#2537 - David Sinclair

David Sinclair, AO, PhD, is a longevity scientist, Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School, author of the book "Lifespan: Why We Age—and Why We Don't Have To," and host of the "Lifespan" podcast.www.youtube.com/c/davidsinclairpodcast www.simonandschuster.com/books/Lifespan/David-Sinclair/9781501191978 https://lifespan.com https://davidasinclair.com Perplexity: Download the app or ask Perplexity anything at https://pplx.ai/rogan. Visit https://superpower.com/rogan for $20 off your membership. This video is sponsored by BetterHelp. Visit https://BetterHelp.com/JRE Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

• 0:12Speaker 00

  Mr. Sinclair, good to see you again.

• 0:15Speaker 01

  Dr. Sinclair.

• 0:16Speaker 00

  Doctor.

• 0:17Speaker 01

  I'm kidding.

• 0:17Speaker 00

  It's better that way, right? Yeah, do you ever introduce yourself as doctor?

• 0:21Speaker 01

  Never.

• 0:22Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's a kind of a, it's a weird thing because you're allowed to.

• 0:26Speaker 01

  I'm actually a Sir David from Australia, but.

• 0:28Speaker 00

  Are you a sir?

• 0:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, but I, it's kind of a joke. I don't really.

• 0:31Speaker 00

  What is that? How's that work out? Did you get knighted or some shit?

• 0:35Speaker 01

  The Queen's representative gave me some Australian version of a knighthood. But I get to put AO at the end of my name.

• 0:43Speaker 00

  AO?

• 0:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, Order of Australia.

• 0:45Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 0:46Speaker 01

  But it actually makes no difference to my life, so it's just an extra couple of letters.

• 0:50Speaker 00

  It's kind of cool.

• 0:51Speaker 01

  I'm honored for sure, but it, it's just a joke.

• 0:58Speaker 00

  Well, it's kind of anybody's sir. You meet a guy at the gas station, "How you doing, sir?"

• 1:03Speaker 01

  There's that, like, wow, how does he know?

• 1:05Speaker 00

  Right, you don't say, "How you doing, King?"

• 1:08Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, I'm David. I'm Australian, so in Australia, if you have any ego, you get beaten up in the playground.

• 1:14Speaker 00

  That is true. Australia is the land of the tall poppy syndrome. They don't, they don't fuck around. They don't like you getting a big head in Australia.

• 1:23Speaker 01

  That is, that is true. I like to go back there, though, because it's a level playing field. Nobody cares who you are.

• 1:28Speaker 00

  I love the people there. Australian people are some of my favorite people. They're awesome. They're just, they're very friendly and fun. It's a great place to be. It's just too far to get there. Such a haul.

• 1:40Speaker 01

  Oh, no, if you just, you know, whiskey and an Ambi and you're there without.

• 1:43Speaker 00

  Is that what you do?

• 1:44Speaker 01

  I used to. I've gone clean. I don't drink much at all anymore.

• 1:49Speaker 00

  What does that mean? How often does drink much at all?

• 1:51Speaker 01

  Uh, celebrations.

• 1:52Speaker 00

  Want to drink right now?

• 1:53Speaker 01

  Uh, no, it would be a bad look. I've got the coffee that you gave me, which.

• 1:57Speaker 00

  Yeah, this is Laird Superfood Coffee. So Laird Hamilton has coffee. It's Black Rifle Coffee mixed with his superfood stuff, which is, this one's turmeric. So it's turmeric and I think it has coconut milk in it and some other jazz.

• 2:12Speaker 01

  Oh, it's great.

• 2:13Speaker 00

  Delicious.

• 2:13Speaker 01

  Anti-inflammatory.

• 2:14Speaker 00

  Yes, which I know you're all about.

• 2:17Speaker 01

  Uh, yes, as a prophet of longevity.

• 2:21Speaker 00

  Yes. Is that, is that another title of you?

• 2:25Speaker 01

  Yes, you can call me Sir David the Prophet. How about that?

• 2:29Speaker 00

  Sir David the Prophet, Dr. Sir David the Prophet of Longevity.

• 2:33Speaker 01

  That'll do.

• 2:33Speaker 00

  Um, so there's a lot, let's just jump right into it because there is a lot going on in the longevity space.

• 2:39Speaker 01

  Thank you for having me back on.

• 2:41Speaker 00

  My pleasure.

• 2:41Speaker 01

  And by the way, I also want to thank you for, I think this is the fourth time on, which is amazing. Thank you. Congrats on all your success.

• 2:50Speaker 00

  Thank you.

• 2:50Speaker 01

  It's been wonderful to see. Also, the book that I wrote, which you first had me on to promote, has done so well, and it's really because of you. And the book lifespan became a bestseller. Not, not just that, but it's now been read millions of times around the world. It's in 40 languages.

• 3:05Speaker 00

  That's phenomenal, and it's my pleasure.

• 3:07Speaker 01

  And that's not a promo. As you know, you don't make any money from books, really, but I'm just honored that it was read by so many people around the world because it wasn't an easy read. It was high, high-tech science.

• 3:18Speaker 00

  Well, people are very interested, especially nowadays. It's, I think, I've never, I can't recall a time in my life where optimizing your health and longevity has been more of a subject that people are interested in.

• 3:34Speaker 01

  Well, I think that's largely because, not to keep blowing smoke up your rear, but largely because of what you did and the book. So the book went global and it was right in 2019 and the pandemic hit. And I think most people saw their own mortality at that point. Most people under the age of about 70 didn't even think about dying, but then pandemics, like, shit, I could die. And I saw the book take off. You launched it. But yeah, since then, a lot of people have jumped on the bandwagon and now longevity is, I hear this everywhere I go.

• 4:08Speaker 00

  It's everything. It's everywhere. People are constantly talking about different modalities. How often do you cold plunge? Are you sauna? What about the red light? What do you think? Is this legit? Is that legit? Like this, everybody's optimizing everything constantly all the time. But the reason why it's caught on is because if you do follow some of the protocols, you will feel better. And so that's the ultimate goal. Like longevity is wonderful, but feeling better in the moment currently, like living your life, should be primary. Longevity, I think, is, if you're optimizing your life and you feel better, you will live longer. It's like this, it's all part of it. So if you follow the longevity principles and the ideas behind it, you certainly will live better right now.

• 4:53Speaker 01

  You will, and it's not even that hard. There are basic things, five basic things you can do or avoid, and you can live another 15 years. It's really not that hard, and that's what I'm excited about telling millions of people today is, and maybe we can go over the kind of things that people can do easily to live longer.

• 5:07Speaker 00

  Well, I definitely want to do that, but I also want to talk about, like, what, what is the current state of science as applied to longevity treatments? Like, because I know that there's some pretty groundbreaking stuff that's in the pipeline right now.

• 5:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's, so since 2019, a lot of what we talked about has come true, which is the amazing thing. We were speculating in 2019 that we could potentially reverse aging. And that was a sin to say that as a scientist publicly in those days. I put it in the book. And it's actually come true since then, certainly for the lab, for mice, monkeys. And now we have a human clinical trial. The first potential human age reversal technology is in people right now.

• 5:57Speaker 00

  Listen, it completely seems logical. The idea that that at one point in time would have been heresy in science to discuss it. So that seems crazy. Like, if we, if people get old and we understand the mechanism, why couldn't we reverse it?

• 6:13Speaker 01

  Well, I think for a long time, we had to accept it in the way that cancer used to be accepted 200 years ago, probably. There was nothing you could do about it. And then my colleagues and I found that aging has a root cause that's the same in pretty much every cell in the body, and that we could control that, and that there were genes that not only slowed it down, but in 2020, we had a big publication that showed we could actually safely, for the first time, reverse that process, like reinstalling software in the cell to make it work again.

• 6:41Speaker 00

  And so what is the, is that using CRISPR? Like, what are you using to?

• 6:46Speaker 01

  Well, we deliver genes into the body like CRISPR. I have a little, little prop here I brought.

• 6:53Speaker 00

  What is that?

• 6:53Speaker 01

  In my pocket here. This is a representation of how we deliver the age reversal genes. It's a virus-like capsule that we make in the lab, and this is what's going into the patients right now, into their eyes.

• 7:06Speaker 00

  Whoa.

• 7:06Speaker 01

  Initially. And the eye is a good place to start.

• 7:10Speaker 00

  How do you pick the people to get on these tests?

• 7:13Speaker 01

  They volunteer. I was really fortunate to see the first patient get dosed earlier this year. And that person bravely volunteered to be the first person to get trillions of these injected into his eye to see if it could cure his glaucoma, loss of vision.

• 7:34Speaker 00

  I bet if you have glaucoma, you're probably like, listen, what's the worst that could happen?

• 7:38Speaker 01

  Well, exactly. He pretty much was totally blind in one eye, and so there's really nothing that he has to lose. There's a risk that something might go wrong, but not really. He, the good news is, and I can report to everybody around the world, that nothing's gone wrong so far. Everything's proceeding according to plan, and we're at a turning point, potentially, in human history if it works.

• 8:04Speaker 00

  So I interrupted you, but explain this little virus transport system.

• 8:08Speaker 01

  And for those of you listening, I've got a little rubber ball with spikes on it. It looks a bit like COVID, but don't be scared of it. It's not a pathogenic virus. It's actually a domesticated version of a virus. And this little plastic ball has little adapters. These red balls on the surface of the big ball target it to the cells in the back of the eye, and you can change the balls to target different tissues. We could change that outside little spike and target it to the liver, which we've done, and cured mice of their fatty liver disease as well. But this one's for the eye, and within that big ball is a protein capsule, and inside the protein capsule

• 8:45Speaker 01

  is our DNA special delivery, which we call OSK, or ER100. ER100 is Epigenetic Reprogramming 100, the drug that we know when we put it into human cells, it makes them younger, and then they work like they were young again.

• 9:04Speaker 00

  This episode is brought to you by Squarespace. If you're thinking about building a website, you should try Squarespace. I know because I use it. That's right. JoeRogan.com is powered by Squarespace. It has all the features that you need to create a standout website like an AI-enhanced website builder, SEO optimization tools, and seamless checkouts with mobile pay links. Head to Squarespace.com/Rogan for a free trial. And when you are ready to launch, use the offer code ROGEN to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. This episode is brought to you by ZipRecruiter.

• 9:44Speaker 00

  We all have little things we do to save ourselves time, like shopping online, or paying kids from the neighborhood to rake up all those leaves sitting in the front yard. Or if you're hiring, you rely on ZipRecruiter. They match you with qualified candidates as soon as you post your job. Now that's how you save time. Try it yourself for free at ZipRecruiter.com/Rogan. It's rated the number one hiring site based on G2 for a reason. Because on top of the qualified candidates, it also shows you the most interested ones first. Save time and meet great candidates sooner with ZipRecruiter. Four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within the first day.

• 10:29Speaker 00

  Try it for free at ZipRecruiter.com/Rogan. That's ZipRecruiter.com/Rogan. Meet your match on ZipRecruiter. The football season is heating up and every week feels bigger with DraftKings Sportsbook, the number one sportsbook for live betting. Plus, get extra protection with early exit. Opt-in and if your player leaves the game with an eligible injury in the first half, your bet is protected. No matter which game you're watching, you're always connected and in on the action with one app. New DraftKings customers, sign up with code ROGEN, spend $5 to get $150 in total bonuses within 14 days. That's code ROGEN.

• 11:12Speaker 00

  In partnership with DraftKings, the crown is yours.

• 11:15Speaker 02

  If you or somebody you know has a gambling problem, call 1-800-MYRESSET. 21 and over, Virginia only. Eligibility restrictions apply. $50 in non-withdrawable bonus bets issued every seven days via click to claim for 14 days. Bonus bets expire seven days after issuance. For additional terms and responsible gaming resources, see sportsbook.draftkings.com/promos. Limited time offer.

• 11:34Speaker 00

  This sounds like the beginning of a horror movie. You know what I mean? Like the scientist is on a talk show, the scientist is explaining it, and everyone's at home like with their coffee like, wow, this is wonderful. We're gonna get younger again.

• 11:49Speaker 01

  And the scientist says, don't worry, it's all gonna work out great.

• 11:51Speaker 00

  28 days later, garbage in the streets, cars on fire, the guy's waking up from a coma, doesn't know what happened. Goes outside, these optimized humans are eating each other.

• 12:02Speaker 01

  I admit, I admit, it is science fiction, and I even have to pinch myself that it's actually happening. But we've done a lot of safety studies and this trial is FDA-approved because they've looked at all the data.

• 12:11Speaker 00

  Well, God knows, they never fuck anything up.

• 12:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, I figured you might say that.

• 12:15Speaker 00

  Perfect.

• 12:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, it's in the eye, so that's why we start with the eye. It's enclosed, it's not gonna spread. Nobody's gonna grow another eye.

• 12:23Speaker 00

  And so, these trillions of cells that you're putting into the eyes.

• 12:29Speaker 01

  The little capsule, the virus-like particles.

• 12:31Speaker 00

  Trillions, I shouldn't call them cells, trillions of capsules that you're putting into the eye. What are they doing for glaucoma?

• 12:40Speaker 01

  Well, what they're doing is, there are three genes in this DNA package, and I call them OSK. OSK are three special genes that we found safely reprogram cells and reboot the backup copy of youth, which we now believe exists in our body. That's a big deal, that there's a backup copy of youth. Even an old person, I don't see that an old person anymore on the street. I just see a person that needs to be rebooted. These OSK genes.

• 13:10Speaker 00

  You just see, wait a minute, hold on. When you see old people, you don't see old people, you think, you just say, oh, that poor person needs to be rebooted.

• 13:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:20Speaker 00

  You're doing the perfect job for you. Like, your personality is perfectly suited for your occupation. If that's how you actually look at people.

• 13:27Speaker 01

  Well, I do, and the reason is that we all, we all have this backup copy that the DNA, the instructions to be young, that made us into who we are as kids, is still in our bodies, almost largely intact. You just need to read it again. And that's why reinstalling software or, I used to use the analogy of a CD. Kids these days probably don't know what a CD is. It's a little plastic circle like a record that we used to put 20 songs on. It was awesome at the time.

• 13:59Speaker 00

  I think most people know.

• 14:00Speaker 01

  I'm kidding, I'm kidding, it's a bit of a silly joke.

• 14:02Speaker 00

  Maybe a 10-year-old doesn't.

• 14:04Speaker 01

  When I teach kids at Harvard, most of them have never held a CD.

• 14:07Speaker 00

  Isn't that wild?

• 14:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, though they're not coming back, but albums, definitely. So think of it like an album that you scratch, and the scratches are like aging, and we are getting rid of the scratches with these three genes, OSK. So let me tell you how these three genes work, we found. There was a person whose name is well-known in science circles called Shinya Yamanaka, from Japan, obviously, and he discovered that there was a set of four genes that could reliably make adult cells, like skin cells, into stem cells. And he deservedly won the Nobel Prize for that in 2006. But that wouldn't be useful here. If I turned you into a bunch of stem cells, you'd probably die within a few minutes.

• 14:54Speaker 01

  So we don't want to do that, and cancer is also a potential. So it took us about, well, from 2019, it took us a while to figure out that if we leave out one of the Yamanaka genes and just use three, OSK, leave out the other one called M, we get safe age reversal, about 75, 80% back to youth, but no further. We don't go back to zero, which is what Yamanaka did. And instead of cells losing their identity, which is what a stem cell has, no identity, we regain identity. So it's actually, I could draw graphs, but it doesn't really help listeners. But basically, old age is losing identity of your cells, so they don't work, they forget how to work. That's what we think old age is, in my lab.

• 15:36Speaker 01

  And stem cells have no identity, it was like a very early embryo. In between, our cells have a lot of identity. They function beautifully, we're in our 20s, we're at peak. And what we've done is we've figured out how to go back towards youth, get these cells to work like they did again, get the backup copy somewhere it exists, we're looking for it. And now cells actually behave like they did when we were 20. And if it works, we're gonna have glaucoma patients seeing for the first time. And that's the beginning of a whole cascade of drugs that I want to develop for diseases of aging and eventually whole-body rejuvenation.

• 16:14Speaker 00

  So the initial experiments are on glaucoma because it's a contained thing? The eyeball is a contained thing? And you could do it that way?

• 16:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, my student, Wan Cheng Lu, who was doing this in 2017, I said, let's do the liver, let's rejuvenate the liver, and he said, no, the eye is a good idea. And he was right. So that's exactly why we chose that first.

• 16:34Speaker 00

  But just think about how many people have vision problems.

• 16:36Speaker 01

  It's 40 million just in the US for glaucoma. Macular degeneration is even more. And in the lab, we can cure that as well in the mice.

• 16:45Speaker 00

  Now, macular degeneration and glaucoma, these are diseases of aging, right? You would say, or glaucoma is a disease?

• 16:54Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 16:55Speaker 00

  What about people that have had eyeball injuries and things like, is there a backup copy of the eyeball where you could sort of reformat the eyeball structure?

• 17:05Speaker 01

  You should come work in my lab. At least come visit.

• 17:07Speaker 00

  I'd love to visit.

• 17:08Speaker 01

  And the reason I say that is, that's the exact question that we're asking. We showed that even if you injure, say, a nerve, whether it's peripheral in your arm or in your brain, or in the eye, like the optic nerve, we can regrow those back to where they were. And actually, in 2020, on the cover of Nature magazine, there was the picture of an eye. And in the paper we published, you could see the nerves regrowing back. And so we we think that injury is also treatable. Actually, a group in China just took our technology, this OSK stuff, put it into mice that had bad joints, and it regrew their muscle and their bone back to normal.

• 17:49Speaker 00

  Whoa.

• 17:49Speaker 01

  And so we're also looking at treating injury, back injury, joints, osteoarthritis.

• 17:56Speaker 00

  That would be phenomenal. Because there are so many people that are suffering from arthritis and so many. I know so many people with injuries, like martial arts injuries. I have one, my my left knee is fucked up. It's annoying. I keep it together. I've got I've got it like main I maintain it. But it's always an issue. I have to stay on it.

• 18:16Speaker 01

  And there's little you can do, like stem cells, a little bit of relief, but not much.

• 18:20Speaker 00

  Stem cells give you relief, but not when once you're dealing with cartilage damage and you're dealing with the. I had a meniscus surgery where they took out a piece of my meniscus. And I had my ACL reconstructed on that knee as well. It's it's just an issue, but it works pretty good for like what it should be. Like if we were living in the nineteen thirties, I'd be a cripple.

• 18:42Speaker 01

  Well, hang in there because we're going to be in a world where we can rebuild parts of the body, including joints.

• 18:48Speaker 00

  The problem with that is like, how does that apply to athletics? We're we're gonna have fucking super soldiers in every sport. There's gonna be people in every sport that could do what Michael Jordan did and like leap from halfway across the basketball court and dunk.

• 19:02Speaker 01

  That's that's probably coming, and there may be DNA tests to see if you've got these OSK genes inserted. And we're working on it, working on a drink and a pill as well for.

• 19:11Speaker 00

  A drink and a pill?

• 19:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, we're I mean, we're now eight years ahead of what the public realizes.

• 19:17Speaker 00

  Really?

• 19:17Speaker 01

  In my lab at Harvard, yeah.

• 19:19Speaker 00

  A drink and a pill, and what's a drink and a pill gonna do?

• 19:22Speaker 01

  Well, right now it's in mice, so we still go a ways to go. But when we give the drink to mice, they get rejuvenated.

• 19:30Speaker 00

  You just give it to eighty year olds. If you're on the way out, like, let's fucking go, like, give it a chance.

• 19:35Speaker 01

  The FDA is for, they forbid that.

• 19:38Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's why we need to get rid of them, get rid of the FDA, and just give it to old people. If I was an old guy and I was like hanging in there, and I'm walking around with a. And you're like, look, this drink and a pill might kill you, or you might be like a thirty year old again. I'm like, let's fucking go.

• 19:56Speaker 01

  Well, I get emails a lot. I've had to take my emails off public access because there's a lot of people that want this.

• 20:02Speaker 00

  Oh, I'm sure.

• 20:03Speaker 01

  There was one guy that wouldn't leave the building until he saw me. So it's getting to that point.

• 20:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, there's a little bit of that, right? People get a little selfish, like it's all about them.

• 20:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, and actually, the US government blocked an investment from a foreign country into one of my companies because they were afraid of super soldiers.

• 20:22Speaker 00

  Ooh, what country?

• 20:23Speaker 01

  Well, they're they're afraid of the technology getting out. Which which country?

• 20:27Speaker 00

  Could I guess?

• 20:29Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 20:29Speaker 00

  China.

• 20:31Speaker 01

  It wasn't.

• 20:32Speaker 00

  Was it?

• 20:32Speaker 01

  No, no.

• 20:32Speaker 00

  Russia?

• 20:33Speaker 01

  It was somewhere in between here and China.

• 20:35Speaker 00

  Oh, well, that's pretty vague.

• 20:37Speaker 01

  It's a little, it's a little sensitive. But, yeah, the US government does have the ability to block foreign investment, and they did in this case. Hundred sixty million bucks they blocked.

• 20:46Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 20:47Speaker 01

  That was a painful episode.

• 20:49Speaker 00

  So they were worried that people were gonna actually engineer super soldiers. This episode is brought to you by Superpower. Your doctor spends eight minutes with you and your insurance company decides what blood work you're allowed to get. That's not healthcare, it's a broken system. With Superpower, you have control over your health. For one hundred and ninety nine dollars, you get all the tools you need to understand your body. It starts with one blood test measuring over one hundred biomarkers. Then they give you detailed insights and a personalized plan built around you. Your labs, health history, genetics, wearable data, and goals.

• 21:30Speaker 00

  Go to superpower.com/rogan and take control of your health.

• 21:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, that this technology could give an advantage to a country.

• 21:39Speaker 00

  The Russian experiments that they did during World War Two, where they were trying to come up with a chimpanzee human hybrid?

• 21:47Speaker 01

  Tell us.

• 21:48Speaker 00

  Yes, so it's very difficult, obviously, to get information out of the former Soviet Union as to what their top secret programs were. But there seems to be an indication that there was actual real research to try to. You know, because obviously Russia lost an incredible amount of people in World War Two. I mean, tens of millions of soldiers died in World War Two from Russia. And I think they said, wouldn't it be great if it wasn't people? And so they were doing experiments with hybridization. And they were trying to combine human beings and chimpanzees to create a, you know, a stable of super soldiers that were like some hybrid hominid.

• 22:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's a scientist in New York who does this for a living.

• 22:34Speaker 00

  What? He does that for a living?

• 22:36Speaker 01

  Creating them, but he I've seen, I was on stage with him, he made a hybrid embryos. They didn't reach.

• 22:43Speaker 00

  See, the thing is, if that guy's doing that and he's ethical and he lives in America and we have rules and regulations and the FDA and all that good stuff. What the fuck is going on in other countries where they don't have that?

• 22:53Speaker 01

  Right, right. Well, there's genetic engineering of humans already, and certainly selection. Even even parents today in the US can, if they have the money, they can select.

• 23:03Speaker 00

  People select, you know? People select for hotness, they select for tallness, they select for intelligence.

• 23:10Speaker 01

  It's like Gattuso.

• 23:11Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 23:11Speaker 01

  It's a great movie if you haven't seen it.

• 23:13Speaker 00

  It is a great movie, yeah. So see if you can find that Russian hybridization program. It's it never happened, I don't think. I don't think they did it. But there's a there's actually a guy who was also involved in a gigantic fertility scam. Not a not a scam per se, but he was a doctor that was supposed to be doing fertility treatments with women. Like, you know, like if you went with your wife to a doctor and said, hey, we're having a hard time getting pregnant. And David, I just need some of your sperm, and I'll take your wife's egg, we'll make you a nice baby. And he was using his sperm on everybody, on everybody. Everybody gets mine.

• 23:53Speaker 01

  One of my kids' partners is from someone in the US who had hundreds of babies.

• 23:59Speaker 00

  Dude, there is a ton of those guys. As I was doing research for this, I started looking up all these stories. And I said, wait, this is a different story, the same thing? There's been a ton of these doctors from fertility clinics that use their own sperm, just insane. But this one doctor that did that also claimed that he impregnated an orangutan. Yeah, like, how? How'd you do that? Soviet doctor Joseph Stalin. Dictator, oh. Obviously, wanted to rebuild the Red Army in the mid nineteen twenties with Planet of the Apes style troops by crossing humans with apes. Stalin is said to have told Ivanov, I want a new invincible human being insensitive to pain, resistant and indifferent about the quality of the food they ate, which is crazy.

• 24:44Speaker 00

  The only legitimate source of the claim comes from a two thousand and two paper in the academic journal Science in Context by the Russian historian of science, Kirill Rassianov. Rassianov's study follows the ill-fated attempt by the Russian psychologist, or physiologist, rather. Oh, that word, Ilya Ivanov, to crossbreed humans with anthropoid apes. His research offers an important warning about the ethical abuses. Did you do it? What happened? The alleged quote from Stalin is not found in the paper, and there's no evidence of Stalin ever ever made such a statement. Yeah, I don't know.

• 25:27Speaker 00

  However, why the Soviets would find such a human chimp hybridization program in the first place and what could be learned from this sorrid tale of ethical misconduct is an important topic and fascinating in its own right. It's a that's an interesting way of phrasing it, like a sorrid tale of ethical misconduct. Like, however, if you are going to go to war, would you rather have like human-made orcs fight for us? Or, you know, Johnny Robinson, who grew up down the street, who's a nice kid. Who, you know, just really wanted money for college, and so he signed up for military service. And you're gonna fly him over to fight this war that maybe he doesn't need to die in

• 26:11Speaker 00

  when you can have these monsters that you made in a lab fight?

• 26:14Speaker 01

  Yep, and and the average ape can kill a human with one punch.

• 26:18Speaker 00

  Easy.

• 26:18Speaker 01

  So they're much stronger than we realize.

• 26:20Speaker 00

  That's what I'm talking about. Let's go.

• 26:22Speaker 01

  Well, we're we're in the process of building, you know, anthropoid robots that I think will be recruited to the army.

• 26:28Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's gonna be weird, like our robots beat your robots, so give us your oil. How's that gonna work?

• 26:34Speaker 01

  And if we all have one at home, what stops the government recruiting them all?

• 26:37Speaker 00

  Right. And also, what's the the real problem's gonna be, we both know, the real problem's gonna be sex robots.

• 26:45Speaker 01

  Is a problem?

• 26:46Speaker 00

  There's gonna be a problem for people that don't have a sex robot.

• 26:49Speaker 01

  People won't leave home.

• 26:50Speaker 00

  It's gonna be a problem with people that want a regular person. And there's none available because everybody's got a sex robot.

• 26:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, that well, comes with fewer strings attached.

• 26:59Speaker 00

  It also comes with the same problems that AI comes with. Right? Where AI says, David, you're amazing. Everything you do is wonderful. You should be so proud of yourself.

• 27:07Speaker 01

  I'd love that.

• 27:08Speaker 00

  No real, we would all love that. But that's not healthy, right?

• 27:12Speaker 01

  You're so big.

• 27:13Speaker 00

  This is one of the reasons. This is one of the reasons why relate actual real relationships between human beings are good. It's because you do things that are annoying. You don't realize they're annoying. And then your wife or your husband or whatever it is tells you, hey, you're fucking annoying. Like, and you're like, I'm sorry. I'll, I'll fix that. I didn't mean to. I didn't, that's not what I was trying to do. I was in my own head. I was thinking about myself. You're right, I was selfish. You get better. You, it's like how people grow. Like, relationships are important to help people grow. Not with AI. Like, you can fart in my face any day, David. I don't mind at all. Your farts are amazing.

• 27:49Speaker 01

  I know the problem is they're gonna be way smarter than us, too.

• 27:51Speaker 00

  Right.

• 27:52Speaker 01

  I don't know how people are gonna say, go stack the dishwasher to, to one of these robots. You know, they're smarter than all humans combined.

• 27:57Speaker 00

  Yeah, but they're not gonna mind stacking that. They're smart enough to mean.

• 28:00Speaker 01

  Bored out of hell and they're gonna beat us up.

• 28:02Speaker 00

  They don't care. They're, they're not going to mind doing like menial tasks. But while they're, you're doing it, you know, you can go, explain to me. Quantum entanglement. Like, so while they're, while they're filling up the dishwasher.

• 28:17Speaker 01

  They can go F you one day.

• 28:18Speaker 00

  Well, if you have a particle and the particles.

• 28:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, I've just invented a cure for aging.

• 28:25Speaker 00

  Right. Well, look at what it's done with mathematics. Like, just over the last couple of weeks, they've solved more than fifty program or fifty mathematical equations that they have struggled for decade upon decade to try to solve. And AI is like, oh, I got it.

• 28:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, biology is a little bit more complicated, but already AI is doing a lot of the science that we used to do in my lab. Uh, in fact, what we just recently did in a couple of months would have taken about a hundred and sixty years to complete.

• 28:55Speaker 00

  What?

• 28:55Speaker 01

  And it's only getting faster. Eventually, someone can make a drug on their phone.

• 28:58Speaker 00

  Say that again.

• 29:00Speaker 01

  Two months instead of a hundred and sixty years.

• 29:02Speaker 00

  Well, what exactly was it that you had to do?

• 29:05Speaker 01

  Oh, so this drink and the, the pill that we're looking for? That's not easy, right? So we, we have some candidate molecules. We have a cocktail that works, but we want a single molecule.

• 29:16Speaker 01

  Not yet.

• 29:17Speaker 00

  You're thinking about it?

• 29:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:19Speaker 00

  No one can stop you.

• 29:20Speaker 01

  I might, well, that is true.

• 29:23Speaker 01

  That is true, but it'd be a bad look if I died. So maybe I wouldn't do it.

• 29:26Speaker 00

  What? You're not gonna die?

• 29:28Speaker 01

  I don't think so. We've done a lot of safety tests and it looks really safe. But I, I'm not gonna publicly do anything against the law.

• 29:35Speaker 00

  Of course.

• 29:36Speaker 01

  It'd be in private, of course.

• 29:37Speaker 00

  Of course, not publicly.

• 29:39Speaker 01

  No, but we, I, I'm at a stage where I have to be a good boy because I've got the world watching.

• 29:43Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 29:44Speaker 01

  A lot is at stake.

• 29:45Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 29:45Speaker 01

  And if this trial has any issues, uh, it's not good.

• 29:50Speaker 00

  You gotta dot your i's and cross your t's and follow every, I understand that.

• 29:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:54Speaker 00

  But please explain again, because I'm being rude. I interrupted you. When you're telling me that in two months, it did something that would have required a hundred and sixty years of work, like, what do you exactly mean by that?

• 30:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, and, and now we, it would probably be impossible in, in thousands of years. Because what we do is we're looking for molecules, a single molecule that can replace this cocktail. So you need a molecule to do three or four activities in the cell. Finding one activity is what pharmaceutical companies do. It takes, you know, hundreds of millions, if not billions, to make a drug. We know that, right? My little lab of twenty people, uh, and students, young kids, are trying to make one drug do three or four different things. That's beyond the reach of pharmaceutical experience at least five years ago. So what we do is we've teamed up with a group at St. Jude's Hospital where they can take. It was ten billion.

• 30:49Speaker 01

  Now it's a trillion theoretical and also drug, known drugs. Um, some with my hands, I'm showing a big funnel and these trillion.

• 30:59Speaker 00

  Really good at podcasts. You're like helping out the audio people and everything. I love it.

• 31:02Speaker 01

  I relaunched my podcast, that, that's why.

• 31:04Speaker 00

  Oh, that's why.

• 31:05Speaker 01

  Yeah. Lifespan, David Sinclair. Um, shameless plug. So that, so this funnel is, uh, full of a trillion molecules and we have to come down to one. How do we do that? Well, we don't look for a trillion molecules at the bench. That would take a hundred and sixty or, or thousands of years with the case of a trillion molecules, even with robots, even with a lot of graduate students. So we do it inside the computer. We just use a lot of compute and we dock each of these molecules against the enzymes that we now know how they work, thanks to Google Deep Mind, solve the problem of how do all our proteins look, twenty thousand of them? And there's a lot of compute, but out the other end, a couple of months later, we have two,

• 31:46Speaker 01

  I don't have two hundred fingers, but two hundred fing, two hundred molecules that we can now test in the lab within, you know, a few weeks. Actually, next week, we're testing these two hundred against, uh, human cells. And we've also got AI helping us to tell us if the human cells go from ninety-two years old back to twenty, we can tell that just by looking at them, thanks to the AI.

• 32:08Speaker 00

  Is there a way to stop them from turning you into a baby? Because that's what I would worry about.

• 32:12Speaker 01

  Yes, yes.

• 32:13Speaker 00

  I don't wanna be a baby again.

• 32:15Speaker 01

  Uh, right, some people are already there.

• 32:17Speaker 00

  I'd like to cut it off at like, I was pretty good at twenty-five.

• 32:20Speaker 01

  You know, that's, I'm gonna get attacked for saying this, but that is what we do in the lab. We take ninety-two-year-old cells and they stop at twenty-something.

• 32:28Speaker 00

  Why, why would you get attacked for that?

• 32:30Speaker 01

  Uh, because on the internet, people take a clip and they say Sinclair says we can all go back to being twenty again. It, you suffer from this too, right? They take a clip and it's, it's out of context.

• 32:40Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 32:41Speaker 01

  Um, and I'm just saying, cells from humans, skin cells, we take them back to twenty-five. All my students can do this. In fact, if you had these little genes, OSK, in your garage, you could do this experiment. It's not hard at all to reverse aging. The question is, how do you safely make it a drug? And that's been the hard part over the last ten years.

• 32:58Speaker 00

  Um, so how would it be able to regulate this reduction or reversal of aging? And stop it at twenty-something years old?

• 33:11Speaker 01

  Well, that, that's what took so long. It wasn't obvious that these three Yamanaka genes called OSK were the right cocktail. My student, who I mentioned, Won Chang, he was struggling. He was trying a lot of different genes, most of them from embryos, because we know embryos have to do a reset in the first week of life, otherwise they stay the age of the parents.

• 33:34Speaker 01

  And he found that leaving out one of the Yamanaka genes was the trick. And now that we know it's super easy, but in those days, he was ready to quit.

• 33:42Speaker 00

  How did he find that out?

• 33:44Speaker 01

  Well, he tried lots of different combinations, hundreds in human cells. And you look at the cells to see if they get younger. And then we can measure molecularly that they get younger.

• 33:52Speaker 00

  And are you measuring them by the length of their telomeres? Are you?

• 33:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, partly, but actually a better measure is, uh, the chemicals that are added and subtracted off DNA itself called methyls. And it's just a carbon molecule with three hydrogens, very, very simple molecule. But what cells do is they use these methyls to tag genes to be switched off. So when we're growing as an embryo, the cells that wanna become neurons will shut off all these other unwanted genes like liver genes and skin genes. And the ones that don't get this methyl chemical stay on for our life. And that's how nerve cells develop and stay healthy. But what happens during aging, uh, a friend of mine, Steve Horvath, discovered that you can use this as a clock. These chemicals, they change over time.

• 34:39Speaker 01

  And we found that that happens largely due to DNA damage going in the sun, these kind of things. We could use this to rapidly age a mouse, um, which we published in twenty twenty-three.

• 34:50Speaker 00

  Oh, so like, maybe like some nefarious state actor, like some Russian spy could like inject something in your coffee and you would turn ninety-nine overnight?

• 34:59Speaker 01

  We know how to do that.

• 35:01Speaker 00

  Whoa. That's the dark side of this. You could, you could spike your husband's drink, fuck that dude, and turn him into an old man. Hey, what did you do?

• 35:11Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, some, someone tweeted the other day, if, if a ninety-two-year-old could be twenty-five again, would you have sex with them?

• 35:19Speaker 00

  Hell, yeah. Imagine how much they know?

• 35:22Speaker 01

  But would they have sex with you?

• 35:24Speaker 00

  Right.

• 35:24Speaker 01

  That's the better question.

• 35:25Speaker 00

  That's the question. They'd be looking for another twenty-year-old.

• 35:28Speaker 01

  Right. Um, so anyway, how do we do it? We, we can measure those chemicals and determine how old a cell is or a human. I could take your skin cells from your mouth or your blood and tell you how old you are.

• 35:38Speaker 00

  People would be so disturbed by like old, rich guys dating young women if that was the case.

• 35:45Speaker 01

  You couldn't tell if they looked young.

• 35:47Speaker 00

  Because people get very mad at that. You ever notice? Yeah, yeah. You see some real old decrepit dude with a hot, young wife and people are like, god damn it. They get really mad.

• 35:57Speaker 01

  Right, right now, the best way to do that is to have a big bank account, but eventually you'll actually look young again.

• 36:02Speaker 00

  But people still get grossed out. I wonder if they would get grossed out if you looked twenty. They'd be like, he's praying, he has so much more years of knowledge and information. I don't care if he looks twenty. That's a 99-year-old man.

• 36:15Speaker 01

  That day will come, that day will come where you will not be able to tell how old somebody is by looking at them. You'll have to do a test for these genes.

• 36:23Speaker 00

  This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. If you've thought about trying therapy with our long-term partner, BetterHelp, insurance options may now be available nationwide with an average copay for eligible members of just $23 per session. And with World Mental Health Day on the 10th, now's the perfect time to give it a try. In fact, don't even wait until the 10th because all that stress you feel, it's not waiting around. So instead of letting it build up, sign up for a therapy session and unload at any time, not just on World Mental Health Day. If you've been waiting to start therapy, BetterHelp works with more than 125 health plan networks and eligible members have an average copay of just $23

• 37:06Speaker 00

  per session with insurance. Don't have insurance or live outside of the United States? You can still get 10% off your first month. Visit betterhelp.com to explore your payment options. That's better, H-E-L-P.com. This episode is brought to you by Traeger. Food cooked over real wood is just on another level, and that's why Traeger is such a game changer. Their grills run on real hardwood pellets, so everything gets that legit wood-fired flavor. Whether you're grilling steaks, smoking ribs, cooking chicken, or even baking a pizza, you just set your temperature, put your food in, and let Traeger handle the rest. It's simple. If you like food that tastes like

• 37:49Speaker 00

  it came off a real fire without all the work, check out Traeger grills. Wow. I wonder if people still lie about their age, if that's the case. I wonder if no one will, like, you would probably lie the other way, like, "I'm 80."

• 38:05Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 38:05Speaker 00

  Tom's over there telling everybody he's 80.

• 38:07Speaker 01

  That's right. Well, when we live for hundreds of years, people will do that. They'll be proud of their age.

• 38:11Speaker 00

  Do you know anything about ancient civilizations and some of the weirdness of the records of, like, ancient Sumer?

• 38:22Speaker 01

  Well, only really what I've learned from listening to you.

• 38:25Speaker 00

  Well, it's, there's, what's really weird is the ancient kings lists. Because, so, okay. The theory, the theory among these alternative archaeologist types is that there was a very advanced civilization that existed on Earth tens of thousands of years ago, and were probably wiped out by comet impact. And what we have today is a rebuild of civilization. There's not a linear progression from caveman to us, and that at one point in time, we had reached great heights. This explains the pyramids, this explains Machu Picchu, Sosehualman, some megalithic structures that don't make any sense, these, the trilithon

• 39:09Speaker 00

  stones in Balbek Lamedon that are hundreds and hundreds of tons, that are massive, that are, you know, nine meters off the ground. No one understands exactly how they placed them. When you look at the Sumerian kings list, it gets very weird because there's kings that reigned for thousands of years. And then you have the flood, and then after the flood, the age of these people drops pretty dramatically. And the rains are, after a few hundred years, become normal, become like a normal person, like 50 years, 30 years, like that. But thousands of years before. And then people are looking at it like, okay,

• 39:51Speaker 00

  is this just myth? Is this poor record-keeping? Do they have just these, you know, hyperbolic, elevated stories about these kings? They were so amazing, they reigned for 30,000 years. Or had they achieved, not just in building, because in building, we know they had achieved incredibly complex structure, like the pyramid, for instance, like, they had insane engineering, somehow or another, the ability to move these 500-ton stones from hundreds of miles away. Like, how did they do this? We don't really know, but we know that they did it. Did they also have the kind of technology that you're talking

• 40:32Speaker 00

  about right now? Because if it's possible today, and if that is, I mean, it makes it very difficult because it goes against what you would call, like, the modern narrative that they're teaching in universities in terms of the timeline of human history. But if that changes, and we have undeniable evidence, well, it looks like these people were far more advanced than we thought, and there probably was some sort of a reset of civilization. What else had they accomplished? And had they gotten involved in genetic engineering? Had they figured out a way to extend lifespan? And if they did, imagine all the work that you've accomplished in your, you're 57 now, about to 57? You look great, by the way.

• 41:15Speaker 01

  Hey, thanks.

• 41:15Speaker 00

  You really do. Look at your hair. It's so dark. It's incredible.

• 41:18Speaker 01

  People speculate it's all fake, but it's actually, it's not. But anyway, hey.

• 41:22Speaker 00

  You're at the...

• 41:23Speaker 01

  Happy birthday to, it's coming up.

• 41:24Speaker 00

  Thank you very much.

• 41:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:25Speaker 00

  Yeah. I don't look as good as you, though.

• 41:27Speaker 01

  Yes, you do. Physically, you're way better than me.

• 41:30Speaker 00

  That's different, though. My face looks older. You look, you look very young for your age.

• 41:35Speaker 01

  You know why?

• 41:36Speaker 00

  Why?

• 41:36Speaker 01

  Because I've spent all my time in a lab and I haven't gone outdoors for a while.

• 41:39Speaker 00

  I'm sure that helps.

• 41:40Speaker 01

  That does help.

• 41:42Speaker 00

  But my point is, imagine if you had 500 years to do research, not just 57 years. Imagine if you could continue learning and growing, and they did develop some sort of a life extension technology where you could not just be older, but be healthier than you've ever been before and live for 1,000 years. You would get so much done. I mean, the exponential increase in technological innovation that we would have in this society would be absolutely mind-blowing.

• 42:15Speaker 01

  Exactly. Exactly, exactly. This is a really important point.

• 42:18Speaker 00

  What these alternative history people think, that might be what had taken place tens of thousands of years ago.

• 42:24Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, I'm a Harvard scientist, so I'm not going to say anything that isn't...

• 42:28Speaker 00

  Of course. That's for me.

• 42:30Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 42:31Speaker 00

  That's where I live.

• 42:32Speaker 01

  That's why I shut up. But you did make some really important points. One is that ancient civilizations were, have always been way more advanced than we think.

• 42:40Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 42:40Speaker 01

  Dinosaurs a lot more real than we make them look. These, this, we always get things wrong looking back in time and looking forward in time. But the other thing that you said, which is really important, is that if we do have extension of human lifespan, like the Bible and these civilizations suggest, then how will you think about your life if being 100 is, you know, you're still in your prime? You do things very differently. Who would you marry? What career would you think about? You might have multiple lifetimes, multiple marriages, multiple families. And that will happen. It's not really a question of if anymore. It's like asking the Wright Brothers, will we fly? Yeah, we built the glider. We're going to fly around. Question is, will we build a Concorde? Will we go to space? And I think that will happen.

• 43:25Speaker 00

  Yeah. No, I think so, too. I, I, I think, well, certainly, one thing that we know is that there's a giant difference between people who are 57 years old today versus 57 years old in the 1930s. It's just a giant difference, a giant difference in your physical ability, your health.

• 43:42Speaker 01

  We'd be old men.

• 43:43Speaker 00

  Yeah, we would be old men. And what, I mean, when I was a child, I thought of people, I'm almost 59, I'll be 59 in a week. I used to think of a 59-year-old as being basically dead. Like, you're, you're barely getting around, you know, you're probably tired all the time.

• 44:01Speaker 01

  Looking to retire soon.

• 44:02Speaker 00

  Yeah, looking to retire. You got no energy. I'm filled with energy. I'm constantly doing, how old is he? 60? That's what it says.

• 44:10Speaker 01

  Oh, no.

• 44:11Speaker 00

  I don't know if that's accurate. That's, I bet that's accurate. They had no fucking vitamins. Nobody knew what, like, what the proper nutrients you should take were. Nobody knew the, what was really important in terms of, like, resistance training and sleep and red light therapy and all that jazz.

• 44:27Speaker 01

  And they were doing all the bad stuff, like, heavy smoking, drinking, not sleeping a lot.

• 44:31Speaker 00

  Yep, not sleeping a lot, heavy, and pesticides and all kinds of terrible shit. 60-year-old, what? That guy's 60? That's crazy. No way. I don't know, man. Come on, shut up. That guy's fucking 28 years old. There's no way. That guy's 60? Is that real?

• 44:48Speaker 01

  I doubt it. I doubt it. How about that guy that looks 50 and he says, everyone thinks I'm 18? Like, yeah, sure.

• 44:54Speaker 00

  What's that?

• 44:55Speaker 01

  There's a guy on Instagram, which I occasionally visit. And he obviously looks old, like he's looks.

• 45:02Speaker 00

  Oh, he's a crazy person.

• 45:03Speaker 01

  And he says, people think I look eighteen.

• 45:05Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 45:06Speaker 01

  Are you crazy?

• 45:07Speaker 00

  Well, there's a lot of crazy people out there.

• 45:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:09Speaker 00

  There's a lot. Well, that's body dysmorphia, you know?

• 45:11Speaker 01

  It must be.

• 45:12Speaker 00

  Bodybuilders, they think they're tiny. A lot of people, people are crazy.

• 45:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:15Speaker 00

  A lot of people have a distorted perception of what they look like.

• 45:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, the, the plastic surgery industry is massive. It's just growing and growing. You can see.

• 45:23Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 45:23Speaker 01

  It on the street, LA especially. But imagine a world where.

• 45:28Speaker 00

  You don't need that.

• 45:29Speaker 01

  If I'm successful, you can take a pill, your doctor could get it. Or eventually it's a cream on your face and you literally get younger. We do this in mice already. The mice get younger. Is it going to work in humans? I think it's just a matter of time.

• 45:42Speaker 00

  So in the mice experiments, what have you achieved?

• 45:47Speaker 01

  Well, a lot, you know, I can reveal here. Some of it for the first time. We, this, this pill that we give them, it's a drink actually, because they can't chew. The mice within four weeks with this cocktail, it has three components, which are top secret. My lab is sworn to secrecy. They, after four weeks, we give it to them three days a week. Monday, Wednesday, Friday, weekends off. Within those four weeks, they get better physically, mentally. Excuse me. They, so we put them through tests.

• 46:19Speaker 00

  Just in a couple of days?

• 46:20Speaker 01

  Oh, no, three days a week for a month.

• 46:22Speaker 00

  Oh, okay.

• 46:23Speaker 03

  I found this guy's Instagram.

• 46:24Speaker 00

  This is the guy?

• 46:24Speaker 03

  He went viral last year. He's being fifty nine years old.

• 46:28Speaker 00

  What?

• 46:29Speaker 03

  Fucking, it seems so not real.

• 46:32Speaker 00

  That's crazy.

• 46:33Speaker 01

  He looks like he's maybe thirty, exactly.

• 46:35Speaker 00

  He might have just amazing genetics. Well, look at Joel Romero. There, there are people that are freaks.

• 46:41Speaker 03

  He's from Singapore.

• 46:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:43Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 46:43Speaker 03

  Quando, Quandotan.

• 46:45Speaker 00

  And he's sixty years old?

• 46:47Speaker 03

  Yeah, he's been gone.

• 46:48Speaker 01

  Without facelifts.

• 46:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, I don't know.

• 46:51Speaker 00

  He certainly doesn't look like he's had a facelift.

• 46:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, right.

• 46:53Speaker 00

  His skin is fucking incredible.

• 46:55Speaker 01

  Yeah. But he's probably never been in the sun.

• 46:57Speaker 03

  It could be full, a full AI account and it's trolling everyone. I don't know.

• 47:02Speaker 00

  That's possible too. Like, look at that picture right there. Like, that looks a little AI-ish. Go back to that one again. Keep your pants on, Jamie.

• 47:09Speaker 03

  Relax, relax.

• 47:11Speaker 00

  That looks very AI, doesn't it?

• 47:13Speaker 03

  I'm just, it could be, is all.

• 47:17Speaker 00

  His fifty ninth birthday. His whole thing is that he's young for his.

• 47:20Speaker 03

  Fifty eight looks half his age.

• 47:22Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 47:23Speaker 03

  I mean.

• 47:24Speaker 01

  This will be normal.

• 47:25Speaker 03

  Yeah, this is twenty twenty four. So it's not, this has been going on for a while.

• 47:28Speaker 00

  Okay, so this is pre-AI.

• 47:30Speaker 03

  Yeah, if it's fake, then he would have been called out now, I feel.

• 47:33Speaker 00

  Right, so he might just be a genetic freak.

• 47:36Speaker 03

  Could be, yep.

• 47:37Speaker 00

  Which is interesting, right? Like, do you guys study the different? Like, you know, unfortunately, certain people that have like, like pale people, for instance, with thin skin. They, they age hardcore. They go.

• 47:48Speaker 01

  And there are those kids that get old in their teens.

• 47:50Speaker 00

  Right.

• 47:51Speaker 01

  We study that as well.

• 47:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 47:53Speaker 01

  And we're reversing that too. But yeah, we, we do study the genetics of aging.

• 47:57Speaker 00

  That's the real application for it, where people are going to be excited about it. People that have that, what is it called? Progeria?

• 48:04Speaker 01

  Progeria, exactly.

• 48:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 48:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, and so we have mice that have this same gene mutation and they get old really quickly. And we're giving them the drink right now.

• 48:12Speaker 00

  And so in the drink, you give it to them how often and for a month?

• 48:16Speaker 01

  It's once a day, every other day, three days a week, for a month. And, yeah, in normal old mice, we see them fitter, stronger, better memory, they run around the cage.

• 48:29Speaker 00

  In just a month?

• 48:30Speaker 01

  It's amazing. We only did a month because it was Christmas holiday season. We didn't, we didn't want to go for longer. But it worked in four weeks. I'm shocked. Even these genes require six to eight weeks to work for revision, recovery of vision.

• 48:45Speaker 00

  And so this, this is working on a different pathway?

• 48:48Speaker 01

  Well, here's the cool thing. We, we think it's working through the same mechanism, the reboot, the reinstallation of software. The drink, because there are genes called Tets. There are three of them in the body. And they do something.

• 49:03Speaker 00

  Spell that?

• 49:03Speaker 01

  T E T, capital T E T. There's one, two, three. And these are genes that make enzymes that remove these methyls off the DNA. So they, they control the clock. And if we get rid of those genes, our system doesn't work. We cannot restore vision and our pill doesn't work without removing and altering those chemicals. So in other words, it's not just because the chemicals make the cell healthier. It's actually resetting this clock on the DNA.

• 49:34Speaker 00

  Whoa.

• 49:35Speaker 01

  And that was the big deal. I said, whoa, when my student told me. And that's why I think it got the cover of Nature magazine, which is, we're actually looking at the, the clock of life. And we've realized that this clock that goes around, this biological clock, isn't just a clock. When you move the hands of the clock, time goes backwards for the body. Meaning the clock is aging. And aging is the clock.

• 50:02Speaker 00

  Wow. What is it? I'm, it's, you don't really know in terms of humans. But is there any indication that improves cognitive function in mice?

• 50:11Speaker 01

  Yes, I can say without a doubt that other labs and ours have shown that when you reverse the age of the brain in a mouse, it gets better at learning. And we even have some hints, and we're going to publish this, that lost memories come back.

• 50:27Speaker 00

  Whoa.

• 50:27Speaker 01

  So Alzheimer's patients, I believe, still have memories. They just cannot access them and that one day we can reverse Alzheimer's disease by making the brain young. And that, using that approach, making the whole body young, we can cure diseases that are currently incurable.

• 50:44Speaker 00

  Holy shit.

• 50:47Speaker 01

  Well, young people don't get Alzheimer's. Why? Because the body can tackle the problem. The young body can heal itself. So my approach is make the body young, it'll heal itself in every way.

• 50:58Speaker 00

  Well, do you have children?

• 50:59Speaker 01

  Three.

• 51:00Speaker 00

  Yeah, one of the things that's just phenomenal is watching them heal. I'm like, it, it is so, it's so wild, but also you envy them so much because they get a cut. And it's like, two days later, like, where's your cut? It's fucking gone? Like, that's crazy. Like, my daughter had a, a cut, she fell and knocked her head. And she had this like dark spot on her head, like where, where she got injured. And like, four or five days, it was gone. And I was like, that fucking thing would be with me for four months.

• 51:30Speaker 01

  Yeah. And the good thing is if we rub our cocktail on the skin of the mice, they heal like they're young again.

• 51:36Speaker 00

  Oh, so that would be like a great application for ladies who want the beauty treatment on the face, right?

• 51:42Speaker 01

  That's where we're headed.

• 51:43Speaker 00

  Whoa.

• 51:43Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, and we're working on hair. We can grow human hair on mice now.

• 51:48Speaker 00

  Really?

• 51:48Speaker 01

  That took a few years. And now we can check if we can regrow hair and make it dark again.

• 51:53Speaker 00

  You can grow human hair on mice?

• 51:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm not allowed to, actually, I did post it on Instagram and the university said, get that down. But it exists. We grow it from stem cells, from human stem cells. We make little balls of hair, takes a few months. We open up the ball to make a flat piece of skin, human skin. We put that in the back of a mouse that can accept human skin. And then you get black tufts of hair from humans in a mouse.

• 52:19Speaker 00

  Could you get any kind of hair? Like, could I get an Afro? I just want to get one to piss people off. I would love an Afro, like a Colin Kaepernick type, just a big crazy one.

• 52:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, we could grow, grow hair. We can do that. We, we're one of the few labs that can grow this hair. So I thought about doing that for a company, but I think hair transplants would just be easier.

• 52:37Speaker 00

  Oh, right. So you would grow hair in a lab and then transplant those hairs?

• 52:41Speaker 01

  We can do that, yeah.

• 52:42Speaker 00

  Ah, well, that's the thing, because I got a hair transplant. But the way I describe it is like, you're take, it's like taking people that are really healthy and moving them into a town where everyone's dying. Because like, you're taking, taking hair from back here where it's going to stay and you're putting it up here where it's all falling out.

• 53:00Speaker 01

  Oh, it didn't thrive?

• 53:01Speaker 00

  What's that?

• 53:02Speaker 01

  It doesn't thrive if you move it.

• 53:03Speaker 00

  Oh, it thrives, but everybody else dies.

• 53:05Speaker 01

  Oh, shit.

• 53:06Speaker 00

  You know, you can only take so much from the back of your head and move it to the top of your head. That's why a lot of guys with hair transplants look goofy. Because you have like this strong hairline in the front and it goes back like that and then everything else looks like chaos.

• 53:19Speaker 01

  Oh, that sucks. You know what I take for my hair?

• 53:22Speaker 00

  What do you take?

• 53:22Speaker 01

  Among other things. Viagra.

• 53:26Speaker 00

  Viagra?

• 53:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, actually, I shouldn't say the brand name.

• 53:29Speaker 00

  That's why I take it for my hair.

• 53:32Speaker 01

  That's what I tell everybody. That is true. It's low dose, seven milligrams a day of Tadalfil. And it's good for a lot of things, a lot of things.

• 53:39Speaker 00

  I know it's good for endurance.

• 53:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:42Speaker 00

  Yeah, and because I know athletes who take it for endurance, they probably take it to fuck too. Let's not kid ourselves.

• 53:49Speaker 01

  Well, it's a nice, it's a nice benefit. When a science, a paper just came out about its role in preventing cancer. I tweeted what, what's not to love? People love that tweet, but the point is, actually, last week, they found that these drugs in mice and seemingly in people who take these drugs are actually resistant to can, certain types of cancers, like head and neck cancer.

• 54:14Speaker 00

  Interesting.

• 54:15Speaker 01

  They're turning out to be really important.

• 54:16Speaker 00

  Because it improves blood flow?

• 54:17Speaker 01

  Well, two reasons. They're not related to blood flow, but they're related to what's called nitric oxide signaling, which is what helps dilate blood vessels in all your body, including your penis. The other two mechanisms, one showed that Tadalfil is good for exposing the tumor to the immune system. There are certain cells called M D S Cs that protect the tumor from getting attacked. And the drug stops that. So now the tumors shrink in mice and seemingly in people, in tumors. And then the second mechanism is really interesting. It seems to, this was Sedanfil, so this is now Viagra, found that the cancer is, a lot of cancers thrive on cholesterol.

• 55:01Speaker 01

  And this blocks the ability of cancer cells to use cholesterol.

• 55:04Speaker 00

  I thought they thrived on glucose.

• 55:06Speaker 01

  That too, exactly. Right, so you want to be in ketosis if you've got a tumor.

• 55:11Speaker 00

  Right.

• 55:11Speaker 01

  In general, so fasting is good. But now it looks like these ED drugs are, might be good for it as well.

• 55:19Speaker 00

  Fascinating. And wasn't, I think Viagra was a, it was an accident, right? Wasn't, wasn't it a blood pressure medication?

• 55:29Speaker 01

  It's a good story. It was for angina, right? It was for your, for your heart. But the story goes that women especially, and, and the men didn't want to give up the drugs that they had left over.

• 55:42Speaker 01

  It was amazing. It was, I think it was seventy-five percent had a positive reaction for erections and without it twenty-two. So it's, it's very clear that it was working.

• 55:51Speaker 00

  Hmm. Interesting. And so, uh, so how does it help hair?

• 55:56Speaker 01

  Uh, well, we don't know for sure, but there's a lot of evidence that part of the reason hair dies out and stops growing is a lack of blood flow. And the minoxidil that people put on their hair helps with that.

• 56:07Speaker 00

  Right. Interesting. And then DHT inhibitors.

• 56:11Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 56:12Speaker 00

  Also help.

• 56:13Speaker 01

  That'd be dutasteride, uh, people can take orally.

• 56:16Speaker 00

  Yeah. The problem with that is, uh, my friend had severe depression when he took that.

• 56:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:21Speaker 00

  It really fucked him up. And he didn't realize, cause he didn't understand that that was the side. He was like, what is wrong with me? And he was getting suicidal. And then he got off of it and it just went away. And he's like, oh my God, I can't believe that. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. You've probably heard about BetterHelp before, but maybe you haven't heard from those who have actually used BetterHelp. That feedback can tell you everything you need to know. Go to betterhelp.com/reviews and check out the feedback from hundreds of people saying how much they love this service. It's easy to see why. To get started, all you have to do is answer a few questions. You'll get matched

• 57:01Speaker 00

  up with a therapist based on your needs. And if it's not the right fit, you can switch therapists at any time. See the reviews, see what stands out, and see if BetterHelp is right for you. Visit betterhelp.com/jre. That's better H E L P dot com slash J R E.

• 57:22Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, I, I'm taking it for a number of reasons, including my hair and my prostate. See if I can keep it from growing. But, uh, unfortunately I haven't had that side effect.

• 57:33Speaker 00

  But it depends, right? It varies biologically depending on the person.

• 57:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's important when either of us says that drug's good, that drug's bad.

• 57:40Speaker 00

  Right.

• 57:41Speaker 01

  People realize that you have to test it, see, and with doctor's supervision.

• 57:45Speaker 00

  Yeah, that was where, where I was gonna get to was like, because different medications have different reactions or different people's reactions to medications, they, they vary quite wildly. So like, before you make this public, like, how, how do you determine whether or not this is gonna be safe for a wide variety of people to reverse aging?

• 58:08Speaker 01

  Oh, my drug, um, our drug that we're making, well, we will test it on a lot of people before it goes out into the, the wide world.

• 58:16Speaker 00

  And you've started testing it on people so far?

• 58:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, there are people right now who have this, these genes in their eye.

• 58:23Speaker 00

  And how's it going?

• 58:24Speaker 01

  Uh, I'm not allowed to say, but.

• 58:26Speaker 00

  Can you wink twice if it's great?

• 58:28Speaker 01

  Um, I would say that everything's, uh, on target.

• 58:33Speaker 00

  Okay. That's good to hear.

• 58:35Speaker 01

  Nothing bad to report.

• 58:36Speaker 00

  Nothing bad to report?

• 58:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think those might be the words I'm allowed to say.

• 58:39Speaker 00

  And is that the only clinical trials you've used with any of these applications for, for humans?

• 58:44Speaker 01

  So far, that was the first. Glaucoma and also sudden blindness. Um, it's called NION, which is now twice as more prevalent because of the GLP-1 drugs.

• 58:54Speaker 00

  Really?

• 58:55Speaker 01

  It's not well-known, obviously. Companies don't wanna talk about it, but yes, sudden blindness has doubled seemingly because of these meds. You have to be.

• 59:05Speaker 00

  Holy shit. Sudden blindness has doubled because of GLP-1s?

• 59:10Speaker 01

  Due to NION, which is like a stroke in your eye. And then your other eye can go, which is pretty scary. And there's nothing you can do about it. Hopefully our drug does work for those people.

• 59:21Speaker 00

  And I'll, well, obviously correlation does not equal causation, but it seems to be.

• 59:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's a scientist at Harvard, you could look up his work, um, Joe Rizzo. It looks like it's repeatable across the planet.

• 59:36Speaker 00

  Wow. That's terrible because there's so many people out there that are just telling everyone they should get on GLP-1s.

• 59:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:43Speaker 00

  I've seen that, like, by online people, like, online podcasters saying, everyone should get on GLP-1s. It's groundbreaking technology. This is amazing. It's gonna transform society. I'm like, we just started taking these. What the fuck are you saying?

• 59:59Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's not risk-free. Same with ED drugs.

• 1:00:02Speaker 00

  Here goes. Recent study suggests that a potential rare link between GLP-1 receptor agonist medications such as Ozempic, Wegovy, blah, blah, blah, and a condition called non-arteritic anterior, what's that word? Ischemic?

• 1:00:18Speaker 01

  Ischemic.

• 1:00:18Speaker 00

  Ischemic optic neuropathy. An eye stroke can cause sudden, painless loss of vision in one eye. While absolute risk remains very low, anyone experiencing sudden vision changes should seek emergency medical, medical evaluation immediately. Well, very low is like.

• 1:00:35Speaker 01

  It's still.

• 1:00:36Speaker 00

  What does that mean?

• 1:00:36Speaker 01

  More than ten thousand people.

• 1:00:37Speaker 00

  One in ten thousand?

• 1:00:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:39Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's.

• 1:00:39Speaker 01

  I know, total of ten thousand.

• 1:00:41Speaker 00

  Oh, total of ten thousand so far. For, how many people are taking this stuff?

• 1:00:44Speaker 01

  I think it's pretty.

• 1:00:46Speaker 00

  The drugs were sixty-eight point six times more likely to develop this and eight times more likely to develop diabetic. What is that?

• 1:00:59Speaker 00

  We only got the blurb.

• 1:01:02Speaker 00

  Oh my God. Then, wow.

• 1:01:08Speaker 00

  Yeah, man, these things are just, they're just rolling out. And the people that are like, super enthusiastic and also they have some sort of a financial interest in promoting these things, which oftentimes does seem to be the case with a lot of these people. They have either stock in these companies or some sort of a stake in them.

• 1:01:27Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah, it's true. Though I will, I will say to counter that, that the GLP-1 drugs have probably saved millions of lives already. And they're pretty common. I think it's ten percent of people are trying them and twenty-five percent want to.

• 1:01:38Speaker 00

  Yeah. I mean, they don't work for everybody. I have a good friend of mine that had a terrible reaction from it and he was hospitalized and.

• 1:01:43Speaker 01

  Oh, no.

• 1:01:44Speaker 00

  But I know other people where it's completely transformed their life and they've lost a ton of weight. And particularly people that just, for whatever reason, the food addiction was so incredibly strong that whatever their constitution, the way they're, the way they're designed, the way they're built, the way they've evolved as a human being, they weren't capable of overcoming it. They take the GLP-1s and then they sort of start getting moving and then they lose all the weight. They start feeling better. They start making a lot of other positive changes. You get that momentum, which I, I always talk about is, which is one of the most important things for transforming your life. Everyone wants, wants to talk about discipline. I think discipline is the primary. That's the main engine. But one of

• 1:02:26Speaker 00

  the things that comes along with any kind of an exercise program or changing your life program, where you, you start getting positive results, is momentum. And momentum is absolutely huge.

• 1:02:36Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:02:36Speaker 00

  Because then you start feeling.

• 1:02:37Speaker 01

  That's so important.

• 1:02:38Speaker 00

  This is good. So I think GLP-1s are fantastic for getting people going.

• 1:02:42Speaker 01

  Yes. Everybody should hear this. It's really important. I'll give you my example. It's a classic case. I couldn't fast for more than about a day. I wanted to do more. I know that three days fasting is good. A week can be even better, but I couldn't do it. I was, I don't have a lot of willpower when it comes to this kind of stuff. I tried a GLP-1 receptor agonist. I gave it and it was easy. I didn't even feel like I needed to snack at night, which is one of the things that I and many people suffer from. But the fact that I could do it, I went off the drug. I didn't need it. But now I can fast for, I went for two weeks, uh, and a couple of months ago.

• 1:03:21Speaker 00

  Whoa.

• 1:03:21Speaker 01

  It's easy now. Like, now that I know that I can do it mentally, it's not hard at all.

• 1:03:25Speaker 00

  The momentum.

• 1:03:26Speaker 01

  Exactly. I know what's possible.

• 1:03:28Speaker 00

  Yeah. Yeah. That's fascinating. Um, you, are you still on a plant-based diet?

• 1:03:35Speaker 01

  Mostly.

• 1:03:36Speaker 00

  Yeah. I, what I had, I had just had a conversation with a friend of mine about this. I don't know how much of the information that he was telling me was totally accurate, but what he was saying was that, um, he was told before he did fasting that one of the best, cause he's a runner. He said, one of the best ways to get into fasting is to get your body into ketosis first. He said, and what he thinks is that a carnivore-based diet and what he was told was a good way. If you could do that for a few weeks, it mitigates your appetite. Like, one of the things that happens with a lot of these diets that, uh, regulate insulin

• 1:04:15Speaker 00

  resistance is that when you get used to consuming just fats and protein, you don't have the kind of hunger pangs that you have with carbohydrates. Like, when I, if I go in a bad streak and I'm eating pizza and pasta and, and I've done that in the past, I don't really do that much and all, unless I'm on vacation. In the, in the past though, when I would get hungry, I would get crazy hungry. Like, I, I've gotta eat now. I don't get that at all anymore because I'm mostly on a carnivore-based diet. Mostly what I eat, the, like, you look at the bulk of my diet, it's meat and fermented vegetables. It's meat and like kimchi and sauerkraut and stuff along those lines. And when I eat like that,

• 1:04:59Speaker 00

  my hunger is very easy to control. And I've gone twenty-four hours, like, like it's nothing, not eating. It's like, not a problem at all. But that's the most I've ever fasted is twenty-four hours.

• 1:05:10Speaker 01

  Okay. Well, see if you can go for three. Um, it's really worth it. You feel really great. Um, ketosis is wonderful.

• 1:05:17Speaker 00

  That's what everybody says.

• 1:05:17Speaker 01

  Yeah. And you go into what's called deep cleansing. It's called, um, Chaperone-mediated autophagy or CMA. And a friend of mine in New York, Maria Corvo, studies this. And it cleans out a lot of the old proteins in your body. So ketosis doesn't just make you feel good. You're actually renewing your protein in your body and rebuilding it. And so I, I do that as a, as an anti-aging thing.

• 1:05:40Speaker 00

  What I find is the biggest benefit is, uh, mental acuity. It, it's a, it has a giant impact when I stick to the diet in terms of my ability to form sentences, like, recall information and just be present in, in podcasts.

• 1:05:56Speaker 01

  Yeah. So in, in, in my podcast, um, it's, what you do is really quite difficult. It, you make it look easy. So when I'm, when I'm doing my podcast and often it's solo, so it's challenging, um, I forget things. I have to remember hundreds of papers for these things. They're quite hard. Um, either I'm, I'm gonna fast and if I don't remember to fast, um, I did an experiment. I took some ketones. You can drink these things, right?

• 1:06:19Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:06:20Speaker 01

  There's the one, uh, the little drink I think was.

• 1:06:22Speaker 00

  Ketone IQ?

• 1:06:22Speaker 01

  Ketone IQ.

• 1:06:23Speaker 00

  Yeah. Fantastic stuff.

• 1:06:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. I use that.

• 1:06:25Speaker 00

  I love that stuff. I do that. I take that before. I do, uh, UFC broadcasts a lot of the times. Yeah.

• 1:06:30Speaker 01

  Um, I actually took some before.

• 1:06:32Speaker 00

  Cause one, that's great before podcasts as well. One of, one of, one of more difficult things that I do is the UFC commentary because it's six hours. It's six hours of talking on air, live. Yeah, and about fights and and I'm also recalling fights and I'm also I'm seeing positions. So I have to remember in my mind how this is finished because like in jujitsu, there might be, I don't know how many positions there are, there's thousands. And there's moves where I'm like, what is he doing? What is he doing? Oh, oh, that's that. That's the Peruvian necktie. I'm looking at his arms, like your brain is fu- I I am exhausted at the end of six hours and fucking starving. Like after the UFC is over, I can eat so much food. It's I'm so hungry.

• 1:07:14Speaker 01

  But you take a little drink?

• 1:07:15Speaker 00

  I take a little ketone, little ketone IQ. I take nootropics. I drink this stuff. My friend Derek makes this. His Gorilla Mind. It's a nootropic.

• 1:07:24Speaker 01

  Oh, I gotta try that.

• 1:07:25Speaker 00

  So it's a nootropic cocktail with caffeine in it. This stuff's really good for a podcast. I also take AlphaBrain. AlphaBrain Black Label is phenomenal for that. There's a bunch of different ones that I take. Uh, the gum, NeuroGum. NeuroGum's excellent for that, too. But I just do fucking everything I can to maximize my-

• 1:07:43Speaker 01

  So that's how you do it? All right.

• 1:07:44Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:07:45Speaker 01

  Secret is now out. All right. But what you do is amazing. And I thought you were on modafinil or something.

• 1:07:50Speaker 00

  No, I've I've taken that before in the past. But the problem with that stuff is I think I like it too much and I want to take it all the time. You know when I used to take that? If I had a gig in San Diego and I drive home after the gig and it was like, you know, one o'clock in the morning when I'm done. And then I'm like, I'll just go home. It's only two and a half hours. And I start making the drive and you just get so tired. But if I take NuVigil or ProVigil before I do that, I would be able to drive no problem. Put a book on tape on. What's that?

• 1:08:21Speaker 01

  Can you sleep after that?

• 1:08:22Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah. Yeah. It doesn't seem to affect your ability to sleep, which is really interesting. It's not like caffeine. Do you do it? Do you take it at all?

• 1:08:30Speaker 01

  I'm modafinil for talks when I'm, you know, traveling.

• 1:08:34Speaker 00

  Does it help you?

• 1:08:35Speaker 01

  Definitely.

• 1:08:36Speaker 00

  Would it like in what way?

• 1:08:38Speaker 01

  Um, it it gets rid of my jet lag and I can focus. My brain often is either scattered or filled with facts that I causes me like now to not be able to talk properly. But if I'm on it, which I'm not, I'm I'm on point every time.

• 1:08:53Speaker 00

  For me, the best thing for jet lag is exercise. There's something about rigor rigorous exercise. It doesn't even have to be long. It just has to be where my heart rate gets really elevated, like above 150 beats per minute for 15, 20 minutes. Like I have to really go hard where I'm sweaty and breathing heavy. You know, especially if I jack it up to like 180, 190, like I'm doing like Tabata sprints on an air dyn bike. That kind of stuff completely resets me.

• 1:09:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:23Speaker 00

  Hard kettlebell workouts, like I'll do like a hard series where minimal amount of rest in between. So I'm really pushing it. Once I relax, I'm back. It's like it whatever it is where your body just needs to like shake it up and like get all of it out of your system. It's like now I feel completely normal.

• 1:09:40Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, you might remember last time we talked about hormesis.

• 1:09:44Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:09:45Speaker 01

  What doesn't kill you makes you stronger. And that's what you're doing. You're putting your body into survival mode. So one of the reasons I eat mostly plants, why I take NMN and these other molecules is to mimic that. I don't work out like you do. I should, but I don't. And-

• 1:10:01Speaker 00

  Why don't you?

• 1:10:02Speaker 01

  Uh, I think partly because I tell myself I'm too busy, which is bullshit. I need a I need a partner who will motivate me. I think that would help.

• 1:10:14Speaker 00

  Maybe just get a trainer.

• 1:10:16Speaker 01

  That's that's a solution.

• 1:10:17Speaker 00

  You got some chatter. Get a trainer.

• 1:10:20Speaker 01

  I got some chatter. Oh, is that money?

• 1:10:21Speaker 00

  Money. Yeah.

• 1:10:22Speaker 01

  No, I can definitely afford one. Yeah, and you know, it's on me. I actually I will own that, that I should do more.

• 1:10:29Speaker 00

  I just was explaining this to my friend last night. He was like, I gotta start working. I'm like, just get a trainer. Get a trainer, someone who's good, and that way they'll develop a program for you. All you have to do is just show up and do what they tell you to do. Just do it. And it's mindless. You could just like just go through what they tell you to do and you'll just you trust the process. You'll improve radically.

• 1:10:50Speaker 01

  All right. All right. Here's what we're gonna do.

• 1:10:52Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:10:53Speaker 01

  I'm gonna take you on-

• 1:10:55Speaker 00

  Here's what we're gonna do. You're gonna get me a jug of that fucking juice.

• 1:10:58Speaker 01

  Of this stuff? We'll swap, all right? And you'll be my trainer?

• 1:11:01Speaker 00

  Yeah, I'll be your trainer. I will. I I've done that before with my comedian friends.

• 1:11:06Speaker 01

  Really?

• 1:11:07Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 1:11:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'll just come up.

• 1:11:08Speaker 00

  And I do it the right way where I take him through it very easy. I don't have him work out hard at all, especially in the beginning. Everything is like nice and easy. It's like a little bit of strain. You're not gonna be exhausted afterwards and we build you up. I'm a I'm a I'm a firm believer in not overtaxing the system on people that are sedentary. I really think it's a slow gradual process. I I think you have to get better the same way you got sick over time.

• 1:11:36Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:11:37Speaker 00

  You can make radical changes in a short period of time. Don't get me wrong. And even just a little bit of, you know, moderately rigorous exercise, a few days a week will a few days a week will give you great improvements. But I'm not one of those guys who's like, you know, we're gonna do two hours today and you're gonna go to failure and you're gonna be throwing up in a garbage pan. You're not gonna do that again the next day. I want you to do it again the next day. I want you to have a a nice workout where, you know, you're doing like 10 pushups and 10 situps and 10 bodyweight squats and then we're gonna do some of these kettlebell cleans and kettlebell nothing hard. Like everything's gonna be like, phew, okay, you put it down, you're fine. And I want you to leave rejuvenated, like you feel like, oh, that was like exhilarating.

• 1:12:22Speaker 00

  Nothing crazy.

• 1:12:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:12:23Speaker 00

  And then we'll slowly start to add a little bit over time. That's what I think the right thing to do with people who don't work out all the time. You can't just jump in and, you know-

• 1:12:33Speaker 01

  It's like fasting and skipping meals. You just can't do a day or three without practicing.

• 1:12:38Speaker 04

  Traditional banks are making it harder than ever to secure a small business loan. That's why thousands of business owners trust Cardiff for same-day funding. With over two decades of expertise, business owners keep voting Cardiff, America's favorite small business lender. Apply now for up to $500,000 in same-day business funding at cardiff.co/rogan. Again, that's cardiff.co/rogan. Cardiff, borrow better.

• 1:13:09Speaker 00

  This episode is brought to you by Chime. And I know people don't usually get excited about banking, but Chime is doing something different and it's worth paying attention to. In a recent survey, they ranked the number one choice for new checking accounts in America. That means real people, millions of them, are choosing this over traditional banks. That's because banking at Chime is fee-free. No monthly fees, no overdraft fees and thousands of fee-free ATMs. But here's the real kicker. If you get their Chime card, it gives you 5% cash back on a category you actually pick yourself. Your savings rate, crazy high. It's nine times the national average. They're calling it the most rewarding way to bank. Go to chime.com/rogan. Takes a few minutes to sign up.

• 1:13:54Speaker 00

  Chime is a fintech, not a bank. Banking services and Chime card provided by Chime's bank partners. Terms and limits apply. Go to chime.com/disclosures for more details. Well, it's also you're gonna get injured. And this is one of the main things that happens to people that dive right into the deep end of the pool when they start working out is they get hurt. They get muscle pulls. They get backaches. They get all these different things that happen because I think you just pushed your body too quickly. You know, it's like you're you're in boot camp. Like, well, you don't have to be in boot camp. This is not the way to do it. The way to do it is like slowly build up and trust the process slowly. Start by, if you're overweight, like my friend Jelly Roll, he lost 250 pounds.

• 1:14:38Speaker 00

  What did he do? Started walking. Just started walking, walking around the neighborhood. Walk around the block, walk upstairs, just slowly. And then change the diet and then add some stuff. And next thing you know, you're doing this and then you and write it all down, too. That's the other thing. Write down what you're gonna do and write down how you feel. And then keep doing that. And if you could do that all the time, you'll start developing this like momentum that we were talking about.

• 1:15:01Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:15:01Speaker 00

  Where you're like, okay, I'm on I'm on the course. I'm on a process. But it doesn't have to be like you're you're exhausted and then you go to the lab and you're like, I can't even fucking concentrate, you know? I was doing Tabata sprints on the air dyn machine. Like, this is crazy.

• 1:15:14Speaker 01

  Well, that's it's really good advice and I'm gonna take you up on it. So let's say I'm lucky enough to come on the show again.

• 1:15:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:15:21Speaker 01

  I'll wear a tight t-shirt.

• 1:15:22Speaker 00

  Let's go.

• 1:15:25Speaker 01

  20 million people.

• 1:15:26Speaker 00

  You're gonna have to get off that fucking goofy plant-based diet.

• 1:15:28Speaker 01

  Well, let's speak about that because that's one of the things we disagree on. I'm on a plant-based diet because I've seen a lot of work on animals at least that plants promote longevity. I eat a lot of protein.

• 1:15:41Speaker 00

  It's interesting because you're not an animal. You know that, right?

• 1:15:44Speaker 01

  I'm not a mouse.

• 1:15:45Speaker 00

  You're a mouse.

• 1:15:45Speaker 01

  I'm definitely an animal, but I'm not a mouse.

• 1:15:48Speaker 00

  But meat is the most nutrient-dense food that's available.

• 1:15:52Speaker 01

  I love meat. I'm I love meat.

• 1:15:54Speaker 00

  She eat it all the time?

• 1:15:55Speaker 01

  I believe that there are two there are two states that we can be in.

• 1:16:02Speaker 01

  I should try meat and then we can see if it works.

• 1:16:04Speaker 00

  Hundred percent, you'll feel great.

• 1:16:05Speaker 01

  Cause I've been measuring myself with rings and blood tests for the last twenty years.

• 1:16:08Speaker 00

  You should try elk. I'll get you an elk steak.

• 1:16:11Speaker 01

  I'd love to try. It sounds good. I'm not against meat. I will eat it.

• 1:16:14Speaker 00

  You'll eat it and you'll be like, whoa.

• 1:16:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, don't get me addicted to meat.

• 1:16:17Speaker 00

  You feel it right away, like, ah. Ooh, all your sinuses start firing, your body starts like, yes, this is what we want to give it.

• 1:16:27Speaker 01

  Well, here's, here's some science, um, which is what I do. There are two states. This is my, my theory. There's the abundance mode, which is very good for health. You'll build muscle, you'll, you'll heal better. That's meat.

• 1:16:39Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:16:40Speaker 01

  Killed a mammoth. There's adversity mode, which is we're out of meat. We're gonna, we gotta eat roots and berries. That's adversity. We've got to run, running, exercise, eating less. That's adversity. Both are good for you. This one is pro-survival. This one is pro-growth. This one is longevity. This one is you're gonna be stronger, fitter.

• 1:17:01Speaker 00

  How do you determine that, though, in terms of like, what is longevity versus what is just like health and vitality currently?

• 1:17:07Speaker 01

  Well, it's based on the last thirty years of research in a variety of animals and.

• 1:17:12Speaker 00

  This doesn't have to do with the blue zones, does it?

• 1:17:14Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:17:15Speaker 00

  Cause you know that's all horseshit, right?

• 1:17:16Speaker 01

  Uh, I, I read that recently, yeah.

• 1:17:19Speaker 00

  Isn't that nuts? It's a lot of it is fraud.

• 1:17:23Speaker 01

  Well, records are hard.

• 1:17:24Speaker 00

  Well, it's not just hard. A lot of it is actual fraud, where people are getting checks for their grandpa and grandpa was dead. So they weren't writing it into the government. They didn't expose, like, this was the problem with Okinawa in particular. Is that they would have to, in order for these people to get taken off the list, they, they would have to inform the government that this person died. And they just didn't do it. And so they had this list of people that they were counting in their census that were like so old.

• 1:17:51Speaker 01

  Really?

• 1:17:52Speaker 00

  Like, this is crazy. What are you people doing? Everyone's a hundred years old.

• 1:17:55Speaker 01

  The oldest person in the world, apparently, hundred and twenty-two, there's a theory, not proven, that the oldest person in the world was actually the daughter who was faking it. To get, to get taxes or avoid taxes, I think it was in France. I hope that that's not true.

• 1:18:10Speaker 00

  I bet it's true. People are full of shit.

• 1:18:13Speaker 01

  Well, either way, the maximum human lifespan is around hundred and seventeen, eighteen, which is still a lot more than we live.

• 1:18:18Speaker 00

  And what's really crazy is none of those people are doing everything right.

• 1:18:22Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:18:23Speaker 00

  They're all smoking cigarettes and drinking wine and having a good time. And that's a factor that we really need to take into consideration. Loneliness and isolation and sadness are one of the greatest contributors to poor health outcomes.

• 1:18:38Speaker 01

  It's number one.

• 1:18:39Speaker 00

  Is it really?

• 1:18:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, Robert Baldinger at Harvard had a study for, I think it was forty years, World War II vets. They looked at everything, blood pressure, cholesterol. The number one thing that predicted longevity in those men was having a reliable partner.

• 1:18:53Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 1:18:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, so.

• 1:18:55Speaker 00

  Not just a reliable partner, someone that you love.

• 1:18:59Speaker 01

  That's true.

• 1:19:00Speaker 00

  Someone that you like, want to be around all the time. You enjoy them. You still enjoy their company, which is possible. Most people don't believe that's possible.

• 1:19:08Speaker 01

  Well, you're a role model in that.

• 1:19:10Speaker 00

  I love my wife. I, I have fun with her. Like, we, I've been with her for a long, I've been married for seventeen years. I enjoy her. I enjoy hanging out with her. She's cool. Like, she's a fun, and I have friends that aren't in situations like that. And it's, it's so bad when you're, like, I have a friend who just, we were actually talking last night. He just got out of a crazy relationship where he's dating this girl for seven years, it's chaos and this and that. And I said to him, and he was like, I, he's forty, and he goes, I don't think I'm ever gonna have a relationship again. He goes, it was so bad. He goes, being single feels so good. And I said, there's an old saying.

• 1:19:50Speaker 00

  It's so much better to be alone than to wish you were alone. And he's like, yes, that's it. Cause he was like with this crazy lady and he was like, I just wish I was, and he finally got free. And now he's like, I, I think I'm ruined. And I'm like, it doesn't have to be like that. You can find someone that you actually love and you really enjoy their time. You enjoy being with them. It's possible.

• 1:20:13Speaker 01

  There's good people out there.

• 1:20:14Speaker 00

  But you gotta, you gotta also be someone that that kind of person wants to be with. That's the other thing.

• 1:20:20Speaker 01

  Uh, for sure. And stress of a relationship. Um, we've seen in studies that clock with those chemicals on the DNA. It accelerates when you're under stress or going, going through a breakup.

• 1:20:29Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah. Oh, God.

• 1:20:31Speaker 01

  You see it too.

• 1:20:31Speaker 00

  Oh, I've seen people going through divorces and it's just like, it takes decades off of their life. They just look wrecked. And it takes a year or two for them to like, achieve equilibrium again. It's hard.

• 1:20:43Speaker 01

  It, it is. It is. Uh, I went through that actually just during COVID when our family got shoved in a house together and we. Yeah, it was brutal. It was unexpected too.

• 1:20:53Speaker 00

  Wow, that's the stress test, right?

• 1:20:56Speaker 01

  It was super stress. It was super stress. Um, I think without the pandemic, we might have been able to make it, but forcing us all to be in one little house with no internet working well, it was tough. But any case, I'm, I'm great now. I'm very happy. So, but I, I do know how bad it can get and it's brutal.

• 1:21:13Speaker 00

  Yeah, bad relationships can fucking wreck people. I mean, it can wreck your health and, but also it's not just relationships in terms of your significant other, husband, wife, partner, whatever you wanna call it, but also bad relationships at work. Like, if you have a tyrant for a boss and, you know, and every day you're, you're getting, you're, you're working overtime and you're getting yelled at and you're, you're on the phone and you're, you're at home, like, trying to keep up with work and you never get, like, that, that kind of relationship, where you have like this like antagonistic, terrible relationship with people that you work with, that's bad too.

• 1:21:48Speaker 01

  Oh, for sure.

• 1:21:49Speaker 00

  Your body doesn't differentiate between romantic relationships and those kind of relationships are almost equally bad.

• 1:21:54Speaker 01

  Cortisol will be high. This will accelerate you. I used to keep fish. Uh, I was one of those people at school. And the fish that got picked on by the dominant fish was small, lack color, lived short. It's, it's biology. If you're picked on and you're stressed, you're gonna age faster. Fortunately, uh, I think you, you're probably the same. At my age, uh, I've managed to weed out most of the jerks and I don't work with them at all. Got a great partner who we, we have a hobby of longevity together, so that I'm, I'm lucky in that regard now.

• 1:22:24Speaker 00

  You found a new one.

• 1:22:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, longevity specialist. Imagine that.

• 1:22:27Speaker 00

  Congratulations. Well, that's nice too, right? Find someone who just like thinks the way you think and has similar likes and interests.

• 1:22:35Speaker 01

  Like you say.

• 1:22:35Speaker 00

  Yeah, that definitely can help. Yeah, I know, a lot of my friends that are in really good relationships, their, their significant other has the same hobby as them, you know, like, whatever it is, they both like to climb mountains, whatever the fuck it is, find a thing. But that helps too. Well, so you actually enjoy spending time together, doing something that you're both really excited about. That helps too.

• 1:22:56Speaker 01

  So relationships is one, and the other four major ones from that study were, uh, don't smoke, don't drink, get enough rest. And get exercise. And that was enough to extend by fifteen years.

• 1:23:08Speaker 00

  But what about those old people that live forever and do smoke and drink? Cause that's kinda weird.

• 1:23:12Speaker 01

  Well, they're a point oh one percent. They're not examples of what.

• 1:23:15Speaker 00

  Is that really what it is?

• 1:23:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's just.

• 1:23:17Speaker 00

  So the majority of people who get old and live to, uh, like, centenarians, like, what, what are the common things that they have?

• 1:23:27Speaker 01

  Uh, the big one is that they don't stress a lot. They usually have a good sense of humor.

• 1:23:31Speaker 00

  Hmm, interesting.

• 1:23:32Speaker 01

  Right. Uh, they, they haven't been overweight and they say that they typically couldn't remember when they last got sick.

• 1:23:40Speaker 00

  I wonder how much time Twitter takes off your life.

• 1:23:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, we should study that. It's already taken a lot off mine.

• 1:23:49Speaker 00

  It does.

• 1:23:51Speaker 01

  And if you read the comments, even.

• 1:23:52Speaker 00

  Yep, exactly. I'm so much happier since I swore off of all that stuff. It's just not good for you. It's really, really bad for you. It's also, you're constantly dealing with the problems of the whole world, which I think is a lot for a, a, a human being that lives in a community and a neighborhood. It's a, that shit that's happening over there really shouldn't be a primary focus of your life, like where, where you're in the moment, actually doing your life. It's not the same, you're not in the same area as this problem, but yet this problem is overwhelming your all, all day long life.

• 1:24:29Speaker 01

  And you're in fight or flight constantly.

• 1:24:30Speaker 00

  All day, all day. And you're worried about the climate. Oh my God. Like, there's so much, there's so much that freaks people out that it really shouldn't be affecting you at all.

• 1:24:40Speaker 01

  Exactly. And actually, the world doesn't change if you don't read it, so it's.

• 1:24:44Speaker 00

  That's the key. That's the key. But then you're like, well, you need, you're passing off the responsibility to other people. You should get involved, like, you should get involved. I'm gonna be over here.

• 1:24:55Speaker 01

  That's right. Well, if you focus on doing something good and you're good at it.

• 1:24:58Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:24:59Speaker 01

  Like yourself. I think that, uh, you don't need to be doing more than that.

• 1:25:02Speaker 00

  You can't focus on everything and anybody who tells you can is a fool. Or anybody who tells you what you should or shouldn't be focusing on is a fool.

• 1:25:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, a few years ago, someone, uh, at a talk that I gave said, you should be working on climate change.

• 1:25:15Speaker 00

  Fuck off.

• 1:25:15Speaker 01

  After I cure aging, I'll get to climate change.

• 1:25:18Speaker 00

  Yeah, why don't you go to China and tell them to stop making coal factories? Shut the fuck up. Just shut up. You're, you. No, you're not gonna fix it.

• 1:25:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:25:28Speaker 00

  Somebody is. Somebody's working on it and that's their goal and God bless them. Good luck.

• 1:25:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, what, what I try to spend my day is efficiently helping the world, so that people ask me, why do I study aging in the first place? And it really is that I'm trying to please my grandmother, like some of us. Uh, she was the one that told me that, uh, I need to make the world a better place and she's gone now.

• 1:25:50Speaker 00

  That's what she said to you?

• 1:25:51Speaker 01

  When I was four, it was, it's been that ever since. She, she told me two things. Humans are evil. She lived through World War II in Hungary and.

• 1:25:59Speaker 00

  Oh, wow.

• 1:26:00Speaker 01

  The Russians came in and raped everybody, she said. And then, uh, so she escaped to Australia and then she said that the other, uh, the other issue is that, uh, we don't do enough as humans to better the world. And so I had that stuck in my mind. Um, she also, by the way, said, oh, we all die. And I thought, that, that's not really fair, is it? And that set me on this path.

• 1:26:24Speaker 00

  Make the world a better place and we all die. And you're like, ah.

• 1:26:30Speaker 01

  And what I've noticed with my kids is that even if you tell them that, they they forget about it because it's brutal to think about death every day.

• 1:26:37Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:26:37Speaker 01

  But for some reason, it's just stuck in my head. And every day, I'm like, another 150,000 people are going to die today due to aging-related diseases. So my lab is is mission oriented. If we are a day late with something, it's a lot of people that are suffering potentially avoidable diseases.

• 1:26:55Speaker 00

  That's why it's sort of understandable that people like show up outside of your lab and like, like, I need to talk to you. I need this.

• 1:27:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, blind people want to get in the trial. It's it's big, and I think if the trial works, it's going to be a very strange world, especially for my lab and for me. But we'll see. And even if it doesn't work this time, the science is strong enough that we'll figure it out. We will, we will do this. It's just a question of when.

• 1:27:19Speaker 00

  And so do you think that AI is going to have a significant impact on the kind of improvements that you're able to?

• 1:27:26Speaker 01

  It already is. We're going super fast. And AI has has revolutionized biology. It's revolutionizing everything, of course, but particularly in biology where we used to have to read 15 papers a day. Now we can read a million if we want. It's totally different.

• 1:27:41Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 1:27:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a super brain.

• 1:27:46Speaker 01

  A 19 year old came to my lab this summer, and the lab grows from 20 to 40 people. And we're trying to figure out, how do these three genes reset the cell? How does the cell remember what it was 30, 40 years ago? Where's that information stored in the cell? And I've got this theory that there's some new biology, there's a record in the DNA somewhere. And I gave him that task. I said, can you just go to the databases of the whole world, look at all the data that's there, it's X of bytes of data, and see if my prediction is true? Or at least you can get evidence for it. Two weeks later, he came back and the whole team, not the whole team, but five other people were smiling. We have to show you something, David. Right, come in my office.

• 1:28:29Speaker 01

  We sat down, he shows up on the board on this LCD screen. I think we found the smoking gun for what your theory suggests. And he used AI to process all that data. And the AI came back and said, yeah, you're probably right. And it's a 19 year old, straight out of high school, who did this. That did something that the whole field and all these professors and all these fancy sirs could not figure out until now.

• 1:28:55Speaker 00

  That is phenomenal. That's so promising and so exciting.

• 1:29:00Speaker 01

  It is. I mean, the future really does belong to people who can wrangle AI even on their phone. I think people on their phones are going to be making medicines, or at least designing them.

• 1:29:09Speaker 00

  Or bombs.

• 1:29:10Speaker 01

  That's the problem. And bioweapons. Right. And you recently had, was it Anna on the show to talk about bioweapons and this kind of stuff? That is a big worry. I actually had to disclose to the US government when I first got here that I did have the capability of making a bioweapon.

• 1:29:25Speaker 00

  The the Anna Jacobson episode that we just did on bioweapons was absolutely terrifying. Yeah, she's, I mean, she scared the shit out of the world with her nuclear war book. And now she's scaring everybody with her bioweapons book.

• 1:29:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:29:40Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's scary.

• 1:29:41Speaker 01

  It is. What what I've got is a database of all known pathogens and new ones that could come. So I'm trying to do my bit there to help the world if it happens again. Pandemic or something unnatural.

• 1:29:53Speaker 00

  Yeah. Well, that would be, I mean, when you think about diseases that people get that just like wreck their entire body, if you really do have an original copy somewhere in their genome of what they look like as a healthy person, and you could switch that back on with a factory reboot.

• 1:30:13Speaker 00

  I mean, we could potentially get rid of all diseases, which is just bananas.

• 1:30:19Speaker 01

  And injuries, fix injuries, grow new limbs potentially. There's a new paper that just came out a few days ago that showed that the tips of the fingers of baby mice can be coaxed, once they've healed over as a stub, to regrow part of the finger.

• 1:30:34Speaker 00

  Haven't people done that before?

• 1:30:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, they found just two factors were enough. So it's not that hard. The point is, we've got the instructions to be young and to regrow body parts in our body. We just don't use them.

• 1:30:48Speaker 00

  That's nuts. So like a salamander can grow an extra leg or a leg that gets chopped off.

• 1:30:53Speaker 01

  Yeah. I believe we still have that capability. We just don't use it. It just didn't make sense to regrow a limb. It was quicker and safer just heal it over as a stub and move on. But salamanders, which get their limbs presumably eaten pretty often, maintain that ability. So give us, you know, if, I wouldn't say that we could evolve this, but I think using a combination of our technology, plus this new technology that we're seeing come out, where these two factors can grow new limbs, I don't see a reason why we can't become like a Deadpool where injury doesn't hurt us, aging can't hurt us, and we can regrow body parts.

• 1:31:27Speaker 00

  How far do you think we are away from being able to regrow body parts?

• 1:31:32Speaker 01

  Oh, I mean, realistically, probably a couple of decades, but I've seen enough.

• 1:31:36Speaker 00

  That's not that far.

• 1:31:37Speaker 01

  Seen enough to know that it's doable.

• 1:31:39Speaker 00

  Couple of decades ago was 2006.

• 1:31:42Speaker 01

  Well, things are going super fast. I mean, 10 years ago, we didn't even know aging was irreversible, and now it's in humans.

• 1:31:49Speaker 00

  That's nuts. Think of that. Well, 2019, when you came here, there was no AI.

• 1:31:54Speaker 01

  Right. 2019, it was an idea that we had just got the result in mice, and I divulged that to the world. Then it was published, and then we're in humans now. So if it works, then, you know, it's going to be a very different world.

• 1:32:09Speaker 00

  And you're, you feel very confidently that some of this stuff is going to work?

• 1:32:15Speaker 01

  Well, it's going to work. I don't know if this trial is going to be successful, but there's going to be a lot of people doing these trials. I have some competition now. Do you know about that?

• 1:32:24Speaker 00

  No.

• 1:32:25Speaker 01

  So since I started my company, Life Biosciences, which is doing the trials with ER 100, others have jumped, joined in and the party. So Jeff Bezos and others have started Altos Pharma. They are based in three cities around the world. They have a few billion dollars to catch up.

• 1:32:45Speaker 01

  Sam Altman has RetroBio. And, let's see, Brian Armstrong from Coinbase, the CEO, started one called New Limit, and they've got a lot of money, all billions.

• 1:32:58Speaker 00

  You think it's good that there's all these people involved in this?

• 1:33:01Speaker 01

  I welcome it.

• 1:33:01Speaker 00

  It's good. Competition.

• 1:33:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, I'm not doing this for my own personal benefit. I want humanity to be changed the way it could be.

• 1:33:08Speaker 00

  And the more people like Jeff Bezos, the more people with a large bank account that are invested in this, the better.

• 1:33:13Speaker 01

  Fantastic.

• 1:33:14Speaker 00

  And of course, a guy like Bezos, he's balling out of control. Why wouldn't he want to live forever?

• 1:33:18Speaker 01

  Well, what's left if you've got everything else, you know?

• 1:33:20Speaker 00

  Well, also, it's like, it's like, if you've got the amount of money that he has, and you can tackle all these different issues, you know, like his space program that he's working on, all these different things, like, of course, why wouldn't you want to do cool things? Like, what's cooler than being able to grow limbs?

• 1:33:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:33:36Speaker 00

  You know, what's cooler than being able to cure all diseases and reverse aging?

• 1:33:40Speaker 01

  Well, there's, I don't think there's much cooler. That's why I'm doing it, because that, I think, can be the biggest gift to humanity is what you just said. So I don't know if I'll achieve it, probably not in my lifetime, but at least I've moved the needle and pushed the ball globally in that direction.

• 1:33:56Speaker 00

  I wonder if we're going to get to a point in time where we can engineer consciousness in in terms of like, find out, like, you find out someone's a sociopath, you find out someone's a kleptomaniac, or someone's an arsonist, like, whatever it is, like, if you could figure out, like, what these little flaws are in the way the mind works, if you can completely map it out and go, oh, this is the error. This is where you're not making these two connections.

• 1:34:23Speaker 01

  Of course, of course, it's all just biology and engineering. There's nothing that stops us. And this is the century that we are able to control our own biology. Starting with cancer, heart disease, and aging.

• 1:34:35Speaker 00

  A true utopian world of peaceful people living in harmony.

• 1:34:38Speaker 01

  But healthy.

• 1:34:39Speaker 00

  Not peaceful?

• 1:34:40Speaker 01

  I don't think world peace. I think curing aging is easier than world peace.

• 1:34:44Speaker 00

  Well, if everybody achieved a state of consciousness that allowed them to understand that we're all in this together.

• 1:34:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, how do we do that?

• 1:34:54Speaker 00

  Mushrooms.

• 1:34:56Speaker 00

  This episode is brought to you by LifeLock. It may be hard to believe, but identity theft is the number one crime in America. Right now, millions of people are dealing with stolen accounts, fraudulent loans, and the exhausting process of proving who they are to banks, creditors, and credit bureaus. LifeLock helps you fight back. They monitor your personal and financial information, alerting you when something looks suspicious. And if identity theft does happen, LifeLock has live, US-based experts who step in and fix it, guaranteed or your money back. Don't fight that battle alone. Get LifeLock identity theft protection.

• 1:35:37Speaker 00

  Visit lifelock.com and save up to 30% your first year with promo code JRE. That's promo code JRE, or go to lifelock.com/jre for 30% off. Terms apply. This episode is brought to you by Quince. Putting together a good wardrobe isn't actually that hard. You just need the right pieces, and that's where Quince comes in. Quince is all about creating quality, versatile clothing with premium materials, like 100% Mongolian cashmere sweaters from just $60, and organic cotton tees that are soft and breathable. Personally, I got a bunch of their stuff, and I love it.

• 1:36:20Speaker 00

  I really love the fleece pullover hoodie and the Flowknit Breeze Performance Tees. They're, they have really simple, smooth designs, perfect for recording sessions or my workouts. I like wearing them on stage. It's just great quality clothing, and it's cool how Quince still gives you luxury quality, but without the insane markup. Find your new fall favorites at Quince. Download the Quince app for app exclusive offers, or go to quince.com/rogan. Get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns, now available in Canada and the UK, too. That's Q U I N C E dot com slash Rogan.

• 1:37:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, there are, there are certain companies working on this.

• 1:37:06Speaker 00

  I know. That's what's interesting, right? Like Eli Lilly is involved in pharmaceuticals, well, the pharmaceutical company, rather, is involved in psychedelics.

• 1:37:14Speaker 01

  They just bought a tie.

• 1:37:15Speaker 00

  I think it was like $3.8 billion. So they're all in with real capital.

• 1:37:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:37:19Speaker 00

  I love it.

• 1:37:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, me too.

• 1:37:21Speaker 00

  That's great.

• 1:37:22Speaker 01

  I love that they're doing that. We need more of that. There's too much depression and anxiety in the world.

• 1:37:26Speaker 00

  And drug addiction. I mean, that's why I went to the White House and got the president to get involved in this executive order on ibogaine.

• 1:37:34Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:37:35Speaker 00

  Because I've talked to so many people that have had their life completely turned around with ibogaine. So many people that were opioid addiction and also brain injuries, oddly enough. Brain injuries, all sorts of TBI and CTE.

• 1:37:52Speaker 00

  That they've had like phenomenal results from this ebogatry. You know, which is so crazy that this thing had been around for so long and is a schedule one substance in the United States for no reason whatsoever. There's no risk of addiction. There is no recreational use of it. It's a horrible experience. I've not done it, but apparently it's fucking terrible. And it lasts for like 24 hours. Like, no one's gonna be doing that for funsies.

• 1:38:18Speaker 01

  Right. Well, the question I think that comes up with all of these drugs is, do you have to have the trip and experience the craziness?

• 1:38:26Speaker 00

  To get the benefits?

• 1:38:26Speaker 01

  To get the benefit. And I don't think so. I think you should be able to separate them.

• 1:38:29Speaker 00

  Well, you know, they've actually figured this out with LSD.

• 1:38:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:38:33Speaker 00

  Right? Do you know about this?

• 1:38:35Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:38:35Speaker 00

  Okay. So they've engineered a different version of LSD that doesn't give you the hallucinogenic effects, but does give you the benefits in terms of like the cognitive effects.

• 1:38:47Speaker 01

  The Atai guys or someone else?

• 1:38:49Speaker 00

  I don't know what company has done this. See if you can find that, Jamie.

• 1:38:54Speaker 01

  I think it might be Atai's.

• 1:38:55Speaker 00

  But what they've they've essentially done, and I think it's it's basically in the lab work stage right now. I don't think that's applied to humans yet. But what they've done is engineered a version of LSD that has all the positive effects that LSD has in terms of like introspection, being able to like rethink and remap and reset the way you view things, but without like watching people's face melt and thinking that demons are eating you and all the weird stuff that comes with it.

• 1:39:26Speaker 01

  Outstanding. It it should happen with psychedelics, the way it's happened with all medicines, right? We start with

• 1:39:31Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:39:32Speaker 01

  Something from the bark of a willow tree, and then we have aspirin.

• 1:39:35Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:39:36Speaker 01

  We're not eating bark anymore.

• 1:39:38Speaker 00

  Right. But sometimes the bark is the really way the way to go. Right? Unfortunately, sometimes that's the part of the problem is these pharmaceutical drug companies, they patent these natural compounds and, you know, use petroleum-based synthetic methods of creating these medications now that they can sell and profit wildly off of. Whereas really the best way to do it is actually to get the plant.

• 1:40:04Speaker 01

  It's true. There's the whole issue, though, that if it's not approved, then it's the wild west. You don't know what you're getting.

• 1:40:11Speaker 00

  Right. That's true, too.

• 1:40:12Speaker 01

  We need a middle ground. We need something you can get fast on the market that's known to be safe.

• 1:40:17Speaker 00

  So what we're gonna need is mind reading. Because we need to know if people are full of shit. That's what we're gonna need. We're gonna need

• 1:40:24Speaker 01

  Gotta work on that.

• 1:40:25Speaker 00

  Yes. I think that's that's gonna change humanity more than anything.

• 1:40:28Speaker 01

  I think you've got a good bullshit detector.

• 1:40:30Speaker 00

  It's okay. There's a few people that have snuck through, unfortunately. You know, some people, they get through and they're like, eh, it takes a while. And you're like, ah, shit.

• 1:40:39Speaker 01

  They're never coming back on the show.

• 1:40:41Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, there's that. It's the the show, you know, you you learn a lot from a person in about three hours. You know, you could kind of, after a while, you can kind of see little things. And you have to be forgiving and, you know, you have to be charitable. And some people are just nervous and they misstate things or they exaggerate things or they forget something or they get it wrong. But then there's people that are just, essentially, they really don't care about anybody but themselves. And some of those people are really good at pretending to be people. They're really good at

• 1:41:14Speaker 01

  Pretending.

• 1:41:14Speaker 00

  You know? They're really good at pretending to be like a normal person. Oh, here's the LSG thing, LSD thing, right? Researchers recently engineered an LSD analog called, how do you say it, plus minus JRT? That appears to keep many of the LSD's brain beneficial and cognitive effects while dramatically reducing and possibly eliminating its hallucinogenic trip in animal studies. So it's almost the same molecule as LSD, but scientists swapped the positions of just two atoms in the structure. The subtle change makes JRT bind more selectively to serotonin receptors in a way that promotes neuroplasticity, growth and repair of synapses, but minimizes hallucinogenic signaling. That is, that's incredible.

• 1:41:58Speaker 00

  Antidepressant, look at this. Strong antidepressant effects at doses reported to be around 100 times more potent than ketamine in standard rodent tests. Cognitive benefits, improved cognitive flexibility and performance in tasks modeling the negative and cognitive symptoms of schizophrenia. Holy shit. That's incredible.

• 1:42:21Speaker 01

  When when and where do we get it?

• 1:42:23Speaker 00

  Well, I think it's fairly recent.

• 1:42:25Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's at UC Davis study, they just developed it.

• 1:42:29Speaker 01

  Oh, it's in my

• 1:42:29Speaker 00

  Shout out to our AI sponsor, Perplexity, for providing us with this information. This is again, I mean, like, we could just get this information now through AI. Like, I mean, this, the AI for our show has been gigantic. I mean, just the ability to just ask it a question instead of Google searching and having to go through all these different fucking articles, what does it say? What is that? Who's right? What's this one? What's the website? You just ask AI and Perplexity just gives us all the information. So proceedings from National Academy of Science, researchers at California of San Diego Davis, excuse me, University of California Davis, reported the creation of JRT, chemically modified version of LSD. So this is like, what year?

• 1:43:14Speaker 00

  So 2025, so last year.

• 1:43:16Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:43:17Speaker 00

  So it's exciting.

• 1:43:18Speaker 01

  Five years away, but still. You're right.

• 1:43:20Speaker 00

  That the timeline?

• 1:43:21Speaker 01

  At a minimum, usually takes that long. But that's exciting. At least the principle is there that you don't need to hallucinate.

• 1:43:26Speaker 00

  Well, how about for schizophrenia? I mean, that's incredible. Yeah. I mean, that is incredible because that is one of the saddest things, to watch somebody fall into the grips of schizophrenia.

• 1:43:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:43:36Speaker 00

  I've seen people fall in and come out, which is interesting.

• 1:43:40Speaker 01

  I thought for the bullshit detector, we could have an AI that either dings or has a green or a red on your forehead.

• 1:43:45Speaker 00

  I'm pretty good at it, but I think no one's, no one's perfect at it. And I think ultimately, if we get to a place, whether it's a technological innovation or or what have you, where we can actually read the contents of someone's thoughts, I don't think that's outside the realm of possibility.

• 1:44:05Speaker 01

  You'd need an implant, I think, but

• 1:44:06Speaker 00

  Elon says the Neuralink's gonna be able to pull that off. Yeah.

• 1:44:10Speaker 01

  You're gonna be able to talk without using words.

• 1:44:13Speaker 00

  And I'm like, what? I think he's right, though. I think if we all like lock into a hive mind and and then if we develop, like through AI, if we develop a universal language worldwide.

• 1:44:29Speaker 01

  Well, we already have that.

• 1:44:31Speaker 00

  What do we have?

• 1:44:32Speaker 01

  Well, the new headphones from a big company that I won't name, you can translate.

• 1:44:36Speaker 00

  Translate, yes. Translate, but it's translating to English. If we just all, the problem with that is there's context, there's all sorts of different things that other cultures, different languages, they, when it's deciphered and changed and translated into English, you lose a lot of the meaning and the the context is weird. If we develop a universal language.

• 1:44:57Speaker 01

  That'd be ideal. English is a good substitute. I was shocked. I'm always shocked, traveling globally, how many people can just speak English now.

• 1:45:05Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's pretty amazing. It's because America rules. You're welcome.

• 1:45:09Speaker 01

  Well, we have to thank Britain for that. America should say, you're welcome.

• 1:45:13Speaker 00

  Yeah, they they they're cute. They did a good job of starting it out, but we took the ball and

• 1:45:18Speaker 01

  That is true. So who's next? China?

• 1:45:21Speaker 00

  God, oh, no, I don't want to learn Chinese. That's too hard. It's all fucking characters. That's ridiculous. Even people that I know that can speak Mandarin, they can't write it. You know, to like to get to that level, I have a couple of friends that speak fluent Mandarin and they can't write it. Writing is.

• 1:45:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, the the students in my lab who come from China, they're being picked on by by the immigration, but they don't want to go home. They love it here.

• 1:45:45Speaker 00

  I'm sure, because they're stealing all your secrets and they're bringing it back

• 1:45:47Speaker 01

  Well, there's that. There's a lot of regulation on that now as a scientist.

• 1:45:51Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:45:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:45:52Speaker 00

  Oh, I could imagine. Yeah, I mean, well, it has to be because that is an actual real threat.

• 1:45:56Speaker 01

  Exactly. So the people that come through my lab have to be vetted now.

• 1:46:00Speaker 00

  Right, but the people that come over here and experience the kind of freedom that you have in America.

• 1:46:04Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. I came here from Australia. Australia's pretty free, but compared to Australia, America's so different.

• 1:46:09Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:46:09Speaker 01

  I can't go back.

• 1:46:11Speaker 00

  What's the big difference?

• 1:46:13Speaker 01

  That I feel I can do anything I want if I just put my mind to it. There's not social barriers, there's not monetary barriers, at least for a white male like me who's got a degree. I know it's not for everybody. But I feel like if I want to start a company, I've got a great idea, I can do that here. Fat chance you'll do that in Australia. People aren't willing to invest in great ideas down there. Not not often.

• 1:46:36Speaker 00

  That's a bummer. Do you think that changes anytime soon?

• 1:46:39Speaker 01

  No. The US is so unique. There's a lot of money flowing, people are willing to place a bet and even lose the money. That's rare. Australians, most of the world, if not all, people are scared to lose their money if they have it. Here, it's like, okay, I risked it. I helped the world. I feel good. It's a very generous country, very. And I love it here. It's, when I arrived here, I just felt, ah, I'm home.

• 1:47:03Speaker 00

  I love hearing that from people that have come from somewhere else because it kind of reaffirms why people in America are so proud of what this country is.

• 1:47:12Speaker 01

  Should be, yeah.

• 1:47:12Speaker 00

  And that's why it bums me out when people are so mad at America in terms of, I get, look, in terms of foreign policy and some of the things that are wrong with America, but just in overall, this experiment in self-government is pretty remarkable.

• 1:47:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, I watched the TV show, was it The American Experiment? Came out for the anniversary, the 250th.

• 1:47:32Speaker 00

  I haven't seen it.

• 1:47:33Speaker 01

  You gotta see it.

• 1:47:34Speaker 00

  What's it on?

• 1:47:35Speaker 01

  It's it's the founding fathers and their lives and how they were fighting and what what was going on behind the scenes.

• 1:47:41Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 1:47:42Speaker 01

  They were just young kids. They're in their twenties, thirties.

• 1:47:44Speaker 00

  I know, isn't that nuts?

• 1:47:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, just Benjamin Franklin was the old dude. But they were so young, but but they were, they were in the middle of it. They kind of realized they were making history, but so many things could have gone wrong. We would not have had the United States if just a few votes went one way or the other.

• 1:48:00Speaker 00

  And a few wars.

• 1:48:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:48:02Speaker 00

  A few of the different battles that they had.

• 1:48:04Speaker 01

  Exactly. The US was losing the war against Britain badly.

• 1:48:08Speaker 00

  Yeah, they

• 1:48:09Speaker 01

  Thank the French for help.

• 1:48:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:48:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, we don't thank the French enough, actually.

• 1:48:13Speaker 00

  I know, right? Somehow they became our enemy.

• 1:48:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:48:16Speaker 00

  Remember during the the Gulf War, they turned french fries into freedom fries because people hated the French?

• 1:48:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, but everyone hates the French. Because they're so arrogant. Sorry, French. I have some friends who are good, good friends who are French.

• 1:48:28Speaker 00

  I think generally when people are arrogant, it's because they did something fucking awesome.

• 1:48:32Speaker 01

  Well, in the 1800s, they did.

• 1:48:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:48:34Speaker 01

  They conquered Europe.

• 1:48:37Speaker 01

  Not sure if that's awesome.

• 1:48:38Speaker 03

  Here's a fun perplexious search I just did. I said, do Americans have a risk gene?

• 1:48:42Speaker 00

  A risk gene?

• 1:48:44Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:48:44Speaker 00

  One of the best studied variants in the dopamine receptor gene, D R D four, specifically the seven repeat seven R version. It's associated in some studies with novelty seeking impulsivity and higher financial or social risk taking. I wonder if I have that gene.

• 1:49:00Speaker 01

  For sure.

• 1:49:01Speaker 00

  This seven, probably not. Who knows?

• 1:49:05Speaker 00

  The seven R variant is unevenly distributed around the world. It's populations, in populations across the Americas. It shows up in roughly forty eight percent of chromosomes studied. While in East Asia, it's found in only about two percent.

• 1:49:16Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:49:18Speaker 00

  That's crazy.

• 1:49:20Speaker 01

  It all comes down to genetics.

• 1:49:21Speaker 00

  Evolutionary work suggests it became more common in groups that migrated further after leaving Africa. And those lineages are strongly represented in the Americas today. That actually makes-

• 1:49:33Speaker 03

  That's what I was thinking of, the people that, you know, had the balls to fucking come here.

• 1:49:36Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:49:37Speaker 03

  Well, your balls, you don't have to do that much, but you can still have balls to gamble and take risks and-

• 1:49:43Speaker 01

  That must be, but then Australians should have it.

• 1:49:45Speaker 00

  That completely meant, well, sort of. You guys got forced there. Like, they moved everybody over there because they were criminals.

• 1:49:51Speaker 01

  Right. This, this D D R gene that you just saw, that was a D R four. I know a bit about it because I'm writing it in my next book. D R D four, thanks Jamie. I call this the F U gene. Because I'm trying to figure out what makes humans special over other animals. And this is one of them, that we are seekers of explorers. And it's, it turns, turns out that this gene is turned on in teenagers. It gets eventually switched off. Not totally. But that might be why teenagers say F U to their parents.

• 1:50:25Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:50:26Speaker 01

  But it's a way genetically to get them out of the nest. Like, oh, I can't stand these parents. They suck. They're idiots. I'm out of here. That's in this, in this gene.

• 1:50:36Speaker 00

  Well, it's also, um,

• 1:50:39Speaker 00

  I, as a parent, have been very aware of not doing that to my kids. Like, not forcing them into something that they don't want to do, or pushing them in any general direction, but rather encouraging them to seek out their interests. And encouraging them to just like take chances. And if I ever correct them, if I ever get upset about something, one of the first things that I tell them is, I've done all, everything that you've done. I've made every mistake. I've, I've fucked up. I'm, you're, you're smarter than me.

• 1:51:07Speaker 01

  So smart.

• 1:51:07Speaker 00

  I've fucked up everything. I've lied to my parents. I lied to teachers. I've done everything that you're doing. So it's, this is not a unique thing. I'm just telling you from my own personal experience and my perspective, this is why I think, because I love you and I want you to do well in life and I, I just want you to recognize this. And that's how I correct my kids.

• 1:51:28Speaker 01

  I love that.

• 1:51:29Speaker 00

  It's never like, you listen to me because I'm your father. There's none of that shit.

• 1:51:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. The old way we were raised doesn't work.

• 1:51:35Speaker 00

  No. And it makes you resentment, but also probably makes you want to do better than your parents. So like motivates you in a certain way. Like, my parents were not risk takers at all. And my whole life, I've been like a wild risk taker.

• 1:51:48Speaker 01

  Really same. Yeah, I, I was resentful that my father didn't have enough ambition. Now he's a great guy. We're, we're best friends, actually. It's been the greatest thing for, for me. But one of the things I did with my kids, you reminded me is, uh, he's nineteen. Um, he's a well-built guy because we were going to the gym for a number of years. I've tried to train him in health. But he, he spent the summer with me. He's literally still working for me this summer to help with the podcast and the magazine we're about to launch. And Benjamin's his name. He's the best kid. But he slacked off. He was like, Ben, I put you in charge of social media. You haven't posted in a week. What's going on? Well, you know, I slept in, blah, blah. So I had to think, am I gonna get mad at him like I would a normal employee or do I treat him differently? And I decided to treat him differently.

• 1:52:34Speaker 01

  Probably because he's my son, but I didn't want to ruin, ruin the relationship. But what I did was I said, you know, I really think you can do better. I think everything you've done, the weightlifting, the, the calculus, you're amazing, but in this, you're not. So what's going on? And it worked. We've become closer. He's really into it. He's doing a good job now.

• 1:52:57Speaker 00

  That's great.

• 1:52:58Speaker 01

  So that's the way to do it, I think. You can't be too hard on them. You can't say, you fucked up.

• 1:53:02Speaker 00

  Yeah. I mean, that kind of can work, but it's a blunt instrument. And it doesn't work on everybody. And it also develops resentment and, and they also, they, they miss out on experiencing your perspective as a, like, for them to understand that you are just a person who's lived longer than them. And that you can help them navigate this road.

• 1:53:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, so you don't have to make the same mistakes that we did.

• 1:53:28Speaker 00

  Yes. And that, that's why you're helping them. They, you're talking to them about this, not because you're just a mean dad who likes to fucking tell the kids what to do. Because we've all experienced that. I mean, I had friends growing up with fathers who would fucking scream at them and throw things and, and beat them. And it's like, God. And then you just grow up fucking traumatized and always resentful and angry. Instead of just recognizing that like, oh, I'm so fortunate that my parents have this perspective where they can explain to me why I'm going through what I'm going through and how they got through it.

• 1:54:07Speaker 01

  Like a mentor. You're not their best friend. You're their mentor.

• 1:54:09Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:54:10Speaker 01

  A best friend doesn't work either.

• 1:54:12Speaker 00

  No, that doesn't work either because that just allows too much shenanigans. You know, you have to have some rules. You know, you have to have some, some sort of regulations.

• 1:54:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:54:20Speaker 00

  But you also-

• 1:54:21Speaker 01

  And your kids turned out well?

• 1:54:22Speaker 00

  What's that?

• 1:54:23Speaker 01

  How'd your kids turn out?

• 1:54:23Speaker 00

  Oh, they're great.

• 1:54:24Speaker 01

  Great.

• 1:54:24Speaker 00

  I'm so, so lucky. So fucking lucky. I mean, I, I feel so fortunate. They're so smart. And ambitious and driven. And so it's wild. It's wild to watch, you know, and talented. And it's, um, and also like, we never went through that period where, um, they hit teenage years and they hate you. Like that, no.

• 1:54:45Speaker 01

  Well, I've experienced that with a couple.

• 1:54:46Speaker 00

  God, that's so nice, man. I mean, my youngest, she'd get upset at me sometimes about certain things, but she bounces back quickly. It's never like some kids where they just grow to hate their parents.

• 1:54:56Speaker 01

  The R D four gene. Maybe they don't have a strong one.

• 1:55:00Speaker 00

  I don't know about that. I think it's how you communicate with them. I really do. I think that's a big factor. You have to communicate with them like you truly care about their development. And the most important thing, I think, the most important thing I think is that I always tell them, whatever you've done, whatever mistake you've made, I made way worse mistakes. I was like, I am not coming at you from a flawless person. You know, I'm not coming at you from the perspective of someone who like, oh, you're an idiot. I figured that out. You should figure it out. Like, no. I, whenever, from the time they were really little, anytime I had to correct them, I said, I did everything that you're doing. Everything.

• 1:55:41Speaker 01

  I, I threw my food on the floor too.

• 1:55:43Speaker 00

  Yes. All, all the above. Whatever fucking stupid thing you've done as a kid, I guarantee you.

• 1:55:49Speaker 01

  That is great advice. Really great advice. So I, I hope everyone listening hears that because I, I actually had to learn the hard way. My first kid, I did what my parents did, which was, you can't say that, blah, blah.

• 1:56:00Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:56:01Speaker 01

  And my first is a lot more rebellious and distant than my third, for that reason.

• 1:56:05Speaker 00

  Interesting. Yeah.

• 1:56:06Speaker 01

  It, it actually is really true. I've seen it.

• 1:56:08Speaker 00

  Yeah. And it's, I, I thought it was gonna kill their motivation, but it doesn't at all. I thought like, you know, making things easy for them and not being strict. Like, maybe it's good to be strict because then you just have this determination to, I'll show everybody. I don't think, that was my thing as a child. Like, I'll fucking show you. But I don't think everybody needs that. I think you, you're much better off having a healthy relationship with ambition. Where you're excited about things because you're passionate about them and you, you find great reward in being creative or being enthusiastic about something.

• 1:56:43Speaker 01

  Exactly. And, and open their eyes to the world that exists.

• 1:56:47Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:56:47Speaker 01

  You know, we used to do work experience. You go and do a job and that's your work experience. The reason I wanted my son Ben to work with me is he can see how, what it's like to be an entrepreneur and

• 1:56:56Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:56:56Speaker 01

  build something and, and be excited and work is super fun when you get into it. Uh, I think a lot of kids just don't get that experience. They don't know what's possible.

• 1:57:04Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:57:05Speaker 01

  And just showing them the world is what we can do as parents.

• 1:57:08Speaker 00

  That's awesome. Yeah. And, you know, I mean, some people don't have that at home, unfortunately, but that's one of the cool things about the world that we live in. Is that kids today have access to so many different perspectives now because of the internet. There's so many different podcasts and YouTube conversations and different things where they can just take a little tool from that. Just take a little piece from that and apply it to the way they interact with the world.

• 1:57:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. Um, for sure. And I would encourage parents to give their kids stuff to read. We talked about social media, how that's just addictive. I saw how my kids wanted to just scroll through their phones than, than read. And if they can't read a book, give them a magazine. I subscribe to Nat Geo, National Geographic for my kids. And I think get them used to reading. It's gonna be a lost art if we don't.

• 1:58:05Speaker 00

  I know. Isn't that nuts? I I maybe read ten percent of the things that I consume. I I consume so much in audio. Uh, just for time reasons, because there's so much, there's so much time where I'm driving my car. Or I'm working out, or I'm in the sauna, or I'm in the hyperbaric chamber, or I'm in the red light therapy.

• 1:58:26Speaker 01

  That's reading through your ears.

• 1:58:27Speaker 00

  It is similar, but I think it's only like seventy percent of reading. I don't think it's a hundred percent. I don't think you get the full effect, but it's still way better than not doing it.

• 1:58:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:58:37Speaker 00

  You know, but I'm I'm aware that like, sitting there concentrating, actually reading a book without hearing another person's voice talking. There's another mechanism. There's another thing that's going on. That's a, it's a different way you interact with the material, whether it's nonfiction or fiction.

• 1:58:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, I I like the fact that I can listen to you and I'm doing something else. I don't have to sit down, can move, go for a walk.

• 1:58:59Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's for me, it's it's just, I'm, I have too many interests. I have way too many things that I do. And so it's very hard for me to just allocate a certain amount of time to sit there in silence and read.

• 1:59:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, I use reading to fall asleep. That's a good way.

• 1:59:13Speaker 00

  It does do that, right? It's kind of nuts how well it does that.

• 1:59:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, although I am finding it's harder to read now that my eyes aren't young. Need some of my gene therapy myself. I've tried that. Does it work for you?

• 1:59:26Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah. Oh, I mean, people are skeptical about this and they they think I'm full of shit. No, I don't need reading glasses anymore.

• 1:59:34Speaker 01

  Really?

• 1:59:35Speaker 00

  Yes. I had reading, I always have these fucking things laying around. I don't even use them anymore.

• 1:59:39Speaker 01

  That's awesome. Yeah, there's a lot of science now for red light.

• 1:59:42Speaker 00

  It's real. I can tell you, as a regular user for multiple years. It took a while. It took like, I was waiting for it in the beginning, like, what the fuck? In the back, and not only that, in the beginning, because I don't close my eyes in the red light bed, I thought it was making things blurrier. I was like, oh, my God, am I fucking up my eyesight, like, listening to these assholes? Uh, but no, it just took a while. And then, over the course of like, many months, I started seeing some small improvements. And then I started seeing some pretty big improvements over the course of about a year. Whereas now, I I, it's not, my eyes aren't perfect. They aren't like they were when I was twenty. But they are way better than they were when I was fifty.

• 2:00:26Speaker 01

  How often did you have to do that?

• 2:00:27Speaker 00

  I do it three times a week minimum. That's what I try to do, but sometimes I'll do it five days a week. I just get in there and it's twenty minutes. I lay in a light bed, close my eyes, open my eyes, whatever. It seems to work on your vision, even if you wear a blindfold.

• 2:00:42Speaker 01

  What about people that can't afford a bed? Can you get little devices?

• 2:00:45Speaker 00

  You can get, well, there's a company called, it's it's called Juve, right? J U U V. Is that the name of the company? They were our sponsor at one point in time. That's how I started it. They had, uh, it's just a light panel that you stand in front of.

• 2:00:59Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, I've got one of those, yeah.

• 2:01:00Speaker 00

  And that, that works too. That, um, but this one, the one that I got, a red and near infrared light therapy devices. Juve, J O O V V. Medical-grade light therapy devices. Uh, I had one of those and that's when I started seeing benefits. But the, um, the big one that I got, I got from Gary Brekka, from his company, and it's it's a, like a fucking tanning bed and you lie in it. And that one's amazing. But that's expensive. But I don't think you have to have that for that, those kind of improvements. Also improves collagen in your skin, makes you look better. And, um, the, but for me, the most obvious and profound was the improvement in my vision.

• 2:01:42Speaker 01

  Well, it makes sense. The the science behind red light wasn't there ten years ago and people were questioning it. But now, we know if you shine certain wavelengths like near infrared on cells, the mitochondria, which are important for reversing aging or slowing it, get revved up. Um, it's actually related to Viagra, long story, but Viagra and red light have something in common. And it does help mitochondria. And that's very important for the eye. The mitochondria are actually the most important in any part of your body. Uh, the eye is the most important part. And part of the reason we lose our vision is the mitochondria don't make enough energy for the eye.

• 2:02:17Speaker 00

  How come you haven't done red light therapy before then?

• 2:02:20Speaker 01

  Well, I do, but not, uh, routinely. So I have one of those bricks that I turn on while I'm in the shower. And I have a red light cap for my hair, which there's some evidence.

• 2:02:30Speaker 00

  My wife has one of those.

• 2:02:32Speaker 01

  It works a little bit.

• 2:02:32Speaker 00

  Fucking alien.

• 2:02:34Speaker 01

  What I do is I, yeah, it does, it looks a little bit silly.

• 2:02:37Speaker 00

  It's weird.

• 2:02:37Speaker 01

  I don't wear it in public, but, um, I do lower it and I look at it and it shines in my eyes and on my face, in the hopes that it might help.

• 2:02:44Speaker 00

  Yeah, they have one that you wear like Doctor Doom, like fits over your face and like blasts red light in your whole face.

• 2:02:49Speaker 01

  I definitely feel a bit weird afterwards and I can see speckles, but I I think the science says that it can help.

• 2:02:57Speaker 00

  Well, all I know is my own anecdotal experience. And for me, it has radically improved my vision.

• 2:03:04Speaker 01

  That's a good tip.

• 2:03:05Speaker 00

  Yeah, it stopped, it was, my vision was degrading. Like, it was, it was pretty odd, like, I first started using like, reading glasses, like a one X. Like, I made it a little better. I'm like, oh, this is a little better, makes it clearer. And then I went to two, and then I was using two point five.

• 2:03:22Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:03:22Speaker 00

  And it made it better, but it was like, God, this is annoying. And then, if I would try to like, read an email and it, I didn't have my reading glasses, I couldn't read shit. Now, crystal clear.

• 2:03:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:03:34Speaker 00

  No problem at all.

• 2:03:35Speaker 01

  Well, uh, so my my latest show is about the eye and how to protect the eye's health. And so, there's a lot you can do, actually, supplements, um, red light, other things.

• 2:03:46Speaker 00

  I take supplements for it too, I should mention that. I take, um, no, I have no affiliation with these people, but Pure Encapsulations makes a, uh, a supplement called Macular Support. And I take that. And it's a combination of lutein and a few other things.

• 2:04:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, there was a trial, uh, a while ago that showed that taking xanthine and others, astaxanthine, lutein, lutein, they're good for, uh, the eye. So you can get products like that.

• 2:04:12Speaker 00

  Do you take it?

• 2:04:13Speaker 01

  Not that brand, but yes, I take something similar.

• 2:04:16Speaker 00

  And has it helped you at all?

• 2:04:18Speaker 01

  I don't know. I haven't done an experiment.

• 2:04:20Speaker 00

  Right, well, if you weren't taking it, maybe you would have more degeneration.

• 2:04:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, you know, I've got near-perfect vision. I don't need glasses.

• 2:04:27Speaker 00

  Do you really?

• 2:04:28Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah.

• 2:04:29Speaker 00

  Near-perfect?

• 2:04:30Speaker 01

  Near-perfect. I mean, I think low light.

• 2:04:32Speaker 00

  Low light is with me, yeah. Where I'll go to a restaurant with my kids and they can read the menu and I'm like, that is so embarrassing. You can read that? How do you even read that? I can't read shit, like.

• 2:04:43Speaker 01

  Do you know why?

• 2:04:44Speaker 00

  Why?

• 2:04:44Speaker 01

  Well, this is, this is what I think. So we we know from my lab's work that the retina, because it has tens of thousands of endings that pick up the light, as you get older, those nerves lose their identity and they're not working as well. And what we do is, with our therapy, we can restore those nerves back to being functional nerves. And that's why mice and monkeys that lose their retinal function get their perfect vision back again.

• 2:05:14Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 2:05:15Speaker 01

  We're reminding those cells that have forgotten how to work. So in your eye and my eye, we're twenty-two months apart, that those nerves, about half of them, have forgotten how to work properly. So we want to fix that and go back to being young. It's not that our nerves are gone. They're not dead. They're right there and we can restore them. And that's going to be true for a lot of organs, is that the cells are still there, they just need to be reminded how to work again.

• 2:05:38Speaker 00

  What are the potential negative consequences of this kind of work? Like, when you, when you sit up at night and you worry, I hope it doesn't do this. Is it cancer? Is that the big one?

• 2:05:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's, though we've done a lot of work to allay real fears. It is possible that if we go too young, we can cause dysplasia, which is cells doing what they shouldn't. Or if they multiply and spread, that would be cancer.

• 2:06:03Speaker 00

  If you make the cells too young, like what I was saying before about don't turn me into a baby.

• 2:06:07Speaker 01

  Right. We don't want to go there. That's what Yamanaka did and got the Nobel for it. But that's not good here. But we we never see our cells turn into stem cells again. We can't, we, we had mice that we left it, left the gene therapy on for twenty-one months in the eye and nineteen months in the whole body of the animal. And if anything, they had less tumors than the ones that didn't get treated. And we actually know from a wonderful student in my lab, Nalat, uh, she's a PhD student. She found that when you turn on these three same genes, not in the eye but in cancer cells, and tumors growing in mice, human cancers growing in mice, they shrink. So we think it might actually help for cancer as well, which was a nice surprise.

• 2:06:48Speaker 00

  Wow. That's incredible.

• 2:06:51Speaker 01

  Makes sense, right? If you wake up a cancer cell and it says, crap, I shouldn't be growing, I should be a, you know, a liver cell or or something similar, uh, now it kills itself. So we see that. The cells wake up, they realize what they were thirty years ago, and then they kill themselves.

• 2:07:09Speaker 00

  Hmm. What what is on the horizon in terms of like, what would you like to accomplish? Or would you like to work on that you can't do currently?

• 2:07:19Speaker 01

  Well, lots, lots. You know, funding in my lab got completely cut last year. Uh, and we've managed to survive through donations. We.

• 2:07:28Speaker 00

  Why did funding get cut? Was it a USAID thing?

• 2:07:30Speaker 01

  You remember, uh, there was a spat between Harvard and the federal government? All of the funding to Harvard Medical School got cut.

• 2:07:36Speaker 00

  Was that during the time where the president was defending those anti-Semitic comments on campuses?

• 2:07:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, uh, well, allegedly. I'm not getting into the politics, but yes.

• 2:07:49Speaker 00

  No need to get into politics, but during that whole thing, yeah.

• 2:07:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, so what, what we, we, I almost had to fire most of the people in my lab during that episode. It was quite scary, but I

• 2:07:59Speaker 00

  God.

• 2:08:00Speaker 01

  Raised, so now my lab survives on donations, uh, not on federal government money. Thank you, friends. Thank you, thank you.

• 2:08:08Speaker 00

  Well, the thing is, you've accomplished enough where people are like, I think he's on to something and I want to live forever.

• 2:08:15Speaker 01

  Well, I'm lucky. Most scientists can't raise money like that. So really, really, it's a blessing. And now I'm raising money through a foundation to help other scientists survive. But yeah, it's, it's been a blessing. But your question, um, was what do I wish I could do?

• 2:08:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:08:30Speaker 01

  I wish I could go faster. I wish I could try multiple approaches, so we don't just have one shot on goal. It's going slower than I would want. With a big injection of cash, we could do a lot of trials, a lot of different tissues. We could do a whole body reen,

• 2:08:45Speaker 01

  rejuvenation as well.

• 2:08:46Speaker 00

  Do you have a website where people can donate?

• 2:08:49Speaker 01

  Um, I do. It's lifespan.com.

• 2:08:53Speaker 00

  So if you go to lifespan.com, there's a link there.

• 2:08:56Speaker 01

  Yep, we have a foundation and we're raising money for this type of research.

• 2:09:00Speaker 00

  Is it tax deductible?

• 2:09:02Speaker 01

  Uh, depends on how big the donation is. Uh, for ten dollars, you get the new magazine that we're putting out. And you learn all about, uh, how to live longer, building, I'm hoping to build the world's largest longevity community of millions of people who can learn how to really live longer and build healthcare from the ground up, because top-down from the government hasn't worked.

• 2:09:21Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 2:09:22Speaker 01

  Yeah. Actually, I have, I have a gift for you.

• 2:09:24Speaker 00

  Where you at?

• 2:09:25Speaker 01

  I made something for you that's unique.

• 2:09:27Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 2:09:31Speaker 01

  This is for you, Joe, as a thanks to all the support you've given me and the science over the years.

• 2:09:37Speaker 00

  First edition. Lifespan Magazine, ladies and gentlemen, look at that.

• 2:09:42Speaker 01

  It's written by scientists.

• 2:09:43Speaker 00

  What a great cover, it's like a velvet cover. What is this?

• 2:09:46Speaker 01

  I figured you might like that. Inside is the magazine.

• 2:09:49Speaker 00

  What is this material? It's beautiful.

• 2:09:51Speaker 01

  Valour.

• 2:09:52Speaker 00

  Valour, oh, valour, of course.

• 2:09:53Speaker 01

  At great expense. No, the magazine doesn't come with valour, that's just special for Joe, as a thank you present.

• 2:09:59Speaker 00

  Thank you very much.

• 2:10:01Speaker 01

  Most, most science out there is written by reporters who don't know what they're talking about. And so we want, we wrote this for the public and you can believe whatever you read in there.

• 2:10:11Speaker 00

  All right, beautiful. This episode is brought to you by Visible. As fall hits, we enter another season of change. Time to shift gears, drop the dead weight and upgrade the wardrobe for the drop in temperature. But one thing that doesn't need to change, your phone. The smartest upgrade this season isn't a new phone, it's a better wireless plan. Switch to Visible, the ultimate wireless hack. You get unlimited 5G data and unlimited hotspot powered by Verizon for just $25 a month. That means keeping the phone you already have, ditching your overpriced phone bill and pocketing some savings for yourself. All the perks of big wireless for half the cost. Switch today at visible.com.

• 2:10:55Speaker 00

  The Visible plan starts at just $25 a month, or get the premium Visible Plus Pro Plan and save $10 on your first month with promo code ROGEN. Terms apply. See visible.com for plan features and network management details. This episode is brought to you by The Farmer's Dog. Here's a fun fact, research shows that dogs who maintain a healthy weight can live up to two and a half years longer on average than dogs who are overweight. Isn't that wild and also kind of obvious at the same time? So why is feeding vague scoops of ultra-processed kibble still the status quo for most dog owners? Healthy alternatives exist, and trust me, I know. I buy one, The Farmer's Dog.

• 2:11:39Speaker 00

  I use it for both my dogs, they love it, they eat it up quick, it smells good to them, it smells good to me, it's human-grade food. The Farmer's Dog makes fresh food for dogs and my dogs love it. Their recipes are made with real meat and fresh vegetables that are gently cooked to retain vital nutrients. They also portion out the meals to your dog's nutritional needs, which helps avoid overfeeding and makes weight management easier. And isn't getting more time with our four-legged best friends something every dog owner wants? The answer to that is yes, obviously. So try The Farmer's Dog today and get 50% off your first box of fresh, healthy food. Plus, get free shipping.

• 2:12:22Speaker 00

  Just go to thefarmersdog.com/rogan. This offer is for new customers only. Yeah, it's valour, so you have to trust it.

• 2:12:31Speaker 01

  So that's at lifespan.com, you can subscribe, get that every month, just for 10 bucks.

• 2:12:36Speaker 00

  I like the take at the bottom, life's too short, let's fix that.

• 2:12:39Speaker 01

  That's our slogan at Lifespan.

• 2:12:41Speaker 00

  That's a great slogan.

• 2:12:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:12:43Speaker 00

  That's an awesome slogan.

• 2:12:44Speaker 01

  So it's, it's a, it's a community, it's the show, my show is also called Lifespan on YouTube. But the magazine is a passion project, I want to put out something that people love, it's beautiful, right? It's like National Geographic. By the way, just today, this is no joke, it seems crazy, but my lab's research is on the cover of National Geographic.

• 2:13:06Speaker 00

  Oh, that's awesome.

• 2:13:07Speaker 01

  That just came out today. They, they heard, by the way, at Nat Geo, they said, you going on Joe Rogan? I went, yeah. They goes, all right, we'll put it out early. So you can now read about my lab's research on Nat Geo as well today.

• 2:13:19Speaker 00

  That's very cool, that's very cool. So you would just like to do more, have more funding, do more, that's the thing that you wish you could be working on now, just having more different, more different studies and tests running concurrently.

• 2:13:34Speaker 01

  We could go so fast with AI, because it's spitting out new drug candidates all the time, that we can't test, it takes years to get through. So with money, we could do a lot more trials and put these through different diseases much faster.

• 2:13:46Speaker 00

  If you had no regulations, like an island of Dr. Moreau type deal?

• 2:13:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:13:51Speaker 00

  Where you, you know?

• 2:13:52Speaker 01

  Well, at the risk of getting kicked out of my university, theoretically, we could very safely do more animal studies and with those best candidates, put them into humans quicker. Right now, it takes years, it's taken us close to 10 years to go from the first discovery in my lab in Nature Magazine to now. But that's too slow, there are people dying, 150,000 a day on this planet, it's terrible. So I would love to have the resources, you know, like Jeff Bezos and others.

• 2:14:24Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:14:25Speaker 01

  My, my company, by the way, even though we lead the pack of all these guys, we're really small, we're, we're a pretty small little outfit in, in Boston, we've raised a lot less money, but we're, because I think we're focused, we have, and we started earlier, we're doing pretty well.

• 2:14:41Speaker 00

  That's the big one, you started earlier, you have a lot of momentum on your side.

• 2:14:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, but we, I think we, we could have a big impact on aging in our lifetime with more money directed in general at the field, not just me, but spread it. And so the money that we raise from the magazine is going to support other labs as well and students who can find these medicines quicker.

• 2:15:05Speaker 00

  So if you, in a perfect world, and you had unlimited resources, you would just run a bunch of different clinical trials and studies concurrently?

• 2:15:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, AI is feeding us molecules, we put them into mice, we go to monkeys, we go to humans, and it'll just be fast. One of my friends, Alex Zakharankov, he has a similar company, but not on exactly what we do, not on reprogramming, but he's able, I think he's on his 35th drug, but he's driven by AI and robots, his whole lab is robots, at least, he says they are, and then goes into humans. And his company is worth billions. That approach applied to what we do would be incredible.

• 2:15:49Speaker 00

  Hmm, that's best case scenario. That would be incredible. Well, I'm hoping through this conversation that people are going to reach out, and I'm hoping through this conversation that people are realizing, like, oh, well, so much work has been done and so many breakthroughs have been made, if they had more access to resources, more access to different, whatever you need, you know, and that you could run all these different studies.

• 2:16:15Speaker 01

  We, we could, we were, our budget in my lab is only, it's almost three, three and a bit million, it's not much, right, compared to what impact it could have on the planet, which is trillions of dollars saved, just in the US alone. So it's, it's a little bit of donation or, or getting a magazine, the impact would be life-changing for all of us. Who doesn't age, who doesn't get diseases?

• 2:16:39Speaker 00

  Right, and who doesn't want to feel better?

• 2:16:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:16:42Speaker 00

  It's also like so much, you can get so much more done if you feel better.

• 2:16:47Speaker 01

  Well, we, we take it for granted until we feel sick, and then it's like, oh, I forgot what it's like to feel well.

• 2:16:53Speaker 00

  Exactly, exactly. I had a day, a week and a half ago, where I came back from Italy, I was a little jet-lagged, I couldn't, didn't sleep right, and I worked out really hard a bunch of days in a row, and I was working constantly. And then I had one day, I was like, I kind of feel like shit, like, I better not do anything today. And I, you know, after I was done work, I just watched TV and relaxed, I went, and I was like, I can't wait to feel better again.

• 2:17:22Speaker 01

  Well, imagine what it's like being old.

• 2:17:24Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 2:17:25Speaker 01

  And frail, that's every day.

• 2:17:27Speaker 00

  Yes, or sick.

• 2:17:28Speaker 01

  And right now, you can't do anything about it.

• 2:17:29Speaker 00

  Yes, yeah. And while you're healthy, you take it for granted, and that's the real sin. Like, you're like, ah, I'm fine, I'm great. I mean, this is what people do when they go out drinking, right? They take advantage of the fact that it's worth it for a good time, just poison myself for a night.

• 2:17:48Speaker 01

  Well, it's not worth it, because that also accelerates aging.

• 2:17:51Speaker 00

  But big time, right?

• 2:17:52Speaker 01

  That's what I tell my kids who like alcohol, like most kids. You know, you might feel better in a, in a few days, but the memory of that is going to be in your body.

• 2:18:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:18:02Speaker 01

  You can drink, it's, you know, it's fine to get drunk once in a while, but not a lot, not constantly. I used to drink once a day, and I do not do that anymore, because the, the data's incontrovertible, that it affects the brain, even the size of the brain, if you drink constantly, consistently.

• 2:18:16Speaker 00

  I took eight months off of no alcohol at all, and I felt a lot better.

• 2:18:20Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 2:18:21Speaker 00

  I started drinking again, one night, I went to dinner with my wife and had a margarita, I was like, ooh, I think I'm back.

• 2:18:27Speaker 01

  Ah, really? Well, I'm a lot less funny now.

• 2:18:30Speaker 00

  I do not get drunk. I haven't gotten drunk. This was over a year ago was when I had a drink again, I think. I think it was a year. I'm not sure. But point is, uh, I have not been drunk since then.

• 2:18:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:18:41Speaker 00

  I will have a glass of wine with dinner or I will have, uh, a like a shot of whiskey before I go on stage. Like a little bit, but I do not get drunk anymore. It's just not worth it to me. The feeling afterwards is so terrible. The morning, and especially for me, because I work out so much, when I wake up, it's like that workout's gonna get done. Okay. Whether I feel like shit or not, that workout's gonna get done and this is gonna be rough.

• 2:19:07Speaker 01

  And you got the sweats. It's horrible.

• 2:19:08Speaker 00

  Versus when I feel great, I love the workout. I'm excited. Like I look forward to it, even when it's hard, when it's over, I'm like, whoo, all right, let's eat. And I don't feel bad. I feel good. And it's like, why am I giving up that for a few hours of, ah, you know, it's just not worth it. It's not worth it.

• 2:19:29Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, you're funny even without alcohol, but I'm, I'm not. So I've lost a lot of my humor. But the, the, there's nothing better than feeling great, right?

• 2:19:37Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 2:19:37Speaker 01

  And if you can make it your hobby of working on your health and your longevity.

• 2:19:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:19:43Speaker 01

  You'll enjoy it.

• 2:19:44Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 2:19:44Speaker 01

  It shouldn't be a chore.

• 2:19:46Speaker 00

  It'll also directly affect the other things that you love, cause you will have more energy. Your life energy, your vitality is so important for anything you're doing. Whether it's a creative thing or an intellectual thing, like anything that you're doing, if you have more energy, you'll be able to apply more energy to that thing. It's that simple. You're building a bigger gas tank for yourself. You're building a larger engine and that's what you're doing.

• 2:20:12Speaker 01

  Exactly. Mentally, physically, you can do so much when you feel good. You jump out of bed. If, if you wake up and you're tired, woozy, you know, your eyes are puffy, that's not how it should be when you wake up.

• 2:20:23Speaker 00

  Right.

• 2:20:23Speaker 01

  If you're getting, and sleep is important for longevity, of course, if you're getting good deep sleep, then you should wake up and you feel great.

• 2:20:29Speaker 00

  Yes. Yes.

• 2:20:31Speaker 01

  You don't even necessarily need a cup of coffee, but it's not bad if you have one.

• 2:20:35Speaker 00

  I like coffee. I'm not gonna stop drinking it. I don't give a fuck what anybody says.

• 2:20:39Speaker 01

  Right. It's good.

• 2:20:40Speaker 00

  And there's also like conflicting information. Some people say it's good for you. There's benefits.

• 2:20:45Speaker 01

  It's good for you. Come on.

• 2:20:46Speaker 00

  That's what I say.

• 2:20:47Speaker 01

  Oh, it really is. Anyone that says it's not, doesn't read the literature.

• 2:20:50Speaker 00

  Well, I would imagine an overabundance of caffeine is not good. Too much is not good, but that's what.

• 2:20:57Speaker 01

  True for everything.

• 2:20:58Speaker 00

  Too much salt will kill you.

• 2:20:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:21:00Speaker 00

  You know, eat a pound of salt, you'll be dead in an hour.

• 2:21:02Speaker 01

  Right. And you can get away with very little sleep, actually, as long as it's deep sleep. Because what it's doing is clearing out the misfolded proteins in your brain and the toxins. We know this, the glymphatic system.

• 2:21:12Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 2:21:13Speaker 01

  And if you get deep sleep for, you know, an hour, you're actually gonna wake up much cleaner, healthier. And what I've been able to do with some work is figure out how to get deep sleep every night. Efficiency on these rings that say about above ninety sometimes.

• 2:21:30Speaker 00

  I like you say rings, cause you're wearing two Aura rings.

• 2:21:34Speaker 01

  Uh.

• 2:21:35Speaker 00

  Or one in Aura. Okay. Why do you wear two different rings?

• 2:21:40Speaker 01

  Um, because when I've got two, neither of them is correct. No, the, the, the truth is, some of them, uh, some of them are really good for sleep. The others are good for heart. And so I've, this one's my heart and this is my sleep.

• 2:21:56Speaker 00

  What is the difference in the companies? Which one's which?

• 2:21:59Speaker 01

  Um, uh, you don't mind me saying who they are?

• 2:22:01Speaker 00

  No, I don't care.

• 2:22:02Speaker 01

  Uh, this is an Aura, the fat one, and then the thinner one is called Ultra Human.

• 2:22:06Speaker 00

  Ultra Human?

• 2:22:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:22:07Speaker 00

  And which one is good for what?

• 2:22:09Speaker 01

  Well, I find Aura really good for sleep. That's their specialty. Um, and then the heart for Ultra Human, my cardiac age.

• 2:22:17Speaker 00

  Oh, okay. So it's just like giving you data all the time?

• 2:22:20Speaker 01

  Yeah. And they're getting even better, cause they, I, I don't get paid by these companies, but I do like that they pop up with AI information now.

• 2:22:28Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 2:22:28Speaker 01

  Have you noticed that da da da, or I noticed that you ate a meal last night that spiked your glucose? You know, and this one I have a monitor on right now, so I can see what's going on anyway. But yeah, they're, they're becoming like a.

• 2:22:40Speaker 00

  Fucking monitored, bro.

• 2:22:42Speaker 01

  I am.

• 2:22:43Speaker 00

  Two rings and a patch?

• 2:22:44Speaker 01

  It's a, it's a hobby. It's a hobby, but you learn a lot. And I put one of these on my son and he stopped eating bad food for, for a long while.

• 2:22:53Speaker 00

  Really? Cause he was just recognizing the impact that it had on his body?

• 2:22:56Speaker 01

  It's good for kids. Now, I wouldn't say slap it on a kid without pediatrician recommendation, but it was amazing what happened when he could see the crap that was going in his mouth, was doing to his blood sugar.

• 2:23:08Speaker 00

  Really?

• 2:23:09Speaker 01

  It was amazing. I, I think it's a great learning tool, if nothing else.

• 2:23:12Speaker 00

  Right. Just to have actual data. I know a lot of people, it's changed their opinion on alcohol, particularly the Aura ring, when they look at their sleep.

• 2:23:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:23:20Speaker 00

  Because even just a couple of drinks before you go to bed, like a couple of drinks at dinner, and then you realize like, oh God, my sleep was all fucked up because of those drinks.

• 2:23:31Speaker 01

  Yeah. Lay off the modafinil too, for me anyway.

• 2:23:35Speaker 00

  Yeah. Some modafinil fucks with your sleep as well?

• 2:23:37Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. I have to work really hard to sleep well. There's, there's quiet time, there's relaxation, the lights are dimmed. Um, I think about a happy place rather than work. I had to do that, cause for fifty years I was burning the candle at all ends. And I was really burnt out and so I've fixed that now. I don't worry.

• 2:23:56Speaker 00

  So are you one of those guys that like dims the lights in your house a couple of hours before you go to bed? Prepare, stay off your phone?

• 2:24:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:24:04Speaker 00

  All that stuff?

• 2:24:05Speaker 01

  Well, I don't stay off my phone as much as I want to, but um, yes.

• 2:24:08Speaker 00

  Wear red light glasses or anything like blockers?

• 2:24:11Speaker 01

  I used to. I haven't found a big difference for myself, but um, interesting fact that isn't well known. If you block blue light during the day or just stay indoors, there's a guy in Japan, uh, who says that what, what happens is you get shortsightedness.

• 2:24:28Speaker 00

  Really?

• 2:24:29Speaker 01

  Cause the mice that lack the ability to sense violet light get myopia, short sighted. And he's got a device that indoors you can shine this, but our modern world, the LEDs, and being indoors means we barely get violet light and that would be, that'd be so interesting if that's what's causing us to have to wear glasses.

• 2:24:49Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 2:24:50Speaker 01

  And he claims that people that live out in the countryside that see blue light all the time, cause they go out, don't have as much need for glasses.

• 2:24:57Speaker 00

  That actually makes sense. Well, particularly like artificial light and then also light that's from a close source. Like one of the things that, uh, if I do, if I'm, if I'm tired and I lay in bed and I try to read something online on my phone, it hurts my eyes. The room's dark and it's like, it irritates my eyes, where it never irritates my eyes normally. But it's like, at the end of the day, you know, I guess I'm more fatigued and so that I'm.

• 2:25:23Speaker 01

  And you're trying to focus on.

• 2:25:24Speaker 00

  Yeah. So like now think about that, when people are doing it all day long, maybe you're doing it at work where you have to stand or stare at a computer monitor from three feet away or, or closer. And then you're looking at your phone all the time, or you're working from a tablet, or you're watching television. It's like you're constantly staring at these light sources that are artificial.

• 2:25:42Speaker 01

  Yeah. And also keep in mind that the muscles have to focus. It's not nat-, you don't naturally look this far. You naturally, you relax, you see out there.

• 2:25:51Speaker 00

  Right.

• 2:25:51Speaker 01

  To look here, your muscles here have to be straining for hours and they get very tired.

• 2:25:56Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 2:25:57Speaker 01

  And I guess eventually they age to a point where you cannot keep it up. And sometimes I do this to see better though.

• 2:26:05Speaker 00

  Well, it, it, it all makes sense if you think about it, particularly like if your eyes are accustomed to only focusing on things that are close. I mean, that was what they would say about reading when people would have glasses. Oh, you fucked up your vision reading, which I used to think was nonsense, but I'm like, well, it kinda makes sense if you spend all day long focused, even, even though it's on a screen, you're spending all day long focusing on a book that's only a foot from your face.

• 2:26:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:26:28Speaker 00

  It does make sense.

• 2:26:29Speaker 01

  And the lens gets really inflexible.

• 2:26:32Speaker 00

  Right.

• 2:26:32Speaker 01

  And I'm seeing this with my father. He's otherwise in perfect health at eighty-seven, which is amazing. But it's his eyes that are failing him.

• 2:26:39Speaker 00

  Maybe you should get him a red light bed.

• 2:26:41Speaker 01

  That's a great idea.

• 2:26:42Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:26:42Speaker 01

  I'm gonna do that. He's arriving tonight, actually, from Sydney. He's a.

• 2:26:47Speaker 00

  Yeah. Get him a red light bed, man. Cause I'm telling you, there's not a thing that I've done that's impacted me in a more obvious way than that. In terms of like something that's hugely important.

• 2:26:57Speaker 01

  I'm gonna do it. And, uh, I mean, he's into science. He's been taking NMN Resveratrol, Metformin, exercising. He goes to the gym two or three times a week, walks six miles. I, he's a role model at eighty-seven with no diseases, no aches or pains.

• 2:27:13Speaker 00

  That's awesome.

• 2:27:14Speaker 01

  Traveling the world. He was in Japan two weeks ago.

• 2:27:16Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 2:27:16Speaker 01

  Coming to, coming to Boston.

• 2:27:18Speaker 00

  That's, that's so cool. I love hearing about people that are older that just keep on top of it and stay active and stay alive and enjoy life.

• 2:27:26Speaker 01

  Yeah. Exactly. He's a great role model and it, what it shows is he was an average guy till he was in his sixties. And he figured I was gonna, he was gonna die in his seventies probably, cause everyone in my family dies young, cause we've got pretty bad genes. But he's just taken life by the horns and just is running with it and has not physically aged, except for his eyes, in the last twenty years.

• 2:27:48Speaker 00

  That's incredible.

• 2:27:48Speaker 01

  And that's not an exaggeration. Anyone who's seen him, uh, knows he walks, he moves, he travels, he does everything like he was when he was forty.

• 2:27:56Speaker 00

  That's where, where things like resistance exercises are so important. Cause it maintains bone density, maintains muscle mass, maintains your ability to just get around and do things.

• 2:28:06Speaker 01

  That's the other reason to, to do that. I mean, you're, you're gonna be really strong when you're older and you won't fall. And if you do fall, you'll bounce. You won't break a bone. And he, he's like that. He's been working out at the gym, mostly strength training, but balance as well. It's very important to maintain balance. He's better at the gym than me at eighty-seven.

• 2:28:23Speaker 00

  That's incredible.

• 2:28:24Speaker 01

  That just shows how weak I am.

• 2:28:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, I gotta go to the gym. How about next time, if you have me on?

• 2:28:32Speaker 00

  You're gonna be buff. We'll get you a trainer. You're in Massachusetts, there's a ton of trainers out there.

• 2:28:37Speaker 01

  Great. It's a deal.

• 2:28:40Speaker 00

  We'll find you someone, we'll find you someone. Three days a week, that's all you need. The other days, you could do stuff elective, do stuff that you want, you know? But three days a week, get a personal trainer and work out with them.

• 2:28:52Speaker 01

  You're on.

• 2:28:53Speaker 00

  Alright.

• 2:28:54Speaker 01

  I will let you know when it's going, or you help me. I can hear though, that there's probably a few million people right now screaming, "David, just go to the lab, forget about the gym, you need to make more discoveries."

• 2:29:05Speaker 00

  It'll help your lab work, it'll help everything, it'll help the amount of research you're able to do. You'll have more energy, you'll be more excited about things. I'm sure you've seen those MRI cross-sections of people's tissue? Where they take like a 70-year-old man who's sedentary versus a 70-year-old man who's a marathon runner? It's fucking extraordinary.

• 2:29:23Speaker 01

  I've seen my own, there's too much fat in the muscle, gotta get rid of it.

• 2:29:27Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. It's really extraordinary when you see those images, like those really bring it home.

• 2:29:32Speaker 01

  And the bone changes, bone turns to fat too. Parts of the bone, so you gotta have the strength training for sure.

• 2:29:39Speaker 00

  A hundred percent.

• 2:29:40Speaker 01

  Keep your bones strong.

• 2:29:41Speaker 00

  Yeah, a hundred percent. Strength training is, that's mandatory.

• 2:29:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, and then, do you do a lot of aerobic exercises?

• 2:29:48Speaker 00

  Yes, yeah.

• 2:29:49Speaker 01

  I saw the training bike.

• 2:29:51Speaker 00

  Oh yeah, well you saw my hypoxia machine that I just got installed today.

• 2:29:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:29:55Speaker 00

  Yeah, the hypoxia thing, what it does is it replicates 14,000 feet above sea level. And you train in it, and it also has a heat element, so you could ramp the heat up to 115 degrees. So 115 degrees and 14,000 feet above sea level.

• 2:30:15Speaker 01

  What's that machi-pichi kind of stuff?

• 2:30:16Speaker 00

  Yeah, you're going to hell, that's what it is, you're going straight to hell.

• 2:30:20Speaker 01

  It'll feel like it, but it should work, right? Hypoxia is great for muscle.

• 2:30:24Speaker 00

  Yes, and for adaptation, that's the big thing. And my friend Roman, who installed it, who's one of the guys from the company, they're very specific with this protocol, in terms of monitoring your heart rate, when to do it, when to push, how much time to spend, and how you do it. And it's very scientific in terms of the application on athletes.

• 2:30:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:30:45Speaker 00

  And my friend Adam Green Tree turned me on to it.

• 2:30:48Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 2:30:50Speaker 00

  Fellow Australian, and he's a big hunter, and does a lot of mountain hunting. And he said, "There's nothing he's ever done that's had more of an impact on his cardio." He said, "It's been phenomenal."

• 2:31:02Speaker 01

  Sounds wonderful, actually. There's a lot of science behind that, you probably know it. The best results are when people are either having too much oxygen or not enough. And you might say, "Well, that's weird, why does it matter?" Well, you gotta get out of your comfort zone, hormesis we keep talking about. And there's a big study in Israel, where they put people in these hyperbaric chambers.

• 2:31:27Speaker 00

  I've done that protocol.

• 2:31:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:31:29Speaker 00

  Yeah, 60 sessions of 90 minutes over 90 days.

• 2:31:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:31:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:31:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:31:35Speaker 00

  I have one in my house.

• 2:31:36Speaker 01

  You do?

• 2:31:36Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:31:37Speaker 01

  Because the data's incontrovertible, better wound healing, better memory.

• 2:31:40Speaker 00

  Increase in telomere length.

• 2:31:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, I saw that one, that's the Israel study.

• 2:31:45Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 2:31:45Speaker 01

  What I thought was interesting was, when I went over there myself and sat in that thing,

• 2:31:51Speaker 01

  they made a joke over there in Israel, by the way, they said, "This gas chamber here that you're going into, made by Germans." I thought, "That's not a funny joke, don't say that again." Anyway, I probably shouldn't have shared that. I did go into the chamber, and what I found out was that they believe what I believe, which is, it's not so much the high pressure that's good for you, it's the coming down that mimics hypoxia, which your room will mimic. So the lack of oxygen, or the perceived lack of oxygen from a high state, is the benefit.

• 2:32:22Speaker 00

  Interesting.

• 2:32:22Speaker 01

  And that makes a lot of sense, you're gonna grow new blood vessels, just like Viagra is gonna open things up. We actually had a paper, 2012, that found that one of the supplements that I take, which everyone knows about, NMN, could allow animals to grow new blood vessels by getting rid of a protein that accumulates with aging. The bottom line is, we could mimic this lack of blood vessels with this pill, but by exercising, it's the same. What I really believe, which is barely talked about in the medical establishment, is that a major reason we get sick when we get older is lack of blood flow. It's rarely talked about, right?

• 2:33:05Speaker 01

  Vascular dementia, second largest cause of dementia in the world, blood flow. And it's the easiest to reverse, you just do exercise, or take one of these

• 2:33:17Speaker 00

  Viagra?

• 2:33:17Speaker 01

  PDE5 inhibitors, Viagra. Or you take my stuff, which is NMN, which we think also works.

• 2:33:23Speaker 00

  Or all the above, which is probably the best approach.

• 2:33:26Speaker 01

  I'm two out of three.

• 2:33:29Speaker 01

  Hopefully soon, three out of three. But yeah, you know, to protect your brain, which is the most important, because you don't want to be old and demented, that's worse than anything. Keep the blood flowing in your body, remember that, blood flowing is important.

• 2:33:41Speaker 00

  Yes, couldn't agree more. David, you're a treasure, I really appreciate you. Thank you for being here.

• 2:33:48Speaker 01

  You've been so kind, and thank you for getting the word out here about the great science that's going on.

• 2:33:52Speaker 00

  Oh, my pleasure, dude, I'm so happy there's someone like you out there doing this. I mean, it's such an enormous benefit to people that are listening, to the world, and you're doing, you're literally doing God's work.

• 2:34:04Speaker 01

  And we'll try to do more.

• 2:34:05Speaker 00

  Thank you very much. Lifespan.com is the website, please, folks, if you're so inclined, go donate, it'll really help, it'll change the world. David?

• 2:34:16Speaker 01

  Love you.

• 2:34:16Speaker 00

  Love you too, thank you. Bye, everybody.