They're not sitting down and having intellectual discussions. They're not sitting down and writing poetry. The verbal part of things is that they read the books, they maybe go to a talk, and they get inspired. But the way they express it is in practice, as opposed to more talk.
Sufal Deb 10:40
Okay, great. Thank you for clarifying that.
Marvin Yan 10:42
Okay, on the same note–because I was doing a little bit reading of Daoism, and one of the chapters you wrote in the book we have here and a little bit on your own work. Daoism, as you mentioned, seems very practical. For example, some Christian friends I have heavily emphasized they need to go to church every Sunday, right? But Daoism seems more like what you do less than what you might believe in, for some people. Is there a reason why this is?
Livia Kohn 11:05
It's a feature that's common to all Asian religions. Hinduism is the same way. Daoism is the same way. Shinto is the same way. It's a general tendency that religion is what you do, as opposed to what you believe. The odd one out is really the Western tradition. Even in Western religions like ancient Rome, ancient Greece, a lot of the mystery cults, even in early Christianity, it's what you do that counts. Judaism is what your daily life is, whether you keep a kosher kitchen, your community engagement. It's what you do that defines who you are, what your calendar is, and how you organize your life. That is what classifies religion. The emphasis on belief is a Western saying that's, to my understanding, from a perspective of world religions. It's really the odd one out. The definition of religion really is what you do.
Sufal Deb 12:05
Jumping over a little bit to the Asian countries, how has Daoism influenced developments in Chinese society as a whole?
Livia Kohn 12:12
It's been there. It's a way of relating to nature, it's a way of–it's a "counter-culture" in many ways. The tendency, even in very ancient China, is for the people in power to be very pushy, to take away from the poor, to start wars, and to be aggressive. Daoists have always been the counter-balancing point there and say, "Hey, take a step back, relax, you can do the same thing but do it a little more slowly. Why do you have to have progress at all? Why do you have to have a bigger country? You're already wealthy." It's a–it's always been this sort of balancing factor in the emphasis on moving along with things, of looking at– Feng Shui would be an example where you're really consciously working to integrate
with nature, and to have a look at the whole context and fit into things, smooth things out. It's a balancing point towards more power hungry and aggressive tendencies.
Marvin Yan 13:22
Just before we jump into more of the longevity based questions, could you clarify what Feng Shui is because I feel like people will just think it's moving furniture around and they'll have some sort of misconception. Do you mind explaining it?
Livia Kohn 13:32
Okay, Feng Shui, the term means wind and water. Originally, it goes back to burial sites. It goes back to the belief that the souls and spirits of the dead have an impact on the fate of the living and if the dead are not buried correctly, they're not happy or not content and then they start haunting people. How it started out was that you had to put the burial or the site of the tomb in a specific direction, have specific measurements for it, have the right time of interment, and so on and so forth. Then, people expanded that idea towards the houses of the living and they found that if you orient your house in a certain way, in a certain direction, like facing South, you get the sunlight and your spirits are up and you feel better. If you have a little hillside behind you, then that gives you are feeling of protection. If there are certain kinds of trees around, it gives you shade and it gives you smooth energy. If you have a little river in front, some lake or a little water, then it gives you that feeling of being connected to the water and it also gives you nourishment. So, gradually they started to find ways to place houses into the environment that would not disrupt the environment.
The other Part of Feng Shui is the understanding that every organism is like a human body, the earth is a living organism. It's not just dead rocks. They talk about the hills looking like a tiger or a dragon. You don't want your house right on the nose of the dragon, because the dragon might get annoyed and there might be an earthquake or it might have a landslide. You don't want it on the tail of the tiger. You're looking at hills as having their own power, in other words. The other concept in this is that, like human bodies have blood vessels and arteries, the earth also has arteries. You don't want to interrupt the flow of energy through the earth. You want to place your house in such a way that it fits in. Then, once you have your house then you ask what's in the compound, you may have more than one building. You arrange your buildings in a particular way that creates harmony, so that your kitchen is not right next to your toilet. You have certain basic things. Then, once you have furniture, you place it in such a way that gives you maximum satisfaction and well-being. The idea is that the Chi , the vital energy, flows through the space in the most possible harmonious–most harmonious manner.
Sufal Deb 16:32
Before we jump into longevity, again, I just wanted to ask, before we live longer, we have to understand what is death? How does Daoism view death? Is it an end, a transition, a state?
Livia Kohn 16:43
Yes, well, death is something that I have to go a little further afield because modern science has recognized–I have a book which just came out, it's called Taming Time. It talks about– one of the chapters is about biological time, or a bio-temporality, which is the time as it flows in the human body. In that chapter, I talk about how, in the early stages of the universe, and also on the quantum level of existence that is still there, there is no such thing as death. There's only transforming, transmutation of energies. Then, even when you get to the stars and the big, galactic entities, you don't have death, either. You have cessation. They end. At some point the fuel runs out and they go supernova, explode or just dissolve, but there's no death. Then, even on the human plane, like plants, they keep on changing. They don't–we talk of them as dying, but they really don't. Death, people have found, is directly linked, in terms of evolution, to sexual reproduction. The idea of having entities or beings of two sexes coming together and reproducing is a very handy one in terms of evolution, because you have two gene pools and they come together. Those genes mix and if there's a certain gene that hasn't been functioning well enough, it can be gotten rid of really quickly. Mutations are easy in sexual reproduction. The downside of sexual reproduction is that the organism that develops then has this built-in aging pattern and eventually there's death.
This is very highly relevant to the Daoist situation because that's how Daoists see immortality or longevity. They see the life expectancy we have as a function of sexual energy. They call this Jing, which we translate as vital essence. Vital essence is something that we receive at birth genetically through the parents, but it's coming from heaven and earth. Everybody has a certain amount of gene or primordial/original parent given, heaven given vital essence. Then, as we live, we interact with our environment and we interact on the basis of Chi. Chi vital energy comes into our bodies through air, food, drink, and also social and sexual interaction. Each time we interact, that Chi that we take in mingles with the Jing, with the essence we already have. Then, it gets expanded as we live. Over a natural life cycle–and that's been described first in the Chinese Medical Classic, the Internal Classic of Internal Medicine of the Yellow Emperor, The Huangdi Neijing. In this text, it talks about how, for females it's a seven year cycle and for males it's an eight year cycle. In the first five, seven or eight years, the gene gradually starts to awaken. Then it gets more–it starts to really arouse in what we would call puberty, it reaches its high point in the 20s and maybe early 30s, and then it starts to decline. So, by the 60s and 70s, it's used up and once the Jing is gone, you die. So Jing is like, which is sexual energy. Vital essence is like the core. That's how Daoists explain longevity. It's a function of Jing.
Marvin Yan 20:47
As a follow up–just because I was reading about some of the Abrahamic religions, and they emphasize the body as very important in terms of reincarnation or resurrection, where it's not just the soul or mind as a concept, it's the whole person and their body. In terms of Jing, is that connected to the person's body or is it connected to more of their identity or soul? How important is the body in terms of Daoism?
Livia Kohn 21:10
It's essential. Jing is physical. Jing is your body. Your mind comes into it as a function. It's everything as Chi or energy. Your body is a slightly more condensed, grosser, thicker, slightly slower vibrating kind of Chi and your mind and spirit are faster, subtler, more rapidly moving forms of Chi, but they're closely interconnected. There's a unity there.
Marvin Yan 21:41
Okay, we talked about terms of the practicality of Daoism before and a lot of it seems like it would promote a longer life. I was wondering if people who practice Daoism, do they truly seek as long a life as possible or even immortality, or is it just that the way of life in terms of Daoism, longer life comes as a consequence, because of that?
Livia Kohn 22:02
It's a mutual relationship, it varies. One of the big characteristics of Daoism is that it's highly individualized. A very typical pattern is that somebody is living their life happily and then some kind of ailment comes in. Whether it's because of an accident, or whether it's because of some other event, some inherited thing, or whether it's because of their lifestyle, whatever it is, and there is this big ailment that comes in. They try this medicine and that medicine, some other medicine, and it doesn't work. Then, they come in contact with some person who practices Qigong and lo and behold, very small steps, but things change. Then it's like, "Oh okay, what's going on here?" and they start to learn about Chi, and then they restore their health. Once they get to that point, it's like, "Hey, I'm enjoying these practices, they're very good for me, I have a lifestyle that's sustainable, why not keep going." Your level of health is at this level, and you've dipped down and gotten sick. You worked your way back up to your original health level, but then why stop there, so you keep going and so you attain longevity. Some people from the word go, they're healthy already. They've heard about it, they read literature, and they say, "Ooh, this is fascinating stuff. Let me try it." They don't have the sickness, they just are getting interested and then they start to practice. Some people grow up in a Daoist community, and they're regularly doing Qigong, because that's just what they do and then longevity is a consequence of that. They're already Daoists, so there's no one size fits all.
Sufal Deb 23:55
What exactly are some of the longevity techniques that Daoists follow or practice, you just mentioned, Qigong.
Livia Kohn 24:01
We classify the techniques in a number of different ways. There's the healing techniques. For people who have a compromised health situation, you do use essentially methods of Chinese medicine, there's acupuncture, there's herbs. It's usually dietary prescriptions, there's gentle exercises and then some kind of basic meditation. Then, sexual control is a big deal too. Then, you move into the more–they already have attained health and again, you do the same thing. You have breathing practices where you consciously
breathe deeply was from your belly. There's gentle movements, and some are standing practices. Most Qigong is in the standing position. But you can also have lying down practices, seated practices, there's meditations where you internally move the Chi through the different organs or you visualize your organs in different colors to put different energies. You can talk to your organs and say, "Hello heart, how are you today? You know, are you happy?" It's like, "Yes!"
There's dietary methods. The thing is that the methods are always very similar, but the emphasis shifts and the modality shifts. For example, if you're looking at diet, ordinary Chinese people eat a lot of rice. Everything is cooked. They eat meat, usually chicken, pork and beef. If you're in a health situation where you need to improve your health, then people may tell you, depending on what exactly your condition is, why you should eat more sour foods, or you should eat less oily foods, or you should eat–but you're essentially still eating a normal diet. But once you get to the longevity level, you start to be a little more selective and you go easier on the grain. There's a practice called Qigong, which means avoiding grain, so you go easier on the grain and you go heavier on the vegetables and you eat lighter overall. You may go easier on the meat.
If you're a Daoist and you join the Daoist community, you become vegetarian. Daoists also avoid what they call the five pungent vegetables. They are five vegetables that are all members of the allium family. They include garlic, ginger, and three different kinds of onions, like regular onions, shallots, and scallions. Those, of course, are mainstays in Chinese regular diet. Here, you're actually breaking away from your mainstream society. The main reason they're given for this is that all these onions, garlic and ginger are very warming. They're increase young quality energy, which is rising, aggressive, pushy, going out there, which is good if you're–in your daily life, you're a laborer and you need to work hard. But if you're sitting in a monastery and all you do is do breathing exercises and sit in meditation, you don't really need that much young energy. On the contrary, it would be counterproductive because you'd be wanting to run around and do stuff. So, you have that level and then once you get to immortality, people switch over into periods of fasting, where they systematically reduce their food intake. They switch from vegetables to vegetable broth. They use a lot of herbal supplements. Daoists, in particular, are very fond of the pine tree. Then things like ginger, which they eat in the regular diet and take out in the monastic diet, comes back in but as an herbal supplement, as a very specific supplement for keeping the organs active.
Then, they get to the point where they just can live on Chi . Where they just inhale like a breatharian, that some of the people talk about, you're using breath and air and just some water to survive. Some people do this kind of practice, like every year for like a month, going a semi retreat, because as you're going into this, your body gets weaker, and it adjusts. But once you get to the point where you don't need food anymore, the body starts to get active and quite strong. But there's a transition period. Coming out of it also you have to be very careful, you can't eat too much, too fast, too soon. That's an example for diet where you use diet on the different levels and you're still using similar
stuff like ginger or other vegetables, but you're using them differently depending on your level.
Marvin Yan 29:00
On the topic of ingesting and non-ingesting, we were doing some reading and we came across– I didn't think we'd come across it. We came across alchemy and Daoism, which was very strange because alchemy–I was reading they took some concoctions which they knew contained, maybe I think mercury, which we know ends your life. How does that relate to the concept of immortality and longevity?
Livia Kohn 29:21
Yes, there's a couple of different things. There's physiological or operative or outer alchemy, and then there's internal energy-based alchemy. We have two different types. The one you're just talking about is external or operative chemical alchemy, which started as a way of actually trying to become immortal. The idea was–it's a fairly primitive idea, but the idea was that because gold as a metal does not decay and does not change, if you ingest–and they still do this, they have like little gold flakes, which you can buy. It looks like a salt shaker, but it's gold flakes and you put a little gold flakes on your rice. That's a Han dynasty thing, around 200 BC they came up with this, that if you start to ingest some of these metals, then you can transform your internal system and become more like this metal, which of course, it doesn't really work, but that was the idea. Mercury comes into it in the same way and they did actually–to preserve corpses, they put mercury in the arteries as a way of preservation.
Then, alchemists came up with this substance called cinnabar. Cinnabar is a mineral, it's a sand, and it's sort of a reddish color. It's found on the banks of rivers, and you take the mineral and make it–powder it into a sand, and you put it in a pot, you heat it up, and it divides into Mercury Sulfide. It transforms into Mercury Sulfide. But if you keep on heating it, it reconstitutes itself and it becomes cinnabar again. This whole idea of this substance that has one form, and it transforms into something else and then it reconstitutes was like this model of reconstituting your body, your identity, and yourself in a new way. In other words, immortality here is not the continuation of longevity, but a complete break. It's like you want to be something completely different. You're transforming yourself into something entirely alien, essentially. You're taking these substances and yes, your physical body dies, but some spiritual entity continues in an immortal form. Then this whole complex gets linked with the many deities that I talked about earlier, how Daoists have these many heavens, and you have these gods in these heavens. The belief was that you had a hierarchy of deities in those various heavens. Like every hierarchy, there's job openings every so often and so people would be invited by the celestial administration to join their ranks. The practitioners would go into ecstatic states, like a shamanic journey, and they would travel with their soul and meet all these other worldly entities.
There's all kinds of psychedelics and drugs involved in that too, which are also body and mind altering. There's that whole part. Then eventually, somebody would receive a summons, an order from the celestials to take the elixir and get yourself up here. It's like a way–I don't know if you'll remember this. It was many years ago, there was a sect in California called Heaven's Gate. They all had cut off their hair, they looked unisex and then they said, "Oh, we're now moving on, we have connections to this otherworldly entity, to this galaxy out there." Then they all drank Kool Aid or whatever it is they did, some chemical. The whole group committed, essentially, ritual suicide with the understanding that they'd be transported to this other galaxy. I remember how everybody was totally outraged. We're like, "Well... Daoists... Yeah, that's what Daoists do, I mean, that's one way of doing it." It wasn't all that alien to us. But that's the kind of thinking where alchemy fits into the immortality spectrum.
Sufal Deb 33:58
Obviously, Daoism has been around for a very long time, over the years, all the way to the 21st century today. Are there any major changes? How has longevity techniques changed over the years?
Livia Kohn 34:08
There have been a few changes, a lot of the practices are still very similar. I mean, obviously, you now have–your whole diet situation has changed since you can transport food longer distances. You have imported foods from other places. You have–but they did– even then they had pill forms and powder forms and tinctures, so that hasn't changed a whole lot. The technology has had some input, but not all that much. I mean, Daoists still try to travel to all kinds of different mountains and they do a lot of walking, as opposed to taking airplanes or buses, so that's pretty much stable. The internal practices are pretty much the same. We don't have have an actual operative alchemy like the kind we're talking about where people mix up arsenic and mercury. We don't actually have that anymore. That was phased out about 1000 years ago and if people are still doing it, it's underground.
Sexual techniques, which involve retaining–getting aroused, but then moving the arousal energies into the body rather than allowing it to exit the body. Those are still around, but again, semi-underground. There's not... if anything, the political climate forces people to do this in secret. That's a big change. In terms of the actual practices, what we do have is the Qigong forms and the forms of Tai Chi. Tai Chi, Tai Chi ch'üan, is a martial art that developed in the late–in the early 17th century at the time of the Manchu Conquest. That has recently been really integrated into the Daoist curriculum. That's a relatively new development. Every mountain and every monastery has their own form of Tai Chi. There are a lot of new forms that are showing up like the different kinds of Qigong. But I don't see that big of a difference, because there may have been other kinds of physical practices that they did, but nobody ever wrote them down so we don't know about them. Tradition has been pretty stable, really modulating itself depending on the political climate and the cultural center.
Marvin Yan 36:53
Going into the future–because we spoke to some scientists, and they each had their own prediction of when life extension technology would come about–the question that everybody is anticipating is, would Daoists be accepting of life extension technologies? Would it impact their practices in any way or would they reject it?
Livia Kohn 37:12
What exactly are we talking about? Growth hormones, or I mean ...
Marvin Yan 37:19
Say, the seven hallmarks of aging could be cured, or they weren't a thing anymore by 2050, where death by biological age no longer existed. Would Daoists–would they want to engage in that sort of technology or therapy?
Livia Kohn 37:34
I'm sure there would be some Daoists that would and some Daoists that wouldn't. Like any other group, I know quite a few Daoists who have–the example I can give you is the whole internet technology. I have–one of my people who I work with is a Tai Chi master. I publish books with Three Pines Press, and he likes every book that I produce, he's very interested in everything. He always gets the emails, so he gets this far. But then he insists on ordering the book and sending me a cheque. Then the other day, we had some issue and the cheque didn't arrive, so someone said, "Can't you use some other means?" He says "No, like all Daoists, I'm technologically incapacitated, and I can't do this. The only way is hard copies. I can't handle it." It's like, "What do you mean, like all Daoists?" There are other Daoists who are top level on the cyber world and would do all kinds of things online, who are very active, and have embraced the internet. For me, one of the arts of the immortals is to be in two places at once. I love that, because the internet allows you to do that. Here I am in the Pacific Northwest and I'm also doing a talk with people on the East Coast, and it's like, "Yay!" So, I'm sure that some Daoists will say, "Yes, this is a very good idea. Let's work with this." Some Daoists will say, "Oh, my God, no way!"
Another example, if I may continue along this line for another moment, is the modern developments of Daoism. We now have a bunch of Daoists in this–in America, who have trained with various Qigong and Daoist masters in China and do their own thing. We have several temples that are being built, many by Americans, some by Chinese who have moved here. In my own scholarly community, there's a whole segment of scholars who just radically ignore these people and who say, "No! These are not Daoists. In order to be Daoist, you have to have this lineage or that lineage and this certification, that certification or this ritual or that ritual. No, this is not Daoism." It's like, excuse me? How is it not Daoism? It's just the religion changes, people more to other places. They pick up new methods. I mean, you can show historically how in the Song and Yuan dynasties, they did the same thing. People moved to new places, and they created new methods,
and some developed followers. Lo and behold, you had a whole new sect or a whole new school. But again, some say, "Oh, no, no, this is not Daoism." Some say "Yes, you know, this is the new development, this is perfectly fine." You have–different people will work differently.
Sufal Deb 40:47
Absolutely, it's a little bit of gatekeeping that people have to get over.
Livia Kohn 40:52
Yes, exactly.
Sufal Deb 40:54
This is our final question before we wrap up with our outro. Do you think there are any ramifications of radical life extension? If we were to extend life by, say, 500-600 years?
Livia Kohn 41:03
Oh, yeah, I mean, that's a huge social issue. I mean, already prolongevity–prolongevity is already happening. I don't have–there's a volume, I think it's called prolongevity. I have an article on how Daoists would relate to this and how Daoist practices fit into that. You already have issues that people have multiple families. They have families in their 20s, families in their 40s, families in their 60s, and they had another one in their 80s. You get this whole complexity, the whole social security–whole idea of retirement is like, "Excuse me, I'm 65 but I don't feel like 65. I feel like I'm 40, and I've got another 50 years to go." So you have another career, you have multiple careers. The whole idea that you go to college and you enter your work life by your mid 20s, that's going to be obsolete. I mean, why not go to college for 50 years, and then have 50 years and another 50 years. Everything is shifting if people live longer. We're not even looking at 500 years, which totally boggles the imagination, at least for me. But if you're looking at say 120, 130 years, everything shifts. You'd have children–I have friends who are in their 80s, and their great grandchildren are starting to go to college. You're looking at what used to be two or three generations maximum, now you're looking at five or six. The other part of this is as technology moves on, there's less manual labor that needs to be done and less work. So, you need to figure out how to keep people not only financially supported, which then all of a sudden the government starts to pay money to people to live, but also how to keep them entertained. They need to do stuff and people don't just want to watch TV, they do want to be creative and productive. There's many, many shifts that are already starting to help. That is a big change coming. Yeah.
Marvin Yan 43:11
Whether it be Daoism, immortality, or even how to send you a cheque or whether to e-transfer you. What's one thing you really want people to take away from today?
Livia Kohn 43:19
Well, I'd like them to take away that Daoism plays an important role in this discussion, that it has a lot to offer in terms of not only whole conceptualization of immortality, but also that the actual concrete practices that many Daoist practices are very accessible. They can be used on all the different levels. If you're already healthy, you can become healthier. If you have any physical ailments, you can use the methods to get better and it will help with life extension. There's a spirituality there that's very relevant. Daoism is a very flexible religion, so if you're more philosophically inclined, you have all that. If you're more physically inclined, you have all those practices. There is a plethora–a lot of organizational groups too, that you could join. It's a very vibrant, viable, and also cheerful religion. Daoists are very life-affirming. There's none of this, "my big guilt", like in Catholicism, and there's none of this "Oh everything is suffering," like the basis of Buddhism. It's like, "Yay, we're alive and we're having fun!" So, very positive, which is one of the things that attracted me to it.
Marvin Yan 44:34
Right, join the party.
Livia Kohn 44:35
Join the party. It's a fun religion, and so, one of the main characters that are widely venerated today in Daoism are the Eight Immortals, and they're a group of seven guys and a woman and they're just having fun. I mean, they go out and party and they have magical powers, they have jokes, they play tricks and they're funny. It's an enjoyable, life- affirming religion. That's what I would like them to take away. If they want to learn more about it, we have many books on Daoism on our publishing company, which is called Three Pines Press, you can go to threepinespress.com. My latest book is called Taming Time, and it talks about many different ways of looking at time, both comparative and in the Daoist tradition. And if you ever want to go hiking in Japan, contact me and that would be great.
Sufal Deb 45:33
I feel like you already answered my question, I was going to ask you where people can find more about you. There you go. For all of you guys listening, all links or things we described will be in the description below. Once again, thank you, Livia, for coming on to our podcast, Im a Mortal, your source for all things immortal. We really appreciate you taking the time to come and speak with us.
Livia Kohn 45:49
Well, thank you so much for having me. It was a great pleasure to join you.
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Episode 6:
Professor Luigi Fontana is a world-leading Medical Researcher, and the director of the Longevity Research Program at the Charles Perkins Centre, University of Sydney. He focuses on Longevity from aspects of diet, calorie restriction, metabolism, exercise, and much more
Listen in to learn of his story of how he switched from being a medical doctor to a researcher, how food and activity alter our longevity, and how his passion for understanding calorie restriction science led to him conducting research across the world.
Mentioned Resources and Links:
The Path to Longevity: The Secrets to Living a Long, Happy, Healthy Life
Molecular Mechanisms of Dietary Restriction Promoting Health and Longevity
Episode 5:
Dmitry Kaminskiy is Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Deep Knowledge Group, and its consortium of non-profit organizations as well such as Longevity Capital, Deep Knowledge Analytics, Aging Analytics Agency, Longevity International and more!
Listen to learn of his involvement in Longevity, Precision Medicine, Artificial Intelligence, why he established a $1 million USD prize for the first person to reach their 123th birthday, as well as his opinions on the past, present and future of the field!
Mentioned Resources and Links:
Dmitry's Website
Longevity 1.0, 2.0, and Future Books
Deep Knowledge Group (& Subsidiaries)
Transcript:
Speakers: Dmitry Kaminskiy (Guest), Sufal Deb (Host), Marvin Yan (Host)
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Dmitry Kaminskiy 0:14
Hello everybody. I'm Dmitry Kaminskiy. I'm a co-founder and managing partner of Deep Knowledge Group. This is a consortium of for and non-profit organizations, two investment funds in our group Deep Knowledge Ventures. This is DeepTech, AI focused investment fund and Longevity Capital, this particular investment fund is focused on longevity industry. We have a number of analytical subsidiaries, including Deep Knowledge Analytics, NeuroTech Analytics, and one of the best subsidiaries was the first longevity company in our group, Aging Analytics Agency. It was established back in 2013. For this analytical company—actually probably one of the most, one of the few in the world, which particularly focused on the longevity industry, aging research, longevity financial industry, the investment analytics looking at longevity, and even politics, longevity politics.
Sufal Deb 1:20
Thank you so much for coming on to our podcast, Dmitry. To start off, we've been asking this question to all our guests, our podcast is called Im a Mortal, a play on the word immortal. What does the word immortal or immortality mean to you?
Dmitry Kaminskiy 1:32
Well, I'm considering this topic from the point of view of engineering. The same as, for example, Elon Musk is considering space, not just space exploration. Whatever project he's doing, he's approaching those projects as an engineer. The very same could be and should be done in regards to longevity. To go back to your particular question, immortality. Well, Ray Kurzweil, his books and his projections predicted that, technically speaking, probably from a technological point of view, immortality will be achievable or possible in 2045. In the sense that, his predictions will be possible, so-called mind upload, in a sense that the transmission of all information in the brain is towards the computer.
Sufal Deb 2:23
Do you consider the mind upload a form of immortality in your perspective?
Marvin Yan 2:28
Would you want to undergo it as well? I know you're focused more on longevity, so this is a little bit of a sidetrack. But would you be interested in that sort of technology as well?
Dmitry Kaminskiy 2:35
Well, it will be in 25 years from now, if it will be. From a pragmatic point of view, we are much more focused on what will be in the next 10 years rather than the next 20 years, because by that time, 2045, there is too much uncertainty. We don't know exactly how it will be and in what form it will be in. However, it is much more doable and much more practically applicable to predict what will be in the next two, three, five, or ten years.
Sufal Deb 3:04
In terms of longevity and all your work, what technologies are you and the world investing in right now and as individuals ourselves, how can we invest in it?
Dmitry Kaminskiy 3:13
When we entered this field in 2013—by the way, by that time the word longevity was not yet common. Longevity as a brand name means for this field of research and science technology—I think it started to be common, including the media, probably around 2017. Before that, the word anti-aging was much more common. However, it was diluted by different companies specializing at distributing different plastic, the products sounded like creams, so anti aging creams, so called anti-aging supplements.
Where am I reading this? Approximately in 2017, 2018, Aging Analytics Agency profiled what would be named longevity industry. We formulated this industry and we defined great framework, what does the longevity industry mean? What should be included? What sectors are actually somehow related to that and which sectors are not related? By now, we have added 520 sectors, and we also estimated the size for [unintelligible] positions—30, 40 years endorsed currently, including national healthcare budgets, which is a quite significant portion, including the budgets of financial corporations, such as insurance companies, healthcare insurance companies like life insurance companies, and pension funds.
This is all in some capacity, in some mode is related to longevity. Now, a particular biomedical, regenerative medicine, preventative medicine, pills, this is in total global scope, approximately two or three trillions of dollars. There is also the Age Tech sector. This is modern products and solutions for all people using innovative approaches at the intersection of elder care, and IT technologies so maybe some mobile apps. This Age Tech also works on two to three trillions of dollars on a global scale. To go back to your question, we have two priorities in terms of investment focuses.
We were focused on applications of artificial intelligence for aging research. First of all, its biomarker of aging and longevity, this is the bottleneck for the entire industry. Without those markers, without those metrics, you can't really estimate wherever any technology providing any beneficial effects in terms of rejuvenation, no resource allocation, or at least slow down aging. This is the number one priority.
The other priority is Longevity FinTech. Modern applications of financial technology, towards health longevity. One of the examples, one of the projects, which we supported, invested in, and now helping them to expand also towards the United States versus (??) longevity banking cut (??). It's typical, quite modern FinTech solution, but with the focus on people who are actually pursuing a healthy lifestyle, willing to live longer, healthier, more actively, a more productive life. Basically, this is still the marketplace in the form of mobile app and desktop solution, integrated with MasterCard. This is one of the examples. There's also—we have some interest in ensuring that you know, modern applications of healthcare insurance, but again, integrated with modern longevity FinTech and a number of our innovative applications, which tune towards longevity.
Marvin Yan 6:50
You mentioned a whole lot of industries there. Before we jump into them, because I know this is important for our listeners who might not know about the biology of aging, do you mind just telling us a little bit about some of the biomarkers? I think we've heard some things like telomeres, this senescent associated secreted phenotypes and stuff like that. Is there any particularly biomarker that the industry is particularly focused on right now?
Dmitry Kaminskiy 7:08
I'm not sure about telomerase as a relevant biomarker in regards to longevity. It was quite popular as you know. I will say a little bit over promoted as one particular sector, whereas in reality, we should talk about panels of biomarkers. I will say, the relevant panel to really measure what is happening, or if any given [unintelligible], it should consist of at least 100 biomarkers, maybe several hundreds. Some of them require so called [unintelligible] tech. You can measure them with quite simple solutions without a significant test on silica equipment. Let's say you can do it at home, maybe with mobile apps.
Some of them actually, using just facial recognition, which is the future where AI achieves the best results in facial recognition. When you're looking at the person, at the face of any person, you just without any equipment, you can use your eyes and your brains to assess what is current biological age of the person. This is a very simple scheme. It's one of the best biomarkers. Now, let's say there are aging researchers’ team recently published a new analytical report, I've actually also created IT platform for the review of the Longevity International website.
There's a system of biomarkers resource. They profile several hundred laboratories, several hundreds of scientists, important 100 companies doing some resources, some technology, so they already have some practical applications in terms of biomarkers or even panels for them. Now, some of the biomarkers requires deep resources, very expensive equipment. It will be done, let's say in specific clinics, where some of the markers does not requires complex movement or technology (??).
This is the diversity of biomarkers and whenever you are assessing the actual biological age of any person, [unintelligible] assessing whether any specific interventions for specific drugs, pills, food supplements, our technologies, whether they're providing positive, negative or maybe neutral, like plasma. Because the bottom of that many food supplements, buy supplements, let's say many sellers, marketing as you know, as anti aging drugs. This is the best-case scenario which is not just possible, in many cases, they can degrade in the body, if you're taking for a long time, such you know, especially synthetic chemical-based supplements or maybe some kind of specific drugs and this could be accumulated and eventually provide negative effects. Not only neutral effects.
But to go back to biomarkers. In reality, the panels for the markers should be not only quite sophisticated, robust, and take into account multiple parameters. First of all, they should be personalized themselves. The panel biomarkers designed for me, it should be different, let's say with you. Each person will have a little bit different measures and those biomarkers should be adjusted towards a particular person. Apparently, we're talking about data science, about p-values.
This will integrate what additional [unintelligible] in other words, it is impossible to assess panels for biomarkers, to measure them in order to track them without AI technologies. Plus, these panels should be not only adjusted towards a particular person, they should be adjusted from time to time in the sense that those particular metrics, they will fluctuate from day to day from week to week. For example, if you're in Toronto, now, and let's say you will move somewhere in Africa, or let's say another climate, another temperature, another humidity.
All of this will provide some input, and all these metrics will have to be adjusted. I think that currently there are at least 10 companies, which can provide more or less relevant balance of biomarkers for you to measure your current biological age and some kind of input for what you're doing. However, I think the market readiness, robust sophisticated balance of biomarkers will be market ready in around two to three years from now.
Sufal Deb 11:32
You mentioned earlier in the conversation that AI could be used, for example, for facial recognition, because skin is a great biomarker for aging. How else can AI be used to accelerate longevity research? On top of that, what is its relationship to personalized medicine? How can AI be used in relation to personalized medicine?
Dmitry Kaminskiy 11:50
I would probably ask this question in the other way. Can you give an example where research on human life extension would be without AI? I don't know such fields. In other words, if researchers don't use in the 21st century, if researchers are doing some significant research on human longevity. If they're not using AI, if they're not using data science analytics, I don't think this is serious research.
Sufal Deb 12:21
It's a new standard to use artificial intelligence and research for longevity.
Dmitry Kaminskiy 12:25
Absolutely.
Sufal Deb 12:26
In relation to personalized medicine, do you have any comments on that, artificial intelligence related to personalized medicine? Do we see any advancements right now?
Dmitry Kaminskiy 12:33
Once again, personalized medicine it's about—maybe we should start with personalized health. There's a term such as precision medicine, in terms of human longevity, much more than precision health, to maintain precision health, you need to know the data science of your health. You should be the CEO of your health, the director of your health. It's not that simple in the sense that to really be a data scientist for your health, you need to monitor your health in a very precise and very deep and very personalized mode. This is again, when going back to this precise balance of biomarkers. Again, I don't see how that could be done without data science and data science nowadays cannot be done without artificial intelligence.
Marvin Yan 13:29
You've talked about how you've had some predictions for the next 10 years. I think you've written about it in one of your books, and you're going to continue talking about it. I think longevity industry 1.0 was just defining industry, 2.0 10 years, and I think there's a 3.0 eventually, as well as Dmitry? Possibly?
Dmitry Kaminskiy 13:42
Yes, I think there will be a 3.0—
Marvin Yan 13:44
Okay well we look forward to that.
Dmitry Kaminskiy 13:46
and probably 4.0.
Marvin Yan 13:47
Oh 4.0 as well. Could you just tell the audience right now, what you envisioned the next 10 years to be like, and how we can prepare as banks, insurance companies and even individuals—how we can prepare for this next decade?
Dmitry Kaminskiy 13:59
Well as you know, current times consider this as the time of the fourth industrial revolution. It's huge and let's say, a combination of multiple technologies into two super industries. For example, when we're talking about longevity, it's not only about science of aging, it's not only about biomedicine, it's not about precision medicine, preventive medicine, precision health. It's all about integration with as I mentioned, for example, with InsurTech, with FinTech, with health, with smartphones, with different wearables with different, let's say specific micro devices, which will be embedded into the body to measure to ensure and all the current state of health and I know we'll provide some red flags if there will be any specific issues.
We can estimate that by 2030, there will happen fifth Industrial Revolution where singularity will be achieved in 2045. That will be considered the sixth Industrial Revolution. 10 years from now, we can estimate that there will be this super—within the next 10 years, the progress and technology including longevity improvement, personalized biomedicine, precision health, there'll be incredible progress. During the next 10 years, the quantity of the progress which will happen will be equal to the previous 30, 40, maybe 50 years.
Currently, the speed of progress, especially at the intersection of science, technology, artificial intelligence, it's already incredible. But this speed of observation, it's a self-inducing cycle so the creation will exceed current pace of progress. Now, in terms of, forecasting technological progress, it is quite doable to predict what will happen in five years, it's a little bit less doable to predict what will happen in seven, eight years. And soon, for more pragmatic technological point of view, what you could predict maximum horizons is 10 years from now. In a sense, predict and forecast in a tangible way, not theoretical abstract way.
The point is that by 2040, first of all, there will be achieved so called escape velocity. What does it mean in particular? For people of middle age, let's say I'm 45. 10 years from now, I'll be 55. But I'm quite sure that by the time the progress in science, technology, and medicine will be so significant, that age 55 will be my maximum age. In the sense that it will stay 55 and probably in 2040, and maybe even sooner, we'll be able to reverse, to decrease my biological age.
For you, because you're younger, this will happen even faster, whereas for people who are let's say now, in age of 70, 80 years, for them escape velocity probably will be shifting to 2035, 2040 in the sense that technologies which require for younger people, they're a little bit simpler technologies which require to freeze the biological age of all people already having tissues with health and immune system. Technology for that age category. Quite more sophisticated, more advanced, and this is reverse when your project is—in a sense, the younger you are, the easier, the sooner this will be achieved to the stage of this escape velocity.
Marvin Yan 17:31
Dmitry, you talked about the rate of rate of change is accelerating, so it gets faster and faster. I want to ask how you think different aspects of society, especially in relation to longevity, how they will change? I know you mentioned insurance companies and banks in your book a bit. I just want to know, to what degree can we expect the change? How should they prepare?
Dmitry Kaminskiy 17:51
Okay. So, no, five years ago, when you were talking about the people who live up to 120 years, you were considered as fringe. It was just five years ago. In 2015, I established the $1 million prize. It will actually be a gift to the first person who will celebrate his or her 123rd birthday because the previous life record belongs to Jeanne Calment who died back in 1997 in Paris at the age of 122 years and six months. Apparently, there's significant genetic predisposition to extra long living. However, this very simple logic, since 1997, the progress in biomedicine was tremendous and if Jeanne would live now, we'll be able to extend life at least for another six months.
Apparently, she would celebrate her 123rd birthday and most likely 125th birthday. From technological point of view, to celebrate 123rd birthday, it is doable already now. However, the perception of general public and media in particular, five years ago, it was somewhat unusual, because by that time, it was normal to talk that we will live up to 100 years. Then just within a couple of years, because a lot of media hype around the topic, now to speak that we will live up to 120 years is totally normal. Nobody confirms this.
Now many people, even serious people, even financial investors like financier's, bankers, they're talking about it, maybe we will live up to 150 years, up to 200 years. It became normal. In reality, the very same [unintelligible] even five years ago because technological progress in biomedicine quite (??) already was quite significant. Technically speaking, the major difference with what happened in the last several years, it's quite significant progress in this field of research and development related to biomarkers of aging and longevity. This is very significant because this is the bottleneck of the entire industry. With this practical application of these biomarkers, this will adjust what real practical applications of human longevity, not animal models, human longevity. This is how all that research could be applied much more practically and much more tangibly towards humans.
Marvin Yan 20:18
Okay, we use this term Silicon Valley quite often. In terms of driving progress in longevity industry, I think you use the term Longevity Valley and there'll be some countries, which could be the longevity hub. Could you describe those two terms in more detail and what you think of them?
Dmitry Kaminskiy 20:31
Well, first of all I don't think that in Silicon Valley, there's real progress related to human longevity. There's a lot of progress towards mice longevity.
Marvin Yan 20:38
Yes, I know.
Dmitry Kaminskiy 20:40
There are other countries. There are some other regions where scientists and doctors are making a little bit more progress towards practical human longevity, rather than mice longevity. In Silicon Valley, from my point of view, they're yet more focused on mice longevity. In regards to Longevity Valley, I imagine that there will be no some particular, small smart region in the form of smart state or smart city, where everything will be tied towards the idea of extension of healthy period of life, healthy active period of life.
Currently, Singapore is number one in the world by healthy life expectancy. Hong Kong is number one in terms of life expectancy, of health life expectancy. It's a little bit different because DALY, disabled life years, this gap—for example, in the United States, between the healthy period of life and the unhealthy period of life is 10 years, even close to 11. Guess we [unintelligible] guess of most other developed countries, 10 years. This is the period of back when, people actually suffering, they're having a lot of, let's say, illnesses, a lot of pathologists, and eventually, they're dying from one of those diseases, age-related diseases.
Now, in case of Singapore, the gap is four to six years. In the case of Japan, the gap is seven years. In Singapore, people are living long, but also, they're living I think, up to eight to seven years on average, in health more. There, this kind of DALY, disabled life years, it's only approximate six years in the case of Singapore, in the case of Japan, seven years. The major idea that in case of really advanced, technology driven Longevity Valley, this gap will be decreased, even down to five years, maybe down to four years.
So, I think that some kind of particular countries, so Singapore maybe Switzerland, maybe some countries such as Liechtenstein can pretend that maybe that will be developed in the next five to 10 years. This kind of [unintelligible] system of most of last condition, most advanced medical disorders, healthcare technologies, data science technology is required for that, but also financial technology, because if you're going to live longer, you also should plan your financial wellness, also in advance and to maintain your finances in such a way that you will be able to pay for those advanced medical services, especially when you will be close to 100 years.
Sufal Deb 23:22
As you know, our interview right now is unfortunately virtual, but with COVID-19 and the pandemic going on right now, has it accelerated or slowed down research?
Dmitry Kaminskiy 23:30
It accelerated it and quite significantly because before pandemics, many people, including scientists, they were doing different resources not related to human health. Nowadays, many people including high level [unintelligible], they start to understand that probably not wealth is the most precious asset, but health is much more precious. Many of what we do see, even particular 2020, a lot of investors support us, asking how they can invest into something related to human longevity in a tangible safe [unintelligible] mode.
We are designing such investment stages, the ones that during pandemics, people started to think less about luxury stuff such as super expensive cars or yachts, maybe real estate. This became less important. They kind of proportion how much people are thinking about this increased significantly. Go back to practical progress in science and technology. Well, COVID actually changed this more from too much speaking at the conference to different meetings.
This switched to towards a little bit more doing to be more focused on some practical results, instead of just socializing, for example, between scientists, which was quite common before pandemics. Nowadays, let's say people are working more and more tangibly focused on some practical results. For your understanding, a lot of other industries, they declined, but then it's worse. Biomedicine, biotech industry is one of the few industries probably along with anything related to such technologies for remote work including Zoom. This veer to technologies was significant but also biotech industry is very significant. Even 2020 and beginning 2021, because of [unintelligible] accelerator is another—
Marvin Yan 25:32
On the topic of this industry of longevity, you talked about a lot of the pros so far. I think the pros are quite obvious. Are there any cons or complications that people might not realize? Is there anything that in particular that people should know about, in that case?
Dmitry Kaminskiy 25:47
Yeah, it will take them years. It's already now the biggest industry, compared to the others. As I mentioned by our estimations, the [unintelligible] industry is 34 trillion, and it will grow. It has grown steadily, and it will grow more. Whereas other industries, which are not essential to humans, including maybe some luxury stuff, maybe some kind of, let's say outdated industries, so, they will decline because many people and many investors will transition from those non essential industries to most important industry which is the longevity industry.
In other words, yes, there will be cons, and it will be more related to industries, which are not providing to humans, what is really important to them. I think that this will also provide impact on politicians and government officials, because in the next five, seven years, when citizens of many states will realize that actually, government, if it will be incentivized [unintelligible] will be able to stamp out the period of life of their citizens and citizens will demand from politicians to provide such solutions.
Normal states, normal governments in the next five, seven, ten years, it will be the norm that governments will declare that one of their priorities is to extend healthcare for the lives of their citizens. That will become for politicians, for governments, for Parliaments, this topic will become quite significant. If five years ago, it was strange to talk about life extension now became normal, you will see that in the next five years it will become normal on the level of politicians and governments to prioritize this topic.
Marvin Yan 27:38
Okay, so pretty much in the sense, not only will they it's not a matter of once the governments have an obligation to their people to almost put money and time into this technology.
Dmitry Kaminskiy 27:47
Exactly.
Marvin Yan 27:48
Okay. Okay.
Sufal Deb 27:50
This is just a little bit more of a personal question. Do you see everyday people, people who may not be in the biomedical field or longevity field, can you see the topic of life extension becoming a daily activity? As you mentioned, the government may push longevity for its people. Can you see people in daily life talking about it; it becoming a daily occurrence?
Dmitry Kaminskiy 28:09
Even without longevity, you can see how even the last five years, the topic of healthy lifestyle became, absolutely, one of the major topics for discussion, including, different diets, different fitness, running. It's now became quite central on the essential part of society, this topic. In the next five years, there'll be more and more practical applications for practical human life extension, people will start to talk, actually to think in such a way that they shall take care about their extension, extension for their healthy period life, productive period of life.
This will become maybe not in all societies, let's say [unintelligible] and people living in a developed country, so this will become the very same as now people think about health, lifestyle, and fitness, which is normal and many people you know, pursuing such a lifestyle, and the same way, in five years, they will talk, and use, and do human longevity.
Just because this fitness dies and all these simple methods of improving lifestyle and health so they will become data and science driven, because now it's absolutely horrific (??). Doctors providing some recommendations, not knowing how [unintelligible] important in real mode, the health of their clients and patients. In five years, instead of doctors, AI with sensors, with biomarkers will really provide you recommendations, how to maintain your health, including fitness, sports and all that, and food supplements. So and so forth.
Sufal Deb 29:59
A collection of our data will help us with our own medicine. A question that a lot of people bring up, even myself at one point, with the idea of immortality, if suddenly everybody were able to live like 120, 150, 160 years, wouldn't there be problems such as overpopulation and things like that? In general, if there was a sudden increase in life expectancy, what negative side effects can we expect to see?
Dmitry Kaminskiy 30:21
No negative side effects, there will be no overpopulation. The quantity of people on our planet should be probably 25 billion. I think that 90% of the planet, they're not headed now, including desert simply, you know, north, or the south part of the plan. There's a lot of space where people can expand their living areas. Very same with food production, so there will be no problems with food because technological related food production, they of course, will exceed, far exceed any growth of actual population.
The only one problem is with pollution, which is increased. Indeed, the problem already now without overpopulation is a topic for first of all, right government amendments, because currently, most of the government's they don't care about pollution at all. This was second, the solution will be—there are a lot of progress and science research and development on the network, different types of efficient and utilization of pollution, including, for example, bacteria which are eating chemical pollution, including different new metals related to new materials, and maybe even now [unintelligible] and also robotic orders (??) and different drones and warmer [unintelligible]. I think that robots on a massive scale will be able to improvise pollution, including, for example, pollution in ocean.
Marvin Yan 31:55
Dmitry, we don't want to take up too much of your time today, we said it'd only take about 45 minutes at most. So, for people who are interested in your work, I know you have a bunch of books coming out, you already had Longevity Industry 1.0 2020 last year. For people who are interested in these books, could you tell us a little bit about them, what they can learn, and where to go to find them?
Dmitry Kaminskiy 32:14
Yeah, so, the next book will be Longevity Politics. After that, they will do Longevity financials here. Then there will be practical longevity, the practical guide helps you reach your 123rd birthday. I will describe technological time using from my life extension and eventually at the end of this year, there will be Longevity Industry 2.0, deep tech engineering, the trajectory of human longevity. All these books you can find at longevity-book.com and our major site of our consortium is dkv.global.
Sufal Deb 32:48
For all of you guys listening, any of the links Dmitry just mentioned and discussed will be in the description below. Once again, thank you, Dmitry for coming on Im a Mortal, your source for all things immortal. We really appreciate you taking the time to come and speak with us today.
Dmitry Kaminskiy 33:00
Thank you. It was my pleasure.
Episode 4:
Bruce Newbold is a population geographer and a professor in the School of Earth, Environment & Society at McMaster University.
With the population today, life extension seems like a “new”, “bold” concept to think about. If you want to learn more about the Demographics of Life Extension make sure to check out the latest episode of Im a Mortal featuring Bruce.
Mentioned Resources and Links:
McMaster Experts Page
Newbold KB. 2019. Population Aging. Encyclopedia of Sociology, 2nd Edition. Wiley Blackwell. (Online) DOI: 10.1002/9781405165518.wbeos1478
Scientific American Article: Can the Planet Support 11 Billion People?
Transcript:
Speakers: Bruce Newbold (Guest), Sufal Deb (Host), Marvin Yan (Host)
[MUSIC – Im a Mortal Theme]
Bruce Newbold 0:27
Hi, I'm Bruce Newbold. I am a professor in the School of Earth, Environment & Society at McMaster University, and I'm essentially a demographer or a population geographer. I study issues that are related to population type questions and that could be the movement of people across space. I do a lot of work around immigration, and then some sub areas as well, population health, for example. I do transportation related work, and more broadly a mobility type of question and just how we move through our environment and how we engage it, how we look at it. Those sorts of questions. But if there's a population piece, I always bring it back to that, where does the population piece fit into the research that I do?
Marvin Yan 1:17
Okay, so our podcast is called Im a Mortal, and when we first were looking out for scientists to interview, we were struggling to think how earth science related. But as a demographer, what does the word immortal or immortality mean to you?
Bruce Newbold 1:30
Yeah, I've always thought of it as two different ways, really. One would be the literal sense that you live forever or have an extended lifespan of some sort. I think there's another piece to immortality, and that's that after we're gone, people recognize the name, and we can look at historical figures to think of that. That certain people remain immortal. William Shakespeare, for example: long gone, long dead, but we know his name. Albert Einstein, Marie Curie, those are some of the names that always float up, whether it's science or literature, plays, anything like that they always float up. That's another measure of immortality, I think, so we can do it either way.
Marvin Yan 2:17
So, as a follow up to that, whether as a person or as a name, what do you think about Newbold being immortal?
Bruce Newbold 2:26
Probably after I'm gone, there won't be a lot of people that necessarily remember the name. I think we all want to have that sense that we are immortal and that the name is going to live on and live on in family. But in terms of—certainly not Einstein or anything like that. People won't necessarily go Oh, yeah. Bruce Newbold, that was his name, I remember, and I know exactly what he did.
Marvin Yan 2:53
Well, at least you'll be on this podcast, this will be floating somewhere in space at some point.
Bruce Newbold 2:58
Good, good. Okay. My own little piece of immortality.
Marvin Yan 3:01
Yes.
Sufal Deb 3:02
Exactly. You'll be immortal on Im a Mortal. Talking purely about life extension and longevity technology, do you think it will be a net positive or net negative for society, and why or how so?
Bruce Newbold 3:12
Yeah, and that's a really good question and it's one that I've thought about for a while, and not just because of this podcast at all. Because of some of the things that I do and study around population type questions and health, we can think of, well, what would happen, could we extend our lifespan? There's certainly the suggestion or the thinking that with modern medicine and continued advances, that instead of saying, Oh, we now expect to live to be about 80, that we're going to start easily pushing 100, and maybe even more than that. There's a good historical precedent for that, because even 100 years ago, our life expectancy was tremendously shorter. We were maybe living 50 years on average. Now, as a Canadian, we tend to live around 80 years. If you go back two to three centuries in time, life expectancy was 20 to 30 years, so an incredibly short period of time. We've really seen this explosion in terms of our own life expectancy over the past few decades and there's this, again, this expectation that it would continue.
In some ways, that's really intriguing that we can live longer because of medicine, because of changes in how we live, personal physical fitness or activity, better diets, better nutrition, for example. The problem that I have is that just because we live longer, does it mean that we will be living better for that period of time, or are more of our older age years going to be spent in poor health? Maybe limited mobility, limited physical abilities, limited mental capacity, or anything like that. That's what I think we have to be thinking about as we move forward. It's one thing to say, Yes, we can live longer. But are we living longer in good health, and able to do all the things that we want to do that we do now, for example.
Sufal Deb 5:28
Ideally, would you prefer a life extension to occur in our working age range?
Bruce Newbold 5:32
I think right now, not necessarily a life extension in our working age, we probably have enough of that.
Sufal Deb 5:39
Fair enough.
Bruce Newbold 5:40
It's that life extension beyond the time period where we work and in better health. That also raises other questions that we can get into. Things like, if we live longer after we’ve finished working, do we have the income to support that? The savings to support that? Living is costly.
We have to be able to do that. There's another problem, that even now, you take a look at the insurance industry, for example, and the old rules were, Yeah, you live to 80, so you make enough savings, you save enough to get to 80. Now, we're talking about savings until you're—assume that you're going to live to 100, and make sure that you save enough for that. That changes the equation in terms of how much we put away and how quickly we put it away to save for those days.
Marvin Yan 6:36
Okay, related to this question, then. Aside from the obvious, I think everyone says, I retire at 65. What other factors contribute to when people decide to settle down and start saving for their eventual 80 or 100 years?
Bruce Newbold 6:51
It depends on what you mean, by settling down. Is settling down—because certainly, if you ask some people, they'd say, Oh, that's when I got married and had a family and that sort of thing, when I became an adult, maybe. Now the rule is that you need to start saving as soon as you can and with that expectation. We know how accounting or how savings work; the longer you can save and compound it, the better off you are. You don't win by starting late in life. The other thing that you alluded to there was that maybe we don't retire at 65, that we work beyond that and more and more Canadians do that. More and more of us are planning or will work beyond age 65. Some because they need to, and some because they want to; they just love what they do.
Marvin Yan 7:43
Okay, I was going to say working longer and longer sounds like equivalents of—equivalent to torture, so I don't know if I'm for that. But moving on to your area of expertise, especially— one thing I've seen you've written a lot about in literature was migration. Before we go into the questions about futures—what happens in the future in terms of migration. What are the main reasons people now move, whether locally or to a different country or whatnot, what are the main reasons that someone decides to get up and move?
Bruce Newbold 8:10
Yeah, and in part, the answer to that question depends upon the geographic scale. People will move locally short distances, typically because of housing needs, and changing housing needs. Maybe their family is, or their household unit, it's getting bigger or shrinking. So, that means that they have different space needs. Longer distance, whether it's across the country or internationally, the number one reason that people relocate is for jobs: to go to a better job to improve their economic situation. It's income, it's a job that they prefer or they want, It's economic peace that's really driving that relocation.
Sufal Deb 8:54
With different geographical locations, for example, if you live in downtown Toronto, you're in an urban area, it's very unlikely that you're going for hikes in downtown Toronto. How do different geographical landscapes affect the physical activity that we partake in? Is there a certain equation or is it quite random?
Bruce Newbold 9:10
Certainly not as specific as an equation. We can't quite put it down to that, but we can talk about human preferences. It is much easier to go for that hike when you have the accessibility of green space as compared to being in downtown Toronto or Vancouver where that green space is more limited. It's harder to get to. It's more that the physical environment that you are in helps to facilitate that movement, that physical activity. It's not to say it's impossible, of course, but there are places that it's easier to engage in those sorts of things.
Sufal Deb 9:51
Just a follow up question for my own interest. Do you think that, for example, living in downtown Toronto often necessitates that you don't need a car, you can just walk around to places? Could that offset the physical activity that they're missing by living in an urban area?
Bruce Newbold 10:04
Yeah, and that's certainly something that we do see. That if people have really good transit options— public transit options—they're probably not going to buy a car or use a car on a regular basis, because they can walk to get groceries. There's something we call a 15 minute city, and that's 15 minutes walking from where you live, you've got everything at your disposal. Your entertainment, your shopping, and that's—your daily grocery needs, for example, as well as some of the higher end goods that you're going to buy and if we could create that sort of 15 minutes city all around, that would be great. We can't, or it's very difficult to do that, and so where you're more likely to find those 15 minutes cities are in older, well-developed neighborhoods or areas of cities where you have those sorts of amenities. You're using public transit, you're walking places, your physical fitness, or activity is probably going to be higher.
Marvin Yan 11:03
I have a follow up question to this. My friend was telling me about a documentary they watched on how Canada developed, or a lot of countries, and one thing you pointed out was how cars were so crucial to how we structured our living spaces, how we structured cities, and then you just mentioned this 15 minute—you can walk to any place you need to. Do you think that with longer lives, do you think that we need to have a different type of transportation possibly, to support this system? Or do you think cars will always be around, always be part of human transportation?
Bruce Newbold 11:35
Interesting question. Certainly, as cars came into our daily use—and that was post World War Two era, where they really, really took off. Our cities became structured in a very different way. They were car centered. We still see a lot of that development within our cities, that suburbs are where we shop, where we work, are all very much dependent upon our personal automobile. It's hard to pull back from that, to change it.
There are some new developments, public transit on demand, that will pick you up where you need to be, and drop you off where you want to be. Those are coming now and we're just starting to see that sort of thing happening, and that maybe is a technology and an ability that starts to change what our cities look like, or at least how they function, but it's going to be hard to get there. There's a lot of other investments that will change it. Maybe that digressed a little bit from your actual question, but it's going to be hard and I think we're going to remain dependent upon the automobile in a lot of places for quite some time.
Sufal Deb 12:54
Another follow up, I feel like we're jumping on this question over and over. But with aging populations, they tend to lose their ability to see, they can no longer drive, they lose that form of personal transportation. It often includes cycling, and even walking. Is there a form of transportation in urban and rural areas that can benefit older people?
Bruce Newbold 13:14
Certainly, something like Uber or Lyft, any sort of ride sharing technology is going to allow that independence for older adults to stay where they are. Most people want to, what's called age in place, they want to remain where they've lived for some time. That's where you can get ride sharing services that can move people around, and again, there’re experiments with that north of Toronto and Innisfil. They've contracted with Uber to provide some of that local transportation for their population, rural area or largely rural area. So, it does provide that connection.
Marvin Yan 13:55
You mentioned the word or the phrase aging in place or age in place. We talked about, so far locally but—I don't know what the word is for this, but is there a typical life movement, in terms of when people decide to move to a different city or different country? A pattern throughout someone's life in terms of where they are located geographically.
Bruce Newbold 14:16
Not so much located geographically. The one big regularity, which sort of answers your question, is there's something called an age schedule of migration. You're most likely to move short, long, incredibly long distances, in your sort of late teens into your early 20s. But that's— you're going to school, you're leaving school, you're going to your first job, it's easy to move. Then after that, your ability to move declines really quickly.
Where it picks up again is around retirement age. Typically, and it's that at 65, you see a little bit of a bump there. As people get to, Okay, I'm done work, I can go live where I want to live now. Then the one other place where you see a big movement is amongst the very old, say, 80 plus. Those are people that are typically moving into retirement homes, long term care or anything like that, because—or maybe with family, because they can't care for themselves or can't live independently anymore.
Sufal Deb 15:24
Is there a geographic, in terms of landscape and geography, is there a certain—a set amount or a stereotypical type of landscape that older people tend to move to? For example, do they move to flatter areas, that way there's not a lot of incline hills, or along the thoughts of that?
Bruce Newbold 15:39
No, no, nothing like that, that we've ever seen. There are different pieces in the literature. There's this idea of aging in place, for example, that I mentioned a moment ago, where people prefer to stay where they've been and that's probably, where they've raised their own families. They've lived there for an extended period of time, so they want to continue to stay there.
There's something called a NORC, a naturally occurring retirement community, and it's just sort of by happenstance, almost, that there's this group of people, they've lived there for some time, and then they grow old together there. Really, it just means that there hasn't been a movement away from that location. Where you see these NORCs are often places that are really amenity rich. They might have the shopping, the facilities, but maybe also the physical environment, it's easy to get out and hike or walk. They have their friends there. They have their community and that sense of community that keeps them there over an extended period of time. Then the only other thing would be, the movement into a retirement type of home, for those that can't or can no longer care for themselves completely or live independently.
Marvin Yan 17:03
Okay, this is stepping aside a little bit, but because you mentioned earlier about your interests and your experience studying immigration, one question we had was, does your immigration status—once you immigrate somewhere. Does your immigration status affect your acceptance of technologies, such as life extension? Is there any research on that?
Bruce Newbold 17:22
I've never seen anything like that at all. Yeah, I'd have to say no. My sense is that it's not going to have an impact at all, in terms of your willingness to take on these new measures.
Marvin Yan 17:37
Okay. All right, then maybe Sufal can jump into our - these are our speculative questions. Pretty much all the questions of, let's say, Life Extension has happened. The first one being, how do you envision—let's say, we live, I don't know, how long you want. Let's say 500 years, right? How do you see the whole global immigration/emigration thing happening in terms of where people are moving to?
Bruce Newbold 18:00
Even with a shorter lifespan, I think people will continue to want to go to places where they can be better off economically. But the other big thing will be that people will move and relocate to places where there's amenities, to head to a warm climate where they're on the beach all the time, maybe. That's going to be something.
I think if we can live 500 years, now we can talk about sampling. Moving around to different places and saying, Oh, well I lived in Toronto for 50 years, but now I want to live in, I don't know, Chile or somewhere else. I'll do that for some 50 years, and then I'm going to go somewhere else. You could almost imagine this group of people that are moving around and sampling different locations. I think that would be incredibly interesting to be able to do that. To live and experience and really become part of a local community, because so often we, as a tourist, pass through places. You skim the surface of what it's like to be there and it's always that tourist piece that you typically get. But to immerse yourself for an extended period of time—if we've got 500 years, I think that's something that people could really do and be part of. The technology to live and work in those places, we're going to have that, we have it now. It's just that liberation of being able to do that for an extended period. That would be really interesting to do.
Sufal Deb 19:37
So, for example, if this global population lives significantly longer from our average 80 to 200, 300, 400 years, can we expect them to migrate to certain areas? For example, I'm somebody who works in a third world country, I save enough money as I'm 200 years old to move to a first world country. Can we expect a lot of migratory patterns such as that?
Bruce Newbold 19:56
Yeah, I think it would just be in part that extension of some of the existing patterns that we see, that people will relocate. There's always the question of the rules and the regulations of who can get in and who's kept out. We hear that all the time, but if we were to say that in addition to, we live longer and we have this ability, and we take away the barriers to movement, those rules and regulations around immigration, it's that I want a different location, I want that different experience. If that's what life or immortality is, of getting these different experiences, people will do that.
Marvin Yan 20:40
Okay, my question before, because we kind of asked them. But specifically to you, Bruce, I was wondering if you had 50, 100, however many more years, where you would end up going or what you would end up doing. Because on the idea of moving, you said a lot of people move, not just to immerse yourself in different cultures, but also for jobs. I was wondering, you're a demographer, but would you ever, with more years, consider a different profession or moving to a different place?
Bruce Newbold 21:06
Yeah, and that's one of the benefits of being a university professor, I've had the ability to live in different places over my career and over my education. That's been incredibly enriching to be able to do that and spend time in different locations. It's something I certainly want to do again, to go and live in a place and be part of it. That's an incredibly rich experience. Privileged? Yes, for sure, to be able to do that. But it's something that I want to do again.
Your next question might be where? Without giving too much away, or committing myself too much, a place that I've never been, or have only sort of touched on. So Asia, Australia, New Zealand. I think to spend an extended period of time there would be, again, really exciting, really interesting. But I'm also—I've had a very limited interaction with South America and find that location really interesting. I could see, wanting to be in, I don't know, Santiago, or Buenos Aires, for example. I think those would be really interesting cities to be part of for a while.
Sufal Deb 22:35
Okay, so I'm going to jump into a topic that is a little more dark, to say the least. Under the assumption that life extension technology and therapy may be expensive, because as all new technologies come out, they tend to be expensive. The wealthy tend to get them first. What effect might it have on the current and future segregation of communities based on economy and other discrimination factors that we see today?
Bruce Newbold 22:58
Yeah, so that's a really loaded and important question. When we think about that, as you put it, we would see this continued segmentation in society. The haves and the have nots, those that can afford this technology, those that can't. Maybe there's a risk of those that can't afford it becoming second, third class citizens. Those that can be here on this planet for 500 years, they're going to have a very different perspective than those that are here, almost in a transient way, if they're here for the standard 80 years. So, there's a risk of taking advantage, of extending the inequality. Oftentimes what we see is the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer. That could very well just continue that trend.
Marvin Yan 23:57
This is not as loaded, but another issue that— if you tell someone about life extension technology, some of the arguments against it— one of them mentioned overpopulation and sustainability. I feel like this technology, it's not a matter of if but when. Do you think that Earth is able to support more people living for extended periods of time, or is there some sort of cap where life extension technology is not going to benefit us in terms of this?
Bruce Newbold 24:26
Yeah, and that's a theoretical question that you're asking, in many ways. I think what would happen there is if we see life extension technology—what else is happening as part of that? If we extend our life, are we also extending the period over which we can reproduce ourselves? Where we can actually have children? Right now it's only, what, 40 years or so of our lifespan, where we can reproduce ourselves? Would that be extended as well? Even if it was extended, I think people would adjust their fertility, their reproductive behavior to fit the new reality that, I might live 500 years, but my family, the number of children that I have wouldn't necessarily be bigger because of that. Because I'm going to assume that they're also going to live 500 years, and maybe we don't want to have/care for children or family for that 500 years.
You could get into a debate or question around how well we support our children, and that sort of thing. I don't think necessarily increase in the number of children that we have because we live longer. I base that on, as I said, some of my experiences as a demographer, and watching how things change. The other process that's at work here is that we're probably going to see peak population in the next 30 years or so, after which the global population will decline. I don't think we're in danger necessarily of overpopulation. We might still run out of resources. That's a different question. But we're not necessarily in danger of an overpopulation just from the sheer number of people in the globe.
Marvin Yan 26:24
Okay, so pretty much we've reached that 30-year cap or cap within the next 30 years regardless of if life extension technology comes within that period of time, right?
Bruce Newbold 26:34
Well, we'll reach peak population under the current circumstances. So, yeah, if all of a sudden, there's a switch that's flicked, and some of us can now live longer, that changes the equation. But I'm going to assume they're too—fairly quickly, it won't happen as quickly. But fairly quickly, people will change their fertility choices as well, the choice around how big their families are. We know that fertility always takes a little bit longer to change. But it does happen, and people will change that to reflect the new reality.
Sufal Deb 27:14
Yeah, I feel like—just a comment on my side, but in past history, when people would have children at a young age, 18, have a child and the child would grow up with a relatively similar age to yourself. People tended to live in the same household, so I can see something like that happening with immortality, because eventually when your child is 120, and you're 140, is there really a big difference? It's debatable.
Going to a much lighter topic, one that I love talking about, vacations. Right now, a one-week trip to Cuba, for me is amazing. It's a great—it's actually an extended trip for me. But if we were to live 200, 300 years, how would vacations change? Would vacations become like the concept you mentioned earlier, "sampling"?
Bruce Newbold 27:55
I think they very well could do that. If we've got more time on this earth we'll certainly get to—in theory, we can get to a lot more places to do that and spend more time doing it. It depends on, in part, how willing are, wherever we work, to give us the time to do that. We've got more years to vacation. Do we get more vacation each year?
Marvin Yan 28:24
Oh, good question.
Bruce Newbold 28:25
Maybe not. Do you see? Do you see what I mean? We're still limited or may still be limited just in terms of the number of days that we can take each year. If we're living to 500 years and 400 of those we've got to work? That's a scary thing. To think—I think extending that lifespan, we've got to be extending the period over which we work as well. Right now you say, Oh, geez, I’ve got to work for—it's another 350 years until I retire. That's enough to scare a lot of people and say, Yeah, I'm going to pass on this one.
Sufal Deb 29:05
Okay, so before we get to some of our concluding questions, I had a little bit of a question regarding willingness to move. I think we discussed it a little bit earlier. But as of now, I know a lot of people aren't willing to relocate. Even if they were offered a job that pays better in a different country. They wouldn't be willing to because they're comfortable where they are. How can you see this changing or getting worse with the introduction of space travel?
Bruce Newbold 29:29
I think space travel will add a whole—if we're able to do that, it adds a whole new dimension. But in part, it's going to be like moving to the frontier. If you think of colonial settlement of the Canadian prairies or the US Great Plains... and even now, to an extent—well, I won't muddy the waters. That early settlement of a new space, like we had saw in North America, those were, in a very literal sense, pioneers. They were going into a place that they had very limited support, very removed. This is a technology piece, of course, from their families, from their support networks, but the same thing would be happening if we go to colonize Mars.
Assuming current technology, you're still months away from any help from Earth. Or if you break some equipment on Mars, you're months away from being able to replace it. That's assuming that it's Mars is where we go, maybe it's further afield, but it would change. You would see that whoever goes, moves, under those circumstances, they are going to be the ones that are really taking chance and cutting some of the other more earthly ties that they have here, because of the relative remoteness of those locations.
Sufal Deb 31:00
Would it be correct to assume that— Because now, traveling to Mars is a commitment, you're not coming back, you're living there till the day you die. If we were able to extend lives to, again, 500 years, wherever the number is, and we were able to—Okay, your commitment to Mars traveling is only 100 years live there and come back. Would you expect to see more people going there and coming back?
Bruce Newbold 31:19
Yeah, I think that's a reasonable assumption that you've got that ability, and then it's all it's just six months or whatever to get there, that makes it doable, and it's only a fraction of your overall lifespan. Then it goes back to the earlier comments around the sampling piece of how you can pick and choose where you live, where you work, and when. It certainly opens up doors and opportunities with that.
Marvin Yan 31:48
Okay, I have one follow up question, which is actually very related, because you talked about chance, right? I remember, it's something about like, some people think driving is dangerous, but there's some statistic like you have to drive X number of years. There's hundreds or thousands of years before you will get into a serious accident. But if you do live a long time, the more stuff you do, the more times you drive, the more times you go to Mars, that's a risk. Would you really want—my question is, would people really want to risk their now, not really finite life, possibly, if aging somehow is no longer a thing? Would they really want to risk these things to have some sort of experience? Or would they be really, really protective of the life they have, because now it's something that can be taken away—death is not guaranteed in that case.
Bruce Newbold 32:33
I think, and I'm guessing here... my sense is that people would be more willing to... well...
Marvin Yan 32:43
I stumped him.
Bruce Newbold 32:46
Yeah, it's a really interesting question. I think you'll see some people and they will jump at the opportunity to do something, and explore, try something different. Then there'll be others that say, Yeah, there's no way you're going to get me on that ship or plane, anything like that. I'm just not going. I'm going to stay here. But that's the way it's always worked. I think in part, unless you're forced to move, you do it by personal choice.
We're factoring in—as humans, we're factoring in, Why is my life going to be better? If I move across the country, or if I move across the universe, why is it going to be better? The one thing with that extended lifespan, where—if I back up a little bit. When we say that people choose to migrate or emigrate, we're making a calculation that they're going to recover the costs of moving because when you move a long distance, there's a physical cost. The dollar cost of moving. You've got to pay the movers; you've got to pay to sell a house and buy a house.
There are also the social costs of moving, of giving up your family, your friends and your location. Then you have to invest and create those new networks in the destination. There's a cost to that but we say it's easier for somebody that's young to relocate and to move because they've got a longer lifespan, longer working career over which they can recover the costs. It's a net benefit to them. I think you can apply the same thing to moving across the universe, that people will continue to make that calculation. Now, if I've got 500 years or 400 years to recover the costs of that, that changes to calculus.
People will say, Yes there is a risk, there is a cost to it, but I've got a long time in order to recover those costs and it could very well be that it's failed. My relocation fails, and then if I can go back home, great, then I can go back home and there I'll have the support of family and friends and community that will help me get re-established. If you can do that. I think that's all part of the calculus of when we move and that's going to stay the same later on, just over a different timeframe now that we're talking about how we do that accounting.
Marvin Yan 35:23
Okay. I just think it's so funny that after university, not everyone necessarily goes into the workforce. I just imagined maybe a few 100 years from now, people will say, I think I'm just going to take the century off, you know, like, just really find myself, right. For like, a century. That's crazy.
Bruce Newbold 35:37
Yeah, it's certainly the backpacking around Europe, but now it's the backpacking around the universe, and as long as they have The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Universe, they'll be in good shape. But yeah, if you've got that ability to do that, we're still doing the same things, I think some of the milestones would be the same in terms of leaving school, taking that time off, getting a job, working, retiring, vacations. Those still all figure in here, but it's the timing; now you've got that elongated timescale, timeframe, over which you can do all of those things. Ultimately, then that increases the number of things that you can do. Hopefully, you don't go back—if you live 500 years—hopefully, you're not going back to the same vacation spot, every single year for 500 years, or you better really like it if you're going to do that. When there's a whole world or whole universe out there, take advantage of it. Even in our short lifespans right now, take advantage of it.
Sufal Deb 36:48
If there's one thing you want everybody listening to take away from today, what would it be? Tough question.
Bruce Newbold 36:55
Carpe Diem, seize the moment, take the day. I've benefited from that ability to go to different places and experience different cultures. To take that move, take the risks of doing that, so that at the end of your career, your life, you're not looking back and saying, Ah, I wish I had done that, and maybe that sounds facile. But I think under the current COVID situation right now and the pandemic, it makes us all recognize or realize how small our world can be at times, and this need to be part of a bigger picture and to be interacting in it.
Marvin Yan 37:42
Okay, so on the topic of seizing the moment, for people who do want to seize the opportunity to possibly work in this field that you are in, get involved in your type of work, do you have any recommendations for where they can go to or how to become a demographer such as yourself?
Bruce Newbold 37:56
Well, it's through university. Take courses on population, and that could be economics, geography, sociology, for example, to get that experience of what populations do and how they act. Just to understand what's going on. There are graduate programs in demography at some schools, not so many in Canada, but certainly in the US and Europe, that can lead you there. But I didn't necessarily set out to be a demographer. When I started my undergrad career, it was something that built along the way and I realized. Studying a population and understanding how it ages, how it moves, how we go about interacting in our environment. That was the real interesting piece for me.
Marvin Yan 38:45
Okay, well, I don't know if we have a lot of links, but if there was anything we discussed in this episode, that will be in the description below. Again, thank you, Bruce, for being on the podcast today, listening to Im a Mortal, your source for all things immortal, and we really appreciate your time you took the interview with us today.
Bruce Newbold 38:59
Yeah. Thank you. This has been great. Appreciate it.
[MUSIC – Im a Mortal Theme]
Episode 2:
Martin Wiener is a professor at George Mason University, specializing in Cognitive Neuroscience, Time Perception, and Space Perception.
Listen in to learn more about how we perceive time, as a normal aging human, and in a scenario where our lives are extended!
Mentioned Resources and Links:
Martin's George Mason University Page
S.T.A.R. Lab
Transcript:
Speakers: Martin Wiener (Guest), Sufal Deb (Host), Marvin Yan (Host)
[MUSIC - Im a Mortal Theme]
Martin Wiener 0:26
Hi, everyone. I'm Dr. Martin Wiener. I'm a faculty member at George Mason University in the Department of Psychology. I got my PhD [Doctor of Philosophy] in psychology and cognitive neuroscience from the University of Pennsylvania back in 2011. My work focuses on timing and time perception, that is, how the brain and the mind understand intervals of time. I use this work to understand how we use time in everyday life for things like rhythm and music and navigation and making decisions and perceiving things in all kinds of facets that time is crucial for. That's me and that's the kind of kind of work that I do. Happy to be here.
Sufal Deb 1:07
Great to hear that. Thank you, first of all, so much for coming onto Im a Mortal and while we're on the topic of our name, what does the word immortal or immortality mean to you?
Martin Wiener 1:16
Immortality at least to me means living or existing forever. That is, there is no end and to some degree, there is no beginning after a while. To me, immortality is any living being breaking free of that life cycle by which you have to be born, exists, and die, such that you just perpetually exist.
Marvin Yan 1:42
I know we're human but I feel like we've always asked this because there's this whole field of life extension and all of that. Would you want to ever engage in those sorts of therapies or would you maybe want to be one of those beings that is, quote, unquote, immortal?
Martin Wiener 1:55
This might precede some of the things I could talk about later. I would say, I would be all for life extension but probably not for immortality.
Marvin Yan 2:05
No, that makes sense. That makes sense.
Sufal Deb 2:07
You mentioned your field of interest so what what piqued your interest in this? How did you get onto time and space perception?
Martin Wiener 2:14
Oh, gosh. It's one of those things that I think I'd like to give you a story that there was some pivotal event in my history where I looked at the stars and I said, “It just keeps going and I need to figure out why.” But my life kind of just went from one thing to the next, right? From one opportunity to the next where I thought I was going to be good at something and it turned out I wasn't and then I moved on to the next thing. I always did have an interest and a love for psychology and understanding the mind, understanding mental processes, how people think, and understanding how others think to a degree.
I knew I wanted to do something in that field but I didn't know what so after college, where I graduated with an undergraduate degree in psychology, I went on to work for a year in a mental health hospital. That was an opportunity to see patients who were suffering from all kinds of psychiatric disorders from schizophrenia, to some people with Parkinson's disease, others with severe depression. It was a humbling experience but that's when I realized I really just was not good at being a clinician. I probably just did not have the knack for it.
I still was interested in why people were having all these different disorders so I went on to do a master's degree in psychology. It just so happened that the there was somebody there who studied timing and time perception. This was at Villanova University in Pennsylvania. It just so happened that he needed a graduate research assistant and I offered to work with him. We talked and he said, "Sure, come on in." I started learning about the work that he was doing which is about timing in animals. It was very cool. It was fascinating. I did the degree and when I was done, I said, “Well now what?”
Again, it just so happened that over at the University of Pennsylvania at their hospital, there was a neurologist there who also was looking for someone to come in and help him do research but this was on stroke patients. He was specifically interested in timing so how patients with strokes in different parts of the brain got disruptions in their perception of time. Because I had done this work already, I was sort of a perfect fit for the position. I came in. I did work there and that led to me doing a PhD which led to me doing more work, which eventually led to me going on and doing several postdocs, a brief detour where I worked for the federal government, and then finally coming back to my position here at George Mason University where I have my own lab.
I know that I found once an old notebook of mine from college, where I think I was jotting down ideas. One of those things that you just do where you're just writing ideas and I think I found a sentence there asking, where does time come from?
Marvin Yan 5:14
Oh my god.
Martin Wiener 5:14
It was one of those things where I said, “There it is! That was it! That was me...” knowing that this is where I was going to wind up but there was a million things written in that book. It wasn't the only thing there but it was something where I said, “Well, I wouldn't have gotten into it if there wasn't some interest in it to begin with, right?” It's one of those things that I grew to love and grew to become involved in this.
Sufal Deb 5:15
Wow, that was quite an origin story.
Marvin Yan 5:40
Yeah!
Sufal Deb 5:40
Yeah, that was great. Well, let's start off with this question. I think this is a great touch or a great starting question. As we age, our brain obviously change so how does biological aging affect our perception of time?
Martin Wiener 5:57
It's interesting. There's this assumption out there that—there's two assumptions with aging. One is the assumption that as we age, we get slower, that things tend to slow down. I mean, certainly, we see people walking slower and moving slower as they get older. When you examine the evidence, there's not that much evidence suggesting the time slows down in the moment to moment. There had been some work suggesting that they were slow but that that work was on the basis of the fact that older people have slower reaction times. That is, if you ask them to react to something, they do it slower than someone who's younger. The assumption was they process things slower as well. Again, we're starting to see that's not necessarily true.
On the other hand, while in the moment, their perception of time might be the same, if you ask them to think about the ordering of events in their lives, what you find is that there is this sense of time speeding up as they get older, of the years just slipping by and just saying. how could I suddenly be 50, or 60, or 70 when just the other day, I felt like I was 20. It does happen. There is this sense of that occurring. We're not exactly sure why that happens in terms of brain anatomy and brain processing. The general idea has been, when you were 16 years old, one year is a much smaller chunk of your life than when you're 20 years old. One year has a far more pivotal outsized effect on you.
That's true to a certain degree because when you're younger, think about how a year can change everything about your life. There are so many amazing and insane events that could occur in your teens and 20s that define who you are. But once you're who you are, at that point, once you're 50 or 60, there's fewer of these events happening that are just going to drastically change everything about you or drastically set you on a totally different path. It does happen but most commonly, things kind of stay the same. That staying the same when you get older leads to kind of as sort of monotony where things just seem to slip by. There is that that change there on the grander scale of time for age, but on the shorter timescale, it seems like someone who's older can perceive an interval of time just as well as someone who's younger.
Marvin Yan 8:33
Okay, I kind of wanted to touch on that because you said when we're younger—right now, Sufal and I we're in university so yay, there's a bunch of cool stuff happening every semester. For people who I guess have—because you're saying time is based on a sort of proportionality. Time perception based on proportionality, plus novel experiences, sort of? So if I did want to have—for people who do have new and fun experiences throughout their 30s 40s not that they're boring but they continue, would they experience—would they still get the same argument that time is slipping away or would they usually say that no, I'm still—it feels like time is just as slow as they were when they were younger?
Martin Wiener 9:15
Yeah. Well, I don't know if this will answer that question but the the experience of time, just to a very large degree is tied to novelty and the novelty and newness of events. You can probably imagine—if you think back to when you first startd college and let's say if it was a monumental event in your life of now I'm here in college. Those first few weeks are probably solidified in your mind but they probably fill a bigger chunk of your memory than say what happened in the most recent 2 weeks of your life perhaps.
Marvin Yan 10:01
I don't remember. Yeah.
Martin Wiener 10:02
Right. There is this thing and it's funny because this is something that that people in my field are studying right now in the context of COVID and in the context of pandemics, of people having a warped sense of time under lockdown, right? Because it's one of those things that when we have more new novel experiences, looking back, our memory of those events, they seem to last longer than they actually were. Paradoxically though, in the moment, it feels like they flew by. If you're having a fun exciting time, if a lot of great stuff is happening, all of a sudden, it's 3am. How did that you know that time slip by? Oh, man, we were having so much fun, we didn't even notice that all this time was gone. Yet, if you think back to it, there's so many things that occur, you overestimate how long you were doing that thing for. The in the moment experience of it might feel like it flew by but the retrospective memory of it is stretched out to be longer than it actually was.
Marvin Yan 11:15
Oh, okay. I'm going to go again but you talked about time estimation. When we're talking about questions, one of the things we're talking about was, if you're in a blank room and someone told you, okay, leave when a minute has passed, you can do a pretty good job at it. But if someone said, an hour, a day, a month, then you end up doing quite poorly. I think there's some experiments with people underground and their judgment of time—even the time of day was off. Is there a reason why we're so bad at judging long term time versus a short term time?
Martin Wiener 11:48
Potentially. With isolation experiments, at least if you lose the light cycle, like you no longer know day from night, there is this free running of circadian rhythms that can occur, where you still sleep and wake for the same amount of time, but when you go to sleep and when you wake up starts to slowly shift. Now you're all (??) groggy (??). Every day, it's like you're falling asleep a little bit later and you're waking up a little bit later until if you go long enough, you're basically sleeping during what is actually day and awake during what is actually night because you no longer have these cues. That's our general method in terms of our body awareness of telling us, okay, it's time for me to sleep, it must have been a day now.
Those things rely on these external cues for us to be able to tell us, okay, now it's time for us to wake up or now it's time for us to go to sleep. As far as why we might be bad at those things, in terms of estimating an hour or estimating a much longer timescale is that the brain has sort of adapted to be able to time things in this immediate moment. We're very very good at timing a few seconds. We're very very good at timing a few minutes even. But once you start kind of extending that out, the brain loses these—the method that it was using before for keeping track of that time. Let's imagine, you're just trying to count seconds, right, and you're just going one, two, three, four, that strategy will work just fine for a short interval of time but if you need to count in order to tell yourself when an hour is up, it's just not—it's just going to fail you because you won't be able to maintain it.
It's the same thing in terms of the brain, that the brain starts moving on to other things and starts attending to other things, it starts turning inwards, and you lose track of all the cues that are necessary for you to say, okay, this amount of time has passed. So in fact though, in order for you to actually know when an hour is up without a clock, your mind has to kind of retrieve other memories of things that you were told lasted an hour, and said, well, this is kind of the same as this other thing that I knew was an hour. It feels like that so it must be an hour! This seems similar to that. Actually, in terms of measuring an hour, we're better at measuring an hour than you'd think.
Marvin Yan 14:12
Really?
Martin Wiener 14:14
We're actually pretty good at being able to measure when an hour has gone like even—
Marvin Yan 14:17
Oh not me then. Okay.
Martin Wiener 14:19
Yeah. I mean if we're tasked to. If you were told you have one hour for this thing to be done, tell me when you think it's up. I mean, most people will undershoot it, of when the hour is but they'll get it fairly fairly close. It's only when you start to get these much longer times, like, tell me when four hours is up? Well now I've lost everything. That becomes far more difficult to indicate...
Sufal Deb 14:48
I know we just touched on this so I'm going to segue here. You mentioned how attention and paying attention to how much time passing is important. Why is it that attention is so closely tied with time perception and say somebody has attentional deficit or some condition, what's the case for them?
Martin Wiener 15:11
I'm going to go big before I go small on that answer. There was a mathematical psychologist named John Gibbon, who back in the 70s, made some of the first, or they weren't the first, but they were some of the most pivotal models of timing and time perception. It wasn't until a little while later that he has this quote, where he said, the reason why he was so interested in time is, he said, "Time is the primordial context." What he meant by that is time was the first thing that mattered to us as living organisms, that it was the very first thing we had to figure out.
In order for me to get energy, I need to know when the sun is up in order for me to go up there and get energy and I need to know it's night in order to conserve energy. I need to figure that out. Okay, I figured that out. Now, I need to hunt. Well I need to figure out how to be quick and catch something. Okay, well, I'm prey, I need to figure out how to run away from it. Well, we're going to keep getting better and better at each of those things and timing becomes more and more and more important. He said, "Evolution favored organisms that could predict things rather than react to them." If we were only reacting to something eating us, we would be eaten, but if we could predict when something was going to come and attack us, we could get away from it. That's the big part.
In terms of the question of attention, what we have found through a lot of this experimental psychology work is that the more attention you pay to time, the longer it gets, okay? If I'm asking you to time an interval and tell me how long it is, and you're focusing all your attention on this interval—like if I say, “I'm going to flash a light at you”, and you tell me how long it is and you focus all your attention on that light, the more attention you focus on it, the longer that light will seem to be on for. If you start diverting your attention away, if you start kind of thinking about something else, or looking at something else, or whatever, the shorter that interval will become.
This is where we get those those sayings, a watched pot never boils or time flies when you're having fun, because in the watched pot example, you are focused entirely on time. The idea again, is that time is that primordial context, because it's that one thing that we focus on there of saying how much time has passed. When you focus on it, it gets longer, but if you're distracted away from it, it gets shorter.
For someone who has ADHD, what we found is that people who cannot maintain attention to time on things, those time intervals obviously all seem to become shortened. If I give someone with ADHD— I ask them to time a five second stimulus, like, “Tell me when five seconds is up,” they're going to type it and then say, “Oh, that was three seconds.” Because they were focused, they couldn't maintain their attention on this particular thing. That's sort of the connection there and that's how attention gets folded into this in terms of timing.
Sufal Deb 18:18
I can go ahead with the next question.
Marvin Yan 18:20
I can ask—here you go first. I asked three follow ups last time.
Sufal Deb 18:24
This actually is a question more related to getting older. You mentioned time slipping and how as you get older, longer pieces of time feel shorter. Say somebody were to live to a more absurd age such as 500. Would a week seem like a second to them in terms of memory?
Martin Wiener 18:42
Oh, huh. Yeah, it's funny. To some degree, it's ad absurdum. Right? It's like, oh, well, obviously, if someone is living for so much longer, and they have so much time, then, you know, at that point, the passing of time must seem to go by in the blink of an eye, right? Because what does it matter to them? You're kind of getting at this geological timescale thing, right? This whole idea that you have an ancient organism that's so old and so wise like a God, for example and to it, the actions of mortals seem like the actions of mere ants where centuries are passing by in seconds to this being.
I mean, that works in all when you're coming up with fantastic beings, but I think we cannot escape biology to some degree. I think if we were to artificially take a human and find a way to expand its lifespan, even to some long amount, like 500 years, I don't think you would get time quite going so quickly in that case. I think you might just wind up reaching, “Yeah, things just fly by,” but they might be like, “Well, what does it matter? Okay, a week has gone by. Oh, whatever, there'll be another week. I can focus on things and do what I need to do then.”
Sufal Deb 20:06
it's almost like a loop of procrastination to a certain degree.
Martin Wiener 20:11
Maybe.
Sufal Deb 20:12
Okay, Marvin you can go ahead here.
Marvin Yan 20:13
Yeah, I want to ask because really, we talked about how there's two factors. One of them was novel events being linked to your perception of time. Say you were like Sufal's scenario of 500 years, maybe even 1000, right? I don't know if there's— first of all that kind of relates to, is there a limit to your memory because I was thinking if there is a limit, then you would only be able to keep so many events in your head, right and that's how you perceive time. If time goes on and you can only still perceive a finite number of events, then wouldn't your perception change? How do we deal with that sort of problem?
Martin Wiener 20:45
Yeah, again, we don't really know, right? I mean, that's a great question. Certainly, you can say that there must be a finite limit to the number of memories that we can hold, that has to be true. You could imagine, though, that after a while, the brain would simply start to lose memories, lose older memories that are no longer relevant or no longer necessary and just replace them with additional memories. You could imagine, perhaps a being that's 500 years old, that no longer remembers what it was like to be 10, or 20, or perhaps just has like a few select choice memories of being 10, 20, and then a few select memories of being 30 and 40, then maybe more memories than closer to whatever is the more relevant memories for it.
On the other hand, it might not be the case. Memory is still one of those things that we have a difficult time untangling in the brain. Certain types of memories are easy for us to study. For example, the memory of locations, of like, where was something/ Where was this or where was that? Studying memories of events, though, in the brain, that's harder, that is still something to this day that we don't really have a very good handle on, on where these memories are stored and where it is, is likely the wrong question. It's more a matter of how these memories are stored.
Simply because modern neuroscience is pushing us to this network view of the brain where you can say, well, when a particular memory is instantiated, the brain activates itself in a particular pattern. You can imagine, these 15 nodes activate in a very particular pattern or very particular way. We think of the hippocampus is the key to saying, okay, activate pattern, 5037. That's the memory of when I was eight and I tripped while I was running too fast. Okay, now switch these weights. Now, it's this other memory, for example.
If that's the case, if it's this network that's just changing its configuration, you can imagine a system that can store memories for hundreds of years because it's just new configurations that the brain has to be able to achieve. As long as the brain retains the weights of saying, these are the weights for this particular memory, and these are the weights for that memory, then I should have a far greater amount of storage than what we even have in our lifetimes.
I mean, that's how we have those reports of people with eidetic memories, people who have these perfect memories for all kinds of events and sort of super mnemonics, right? Their brains are no different necessarily, then ours. If you examine their neuroanatomy, you don't find like, oh, my gosh, this brain looks so different. The hippocampus might be bigger, perhaps but otherwise, they don't really suffer many losses although that could be argued against. There are some people who claim having eidetic memory is a curse rather than a gift.
Marvin Yan 23:39
I can imagine it. Yeah.
Martin Wiener 23:40
But that at least proves to us that you could have a person who lives for a very long time span and doesn't suffer any problem in being able to remember something.
Marvin Yan 23:49
Oh, okay wait. I had a question because we're talking about the brain and only in the past few years, my frontal lobe has developed sufficiently where I realize, I'm not immortal or invincible at age 18 to 20 or whatever—and start planning less current satisfaction, like, Oh, I'm not going to go watch Netflix now because I need to do my project, you start playing more long term, right?
Martin Wiener 24:10
Sure.
Marvin Yan 24:11
Now I'm like, Okay, what am I doing once I graduate, right? Possibly start investing, because apparently 10 years down the line, it'll make me some money. Living longer and longer, do you anticipate people would plan even longer term? Would they have like a 50 year plan? A 100 year plan? What do you think?
Martin Wiener 24:27
I mean they could or rather they should.
Marvin Yan 24:32
Should, okay.
Martin Wiener 24:33
People are people. We are creatures of the moment. I mean, achieving the lifespans that we have, like on a longer scale really is one of the great success stories of modern medicine and modern civilization, right, that we all have the opportunity to live as long as we do and that lifespans regardless are still increasing. At this point, I think people still are living longer than they have than at any other point in history. Given that, people should plan ahead, plan long term, but by and large people don't. People are impulsive. People are far more engaged in things of the moment.
For example, there's a basic psychology experiment called temporal discounting, right? Temporal discounting works like this. If I could give you $5 right now—
Marvin Yan 25:24
Oh this one.
Martin Wiener 25:25
Yeah you know this one. $5 right now or $50 tomorrow, which would you pick? Right. You'd say, “$50,” and I said, “Okay, $5 right now, or $50 next week?” You'd probably say, “$50”. “Okay, $5 right now or $50 a year from now?” You'd probably be like, “Well, you know that's a while to wait just for $50. I'll take the $5.” Then if you say, “$5 right now, or $5 10 years from now,” they'll say, “Just give me the $5 right now.” The thing of it is, you should always pick the bigger amount. From an economic standpoint, the bigger amount is better unless the smaller amount is something that you could invest to grow.
Marvin Yan 26:01
I was going to say yeah if you can...
Martin Wiener 26:03
Right, but aside from that particular example, you should generally always pick the bigger one. These timescales I'm saying are excessive but you find people discount the larger reward at fairly small intervals and it varies from person to person. Some people just say, “Nah a week's too long, give me the smaller one.” We've seen some cases where people discount an hour or something like that, where they just say, “No, I want this. I'll take the smaller reward now in lieu of getting the bigger reward later, because I want it now.” I think people are impulsive even if they live for long lifespans, they probably would still be creatures of the moment because that's how we developed. That's how we evolved.
Marvin Yan 26:41
Oh, there was this—this is a little bit like a sidetrack in terms of a different realm of psychology but I figured out it asked because I remember hearing on this other podcast, there's this marshmallow test for kids. Right? One marshmallow now, two marshmallows later and then they linked it to future success. I forget how they gauged success. I don't know if there's any evidence like, oh, do people who are more willing to take $50 a week later, two weeks later, or a month later, if there's any evidence that they are better off or better equipped for future something in some way?
Martin Wiener 27:15
I mean, certainly I think there is work linking temporal discounting, like you're describing to different personality traits. The one that tracks most closely to that unsurprisingly is impulsivity. There are impulsivity questionnaires and people who score higher in impulsivity are far more likely to take the smaller (??) reward sooner. Whereas people who score lower on impulsivity are much more likely to take that longer later reward. That is, I think, is by far the biggest, strongest effect in terms of—you can then ask yourself, well, are those people better off who are less impulsive overall?
For example, I remember, anecdotal reports are like, “Well, who are the people that are really impulsive?” I remember talking with somebody and saying, “Oh, well, this one person. He was a professional skydiving coach. This other one, oh, he was always doing extreme sports. This other one, he was always engaging in risky behavior.” These are the different traits that they have so you can say, “Well, are those people worse off because they're engaging in these things or is it just, that's who they are and they're doing what they enjoy?”
But part of that is, from this impulsivity, that they have to engage in these behaviors. I don't know that we have something quite like the marshmallow test here in terms of saying that these people are better off. I mean, the marshmallow test itself has some controversy back and forth as to as to whether or not it actually exists. I mean, whether or not the effects actually track with later success, or with delinquent behavior, and things like that. I mean, it's an open question I think.
Sufal Deb 28:52
I'm going to jump the ship here a little bit. This is a question we have written here that I personally find pretty interesting. Typically, people tend to have a fear of death, it's very common to have a fear of death. People can also have a fear of living forever, the infinite. How can both of these exist in like a lifetime? Is it not a contradiction for somebody who's immortal? They could possibly have both.
Martin Wiener 29:12
You're saying, is it a contradiction for someone to both fear death and immortality at the same time?
Sufal Deb 29:18
Yeah, essentially.
Martin Wiener 29:20
Okay. Yeah. Well, I don't know if it's—is it okay for me to curse on this podcast or is it or not?
Sufal Deb 29:28
Yeah, shouldn't be a problem as long as you're okay with it.
Martin Wiener 29:31
A fear of death and a fear of immortality is basically you're f*cked one way or the other. In one case, you die and that's it, and there's nothing, and that's scary, and that's frightening, and I don't want to face that. In another sense, if you take immortality to its extreme—you say, “I'm just going to keep on existing and existing and existing and existing and nothing will ever end. It will never stop. I will never stop existing.” Especially if you're miserable in your existence, you reach this point of saying, “That doesn't sound very great either and there's nothing I can do about it.”
I mean, let's imagine pure immortality. You cannot die. You simply will not die, right? The Earth could crumble behind you and you could be floating still in space, and you just would not die. That I know is again, a just as frightening prospect, right? Just this continued endless existence. I think either way, someone would find both of those things, a type of fear. I mean, this connects also to, people who might have a fear of the of infinity could have a fear of an afterlife even, of being like, “Well, I'm afraid of dying and going to an afterlife where I'm just existing forever.”
What if there was, say an afterlife, then what if there was a hell where you were just placed in a blank room and that was it? You were told, “This is it, you're going to be here forever. Bye. I'm the last person you're ever going to see. It's never going to end. That's it.” You're just now in this room, there's no doors, there's no windows, it's just a blank room, an oubliette of darkness. That's terrifying to me, right?
Again, it's terrifying under the idea that it does not end, right? It's also terrifying, because we are social creatures, where we have to be interacting with other people to some degree in order to maintain our mental health. Again, that why isolation is a type of torture. That's why we need others one way or another to be around us, in order to survive.
Marvin Yan 31:49
If we have life extension therapy, we have to remember, everyone should get it, not just one person, Otherwise, that person will have that conundrum thousands of years later. Do I die? Do I keep going? There's no one around. Right?
Martin Wiener 32:01
Right. Right. Well, I mean, yeah, to some degree, yes.
Sufal Deb 32:06
Martin, can the mind handle living for extended lifespans or even forever? Is it even possible?
Martin Wiener 32:12
So, this is one of those questions that—it's sort of hard to answer. Certainly, we've seen that as life has extended, people are able to exist and behave. We have people living up to 120. Even though there may be some issues, they still are themselves. You can still have a conversation with someone who's 120. In terms of living to 220 or 520, it's one of those open questions, especially if we could find a way to preserve the body, so that you could still have a relatively healthy, self healthy body. Say, be sort of stuck as you are, but have a mind that exists for a much longer period of time.
To answer those things, that's funny because science—we can't really answer that. It's sort of an ethical and moral question of, should a person even be allowed to live that long if they were given the ability to? I mean, I think everybody wants life extension of some form or another. It is something that's actually being studied and there are groups out there that want to find a way—we have been able to extend the lives of smaller organisms like mice and other animals to longer periods of time.
If you can scale that up to humans and expand their lives, well, who should be the first one to get it? Should you wait 200 years to see if it worked and to see what this person was like? What is a clinical trial like for a life extension drug? Do we say, “Hey, everybody, there's going to be this life extension drug, we'll let you know if it works in two centuries. If it does, your grandchildren might be able to take it.” I don't know if that's what we want.
There have been, of course, a lot of people who have speculated on this and that gets into the realm of science fiction and fantasy where you can see there's lots of work out there that talks about people living for long periods of time, or certainly people living for infinite periods of time. It's funny because I'm not an expert in science fiction or fantasy. I've read my fair share but at least from what I've seen, they fall into two categories, where you've got a dystopian immortality and utopian immortality on either side.
Dystopian immortality is that type I've talked about where people who live longer than they're supposed to and find the experience to be sort of one of misery and one of being kind of stretched out. Okay. There was a letter that JRR Tolkien wrote to somebody where he was explaining why in the Lord of the Rings, someone getting the ring led to unnaturalness in them and like Gollum living for centuries and centuries or Bilbo being extended out. As you use the metaphor saying, “I feel like butter spread out over too much bread.”
He said, “The idea is that everything has a set lifespan, it's the lifespan it's supposed to live, and when you unnaturally stretch that out, it's this sense of taking what was supposed to occur the right way and making it occur the wrong way.” The mind tries to adapt to this thing that it's not supposed to be doing. There are these dystopian immortals that get affected by it in a negative way, where they get filled with apathy, they get filled with an inability to experience pleasure. That's where we get bad guys in a lot of comic books and movies and stuff like that. I've just been existing for so long and now I torture you mortals because this is who I am and I can't relate to anyone anymore.
On the other side, you've then got utopian immortality, which are other sci fi stories of people given life enhancing drugs that now find themselves with access to great wisdom, a greater awareness of who they are. This is something Marvin, that you kind of mentioned, well, if you're going to live longer, shouldn't you look further ahead? It's funny because I've read some books with stories where someone gets a life enhancing treatment, and then they're like, “Now I know that my life is going to go on for several hundred years, I don't have to rush anymore. I stopped rushing and everything. I started taking my time and things. I started really stopping to enjoy things in the present moment because I didn't feel this pressure to get things done and to achieve things.”
You lead to this utopia of people experiencing longer lives, leading them overall being happier and more fulfilled. Which one of those things would happen? We don't know. To some degree, it probably depends on the individual, in that there's probably some people who would benefit in some ways. What's interesting about these sci fi fantasy stories is that it seems to happen automatically as a byproduct of living longer. If you're granted long life, it's going to corrupt you. That's just something that's going to happen in the dystopian versions. Whereas in the utopian versions, if you're granted long life, it's just something that's going to make you better. There's no way around it, you're just going to become better as a result. I think those are caricatures of individuals whereas, what would really happen probably would differ from person to person.
Marvin Yan 37:47
Wow, makes me really question if I want that therapy because we were talking—I guess this is a more modern-day example but I feel like everyone's always complaining, “There's not enough time. There's not enough time. I'm too busy.” Right? But once you give them too much time, they're just unproductive, right? Are we going to have a society where everyone's just like, next century?
Martin Wiener 38:05
Right. Right. Exactly. I'll do it later. Right. Yeah. Everybody starts pushing everything off. Yeah, you can imagine it going in that that direction, that everybody—everything just leads to a kind of apathy.
Marvin Yan 38:16
Anyways, jumping to our question, because you mentioned, you do not just time perception, but space as well. I'm going to read this exactly how it's worded because I love this. Physics, at least they talk about space and time often being intermingled but we're talking about psychology and neuroscience here. Is there any sort of connection between the two?
Martin Wiener 38:36
Yes, it's not studied as much. I mean, it's not studied as much as one of the dimensions individually. People tend to study space or they tend to study time but there's not as many people who study space time, that is how you experience both of these dimensions, right. That's more for historical reasons than anything else, that some people just are studying navigation of animals in a maze and others are training animals to judge an interval of time in order to get a reward. Those kind of lead to different literatures.
There are examples of people studying space and time, leading to some interesting results. To my mind, the most interesting one was—this is a paper that came out in science about 40 years ago, back in 1981. It was one of these papers that was interesting but not many people cite it and it's sort of fallen out of favor. It's one of these weird papers. It was by a guy named Alton Delong at the University of Tennessee. He was an architect there, the School of Architecture.
I don't know why he did this study but he did this study where he invited people into a room to play with little scale model environments. Here's a diorama of a room and in this diorama, there's a whole setup or something like that. He asked them to imagine they were in that room. Imagine you're in it and just go ahead and play there in the little room. He brought different people in and made them play with different dioramas of different sizes. Some people got a really tiny little room of a diorama. Other people got a bigger diorama. Other people got a very big diorama. He'd play with them for different sizes.
He would let them play with that, and say, “Imagine you're in there,” and then he would leave. He would leave for different intervals of time and then come back and ask them how long they've been playing in this diorama for. What he found is that people's reports of time became warped to the size of the environment they were playing in, where if people were playing in a really, really, really tiny environment, they felt that a very short amount of time had passed by. The reports varied widely but they were consistent.
At the most extreme, he let a person play in a tiny little environment and he came back 30 minutes later and said, “How long has gone by?” and the person said, “five minutes.” Whereas, as the environments got bigger and bigger and bigger, the amount of time got longer and longer and longer and longer. But they were always shorter than the actual amount of time that people were in there. He came up with—he called this phenomenological space time.
The idea was saying that our sense of time is warped through the environment that we're in. Okay, that is the boundaries of the environment change our sense of time while we're in that environment. He went from there to kind of say, “If you're in a tiny cramped room, you're going to have a different perception of time than if you're in a wide open space like if you're in an arena or airplane hangar or something like that.” It's funny because he then wound up suggesting that it's also in relation to the size of the observer.
If you were to be a giant, for example, like a giant person in a relatively smaller environment, your time would wind up going in the opposite direction there, okay, where your time would wind up becoming longer. This is like I said, people become ants and so for them, time would be going faster, but for you time would be going slower. Those people would be like—you'd have a very different perception of events passing by compared to the little people all around you, the little tiny individuals.
There was actually some work that replicated this effect, a couple times in the 80s, and then no one ever followed up on it after that. It kind of just became this footnote. There were some studies that did follow it up in architecture, actually, for designing spaces because this guy was from an architect school. Some people said, you need to keep in mind, people's sense of time, when you're designing an environment, like when you're designing a space for people to walk around. When you have more narrow corridors and narrow, worn like environments, that's going to change people's sense of time in them, and it might stress them out. Likewise, if you have grander, wide open VISTAs, people get this sense of awe there and their sense of time will become expanded in those particular places.
It was this wild thing. Again, not many people have followed up on it but it does suggest that our sense of time and our sense of space are linked to some degree. That is, we use time when navigating just as we use space when navigating, in terms of saying, like, “How far does it take for me to get from here to there?” It's funny, because again, this is this is all anecdotes. There's not been a lot of work on this and we're starting to get into this work. I know that I have seen a difference of people who live in rural environments, their perception of how long it takes to get from like Point A to Point B to Point C, and what is considered a long time or a long distance versus people who live in urban dense environments, of saying, “Oh, I've got to get from here to there.”
I know that if you live in a very dense environment—say you're in downtown Toronto, and it's kind of like, “Oh, we got to get over here to the other side of the city.” It's like, “Oh, I got it.” Let's see if I can do a local reference. “I got to go to Mississauga from Toronto,” and it's like, “Well, I don't want to go all the way over there. It's going to take me forever to get there.” But if you looked at the actual distance, it's probably not that far versus somebody say, who lives like way out in Alberta or something like that who's kind of like, “Oh, that place? Yeah, it's right over there. Just 50 miles away. What, let's go. It's right over there.”
For them, they, you know, they might have a different sense of it, you know, it's like, simply because their experiences of the time intervals for those things has warped their sense of the space. Just as the space itself can warp their sense of the time that it takes to get from one thing to another. You might say, “Oh, 50 miles, that's going to take forever, I don't want to sit in the car for 50 miles,” while we go like just down the road for this thing. Whereas for them traveling to Mississauga might be just a very simple trip, like, “Oh, that wasn't so bad. Why did you get you so worked up about it?”
Sufal Deb 45:37
Yeah, I've heard a lot of those examples, specifically with people in the UK, mentioning how, “Oh, I would never travel 200 kilometers to another country to attend a concert,” but in the US, “Oh, eight hour drive for the concert. Not a big deal.”
Martin Wiener 45:50
There was one time I remember. A Canada story was I was up in Montreal, also going to a show and there was a person there we were hanging out with and he was from the UK. We were done. We were saying, “Okay, well, we're going to drive back tomorrow.” He's like, “Oh, where are you going?” It's like, “Oh, we were actually going to Boston.” He was like, “How long is it going to take you to get there?” It's like, “It's going to take us eight hours.” He was like, “Eight hours!”
I remember he seemed concerned for us. He was like, “Do you need anything? Is there anything that you need in order to make the trip okay? Are you guys going be all right?” We were like, “Yeah, we're going to be fine. It's not that bad.” But for him, the idea of traveling anywhere by car for eight hours, was just this ordeal, this odyssey of a journey, whereas for us, it was like, “Oh, no, no big deal.”
Sufal Deb 46:42
Yeah. So one more question related to time perceptions. A lot of people, especially students, when the summer comes, and you have nothing to do you get bored very quickly. How exactly is boredom related to time perception and additionally, would boredom change as we live longer?
Martin Wiener 46:58
Yeah. Again, this is that time is the primordial context thing that I was talking about. It's the primordial context in the sense that—this is the insidious nature of it, when you don't have anything else left to attend to, if you just don't have anything else to look at, all you have left is time. All you have left to attend to is time. Remember, the more you attend to time, the longer it become so it gets worse and worse. If you lose things to look at and lose things to focus on, you just come right back to the passage of time, which makes it go slower, and then you focus more on it, which makes it go slower and slower and slower and slower.
To some degree that's boredom. That is like you becoming bored with the input that you're getting of just, “I don't want to attend to this stuff anymore. What's left?” Even if you don't want to attend that, turn yourself inward to your own thoughts, you don't even want to daydream, you just get tired of that. You just start attending to time. Without even realizing it you are attending to time, and just how, “Gosh, this is taking forever.” It's like if you're on a long plane flight, the joke is like if you're taking like a 12 hour plane flight, you watch a movie, and then you watch another movie, and then you still have seven hours up in the plane flight.
It's like, “Well, what do I do now?” It's like that. It can just become agony for all because all you're thinking about is the passage of time. I remember the first time I flew on a plane where I was with a friend talking with them the whole time on the flight and suddenly they were like, “Oh, we're landing now.” I'm like, “Oh, we are?” because I was distracted away from the passage of time, I wasn't focused on it anymore. It seemed to go by really quick. That is something that we are seeing in these studies of COVID and lockdown, where there are these large sales studies in the UK, in Brazil, in Japan, showing that people are experiencing a slowing down of time in lockdown, where things are slowing—slowing down the sense that things are becoming stretched out.
It's related to this sense of boredom of, “Well, I watched all my Netflix shows now and I binge watched all the things I want to do. I've crocheted all the things I needed to crochet, cooked all the things I needed to cook. What's left? Well, that's it. Now I'm just thinking about the fact that I'm still here, and nothing is new anymore. I'm just getting bored with it and time is stretching out and I feel that this is taking forever.” There was this joke I remember when the pandemic first started that March was endless that it was an endless March because it was the first month of the pandemic. We were so new to being stuck where we were that it just seemed to drag on forever.
Marvin Yan 49:44
Wow. So a way you could technically ex—not extend your time, but feel like time is going slower—It's like if you're in a big blank mansion in the middle of nowhere during a global pandemic, and you're extremely bored, and you have no Netflix. That seems like a pretty good way to maximize your misery here at least.
Martin Wiener 50:00
Yeah, yeah, exactly. If you're put into this space where just nothing is exciting, where everything is old, nothing is new, nothing is exciting... We crave novelty and if you take that away, it just leads to boredom.
Marvin Yan 50:16
Okay, well, do you want me to wrap? Okay. Sure. I have one sort of wrap up question. We've talked about a lot of different things today. But if there's one thing you have— what you want listeners to take away from today with regards to time perception, with regards to life extension possibly, is there a sort of one thing you really want to tell them to hone in on?
Martin Wiener 50:35
If there's one lesson that we've learned from timing, and from the things that I've talked about, it's that time flies when you're having fun, the brain seeks and craves novelty. It does not crave a dark room where nothing happens even though that's the safer alternative. We go out. We experience things. Whether we are living for 200 years or 50 years, experience more things, experiencing more novel events, doing more, involving yourself in more things, is a way to enrich your life and even make it seem to last longer in the time that you have than it actually is.
You could live for 50 years and fill up those 50 years with a ton of experiences, or live for 500 years and have nothing in it and wind up with like an equivalence in terms of the memories that you have, and the lived experience between those two. If I had my choice, I mean, I think I would choose again to have the experience of a life that was more full, rather than a life that was more empty. Time may be the primordial context, but it's not a fun place to be, to just focus on time endlessly. The point is for us to get away from that and experience more novelty as a way of kind of escaping the trap of time, to some degree.
Marvin Yan 52:06
Wow, I realized the phrase, the experience of a lifetime has a way different meaning now after having this interview.
Sufal Deb 52:14
So let's wrap it up with for all the audience listening in where can they find more about your work, support it, or if they're a university student, how can they get involved in this field?
Martin Wiener 52:22
If they want to know more about me, I have a website up through George Mason University. You can Google my name, and that should take you to my webpage at George Mason. My lab has its own website. We're the STAR lab. So Space Time Action Representation. You can Google that and George Mason University.
In terms of getting involved in this work, cognitive neuroscience, that's my area, is a growing field. There's many cognitive neuroscientists at most research universities, and even smaller universities. If you're interested in this, I encourage you to reach out to people at your local university who are doing exciting and interesting things in this space and chatting with them and seeing if there are opportunities there for doing research. I mean, we are always looking for people who are interested in this field and want to learn more and want to involve themselves in research.
Sufal Deb 53:22
Absolutely. Great. For all of you guys listening, links to Martin's lab, as well as his university website will be below. With that all wrapped up, thank you so much for coming on to our show and being interviewed. We really appreciate it.
Martin Wiener 53:34
Thank you Sufal and Marvin. This has been fantastic. I really appreciate you guys reaching out. Thanks.
Episode 1:
Dennis Kowalski is the President of Cryonics Institute.
Listen in to learn more about the history, present, and future of cryonics and its take on potential immortality.
Mentioned Resources and Links:
Cryonics Institute
Transcript:
Speakers: Dennis Kowalski (Guest), Marvin Yan (Host), Sufal Deb (Host)
[MUSIC - Im a Mortal Theme]
Dennis Kowalski 0:27
Hello, my name is Dennis Kowalski. I'm the president of the Cryonics Institute. And thanks for having me on your podcast, guys.
Sufal Deb 0:35
Yeah, we love having you here. For all of you guys listening, welcome to Im a Mortal. Today we have Dennis Kowalski, as he introduced himself and, Dennis, let's start off with a simple question. Since our podcast is about immortality, life extension and just aging in general, what does the word immortal or immortality mean to you?
Dennis Kowalski 0:52
Well, I mean, words are important but you know, the strictest definition immortal means you live forever. It's not really what we're trying to do in cryonics and a lot of the life extension movement, what we're trying to do is extend life radically. I mean, something statistically will get you sooner or later so I don't think any of us is really talking about true immortality, we're just talking about the same thing that regular medicine and diet and health and exercise and everything proposes to do, you know, extend our lives. Not just our biological life, but our healthy life, so that we can spend time with our loved ones and our family and enjoy. Enjoy.
Marvin Yan 1:39
Yeah, we can all enjoy more parks outside and nice weather. Right?
Dennis Kowalski 1:43
Right, right. Exactly.
Sufal Deb 1:44
Yeah.
Marvin Yan 1:45
Okay. So I guess, because we've never met someone in cryonics. It's not too often you do so I guess to start off with, how did you first get involved in cryonics at all?
Dennis Kowalski 1:55
When I was a younger kid, I read a lot of science and science fiction as well. And I noticed it was a recurring theme. And even in history, you know, you go back to the Egyptians and the pyramids, and know that people have always been seeking longevity. And you've always heard through different science fiction films about space travel, where they suspend a person's life status temporarily to get from a long distance from one area to another.
And it was in the 1960s, that Professor Robert Ettinger from Michigan — actually, he was a physics professor, and he decided to look into it and apply science to the theory that could we do it? He applied science to the idea and he wanted to see, is this possible? So he wrote a book called, The Prospect of Immortality and it became a number one worldwide bestseller. And it was, you know, he was on all the top circuits. I remember seeing him as a young kid, and I thought, boy, this is really interesting. It's fascinating. But you know, how are they going to ever bring anyone back? Are they just purely relying on the future. So I thought, it's a good idea, but I kind of stowed away in the background of my mind.
And later on, when I was a little older, 18, 19 years old, I read a book called Engines of Creation by Eric Drexler. In chapter nine of that book, basically, it's about molecular nanotechnology and it's basically the reverse engineering of life at the molecular level, the mechanical, reverse engineering, of what happens with biology. And the book really laid out a fantastic blueprint and concept of how we probably would be able to revive patients. It's not at all easy, and it'll probably take another 100 years or more for us to figure it out but it is in no way impossible. In fact, the book kind of shows a lot of biological and natural processes that, you know, in one shape, or form or another, reverse biological aging. I mean, when you think about it, when two people meet and have a child. Some of their cells in their body are reverting back into germline cells and resetting the clock biologically and there's all sorts of examples of this in nature. So it's just a matter of figuring out what Mother Nature does, and reverse engineering it.
Sufal Deb 4:53
Great. Yeah, I love those examples. And there's a lot of examples of even a lot of species like the water bear who you know preserve themselves for a long time in stasis. So for the audience out there, could you describe what exactly is cryonics and how does cryonics work?
Dennis Kowalski 5:09
So, cryonics is a process in which people after they're pronounced legally dead and I emphasize legally dead, that doesn't mean you're technically dead in the strictest sense. But once people are legally dead, they're in cardiac arrest, and all traditional conventional medical sciences given up currently, because our current technology can't bring you back. Well at that point, in an ideal situation, we get to that person, patient, we call them, as soon as possible. We put their body into a ice water bath. We'd continue CPR to circulate the blood and nutrients to the brain, but also to take and what am I thinking of, take the core, the warm core blood, and exchange it with the colder peripheral blood that's touching the ice bath, so that we can cool the person as quickly as possible.
The ideal is when you cool a person down there, the chemical reactions that are going on including degradation of a body is slowed down. And then we know this intuitively, you know, if you have food outside on a warm day, it's going to last much longer, in a refrigerator and then that much longer in a freezer or dry ice. So it's actually a function of the Arrhenius equation, which is exponential that the reaction time of the molecules just slow it down exponentially, the colder you get. So you're buying yourself time. So we know that, you know in emergency medicine, when you go into cardiac arrest, you need someone to do CPR as soon as possible. And the longer you wait, the worse your chances are going to be of bringing a person back.
And this is with conventional medicine. With cryonics, we eventually get the person into liquid dry ice, or I mean not dry ice, liquid nitrogen, and seconds of time actually become thousands of years. So the thought is, is that modern medicine, we're not at the zenith of our knowledge today, certainly. But modern medicine in the future, we'll be able to do things we can't — we couldn't have even dreamed of doing in the present. And I feel looking around, there's a lot of things we can do today that we couldn't do 40, 50 years ago. Heart transplants, even, you know routine cardiac defibrillation and CPR wasn't available 50, 60 years ago. So we're already in only raising the dead by using CPR and defibrillation. But anyways, I kind of got a little sidetracked there.
In an ideal situation we'd put a person in an ice bath. We ship them to the cryonics Institute in Michigan, Clinton Township, Michigan. They're at our facility, we do a blood washout. Blood likes to move so if it stays still, it'll clot. So we use anticoagulants and some other medications, we circulate them with CPR. And then we hook the patient up to the equivalent of a heart lung bypass. And we wash out the blood and we wash it in a cryoprotected solution that was developed by a cryo-biologist. And it's very similar to some of the solutions that go into when hearts and livers — when people do heart transplant or a liver transplant. But it goes a bit further — a bit beyond that. So the tissues are vitrified.
So you might think, if you put a body or human tissues in a freezer, that there might be ice crystallization. And with the vitrification process, we minimize that ice crystallization. We can't get rid of all of it currently, but we minimize it and we get rid of most of it so that future technology has less to repair. Then we put them into liquid nitrogen tanks. They're very much like a giant thermos bottle. There is no electrical — so you know people often joke about someone unplugging the tank, but no, it's just like a thermos bottle that's filled up with liquid nitrogen. Boil off rates take currently four or five months for all that liquid nitrogen to boil off, but we don't wait that long. We top them off every week. We check them every day. We've been doing that for 40 plus years without incident. And that's pretty much how the process works. It's a wait and see what the future will bring. If people will figure out how to reverse engineer biology so that we can revive and wake people up and revive and wake people up at a young youthful age.
Marvin Yan 10:42
Okay, wow, that was like a knowledge bomb on us, Dennis. I guess cuz one thing we were interested in was, I guess mentioned a bit earlier was we don't know a lot of people who are involved in cryonics. But what are the type of people that are interested in cryonics? Like, what kind of people are the ones that are signing up for this sort of procedure?
Dennis Kowalski 11:03
Well, definitely people who read a lot about science and are optimistic about the future. We tend to have a lot of people who enjoy science fiction, because science fiction kind of touches on — it kind of links the possible and the impossible kind of that reaching out fear about what might be, and that's the only way we find out what is possible by kind of reaching into that realm.
So you're going to find people who definitely are positive and optimistic. They tend to be — I'm just looking at our demographics of our membership. College educated, slightly wealthier. But you know, that's not to say that we don't have people who are less educated or have less money. It kind of spans across the board. I mean, we even have, we have people that are atheist, agnostic, and fundamentalists in all major religions. And that makes sense, really, when you think about it, because you could get a heart transplant or not get a heart transplant based on your religious or ideological beliefs.
Marvin Yan 12:19
Right.
Dennis Kowalski 12:19
You know, so it kind of follows along those lines. And in fact a lot of our detractors, and criticism is coming from people — It sounds almost like the same things. they said, when they were picking on people for heart transplants. They were saying that's weird, that's Frankenstein, or you're going against God or nature or something. But today, we take it for granted that those are great medical technologies. And bottom line, grandma, or grandpa is still here, you know, or mom or dad or brother or sister...
That's all we're trying to do. I mean, it may not work. But we can't honestly say for sure, until we're in the future. So, you know, I guess you could — I guess the big thing is, will everyone be able to be brought back and that depends on how quickly we get to the person after cardiac arrest, which is just the same as conventional emergency medicine.
Marvin Yan 13:31
So ideally, then, like, I'm trying to think, if someone has let's say as you said is technically or no legally dead, as you said earlier, like, what's the ideal amount of time to get to that to start all these CPR and to start putting them in ice bath and all that?
Dennis Kowalski 13:45
Immediately after the heart stops beating immediately. And in a couple situations, a couple of circumstances, we've been able to do that. But people don't really have the ability to plan their death. And so not every single cryonics case has gone, you know, that well. It spans all across. It's just like emergency medicine, there's times we get on scene alright. Formerly, I worked in emergency medicine as a paramedic in a major city. So there's times we could bring people back because we got there quickly and there's other times, you know, it was a futile effort. I mean, we tried the best we could, but we couldn't bring them back because too much time had elapsed.
Sufal Deb 14:34
Yeah.
Dennis Kowalski 14:35
One thing that I did learn though, is you just never know. There's people that you think, oh, it's been too long, and then they're back. And then there's other people you think, you know, we do — we got there quickly, everything went absolutely right and they — it just was their time. We can't bring them back. So you just never know. But you know, you just give it the college try. You try your best and you fight the good fight. And that's what we're trying to do fight the good fight. You know, we care about life, and we care about people.
Sufal Deb 15:06
Yeah, for sure. So, you mentioned earlier that, you know, it tends to be the wealthier side for a demographic people choosing to be cryopreserved. So talking about costs, specifically, like where, where's the money going towards, like, cost for chambers maintenance, like, and even transport of the body towards your facilities?
Dennis Kowalski 15:24
Yeah, yeah. So that's a fantastic question. A lot of people assume that we're providing some kind of false hope and just cashing in on the money, you know. But the thing is, we are a nonprofit and not only are we a nonprofit, all of our books are open for public scrutiny. So you can see where every penny is spent, a lot of nonprofits don't do that. A lot of our workers are volunteers or work at much lower than normal, standard wage. So the money in cryonics goes to the kind of the equivalent of an endowment fund. It gets invested in index funds and after that, the interest is what pays for the perpetual upkeep. So like we charge 28,000. 28,000 was what we charged in 1974 and that's what we charge today. But most of the money, you know, a small amount goes to the procedure, most of the money actually goes in that endowment. And the interest is what pays for the taxes, the utilities, the salaries, and the liquid nitrogen, and so forth. That's what pays. As long as the economy doesn't collapse — the world economy, the way we're investing. As long as the world economy doesn't collapse completely for good, then we should be around and have the money to pay for the constant perpetual update. And most people use life insurance. So if you think about it, it's really not that much. Yeah, even for people of poor means — people who don't have a lot of money, it is affordable. Certainly for people who are, uber wealthy. I mean, it's nothing for them.
Sufal Deb 17:24
Yeah—
Dennis Kowalski 17:25
It's really, it's really one of those, to me, a Pascal's Wager. I mean, you got everything to lose, and I mean, everything to gain and nothing that lose.
Sufal Deb 17:36
Yeah, no, fair enough.
Marvin Yan 17:37
Okay. I know maybe not everyone knows about this but earlier, you mentioned the terms like technically dead and legally dead. I guess, what do you mean specifically by like terms, like technically dead like, I guess?
Dennis Kowalski 17:52
Well—
Marvin Yan 17:52
Sorry, Dennis go ahead.
Dennis Kowalski 17:55
Well, in cryonics, we often use a term called information theoretic death. So what that means is when you can't get any information out of the substance — so what do we all have in every cell? We've got DNA. So DNA is enough to in theory today, even with today's prude technology, clone you right, and replace and repair every single part of your body. But is that really you or just like a clone or a twin? That's not you, just looks like you. The other part of the information is your mind. So there it gets kind of tricky, because well what is the mind you know, it's the information that's encoded on that tangled web of nerves and synapses that we haven't quite figured out yet. Your connectome is what a lot of people refer to it as. Your connectome, which they're learning more and more about, as you know, we try to reverse engineer the human brain. But we feel confident that in there, in that biological computer is your mind. And that information is there. We do believe that, that information is redundant. And, you know, a lot of your memories are — they're backed up in multiple ways. And it's pretty hearty, but we do believe it's not impossible to lose that information, eventually.
So to use an analogy, if you take a computer and you throw it off the Empire State Building, it shatters in a million pieces, it's not a very functional computer, is it. But harddrive, you know, that may be broken in pieces. In theory, you could get that information off that hard drive. Or if you took the Mona Lisa and ran it through a shredder you could, in theory, piece it back together at the molecular level.
Sufal Deb 19:59
Yes.
Dennis Kowalski 20:00
You wouldn't wouldn't know that the Mona Lisa had gone through a shredder. But if you take that same computer and you melt it down, or run it through an acid bath or something like that and dissolve it, I think that there is no way you can get that information off that hard drive. So we believe that when a person is buried eventually and when they are cremated, or whatever — they decompose, information is lost forever. We believe that eventually, if a body is in warm temperature is long enough, more and more information is lost until there's no information there. But there's plenty of DNA. So I mean, it's likely still be able to bring the person back with a drop of blood. But is that the same person? And that's not what — we're not shooting for a cloning mechanism. We're shooting for restoration of your actual mind, and who you are as much of it as possible.
Marvin Yan 21:04
So the sooner you—
Dennis Kowalski 21:06
Unlike a stroke victim, like you think of someone like a stroke victim who might lose a little bit, they're not going to gain back certain things. But with technology powerful enough to bring you back, we should be able to regenerate tissues, and you should be able to maybe not gain all the information back. But you should, in theory, be able to gain every bit of function back. So you know, certainly a better prognosis than their typical stroke victim.
Sufal Deb 21:37
Absolutely.
Marvin Yan 21:38
So just to confirm, when someone is cryopreserved, the sooner you get back to them, the more I guess, information is preserved. And that's sort of the I guess what, that's what the goal—
Dennis Kowalski 21:50
That's a gold standard.
Marvin Yan 21:51
Right.
Dennis Kowalski 21:51
That's the gold standard, yes.
Marvin Yan 21:53
Okay. All right, just to confirm. Alright, so Sufal why don't you — what were you gonna ask?
Sufal Deb 21:57
I was gonna talk about like, what — we just talked about DNA and blood, and that could easily go into genetics. So are there certain conditions or issues that somebody might encounter that could prevent them from undergoing cryopreservation or no longer being a candidate?
Dennis Kowalski 22:13
Oh, well, you know, if you were lost at sea, or if you were maybe in a terrible fire, or there's a lot of things that could destroy your brain? Or, what if you had like a very advanced brain cancer? Or brain disease where your body did not biologically die? Like, by the time it did, your brain was pretty much not there? Then what are you saving just DNA then. So I can think of a whole host of things that can go wrong. But that's just like emergency medicine again, you know, I can think of a million things that will go wrong, you get caught in traffic, on the way to emergency run, that that person is down that much longer from whatever put them in cardiac arrest.
Sufal Deb 23:02
So just touching on that topic still, does cryopreservation typically surround the idea of preserving the brain or do, do most people tend to focus around the brain and the body?
Dennis Kowalski 23:13
Well, our organization — I mean, there's other organizations that will do head only or brain only preservation under the assumption that you can grow the body back. But our organization only does whole body. And, I mean, we kind of operate under the premise of do no harm. So we don't see any reason to remove someone's body, you know, that kind of Hippocratic Oath of do no harm. The only gain would be maybe a little bit of storage. You know, we don't operate like that ourselves. But certainly the most important thing is your brain. I mean, even in a conventional sense, if you lost your arm, that's not a good thing but it's not the same as losing your brain. You know, what would you rather — when it came right down to it, what would be worse?
Sufal Deb 24:10
Yeah, absolutely. So if somebody were to go under, like undergoes severe Alzheimer's or dementia, something that affects their memory and brain, would they still want to be cryopreserved? Or is the hope that after they're cryopreserved, someday in the future, that type of damage would be able to be reversed?
Dennis Kowalski 24:27
Well, that is entirely up to I mean, we don't know. That's, again, you know, a lot of this hits on to what we don't know. And so we leave that up to the person who contracts with us we leave clauses in there where they can say, well, if this happens, or that happens, go forward and try at all cost. Preserved me. Or, if this happens, or that happens, I don't want to be preserved. And take the money that I had earmarked for my life insurance, and send it back to my family or donate it to another scientific cause. Or donate it to us because you still believe in the process, but don't bother saving my tissues for a clone. So we follow the contract and the wishes of the of the person who contracts with us.
Marvin Yan 25:27
So for people —I guess this is thinking very futuristically. But you said right, as of I guess, right now, there's no method to bring someone back. But you know, maybe a few hundred years later, there could be some way. Are there, are there any hypothetical ways that that could happen?
Dennis Kowalski 25:40
Well, I mean, there's the engines of creation, talked about molecular nanotechnology, which is kind of a micro miniature robotics that would be reverse engineered and designed based off your biological system, right, the repair systems that exist at the molecular level within your body. So copying nature, because nature had billions of years to perfect what it does through evolution. Copying nature, we'd reverse engineer and maybe have some kind of robots, microscopic robots injected into your system, and they'd cross check your DNA and say, oh, yeah, things are supposed to look like this, but they don't look like this. So let's rearrange these molecules this way, or that way, until things look the way they're supposed to. And I know that sounds pretty science fiction, like, but it's really how biology repairs our tissues now.
Look at stem cells. Stem cells are, you know, your body's taking — I mean, we can take today, some old differentiated cells out of your — skin cells out of your arm and, then we reverse time and undifferentiate them back to the stem cell state, and use them maybe to repair dead heart tissue, or some other aged tissue in your body. Either repair and or replace it. And so you get into some kind of hairy philosophical questions of, you know, how much can I replace? And is it still me?
Marvin Yan 26:40
Oh, yeah, identity, right?
Dennis Kowalski 27:21
Identity, but then you can say, you know, is it really, the components that make up me, or the information that make up me? So, I mean, we're constantly eating food and right, shedding skin, and, you know, bringing in molecules, molecules and molecules out. What really are you, but the information that's encoded on that, on that substrate that is your body. So I think we're more of the information, I mean, or really kind of combination of both, we're both. But I mean we can lose, we can lose a lot of biological matter, and replace it as long as we hang on to the identity.
Sufal Deb 28:11
So, we actually jumped over this topic. So I'm sure euthanasia is a big topic with cryonics because, you know, the whole facets of legally being dead medically being dead along the lines of that. So since it's already a hotly debated topic, what are the benefits of cryothanasia and has it been done before?
Dennis Kowalski 28:28
Well, you know, it's still not fully accepted in most of the world. Euthanasia that is.
Sufal Deb 28:36
Yeah.
Dennis Kowalski 28:37
But one thing that does seem to be accepted in most of the world is the ability to refuse medical treatment when you're in a terminal condition.
Sufal Deb 28:48
Yeah.
Dennis Kowalski 28:48
So you know, we're not talking about someone who was depressed and doesn't want to live, but we're talking about someone who may have end stage cancer, and they don't want to go through the very end where it's very painful, and they feel maybe they're a burden on themselves and society and their families. And, and, and they're just living in pain. So you could you know, for a goal, maybe if you're on a ventilator, you could be removed from the ventilator or for goal, sort of a medical treatment, or even cancer, chemotherapy, for instance, and then speed things up. We have had people who have exercised their legal right to not pursue medical treatment, and sped things up and made for better cryopreservation. And that's their choice and that's fully legal. But when it comes to actually assisting someone or, you know, allowing them to commit suicide, that's something that — I mean we'd have to look at that by a case by case situation. Was it done in an area where it's legal and ethical and moral. We certainly don't want to ever be involved in anything that encourages people, you know, commit suicide because they're depresed or not in a terminal condition, or certainly anything that's illegal in any way. We don't want to be involved with that. We would turn someone down if they did something illegal or unethical or immoral. Because we have to preserve the whole organization and movement and all the patients that we have already.
Marvin Yan 30:40
Okay. Wow. Thanks for sharing all that, Dennis. And I mean, I guess, being involved cryonics to the extent you are like you're providing this service for people. I guess it's kind of a personal question. But you know, towards the end of, you know, your life, would you also want to go, undergo cryopreservation yourself?
Dennis Kowalski 30:57
Absolutely. I'm signed up, my family signed up. And as a condition of being on the board of directors in cryonics, the leadership, who, by the way, the whole leadership is democratically elected by our members. So its members elected by members who ran for the board, and then were elected. And then they pick the officers. We all have contracts signed up for cryonics. So we all have a vested interest. We did that by design. We didn't want someone who didn't have a vested interest in current cryonics running cryonics. And so yeah, I, I believe in it. Do I believe absolutely, positively, this is going to work? No, I mean, I think we're very pragmatic, very rational people. And do we absolutely believe that when you call 911, they're going to save you?
Marvin Yan 31:54
Well, you have to be an optimist. Right?
Dennis Kowalski 31:56
But if you don't call 911 your chances...
Marvin Yan 31:58
Yeah.
Dennis Kowalski 32:00
Right. Right. So you know, I am, I wish more people would sign up, because I mean, people join up for all kinds of — to me, irrational stuff. You know, cults and cargo cults type of stuff. Yeah. And this is like, pretty rational. I mean, pretty Pascal's Wager type stuff. But maybe because we don't oversell and we're brutally honest, that, hey, this might not work. You know, but this is the only chance in town, and as far as I'm concerned, even if it doesn't work, it's still a good thing, because it's proving what can or can't be done in science. That's the only way we find out what can or can't be done. That's the only way we advance as a species.
Sufal Deb 32:51
Yeah, absolutely. Speaking of cryopreservation and requirements for say, is there a location requirement? Say I live in Europe, am I able to still be a part of the cryonics Institute as a member?
Dennis Kowalski 33:02
Well, yes. In fact, a lot of our members are all over the world. You know, the farther away you are from civilization, I guess, the harder it becomes. But there is kind of, we call them like, kind of like outposts or standby communities all over the world. So like, for instance, there's an organization called Cryonics UK in England, where they don't have a long term, cryogenic facility or cryonic facility, but they have people that will prepare you. And they've got the whole structure set up to prep people and get them ready for shipping through international funeral director to get to our organization and others. So these people have kind of taken the initiative. And a lot of people contract through funeral, funeral services, their doctors, other organizations that will do standby and it's really interesting, what people have done to get to us. So we kind of like to think of ourselves as the ambulance ride to the future. That may or may not exist. It is to some degree, you know, where people have to get an ambulance ride to the ambulance, right?
Sufal Deb 34:29
Yeah.
Dennis Kowalski 34:30
They've got to, they've got to prepare. And because they're — but that's just like anything else. I mean, you can, you can learn CPR, and, you know, if your loved one goes down, they're gonna have a lot better chance than if you just call 911 and watch them gasp for air. If you do CPR while 911 is coming, maybe ambulance is caught in traffic, or what have you. So you know, you can do a lot to prepare always when it comes to you know, your health and your longevity.
Marvin Yan 35:03
Okay, Dennis I know, we're keeping you from your family brunch. And I don't want to keep you any further. But we have just one more question, which is, I guess from everything you've said today, is there one thing you really want people to take away?
Dennis Kowalski 35:14
Well, I'd like to say that if you know if you're interested in any way, in cryonics, there's a ton of information out there, we've got a wonderful website with a magazine that is digital open to anyone. It's cryonics.org. And we welcome anyone to do research and if it's for you, you know, welcome aboard. And even if it's not the deal, you might be very interested in finding out what cryonics is and isn't. There's a lot of myths and misconceptions out there. So I do encourage people to look into it.
Sufal Deb 35:50
Absolutely. Great. So I think we're at the end of our interview here so once again, we wanted to thank you Dennis for coming on. We enjoyed having you as a guest and we've definitely learned a lot and hopefully our audience will as well. Other than that—
Dennis Kowalski 36:04
Okay, well now when are you what are you guys signing up?
Marvin Yan 36:08
Let me check my how much I'm making this summer. Alright.
Dennis Kowalski 36:12
Hey it's just life insurance, which is really cheap when you're young. When you get old that's when — then they won't even insure you.
Marvin Yan 36:19
Okay, well, Dennis, if I sign up, you'll be the first to know.
Sufal Deb 36:22
Yeah you'll be the first to know. You'll get a wordy email about our signing up.
Dennis Kowalski 36:25
It's not like I get a paid — I don't get a commission.
Marvin Yan 36:30
I'll hold you to that. Alright. Alright. Thank you so much Dennis.
Dennis Kowalski 36:35
Take care, gentlemen. Bye bye.
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