#2537 - David Sinclair

28:08I've just invented a cure for aging. Right. Well, look at what it's done with mathematics. Like just over the last couple weeks, they've solved more than 50 mathematical equations that they have struggled for decade upon decade to try to solve. And AI is like, oh, I got it. 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. In fact, what we just recently did in a couple of months would have taken about 160 years to complete. What? And it's only getting faster. or eventually someone can make a drug on their phone. Say that again.

28:45Two months instead of 160 years. Well, what exactly was it that you had to do? Oh, so this drink and the pill that we're looking for, that's not easy. So we have some candidate molecules. We have a cocktail that works. Are you taking this stuff? Not yet. You're thinking about it. Yeah. No one can stop you. Well, that is true. That is true. But it would be a bad look if I died. So maybe I would. What? You're not going to die. Come on. I don't think so. We've done a lot of safety tests, and it looks really safe. But I'm not going to publicly do anything against the law. Of course. It'll be in private, of course.

29:23Of course. Not publicly. I'm at a stage where I have to be a good boy because I've got the world watching. Yes. A lot is at stake. Yes. And if this trial has any issues, it's not good. You've got to dot your I's and cross your T's and follow every—I understand that. 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 160 years of work, like what do you exactly mean by that? Yeah, and now it would probably be impossible in thousands of years because what we do is we're looking for molecules, a single molecule that can replace this cocktail.

30:02So you need a molecule to do three or four activities in the cell. Finding one activity is what pharmaceutical companies do. It takes hundreds of millions, if not billions, to make a drug. We know that, right? My little lab of 20 people 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$10 billion. Now it's a trillion theoretical and also known drugs. With my hands, I'm showing a big funnel.

30:44You're really good at podcasts. You're helping out the audio people and everything. I love it. I relaunched my podcast. That's why. Oh, that's why. Yeah. Lifespan, David Sinclair. Shameless plug. So this funnel is 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 160 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 DeepMind solved the problem of how do all our proteins look, 20 ,000 of them.

31:27And there's a lot of compute, but out the other end, a couple of months later, we have two, I don't have 200 fingers, but 200 molecules that we can now test in the lab within a few weeks. Actually, next week, we're testing these 200 against human cells. And we've also got AI helping us to tell us if the human cells go from 92 years old back to 20. We can tell that just by looking at them thanks to the AI. Is there a way to stop them from turning you into a baby? Because that's what I would worry about. I don't want to be a baby again. Right. Some people are already there. I'd like to cut it off at like, I was pretty good at 25.

32:05You know, that's, I'm going to get attacked for saying this, but that is what we do in the lab. We take 92-year-old cells and they stop at 20-something. Why would you get attacked for that? Because on the internet, people take a clip and they say, Sinclair says we can all go back to being 20 again. You suffer from this too, right? They take a clip and it's BS. It's out of context. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm just saying cells from humans, skin cells, we take them back to 25. 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.

32:39The question is, how do you safely make it a drug? And that's been the hard part over the last 10 years. So how would it be able to regulate this reduction or reversal of aging and stop it at 20-something years old. Well, 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. And he found that leaving out one of the Yamanaka genes was the trick.

33:24And now that we know it, it's super easy. But in those days, he was ready to quit. How did he find that out? 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. And are you measuring them by the length of their telomeres? Yeah, partly. But actually a better measure is the chemicals that are added and subtracted off DNA itself called methyls. And it's just a carbon molecule with three hydrogens. Very simple molecule. But what cells do is they use these methyls to tag genes to be switched off.

34:00So when we're growing as an embryo, the cells that want to 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, a friend of mine, Steve Horvath, discovered that you can use this as a clock. These chemicals, they change over time. 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, which we published in 2023. Oh, so maybe some nefarious state actor, some Russian spy could inject something in your coffee and you would turn 99 overnight?

34:45We know how to do that. Whoa. That's the dark side of this. It is. You could spike your husband's drink. Fuck that dude. And turn them into an old man. Hey, what did you do? Someone tweeted the other day, if a 92-year-old could be 25 again, would you have sex with them? Hell yeah. Imagine how much they know. But would they have sex with you? Right. That's the better question. That's the question. They'd be looking for another 20-year-old. Right. So anyway, how do we do it? 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 would be so disturbed By like old rich guys dating young women if that was the case You know tell if they looked young 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 god damn it.

35:41They get really mad Right right now the best way to do that is to have a big bank account, but eventually you'll like right But people still get grossed out. I wonder if they would get grossed out if he looked 20. They'd be like, he's praying. He has so much more years of knowledge and information. I don't care if he looks 20. That's a 99-year-old man. 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. This episode is brought to you by LifeLock. Identity theft costs more than you think. That's why LifeLock is backed by the Million Dollar Protection Package.

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37:00Wow. I wonder if people still lie about their age, if that's the case. I wonder if no one will care. Like, you would probably lie the other way. Like, I'm 80. It's right. Tom's over there telling everybody he's 80. That's right. Well, when we live for hundreds of years, people will do that. They'll be proud of their age. Do you know anything about ancient civilizations and some of the weirdness of the records of like ancient Sumer? Well, only really what I've learned from listening to you. Well, what's really weird is the ancient kings lists because – so, okay. 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 we were probably wiped out by comet impact.

37:54And 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, Sacsayhuaman, some megalithic structures that don't make any sense. The Trilithon stones in Baalbek-Lemadon 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 place them. When you look at the Sumerian kings list, it gets very weird because there's kings that reigned for thousands of years.

38:36And then you have the flood. And then after the flood, the age of these people drops pretty dramatically. And the reigns 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, OK, is this just myth? Is this poor record keeping? Do they have just these 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'd achieve 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 about right now.

39:38Because if it's possible today, and if that is a, 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 be 57?

40:18You look great, by the way. You really do. Look at your hair. It's so dark. It's incredible. People speculate it's all fake, but it's actually, it's not. But anyway, hey. You're at the - Happy birthday, too. It's coming out. Thank you very much. Yeah. Yeah, I don't look as good as you, though. Yes, you do. Physically, you're way better than me. That's different, though. My face looks older. You look very young for your age. You know why? Why? Because I've spent all my time in a lab and I haven't gone outdoors for a while. I'm sure that helps. That does help. But my point is, imagine if you had 500 years to do research, not just 57 years.

40:55Imagine 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. Exactly. Exactly, exactly. This is a really important point. what these alternative history people think that might be what had taken place tens of thousands of years ago. Yeah. Well, I'm a Harvard scientist, so I'm not going to say anything that isn't proven.

41:33Of course. That's for me. Yes. That's where I live. That's why I shut up. But you did make some really important points. One is that ancient civilizations have always been way more advanced than we think. Yes. Dinosaurs a lot more real than we make them look. 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.

42:09Who 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. The question is, will we build a Concorde? Will we go to space? And I think that will happen. Yeah. No, I think so too. 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.

42:44A giant difference in your physical ability, your health. We'd be old men. Yeah, we'd 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 barely getting around you know you're probably tired all the time Looking to retire 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 Oh no I don't know if that's accurate I bet that's accurate They had no fucking vitamins. Nobody knew what the proper nutrients you should take were.

43:24Nobody knew what was really important in terms of resistance training and sleep and red light therapy and all that jazz. And they were doing all the bad stuff like heavy smoking, drinking, not sleeping a lot. Yep, not sleeping a lot. 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? I doubt it. I doubt it. How about that guy that looks 50 and he says, everyone thinks I'm 18. Like, yeah, sure. What's that? There's a guy on Instagram, which I occasionally visit, and he obviously looks old.

44:06Like, he looks over 40. Oh, he's a crazy person. And he says, people think I look 18. Oh. Are you crazy? Well, there's a lot of crazy people out there. Yeah. There's a lot. Well, that's body dysmorphia, you know? It must be. bodybuilders they think they're tiny a lot of people people are crazy yeah a lot of people have a distorted perception of what they look like yeah the plastic surgery industry is massive it's just growing and growing you can see yeah get on the street uh la especially but imagine a world where you don't need 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.

44:44Is it going to work in humans? I think it's just a matter of time. So in the mice experiments, what have you achieved? Well, a lot, you know, I can reveal here some of it for the first time. 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. 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 are so we put them through tests if you just in a couple days oh no three days a week for a month oh okay this is the guy he went viral last year he's been 59 years old what fucking it seems so not real he looks like 30 years old 30 exactly he might have just amazing genetics.

45:42Well, look at Yoel Romero. There are people that are freaks. He's from Singapore. Wow. And he's 60 years old? Yeah, he's been gone without facelifts. Yeah, I don't know. He certainly doesn't look like he's out of facelifts. His skin is fucking incredible. Yeah. It could be a full AI account that's trolling everyone. I don't know. So that's possible, too. Look at that picture right there. That looks a little AI-ish. Go back to that one again. Keep your pants on, Jamie. Relax. That looks very AI, doesn't it? I'm just saying it could be. It's all. His 59th birthday. His whole thing is that he's young.

46:2558 looks half his age. Wow. This will be normal one day. This is 2024. This has been going on for a while. Okay, so this is pre-AI. Yeah, if it's fake, then he would have been called out now. Right. So he might just be a genetic freak. Could be. Yep. 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 age hardcore. They go. And there are those kids that get old in their teens. Right. We study that as well. Yeah. We're reversing that too. But yeah, we do study the genetics of aging.

47:03That's the real application for it where people are going to be excited about it. people that have that, what is it called, progeria? Progeria, exactly. Yeah. 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. And so in the drink, you give it to them how often and for a month? 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. In just a month? It's amazing. We only did a month because it was Christmas holiday season.

47:39We 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 recovery of vision. And so this is working on a different pathway? Well, here's the cool thing. 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. Spell that. 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 control the clock. And if we get rid of those genes, our system doesn't work.

48:24We 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. Whoa. 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 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.

49:07Wow. What is it? You don't really know in terms of humans, but is there any indication that improves cognitive function in mice? 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. Whoa. 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 using that approach, making the whole body young, we can cure diseases that are currently incurable.

49:49Holy shit. 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. Well, do you have children? Three. Yeah. One of the things that's just phenomenal is watching them heal. Yeah. I'm like, it is so, it's so wild, but also you envy them so much because they get cut. And it's like two days later, like, where's your cut? It's fucking gone? Like, that's crazy. My daughter had a cutter. She fell and knocked her head, and she had this, like, dark spot on her head, like, where she got injured.

50:30And, like, four or five days, it was gone. And I was like, that fucking thing would be with me for four months. Yeah. And the good thing is if we rub our cocktail on the skin of the mice, they heal like they're young again. Oh, so that would be, like, a great application for ladies who want the beauty treatment on the face, right? That's where we're headed. Whoa. Yeah. Yeah, and we're working on hair. We can grow human hair on mice now. Really? That took a few years. And now we can check if we can regrow hair and make it dark again. You can grow human hair on mice. Yeah, I'm not allowed to. Actually, I did post it on Instagram, and the university said get that down.

51:06But it exists. We grow it from stem cells, from human stem cells. We make little balls of hair. It takes a few months. We open up the ball to make a flat piece of skin, human skin. And 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. 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. Yeah, we could grow hair. We can do that. 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.

51:42Oh, right. So you would grow hair in a lab and then transplant those hairs? We can do that, yeah. Oh, well, that's the thing because I got a hair transplant. But the way I describe it is like it's like taking people that are really healthy and moving them into a town where everyone's dying. Because, like, you're taking hair from back here where it's going to stay and you're putting it up here where it's all falling out. Oh, it didn't thrive? What's that? It doesn't thrive if you move it? Oh, it thrives, but everybody else dies. Oh, shit. You know, you can only take so much from the back of your head and move it to the top of your head.

52:15That'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. Oh, that sucks. You know what I take for my hair? What do you take? Among other things. Viagra. Viagra? Yeah, actually. I shouldn't say the brand name. That's why I take it for my hair. That's what I tell everybody. That is true. It's low dose, seven milligrams a day of Tudelofil. And it's good for a lot of things. A lot of things. I know it's good for endurance. Yeah. Yeah, because I know athletes who take it for endurance, they probably take it to fuck too.

52:52Let's not kid ourselves. Well, it's a nice benefit. When a paper just came out about its role in preventing cancer, I tweeted 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 certain types of cancers like head and neck cancer. Interesting. They're turning out to be really important. Because it improves blood flow? Well, two reasons that are 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.

53:32The other two mechanisms, one showed that Tadalafil is good for exposing the tumor to the immune system. There are certain cells called MDSCs 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 Sedanophil, so this is now Viagra, found that a lot of cancers thrive on cholesterol. And this blocks the ability of cancer cells to use cholesterol. I thought they thrived on glucose. That too. Exactly. So you want to be in ketosis if you've got a tumor in general.

54:17So fasting is good. But now it looks like these ED drugs might be good for it as well. Fascinating. And wasn't, I think, Viagra was an accident, right? Wasn't it a blood pressure medication? It's a good story. It was for angina, right? It was for your heart. But the story goes that women especially and the men didn't want to give up the drugs that they had left over. It was amazing. I think it was 75 % had a positive reaction for erections and without it, 22%. So it's very clear that it was working. Interesting. And so how does it help hair? 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.

55:09And the minoxidil that people put on their hair helps with that. Right. Interesting. And then DHT inhibitors. Exactly. Also help. That B-dutesteride people can take orally. The problem with that is my friend had severe depression when he took that. It really fucked him up. And he didn't realize because he didn't understand that that was the – 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.

55:49that feedback can tell you everything you need to know. Go to BetterHelp.com slash 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 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 slash J-R-E. That's BetterHelp.com slash J-R-E. Yeah. Well, I'm taking it for a number of reasons, including my hair and my prostate.

56:33See if I can keep it from growing. But fortunately, I haven't had that side effect. It depends, right? It varies biologically depending on the person. Yeah, it's important when either of us says that drug's good, that drug's bad. People realize that you have to test it with doctor supervision. Yeah, that was where I was going to get to was like because different medications have different reactions or different people's reactions to medications, they vary quite wildly. So like before you make this public, like how do you determine whether or not this is going to be safe for a wide variety of people to reverse aging?

57:13Oh, my drug, our drug that we're making. Well, we will test it on a lot of people before it goes out into the wide world. And you've started testing it on people so far? Yeah, there are people right now who have these genes in their eye. And how's it going? I'm not allowed to say. Can you wink twice if it's great? I would say that everything's on target. Okay. That's good to hear. Nothing bad to report. Nothing bad to report. Yeah, I think those might be the words I'm allowed to say. And is that the only clinical trials you've used with any of these applications for humans? So far, that was the first.

57:50Glaucoma and also sudden blindness. It's called Nyon, which is now twice as more prevalent because of the GLP-1 drugs. Really? It's not well known. Obviously, companies don't want to talk about it. But yes, sudden blindness has doubled seemingly because of these meds. Holy shit. Sudden blindness has doubled because of GLP-1s? 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. And obviously correlation does not equal causation, but it seems to be... Yeah, there's a scientist at Harvard.

58:36You could look up his work. Joe Rizzo. It looks like it's repeatable across the planet. Wow, that's terrible because there's so many people out there that are just telling everyone they should get on GLP-1s. Yeah. I've seen that by online people, like online podcasters saying everyone should get on GLP-1s. It's groundbreaking technology. This is amazing. It's going to transform society. I'm like, we just started taking these. What the fuck are you saying? Yeah, it's not risk-free. Same with ED drugs. Here goes. Recent studies suggest that a potential rare link between GLP-1 receptor agonist medication such as Ozempic, Wagovi, blah, blah, blah, and a condition called non-arteritic anterior, what's that word?

59:22Ischemic? Ischemic. Ischemic optic neuropathy. An eye stroke can cause sudden painless loss of vision in one eye while absolute risk remains very low. anyone experienced sudden vision change should seek emergency medical evaluation immediately. Well, very low is like... It's still... What does that mean? One in 10 ,000 people. One in 10 ,000? Yeah. Yeah, that's... No, total of 10 ,000. Oh, total of 10 ,000 so far. Each year. How many people are taking this stuff? I think it's pretty... The drugs were 68.6 times more likely to develop this and eight times more likely to develop diabetic... What is that?

1:00:03we only got the blurb oh my god then wow Yeah, man. These things are just rolling out. And the people that are 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. uh yeah it's true though i will i will say to counter that that the glp1 drugs have probably saved millions of lives already and they're pretty common i think it's 10 of people are trying them and 25 want to 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 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 ones 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.

1:01:25Everyone wants to talk about discipline. I think discipline is the primary. That's the main engine. But one of the things that comes along with any kind of an exercise program or a changing your life program where you start getting positive results is momentum. And momentum is absolutely huge. Thank you. Because then you start feeling that this is good. So I think GLP-1s are fantastic for getting people going. 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.

1:02:01A week can be even better, but I couldn't do it. I don't have a lot of willpower when it comes to this kind of stuff. I tried a JLP1 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 in a couple of months ago well it's easy now like now that i know that i can do it mentally it's not hard at all the momentum exactly i know what's possible yeah yeah that's fascinating um you are you still on a plant-based diet mostly yeah i what i had i just had a conversation with a friend of mine about this.

1:02:46I don't know how much of the information that he was telling me was totally accurate. But what he was saying was that he was told before he did fasting that one of the best, because 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 regulate insulin 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.

1:03:31Like 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 got to 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 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 my My hunger is very easy to control. And I've gone 24 hours like it's nothing, not eating.

1:04:12It's like not a problem at all. But that's the most I've ever fasted is 24 hours. Okay. Well see if you can go for three. It's really worth it. You feel really great. Ketosis is wonderful. That's what everybody says. Yeah, and you go into what's called deep cleansing. It's called 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 do that as an anti-aging thing. What I find is the biggest benefit is mental acuity.

1:04:49It 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 podcasts. Yeah, so in my podcast, what you do is really quite difficult. You make it look easy. So when I'm doing my podcast, and often it's solo, so it's challenging, I forget things. I have to remember hundreds of papers for these things. They're quite hard. Either I'm going to fast, and if I don't, remember to fast. I did an experiment. I took some ketones. You can drink these things, right? Yeah. There's the one, the little drink I think was ketone IQ. Ketone IQ.

1:05:28Yeah, fantastic stuff. Yeah, yeah, I use that. I love that stuff. I do that I take that before I do UFC broadcasts a lot of yeah, I actually took some before Because one that's great for podcasts as well Well, the more and one 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 jiu-jitsu 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?

1:06:03What is he doing? Oh, oh, oh, that's that. That's the Peruvian necktie. I'm looking at his arms. Like, your brain is – I am exhausted at the end of six hours and fucking starving. Like, after the UFC is over, I can eat so much food. I'm so hungry. But you take a little drink? I take a little ketone. A little ketone IQ. I take nootropics. I drink this stuff. My friend Derek makes this. His gorilla mind. It's just a nootropic. Oh, I've got to try that. So it's a nootropic cocktail with caffeine in it. This stuff's really good for a podcast. I also take Alpha Brain. Alpha Brain Black Label is phenomenal for that.

1:06:40There's a bunch of different ones that I take. The gum, NeuroGum. NeuroGum's excellent for that, too. But I just do fucking everything I can to maximize my— So that's how you do it. All right. Yes. Secret is now out. All right. But what you do is amazing. And I thought you were on Modafinil or something. No. 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 New vigil or pro vigil before I do that I would be able to drive no problem Put a book on tape on.

1:07:26What's that? Can you sleep after that? 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? I'm a daffinil for talks when I'm traveling. Does it help you? Definitely. Like in what way? It gets rid of my jet lag and I can focus. My brain often is either scattered or filled with facts that causes me like now to not be able to talk properly. But if I'm on it, which I'm not, I'm on point every time. For me, the best thing for jet lag is exercise. There's something about rigorous exercise. It doesn't even have to be long.

1:08:06It 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. I'm doing like Tabata sprints on an Airdyne bike. That kind of stuff completely resets me. 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 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.

1:08:46Yeah. Well, you might remember last time we talked about hormesis. Yes. 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 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. Why don't you? I think partly because I tell myself I'm too busy, which is bullshit. I need a partner who will motivate me. I think that would help. Maybe just get a trainer. So that's the solution. You got some cheddar. Get a trainer. I got some cheddar. Oh, is that money?

1:09:26Money, yeah. 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. I just was explaining this to my friend last night. He was like, I got to 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 can just go through what they tell you to do, and you'll just trust the process. You'll improve radically. All right. All right. Here's what we're going to do. Okay.

1:09:58I'm going to take you on. Here's what we're going to do. You're going to get me a jug of that fucking juice. Of this stuff? We'll swap, all right? And you'll be my trainer? I'll be your trainer. I will. I've done that before with my comedian friends. Really? Sure. Yeah, I'll just come out. Then I do it the right way, where I take him through it very easy. I don't have them 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 going to be exhausted afterwards. And we build you up. I'm a firm believer in not overtaxing the system on people that are sedentary.

1:10:34I really think it's a slow, gradual process. I think you have to get better the same way you got sick over time. Okay. 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 give you great improvements. But I'm not one of those guys who's like, you know, we're going to do two hours today and you're going to go to failure and you're going to be throwing up in a garbage pan. You're not going to do that again the next day. I want you to do it again the next day. I want you to have a nice workout where, you know, you're doing like 10 push-ups and 10 sit-ups and 10 bodyweight squats and then we're going to do some of these kettlebell cleans and kettlebell, nothing hard.

1:11:18Like everything's going to be like, whew, okay, you put it down, you're fine. And I want you to leave rejuvenated. Like you feel like, oh, that was like exhilarating, nothing crazy. 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. It's like fasting and skipping meals. You just can't do a day or three without practicing. Well, it's also you're going to 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.

1:11:50They get muscle pulls. They get back aches. 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 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. 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.

1:12:23And next thing you know, you're doing this. And write it all down, too. That's the other thing. Write down what you're going to do. And write down how you feel. And then keep doing that. And if you can do that all the time, you'll start developing this momentum that we were talking about. Where you're like, okay, I'm on the course. I'm on a process. But it doesn't have to be like 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 Airdon machine. Like, this is crazy. Well, it's really good advice. And I'm going to take you up on it.

1:12:53So let's say I'm lucky enough to come on the show again. Yeah. I'll wear a tight T-shirt. Let's go. Right. So 20 million people. You're going to have to get off that fucking goofy plant-based diet. 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. It's interesting because you're not an animal. You know that, right? I'm not a mouse. You're not a mouse. I'm definitely an animal, but I'm a human. I agree. Meat is the most nutrient-dense food that's available.

1:13:27I love meat. I love meat. She eats it all the time. I believe that there are two states that we can be in. I should try meat. and then we can see if it works. You'll feel great. Because I've been measuring myself with rings and blood tests for the last 20 years. You should try elk. I'll get you an elk steak. I'd love to try it. It sounds good. I'm not against meat. I will eat it. You'll eat it and you'll be like, whoa. Yeah, don't get me addicted to meat. You'll feel it right away. Like, oh. Oh, your synopsis start firing. Your body starts like, yes, this is what we wanted, David. Well, here's some science, which is what I do.

1:14:05There are two states. This is my theory. There's the abundance mode, which is very good for health. You'll build muscle. You'll heal better. That's meat. Right. Kill the mammoth. There's adversity mode, which is we're out of meat. We've got to 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 going to be stronger, fitter. How do you determine that, though, in terms of what is longevity versus what is just health and vitality currently?

1:14:42Well, it's based on the last 30 years of research in a variety of animals. This doesn't have to do with the blue zones, does it? No. Because you know that's all horseshit, right? I read that recently, yeah. Isn't that nuts? It's unfortunate. A lot of it is fraud. Well, records are hard. Well, it's not just hard. A lot of it is actual fraud where people were 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 would have to inform the government that this person died and they just didn't do it.

1:15:21And so they had this list of people that they were counting in their census that were like so old. Really? Like this is crazy. What are you people doing? Everyone is 100 years old. The oldest person in the world, apparently 122. There's a theory, not proven, that the oldest person in the world was actually the daughter who was faking it to get taxes or avoid taxes, I think it was, in France. I hope that that's not true. I bet it's true. People are full of shit. Well, either way, the maximum human lifespan is around 117, 18, which is still a lot more than we live. And what's really crazy is none of those people are doing everything right.

1:15:57Exactly. 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. It's number one. Is it really? Yeah, Robert Voldinger at Harvard had a study for, I think it was 40 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. hmm yeah so not just a reliable partner someone that you love that's true 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 well you're a role model in that I love my wife I have fun with her like we I've been with her for a long I've been married for 17 years I enjoy her I enjoy hanging out with her she's cool yeah like she's a fun and I have friends that aren't in situations like that.

1:16:59And 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 as chaos and this and that. And I said to him, and he was like, I, he's 40. And he goes, I don't think I'm ever going to 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, It's so much better to be alone than to wish you were alone He's like Because he was like with this crazy lady and he was like I just wish I was free and he finally got free and Now he's like 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.

1:17:48There's good people out there, but you gotta you gotta also be someone that that kind of person wants to be with That's the other thing. For sure. And stress of relationship. We've seen in studies that clock with those chemicals on the DNA, it accelerates when you're under stress or going through a breakup. Oh, yeah. Oh, God. You see it, too. Oh, I've seen people going through divorces, and it's just like it takes decades off of their life. They just look wrecked. Yeah. And it takes a year or two for them to, like, achieve equilibrium again. It's hard. It is. It is. I went through that actually just during COVID when our family got shoved in a house together.

1:18:25Yeah, it was brutal. It was unexpected too. Wow, that's the stress test, right? It was super stress. It was super stress. It's funny that you said that. 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 in any case, I'm great now. I'm very happy. But I do know how bad it can get and it's brutal. Yeah, bad relationships can fucking wreck people. I mean, it can wreck your health. But also it's not just relationships in terms of your significant other, husband, wife, partner, whatever you want to call it, but also bad relationships at work.

1:19:02Like if you have a tyrant for a boss and every day you're working overtime and you're getting yelled at and you're on the phone and you're at home trying to keep up with work and you never get – Like that kind of relationship where you have like this like antagonistic, terrible relationship with people that you work with. That's bad too. Oh, for sure. Your body doesn't differentiate between romantic relationships. Those kind of relationships are almost equally bad. Cortisol will be high. Yeah. This will accelerate you. I used to keep fish. I was one of those people at school. And the fish that got picked on by the dominant fish was small, lacked color, lived short.

1:19:42It's biology. If you're picked on and you're stressed, you're going to age faster. Fortunately, I think you're probably the same. At my age, I've managed to weed out most of the jerks, and I don't work with them at all. I've got a great partner who we have a hobby of longevity together. So I'm lucky in that regard now. You found a new one? Yeah, longevity specialist. Imagine that. Congratulations. Well, that's nice too, right? Find someone who just thinks the way you think and has similar likes and interests. Yeah, it's fun, like you say. Yeah, that definitely can help. Yeah, I know a lot of my friends that are in really good relationships, their significant other has the same hobby as them.

1:20:18You know, like whatever it is. They both like to climb mountains or whatever the fuck it is. Find a thing. But that helps too. So you actually enjoy spending time together doing something that you're both really excited about. That helps too. So relationships is one. And the other four major ones from that study were don't smoke, don't drink, get enough rest, and get exercise. And that was enough to extend by 15 years. But what about those old people that live forever and do smoke and drink? Because that's kind of weird. Well, they're 0.01%. They're not examples of what typically happens. Is that really what it is?

1:20:51Yeah. So the majority of people who get old and live to, like, centenarians, like what are the common things that they have? The big one is that they don't stress a lot. They usually have a good sense of humor. Oh, interesting. Right. They haven't been overweight, and they say that they typically couldn't remember when they last got sick. I wonder how much time Twitter takes off your life. Yeah. We should study that. It's already taken a lot off mine. It does. And if you read the comments, it's even more. Yep, exactly. I'm so much happier since I swore off of all that stuff. It's just not good for you.

1:21:33It'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 human being that lives in a community, in a neighborhood. That shit that's happening over there really shouldn't be a primary focus of your life, like 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 day long life. And you're in fight or flight constantly. 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.

1:22:15Exactly. And actually the world doesn't change if you don't read it. That's the key. That's the key. But then you're like, well, you're passing off the responsibility to other people. You should get involved. Like, you should get involved. I'm going to be over here. That's right. Well, if you focus on doing something good and you're good at it. Yes. like yourself. I think that you don't need to be doing more than that. 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. Yeah. A few years ago, someone at a talk that I gave said, you should be working on climate change.

1:22:49Fuck off. After I cure aging, I'll get to climate change. Yeah. Why don't you go to China and tell them to stop making coal factories? Shut the fuck up. Just shut up. No, you're not going to fix it. Yeah. Somebody is. Somebody's working on it, and that's their goal, and God bless them. Good luck. Yeah. Well, 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. She was the one that told me that I need to make the world a better place, and she's gone now.

1:23:25That's what she said to you? When I was four, it's been that ever since. She told me two things. Humans are evil. She lived through World War II in Hungary. Oh, wow. The Russians came in and raped everybody, she said. So she escaped to Australia, and then she said that the other issue is that we don't do enough as humans to better the world. And so I had that stuck in my mind. She also, by the way, said, oh, we all die. And I thought, that's not really fair, is it? And that set me on this path. Make the world a better place, and we all die. And you're like, oh. And what I've noticed with my kids is that even if you tell them that, they forget about it.

1:24:09Because it's brutal to think about death every day. Yeah. 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 mission-oriented. If we are a day late with something, there's a lot of people that are suffering potentially avoidable diseases. That's why it's sort of understandable that people show up outside of your lab and like, I need to talk to you. I need this. Yeah, blind people want to get in the trial. 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.

1:24:46But 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 do this. It's just a question of when. And so do you think that AI is going to have a significant impact on the kind of improvements that you're able to? It already is. We're going super fast. And AI 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. Wow. Yeah. It's super brain. 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?

1:25:30How 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, exabytes 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. All right, come to my office. We sat down. He shows up on the board on this LCD screen.

1:26:08I 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 that is phenomenal that's so promising it's so exciting 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 or bombs that's the problem and bioweapons right You recently had, was it Anna on the show to talk about bioweapons and this kind of stuff?

1:26:53That is a big worry. I actually had to disclose to the U.S. government when I first got here that I did have the capability of making a bioweapon. The Anna Jacobson episode that we just did on bioweapons was absolutely terrifying. Yeah. She scared the shit out of the world with her nuclear war book, and now she's scaring everybody with her bioweapons book. Yeah. Yeah, that's scary. It is. 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. 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.

1:27:47I mean, we could potentially get rid of all diseases, which is just bananas. And injuries, fixed 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. Haven't people done that before? 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. That's nuts. So like a salamander can grow an extra leg or a leg that gets chopped off.

1:28:28Yeah. 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 to 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, 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.

1:29:02How far do you think we are away from being able to regrow body parts? Oh, I mean realistically probably a couple of decades, but I've seen enough That's not that far seen enough to know that it's doable couple of decades ago was 2006 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 That's nuts think of that well 2019 here there was no AI 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 it's going to be a very different world.

1:29:43And you feel very confidently that some of this stuff is going to work. 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? No. So since I started my company, Life Biosciences, which is doing the trials with ER100, Others have joined in in the party. So Jeff Bezos and others have started Altos Farmer. They are based in three cities around the world. They have a few billion dollars to catch up. Sam Altman has RetroBio. And let's see, Brian Armstrong from Coinbase, the CEO, started one called New Limit.

1:30:29And they've got a lot of money, all billions. You think it's good that there's all these people involved in this I welcome it yeah Competition yeah, yeah, I'm not doing this for my own personal benefit I want humanity to be changed the way it could be and the more people like Jeff Bezos The more people with a large bank account that are invested in this the better fantastic And of course a guy like Bezos. He's balling out of control. Why wouldn't he want to live forever? Well, what's left if you've got everything else? 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.

1:31:05Like, of course, why wouldn't you want to do cool things? Like, what's cooler than being able to grow limbs? Yeah, yeah. You know, what's cooler than being able to cure all diseases and reverse aging? 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. I wonder if we're going to get to a point in time where we can engineer consciousness 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 we can completely map it out and go oh this is the error this is where you you're not making these two connections of course It's all just biology and engineering.

1:32:00There'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. A true utopian world of peaceful people living in harmony. But healthy. Not peaceful? I don't think world peace. I think curing aging is easier than world peace. Well, if everybody achieved a state of consciousness that allowed them to understand that we're all in this together. Yeah, how do we do that? mushrooms yeah yeah well there are there are certain companies working on this I know that's what's interesting right like Eli Lilly is involved in pharmaceuticals well the pharmaceutical company rather is involved in psychedelics they just bought a tie I think it was like 3.8 billion dollars so they're all in with real capital yeah I love it yeah me too that's great I love that they're doing that we need more of that there's too much depression uh-huh anxiety in the world 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.

1:33:02Yes. 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, that they've had phenomenal results from this a boga tree, 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.

1:33:44Like no one's going to be doing that for funsies. 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 to get the benefit? To get the benefit. And I don't think so. I think you should be able to separate them. Well, you know, they've actually figured this out with LSD. Yeah. Right? Do you know about this? No. 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. The attire guys or someone else?

1:34:17I don't know what company has done this. See if you can find that, Jamie. I think it might be a tire assist. But what they've essentially done, and I think 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. Outstanding. It should happen with psychedelics the way it's happened with all medicines, right?

1:34:59We start with something from the bark of a willow tree and then we have aspirin. Right. We're not eating bark anymore. Right. But sometimes the bark is 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 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. 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.

1:35:39Right. That's true, too. We need a middle ground. We need something you can get fast on the market that's known to be safe. 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 gotta work on that yes i think that's that's gonna change humanity more than anything i think you've got a good bullshit detector it's okay there's a few people that have snuck through unfortunately you know some people they get through and they're like it takes a while and you're like ah shit they're never coming back on the show. Yeah, well, there's that.

1:36:10The show, you know, you learn a lot from a person in about three hours, you know, you can 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, 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 it Pretending you know they're really good at pretending to be like a normal person.

1:36:46Oh, here's the LSD 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 swap 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's incredible.

1:37:26Antidepressant, 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. When and where do we get it? Well, I think it's fairly recent. It's a UC Davis study. They just developed it. Oh, it's in my. 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 that AI for our show has been gigantic I mean just the ability to just ask it a question instead of Google searching and have to go through all these different fucking articles What does it say?

1:38:16What is that? Who's right? What's this one? What's the website? He just asked 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?

1:38:42So 2025. So last year. So it's exciting. Five years away. Yeah. You're right. Is that the timeline? At a minimum, usually it takes that long. But that's exciting. At least the principle is there that you don't need to hallucinate. Well, how about for schizophrenia? That's incredible. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that is incredible because that is one of the saddest things to watch somebody fall into the grips of schizophrenia. Yeah. I've seen people fall in and come out, which is interesting. I thought for the bullshit detector, we could have an AI that either dings or has a green or a red on your forehead.

1:39:13I'm pretty good at it, but I think no one's perfect at it. And I think ultimately if we get to a place, whether it's a technological innovation 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. You'd need an implant, I think. Elon says the Neuralink's going to be able to pull that off. Yeah. You're going to be able to talk without using words. And I'm like, what? I think he's right, though. I think if we all lock into a hive mind and then if we develop – like through AI, if we develop a universal language worldwide.

1:39:57Well, we already have that. What do we have? Well, the new headphones from a big company that I won't name. You can translate. 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, when it's deciphered and changed and translated into English, you lose a lot of the meaning and the context is weird. If we develop a universal language. That would be ideal. English is a good substitute. I was shocked. I'm always shocked traveling globally how many people can just speak English now.

1:40:33Yeah, it's pretty amazing. It's because America rules. You're welcome. Well, we have to thank Britain for that. America should say you're welcome. Yeah, they're cute. They did a good job of starting it out, but we took the ball and spread it all over the world. So who's next? China? God, I don't want to learn Chinese. That's too hard. It's all the fucking characters. That's ridiculous. Even people that I know that can speak Mandarin, they can't write it. To get to that level, I have a couple friends that speak fluent Mandarin, and they can't write it. Writing is. Yeah. Well, the students in my lab who come from China, they're being picked on by the immigration, but they don't want to go home.

1:41:12They love it here. I'm sure because they're stealing all your secrets and bring it back home. Well, there's that. There's a lot of regulation on that now as a scientist. Oh, yeah. Do you know that? Yeah. Oh, I can imagine. Yeah. I mean, it has to be because that is an actual real threat. Exactly. So the people that come through my lab have to be vetted now. Right. But the people that come over here and experience the kind of freedom that you have in America. Oh, yeah. I came here from Australia. Australia's pretty free, but compared to Australia, America's so different. I can't go back. What's the big difference?

1:41:41That 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 that's a bummer do you think that changes anytime soon no you 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 help 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 I'm home 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.

1:42:39Should be, yeah. 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. Yeah, I watched the TV show, was it The American Experiment? Came out for the anniversary, the 250th. I haven't seen it. You got to see it. What's it on? It's the founding fathers and their lives and how they were fighting and what was going on behind the scenes. They were just young kids. They're in their 20s, 30s. I know. Isn't that nuts?

1:43:13Yeah. Just Benjamin Franklin was the old dude. But they were so young. But 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. And a few wars. Yeah. A few. Different battles that they had. Exactly. The U.S. was losing the war against Britain badly. Yeah. Thank the French for help. Yeah. Yeah, we don't thank the French enough, actually. I know, right? Somehow they became our enemy. Yeah. Remember during the Gulf War, they turned French fries into freedom fries because people hated the French?

1:43:50Yeah, but everyone hates the French because they're so arrogant. Sorry, French. I have some good friends who are French. I think generally when people are arrogant, it's because they did something fucking awesome. Well, in the 1800s, they did. They conquered Europe. Not sure if that's awesome. Here's a fun perplexing search I just did. I said, do Americans have a risk gene? A risk gene? Yeah. One of the best studied variants in the dopamine receptor gene DRD4, specifically the 7-repeat, 7-R version. It's associated in some studies with novelty-seeking, impulsivity, and higher financial or social risk-taking.

1:44:26I wonder if I have that gene. For sure. This 7, probably not. Who knows? The 7R variant is unevenly distributed around the world. It's populations, in populations across the Americas, it shows up at roughly 48 % of chromosomes studied. While in East Asia, it's found at only about 2%. Wow. That's crazy. It all comes down to genetics. 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 I was thinking of the people that you know had the balls to fucking come here you don't have to do that much but you can still have balls to gamble and take risks that must be it but then Australians should have it that completely well sort of you guys got forced there they moved everybody over there because they were criminals right this DDR gene that you just saw that was a DDR4 I know a bit about it because I'm writing it in my next book DRD4.

1:45:29Thanks, Jamie. I call this the FU 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 turns out that this gene is turned on in teenagers. It gets eventually switched off. Not totally. But that might be why teenagers say FU to their parents. 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 gene. Well, it's also 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.

1:46:23And 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 everything that you've done. I've made every mistake. I've fucked up. You're smarter than me. I've fucked up everything. I've lied to my parents. I lied to teachers. I've done everything that you're doing. So 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 just want you to recognize this and that's how I correct my kids. I love that It's never like you listen to me cuz I'm your father.

1:46:59There's none Yeah, yeah, I don't know the way we were raised doesn't work. 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 really same Yeah, I was resentful that my father didn't have enough ambition and now he's a great guy. We're best friends, actually. It's been the greatest thing for me. But one of the things I did with my kids, you reminded me, is he's 19. He's a well-built guy because we were going to the gym for a number of years.

1:47:33I tried to train him in health. But 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. So I had to think, am I going to get mad at him like I would a normal employee or do I treat him differently? And I decided to treat him differently probably because he's my son. But I didn't want to ruin the relationship. But what I did was I said, you know, I really think you can do better.

1:48:11I think everything you've done, the weightlifting, 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 that's great so that's the way to do it i think you can't be too hard on them right and say you fucked up 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 yeah so you don't have to make the same mistakes yes that's why you're helping them 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 whose fathers would fucking scream at them and throw things 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 like a mentor you're not the best friend you're the mentor yes best friend doesn't work either 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 yeah but you also kids turned out well what's that how'd your kids oh they're great great i'm so so lucky so fucking lucky i mean i feel so fortunate they're so smart and ambitious and driven it's 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 they hit teenage years and they hate you.

1:50:12Really? Well, I experienced that. God, that's so nice. 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. The RD4 gene, maybe they don't have strong one. 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 is that I always tell them, whatever you've done, whatever mistake you've made, I made way worse mistakes.

1:50:49I was like, I am not coming at you from a flawless person. I'm not coming at you from the perspective of someone who, like, you're an idiot. I figured that out. You should figure it out. Like, no. I whenever that went from the time they were really little anytime I had to correct them I said I did everything that you're doing everything I threw my food on the floor too Yes, all all the above whatever fucking stupid thing you've done as a kid. I guarantee you that is great advice really great advice so I hope everyone listening hears that because I actually had to learn the hard way my first kid I did what my parents did which was you can't say that yeah and my first is a lot more rebellious and distant than my third for that reason interesting yeah it actually is really true I've seen it yeah and it's I thought it was going to 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 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'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 exactly and and open their eyes to the world that exists yes 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 what it's like to be an entrepreneur and build something and be excited.

1:52:26And work is super fun. Yes. I think a lot of kids just don't get that experience. They don't know what's possible. Right. And just showing them the world is what we can do as parents. 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.

1:53:06Yeah, 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 then 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 going to be a lost art if we don't. I know. Isn't that nuts? I maybe read 10 % of the things that I consume. I consume so much in audio just for time reasons because 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.

1:53:53That's reading through your ears. It is similar, but I think it's only like 70 % of reading. I don't think it's 100%. I don't think you get the full effect, but it's still way better than not doing it. You know, but 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 it's a different way you interact with the material, whether it's nonfiction or fiction. Yeah, I like the fact that I can listen to you and I'm doing something else. I have to sit down, can move, go for a walk.

1:54:27Yeah, 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. So it's very hard for me to just allocate a certain amount of time to sit there in silence and read. Yeah. I use reading to fall asleep. That's a good way. It does do that, right? It's kind of nuts how well it does that. Yeah. Although I am finding it's harder to read now that my eyes aren't young. I need some of my gene therapy myself. I've tried that. Does it work for you? Oh, yeah. Oh, I mean, people are skeptical about this and they think I'm full of shit. No, I don't need reading glasses anymore.

1:55:02Really? Yeah. I had reading. I always have these fucking things laying around. I don't even use them anymore. That's awesome. Yeah, there's a lot of science now for red light. 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? 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? But no, it just took a while. And then over the course of like many months, I started seeing some small improvements.

1:55:39And then I started seeing some pretty big improvements over the course of about a year. Whereas now, it's not – my eyes aren't perfect. They aren't like they were when I was 20. But they are way better than they were when I was 50. How often did you have to do that? 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. where I just get in there and it's 20 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. What about people that can't afford a bed? Can you get little devices?

1:56:13You can get – well, there's a company called – 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 – it's just a light panel that you stand in front of. Oh, yeah. I've got one of those. Yeah. And that works too. But this one, the one that I got, a red and near infrared light therapy devices, JOOV, J-O-O-V-V, medical grade light therapy devices. I had one of those, and that's when I started seeing benefits. But the big one that I got, I got from Gary Brecka from his company. And it's like a fucking tanning bed, and you lie in it.

1:56:54And that one's amazing. But that's expensive. But I don't think you have to have that for those kind of improvements. It also improves collagen in your skin, makes you look better. But for me, the most obvious and profound was the improvement in my vision. Well, it makes sense. The science behind red light wasn't there 10 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. It's actually related to Viagra. Long story, but Viagra and red light have something in common, and it does help mitochondria.

1:57:33And that's very important for the eye. The mitochondria, actually, the most important in any part of your body, 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. How come you haven't done red light therapy before then? Well, I do, but not 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. My wife is one of those. It works a little bit. She looks like a fucking alien. What I do is I, yeah, it looks a little bit silly.

1:58:05It's weird. I don't wear it in public, but 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. Yeah, they have one that you wear like Dr. Doom and it fits over your face and blasts red light in your whole face. I definitely feel a bit weird afterwards and I can see speckles, but I think the science says that it can help. Well, all I know is my own anecdotal experience. And for me, it has radically improved my vision. That's a good tip. Yeah. It stopped. My vision was degrading. It was pretty odd. I first started using reading glasses, like a 1X.

1:58:44It made it a little better. I'm like, oh, this is a little better. It makes it clearer. And then I went to 2. And then I was using 2.5. 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 I didn't have my reading glasses I couldn't read shit now crystal clear yeah no problem at all well so my latest show is about the eye and how to protect the eyes health and so there's a lot you can do actually supplements red light other things I take supplements for it too I should mention that I take no I have no affiliation with these people, but Pure Encapsulations makes a supplement called Macular Support.

1:59:23And I take that. And it's a combination of lutein and a few other things. Yeah, there was a trial a while ago that showed that taking xanthine and others, astaxanthine, lutein, they're good for the eye. So you can get products like that. Do you take it? Not that brand, but yes, I take something similar. And has it helped you at all? I don't know. I haven't done an experiment. Right, well, if you weren't taking it, maybe you would have more degeneration. Yeah, well, you know, I've got near perfect vision. I don't need glasses. Do you really? Yeah. Near perfect? Near perfect. I mean, I think low light is with me.

2:00:00Low 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. Do you know why? Why? Well, this is what I think. So 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.

2:00:43We're reminding those cells that have forgotten how to work. So in your eye and my eye, we're 22 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. What are the potential negative consequences of this kind of work? Like when you sit up at night and you worry, I hope it doesn't do this.

2:01:15Is it cancer? Is that the big one? Yeah. 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. If you make the cells too young. Like what I was saying before about don't turn me into a baby. 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 never see our cells turn into stem cells again. We can't. We had mice that we left the gene therapy on for 21 months in the eye and 19 months in the whole body of the animal.

2:01:53And 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, 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. Wow. That's incredible. It makes sense, right? If you wake up a cancer cell and it says, crap, I shouldn't be growing, I should be a liver cell or something similar, now it kills itself. So we see that.

2:02:32Cells wake up, they realize what they were 30 years ago, and then they kill themselves. 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? Well, lots, lots. You know, funding in my lab got completely cut last year and we've managed to survive through donations. Why did the funding get cut? Was it a USAID thing? You remember there was a spat between Harvard and the federal government. All of the funding to Harvard Medical School got cut. Was that during the time where the president was defending those anti-Semitic comments on campuses?

2:03:13Yeah. Well, allegedly. I'm not getting into the politics. No need to get into politics, but during that whole thing, yeah. Yeah. So what we – I almost had to fire most of the people in my lab during that episode. It was quite scary, but I raised – so now my lab survives on donations, not on federal government money. thank you friends thank you thank you well the thing is you've accomplished enough where people like i think he's on to something and i want to live forever 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 yeah 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 re and rejuvenation as well you have a website where people can donate I do it's lifespan calm and so if you go to lifespan calm yeah there's a link there yeah good doing a foundation and And we're raising money for this type of research.

2:04:28Is it tax deductible? Depends on how big the donation is. For$10, you get the new magazine that we're putting out. And you learn all about how to live longer. 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 health care from the ground up because top down from the government hasn't worked. Actually, I have a gift for you. What do you got? I made something for you that's unique. I'll blow it here. This is for you, Joe, as a thanks to all the support you've given me and the science over the years. First edition. Lifespan magazine, ladies and gentlemen.

2:05:09Look at that. It's written by scientists. What a great cover. It's like a velvet cover. What is this material? I figured you might like that. Inside is the magazine. What is this material? It's beautiful. Velour. Velour. Oh, velour, of course. At great expense. No, the magazine doesn't come with velour. That's just special for Joe as a thank you present. Thank you very much. Most science out there is written by reporters who don't know what they're talking about. And so we wrote this for the public, and you can believe whatever you read in there. All right. Beautiful. Yeah, thanks. And it's velour, so you have to trust it.

2:05:42So that's at lifespan.com. You can subscribe. Get that every month just for$10. I like the take at the bottom, life's too short. Let's fix that. That's our slogan at Lifespan. That's a great slogan. Yeah. That's an awesome slogan. So 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. 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. Oh, that's awesome. That just came out today.

2:06:21They heard, by the way, at NatGeo, they said, you're going on Joe Rogan? I went, yeah. He 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. 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 studies and tests running concurrently. 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.

2:06:58If you had no regulations, like an Island of Dr. Moreau type deal? Yeah. 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. Yeah. My company, by the way, even though we lead the pack of all these guys, we're really small.

2:07:41We're a pretty small little outfit in Boston. and we've raised a lot less money. But because I think we're focused, we have, and we started earlier, we're doing pretty well. That's the big one. You started earlier. You have a lot of momentum on your side. Yeah. I think 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. 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?

2:08:27Yeah, AI is feeding us molecules. We put them into mice, we go to monkeys, we go to humans, and it would just be fast. One of my friends, Alex Zakronkov, 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 uh at least he says they are and then uh goes into humans and his company is worth billions um that approach applied to what we do would be incredible 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.

2:09:18If they had more access to resources, more access to different whatever you need, you know, and that you could run all these different studies. We could. Our budget in my lab is only – it's almost 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 U.S. alone. So it's a little bit of donation or getting a magazine. The impact would be life-changing for all of us. Who doesn't age? Who doesn't get diseases? Right. And who doesn't want to feel better? Yeah. It's also like so much, you can get so much more done if you feel better.

2:10:00Well, we take it for granted until we feel sick, and then it's like, oh, I forgot what it's like to feel well. Exactly. 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 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 not and I was like, I can't wait to feel better again. Well, imagine what it's like being old and frail.

2:10:38That's every day. Yes, or sick. And right now you can't do anything about it. Yes, yeah. And while you're healthy, you take it for granted, and that's the real sin. 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 poisoning myself for a night. Well, it's not worth it because that also accelerates aging. But big time, right? This is what I tell my kids who like alcohol, like most kids. You know, you might feel better in a few days, but the memory of that is going to be in your body.

2:11:13Yeah. 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 data is incontrovertible that it affects the brain, even the size of the brain, if you drink constantly. I took eight months off of no alcohol at all, and I felt a lot better. Exactly. 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. Ah, really? Well, I'm a lot less funny now. So I drink now, but I do not get drunk. I haven't gotten drunk. This was over a year ago.

2:11:45It was when I had a drink again, I think. I think it was a year. I'm not sure. But point is, I have not been drunk since then. Yeah. I will have a glass of wine with dinner, or I will have 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 going to get done, okay? Whether I feel like shit or not, that workout's going to get done, and this is going to be rough. And then you've got the sweats.

2:12:19It's horrible. Right, 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 not worth it. It's not worth it. Yeah, well, you're funny even without alcohol, but I'm not. So I've lost a lot of my humor. But there's nothing better than feeling great, right? Yes, nothing better than feeling great. And if you can make it your hobby of working on your health and your longevity, you'll enjoy it.

2:12:55Yes. It shouldn't be a chore. It will also directly affect the other things that you love because 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. Exactly. mentally physically you can do so much when you feel good you jump out of bed 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 right 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 yes yes you don't even necessarily need a cup of coffee but it's not bad if you have one i like coffee i'm not gonna stop drinking it now i don't give a fuck what anybody says right it's good and it's also like conflicting information Some people say it's good for you.

2:13:55There's benefits. It's good for you. Come on. That's what I say. No, it really is. Anyone that says it's not doesn't read the literature. Well, I would imagine an overabundance of caffeine is not good. Too much is not good. But that's true for everything. Too much salt will kill you. Yeah, exactly. If you need a pound of salt, you'll be dead in an hour. 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. And if you get deep sleep for an hour, you're actually going to wake up much cleaner, healthier.

2:14:32And 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 above 90 sometimes. I like you say rings because you're wearing two Aura rings. Different companies. Okay. Why do you wear two different rings? Um, because when I've got two, neither of them is correct. No, 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. What is the difference in the companies? Which one's which? Um, uh, you don't mind me saying who they are? No, I don't care.

2:15:14Uh, this is an aura, the fat one. Right. And then the thinner one is called ultra human. Ultra human. Yeah. And which one is good for what? Well, I find aura really good for sleep. That's their specialty. And then the heart for ultra-human, my cardiac age. Oh, okay. So it's just like giving you data all the time? Yeah, and they're getting even better because they – I don't get paid by these companies. But I do like that they pop up with AI information now. Have you noticed that da-da-da or I noticed that you ate a meal last night that spiked your glucose? And this one I have a monitor on right now so I can see what's going on anyway.

2:15:50But yeah, they're becoming like a fucking monitored bro. I am two rings and a patch. 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 all for a long while Really cuz he was just recognizing the impact of his body. 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. Really? It was amazing. I think it's a great learning tool, if nothing else. Right. Just to have actual data.

2:16:26I know a lot of people, it's changed their opinion on alcohol, particularly the Oura Ring when they look at their sleep. Yeah. 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. Yeah. Yeah. Lay off the modafinil, too. For me, anyway. Yeah. Some modafinil fucks with your sleep as well? Yeah. Yeah. I have to work really hard to sleep well. There's quiet time. There's relaxation. The lights are dimmed. I think about a happy place rather than work. I had to do that because for 50 years I was burning the candle at all ends.

2:17:04I was really burnt out. And so I've fixed that now. I don't worry. So are you one of those guys that like dims the lights in your house a couple hours before you go to bed? I try. Prepare. Stay off your phone. Yeah. All that stuff. Well, I don't stay off my phone as much as I want to, but yes. Do you wear red light glasses or anything, like blockers? I used to. I haven't found a big difference for myself. But 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 who says that what happens is you get short-sightedness. Really?

2:17:40Because 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 so interesting if that's what's causing us to have to wear glasses. Wow. And he claims that people that live out in the countryside that see blue light all the time because they go out don't have as much need for glasses. That actually makes sense. Well, particularly artificial light and then also light that's from a close source. Like one of the things that if I do, if I'm tired and I lay in bed and I try to read something online on my phone, it hurts my eyes.

2:18:25The room's dark. It irritates my eyes. Where it never irritates my eyes normally. But it's like at the end of the day, I guess I'm more fatigued. And you're trying to focus on screen. So now think about that when people are doing it all day long. Maybe you're doing it at work where you have to stare at a computer monitor from three feet away 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. Yeah. And also keep in mind that the muscles have to focus.

2:18:58You don't naturally look this far. You naturally relax. You see out there. Right. But to look here, your muscles here have to be straining for hours. And they get very tired. And I guess eventually they age to a point where you cannot keep it up. And sometimes I do this to see better, though. Well, 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, kind of makes sense if you spend all day long focus, even though it's on a screen.

2:19:36You're spending all day long focusing on a book that's only a foot from your face. Yeah, it doesn't make sense and the lens gets really Inflexible right and I'm seeing this with my father. He's otherwise in perfect health at 87, which is amazing But it's his eyes that are failing him. Maybe you should get him a red light bed That's a great idea. Yeah, I'm gonna do that. He's arriving tonight actually from Sydney He's uh, he's a get him a red light bed man Because 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 something that's hugely important.

2:20:09Yeah, I'm going to do it. He's into science. He's been taking NMN, resveratrol, metformin, exercising. He goes to the gym two or three times a week. Oh, that's great. He's a role model at 87 with no diseases, no aches or pains. That's awesome. And he's traveling the world. He was in Japan two weeks ago. Wow. Coming to Boston. 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. Yeah, exactly. He's a great role model. And what it shows is he was an average guy until he was in his 60s. And he figured he was going to die in his 70s probably because everyone in my family dies young because we've got pretty bad genes.

2:20:50But 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 20 years. That's not an exaggeration anyone who's seen him knows he walks he moves he travels he does everything like he was when he was 40 That's where things like resistance exercises are so important because it maintains bone density maintains muscle mass maintains your ability to just get around and do things That's the other reason to do that I mean you're going to 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's like that.

2:21:27He'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 87. That's incredible. That just shows how weak I am. Yeah, I got to go to the gym. How about next time, if you have me on? You're going to be buff. We'll get you a trainer. You're in Massachusetts. There's a ton of trainers out there. Great. It's a deal. 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, but three days a week, get a personal trainer and work out with them.

2:22:03All right. You're on. All right. 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. Well, 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.

2:22:34I've seen my own. There's too much fat in the muscle. Got to get rid of it. Yeah. Yeah. It's really extraordinary when you see those images. Like those really bring it home. And the bone changes. Bone turns to fat too. Parts of the bone. Yes. So you've got to have the strength training for sure. 100%. Oh, and strong. Yeah, 100%. Strength training, that's mandatory. Yeah, and then do you do a lot of aerobic exercises? Yes. Good. I saw the training bike. Oh, yeah. Well, you saw my hypoxia machine that I just got installed today. Yeah. Yeah. The hypoxia thing, what it does is it replicates 14 ,000 feet above sea level, and you train in it.

2:23:17And it also has a heat element, so you could ramp the heat up to 115 degrees. So 115 degrees and 14 ,000 feet of both sea level. What's that, Machu Picchu kind of stuff? Yeah, you're going to hell. That's what it is. You're going straight to hell. You don't feel like it. But it should work, right? Yes. Hypoxia is great for muscle. Yes, and for adaptation. That's the big thing. And my friend Roman, who installed it, who owns one of the guys from the company, um they're it's a very they're very specific with this protocol with 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 yeah and that's a my friend adam greentree turned me on to it okay uh fellow australian um and uh he uh 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.

2:24:12So it's been phenomenal. 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 got to 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. I've done that protocol. Yeah. Yeah. 60 sessions of 90 minutes over 90 days. Yeah. Yeah. I have one at my house. You do? Yeah. Because the data is intercontrovertible. Better wound healing, better memory.

2:24:52Increase in telomere length. Yeah. I saw that one. That's the Israel study. Yes. What I thought was interesting was when I went over there myself and sat in that thing, 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.

2:25:28So the lack of oxygen or the perceived lack of oxygen from a high state is the benefit. And that makes a lot of sense. You're going to grow new blood vessels, just like Viagra is going to 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.

2:26:15It's really talked about, right? 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 PDE5 inhibitors, Viagra. Or you take my stuff, which is Anaman, which we think also works. Or all the above, which is probably the best approach. I'm two out of three. 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.

2:26:53Yes. Couldn't agree more. David, you're a treasure. I really appreciate you. Thank you for being here. You've been so kind. And thank you for getting the word out here about the great science that's going on. 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 literally doing God's work. And we'll try to do more. 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. Love you. Love you, too.

2:27:29Thank you. Bye, everybody.

2:27:42We'll see you next time.