Interviewing visionaries giving humanity control over biology. All problems are solvable, including aging and death. Hosted by @teleodaniel & @EricDai_BioE.
Joined June 2025
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Free Radicals retweeted
Twenty years ago, @DeryaTR_ predicted we would reverse aging by 2045. People thought he was crazy.
Now, he thinks he was too conservative, and has moved the date up to 2040 because AGI arrived earlier than he expected.
I sat down with Derya to ask if such bold predictions are too fatalistic. Is the future guaranteed? Shall we just sit back and wait for AI to save us? Derya disagreed.
The golden age for humanity is within our sights, but there is much work to be done.
Academia is failing us. If it doesn’t adapt to the pace of progress AI enables, we have no shot at curing aging this century. And we need to invest trillions into collecting the data that superintelligence will need to solve biology.
If we pull it off, the future can be brighter than anyone imagines.
Watch the full episode below, or look up Free Radicals (@FreeRadicalsBio) on your favorite podcasting platform.
Special thank you to @adamgries and vitalismfoundation.org for hosting us at @VitalistBay!
Intro
AGI arrived early, accelerating the timeline to biosingularity
Are we really in the takeoff now?
Superintelligence can help us build a world model of biology
Aging as the breakdown of biological resilience
The case for investing trillions into biological data
The economic return on curing aging
AI is accelerating science but academics are stuck in the past
How AI can liberate humanity from biological constraints
Derya’s Human 2.0 dream
Testing the latest OpenAI models and rethinking the PhD
Agency, jobs, and free will in an AI world
Science fiction & Derya’s case for a coming golden age
Free Radicals retweeted
Health podcasts are probably shortening your life expectancy. Not just because of the health anxiety they create, but because that time could instead be spent writing a letter to your congressperson.
Aging kills 85% of Americans, and the US spends $15-20 per person per year on cancer research but only $1 on aging biology. No amount of zone 2 and sauna are going to save you from that gap.
I sat down with Andrew Steele (@statto), scientist, author of Ageless, and founder of the Longevity Initiative, to talk about closing it. His position: if he had $10M to spend on his own longevity, he'd spend every dollar on policy and communication, because that's where the leverage is.
With health systems pushed to their limits and demographic crises looming, the time is right to organize against aging.
Andrew is a phenomenal communicator, and played a huge role in inspiring me to start this podcast. You’re gonna love listening to him, and I highly recommend you follow him as well.
Watch the full episode below, or look up Free Radicals (@FreeRadicalsBio) on your favorite podcasting platform.
Special thank you to @adamgries and vitalismfoundation.org for hosting us at @VitalistBay!
0:00 Intro
1:03 Andrew’s path into aging biology & activism, and publishing Ageless
8:28 Aging as the biggest driver of disease
12:10 The policy gap in addressing aging
20:57 How Andrew hopes his work will help us defeat aging
28:05 The case for increasing funding for aging research
37:12 Bryan Johnson & personal health optimization vs biotech progress
42:37 Why health podcasts are such a nerd snipe
49:27 Who will fund the solution for aging?
57:50 The Longevity Initiative
1:03:50 Andrew’s experience as a science communicator
1:09:53 How to measure progress in activism against aging
1:15:07 Will we solve aging?
Free Radicals retweeted
Reprogramming molecules are getting dosed into patients for the first time, with the goal of restoring function lost due to aging. I‘ve had over 30 recorded conversations about the longevity space and didn’t realize this is happening so soon!
We sat down with Dr. Jamie Justice (@j_n_justice), the geroscientist running the $101M @xprize Healthspan competition, and she told us there are five teams pursuing reprogramming, and hundreds pursuing other approaches. The $101M prize is to be awarded to teams that can restore muscle, cognitive, and immune function by 10 to 20 years.
We discussed how the longevity field has a serious hype problem. We‘ve found hundreds of interventions that can extend lifespan in model organisms (reprogramming among them) and yet none have been translated into humans.
The XPRIZE is changing that, by challenging the field to get out of the lab and into the clinic. $101M for those that can show results now, not in a decade, is a huge incentive to turn the hype into reality.
Watch the full episode below, or look up Free Radicals (@FreeRadicalsBio) on your favorite podcasting platform.
0:00 Intro
1:01 XPRIZE Healthspan: the $101M prize for restoring function in humans
3:05 Where teams enter: discovery, trials, or scale-up 5:08 Aging isn’t an indication: the regulatory wall
9:07 Chemical reprogramming in humans for the first time
12:35 How XPRIZE verifies the data and picks finalists
15:40 How XPRIZE manages ambiguity around aging
20:48 Endpoints for aging: function, feel, survive
26:06 The geroscience hypothesis and why TAME stalled
33:15 What makes a drug a real gerotherapeutic?
36:43 Where the field actually is, from telomeres to peptides
40:33 The peptide problem: gray markets and autonomy
43:40 Is the first person to reach 150 alive today?
46:01 Building the dataset behind personalized longevity
49:27 What motivates Jamie
Free Radicals retweeted
.@DARPA is betting big on blood.
It's not just about shelf-stable synthetic blood & engineered RBCs for human enhancement, important as those may be.
DARPA Director @mkoeris believes blood is also the ideal universal layer for managing human health & longevity.
Link in bio to the full interview on the @FreeRadicalsBio podcast.
Free Radicals retweeted
AI is accelerating the pace of progress for scientists and nefarious actors alike.
That means new opportunities to unlock human longevity, but it also means novel biological threats. DARPA’s Biological Technologies Office is preparing for both futures.
In this episode of the Free Radicals podcast we sat down with Dr. Michael Koeris, DARPA Director (@mkoeris).
We discuss how biological foundation models are needed to protect us from novel threat agents, how blood is the universal OS of the body, how DARPA & the pharma industry are learning lessons in enhancement and longevity from GLP-1s, and much more.
0:00 Intro
2:13 DARPA’s efforts across combat casualty care, synthetic blood & soldier enhancement
6:32 GLP-1s and the new paradigm for pharma of enhancement rather than treatment
11:57 How DARPA can fast track drug development to get us longevity medicines sooner
14:40 Turning red blood cells into nanobot drug factories
19:13 Blood as the universal management layer for the body
21:24 Why Mike is a LinkedIn influencer & how to collaborate with DARPA
25:07 Replacing silicon with biology for more efficient compute
28:37 Why non-invasive brain computer interfaces are the future
30:07 How Cortical Labs has created the SDK for coding with neurons
32:09 How to scale up physical & synthetic data collection to decode biology
35:52 Protecting our crops & our civilians from AI-designed biological weapons
39:14 Reshoring biomanufacturing to ensure American resilience
41:36 The unique danger of biological weapons & how to address them
46:51 The acceleration of technological progress & a call to work with DARPA to build the future
Look up Free Radicals podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, etc. Follow me, @FreeRadicalsBio and @EricDai_BioE for weekly episodes.
Thank you to @SynBioBeta for hosting us!
Free Radicals retweeted
Traditional pharma is not positioned to solve aging today.
Radical approaches are needed. Approaches like organ replacement, brain replacement (yup!), and biostasis to save those who don't have the time to wait.
@krisborer outlines the radical plan for radical life extension in his book to be released next week. Get a sneak peak today of the plan, in our interview with him on the Free Radicals podcast.
0:00 Intro
1:12 Why most longevity bets are too risk averse
12:09 The four approaches to longevity: drugs, bioengineering, replacement & biostasis
17:16 What’s going on with Peptides?
32:04 What is the path forward for replacing organs to extend lifespan?
43:41 What are the limits of Tissue Engineering?
55:46 Biostasis: pausing death until a cure exists
1:03:34 Identity & consciousness: chemo vs. cryo and using AI to upload our minds
1:07:07 Anarcho-capitalism, freedom & the role of government
1:13:24 Closing: pipeline tech & a call to action
You can also look up Free Radicals on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, etc... Link in bio. Follow me and my co-host @EricDai_BioE for weekly longevity content.
Free Radicals retweeted
Had @JonathanAnomaly on the podcast to discuss @herasight and the ethics of selecting embryos for intelligence, height, and other traits.
We get into radical life extension, and the broader philosophy of seeking ever greater control over biology. Jonathan shares a polarizing and inspiring view of what humanity can become.
0:00 Selecting embryos for intelligence and the taboo around it
7:39 Aging, death and status quo bias
14:29 Side effects of secularization
17:29 How a preference cascade will shift the Overton Window
22:40 The importance of biological intelligence post-AGI
29:53 In vitro gametogenesis, gene editing & fully synthetic human genomes
38:14 The rift between us and the upcoming enhanced generation
43:26 Nietzsche’s Übermensch, slave morality, and transhumanism
56:32 Longevity as our generation’s space race
Look up Free Radicals podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, etc. Follow me and @EricDai_BioE for weekly episodes.
Thank you to @SynBioBeta for hosting us!
Free Radicals retweeted
Twelve months ago, we didn’t have working antibody design models. Now we have models that can compress 18 month design timelines to a single month, and agents that can collapse weeks of work to an afternoon.
Today on @FreeRadicalsBio we welcome Simon Kohl (@saakohl), a former @GoogleDeepMind research scientist on the Nobel Prize–winning AlphaFold 2 team.
He is now the founder and CEO of @Latent_Labs, a startup that is building a future where AI agents can design safe, effective and personalized drugs at the push of a button for every patient. With 3 frontier models released in just 9 months, this future is coming quickly.
Simon walks us through his company’s rapid progress from models for designing binders to autonomous agents that can design drug-like antibodies from a text prompt.
Thank you to @SynBioBeta for hosting us at their conference, where we recorded this episode, and several others we’ll be releasing soon!
0:00 Intro
02:17 Levinthal's paradox and the protein-folding problem
10:03 From AlphaFold to Latent Labs: de novo binders (Latent X)
14:28 Beyond binding: building drug-like antibodies with Latent X2
18:17 The clinical data gap and personalized medicine
24:46 Latent Y: the end-to-end drug-design agent
32:54 Beyond single targets for chronic and aging diseases
36:32 The inflection point in pharma, and what's next
And be sure to follow me and @EricDai_BioE to stay up to date on the latest news in longevity biotech!
Free Radicals retweeted
Free Radicals is back! Today’s guest is @ElliotHershberg, partner at @AmplifyPartners and author of the popular blog Century of Biology.
We talk about GLP-1s as a breakthrough moment for biotech, why drug development is starting to behave like software, and how falling discovery costs could finally free biotech startups from selling themselves to pharma.
Other topics include Elliot’s "massive markets, medium prices" thesis, the rise of consumer and "n-of-one" medicine, and Sid Sijbrandij @sytses going founder mode on his own cancer.
Thank you to @SynBioBeta for hosting us at their conference, where we recorded this episode, and several others we’ll be releasing soon!
Follow me, @FreeRadicalsBio & @EricDai_BioE for weekly episodes with leaders in biotech and longevity.
0:00 Intro
2:12 What era of biotech are we in?
3:58 GLP-1s: the once-in-a-generation breakthrough
7:04 Inside Lilly's trillion-dollar valuation
9:09 The Gillette Era of GLP1s
9:54 The Bryan Johnson Era of Biotech: Biohacking goes mainstream
12:55 The $1T question on Consumer Biotech
14:33 Patent cliffs, fast followers, and building for "me-last" therapies
18:20 Disintermediating pharma: HIMS, Loyal, and the standalone biotech
19:41 Why do biotechs sell to pharma in the first place?
23:03 Longevity: a science problem or an ecosystem-alignment problem?
27:14 Why GLP-1s came from pharma
29:52 Why Elliot is Bullish on Standalone Biotechs
33:03 Is Drug Development Becoming more like Software? Not if upside is capped at <$10B
41:30 The geroscience hypothesis and longevity as massive markets, medium prices
45:36 Treating age related diseases or aging as an indication
47:55 How do you value curing aging?
Free Radicals retweeted
New episodes of @FreeRadicalsBio will be on pause until May 26th because we’re taking our show on the road!
This week we’re at @SynBioBeta. Next week @VitalistBay. We’ll be recording conversations with some amazing leaders in AI and Bio at these conferences!
We’ll be back to our regular weekly episodes soon.
And on a personal note this is the first time I’ve ever been at an event as a member of the press
Free Radicals retweeted
“You’re born, you grow up, you have a career, and then you get older and then you die. And that's just like the acceptable plan. Even if the plan is horrible… as long as we're going to plan, everybody goes along with it.”
@realNathanCheng is one of the most prolific activists in the longevity field. He argues that aging, decline and death are not really a great plan, even if it's the way things work today. He has dedicated his life and career to finding us a new plan.
Follow me and @EricDai_BioE to stay up to date on the latest news in longevity biotech!
0:00 Intro
2:35 Why did Nathan dedicate his life to defeating aging & death? (And the absurdity of asking that question)
8:59 Why has Daniel been on the fence, despite being longevity-pilled
14:09 The agency and bravery of founders to tackle the hardest problems (like aging)
18:46 Many ways to contribute to longevity besides entrepreneurship
19:41 Is longevity underinvested into?
24:48 What does it mean to treat aging itself as the issue (vs other diseases)
32:23 Do we need more scientific arguments, or philosophical arguments?
39:50 Nathan’s experience longevity-pilling influential people
47:03 Billionaire paradox
53:18 The challenge in going from viewing aging as inevitable to malleable
57:29 What needs to change about our culture to save us from aging & death
1:16:55 Should we be intolerant of pro-death & pro-aging views?
1:22:59 Join us at Vitalist Bay!
Free Radicals retweeted
Thanks to AI, this century will be marked by an abundance of discoveries in biology.
Today’s guest on the @FreeRadicalsBio podcast is @KexinHuang5, one of the brightest minds in AI for life sciences.
Kexin recently raised $13.5M from @a16z and @MenloVentures Anthology Fund in partnership with @AnthropicAI, to build @phylo_bio - a research lab studying agentic biology.
Listen to learn how AI will make the dream of a one-man biotech reality within 10 years, how AI can unveil discoveries hidden in existing data, and much more.
Be sure to follow me and @EricDai_BioE to stay up to date on the latest news in longevity biotech!
0:00 Intro
2:47 Phylo’s vision to transform how biologist work
6:35 Phylo’s research areas
12:48 Why it’s harder for AI to do biology rather than software, and how to get around that
18:05 Building a virtual cell is a data problem
22:31 What it means for a biotech to go fully AI-native
27:26 The role of a human scientist & the importance of taste
32:22 Experiments in teaching AI scientific taste
36:57 How agents are transforming biology
42:53 The dream of the one-man biotech
47:21 How AI agents can find low hanging fruit through indication expansion
51:51 Can AI agents inflect biotech progress to give us radical life extension?
1:00:47 POPPER model for hypothesis validation
1:04:17 AI research institutes
Free Radicals retweeted
Two young Harvard professors are coming for the supplements industry.
@omarabudayyeh and @jgooten run a joint lab at @harvardmed, have co-founded 4 biotechs, and raised over $300M to develop genetic medicines and diagnostics.
But what surprised me most: they think like consumer tech founders, not academics. They start with what people actually want and work backwards from there.
And best of all? They’re totally longevity-pilled. Consumers want to feel younger and healthier, and big pharma is waking up to it.
In this week’s episode of the Free Radicals podcast, we discuss the biology of aging, the future of longevity therapeutics, and how Harvard can bring legitimacy to the supplements industry.
One of my favorite episodes yet.
Be sure to follow me, @EricDai_BioE and @FreeRadicalsBio to stay up to date on the latest news in longevity biotech!
Free Radicals retweeted
Have you thought about the politics of longevity?
Today’s guest on the @FreeRadicalsBio podcast is Dylan Livingston (@dullunlivin), the 28 year old founder of the Alliance for Longevity Initiatives @theA4LI.
Dylan created America’s first and only lobbying group focused on advancing longevity initiatives in Washington DC.
Since its founding, A4LI has created a longevity caucus composed of 8 congresspeople, and hosted leaders like Dr. Oz, Newt Gingrich and @mkaeberlein at their summits. A4LI also played a key role in garnering bipartisan support to advance Montana’s Right to Try legislation, which expands the right for consenting patients to utilize safe experimental medicines in Montana.
In this episode, we discuss how Dylan gets bipartisan support for healthy life extension initiatives, what it’s like selling politicians on longevity, and A4LI’s role in accelerating longevity towards its ChatGPT moment.
Follow me and @EricDai_BioE for weekly episodes about longevity biotech!
0:00 Intro
1:52 Origin story of the first longevity lobby
10:30 State of government support for longevity
14:49 Trump administration’s view on longevity
17:30 The unique policy needs of longevity biotech
23:42 A4LI’s success with right to try
30:30 Why lobbying is so effective for accelerating longevity
34:32 Case for optimism in longevity & the need for more investment
40:04 What arguments resonate with congresspeople
49:23 Bryan Johnson’s impact on the perception of longevity
52:15 Who are the most important people to influence
Free Radicals retweeted
Today’s guest on the Free Radicals podcast is @M_S_Ringel, COO @lifebiosciences and former Managing Director at @BCG.
Michael is a leader in longevity and pharma who spent 25+ years advising top pharma companies on their R&D strategy. He is now COO at Life Biosciences where he is bringing the first ever partial epigenetic reprogramming therapy to human clinical trials - a major milestone for the longevity industry.
In this episode, we discuss Michael’s insightful paper on why aging is an optimization by evolution, why that means it’s malleable, and how to push the longevity field forward.
Michael also sits on the US board of @hevolution_f and on the board of the @AFARorg.
Be sure to follow me and @EricDai_BioE to stay up to date on the latest news in longevity biotech!
0:00 Intro
2:30 Why aging is an optimization by evolution
15:10 Why scientists miss the role of evolution in aging
19:31 Evidence that aging is a regulated process
24:40 Hormesis and adaptive stress responses
28:55 The promise of partial epigenetic reprogramming in humans
35:08 Life Bio's first therapy proceeding to clinical trials
47:47 Why targeting the eye, particularly glaucoma and NION, is a strategic choice
52:03 The pharma industry's perspective on anti-aging research
56:39 The importance of public engagement for funding and policy change
1:05:42 Reasons for optimism in longevity
1:08:26 Advice on how to have an impactful and interdisciplinary career
1:11:54 The ethical case for longevity
1:17:34 Concrete steps for audience members to support longevity research
Free Radicals retweeted
I have recorded a bunch of podcasts, but this last one is my favorite one so far. We talked about longevity, but also many of my other niche interests
xitter.cf/teleodaniel/status/203…
Today’s guest on the Free Radicals podcast is @ArtirKel, head of theory @RetroBio_ and blogger nintil.com.
Jose is a prolific blogger, covering a wide breadth of topics across economics, philosophy, progress studies, science funding, much more, and of course longevity. His works have been published by @a16z, @WorksInProgMag and @ASI.
Our conversation is wide ranging, spanning a deep dive on Retro’s work to replace and engineer microglia to rejuvenate the brain and how our cells have the ability to turn back the aging clock but choose not to. We also covered the technological stagnation and why biological engineering is the new frontier of progress, as well as philosophical topics like transhumanism and how a future of total biological control might impact our values and way of life.
Be sure to follow me and @EricDai_BioE to stay up to date on the latest news in longevity biotech! And Special thank you to @NFX & @omri_drory for lending us their beautiful podcasting studio!
0:00 Intro
2:49 What is aging & why cells have a tough choice to make
9:02 When cells choose to reverse aging themselves
12:43 Cellular vs Organismal Aging & the magic wand experiment
18:31 What is reprogramming
22:40 How reprogramming plays a role in DNA damage repair
25:42 Do we already know how to cure aging? FOXO3!
28:37 How to cut through the complexity of interconnected biology
32:32 Why transcription factors are so great for intervening
36:49 Does a rejuvenation program exist already in the genome
38:51 Michael Levin: from thinking in terms of genes to morphogenesis
48:14 Tech stagnation and why physics is cooked
55:03 Why doesn't the world look more futuristic
57:26 Transhumanism & asking ourselves what we want out of life
1:05:34 Do we need war for technological progress
1:09:31 Government role in science funding
1:15:06 How Jose became the Head of Theory at Retro
1:24:53 How AI might put software engineers out of a job, and push them towards biotech
1:27:28 What it takes to get a flywheel in biotech
1:29:04 Rejuvenation vs Prevention
1:34:23 Aging is the coolest hardest problem to work on
1:36:09 What does it take to cure aging
1:42:25 Delivery mechanisms for genetic therapies
1:48:53 Retro's work to replace microglia and engineer them outside the body
1:59:10 Consciousness
2:00:39 Jose's Origin Story
Free Radicals retweeted
Today’s guest on the Free Radicals podcast is @ArtirKel, head of theory @RetroBio_ and blogger nintil.com.
Jose is a prolific blogger, covering a wide breadth of topics across economics, philosophy, progress studies, science funding, much more, and of course longevity. His works have been published by @a16z, @WorksInProgMag and @ASI.
Our conversation is wide ranging, spanning a deep dive on Retro’s work to replace and engineer microglia to rejuvenate the brain and how our cells have the ability to turn back the aging clock but choose not to. We also covered the technological stagnation and why biological engineering is the new frontier of progress, as well as philosophical topics like transhumanism and how a future of total biological control might impact our values and way of life.
Be sure to follow me and @EricDai_BioE to stay up to date on the latest news in longevity biotech! And Special thank you to @NFX & @omri_drory for lending us their beautiful podcasting studio!
0:00 Intro
2:49 What is aging & why cells have a tough choice to make
9:02 When cells choose to reverse aging themselves
12:43 Cellular vs Organismal Aging & the magic wand experiment
18:31 What is reprogramming
22:40 How reprogramming plays a role in DNA damage repair
25:42 Do we already know how to cure aging? FOXO3!
28:37 How to cut through the complexity of interconnected biology
32:32 Why transcription factors are so great for intervening
36:49 Does a rejuvenation program exist already in the genome
38:51 Michael Levin: from thinking in terms of genes to morphogenesis
48:14 Tech stagnation and why physics is cooked
55:03 Why doesn't the world look more futuristic
57:26 Transhumanism & asking ourselves what we want out of life
1:05:34 Do we need war for technological progress
1:09:31 Government role in science funding
1:15:06 How Jose became the Head of Theory at Retro
1:24:53 How AI might put software engineers out of a job, and push them towards biotech
1:27:28 What it takes to get a flywheel in biotech
1:29:04 Rejuvenation vs Prevention
1:34:23 Aging is the coolest hardest problem to work on
1:36:09 What does it take to cure aging
1:42:25 Delivery mechanisms for genetic therapies
1:48:53 Retro's work to replace microglia and engineer them outside the body
1:59:10 Consciousness
2:00:39 Jose's Origin Story
Free Radicals retweeted
Today’s guest on the Free Radicals podcast is @ricomnl, head of applied AI @retrobio_.
Retro was seeded with $180M by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman to develop therapies to prevent and reverse age-related disease, and is widely recognized as one of the leading AI for longevity companies.
This was a fun conversation about Retro’s work with OpenAI to engineer 50x more efficient Yamanaka factors in a matter of months, what it means to build foundation models that can reason across natural language and protein sequence, and why the bottlenecks in biology are more experimental than computational. We also get into the biology of aging and how AI can enable therapies that dramatically advance healthy lifespan.
Be sure to follow me and @EricDai_BioE to stay up to date on the latest news in longevity biotech! And Special thank you to @NFX & @omri_drory for lending us their beautiful podcasting studio!
0:00 Intro
1:42 Engineering transcription factors for more efficient reprogramming
19:02 How protein models are used
30:40 Exciting developments in protein engineering
36:20 Challenges in predicting protein behavior
39:38 Do scaling laws apply to protein models?
43:41 How these models are useful for longevity
56:15 Existing pathways for damage repair in the body
1:03:07 Will superintelligence solve aging for us?
Free Radicals retweeted
Today’s guest on the Free Radicals podcast is Christopher Bradley, founder of @matterbio.
Christopher is a serial entrepreneur who has dedicated himself to solving aging after his last startup Mana Health was acquired by NBC Universal. His company Matter Bio is developing therapies to enhance DNA damage repair to slow the rate of aging, and to treat cancer through novel bacterial delivery mechanisms. They've raised over $9M for this purpose from investors including Lifespan Vision Ventures and @quadrascope.
In today’s conversation we discuss the theory of aging as information loss, which Chris contends is primarily mediated through DNA damage, how to unlock new approaches for longevity through large scale genomics studies, and the evolving business of biotech.
Be sure to follow me and @EricDai_BioE to stay up to date on the latest news in longevity biotech!
Special thank you to @NFX & @omri_drory
for lending us their beautiful podcasting studio!
0:00 Intro
2:13 Largest study ever of genes for longevity
06:49 DNA damage as a driver of aging
14:10 Counter-arguments against the DNA thesis
25:16 Cancer isn't aging
27:53 How Matter Bio is targeting DNA damage to extend lifespan
35:15 Stem cell therapies
41:03 Different pathways for managing DNA damage
50:28 Sex ed (or what we can learn from germline rejuvenation)
55:14 What to expect from Matter Bio in the future
57:36 How to make longevity therapies as visual as rocket launches
1:00:35 The business of biotech
1:06:47 The importance of longevity as a moonshot
1:09:31 Sequencing techniques
1:12:02 What is it like working with co-founder George Church
1:16:02 Navigating the volatile industry of biotech
Free Radicals retweeted
Today’s guest on the Free Radicals podcast is @RaianyRomanni. Raiany is a Harvard and Brown-trained bioethicist focused on understanding why secular people like to narrate death and aging as good things, and quantifying the economic impacts of such narratives.
Our conversation focuses on the ethics and economics of longevity. Listen to hear the moral case for delaying aging, why it’s not a “luxury problem” and much more!
More info on Raiany: she worked with legends like George Church and Steven Pinker on her PhD, and also played a central role in designing the $101 million dollar XPRIZE for Healthspan, the largest science prize ever awarded. She is the founder of a new think tank designed to study and streamline progress in America’s science and technology, and most recently published a paper demonstrating that delaying overall biological aging by just one year could yield $27 trillion dollars in net present value.
Be sure to follow me and @EricDai_BioE to stay up to date on the latest news in longevity biotech!
0:00 Intro
2:44 Daniel and Eric discuss their takeaways
8:35 Raiany explains the economic impact of longevity
13:08 The connection between ethics and economics
17:20 The importance and failures of bioethics in the modern age
20:28 Objection to longevity #1: nature knows best
25:07 Are the pharma companies heroes or villains?
29:31 Objection to longevity #2: overpopulations
30:20 Objection to longevity #3: vampire billionaires and tyrants
30:20 Objection to longevity #4: vampire billionaires and tyrant
31:52 Objection to longevity #5: cultural stagnation
33:28 The importance of human agency
41:01 How to influence the culture and policy
46:30 Objection to longevity #6: longevity is full of snake oil salesmen
49:20 US-China and the race to longevity
52:43 Evidence that aging is malleable
58:00 Eric and Daniel open up about their relationships
1:02:48 Is longevity a “luxury problem”?
1:06:21 The greatest crisis facing our generation