Wellness Grifters and the Real Science Behind Longevity with Dr. Eric Topol

Dr. Eric Topol, the founder and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, joins Kara to discuss reality versus the hype in the booming longevity business ahead of her new CNN series "Kara Swisher Wants to Live Forever." Dr. Topol has written several books, including his latest, "Super Agers: An Evidence-Based Approach to Longevity," which explores the science behind anti-aging and longevity. He explains why the biggest breakthroughs in aging science focus not on extending lifespan, but on extending health span and preventing the chronic diseases that affect most Americans over 65. And Topol takes aim at the “longevity lifespan circus” of pricey supplements and peptides sold by wellness grifters. Kara and Dr. Topol also talk about how inequality, poverty and the lack of universal healthcare in the US impact health span, and what can be done about it. Questions? Comments? Email us at [email protected] or find us on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Threads, and Bluesky @onwithkaraswisher. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Kara Swisher?

  You know, the hyperbaric chamber stuff, I go into one. And I was like, what did you think? I was like, are you fucking kidding me? Unless you have the bends or a wound, I wouldn't recommend it. You know, oh, I get tired. I was like, you don't need more oxygen. Just breathe.

• 0:26Kara Swisher?

  Hi, everyone. From New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network, this is On with Kara Swisher, and I'm Kara Swisher. My guest today is Dr. Eric Topol, a cardiologist, researcher, and the founder and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, one of the largest nonprofit biomedical institutions in the country. He's also the author of several books, including his most recent, called Superagers: An Evidence-Based Approach to Longevity, which explores the actual science behind anti-aging and longevity. Spoiler: It's not found in pricey supplements. Dr. Topol is a physician scientist and an expert leader who oversees millions in research funding. He's uniquely positioned to distinguish the real breakthroughs from the hype and offer

• 1:08Kara Swisher?

  guidance on a topic rife with pseudoscience and fraud. It's also a timely conversation ahead of my new CNN series, Kara Swisher Wants to Live Forever, premiering this Saturday, April 11. It's going to go on for six weeks. It is full of science and evidence and proof and reporting, and I urge you to watch it. But mostly, I want you to listen to Dr. Topol, because he is articulating exactly what I was trying to do, which is, in this world of wellness grifters, in people that are offering instant solutions to very significant health problems, there needs to be people who break through all this noise and show you the signal, which is, there are amazing breakthroughs. So let's get into my conversation.

• 1:48Kara Swisher?

  Our expert question today comes from Amy LaRocca, journalist and author of How to Be Well: Navigating Our Self-Care Epidemic: One Dubious Cure at a Time. She's also in the documentary series. It's an important conversation. We're going to be having it for a while, listeners, so stick around.

• 2:18Kara Swisher?

  Support for this show comes from The Guardian and their new show, Stateside, where journalists Kai Wright and Carter Sherman use the entire independent reporting resources of The Guardian to slow down the news and wrestle with the questions we all have about what is actually happening in the world. Join Kai and Carter three times a week as they utilize all the reporting resources The Guardian has across news, international coverage, climate, culture, wellness, and more. And The Guardian's not owned by a billionaire, they fearlessly report the facts without interference. Go to theguardian.com/stateside to learn more and listen wherever you get your podcasts or watch on YouTube. That's theguardian.com/stateside.

• 3:02Speaker 01

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• 4:20Kara Swisher?

  Dr. Topol, thank you so much for coming on ON.

• 4:23Speaker 03

  Great to be with you, Kara.

• 4:24Kara Swisher?

  So, in your latest book, Superagers, you write that we're at a unique moment in medicine where we've seen a "historic convergence of breakthroughs," particularly around anti-aging. After a year of reporting on this is exactly the conclusion I came to, except a lot of it is being masked by a lot of nonsense at the same time, which probably happened the last time we had this happen. But briefly walk us through the most significant breakthroughs and explain how they converge, because this moment in anti-aging science is different than where we were 10 to 15 years ago.

• 4:56Speaker 03

  Exactly. It is really a turning point. The science of aging is where we made these big strides. So, there's a lot of noise out there, as you well know, but the signal is that we can quantify aging and understand the biology much better. So, for example, we now have these organ clocks, so that within our body, we can tell if our brain is aging differently than our immune system, and our heart, and arteries, and whatnot. So, we didn't have anything like that before, and so we also understand that inflammation, so-called "inflammaging," and immunosenescence, the immune system, are big drivers of age-related

• 5:38Speaker 03

  diseases. So, while so many are working on reversing aging, Kara, the real opportunity here is actually accept that we're going to age, but let's squash the age-related diseases, since so much understanding has been enhanced.

• 5:54Kara Swisher?

  You know, you talked about immunosenescence.

• 5:57Speaker 03

  Right.

• 5:57Kara Swisher?

  Talk about each of the parts you just talked about.

• 5:59Speaker 03

  Right.

• 6:00Kara Swisher?

  It's essentially knowing how to fix age-related things on parts, correct? Or is that kind of too idiotic way of saying it?

• 6:07Speaker 03

  Right, right. We used to think that everything was genetically driven, about health span and lifespan, but-

• 6:14Kara Swisher?

  And it is in part for people to understand.

• 6:16Speaker 03

  It is in part, but less than, particularly health span, less than had been previously accepted.

• 6:23Kara Swisher?

  So, in the book, you introduce the concept, which I think is an important one, of health span. versus lifespan. The goal is to max out our total number of healthy years of life as opposed to solely focusing on longevity.

• 6:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, so when we looked at, for example, fourteen hundred people who were almost ninety and never been sick on no medications. And we looked at their whole genome sequence, you know, we didn't find very much to account for that. But the immune system seems to be the real explanation for many of these people reaching such advanced age that their immune system has very high integrity. It hasn't lost its protection against cancer. And it also isn't hyperactive, for example, in the artery wall for atherosclerosis or in the brain to promote a reaction to these misfolded proteins. So the three big diseases of aging, neurodegenerative cancers

• 7:19Speaker 03

  and cardiovascular, the common thread is that we need an intact immune system. Because if we don't, then we start to see this process of inflammation get unleashed. And when that happens, you know, then these diseases go into an accelerated phase. So even though they take twenty years or more to incubate in our bodies, our immune system keeps us healthy. And there's many things, of course, that we can do to promote that. And we got to do even more things in the future. But that's been the biggest breakthrough to understand that the brain, which is the master command central for the immune system. And the brain and the immune system together are largely accounting for this remarkable health span that we've seen in people.

• 8:03Kara Swisher?

  Now, when you talk about significant breakthroughs, there's a couple. I, one of them, of course, someone, everyone always asks me and I'm like, well, friends and family are actually much more important than you think scientifically and personally. I said, but one of the things is don't be poor and don't be under stress, right? And I don't mean stresses like your husband was mad at you or something, you know, or whatever. You got in a fight with your kids or whatever. It was something else. It was sort of this idea of don't be in situations that stress the immune system in that regard, whether it's by food or by sleep. And I was interviewing one of these billionaires and he goes, well, if people just slept. More, you know, and I was like, well, some people can't because they're poor. Like, you know what I mean? Which is interesting. So maybe stack rank them a little bit for me.

• 8:45Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, I think what's going to be the biggest, what we start to see now is that AI is going to make. I think its singular biggest contribution over the years is that it can have remarkable accuracy in prediction 20 years ahead, which leads to prevention of cancers, which now at best we can detect where there already cancer. But we're talking now about prevention, the same for Alzheimer's. I mean, we're starting an Alzheimer's trial later this month to prevent the disease. We never even thought about that before. And also for cardiovascular. So the fact that we have these markers of aging, that we can track the immune system and inflammation.

• 9:29Speaker 03

  And we have AI to pull all the layers of data for each person. This enables prevention. So that's the future. Everybody's talked about AI in healthcare, but I think that ultimately, of course, not yet. But ultimately, it'll turn out to be its singular most important contribution. But otherwise, you know, for example, the biggest breakthrough in neuroscience in decades has been a marker for Alzheimer's disease, P tau 217, which tells us even two decades ahead that someone is really at high risk and it's can be modified by exercise and lifestyle improvements.

• 10:08Speaker 03

  And hopefully medications. The GLP-1 drugs have outperformed any expectations. And they have become realistically the most potent way to knock down inflammation in the brain and throughout the body that we know, the safest and most potent. So it has diverse potential to even help us ultimately to prevent these diseases.

• 10:36Kara Swisher?

  Which require more and more study about it, how as it moves into the population, which it is at a rapid pace.

• 10:42Speaker 03

  Absolutely. You know, we've seen it have these weight loss independent effects. In heart disease, liver, kidney, and even arthritis, osteoarthritis, psoriatic arthritis. But whether it's going to pan out as a prevention for Alzheimer's disease and prevention of these other age-related diseases to be the first extending health span drug, that is obviously has to be proven. That's going to take some years ahead.

• 11:08Kara Swisher?

  So giving the advances in anti-aging medicine, talk about this idea of a health span, because I think what people don't realize is most people spend most of their money in sick care, like not healthcare, at the last many years of their lives. So talk about someone who's healthy at 70. What does that mean? What is the realistic health span in 2026? In certain countries, I've visited Korea because the women there are showing remarkable health spans, which is for lots of different reasons, but they're studying it now. But talk a little bit about what that means, a realistic health span.

• 11:41Speaker 03

  Yeah, so the average American has already one of these age-related chronic diseases by 64. So that's the end of their health span. Whereas the average American has a life expectancy, lifespan of 79. So there's a 15-year gap among Americans on average. Of course, many Americans by 64 have multiple chronic diseases. But that 15-year gap is the difference between health span and lifespan. And that's why when I saw Kara Swisher Wants to Live Forever, I said, well, you got to add when I'm completely healthy, if I'm completely healthy.

• 12:21Kara Swisher?

  I hope you get the joke. How ridiculous.

• 12:23Speaker 03

  No, no, I do. But you know, lifespan, you know, we can keep someone alive on life support forever. But what kind of life is that? So what we really want is to extend health span. And, you know, I think we're on the brink of that. And that's what's exciting is that preventing age-related diseases will get us that extension of health span. We want to close that gap, that when people are 80, that they live most of their life healthily.

• 12:49Kara Swisher?

  Standing up, right. I mean, as Zeke Emanuel, who I interviewed in the show, talked about that. He goes, if you had to spend the last 15 years of your life in a wheelchair, That's not life, essentially.

• 12:59Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 12:59Kara Swisher?

  Something else. So you say there's a lot of hype around anti-aging, which you say is misplaced and not aligned with evidence in people. I couldn't agree more. You criticize the longevity lifespan circus, the Carnival Parker scientists who make, and I'm quoting you, "make false claims and hawk supplements." Talk about what this is and who are some of the ringleaders of this longevity lifespan circus? I have worse words for them, but circus works. Grifters is the word I use.

• 13:24Speaker 03

  Right, grifters. This is deep. There are so many influencers who have such big impact, and they're selling, they're selling supplements, expensive supplements like AG1 and claiming, you know, these anti-aging properties that have never been proven. They're also now pushing peptides really heavily, none of which have any data. And they have all sorts of other antics, but of course, they're always admixed with some truth. So it's hard for the public to separate that out. And we have longevity clinics, even at, you know, prestigious institutions that are promoting this idea that we can keep your, you pay us enough money and we can keep you with extending

• 14:06Speaker 03

  your lifespan. You know, so it's all over the place. We even have our HHS secretary as part of this because he's promoting peptides. We have people like, you know, Peter Attia, one of the biggest influencers, promoting rapamycin, which has no proof in people, cold plunges, protein, out of control amount of protein.

• 14:27Kara Swisher?

  Out of control. You wrote a great column about that.

• 14:30Speaker 03

  You know, Andrew Huberman is another key force of supplements, but I always tell people, if you really want to have somebody you can rely on, the first step is that they're not selling something. If they're already hawking something, or you know, whether it's protein bars or supplements or something anti-aging, because we don't have anything anti-aging, okay, outside of the healthy lifestyle, which you don't have to market that. But if they are selling something, that's automatic credibility, question mark.

• 14:58Kara Swisher?

  Right. And especially, just drill down just very briefly on peptides. That's the latest one. The last test was 14 people. Like, there isn't tests on this stuff. And also, The danger of using mixed compounded things that you just the sepsis issues are alone are problematic, but talk a little bit about this.

• 15:15Speaker 03

  You've touched on a couple of these things. So first of all, right now, most of these are from China. There are some compounding labs in the US that are also questionable, but if you actually analyze what people are getting as one of these peptides, 20% of them have all sorts of impurities or are not even the peptide that they're purported to be. As you mentioned, they might not be sterile and you're getting these into your bloodstream. So people think I'm just putting it under the skin. No, it's getting into your bloodstream through the capillary network. So it's a very dangerous thing to self inject when there's no proof of safety or of any efficacy that is helping. So it's a misplaced trust

• 15:57Speaker 03

  and it's also a tremendous amount of confirmation bias, Kara, because these are very expensive. So when you take these injections and some of them are taking stacks of peptides, why would it not work? You've paid so much money. You must feel better from that, right? So it's just so sad to see these promoted and now we even have the idea that the FDA is going to take away the ban. The ban was appropriate on these unregulated peptides. We're not talking about GLP-1 peptides. We're talking about all the others.

• 16:27Kara Swisher?

  Right. No, no, no. I think that the complaint they make is that, oh, it's the FDA trying to keep this from us secretly, which is also part of a plot. Now, when you talk about this, what do you think the biggest problem with these sort of circuses are? Is it that they can reach people more quickly? Is it the new social media environment? I mean, this has gone on since Ponce de Leon. Like, let's be clear. Kellogg's was started as sort of a scheme of cereal. So it's not a new and it's not an American phenomenon either, by the way.

• 16:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, that's because concurrent to all this, you know, noise and grifters and whatnot, there has been a big push in the biotech world. To try to reverse aging. And there are very intriguing science approaches. Like, for example, the so-called cellular reprogramming, or the senolytics, stem cells. And so there are some real science initiatives that are exciting.

• 17:21Kara Swisher?

  Yeah.

• 17:22Speaker 03

  They look good in rodents and mice and rats. We have no data in people, and there's some dangers about going forward in people. But the point is, so that has helped to take this into center stage. So you have some real science, then you have the pseudoscience marketing stuff. And then you have this other area that I'm most enthusiastic about, which, let's just not try to reverse aging so much, because it may not ever work. There's a lot we can do right now, just to-

• 17:49Kara Swisher?

  Have a better life that is longer. So what, talk about the upper limits of health span, and what age, which biology wins, and the human body starts to break down, no matter how good medicine gets. I mean, Scott Galloway, we always joke biology is undefeated so far on this planet. So you studied in 2008, theelderly, or people who are at least 80, who have never been sick or had a chronic illness. As you noted, more than 90% of Americans over 65 have at least one chronic disease. So talk a little about the upper limit of this, which you're trying to do here.

• 18:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, I think the upper limit is, we can certainly get most people, we should be pushing towards everyone being a superager, as defined by 85 plus, without cancer, without cardiovascular disease, and without any neurodegenerative disease. That's what we should aspire to achieve. We may not get way beyond that on average. There will be people like Lee Rusolo, the patient of mine in the book, who just is about to celebrate her 100th birthday, totally intact. But even if we get to most people at 85 with intact health span, you can see that through now. You can see that that's a possible-

• 19:03Kara Swisher?

  The cost savings are enormous, too.

• 19:05Speaker 03

  Oh, gosh. You don't have people with Alzheimer's, and the treatment for cancer, just as you said, Cara, the economic burden is just ginormous. And so, no less, the health burden. So that's what we should be pushing on. It's, you can see that this is achievable in the years ahead. It all starts with the prevention. So today, everything is treat, treat, treat. We have to go into prevent, prevent, prevent, and we never really had the way to do that before. That's what's really new here.

• 19:38Kara Swisher?

  Talk about the key findings when we think about aging genetics. I know there was a study published earlier this year in the journal, "Science Suggests That Longevity Appears To Be About 50% Heritable." If genes can reveal more about aging, how does that shift the focus on longevity research and ultimately impact what research is funded? If the FDA is dicking around on peptides, which they are,

• 20:02Kara Swisher?

  what is most important to be focused in on when you're thinking about this welderly population?

• 20:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, so the genetics of health span is very different than the genetics of lifespan. Because if you're, again, if you have those 15 years, that gap, and you're incapacitated one way or another, that's your genetics, maybe it has 50%. But the health span, as we've studied in others, has a lesser genomic role because a lot of that depends on your lifestyle. And so that is really one of the essential things, which we don't do enough. And hopefully, when we have individualized forecasting, we'll do much better because before we could say, "Well, you're at risk for something," but we could never say when. So you could risk for Alzheimer's when you're 66 or when you're 99. There's a big difference.

• 20:53Speaker 03

  Now we can say when. That's a huge difference. And when we tell a person when who's receptive, they may actually start really getting on a lifestyle kick. Of course, which is not just diet, exercise, and sleep. There's many other factors, as you well know. So that's the beginning of a prevention story, is when you can forecast accurately.

• 21:14Kara Swisher?

  It's like savings for college.

• 21:31Kara Swisher?

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• 22:14Kara Swisher?

  climate, culture, sports, lifestyle, fashion, and wellness. Plus, The Guardian wants to emphasize they're not billionaire-owned, meaning they're free to report the whole picture without interference. Go to theguardian.com/stateside to learn more and listen wherever you get your podcasts, or watch on YouTube starting May 13.

• 22:34Speaker 01

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• 23:05Kara Swisher?

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• 24:12Kara Swisher?

  We've known for a long time, as you said, factors like diet, exercise, sleep play a big role in long and healthy life. And actually, I say that, people are like, "Yeah, yeah." It's not the most important. It's a combination of all of them. I mean, to an extent, don't eat fried foods and don't not sleep. Like, welcome to Donald Trump. But you've expanded the concept to what you call Lifestyle Plus to include other factors. You write about the often overlooked heavy influence of big food in our health, ultra-processed foods, something, the only thing I think both of us agree with Robert Kennedy Jr. on, but that's kind of a duh kind of thing. Let's start with that. Talk about the big food and ultra-processed foods first.

• 24:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, so this is a big part because bad food intake or beverages can promote inflammation and also knock down our immune system. So we have to pay a lot more attention to that. And America is the highest consumption of ultra-processed foods. And acknowledging that, not all ultra-processed foods are bad, but within that group, there are some that are really noxious, that really rev up inflammation in our bodies. So we want to minimize those. And there's things that we could do to change that American diet, to make it healthy, and it doesn't align with what changes have been made recently.

• 25:25Kara Swisher?

  Right. So it is up to the individuals to avoid ultra-processed food? Or should there be legislation and regulation to curb the abundance of ultra-processed food in our diets?

• 25:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, so big food is, of course, in command here, and it seems to be beholden to the Department of Agriculture. And our government has really not done enough to take it on, of course. Has tremendous lobbying power, but what we want to get out there is that we know the diets that are anti-inflammatory, that are Mediterranean, plant-based, of low red meat content, you know, trying to eradicate the harmful group within ultra-processed food. So getting that out without the distortion that we're seeing, you know, currently is important. So, you know,

• 26:12Speaker 03

  animal protein overall is not our best source of protein and also don't want to overdose on protein because if you take too much of that in, particularly animal-derived, you're going to promote inflammation too. So the balance of food is really important and we're way off as a country.

• 26:29Kara Swisher?

  Yeah. The reason I went to Korea is because I went to a school where they were feeding the kids astonishing lunch. There was rice, of course, but there was also fermented foods, miso, healthy proteins, tofu, miso. You couldn't believe what these kids were eating and they learned from an early. Now, they do eat junk food too, but it's a really interesting basis and every school had a nutritionist. It was really quite something to watch.

• 26:54Speaker 03

  Yeah. Why aren't we doing this? That's exactly what should be done. Yes.

• 26:58Kara Swisher?

  Right, exactly. But moving on from food, in the book you reference a quote, outspoken 47-year-old centimillionaire taking over 110 supplement pills a day. I think I know who you're talking about. New research suggests the roughly $209 billion global market for dietary supplements is projected to double by 2033. Talk about why so many people are convinced that vitamins and supplements are effective ways to increase their health span. Now, let me just say, some are good for you, but often like, for example, someone was eating a fish oil supplement and they're like, Kara, what do you think of this? I'm like, it's fine, but eat a piece of fish would be a better choice.

• 27:34Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 27:35Kara Swisher?

  I guess if you're not eating fish and it's not a bad supplement necessarily, but, you know, and there's a couple that are probably a good idea. Talk a little bit about that because they get mixed in with the ones that aren't.

• 27:47Speaker 03

  Yeah. So this supplement part is really where the gaps are. The vitamins, I mean, if you include something like a multivitamin. Vitamin which has at least some randomized trial data a bit. It doesn't have a big effect in older people, but it has at least a small benefit. But when you get into the supplement side, unless you have a deficiency, if you're a healthy person and you have a good diet as you alluded to, you're better off to get those things from your diet, from your normal intake, than, you know, you'd have to take a lot of omega-3 fish oil supplements to get what you could get in your diet. If you just concentrate on a, on the right diet, that takes out the supplement story, you know, and you save a lot of money.

• 28:32Kara Swisher?

  Are there any supplements you think are worthwhile besides multivitamin, which I think maybe, maybe not is what I've come to the conclusion.

• 28:40Speaker 03

  Well, the one that's gotten so much play in recent times is creatine. And creatine, you know, the only data that really exists that's solid is that if you work out, you do a lot of strength resistance training, it'll reduce muscle soreness afterward. But beyond that, does it help the brain function or other things? We don't know. The data are inconclusive. So that one has lots of attention. People are all on this creatine kicks, high dose creatine. There's just nothing to support it.

• 29:08Kara Swisher?

  Right. No, I do a creatine after I work out. That's the exact, that's the only thing I use it for. And one of people like, oh, you're taking it. And I said, only for that. What's interesting about the supplement is they think it's going to solve 20 other problems, right? I'm like, it's good for that. Or, you know, the hyperbaric chamber stuff. I go into one and I was like, there, what did you think? I was like, are you fucking kidding me? Unless you have the bends or a wound, I wouldn't recommend it. You know, oh, I get tired. I was like, you don't need more oxygen. Just breathe. Like, it was, it was really interesting. And I did it on purpose to say, this is fucking ridiculous, even if it's, you know, the same thing, a lot of them, all of them. I did a cold plunge. I'm like, it's fun, I guess, or a sound, I did a sound thing.

• 29:51Speaker 03

  That's a stress test for heart disease.

• 29:53Kara Swisher?

  That's correct.

• 29:54Speaker 03

  Your blood vessels totally constrict. And if you have atherosclerosis in your arteries, your heart. Yeah. So to advocate things like that with no Data, particularly where there's danger. It's great that you're on this because you will have the anti-influencer impact.

• 30:13Kara Swisher?

  Yes, that's what I am. I'm the opposite. I'm up. But some of them like, if you have workout a lot for your team, sure, sure. Why not?

• 30:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, I don't have a problem with that.

• 30:21Kara Swisher?

  You're not getting enough fish? Sure.

• 30:23Speaker 03

  Right.

• 30:24Kara Swisher?

  That sounds good.

• 30:25Speaker 03

  But the thing that gets me, Kara, is they're just making up doses of it. So, you know, they'll say, oh, take three times the normal creatine and then it'll do all these other. No, because there's, show me the data.

• 30:37Kara Swisher?

  Yeah, more means better. So you include environmental toxins, which I think are is important in the lifestyle plus, which include factors like air pollution and microplastics. You write, "It was one thing to document the pervasive presence of microplastics in our air and water, but another to find it in our arteries, brains, blood clots, liver, gut, lung, placentas, testicles, and other tissues." So talk about the solution for regular people who don't have a lot of time and money because it often feel like we're surrounded by ultra processed foods, plastics, and toxins.

• 31:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, the micro nano plastics worries me because as a cardiologist, to see the remarkable study of these microplastics in the artery inducing, you know, vicious inflammation locally and then a four to five fold higher rate of heart attacks and strokes in the follow up of a couple of years. This was studied, to me, there are others, but that really took the plastics worry to the highest level and we're not doing enough to try to reduce that in our air and our water supply and whatnot. So the, what you're bringing up is central and that are inequalities. That is, the people who have the worst exposure,

• 31:45Speaker 03

  air pollution, microplastics, forever chemicals, the ultra-processed foods, they need help. Of all the folks, they're the ones that have the highest burden of this. So we have to really work on that. And that's not been part of the longevity mainstream. It's all about catering to the affluenza. Which are the people who don't need this the most. It's the people who are in the lowest socioeconomic category that are the ones who are most to benefit.

• 32:17Kara Swisher?

  Yeah, one of the things, I spent a lot of time talking about inequality, actually, which is, you know, I think I interviewed a doctor who's working on, obviously, CRISPR and sickle cell anemia. And she said, you know, if Elon Musk got sickle cell anemia, you'd be sure this would be a very inexpensive process, right? And now $2 million is very expensive and eventually it won't be. But one of the things I kept stressing to them is that really, like, everyone was like, what's the answer? I'm like, don't be poor. And they're like, that's not a good answer. I'm like, I'm sorry, I can't sell you a supplement. But really, the biggest dip in longevity has been among those who are getting killed by obesity, with processed foods, in polluted areas, with enormous amount of stress. Homelessness is a health issue.

• 33:01Speaker 03

  No question about that.

• 33:02Kara Swisher?

  If you think of it that way, then it's economic to me. So every episode, we get an expert to send us a question. Let's hear yours.

• 33:09Speaker 04

  Hi, I'm Amy LaRocca, the author of How to Be Well. My question for Dr. Eric Topol has to do with the information that last week, the American Heart Association issued new dietary guidelines that directly contradict the dietary guidelines that were issued by Robert Kennedy. And given that so many doctors have their own proprietary lines of supplements and protein powders and other nutritional products, where in the world are Americans meant to look for safe, reliable health and nutritional advice to increase and improve their health spans?

• 33:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, that's a great one because firstly, the American Heart, as you might imagine, got it right. They actually had evidence-based guidelines about diet as opposed to what was done through RFK Jr. and HHS. So if you want to follow where there's the facts.

• 34:11Kara Swisher?

  Explain the difference between them, between what RFK said what?

• 34:16Speaker 03

  RFK has, you know, been advocating, well, fat, the wrong oils, you know, raw milk. I mean, stuff that just, you know, Looney Tunes. Now, some of it is right. That is, we want to foster the high consumption of. Fruits and vegetables and plant-based, but to have meat, red meat, which is advocated by HHS is wrong. It's okay to have red meat, but it should be infrequent rather than something that you should have at the top of a food pyramid, right? So some things are just completely unfounded in the current, hopefully, short-term US HHS.

• 35:00Speaker 03

  Whereas the American Heart went through all the data and that guidelines piece is well-done and it sets the record straight. The problem, of course, in general, I mean, you brought up some of the people like Brian Johnson and then there's Gary Brekka and all these people, and a lot of these are very close to RFK and having an effect even on him, is that they have ideas that are not substantiated by any evidence. And this is, of course, really unfortunate, but you can tell that the basis for their ideas are things that they're selling typically. And so that's where you really eliminate the lack of evidence combined with, "Oh, you can buy this supplement or you get this peptide or whatever."

• 35:44Speaker 03

  Then you already know that you stay away because it's just not going to help you to follow a person or, you know, a group that's working in a fact-free world. And we have a lot of really good evidence for these things.

• 36:00Kara Swisher?

  Yeah, the American Heart Association basically said to eat a Mediterranean diet, heavy on legumes, fruits and vegetables, whole foods and light on animal proteins. Not getting it out of your system, it's just lighter on it. Get your protein through fish or, you know, spinach. And your fiber through whole foods, like an avocado, for example. People don't realize how full of fiber an avocado is, for example.

• 36:21Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, yeah. Fiber, maxing, that's good. Fruits, vegetables, legumes, great. And yeah, protein, great from fish. Obviously, many other great sources, yogurt, tofu. So there's so many great foods out there that provide the kind of ideal intake that is anti-inflammatory. And we have randomized trials for the Mediterranean or Mediterranean-like diet. We have huge cohorts followed for 20-plus years that show the people that have the greatest health span Are people that are following a very healthy diet. So this is, there's, pretty much this is incontrovertible.

• 37:05Speaker 03

  But what's happened is that we have some actors who are trying to subvert what the evidence shows.

• 37:12Kara Swisher?

  Right, right, in order to sell things. I mean, I did a long interview with Brian and I said, you are a study of one, which means, I mean, it's meaningless. He's like, I'm just sharing. And I said, it doesn't matter. I was like, it doesn't matter what your experience is. It was somewhat sad, though, because of his obsessive measurements.

• 37:29Speaker 03

  It's sad, but you know what's really bad about this, Cara? So, for example, he and Atiya and so many others were, they were on the rapamycin leaderboard. How much rapamycin they take. They all had different doses, you know? It's kind of like when the error is in a newspaper, you do, you never see the error. Well, these people stopped taking the rapamycin because they were getting a lot of infections. No surprise, because it's a very potent blocker of our immune system. And so here you go, this is, oh, this is going to extend your health span, your lifespan. No data in people. And you have these influencers who got everybody onto this rapamycin kick, all the bro folks, you know?

• 38:11Speaker 03

  Then this is a typical thing where then they stop taking it because they have all these side effects, but that all these people are already hooked.

• 38:18Kara Swisher?

  Yeah, yeah. The problem is, the answers are very basic and simple and inexpensive. And so it's not a quick fix. And I think there is an element of quick fixiness that people desperately need. And it's the same thing with diet, right? It's pretty basic in terms of how you change your lifestyle.

• 38:36Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, there's another dimension to this, and I'm sure you're on it, which is getting unnecessary tests. This is also heavily promoted, whether it's a total body MRI or hundreds and hundreds of blood tests and on and on. And this is another part of that, no evidence, but I do it and I, you come to my clinic and I'll, I'll do all these things. And so

• 38:59Kara Swisher?

  I went to one.

• 39:00Speaker 03

  Oh, oh, gosh.

• 39:01Kara Swisher?

  I was like, what do you need this to know for? Why is this information helpful to me? Now, it sometimes works. My brother Was doctor went to, speaking of cardiology, hadn't had a calcium test. Turned out he had one when he went into Medicare and he had huge blockage, the widow maker blockage essentially. And it was great. That was a great test to get. And he removed it, then he was fine. Then he just had the surgery, which was really quite not as less invasive than it's ever been. Really astonishing.

• 39:32Speaker 03

  With the stem, right, right.

• 39:33Kara Swisher?

  So I think people are hoping for those ideas, that you find something drastic.

• 39:38Speaker 03

  Yeah, the problem is when you get add to the real data, particularly for the total body MRI. And there are ways to assess a coronary artery non-invasively better than just getting a calcium score. But you wind up.

• 39:52Kara Swisher?

  They did a second one.

• 39:53Speaker 03

  Yeah, the balance about this is that more people are hurt right now. We don't have any evidence that there's a net positive and all these rabbit holes of chasing down incidental findings that are spurious. So this is a real problem because that goes hand in hand with the supplements and the peptides. It's all part of that mix.

• 40:13Kara Swisher?

  Explain how people are hurt by these tests.

• 40:16Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 40:16Kara Swisher?

  Besides having way too much fucking information like that you don't need.

• 40:20Speaker 03

  I've had patients with total body MRI who found a pulmonary lung nodule. Then they had a biopsy eventually and then they had a collapsed lung and they had to be in the hospital with a chest tube. I've had patients who had a liver nodule, which actually turned out to be a benign cyst, but in the process of a biopsy, almost bled to death. So when this leads to getting tissue to find out what it is that you never really wanted to know in the first place, you can have pretty severe, potentially even life-threatening consequences, no less big expense and big anxiety.

• 40:58Kara Swisher?

  Yeah, it's like a bad facelift, which I've seen many on some of these guys.

• 41:05Kara Swisher?

  We'll be back in a minute.

• 41:18Speaker 05

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• 42:00Speaker 05

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• 42:29Kara Swisher?

  I'm Kara Swisher, and I like people who say the quiet part out loud. In fact, I love it. That's Tiger Sisters, a new podcast that recently joined the Vox Media Podcast Network. Cherie Brooke Lu and Jean Lu are real sisters who built their careers at LinkedIn and Goldman Sachs. On their weekly podcast, they're giving the next generation practical tips on how to get ahead, how to write emails people actually answer, how to make your LinkedIn profile stand out, and how to keep learning as an adult. It's straight talk about money, career, and relationships every Monday. Follow Tiger Sisters wherever you get your podcasts.

• 43:06Kara Swisher?

  Let's talk about real biotech interventions because as you said astonishing high-tech breakthroughs in the biomedical area and they're transforming our approaches to diagnostics for example. You've talked about how AI could propel the biggest transformation in the history of medicine. Talk about how important AI will be in drug discovery.

• 43:24Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, I wish we'd had AI when GLP-1 drugs were getting their legs, but the problem is we didn't and it took 25 years. When it started out as a diabetes drug to become an obesity drug, had we had AI back then, we would have said, oh hey, test this for obesity. But now we do have AI and we're seeing drugs that are truly discovered by AI. And, you know, we have some that are pretty advanced clinical trials now, for example, to get rid of scarring of tissue, which we never thought would be possible. I mean, in medicine, we thought if it's scarring, that's it's done, you know, and we're seeing

• 44:05Speaker 03

  drugs starting to crop up in late trials. That is, they've already passed, that they're safe and they may wind up having lots of efficacy in areas that were not envisioned previously. So that's led to some people like Demis Hassabis to say, you know, we're going to cure all the diseases. I have a different look on this. My thought is we are going to have a big jump in speed, breadth in drug discovery, but I call them prev meds. They're not going to be treatment medications. They're going to be preventive medications.

• 44:38Kara Swisher?

  Right, which you don't even know you got it in the first place.

• 44:41Speaker 03

  Yeah, so, you know, the GLP-1 story is an exemplar, but what if you had drugs that could really knock down brain inflammation so you never got Parkinson's or Alzheimer's? And, you know, we have many candidates in the pipeline now that we didn't have before. So there's a gold rush with AI for drug discovery and it isn't just even to discover new molecules, it's to be able to go high velocity and get the right...

• 45:07Kara Swisher?

  Right, quickly. I interviewed Reid Jobs about it because he's a terrific guy. And one of the things he's working on is hepatitis. To prevent liver issues, which leads to cancer. But you never get the hepatitis in the first place. You never get the cancer in the second place, which seems very promising to me. But explain, say, one of the things you talk about, the GLP-1s should have been studied much earlier. And they have potential, life-changing potential beyond weight loss, which is a good thing, too, in some ways. Talk about a counterargument to any of this, because once patients with GLP-1s stop taking Wegovy or Ozempic, and now there's pills coming out, which will be more on a maintenance schedule without the shot required or the refrigeration.

• 45:50Kara Swisher?

  It is a lifetime commitment, very similar to a statin, for example. Talk about the idea of how you keep people on these kind of things that can be life-changing and helpful for other diseases, so they understand it better.

• 46:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, so I don't like forever drugs. And as you mentioned, statins, blood pressure medicines are examples of that. And we don't need to add another forever drug if we can avoid that. Right now, we don't have a good mechanism to wean people completely. But I actually think that will be possible in the future, that we don't have to have them on, you know, high doses of GLP-1. So we have these now two pills that are like the injectables, but not quite as potent.

• 46:33Kara Swisher?

  Right, they're from Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk.

• 46:37Speaker 03

  Right, and they're both peptides that are packed into a pill with, it's very hard to get, eke out much out of that. But there are pills, low cost, small molecules, can be manufactured at a scale, with the actual cost is pennies. So we're going to get the cost way down, and that will make it a global for, you know, all people, not just for those who can afford it. And then the next thing is, can we get to a strategy, whether it's a lower dose, small molecule pill, or some other way, that we can get people so that maybe they're taking it, but, you know, much lower quantities, or not at all? We know, for example, the muscle mass that you lose when you lose weight.

• 47:21Speaker 03

  There are a lot of these companies are vested in these muscle-building adjuvant. Junks, but actually, you know, if you do strength training while you're taking these drugs.

• 47:29Kara Swisher?

  Right, combination. I end up interviewing a woman who lost several hundred pounds, started off as an obesity drug. But then they gave her a whole program of nutrition, teaching how to cook correctly, combine it with exercise. And so it creates the three things together are what's critical, I think.

• 47:45Speaker 03

  Absolutely. So, you know, I think we're going to learn about this in the future because the idea that it expanded now to many other indications that people would take it. We have to figure out a longer term strategy. The companies, the duopoly, if you will, they don't really have a great motivation to wean people from the drug. But we do, I mean, we, if we can get away with keeping the weight off or having the sustained benefit of the inflammation in the body, that'd be great. I should add, though, there are many other candidates in, in the pipeline that have similar effects on the immune system and inflammation that we might turn to those as a longer term maintenance strategy.

• 48:29Speaker 03

  They're just not as far along in the, in the whole process.

• 48:32Kara Swisher?

  Right, right. You wrote an article in your Ground Truth Substack explaining why all mammograms should incorporate AI. Talk about the use of AI in mammograms and how it could lead to improved accuracy. And how long will it take until AI is incorporated into not just mammograms, but all diagnostics? Now, I know there's been some like, one of the tech people, like, well, no more radiologists. I'm like, no, again, they're always so all or nothing on everything. And I'm like, it's an aid, it's a tool. So talk about incorporating mammograms, for example.

• 49:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, so this is frustrating because we now have three ways, three different AIs that should be part of every mammogram. So every woman should have, for example, the better detection. Because we know from the National Cancer Institute that 20% of breast cancers are missed by mammograms today. And AI picks those up and then some. So it increases the yield by about almost 30%.

• 49:28Speaker 03

  Then the next one is that we have a if a normal mammogram in a woman, well, what about the risk in the next three to five years? And we have an FDA cleared AI to do that. Then we also have one that picks up heart disease risk from the breast artery calcification very accurately to say that, oh, you have, this woman has a very high risk for heart disease, which would often be not even in the awareness of that woman. So we have three AI tools and almost no women in the United States are having the advantage of these. And the only one that they are getting exposed to in this rad net network, they have to

• 50:10Speaker 03

  pay out of pocket forty dollars to get the AI initial interpretation, which isn't the other two AIs. So it's frustrating because we have, we've iced this. The data are clear, the FDA approvals are out there, but we're not incorporating in the medical practice. And this is where a lot of people, there's a backlash to AI out there in the public, but they don't realize there's a lot of good things that AI can bring to us, but we're not bringing that in, you know?

• 50:35Kara Swisher?

  Right, exactly. No, exactly. The thing, but that's because they promised them as an all solver, you know, the same thing with supplements, like some supplements are fine. Anyway, let's end by talking about some of the structural and institutional barriers preventing the universal expansion of health span. Many of the ways we alter the pace of aging carry a serious risk of cancer. Explain the connection to cancer and how you weigh the positives and negatives when you think about that.

• 51:00Speaker 03

  Well, I mean, I think we know that the risk of cancer, there's a lot of preventable aspects to it. And we reviewed now lifestyle factors. We also know that the immune system is a big driver. When it starts to lose its protection as we get older, that's when, I mean, the ability for cancer to develop and spread in our bodies is, makes us so much more vulnerable. So we have to counter that. And what the way we're going to do that in the future, which we never had before. What's amazing about this, Kara, is here it is 2026. And we have no test to say your immune system is healthy or it's it's down. It's, you know, you're vulnerable.

• 51:45Speaker 03

  And that's something that we're on the window of having, not only through an immune clock, a piece of aging of your immune system, which will someday be routinely available. But now we also have this thymus that is the gland that everybody thought was involuted and became fatty and worthless over after our teenage years. Well, it turns out when you do AI of the thymus, you find out that even people in their seventies and older have some, some of them have intact thymus. And guess what? They also have intact health span. So the point here is that we're right on the brink of being able to say, particularly when people are 50 and older, your immune system's starting to show signs of vulnerability.

• 52:26Speaker 03

  So we're going to give you a vaccine to amp it up, or we're going to do this or that to amp it up, because we have so many ways to rev up the immune system that we've learned for cancer treatment, so many ways. And that's something that's in the high velocity of new dimensions of how we can rev up an immune system in people who have cancer to treat them. But now we have these two ways and probably more subsequently. If we start to get on top of the immune system before a person has cancer and get their, like, for example, the shingles vaccine has had incredible impact to reduce Alzheimer's, unexpected.

• 53:06Kara Swisher?

  I had mine. There's two of them, folks.

• 53:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, because it revs up your immune system, not because it works against a virus. Well, the same thing for cancer. And these could be generic vaccines that are not against a virus, but rather vaccine that's just trying to get your immune system amped up. So that's where I think we're going to see some big advances. And it's just because the system that lets cancer take hold in our body and allow it to spread, we didn't have a way to measure it. And that's one of the aspects of the excitement in the science of aging, is understanding and respecting. And also, you know, this whole idea that maybe we could keep the thymus healthy in everyone throughout our lives.

• 53:49Kara Swisher?

  Which would provide enormous benefit, absolutely. And you, you, you stuck on vaccines, which we didn't get into, but I interviewed the guy just who won the Nobel for the mRNA vaccines stuff. And the whole, I, I talked to everyone in that, in that lab at University of Pennsylvania.

• 54:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, Drew Weisman, yeah.

• 54:06Kara Swisher?

  Yes, exactly. He was amazing. He's like, he's such, he's sort of like a, like a very even-handed guy. He's like, "Well, it's really important. We could have a vaccine for cancer, for HIV. There's all these amazing things." And then all of a sudden, he goes, "But RFK is a murderer." I was like, "Oh," you know, in his most normal tone. But everyone in that lab was thinking of moving elsewhere. Because our country was way ahead, has been way ahead, but moving to France, moving to Canada, moving to places that they are not getting these ridiculous research cuts. Because they are on the cusp of doing that, which is really kind of like shooting yourself in the foot, but...

• 54:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, no, the idea, it was a dream that we could have vaccines that would help us prevent cancer. We're gonna get there, now that we have a way to find out who are the...

• 54:49Kara Swisher?

  Maybe France is gonna get there, or Canada, or China.

• 54:52Speaker 03

  We is collective, right?

• 54:53Kara Swisher?

  Right. No, what he was saying, "We're gonna rely on China for this. That's what's gonna end up happening," which is problematic on every issue, right?

• 55:00Speaker 03

  Absolutely.

• 55:01Kara Swisher?

  So, health inequality, as you said, is a huge problem in the US and globally. You note the lack of universal healthcare in the US is holding us back. Korea has universal healthcare. They're so healthy in that regard. Lot of preventative stuff. Research shows that rich people not only live longer, they get more healthy years after age 50 than poor people. This should not come as a surprise to anyone. But the lack of universal healthcare in this country, to me, is another thing I point to. I'm like, "You know, how you wanna screen longevity? Universal healthcare, basics." And then rich people can pay for more of the bells and fucking whistles if they feel like it. But what would a fair healthcare system look like in America?

• 55:35Speaker 03

  Well, it would be where insurance companies are not ruling the roost and only concerned about the one-year outcomes of big employers or the actual direct consumers that cover. So, we not only have lack of universal healthcare, but we have such a perverse incentive that we don't have a country where we're trying to promote and prevent diseases, promote health span. Whereas other countries, like the UK and just about every other, you know, high-income country around the world, their incentive is reduce the health burden of chronic diseases, age-related especially, and reduce...

• 56:14Speaker 03

  Reduce the economic burden. So they go hand in hand. Whereas here, we have a mal incentive to do that. That even transcends the lack of a universal health system because we have no way that preventing these diseases, besides the fact that people could benefit, the the financials don't click, you know, and so we're at a disadvantage. And we could see the prevention story unfold at other high income countries because they get it. The investment for prevention and detection and forecasting is so easy to see the benefits, whereas here.

• 56:51Kara Swisher?

  For people who don't know, our country pays double healthcare, thirteen thousand dollars a person versus six in most developed countries.

• 56:57Speaker 03

  Oh, right, right, exactly.

• 56:58Kara Swisher?

  Crazy amounts of money.

• 56:59Speaker 03

  No, what we get for that.

• 57:00Kara Swisher?

  And we're sicker.

• 57:02Speaker 03

  Totally. And we're going to keep that up unless we start to get a new mindset of preventing diseases, which starts with prediction and finding high risk people. But if we don't break through these barriers that are holding us back with our our system of of the financial coverage, that is not the lasting is for prolonging health span, which is a multi-year story. Then we're not going to make the advances that are others will certainly be able to achieve.

• 57:32Kara Swisher?

  What do you imagine has to happen? How do you get there? Because there's been multiple attempts to do it. You know, Hillary Clinton was, you know, digging the ditch on that one many years ago, but.

• 57:41Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, I think unfortunately, the lobbying power of these forces that are holding us back is so strong that we haven't been able to override that. It probably is only going to become achievable when we see, whether it's some systems within the US, let's say it's a Kaiser or Veterans Health, or more likely other countries markedly reduce their healthcare costs from prevention. That will maybe be the stimulus ultimately in the years ahead that we better get on this. But right now, there's no attention being paid to this potential here. But, you know, having been an advisor to the NHS and other countries, I know it's

• 58:23Speaker 03

  happening elsewhere because they have the the the great interest in keeping their whole population as healthy as long as possible.

• 58:31Kara Swisher?

  So I want to ask you a last question. You emphasize both the power of evidence-based medicine and the risks of hype and pseudoscience. And at the same time, we're seeing a growing skepticism toward modern medicine in the US and distrust of experts and institutions. Now, that may be waning down, and it's one of these things we go through. But how do you think we can distinguish between genuinely transformative advances like AI-driven medicine and GLP-1 drugs and the kinds of unproven interventions that gain traction in the wellness space? Talk about the distrust of science and what that might do. How do we regain that?

• 59:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, of course, you know, we had it before COVID. We started to, you know, have this fabricated data that led to vaccine questions and autism, which was completely bogus. Then it was amplified through COVID. And unfortunately, the science community didn't stand up. It led this orchestrated, financed, backed minority to to make serious holes. And there were missteps of public health agencies and the government. So it just all added during the pandemic to take the questioning of the medical establishment at the highest level, you know, really a disregard, a diss, that these people don't know what the hell they're talking about. What do you mean, experts? I do my own research. So we got to this height, and hopefully, we're starting to-

• 59:50Kara Swisher?

  And the medical establishment has plenty to blame in terms of being high-handed, not being open to open to a number of things.

• 59:57Speaker 03

  Listening to the the concerns, that is, you know, having respect for the doubting folks out there and trying to provide the evidence that their concerns are not real or they should be not, they should be balanced by, for example, benefits and risks. But anyway, so we're still, you know, not that long from the COVID pandemic days where it's at height. And a lot of these people have been now empowered at the highest levels of our government agencies. So that helps perpetuate it. So in the meantime, the medical establishment has still not gotten its voice. You know, the likelihood of somebody in in science and medicine to be trying to ante

• 1:00:41Speaker 03

  up, be on social media and getting good information out there, it's a tiny minority. It's so crowded out by the others. So we haven't put a dent in this. And in order for us to change this, to turn the tide, we got to see a lot more people in the medical community who are credible, who are not selling something, who are going to stand up and get the facts out so the people know. And we also need compelling data. So we're not going to get AI into the mainstream until the data is incontrovertible, powerful, replicated independently. But when it is, we can't keep having poking holes and questioning it because it's really going to become the standard of care. That's just one example. So, you

• 1:01:25Speaker 03

  know, we have unfortunately so many conflicts out there with people who are, you know, all these tests and supplements and peptides and whatnot, and they're getting the audience. They say, we have the secrets that the doctors won't tell you, you know. And don't wait for this stuff to get approved by the medical establishment because it it works, you know. The rapamycin is kind of the prototype story of that. And I think hopefully people are going to learn that that's not the answer. The answer is, you know, have the evidence, restore the trust in the medical community, get more of doctors and people in life science to be activists.

• 1:02:07Kara Swisher?

  Talk about it.

• 1:02:08Speaker 03

  Talk about it.

• 1:02:09Kara Swisher?

  Absolutely.

• 1:02:10Speaker 03

  Write about it.

• 1:02:11Kara Swisher?

  Well, guess what? I have two billboards in Times Square and I'm going to show off people like you. That's what I'm doing.

• 1:02:14Speaker 03

  Oh, wow.

• 1:02:15Kara Swisher?

  I'm sick of this shit.

• 1:02:16Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, me too. I'm so glad you're on it. I mean,

• 1:02:19Kara Swisher?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:20Speaker 03

  I can't wait to watch your your series because I think what you've done is-

• 1:02:23Kara Swisher?

  I talk to actual experts. Yeah.

• 1:02:25Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 1:02:26Kara Swisher?

  I'm sick of it. I'm sick of it. I was like, guess what? I'm going to play your game and I'm going to kick your ass, just like I always did before. I was right about the tech moguls, now I'm going to be right about this.

• 1:02:36Speaker 03

  Well, you know, the bro-science.

• 1:02:39Kara Swisher?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:40Speaker 03

  Is, whether it's Joe Rogan, Elon Musk, Huberman, all these people, you know, this is a big part of this, you know, they're an underpinning of all of it.

• 1:02:51Kara Swisher?

  100%. I would agree with you. And I took ketamine just for you. I would not recommend it. I would not recommend it, but I did it and I did it in a medical setting and I say, "Do not do it. It will not help you unless you have some..." But there's some promise, even there, there's promising stuff. It's just the abuse of it, right?

• 1:03:10Speaker 03

  That's right. No, ketamine can help some people, but they have ketamine clinics all over the place. We have in California. I mean, this is crazy stuff. Yeah.

• 1:03:18Kara Swisher?

  It's crazy stuff. Anyway, Dr. Topol, I really appreciate it. We're going to be doing a lot more and I'm going to be doing a lot more because I think it's a huge opportunity to make people healthy, save money, have economic impact and have everybody live longer instead of just 14 men from Silicon Valley. So I really appreciate it.

• 1:03:35Speaker 03

  Oh, thank you.

• 1:03:36Kara Swisher?

  Thank you.

• 1:03:37Speaker 03

  Really enjoyed the talk with you.

• 1:03:39Kara Swisher?

  I enjoyed it too. Thank you.

• 1:03:48Kara Swisher?

  Hi, everyone. Want career advice from Kara Swisher? Now's your chance. Send a video to [email protected] and you might be featured. I can't wait to see what you've got. Ask any question. I'll try to answer it.

• 1:04:03Kara Swisher?

  Today's show was produced by Christian Castor-Russell, Michelle Aloy, Catherine Millsop, Megan Burney, and Kalen Lynch. Nishat Kurwa is Vox Media's executive producer of podcasts. Special thanks to Madeline LaPlante-Duby and Eamon Whalen. Our engineers are Fernando Aruda and Rick Kwan, and our theme music is by Trackademics. If you're already following the show, you're on the path to a health span expansion. If not, enjoy the longevity lifespan circus. Actually, they're grifters. Go wherever you listen to podcasts, search for On with Kara Swisher and hit follow. Thanks for listening to On with Kara Swisher from Podium Media, New York Magazine, the Vox Media Podcast Network, and us. We'll be back on Monday with more.