The Truth About Aging: Longevity Expert Debunks Common Misconceptions w/ Jamie Justice | EP#75

In this episode, Peter and Jamie discuss the launch of the $101 million XPRIZE Healthspan. This competition aims to develop and test therapeutics targeting the biology of aging to improve function and extend healthy lifespan. Can we reverse aging by a decade? 04:47 | Age as a Disease: A New Thinking 15:12 | Slowing Down the Aging Process 36:02 | Extending Global Health Span Dr. Jamie Justice is the Executive Vice President of the Health Domain at XPRIZE Foundation, and Adjunct Professor in Internal Medicine Section on Gerontology and Geriatric Medicine, and Sticht Center on Healthy Aging and Alzheimer’s Prevention at Wake Forest University School of Medicine (WFUSM). Get Involved with the Healthspan XPRIZE: https://www.xprize.org/prizes/healthspan Abundance360 is a group of ~400 successful entrepreneurs who are interested in using their resources to uplift humanity. You can learn more about the membership here: https://www.abundance360.com/ ____________ I only endorse products and services I personally use. To see what they are, please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors: ProLon is the first Nutri-technology company to apply breakthrough science to optimize human longevity and optimize longevity and support a healthy life. Get started today with 15% off here: https://prolonlife.com/MOONSHOT Get started with Fountain Life and become the CEO of your health: https://fountainlife.com/peter/ _____________ I send weekly emails with the latest insights and trends on today’s and tomorrow’s exponential technologies. Stay ahead of the curve, and sign up now: Tech Blog Get my new Longevity Practices book for free: https://www.diamandis.com/longevity My new book with Salim Ismail, Exponential Organizations 2.0: The New Playbook for 10x Growth and Impact, is now available on Amazon: https://bit.ly/3P3j54J _____________ Connect With Peter: Twitter Instagram Youtube Moonshots Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:00Speaker 03

  There might be therapeutic opportunities so that we can target not just one disease at a time, but really looking at this as an opportunity to make a global shift.

• 1:10Peter Diamandis?

  Eight, 10 years ago, I started becoming really enamored because I felt like we could do something about it.

• 1:20Peter Diamandis?

  Let's go back to what we as humans evolved 100,000 years ago. The last thing you wanted to do to perpetuate your genes and your species was take food from your grandchildren's mouth so you would die.

• 1:31Speaker 03

  We know that aging is a primary risk factor for almost every disease, but we know that this can be targeted. The next great idea can come from anyone. These are the things that will improve function and keep people engaged, active, healthy, participating. That's the goal.

• 1:48Peter Diamandis?

  Everybody, Peter here. This episode is sponsored by XPRIZE. Imagine a future where aging brings more time with your family and friends, opportunities for continued learning, second or third careers. And actually allows you fulfill your entire bucket list and go for a second one. A future where healthy aging is not a luxury, but a necessity. We designed XPRIZE Healthspan to make that future a reality. XPRIZE Healthspan is the world's largest health prize. In fact, it's the largest prize on the planet. It's a seven-year, $101 million global competition that incentivizes teams to develop and test therapeutics

• 2:28Peter Diamandis?

  that target the biology of aging to improve function and extend your healthy lifespan. Now, here's the details on the prize. This radical collaborative effort is going to bring together top scientists, clinicians, policymakers, industry experts, nonprofits to create a future where aging is something that we're not scared about because we're making 100 years old in your 60. We're adding decades onto our health span. So if you'd like to be involved, please join the conversation by following XPRIZE on YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, on X and Discord, or go to XPRIZE.org and learn more about XPRIZE Healthspan.

• 3:10Peter Diamandis?

  I cannot tell you how pumped I am about this competition. You know, going to space has been something I've wanted to do since a kid. XPRIZE has really opened up the doors and living to 120 in a helpful fashion, that's what this XPRIZE is going to do. Now, back to the episode. Welcome, everybody, to Moonshots. This is a special segment for us. For me in particular, this is the launch of the $101 million XPRIZE Healthspan, the largest competition ever in human history. And for me, the XPRIZE, hopefully for you, this is an XPRIZE that's going to change your life, change the life of your family, your friends, your parents.

• 3:51Peter Diamandis?

  This is about the potential to add 20 healthy years onto your life. Nothing more of value than our health. Our health is our new wealth. And joining me here today to discuss this XPRIZE is Jamie Justice, Dr. Jamie Justice, the head of our Healthspan XPRIZE. Jamie, good morning to you. How are you doing?

• 4:15Speaker 03

  Good morning, Peter. It's really good to see you.

• 4:18Peter Diamandis?

  It's great to see you too. We're just back from Riyadh in Saudi Arabia where we announced this competition to the world and then on a media blitz, doing TV, radio segments around the world, from Washington DC to New York to California, really letting people know about how the future is going to unfold for them in terms of a, not a longer lifespan per se, but a longer health span.

• 4:50Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 4:51Peter Diamandis?

  Do you mind if I just do a proper introduction of you?

• 4:53Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 4:54Peter Diamandis?

  Because people need to know the rock star who's heading this. So Dr. Jamie Justice is our Executive Vice President of the Health Domain at the XPRIZE, the Executive Director of XPRIZE Healthspan, our largest prize ever, Adjunct Professor of Internal Medicine in Gerontology and Geriatric Medicine at Wake Forest University. What I can say is that I searched and interviewed, you know, probably close to 100 individuals. And when we finally chose you, Jamie, I had the best verification. People congratulated me. How did you find her? How did you get her? And so, super excited. I mean, we're going to go into the details

• 5:36Peter Diamandis?

  of what this competition means, how it's going to impact individuals, what 20 years of additional help means, how we're going to judge this. But let's begin with the fact that you gave up a tenure track for this competition, which I can say, you know, one is very, I'd say, low risk, but this is a big, bold, crazy idea. So what got you to join us at the XPRIZE?

• 6:04Speaker 03

  Oh my gosh, Peter, I think it's a great question. And first, I just want to say how honored I am to be at XPRIZE. Is that, you know, as an academic, this wasn't anywhere on my radar. As you mentioned, I was actually marching very well towards tenure, had my promotions materials in, got a new grant, had great things going on. But this opportunity was just incredible. It's like you had gone out And raised funds and pulled together people and ideas that is exactly what I've been trying to do on the academic side, but with such a much greater expanse in vision so that I think we can actually make change. And so, you know, that's, I would say is the beauty of XPRIZE, and I don't think anyone else in the world is doing this in the way

• 6:48Speaker 03

  that it can be done here. And so, yeah, no, I'm delighted. And so, just to give the folks online, you might be a little less familiar with me, but I know Peter, you and I know each other well, but again, I was an academic investigator, was working in a new field within aging that really looks at the biology of aging. Not just as a discipline on, you know, as its own thing, but really looking at that biology and see if there might be therapeutic opportunities so that we can target not just one disease at a time, which we can talk about what that's gotten us, or, but really looking at this as an opportunity to make a global shift mindset and in terms of policy and how we approach, think about,

• 7:31Speaker 03

  and treat human aging. And so, we know that aging is a primary risk factor for almost every disease, but we know that this can be targeted and that we've been doing this in animals, and my work has really been in translating that and looking at the effects, not just on keeping us less dead and more alive, but how do we actually improve our health? What are we doing?

• 7:54Peter Diamandis?

  A lot of people-

• 7:55Speaker 03

  And actually, traditional medicine has not done great there.

• 7:57Peter Diamandis?

  A lot of people think of aging as a disease, right? There's been a big push by Nir Burchellai and David Sinclair and others. And, and a lot of conversation about, okay, how do we slow this disease, stop it, or even reverse it? What, you know, speak to that for a moment about the idea of aging as a disease that, and the FDA and companies should think about it. How do you think about it?

• 8:25Speaker 03

  Yeah, so that's a great question. And this has been actually a really active area within the field. You know, I have actually been asked many times to sit on panels to talk about exactly this. And I know that there are many people within the field that do categorize it as a disease. I've really been more on the risk factor side, but for a few reasons, and they might not be intuitive. You know, one, is this biology, can it be targeted therapeutically? Is it intervenable? Is it malleable? Absolutely. You know, it is the driving risk factor for every chronic disease. Almost every single one that share very few other traditional clinical risk factors. And yet aging is it. And that we know that, you know, really critical work. Right. Is that we can look at these mechanisms.

• 9:10Speaker 03

  And this is the other thing that we've learned over the last 10 to 20 years. It's that there is a distinct biology. And so these are some of the frameworks around where this is where people say, yes, is a disease. Because not only does it have this distinct biology, but it has a couple of critical features. One is that this biology is conserved across multiple species. Now, two, if you do something to these processes to aggravate them, make them worse, turn them up. You can shorten animals lifespan. And this is across many, many species. And then three, if you can do something that you can target, you can block, you can ameliorate. You can actually extend lifespan and also health span.

• 9:51Speaker 03

  You can look and how see how they function, how they thrive within the time that they're alive. And so those are three critical criteria. Now about disease or not disease, I tend to shy away from that. Do I think it can be regulated? Yes. Do I think we can have an indication within the FDA? Absolutely. And actually, the FDA is willing to play ball. What they need is they need investigators and they need enough ground swell from within the field itself. That we bring them something that they can work with. The FDA is not in the business of making determinations like this. But they will absolutely, whether you call it a disease or not. They also often you can get, you can get approved indications for risk factors for disease. They do this with statins.

• 10:34Speaker 03

  We do this with many other prevention preventables. And so regardless of what we call it or how we get there. It absolutely is a target for therapeutics. It absolutely is viable. And I think it's critically important that we pull together, build some consensus and bring something to them. So they can create change on our behalf. They just won't hand it to us.

• 10:57Peter Diamandis?

  Yeah, well, that's what this X Prize is about. For those of you who haven't been following X Prize, I'll take a second to give a little bit of background and then I want to jump into this competition because one of my goals here is that if you're a team out there that wants to play in this competition, if you're looking for your moonshot and solving aging or extending health span is your moonshot, then you're going to want to play in this X Prize and go for part of that $101 million, if not for the whole thing. So, what is it? So, X Prize in particular, we're 29 years old, hard to believe it's 29 years old. It feels like yesterday, I know. Oh, Peter, that's your age. How did you? You were five when it started? Exactly.

• 11:41Peter Diamandis?

  So, I read the Spirit of St. Louis book that Lindbergh won the Pulitzer Prize for in 1994. It was given to me as a present and it got me inspired to create a prize for spaceflight. And I didn't know who was going to put up the money, who was going to be the Pulitzer, the Nobel, right? The name of the prize, so I used the word, the letter X as a variable to be replaced. And anyway, it took a while. The Ansari family finally put up the $10 million for this first flight for, for, for spaceflight, this first prize for spaceflight, and we named that one the Ansari X Prize. On the heels of that success, with Bert Rutan building Spaceship One and then selling the

• 12:23Peter Diamandis?

  rights to Richard Branson to create Virgin Galactic, I was able to recruit Elon Musk and Larry Page and Jim Cameron into our board and many others, and we built it into a platform. And since then, we raised over $300 million in X Prize competitions. That's driven about $3 to $4 billion in expenditures by all the teams trying to win that $300 million. They're all optimists going after this. And super pumped that over the next, you know, 90 to 120 days, we're going to be launching a quarter of a billion, actually, we just launched a $101 million prize, and we're going to be launching another $120 million worth of prizes very shortly.

• 13:07Peter Diamandis?

  So, stay tuned for those. But this one, the Healthspan Prize, man oh man, it's been a journey of about 15 years since the very first conversation here. Uh, five years in earnest and uh, I feel like I just gave birth with you.

• 13:28Peter Diamandis?

  I don't want to call you a surrogate mom or the mom here, but I don't want to, I don't want to make this, but.

• 13:34Speaker 03

  We're co-parenting, Peter.

• 13:36Peter Diamandis?

  Co-parenting, yes, we're co-parenting this prize. So, uh, let's dive in.

• 13:41Speaker 03

  Actually, Peter, before we go on to that, what I'd love to know, so you know, I love aging. This has been my scientific field, but you're a huge name in aging too. Not, you know, because you've been, your passion, your drive, your area. I mean, you have really coalesced quite a group of people to help tackle this with you. So do you mind if I, I know this is your podcast, but how did you get into this?

• 14:05Peter Diamandis?

  I love it, Jamie. Thank you.

• 14:07Peter Diamandis?

  You know, I got into it, I mean, I came from a medical family. I went to medical school years ago and I tell people, don't ever come to me for anything off your two for one special on your, on your appendix. But um, I became enamored in space first, which gave rise to the original Ansari X Prize. And then it's taken so damn long to open up the space frontier. I said, I've got to add a hundred years to my lifespan. And it was about eight, 10 years ago, I started becoming really enamored because I felt like we could do something about it. I felt like finally the tools existed, the earliest days of AI, but in particular gene, you know, gene therapies and CRISPR.

• 14:50Peter Diamandis?

  There was, uh, you know, I tell the story of seeing a long live, a television show and long live sea life. That I learned that bowhead whales could live 200 years and Greenland sharks could live 500 years. And I asked the question, if they can live that long, why can't we? And my answer was it's either a software or hardware problem and we're going to be able to solve that. And so I think for me, the biggest business opportunity in the world is longevity. And the biggest gift to humanity would be longevity. When I say longevity, I really mean health, longevity of health versus life. And we should get into what that, what the difference between lifespan and health span is. But I've become just, you know, I've got a new book, uh, longevity, a practical playbook, which just came out.

• 15:34Peter Diamandis?

  I'm uh, focused in on fountain life as a company and a sister company, Life Force. And, but this prize has been, um.

• 15:46Peter Diamandis?

  Has been something I've been relentless about, just the same way as the very first prize in spaceflight. It's like, I know there's a there, there. I know that if we get the right minds thinking about this, and like you said, it's typically you back one single approach, but here's a chance to back hundreds or thousands of approaches to solving this challenge. So, thank you for that question. And was there a causative moment in your life that got you excited about this, that steered you towards, you know, gerontology?

• 16:19Speaker 03

  It's so funny, Peter, I've gotten to know you so well, and I didn't realize that your intro to this was actually shockingly similar to mine. And so, I was in graduate school and had started doing work around, you know, looking at function and had just started doing work in aging and looking at some of the common causes for functional decline and disability with aging, really digging into some of the mechanisms and potential treatments. And I went to one of the most interesting, it was actually, it was a point counterpoint discussion about sort of the causes of aging, where we had on one side, an investigator named Tom Johnson, who talked a lot about sort of, you know, different aging genes and some of the early discoveries that had been done around making some sort

• 17:04Speaker 03

  of, you know, with these, I think they started in worms and looking at particular mutations.

• 17:09Peter Diamandis?

  Our long, long cousins.

• 17:11Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly, our distant, distant, distant cousins. And that he went through this sort of this really deep, deep approach. And it was coupled by somebody else within the aging field, someone named Leonard Hayflick, who he went up and started talking about these long-lived species. And, you know, and he also had this sort of non, they call it program, non-program, but he, I don't want to get in the weeds, but it was the first time my attention was just grabbed, and it hasn't stopped. I mean, just like, why do we age? How do we age? Is it inevitable? And then you look across just sort of the bestiary, right? And you have, you know, a friend, Steve Ostad, wrote this book called Methuselah Zoo. There's incredibly long-lived, really vibrant species and so many lessons

• 17:56Speaker 03

  to be learned. And then, so, once I got into it, and I started really studying older adults, and I started really working with them, and, you know, that these, it's almost universal.

• 18:08Speaker 03

  And that it can be really terrifying. And it's almost like the problems, like this functional decline. It's almost unseen. We take it for granted. We see it everywhere and we just stop seeing it. And so I think really looking at some of these things, these, you know, these processes, these new opportunities, you know, is there really something that we could do to drive change and really help a group of, not just a group of people? I mean, my goodness, aging is us. It's everywhere. It's success.

• 18:41Peter Diamandis?

  For sure. You know, I, I would say, as I talk to you and George Church and David Sinclair and Eric Verden and many of the rock stars in this field, it's interesting that the idea of talking about impacting aging, slowing it, stopping it, even potentially reversing it, would have been heresy five or 10 years. Now I think it's the hottest topic out there. Would you agree with that?

• 19:05Speaker 03

  I would have to agree, absolutely. You know, and that there is in equal parts, a lot of, you know, championing, championing, if I can get that word out. And, you know, there is, well, it sparks both excitement and I would say still springs a little bit of fear, you know, that there are a lot of people concerned about unintended consequences. And then there's others within the field who just think, you know, poo poo, can't be done, can't be done.

• 19:30Peter Diamandis?

  And also so much of our society is predicated on aging and dying, right?

• 19:35Speaker 03

  You're right.

• 19:36Peter Diamandis?

  It's the, it's the business plan. It's the business plan of most religions, you know, not, not going to get into religious debate here, but you know, it's part of it, a social structure of retirement and social security. And I mean, it's just embedded so much into our lives. And most people don't even realize that, you know, normal human aging, let's put, let's go back to what we as humans evolved 100,000 years ago. Normally you would have been pregnant by age 12 or 13. You're a grandparent by 26 or 27. And before we had McDonald's and Whole Food and, you know, food was abundant, the last thing you wanted to do to perpetuate your genes and your species was take food from your grandchildren's mouth. So you would die.

• 20:20Peter Diamandis?

  So the average human lifespan for most of human history. Was like thirty and and we see that now physiologically from hormone levels from your thymus, from stem cell populations in your body. You know, you're at peak health in your late twenties to thirty and then it's sort of like this slow and steady decline. We want to change that, flatten out that curve.

• 20:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, so you're absolutely right. So a couple of really big things that you said there, really, really important, right, is that really critical. So, you know, so, so one, I'll push back just a little bit, is that I know that there's been a lot made of this sort of like this altruism, right, is that did we evolve towards altruism, that we die out so that our kids and grandkids can live. I don't know that that's really where aging comes from. I think that it's almost like a byproduct, is that we do what we have to do to have children, we procreate. Once that natural selection drive goes, then sort of the force declines. And a lot of what we experience of this deterioration, it's limited by, again, the things that used to kill us, which most of those things, our

• 21:25Speaker 03

  aging process directly relied to, we call that that intrinsic capacity for aging, that intrinsic process is directly related to the extrinsic things that used to kill us. And so whether it's predation, illness, injury, I'm a woman, I would have died in childbirth. Like, let's just, you know, let's just go there. That was just too energetically costly to keep this whole system working if I was going to die anyway. And so we've had in the last one hundred years, just remarkable, remarkable things happen, where our traditional medicine and public health, right, clean water.

• 22:00Peter Diamandis?

  Yep, sanitation.

• 22:01Speaker 03

  Vaccination, you know, lower infant mortality, lower maternal.

• 22:05Peter Diamandis?

  Pasteurization of milk.

• 22:07Speaker 03

  Absolutely. Trauma care as well, you know, if you were in an accident, say you were bucked off a horse, you know, two hundred years ago, likelihood of death was pretty high. We now keep people less dead. And so let's just

• 22:22Peter Diamandis?

  Less dead X-prize, I like that.

• 22:25Speaker 03

  We have done that really well and that, you know, and even so, and all the public health measures have kept us a little healthier. And so, you know, we're living, J. L. Shansky calls it this, which he's another guy. If you haven't had him on, oh my goodness, Peter, he's a hero of mine. And so he talks a lot about this, like, we're living the longevity revolution. You know, we don't recognize it because it's our lifespan. We don't see it. But, you know, our great grandparents, great great grandparents, lived to 48, early 1900s, median lifespan was 48 years old. In the US, it's now 78. And we just failed to see this huge accomplishment.

• 23:03Peter Diamandis?

  And I want to make it 108 or more.

• 23:05Speaker 03

  Well, in those years.

• 23:06Peter Diamandis?

  Everybody, I want to take a short break from our episode to talk about a company that's very important to me, and could actually save your life, or the life of someone that you love. Company is called Fountain Life. And it's a company I started years ago with Tony Robbins, and a group of very talented physicians. You know, most of us don't actually know what's going on inside our body. We're all optimists. Until that day, when you have a pain in your side, you go to the physician in the emergency room, and they say, listen, I'm sorry to tell you this, but you have this stage three or four going on. And, you know, it didn't start that morning. It probably was a problem that's been going on for some time. But because we never look, we don't find out. So what we built at Fountain Life

• 23:51Peter Diamandis?

  was the world's most advanced diagnostic centers. We have four across the US today, and we're building 20 around the world. These centers give you a full body MRI, a brain, a brain vasculature, an AI-enabled coronary CT looking for soft plaque, DEXA scan, a GRAIL blood cancer test, a full executive blood workup. It's the most advanced workup you'll ever receive. 150 gigabytes of data that then go to our AIs and our physicians to find any disease at the very beginning. When it's solvable, you're gonna find out eventually. Might as well find out when you can take action. Fountain Life also has an entire side of therapeutics. We look around the world for the most advanced therapeutics that can add 10, 20

• 24:36Peter Diamandis?

  healthy years to your life, and we provide them to you at our centers. So if this is of interest to you, please go and check it out. Go to fountainlife.com/peter. When Tony and I wrote our New York Times bestseller, Life Force, we had 30,000 people reached out to us for Fountain Life memberships. If you go to fountainlife.com/peter, we'll put you to the top of the list. Really, it's something that is, for me, one of the most important things I offer my entire family, the CEOs of my companies, my friends. It's a chance to really add decades on to our healthy lifespans. Go to fountainlife.com/peter.

• 25:21Peter Diamandis?

  It's one of the most important things I can offer to you as one of my listeners. All right, let's go back to our episode. Yeah, agreed. I know, I want to give our listening audience a little bit of insight about what this X Prize

• 25:35Speaker 03

  Oh yeah, we should go back to the prize. We can talk science, we should have another.

• 25:40Peter Diamandis?

  We will, we will, for sure. This is a, this is a subject that people like. And so if you're a moonshot entrepreneur out there, if you're in biology and health, if you want to go for this largest X Prize ever, here it is. $101 million up for grabs. And Jamie, you know, all they have to do to win the money is?

• 26:00Speaker 03

  Oh my gosh. So if you're out there, my moonshot team, are you ready? Get your pencils. We just launched this, so you better start looking us up online.

• 26:09Peter Diamandis?

  Xprize.org.

• 26:12Speaker 03

  That's right. Go to the site, get registered. We have an intent to compete out. Please sign up for it. Our winning team of the $101 million X Prize health span. You must demonstrate that your therapeutic treatment restores muscle, cognitive, and immune function.

• 26:33Speaker 03

  And that this is a minimum of 10 years, but a goal, Peter's exponential, a goal of 20 years. And you have to show that in persons age 65 to 80. And the therapeutic treatment that you give, it has to take a year or less. So we're going to be measuring that function before, we're going to be measuring it again at one year, and you have until that time to really move the needle. What we're not going to tell you is what to do. And so you can bring us anything, all right? So this can be a drug, that can be a new drug, it can be a repurposed drug, it can be a new combination of either new or repurposed. It could be a biologic, it could be a gene therapy, you could be looking at a cell therapy or a vaccination.

• 27:16Speaker 03

  You might even have a device. Maybe you're working with some kind of fasting mimicking diet or other nutritional approach. And you can do one of those alone or in combination. What we're not telling you is what to do. What we're asking you to do is to play by these rules if you want to be considered for an award. And the awarding is indexed, right? So we're looking at, you have to show an improvement in function and not, not one, but all three. Again, that's muscle, cognitive, and immune function.

• 27:47Peter Diamandis?

  Let's talk about why those three, and then I'll, if you don't mind, I'll peel the onion on the, on the competition rules so you can explain them a little more in, in detail. So I'll, I'll just, I'll mention muscle. We have a, a $10 million bonus prize around a muscular dystrophy called FSHD. And I'm going to use this as a, as a digression and tell a little bit about the history of this prize, if that's okay with you, Jamie.

• 28:16Speaker 03

  Please do. I'm just so happy that you built this.

• 28:19Peter Diamandis?

  Yeah, well, so the very first conversation, conversation I had was after the spaceflight prize some 15 years ago, it was a conversation with, with Aubrey DeGray and Peter Thiel. And it was running a longevity prize, and we couldn't figure out what the prize would look like if we had to wait 30 years for it to be awarded, or 20 years for it to be awarded. So it was difficult. Five years ago, a gentleman by the name of Sergey Young, who is a partner with me in my bold longevity venture fund and super proud of what Sergey's built, he put up a half million dollars to try and kick off this idea of a, of a longevity prize again.

• 29:03Peter Diamandis?

  And that was the money we used to sort of design and develop the prize. And it was a conversation with George Church at Harvard Medical School, who's one of the most prolific and entrepreneurial biotech faculty out there. He's amazing. And he said, rather than longevity, what you really have to look at is functional reversal. Because I don't care what your aging clock says. If you feel better, if your systems are working better, you can measure that in the now. And there are probably FDA-approved endpoints. And so he said, a true aging therapeutic, if it works in one system, it's likely to work in others.

• 29:47Peter Diamandis?

  So let's look at three. And I met a guy named Chip Wilson. Many may know Chip's company. It's called Lululemon. He founded it. Amazing entrepreneur and philanthropist. And Chip has this muscular dystrophy, FSHD. And he became the first major sponsor of this prize. He put up a quarter of the prize money and a $10 million bonus if your therapeutic can impact muscle and help his particular disease. So we have $101 million for the health span, X Prize health span, and $10 million for this FSHD bonus prize, this muscular dystrophy bonus prize.

• 30:31Peter Diamandis?

  And so we set muscle as one. And one of the biggest issues around aging is sarcopenia, the loss of muscle. And a lot of people, my dad included, fell in his mid-80s, broke his hip. That put him into the hospital, developed pneumonia, and then passed away. And we see this over and over again. If you Have muscle wasting and you trip while walking and you break a hip or pelvis. It really is a beginning of the end. It's really challenging. So how do you maintain muscle function was one of the biggest things. Where do you want to go next? You want to go to immune or cognition?

• 31:13Speaker 03

  Yeah, I want to, I want to sort of follow that thought. I think that's really great. So actually, that's my intro to aging was exactly around that. So I started looking at the neuromuscular determinants of functional decline. And that was my graduate work and then followed that into more systemic sort of multifunction and really focused on physical dysfunction, frailty, disability. And know that those are, you know, really incredible drivers. And those are some of the things that are so meaningful to people. So we can do a deep dive in some of these others. One thing I want our audience to know, especially the teams out there, which I really hope you compete, I will track you down. So again,

• 31:55Speaker 03

  so when we're talking about muscle, this is function, but it's also, it's not single dimension, right? And so we're talking about, it can be, muscle is kind of broad. So it also means like fitness. So, you know, whether that is going to be like a cardiopulmonary kind of thing, like a VO2 max, or could be like a six minute walk, something like that that requires that you have to move, you have to walk, it requires endurance. We're also looking at strength and power, as well as that muscle mass component. So again, we're looking at multiple measures of this. So you can't just get one measure and call it good. We're making this hard. Okay, guys? So we are putting out, and you should link

• 32:39Speaker 03

  to it on the website, is you'll go in there, there's going to be a competition guideline. That's an initial guideline set, but you can link into it and you can see a menu of suggested tests that we're going to be refining with your input. So please join us in this. So again, muscle physical function is one of those so important.

• 32:56Peter Diamandis?

  Yeah, we'll put the, we'll put the link into the, to the show notes. And again, xprize.org or xprize.org/hellspan. And I think you made an important point. When we launch an XPRIZE, we, we announce it with a set of guidelines versus the final rules. And we have about a six month period where the world gives you feedback. I'm so happy to have you.

• 33:23Speaker 03

  I get to draw the arrows and the praise. Bring them my way, guys. Radically collaborative.

• 33:29Peter Diamandis?

  Yes, it's not me getting the feedback. It's you as the executive director. And you have an amazing endpoints committee. Who are guiding you here. And so then we'll refine it, get the feedback. What did we miss? What did we get right? What did we get wrong? And then we'll announce the final rule set that will guide the agreements we have with the teams. So that's muscle. You know, everybody who's getting older, I think their biggest fear is cognition. It's losing their mind more than anything else.

• 34:03Speaker 03

  Yeah, so I think this is actually the perfect segue. So that, you know, the three systems, what? One of the reasons that I was really excited and really made the move to X Prize and delete this prize is because it was function forward. And that it's captured the essence of aging, meaning that it's not one system. And then I think by making this based on function rather than disease, it really gets to the heart of what health is. Health is more than the absence of disease. And so we're taking this very holistic look where we're looking at physical function, what we're calling muscle. Right? We're also looking at cognitive function because as Peter said, like the things that worry us and actually lead to disability. These are sort of the three horsemen, right?

• 34:48Speaker 03

  Is that inability to physically participate in our life. Inability to mentally participate in our life, whether that's memory. There's also something we call executive functioning. So that's like, can I keep track of multiple things at the same time? Not just what my memory goes, which we think about with Alzheimer's. But there's also many, many other components of this, whether it's a general slowing or just a gap or where I can't, I can't do two things at the same time anymore. And so these are some of those really core functions that are really essential in participating in life. And then the third, I don't think I need to tell anybody in the world right now, after going through an international pandemic, how important our immune function is.

• 35:32Speaker 03

  Is that one of the things we learned through pandemic where our older adults, those over the age of 60 and 65, or people that had something like comorbidities, where you already had some kind of a chronic illness, which is much more frequent in older adults, is that those were the ones that were preferentially targeted by this pandemic. And so, you know, what we've really started learning is that we need to do what's called host-directed therapies to improve our immune systems. Again, if we target that aging biology, we can improve our immune function, become more resilient in the face of many different challenges, including the next pandemic, whatever it is. And so, these are the three most critical pillars,

• 36:16Speaker 03

  and they're not independently tied to any single disease. So what we're talking about is aging, what we're talking about is health, and that we're developing therapies of any kind. And it can't be just one, it has to be all three, so that we're sure we're not just going after a single disease.

• 36:32Peter Diamandis?

  Yeah, beautifully said. Jaima, I also remember, remind us that, you know, your immune system is not just for an infectious disease. Your immune system protects you against cancer as well.

• 36:44Speaker 03

  That's exactly right.

• 36:45Peter Diamandis?

  We're all, we're all developing cancers all the time. It's just normally our immune system finds it early and zaps it. And if your immune system weakens, or if you have immune exhaustion, as they call, it increases the rate of cancer.

• 36:59Speaker 03

  Yep. And the other part, I want to emphasize, one other part with this, that I think is super, super critical, is that these three really go together and they get at something, you know, we haven't talked about the economic impacts yet. And that I think that's really important. And so, when we think about aging, right, is that

• 37:22Speaker 03

  You know, we often, I think there may be a misperception with this prize. It's like, oh, we're going to launch this prize and we only want rich people to live longer and that they're going to have this huge divide. By setting the prize up this way and looking at function, what we're really going after is population level change, right? So, right now in the US, for every 10% increase in the fraction of the population over the age of 60, it actually, the GDP, the gross domestic product, that it actually goes down just under 6%. And so, in the next years, we've actually already had an increase of more than that.

• 38:06Speaker 03

  And so, we're looking at really major changes. And what they think most of that loss of GDP is due to is actually, it's a loss of labor supply. And so, we're looking at things that can possibly impact function. We're talking about, these are the things that could actually keep people active in their communities, whether or not they're working in sort of a for-profit position or staying at a job per se, but they're still participating. They're still able to take care of their kids, their grandkids, they're working, they're doing something. Because it's not just whether that individual stays in the labor pool, working, but it also means that they're less dependent on a caregiver who might have to leave work

• 38:48Speaker 03

  to take care of them, a family member, a child, a niece, a nephew. And so, this is really critically important, is that these are the things that will improve function and keep people engaged, active, healthy, participating. That's the goal.

• 39:03Peter Diamandis?

  Absolutely. You know, the numbers, I guess it was, you know, the publication here, David Sinclair is one of the co-authors and it was, also was supported by Oxford and Harvard here. That- Adding just one year to the global life expectancy on the average is worth $38 trillion to the global economy. And it's like in less, you know, both increased productivity and also decreased spending on on medical health. Yeah. I mean, it's a massive, massive impact. And I think one of the things that is true for this prize and true for all X prizes is it's around equitable impact globally.

• 39:45Peter Diamandis?

  Our our hope is and and the structure of the competition is that these these therapeutics are not going to be, you know, you know, million dollar treatments eventually. As you as you offer these treatments to millions, hundreds of millions and billions of people, the price comes down massively and becomes available. And what we truly want is increasing global health span. You know, there's a there's a lot of people who argue, and I just want to get to the to the heart of this one second, that say, oh, my God, we already have too many people on the planet. You know, we have overpopulation issues.

• 40:28Peter Diamandis?

  Why do you want to have people live longer? There's a lot of people, and we could talk about these individually. But I wanted to talk about the pro and the con for a second, then come back to the rules here. I mean, I'll just mention off the bat, increasing health span is about keeping people in the game longer. People retire either because they're in pain, they're tired, or they're forced by policy to get out. But imagine at 65, if you are vibrant, you have the most contacts ever, you're excited to contribute and excited to, you know, start your next startup or do whatever you want. It is a huge positive impact on society.

• 41:13Peter Diamandis?

  And people who are concerned about about population, let me just give the stats because I know these numbers well. Fifty years ago, the average globally number of children per family was over five children per family. It was like 5.4. The replacement number is 2.1. 2.1 children per family is the average to keep the population level. We've gone from like 5.4 down to 2.3 right now. And most of the world, China, Japan, most of Europe, the United States, is below the replacement level. And so, you know, we're possibly going to have one of the world's, you know, a problem

• 41:54Peter Diamandis?

  on the flip side, not enough labor to sustain our global economy.

• 41:59Speaker 03

  Actually, that's correct. That's one of the biggest concerns. And so, you know, the US certainly were on that trajectory. Other countries are already grappling with it. You know, Japan, many other countries where it's, you know, they have had major demographic changes. And so that's why, you know, globally, both the UN and the World Health Organization, they have named this the decade of healthy aging. And it's exactly for this reason, is that there are many countries right now that don't have the labor needed, the people within that labor supply to support the number of persons who are actually retired and needing care and support. It's already happening. And this isn't just for, you know, really wealthy countries already.

• 42:43Speaker 03

  The countries that are actually going to see the most change in the next, say, 10, 20, 30 years, those are our lower and middle income countries. We need solutions now that are available to support this really major global demographic shift. We've already seen some of it in our country. Other countries are just coming on board. We have changed what human aging looks like. And we need to change it more so that we have support. Available and options available.

• 43:12Peter Diamandis?

  Let me ask you, who can compete for this XPRIZE? Who can register as a team?

• 43:18Speaker 03

  Anyone, anyone, anyone. I want people from everywhere jumping in this. This is a great opportunity. I mean, it could be from our nonprofit foundations, academic investigators, from any country. It could also be commercial for-profit companies. So this could be somebody in the biotech space that might already actively be working on therapeutics that think would actually help and benefit aging. This could be from groups working in other disease categories. I know of some folks that working in cancer oncology that may have some things that could be repurposed or reconceptualized toward aging. There are also some active companies and also academic teams that have been working

• 44:03Speaker 03

  on pieces, as you know, in the US, there's been a huge, huge increase in the amount spent for research on Alzheimer's disease, trying to find a cure, trying to find a treatment. Is that, you know, there may be opportunities there that maybe some of those drugs, some of those compounds, might have effects well beyond cognition. And they just need the incentive to actually try them because we need options for aging more holistically. And this is a chance to do that. So again, we expect anybody. The important part of XPRIZE, one of the things that brought me here, and I think it's so central to XPRIZE's mission, and it's really dear to my heart, is it's decentralized. The next great idea could come from anyone.

• 44:47Peter Diamandis?

  Yes, I love that. I love that. You know, one thing important to point out for those is XPRIZE makes no claim on a team's intellectual property. This is non-dilutive capital that a team gets. Our job is simply to support, promote, help, hopefully hundreds of teams get attention and Hopefully, as part of this, just like we did with the original spaceflight X Prize, and we've done with other X Prizes, also pave the regulatory path. So, work with, in this case, the FDA and regulators around the world to be supportive of the kinds of strategies and approaches that are coming here.

• 45:30Speaker 03

  So, that's a really great thing. And so, these two actually go hand in hand. So, when I just mentioned a little bit ago that, you know, we invite anyone, maybe biotech companies, groups that are out there that are already working in this space, maybe they're developing things around aging. So, I'm going to tell you something crazy, Peter. So, there are some companies that have been working on aging, developing therapeutics around aging. And I talked to one of them recently, and I was like, "Well, what would you think? Would you think about competing in this prize?" I did this a few months ago, before they had an opportunity to start really letting this digest. And one of their founding CEOs said, "No, because there's no commercial incentive for us to actually do anything towards aging, because there's no regulatory pathway.

• 46:15Speaker 03

  There's nothing there. So, we'll just keep developing our drugs and working on them, and this rare disease, that rare disease, this rare disease." Because even though they were at their heart targeting the biology of aging, they saw this as a fool's game. Because there's no one here being the champion to bring everyone together to force our... you know, and it's not really forcing the FDA. They're receptive. They want to help, but they need us to bring it to them. And it's too large of a challenge for any one company or any one academic group to do it on their own. And so, again, this could be from anyone, anywhere, and the goal is to link these groups together, develop common resources, and actually work together, create change. This is a radically collaborative effort.

• 47:00Speaker 03

  We're putting out an initial guideline, we're telling you what we think, and we're asking for input. Everybody gets to be part of this with us. We are democratizing science in the field of aging.

• 47:11Peter Diamandis?

  You know, just to remind people, you read about SpaceX, and Blue Origin, and Relativity Space Now, and Virgin Galactic, and all of these companies, and you say, you think about commercial spaceflight, and commercial human spaceflight is an everyday activity, and you can go and buy a ticket right now. When the XPRIZE originally got thought up in 94 and announced in May of 1996, that was not the case by any means. The regulations didn't exist. People were not investing in this. It was before all of these companies got started. And the XPRIZE really lit the fuse on commercial space and made it a much more rational investment and created the regulatory framework that has launched this commercial spaceflight.

• 47:55Peter Diamandis?

  And we want to do the same thing here in the field of health span extension. There's 100, well, you know, I'm very proud to have raised $141 million for this competition. It's the largest amount of capital ever raised for an XPRIZE. Yay.

• 48:12Speaker 03

  Wow, Peter, that's incredible.

• 48:15Peter Diamandis?

  And I believe enough in this that I've, you know, put in millions personally into this competition. The first XPRIZE I've backed. And as I mentioned, Chip Wilson was our largest first prize sponsor. And then we've had people putting in a million bucks, up to 40 million bucks, and it's our largest group here. Let's talk about how this, so how this money gets distributed. 30 million is for operations. There's a lot of testing has to be done. 10 million is up for this FSHD prize.

• 48:49Speaker 03

  Small pitch there. 30 million for operations. That might sound like a lot. This is a lot to run. And so any of our partners out there, if anyone's out there, maybe you've got a great idea, a great biomarker, a great system, something you want to ask us about, we're not closed. Feel free to call us, we're in kind support.

• 49:07Peter Diamandis?

  Yeah. Yeah, we're going to be partnering with companies to do testing in the cognition, immune, and muscle space and a whole bunch of biometric testing along the way. And we'll be announcing partners in epigenetic testing and genome testing and blood biomarker testing and so forth. And this is a global competition, so we're going to have to be doing this around the world. But there's 101 million up for grabs for the primary segment of this prize. And unlike winner take all, which we have done in the past, we're doing this a little bit differently.

• 49:50Peter Diamandis?

  And I'm excited about it. Would you lay out how that 101 million is there for teams to go after?

• 49:57Speaker 03

  Okay, so this is great. So again, we have the 101 million. This is one of the most common questions that I've had since we've launched, Peter, is people want to know, are we just giving, is it a winner take all? Is it a one prize, one shot? And no, because that's really not the spirit, right? That this is meant to get people in the field and keep them there. And so I think one of the brilliant things that Peter and some of the early developers on this is to find a way to distribute this money. And so again, it is a competition. And so this requires that you have to come into this with some funding on your own to do the earliest stage. Those first two years, that's going to be a lot of qualifying submissions. You have to turn in paperwork to us.

• 50:41Speaker 03

  We have to understand the therapeutics that you're working with and the screening process that you have. And we'll do some evaluating based on that. At that point, it's going to be in the early, about right around two year mark for us, which is going to be in early 2025. We'll look at those qualifying submissions. And there's going to be the first $10 million distribution. That awarding is going to go to 40 teams will be given some money. That 10 million will be distributed. So that's about $250,000 a team. And we know that, you know, depending on where you're testing from, that may or may not be a lot for you. But we wanted to make sure that we at least distributed money to encourage people,

• 51:26Speaker 03

  keep them going, keep them invested in this, and it's a token to keep moving. More teams than 40 can continue, but we're only doing the awarding at that point. And another about year and a half ish after that point into 2026, we're going to be distributing again that next milestone award. At this point, teams will have had to go in to do at least some early clinical trials work. And so this is making sure that they can use the protocols that we're going to recommend, are comfortable and have the regulatory paperwork necessary, and a clinical trials center that they can support their work. Or we can help partner them. With network, with folks within our alumni and team network that can help them along the way.

• 52:11Speaker 03

  And so then that's that next $10 million distribution. So again, now we've given away 20 million. That next 10 million is given to 10 teams. Those 10 teams will use that $1 million each to at least see their one-year clinical trial. The clinical trials will run, and again, we're going to be asking these teams, they're going to be testing function, that's muscle, cognitive, and immune function. We need them at the beginning. At baseline, they'll give whatever that therapeutic intervention, whatever their team's solution is. One year later, those clinical trials are run again, and you have to test those same things again, muscle, cognitive, and immune function.

• 52:53Speaker 03

  We take that in also with some of the safety data that you collect. You know, any kind of event reporting or symptoms. We'll look at dropouts or adherence or anything that's related to that that will support the awarding. But our awarding is based on change in function, and that you have to show a functional improvement. And we break down that 101, which remaining at this point is 81, because we've given away 20. Now we have the 81. If you can show that the improvements in function in one year are enough to offset, it's equivalent to a 10-year improve or decline, it's enough to offset the 10-year decline. So you have to have an improvement in magnitude that's equivalent to 10-year.

• 53:37Speaker 03

  That is, will the awarded, the team will be awarded 61 million. If you can show a 15-year functional improvement, that's 71 million. If you can show, again, this is Peter's, so I thought 10 years, three systems was the most insane thing I could think of. Peter is exponential. And so this is the exponential goal for 81 million is that you have to show a 20 year, the equivalent of a 20 year improvement in all three systems for 81 million.

• 54:11Peter Diamandis?

  And just to be clear, the highest level wins the money. So if you showed 10, but someone showed 15, the team who got 15 wins it. And, and this competition is going to run for seven years from launch. At the, at the end of seven years is hopefully we have a winner by that point.

• 54:33Speaker 03

  That's exactly right. And so, yeah, 2030 is that's our goal period. And so this gives our teams actually, and having that amount of time, yes, it takes time to run trials. The other thing, it takes time to get the regulatory paperwork done and make sure that you have the resources and the network building and that we can actually begin to work and lay that groundwork around, you know, what is possible for the future. And so that's why we have this duration is it just takes time to run these trials and it takes time to build the community and lay what we want to make this again, it's not meant to be a prize, a one and done, we give the money away and everyone goes home, is that this is meant to make global lasting change. We're about an impact.

• 55:18Peter Diamandis?

  Over the years, I've experimented with many intermittent fasting programs. The truth is, I've given up on intermittent fasting as I've seen no real benefit when it comes to longevity. But this changed when I discovered something called ProLon's five day fasting nutrition program. It harnesses the process of autophagy. This is a cellular recycling process that revitalizes your body at a molecular level. And just one cycle of the five day ProLon fasting nutrition program can support healthy aging, fat focused weight loss, improved energy levels and more. It's a painless process, and I've been doing it twice a year for the last year. You can get a 15% off on your order when you go to

• 56:01Peter Diamandis?

  my special URL. Go to prolonlife.com, P R O L O N L I F E dot com backslash moonshot. Get started on your longevity journey with ProLon today. Now back to the episode. Yeah, you know, one of the things that's important for people to realize is that We're doing this competition now because for the first time ever, small teams can do what only the largest corporations and healthcare systems could do before. In fact, I think can do more, given the use of AI and what we'll see before the end of this competition, before 2030, is we'll see, you know, quantum chemistry and quantum computation

• 56:44Peter Diamandis?

  coming online, gene therapies, CRISPR technologies, gene writing, all kinds of things coming on at exponential rates. And I think the biggest opportunity for impact on the planet is going to be for adding health onto people's life. Let's talk about, one second, the definition of lifespan, health span. I think it's important for people to realize.

• 57:06Speaker 03

  We didn't go there, did we? You're still right.

• 57:08Peter Diamandis?

  No. Yeah, go for it.

• 57:10Speaker 03

  Okay, great. So this is a really good point. This is a really, really good point. Okay, so lifespan, right? So this is, you know, a lot of people, when we talk about the surprise, they see only sort of the lifespan numbers. And lifespan is super important, right? It's how long you have lived. It's the total duration of your individual life. It's your chronology. It's how many birthday candles you have put on your cake. And it has really not a lot of connection necessarily to your health condition.

• 57:40Peter Diamandis?

  Birthday candles, whether or not you can actually count them or not.

• 57:43Speaker 03

  Yeah, whether you can blow them out even, see them. Exactly right. So health span is different. Okay, so health span is the period of life spent in good health. So, you know, classically, we think about this as when you're free of like major life-threatening diseases or disability. So it really, it emphasizes the quality of life rather than just the duration. So again, we want to add life to your years. This is really the key component here. And, you know, and one of the reasons this is such a key component, because this is really where the gap is, Peter. I know you're aware of this, and I'm sure that our listeners, if you made it in this far, you probably know this. We talked

• 58:28Speaker 03

  about that longevity revolution at the beginning of the show, just drawing a loop back. Did you know, so in the US, right, we've gained 30 years in the last 100 years. We're living 30 years longer. Do you know what's happened? So the World Health Organization counts something called the Health Adjusted Life Years. Do you know how long we've expanded that?

• 58:48Speaker 03

  No, no. In the last 20 years, zero. Right now, there's a gap between our health-adjusted life years and our lifespan of 12 years, meaning that we've extended life. And we might have wiggled health a little bit, but if we actually quantify it, there is a 12-year period that people are living in poor health, low quality of life, poor function, and disability. That's staggering.

• 59:18Peter Diamandis?

  That's not the goal. That's not the goal. It's not the goal to have you slobbering in a wheelchair, unconscious. It's how do we... Yeah, how do you have the energy, the cognition, the mobility, the aesthetics, the immunity to to enjoy, enjoy those, those years of life?

• 59:35Speaker 03

  That's right. Traditional medicine has... Yeah, traditional medicine has made us less dead. We want to make us more alive.

• 59:44Peter Diamandis?

  I love that. The less dead X Prize.

• 59:49Peter Diamandis?

  I want to talk about, you know, one more, one more subject for folks here, which is, you know, people complain about extending lifespan or longevity, and they bring up a number of things. And I went out to my Twitterverse to get people's objections. Normally, I have a community of folks, many of you here listening, who love this and follow this with me. Again, I, I, you know, put out my book, Longevity Practical Playbook, which is available for free if you're listening on my DMandus.com backslash longevity, or you can go to Amazon to get a hard copy.

• 1:00:30Peter Diamandis?

  But the interesting list of things, and I'm just going to run through them. The first is bored. And people say, "I'm going to be bored. I'm going to be bored if I live to 100 or 120." And I'm like, "Really?" So I think that's interesting. You know, my answer to that is, we're going to have AI and VR and BCI and all kinds of extraordinary, new ways to engage in the world.

• 1:01:01Peter Diamandis?

  And hopefully boredom is the last thing you have to worry about. I don't know how you feel about that.

• 1:01:07Speaker 03

  No, I actually, I think that's completely right. You know, and I have talked to others in the field is that, you know, we're going to have to come to terms with this. We are living longer and I think our current approach has actually left that feeling is that people don't know what to do with those added years. Right? So I think that's where that's like, oh, I'm gonna be bored. Oh, I don't know what to do. Or they, you know, even within medicine, there's this sort of palliative approach to care and it, and it's really, it's, we're looking for things that actually empower people is you don't have to be bored. Maybe go back to school. Is there an opportunity for lifelong?

• 1:01:43Peter Diamandis?

  Yeah, I think.

• 1:01:43Speaker 03

  Is there engagement? There's so many things.

• 1:01:46Peter Diamandis?

  Yeah. I think there's travel and education and I think what happens is people conflate being in pain and having low energy with those later years. And the hope is that there'll be increased vitality. Okay, so another thing is the sense of immortal dictator. So I had this, I had this debate with Elon that, you know, people need to die in order to make room for new innovation. And if, if the CEOs and the leaders are still alive and living longer, that, that we only have change when people, when we have turnover and people die. And I call bullshit for that.

• 1:02:28Peter Diamandis?

  I mean, you know, I listen, that, that head of, the head of Lockheed Martin and Boeing or General Motors, you know, and Toyota didn't have to die for SpaceX and for Tesla to come along. You know, you just need better, better entrepreneurs and better technology. And I think we have revolution all the time. And, you know, we are gonna have without question the societal checks and balances against, you know, evil dictators and tech that doesn't work well.

• 1:03:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, so I mean, societal evil dictators, but you know, I'll get clear you and so there's a there's been a side conversation around this on the academic side around tenure where there's, you know, so many more new PhD candidates coming up and, you know, we can't do anything if we know nobody retires because, you know, because of tenure. And so there's all these fear, there's fear, fear, fear, fear, fear. But instead, so we can either do two things, we could either not talk about it, or we can talk about it and just sort of allow a place for engagement and, you know, and is this a potential risk? Like, you know, I'm with you, Peter, I certainly don't think so, but I also realize that I am an eternal optimist.

• 1:03:44Speaker 03

  But this is a great chance. This is why these prizes are so incredible, is that they take some of these things that might be scaring people in the background about unintended consequences, like the evil dictator syndrome, or whatever that may be, which I also don't agree with, or I'm gonna be bored, or any of these things. And they allow us to have a public, global conversation about them. We can talk about them by doing this prize, you know, bring them out, have pros and cons, come to a team summit, come to a biomarker summit. We're going to have a lot of opportunities and channels to communicate and talk about this. Is that, you know, we are gonna have to talk about reskilling, we're gonna have to talk about, you know, whether it's turnover or just new opportunities for engagement.

• 1:04:29Speaker 03

  Like, this is an opportunity that we get to have. And it's, I think it's beautiful.

• 1:04:34Peter Diamandis?

  The other, the other side of tenure and evil dictators is till, till, till death do us part in marriage, you know, institution of marriage. Was it, you know, was it, was it specifically, you know, designed to last for 100 years? I don't know about that.

• 1:04:55Speaker 03

  I don't know.

• 1:04:56Peter Diamandis?

  So maybe, maybe we're gonna have, we are gonna have, as people live longer, we're gonna have to have change, right? Whether it's when you retire and social security, and maybe marriage becomes a renewable contract, and maybe tenure goes away. But, you know, interesting. Overpopulation, we spoke about the issues of overpopulation, I won't hit on that again. But another is inequality, you know, is this simply for the wealthy? You mentioned this, and that's not the objective.

• 1:05:28Speaker 03

  No, it's not the objective, but again, this is one of those, we talk about unintended consequences. This is the purpose of having a global prize, rather than have a company or group of companies sort of do this their way. Right? Is that we want companies to participate, be a part of a team, be part of the conversation. You know, and I certainly, for me, the goal is not to, and again, it is not an awarding criteria, but it's part of a judge consideration as we talk about, we don't call it cost, we're talking about accessibility. Right? Because even if you have a cheap drug, if it's not something that can be given and say, you know, in other sort of lower or middle income countries that might not have access to the appropriate refrigeration, or the blister packs aren't quite right in

• 1:06:12Speaker 03

  order to get, you know, people can use them, or the dosing schedules are too complex. You know, so there's a lot of things that when we think about access, that's really very important. One of those considerations is cost. But I think one of the key features when we think about cost, Peters, you said it sort of two ways, right? So there's, the importance is that if we get these out there, the costs will eventually come down. The next thing is that if we actually can go about this the right way, and that we can actually go forward and we can get an indication, and again, whether you call aging the disease or not, that's not my dogfight, right? That's not mine, I let other people handle that. But the goal is still the same, is that if we can get this through, whether as a disease

• 1:06:56Speaker 03

  or a non-disease indication, which the FDA is interested in driving forward, that makes health reimbursable. Right? And so that automatically is going to start bringing that cost back down, so that we can talk about access and delivery. And if we can couple this with additional innovations and say, Peter, you and I, last month, we had some really interesting conversations around, you know, decentralized medication, essential medication. So is this an opportunity that we can really drive change in that area? And I think one of the other key things is that when we're talking about function... We're automatically going to talk about improving the health and the lives of those

• 1:07:40Speaker 03

  who actually experienced those declines perhaps earlier, either as accentuated or accelerated aging. And those are the people who really need it. You know, aging is essentially, it's the great equalizer. Everyone gets here eventually. Some of us might get here a little bit sooner. And if we make action now, and we actually can work on some of those access issues and work on the regulatory issues collectively, the idea is that we can actually create that level playing field and give innovation and innovative solutions to the populations who need them the most. This could be the great equalizer if we do it correctly and out in the open, transparently, and with a great global partnership.

• 1:08:20Peter Diamandis?

  So, there you have it, our Healthspan X Prize, 101 million, actually it's 111 million if you include the bonus prize up for grabs. Our mission is stimulate moonshot entrepreneurs. If you're not in the biotech or medical field, maybe you'll organize a team. Go and find the smartest people you can, pull together a team to compete for this. You know, we had some 6,000 teams pre-register for Elon's $100 million Carbon X Prize, and then down to some 1,400 registered teams. By the way, I have to tell the side story here.

• 1:09:04Peter Diamandis?

  Why is it $101 million, not $100 million prize? It was in a conversation with Chip Wilson, who put up the first, you know, 25 million, and then a $10 million FSHD bonus prize, and said, huh, Elon's prize is 100 million. How about we make it larger? And I said, you want to kick in an extra million? He said, sure. And it became $101 million prize. I just want to, again, go to xprize.org, check out the X Prize Foundation, go to xprize.org backslash Healthspan. You can get the guidelines there, you can register as a team, you can find out what else we're doing in the X Prize world.

• 1:09:45Peter Diamandis?

  For me, it's really moonshot heaven for moonshot entrepreneurs. Jamie, what else do you want to add here?

• 1:09:52Speaker 03

  Oh my gosh, all I want to say is, you know, come join us, right? So this is, this is us. We're democratizing science. We're encouraging people to rethink about your relationship to aging and the community around you who is aging. And that, you know, all I want is for everyone to show up, knock on our doors, actually go on to our website. Again, that's xprize.org. Make sure you go on there, get that intent to compete. Sign up your team. If you need help or access linking up to teams, we're building that global community. Feel free to reach out. This is, again, this is a radically collaborative effort and I am so excited to have you join me on the journey.

• 1:10:35Peter Diamandis?

  A pleasure. I want to thank Evolution, our largest sponsor, Chip Wilson and Saul FSHD, and a myriad of individual sponsors who put in from a million to $10 million each for supporting this X Prize, for our advisors, our endpoints committee, the teams who have already registered to compete. We have some amazing individuals, top in their fields, who are part of this competition. Go and check it out. And Jamie, you and your team, you are playing all out on this and you have an amazing, amazing team.

• 1:11:17Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 1:11:18Peter Diamandis?

  Actually, I think you've got an all-female team, which is pretty amazing.

• 1:11:23Speaker 03

  I know. Not intentional, but oh my gosh, we have an incredible, like a powerhouse team of women. So I'm joined, I should have given them a shout out way earlier, in addition to the incredible folks at X Prize, which has the most amazing support, prize design, advancement, partnerships, great teams. But my immediate team, I also am joined by a medical deputy, Dr. Laura Getz. I have a senior epidemiologist and data analyst, and her name is Dr. Lauren Pierpoint. And we have the amazing DeLali, which I recommend to anybody who needs information or contact. She's our prize manager. If anything gets done on this prize, she is our get it done gal.

• 1:12:03Peter Diamandis?

  And then, of course, our CEO Anusha Ansari, who funded my first XPRIZE back 23 years ago, then flew to the space station as the first private female astronaut, and five years ago came back to bless us all as CEO of the XPRIZE. I serve as executive chairman, which means I get to be her pain in the ass and her partner.

• 1:12:28Peter Diamandis?

  Anyway, I thank everybody for listening.

• 1:12:31Speaker 03

  She was a cell for me, coming out from academia. She's my Shiro. I just love her.

• 1:12:37Peter Diamandis?

  Yeah, Shiro. I love that. All right, that's it. The $101 million health span XPRIZE out to change the world. Excited for everybody who's going to compete and to add 20 healthy years onto my health span. I'm looking forward to it.

• 1:12:52Speaker 03

  The expedition, Peter. Peter, grateful for you. Thank you.

• 1:12:57Peter Diamandis?

  Thank you, Jamie. Take care now. I want to take a moment to tell you about Abundance 360, my year-round leadership mastermind for people who want to go big, create wealth, and uplift humanity. It's Singularity University's highest-level program. We are a global community of entrepreneurs, CEOs, investors, philanthropists, who have come together based upon a set of shared beliefs. I'm going to share with you a few of these core beliefs. If they resonate with you, consider applying to the membership. We believe in the power of entrepreneurs to solve the world's biggest problems. Second, we believe it is possible to create wealth while at the same time uplifting humanity.

• 1:13:39Peter Diamandis?

  Third, we believe that by the end of this decade, 2030, we'll be extending the healthy human lifespan by decades. Next, we believe that the day before something is truly a breakthrough, it's a crazy idea, so embracing crazy ideas is critical to innovation.

• 1:13:57Peter Diamandis?

  Next, we believe that exponential technologies create abundance. And finally, we believe that an entrepreneur's mindset is your greatest asset. If hearing these has you thinking, "That sounds like me and I want to be part of this community," then consider submitting your application to a360.com. That's a360.com. We let in about 50 new members every year in advance of our summit between March 17th and 21st. These spots sell out fast, so if you want to get in, consider applying early to increase your chance. A360.com has everything you need to know. I hope you'll join me.

• 1:14:42Peter Diamandis?

  It's an extraordinary group of entrepreneurs and we'd love to have you. Now, back to our podcast.

• 1:15:00Speaker 05

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