Joe Rogan Experience #1432 - Aubrey de Grey

Aubrey de Grey 0:01 Three, two, one. Boom. Here we go.

Joe Rogan 0:04 What's up, man?

Aubrey de Grey 0:05 How are you? What's up?

Joe Rogan 0:05 Hey, did you trim your beard since I've seen you last?

Aubrey de Grey 0:07 No, I'm afraid not.

Joe Rogan 0:07 I feel like you have.

Aubrey de Grey 0:08 No. It may be a fraction shorter, but that's only because it's been falling out more.

Joe Rogan 0:12 It falls out?

Aubrey de Grey 0:13 Oh, yeah. I mean-

Joe Rogan 0:13 Wow.

Aubrey de Grey 0:13 ... I stroke it all the time, you know? It's compulsive.

Joe Rogan 0:15 Oh. And so then you get these weird hairs that you have to-

Aubrey de Grey 0:19 (laughs) Well, actually, I don't notice it enough. I mean, it falls out slowly, you know, but-

Joe Rogan 0:22 Yeah.

Aubrey de Grey 0:22 ... I guess, you know, I guess there's a certain amount of attrition.

Joe Rogan 0:25 So the beard's the same length?

Aubrey de Grey 0:26 Pretty much.

Joe Rogan 0:27 Have you gotten any younger since I've seen you last?

Aubrey de Grey 0:29 Yeah, hard to say.

Joe Rogan 0:30 Hard to say. But that is your, that is your business?

Aubrey de Grey 0:32 That's my business, yes.

Joe Rogan 0:33 How many years has it been since I saw you? Four?

Aubrey de Grey 0:35 Uh, f- nearly five, I think.

Joe Rogan 0:37 Five? Five years.

Aubrey de Grey 0:37 It was A- April of 2015.

Joe Rogan 0:38 Mm. And you have not, you have not gotten younger?

Aubrey de Grey 0:43 I have not gotten younger. I-

Joe Rogan 0:44 Have you maintained?

Aubrey de Grey 0:45 I think I've pretty much maintained, yes.

Joe Rogan 0:47 Yeah?

Aubrey de Grey 0:47 But not through my own work. Um, so the work is still very much ongoing, though we have come an awfully long way in the past five years. Uh, but, you know, this is a complicated thing to fix.

Joe Rogan 0:57 Yes.

Aubrey de Grey 0:58 And so... And we need to fix all of it in order to really make people start getting biologically younger.

Joe Rogan 1:02 So let's bring people up to speed. What, what have the, what are the latest revelations? What's the, the latest in terms of, uh, what we understand in, in terms of what could possibly be fixed about human aging?

Aubrey de Grey 1:17 All right, so the fantastic answer to that question is there are no new revelations in terms of what we understand. Our understanding seems to have been pretty much complete already, like 20 years ago. The fact that we haven't found out any fundamental new stuff that we didn't know before then is fantastic news, because of course it means that we're unlikely to find anything out in the future either. It means that we are pretty much on top of the description of the problem, and therefore it's all about solving the problem.

Joe Rogan 1:46 Is it b- possible to summarize the problem?

Aubrey de Grey 1:48 Sure.

Joe Rogan 1:48 What is the problem? What causes human aging?

Aubrey de Grey 1:49 Sure, that's easy. So aging is simply the same thing in a living organism like you or me as what it is in a car or an airplane or any other simple manmade machine. It's a fact of physics, nothing to do with biology, that any machine that has moving parts is gonna do itself damage in the course of its normal operation, as an intrinsic consequence of its normal operation.

Joe Rogan 2:13 Okay.

Aubrey de Grey 2:13 So in the same way that a car rusts-

Joe Rogan 2:15 Jimmy's gonna bring that microphone up to you.

Aubrey de Grey 2:16 Sure. Is that good? Yep.

Joe Rogan 2:17 Yeah.

Aubrey de Grey 2:17 Sorry.

Joe Rogan 2:17 Just try to keep it about a fist from your face.

Aubrey de Grey 2:19 Yeah. So in the same way that a car rusts, uh, or, you know, accumulates junk in the oil or whatever, similarly the human body does damage to itself.

Joe Rogan 2:27 Mm.

Aubrey de Grey 2:28 And again, just like a car or an airplane, the human body is set up to tolerate a certain amount of that damage so that we can get through to the point where we have kids before we start going functionally downhill.

Joe Rogan 2:42 Hmm.

Aubrey de Grey 2:42 Whether mentally or physically. But after that, evolution doesn't care about us anymore, and therefore, we are only equipped to tolerate that much. And eventually the damage that's being done accumulates to a point beyond what the body's set up to tolerate, and that's when things start to go wrong and-

Joe Rogan 3:00 So-

Aubrey de Grey 3:00 ... we start to function less well.

Joe Rogan 3:01 ... what is the difference physically between a younger person and an older person in terms of their ability to recover from the damage of just regular, everyday life and exercise and abuse and running around?

Aubrey de Grey 3:11 Yeah, all that. So that's just one aspect of the difference between a younger person and an older person, so let me answer that question by stepping back one step.

Joe Rogan 3:18 Okay.

Aubrey de Grey 3:19 So the difference ultimately arises from what the body is made of at the molecular level and cellular level. The body accumulates various changes that are chemical and biological consequences of what the body has to do to keep us alive from one day to the next, even starting before we're born. And those changes, the reason I'm using the word damage to, to describe those changes, is because eventually things don't work so well. So you're quite right that recovery from injury is one thing that doesn't work so well, but so are plenty of other things, whether it's how fast you can run or how, how fast you can think, you know, how strongly you can grip something, uh, how fast you can walk. Um, you know, all of these things become progressively less good. But the point is that the amount by which they become less good is pretty negligible until the age of 40 or 50. It's only then that the decline starts to accelerate.

Joe Rogan 4:14 So what do you do in your own life to try to mitigate that acceleration?

Aubrey de Grey 4:19 Yeah, I'm a really bad example of this, for two reasons.

Joe Rogan 4:21 Really? That's crazy, but you're a... This is your business.

Aubrey de Grey 4:24 So there are two reasons why I'm bad at it.

Joe Rogan 4:26 Okay.

Aubrey de Grey 4:26 The first reason is that I'm really well built. I'm just lucky. I'm just one of those hateful people who I can eat and drink exactly what I like and nothing seems to happen, and I don't even need to exercise to speak of, and, you know, I'm far, biologically far younger than I actually am chronologically.

Joe Rogan 4:39 How old are you chronologically?

Aubrey de Grey 4:40 Chronologically, I'm 57. Um-

Joe Rogan 4:43 How old do you think you are biologically?

Aubrey de Grey 4:44 Well, th- I'm told that I'm a, a good decade less than that.

Joe Rogan 4:48 Hmm.

Aubrey de Grey 4:48 And this is what I get told every time I do these tests, which I've been doing for the past, let me see, 18 years. Um, yeah, so that's pretty good news. Um-

Joe Rogan 4:55 So you're lucky.

Aubrey de Grey 4:56 Yeah, that's right.

Joe Rogan 4:56 Genetically.

Aubrey de Grey 4:57 Yeah. But the other thing is, you know, I'm working hard to hasten the defeat of aging, and, um, maybe it's a net win. You know, maybe the amount that I'm hastening it is more than the damage I'm doing myself by, for example, not getting enough sleep.

Joe Rogan 5:10 And you still drink booze?

Aubrey de Grey 5:12 (laughs) I still drink.

Joe Rogan 5:13 How often?

Aubrey de Grey 5:14 Oh, I drink probably more than the average American.

Joe Rogan 5:17 What does that mean?

Aubrey de Grey 5:18 (laughs) A few beers a day.

Joe Rogan 5:20 A few beers a day?

Aubrey de Grey 5:21 And maybe, and maybe-

Joe Rogan 5:21 What's a few?

Aubrey de Grey 5:22 ... a whiskey or two. Yeah, three or four.

Joe Rogan 5:24 Three? Three or four?

Aubrey de Grey 5:24 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 5:24 Three or four beers every day?

Aubrey de Grey 5:26 Yeah, most days.

Joe Rogan 5:26 And a whiskey or two every day as well?

Aubrey de Grey 5:28 Yeah, most days.

Joe Rogan 5:29 So six days a week, or six drinks a day?

Aubrey de Grey 5:31 Yeah, most days.

Joe Rogan 5:32 Wow. You want a drink right now?

Aubrey de Grey 5:34 (laughs) Only if you have one.

Joe Rogan 5:36 We have... Do we have any beer? Do we have any Heinekens or is it, we have the fake Heinekens?

Aubrey de Grey 5:39 I, I, I drink-

Joe Rogan 5:40 We have whiskey.

Aubrey de Grey 5:41 I only drink actual beer, not Heineken.

Joe Rogan 5:43 Oh, you son of a bitch.

Aubrey de Grey 5:45 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 5:45 What is an actual beer?

Aubrey de Grey 5:46 Well, you know, IPAs, things like that-

Joe Rogan 5:48 Oh.

Aubrey de Grey 5:48 ... things that taste like beer.

Joe Rogan 5:50 Heineken doesn't taste like beer?

Aubrey de Grey 5:51 Of course not.

Joe Rogan 5:52 I don't know. I mean, I'm not We had some weed-infused beer-

Aubrey de Grey 5:54 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 5:54 ... for a while, but I think it'll- Oh, that, that'll fuck- ... go bad.

Aubrey de Grey 5:57 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 5:57 ... this dude up. He'll, he'll lose all of his gains in biological aging.

Aubrey de Grey 6:00 I, actually, no, I've never smoked pot.

Joe Rogan 6:01 Never?

Aubrey de Grey 6:01 I, I mean, I've, I've, I've ex- I've experimented with it when I was younger, but it never did anything to me at all.

Joe Rogan 6:07 Let's get some ice. Get some ice. We'll, we'll have some whiskey. Um-

Aubrey de Grey 6:10 I, I don't-... put ice in my whiskey. But you're- you're- (laughs)

Joe Rogan 6:13 Oh, you're one of those guys. Just get some glasses then, Jamie.

Aubrey de Grey 6:16 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 6:17 That's hilarious. You're very specific with your booze?

Aubrey de Grey 6:19 Well, no, not all that specific.

Joe Rogan 6:21 Tell me.

Aubrey de Grey 6:21 Uh, when it comes to whiskey, I'm... I... I mean, or beer for that matter, I'm not a snob at all. I mean, I won't-

Joe Rogan 6:25 But you're not a... You don't drink Heineken, you gotta be a snob.

Aubrey de Grey 6:28 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 6:28 Heineken's a delicious beer.

Aubrey de Grey 6:29 Heineken is refreshing.

Joe Rogan 6:31 (laughs)

Aubrey de Grey 6:31 Which is, you know... It's, it's like when you call, uh, someone's research descriptive. It's a euphemism for not worth much.

Joe Rogan 6:40 I understand. Refreshing, meaning it's a cold beverage.

Aubrey de Grey 6:43 That's right.

Joe Rogan 6:43 But it's not... It doesn't have the stout taste that you enjoy.

Aubrey de Grey 6:46 It, it, it, it has the function of water.

Joe Rogan 6:48 Oh. Right. Or lemonade, or something along those lines.

Aubrey de Grey 6:52 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 6:52 Yeah. Um, how frowned upon it is in the anti-aging community to be a person who drinks as much as you do?

Aubrey de Grey 6:58 (laughs) Everyone in the anti- in the aging community knows me and they know that I don't drink to excess for myself. Right? They know that what I drink is, um, you know, what works for me.

Joe Rogan 7:10 Some really good stuff. This... Which one's really good? Locke-uh-vul-in. Yeah.

Aubrey de Grey 7:14 Lagavulin, it's pronounced.

Joe Rogan 7:15 How do you say it?

Aubrey de Grey 7:16 Lagavulin. Emphasis on the-

Joe Rogan 7:18 La-ga-vu-lin.

Aubrey de Grey 7:18 That's right.

Joe Rogan 7:18 You fucked it up, Jamie.

Aubrey de Grey 7:20 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 7:20 Is... Do you prefer this?

Aubrey de Grey 7:21 It's very good.

Joe Rogan 7:21 Or do you have... What do... You ever had Buffalo Trace?

Aubrey de Grey 7:24 That's... Okay. Lagavulin's better.

Joe Rogan 7:26 Okay. So it saves you.

Aubrey de Grey 7:29 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 7:29 Buffalo Trace is American, that's what you don't like.

Aubrey de Grey 7:31 My PR people will... w- w- w- will get pissed off with me for this.

Joe Rogan 7:35 (laughs) For drinking?

Aubrey de Grey 7:36 It's... I... N- n- n- yeah. In the anti-aging community, I am not frowned upon at all.

Joe Rogan 7:39 Cheers, sir.

Aubrey de Grey 7:39 I... And people know that I d- I do what I do. But everyone says, you know, there will be donors out there who will frown on you for...

Joe Rogan 7:46 Oh.

Aubrey de Grey 7:46 But it's your own fault. Uh, uh... (laughs)

Joe Rogan 7:49 Ooh, that's all... That tastes like smoke.

Aubrey de Grey 7:51 (laughs) Yeah, that's right. It's one of those, um-

Joe Rogan 7:53 Is it smokey? Is there a smokey whiskey?

Aubrey de Grey 7:54 It is. It's one of those peaty whiskey that's really nice.

Joe Rogan 7:57 It's very smokey. Yeah. Interesting. It'll be popular in restaurants, I know. That's why... that's why I know they've been selling it, yeah. Is it? I prefer the Buffalo Trace.

Aubrey de Grey 8:05 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 8:06 It tastes a lot better.

Aubrey de Grey 8:07 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 8:07 That's... It's weird though, it tastes like, uh, like it's made with smoke. Like somehow-

Aubrey de Grey 8:11 That's right.

Joe Rogan 8:12 You say it... Is it peaty? Is that what you say? Like peat bog?

Aubrey de Grey 8:13 That's what... That's the word that's often used. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 8:15 Yeah.

Aubrey de Grey 8:15 That's the word that's often used.

Joe Rogan 8:17 Um, how bad is drinking for you?

Aubrey de Grey 8:19 Well, of course it depends whether you drink too much. And diff- and too much is a different amount for different people.

Joe Rogan 8:24 Yeah.

Aubrey de Grey 8:24 And so, you know, if you drink within your limits, you know. If you drink enough that you get a hangover, the more... uh, well, uh, in the morning, you know, once a week, then you're definitely drinking too much. Last time I had a hangover must've been when I was a teenager.

Joe Rogan 8:36 Oh, okay. You just keep it going? And drink lots of water?

Aubrey de Grey 8:39 I don't actually drink all that much water.

Joe Rogan 8:41 Really?

Aubrey de Grey 8:42 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 8:42 God, you're... you're defying all the rules.

Aubrey de Grey 8:45 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 8:45 It's confusing. Are you still, uh, rowing for exercise? Last time we spoke, you were rowing.

Aubrey de Grey 8:51 You don't remember enough. So-

Joe Rogan 8:52 What is it called? Paddling?

Aubrey de Grey 8:54 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 8:54 What do you call it?

Aubrey de Grey 8:55 So when I used to live in Cambridge in England-

Joe Rogan 8:58 Yes.

Aubrey de Grey 8:58 ... I used to be quite an expert at punting.

Joe Rogan 9:01 Punting?

Aubrey de Grey 9:01 Which is this thing that you do in Cambridge and Oxford-

Joe Rogan 9:04 Oh, it's a stick.

Aubrey de Grey 9:05 ... with a stick, that's right.

Joe Rogan 9:05 That's right, I'm sorry.

Aubrey de Grey 9:06 That, that you push against the bottom of the river with. Uh, it sounds, when you describe it like that, like a really clunky, uh, you know, activity. But actually it's fantastically smooth and when you're good at it, it's really easy. It doesn't... it's not even tiring. And it's ridiculously romantic.

Joe Rogan 9:22 Romantic?

Aubrey de Grey 9:23 Yeah, that's right.

Joe Rogan 9:23 Yes. And-

Aubrey de Grey 9:24 It's definitely a babe magnet.

Joe Rogan 9:25 Woo. There you go. And good exercise as well.

Aubrey de Grey 9:27 Yeah, that thing. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 9:28 Yeah. Good for balance and that. So is that basically what you do for exercise, or do you not do that anymore?

Aubrey de Grey 9:33 Uh... I... I used to... I don't live in Cambridge anymore.

Joe Rogan 9:35 Okay.

Aubrey de Grey 9:35 I live in California now.

Joe Rogan 9:36 Oh, you do? You live out here?

Aubrey de Grey 9:37 Yeah, I live in the Bay Area.

Joe Rogan 9:38 Get the... What are you doing out there?

Aubrey de Grey 9:40 Well, that's where the foundation is based.

Joe Rogan 9:41 Oh, okay.

Aubrey de Grey 9:43 Yeah, I've been over here for 10 years now.

Joe Rogan 9:45 So what is, uh, a day-to-day life? What's a w- a normal day for Aubrey de Grey?

Aubrey de Grey 9:51 Well, there isn't really a normal day. I spend a ridiculous amount of time on the road, 'cause I view, you know, being a high profile member of this community, I view the outreach side of things, just educating people on this, as an enormously valuable and important part of my work. And also, it's something you can't delegate. Because, you know, conference organizers or interviewers for that matter, they always want the front man. Whereas on the science side, we- we've been able to hire extremely good people. And so I've been able to delegate that to a very large extent.

Joe Rogan 10:19 Now, in terms of progress, like, what, what has to happen for there to be a shift in the, th- the biological age of people, where you could actually reverse it? Or even actually maintain the position they're at now for extended periods of time?

Aubrey de Grey 10:36 First of all, let me answer that last part. So reversing aging is actually going to be pretty much the result of maintaining it. There won't be a just you maintain it, because that would mean that you are repairing the damage of aging just exactly at the same speed that the damage is being laid down, which is ridiculous. You know, you'd obvious-... If you can do that, you can obviously do it a little bit faster than it's being laid down.

Joe Rogan 10:58 Right.

Aubrey de Grey 10:58 So you don't really need to think about the maintaining part. Um, however, what we need is we need to be able to repair all of the types of damage. And because the human body is so very complicated, there are of course a lot of different types of damage. So it's a divide and conquer strategy. Any of these types of damage, at the molecular level, cellular level can perfectly well kill you more or less on schedule, however well we fix all the others. So since the beginning, SENS Research Foundation, my organization, has focused on the most challenging, the most difficult types of damage. Because basically the easiest ones are being worked on by other people. We have, you see, we set ourselves up as an independent charity. We're... So we're a charity, we're a public 501 (c) (3) , which means that if someone gives us money, they get a tax break. But we're independent, which means that we do not rely on peer review, government grants, or anything like that. We just rely on phili- philanthropy. The enormous advantage of that is that we're not competing with a lot of other people who have their own ideas about what to do. And in particular, the people who are deciding who wins that competition are not, um, you know... When you apply for government grants, it's terrible, you know. You end up having to basically-... emphasize really boring, low-hanging fruit just in order to have a chance at getting funded because people want to avoid funding things that don't lead to high profile publications soon.

Joe Rogan 12:24 Hmm.

Aubrey de Grey 12:24 Um, so, you know, really ambitious, high risk, high reward stuff just doesn't get done and so that's ... So we focus on that because other people can't.

Joe Rogan 12:32 That makes sense and that's very unfortunate that that doesn't get done outside of what you're trying to do.

Aubrey de Grey 12:37 Yeah, I mean, of course, this, this is a recognized problem.

Joe Rogan 12:40 Yeah.

Aubrey de Grey 12:40 And NIH, for example, have tried to address it with awards, wi- with types of grants that are specifically focused on more, um, cutting-edge visionary stuff. But the magnitude there is ti- ... It's real tokenism. You know, it's less than 1% of the NIH budget.

Joe Rogan 12:57 What's frustrating to you about th- the state of, uh, understanding repair and understanding the, the, the ability to fix things?

Aubrey de Grey 13:07 W- well, I'm not the kinda guy who gets frustrated very much. You know, I'm always a glass half full kind of person. So for me, what matters the most is the fact that the understanding that this is what aging is and this is how to deal with it has improved so much over the years. So I started putting out the idea that this was the way to go after aging 20 years ago. Uh, bef- up until then, the only game in town really was we've gotta make the body run more cleanly and generate this damage more slowly than it naturally does. And that's a very big conceptual difference, right? So it's not surprising that it took me maybe 10 years to really get the damage repair approach taken properly seriously by my colleagues in the scientific community. But by about 10 years ago, it was taken seriously and in fact over the past decade, people have been periodically reinventing the idea. And, you know, I don't necessarily always get as much of the credit as I probably ought to have, but I don't care about that. The main thing is I don't have to persuade anyone anymore. People get it, that damage repair is at least, if not the way to go, at least a very promising way to go. So really what happens next is convincing people outside of the community, right? And there, there's been enormous progress as well. So when you and I spoke last, five years ago, really that was the end of the story. I'd pretty much won the scientific argument, but still no one was really listening. And then over the past five years, the huge thing that's happened is the private sector interest in this has taken off. So investors have been coming along. Typically, it's been led by the angel investor types, the seed investors, people who are willing to do really high risk, high reward stuff, but they understand that we are getting close enough that this is the next big thing, that we will actually have bonafide and genuine rejuvenation medicine in the foreseeable future.

Joe Rogan 14:57 How foreseeable?

Aubrey de Grey 14:59 Well, you know, some of it's already in clinical trials.

Joe Rogan 15:01 Like what kind of stuff?

Aubrey de Grey 15:02 So for example, the stem cell therapies now being used-

Joe Rogan 15:06 Mm-hmm.

Aubrey de Grey 15:07 ... for aspects of aging with a really clear understanding of how they're going to work. Parkinson's disease is a great example of this-

Joe Rogan 15:13 Yeah.

Aubrey de Grey 15:13 ... where stem cell therapy is the right way to go and it's in clinical trials. Something that's been in the news a lot over the past couple of years is senolytics, which are drugs that selectively kill what are called senescent cells. So these are cells that hang out in the body in a bad state, where they're doing more harm than good. They're, not only are they not doing what they're supposed to, they're also secreting nasty stuff that damages their neighborhood. And so drugs have been developed that are seemingly pretty good at getting rid of those, and they're in clinical trials as well. Most ... And so we don't wo- ... We used to work on that area. We basically do no work on that area anymore, hardly any. Um, and we may end up doing none at all a couple of years from now just because-

Joe Rogan 15:52 Why is that?

Aubrey de Grey 15:52 Because other people are doing it-

Joe Rogan 15:53 Mm-hmm.

Aubrey de Grey 15:53 ... and so our money is better spent doing the stuff that's still at an earlier stage. And beyond that, um, you know, we are able even for things that are a couple of years behind that, so wo- won't be in clinical trials for another year or two, um, we've been able even then to get investors interested so that we can actually spin the projects out as start-up companies and focus on the things that remain. And it's not just us, of course. There's lots and lots of ... I mean, literally more than, way over 100 other companies now that I work with 'cause they're not spin-outs from my foundation but they are, um, you know, doing closely aligned work. And so I'm, I'm literally spending probably a day a week on average, um, just making introductions between, you know, en- entrepreneur founders, you know, scientific founders of, with, with great science and investors who wanna get involved.

Joe Rogan 16:42 The, uh, stem cell therapy is fascinating to me because I've had some personal experience with it. Um, I've had some injuries that I cured with, uh, well, doctors cured with stem cells in a remarkable way. Where the point where I, I was told that I need shoulder surgery-

Aubrey de Grey 16:57 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 16:57 ... and, uh, I had a, a large rotator cuff tear-

Aubrey de Grey 17:00 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 17:00 ... and it's gone.

Aubrey de Grey 17:01 I know, it's incredible.

Joe Rogan 17:02 It's amazing.

Aubrey de Grey 17:03 But that's not really what I'm talking about. That's gone really well and-

Joe Rogan 17:05 You're talking about ne- neurodegenerative diseases and-

Aubrey de Grey 17:08 So, well, the big difference, it's not necessarily brain versus anything else. What I'm saying is that what you got was using stem cells to treat an acute injury-

Joe Rogan 17:18 Mm-hmm.

Aubrey de Grey 17:18 ... right? A tear. And that's what stem cell therapies have been developed the most for so far, um, a- and have shown the most promise for. But now we're going to the point where we're in a position to use stem cells to address certain aspects of aging. In other words, certain aspects of slow, steady, progressive decline that happens throughout life.

Joe Rogan 17:40 Through intravenous use?

Aubrey de Grey 17:42 Th- well, not necessarily intravenous. So let me talk about the Parkinson's disease case in a bit more detail. So what Parkinson's disease is driven by is the loss of a particular type of neuron. So of course, in the brain there's lots of different types of neuron. There's one type called a dopaminergic neuron and they exist just in one specific, very small part of the brain called the substantia nigra. So it turns out those neurons, they ... Well, because they do a lot of work basically, um, they die at a much more rapid rate than other types of neuron. So (clears throat) we end up, all of us, with maybe-... a quarter of those neurons that we had when we were young adults having gone by old age. That's okay. That, that amount of margin of error is tolerable in the system. It just doesn't, doesn't have a con- a consequence. But of course, as with everything in aging, some people have the problem accumulate faster than others, and so some people by old age will have lost maybe three-quarters of their dopaminergic neurons, and that is what gives you Parkinson's disease. So what is stem cell therapy? If you think about it, what it is basically you put cells into the body that have been programmed, have been got in ... Have been, um, developed into the right state in the lab so that they know what to do when you inject them. They know, like, to divide and to then transform themselves to differentiate into the right kind of other cell. So what has been developed is dopaminergic precursor cells, stem cells that know how to become dopaminergic neurons. And those are injected into this one place, the substantia nigra, and they do what ... They do that thing.

Joe Rogan 19:16 So they're injected right into the brain?

Aubrey de Grey 19:19 That's right.

Joe Rogan 19:19 Wow.

Aubrey de Grey 19:20 So actually this was first tried more than 25 years ago. There was a clinical trial in Sweden because people knew what Park- what, what was ... That this was driving Parkinson's disease, so they knew this ought to work. But of course back then we knew almost nothing about how to manipulate stem cells in the laboratory. So what they did was, these people, they took cells from the right part of the brain of aborted fetuses. Right? And they just injected them. Now this was enormously speculative because, you know, first of all, the brain of an aborted fetus is very pu- very ... Has, has hardly developed at all, right? And so just taking the right cells from kind of the right place was hit-and-miss. And sure enough almost all the time there was no effect because, you know, they just didn't get the right kind of stem cell, but occasionally it worked. Occasionally patients got lucky and got some of the right kind of stem cell.

Joe Rogan 20:14 How often?

Aubrey de Grey 20:15 Well, I think there was a single-digit number in the, in the clinical trial that was done, like maybe three or four. But the question was how good was the effect when there was any effect at all? And the answer was astronomical.

Joe Rogan 20:27 Mm.

Aubrey de Grey 20:27 So a couple years ago there was actually a retrospective written by the group that did this clinical trial and it was written specifically about the first responder, the first person who really got lucky and responded well. And it was written on the, on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of that person being treated. What happened with that person was they were treated once, just got one injection, and the Parkinson's symptoms went away so well that the person was taken off their prior medication. There's a standard medication for Parkinson's called L-DOPA which is a precursor molecule for dopamine. Um, they were just taken off it. Again, no symptoms. Symptoms gradually started coming back after 15 years. So 15 years with no symptoms at all just from one injection.

Joe Rogan 21:08 Wow.

Aubrey de Grey 21:09 That's about as good as you can get. So of course now that we know so much about how to manipulate stem cells before we inject them and therefore how to inject the right kind of stem cell, um, you know, people are very optimistic and that's why there are clinical trials already ongoing right now.

Joe Rogan 21:22 That's fascinating. So what's really interesting to me is that during the time this person had this one injection, the rate of progress, the amount of understanding of-

Aubrey de Grey 21:32 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 21:32 ... how to manipulate these cells and make them exactly what you want has increased and-

Aubrey de Grey 21:35 Well, that's right.

Joe Rogan 21:36 ... probably shall still increase, and considerably.

Aubrey de Grey 21:38 That's right. And so what I was saying about we ... How SENS Research Foundation is moving increasingly away from bothering work on senolytics because other people are doing it, that was already true when we started the foundation in respect to stem cells. We didn't need to. Everyone else-

Joe Rogan 21:53 Mm-hmm.

Aubrey de Grey 21:53 All the, all the important work was already being done by other people.

Joe Rogan 21:57 So where are they at right now?

Aubrey de Grey 21:59 Where who at?

Joe Rogan 22:00 Where are you at in terms of, like ... Let's just focus on Parkinson's disease.

Aubrey de Grey 22:03 Okay. So the clinical trials are in phase one, early stage, so we won't know anything really good for another year maybe, maybe two years. But you know, we ... It's not, it's not just one trial. There's, there's several groups around the world that are focused on this. Some of them are having started the trial yet but they're about to and so on. So you know, it would ... The level of ... That, that gives you a sense of the level of optimism of the specialists in this area.

Joe Rogan 22:26 That's very exciting. So you, when you look at your future at 57 years old and you think of yourself at, at 77, do you, do you think you're gonna be the same?

Aubrey de Grey 22:37 (laughs) Well-

Joe Rogan 22:38 If you had to guess.

Aubrey de Grey 22:40 So in order to answer that I have to come back to what I said about this being a divide and conquer problem, and the fact that we need to fix all of these things in order to really give the proper results in terms of biological age. Now that means that any speculation that I may make about the timeframe for when we get there is a speculation about the most difficult parts of the problem, and therefore it's highly speculative because the most difficult parts-

Joe Rogan 23:06 Mm-hmm.

Aubrey de Grey 23:06 ... are at the earliest stage and therefore there's ... There's more opportunity for things to go wrong between now and then so to speak.

Joe Rogan 23:12 Right.

Aubrey de Grey 23:13 So when I am asked to give a timeframe estimate on this, I always make sure to emphasize that it's probabilistic, that what I'm giving you is a timeframe for when I think we have a 50/50 chance of getting a decisive level of comprehensiveness of these therapies. And at the moment that number is 17 years. Now-

Joe Rogan 23:31 That's very specific.

Aubrey de Grey 23:32 Well, yeah. And it's ... It is, yeah. I mean, but the thing is what matters is how that number has changed over the time, over time. So I first started giving timeframe predictions about 15, 16 years ago, and back then I said 25 years. Right?

Joe Rogan 23:50 Mm-hmm.

Aubrey de Grey 23:51 So it's only come down by eight years in 16 years which sounds like bad news, right? But here are two pieces of good news. First piece of good news is that it hardly came down at all for the first seven or eight years. It was like ... I would say, yeah, um, five years ago I was still saying 22, 21 years. So it's been ... It hasn't been, hasn't been slipping any further for a little while. And the reason why things have speeded up to parity is because the only thing that was slowing it down before was lack of funding-

Joe Rogan 24:24 Oh.

Aubrey de Grey 24:25 Beforehand, you know, I was always saying, "This is how fast the science allows the problem to be solved." But the science only allows the problem to be solved if the science can be done, and that req-... and ult- ultimately, biomedical research is inherently expensive. And we are just not able to pull in as much money as we need for this. So it's-

Joe Rogan 24:47 That's interesting because it seems like that would be something that most people would have a vested interest in funding.

Aubrey de Grey 24:53 You don't say. Um, and sure, over the past five years, as I mentioned, as things have become investable, things have changed a lot. Every time we end up being able to spin a project out from our lab into a private company, another digit gets put on its budget, like, overnight, just because it's so much easier to get people to write a check if they think there's a chance, even a really small chance, that they'll get their money back in-

Joe Rogan 25:18 Hmm.

Aubrey de Grey 25:18 ... spades sometime later. Um, you know, th- I mean, I guess that's what you would expect. Um, but yeah, I mean, of course, the other thing that we always are up against is the mindset that people have got into about aging, that they've needed to get into for all these millennia that we have been unable to do anything about it or have any prospect of doing anything about it ev- anytime soon. You know, what are you gonna do? You've got this terrible, ghastly thing that's gonna happen to you in the distant future, and, um, you can't do anything about it. So you've gotta put it out of your mind, 'cause you're not gonna spend, you don't wanna spend your life being preoccupied by it. So you've gotta find some way to, to, like, not think about it and get on with your miserably short life-

Joe Rogan 25:58 (laughs)

Aubrey de Grey 25:59 ... and make the best of it, right? Um, and, of course, the on- the only way that one can do that is by somehow denying, somehow tricking oneself into denying that this is such a big deal. You know, and thereby pretending, for example, that it's not really, like, a medical problem at all, you know, and that it's, like, inevitable and universal and natural or alternatively saying, "Well, okay, maybe we could fix it if we tried to, but it would be a bad thing," that aging is some kind of blessing in disguise. And that's where all this-

Joe Rogan 26:27 Yeah, I hate that nonsense.

Aubrey de Grey 26:27 Yeah, and that's where all this stuff comes from about, oh dear, where will we put all the people, or how will we pay the pensions, or won't dictators live forever-

Joe Rogan 26:33 (laughs)

Aubrey de Grey 26:34 ... or won't it be boring, you know, you know, which I have to spend my whole life contending with.

Joe Rogan 26:38 How do you say, well, how do you get over the dictators living forever one?

Aubrey de Grey 26:41 Well, you know, last time I looked, dictator was fairly high on the league table of risky jobs.

Joe Rogan 26:47 (laughs)

Aubrey de Grey 26:47 You know, I mean, not a lot of dictators die of aging in the first place, and furthermore, the ones that do die of aging, they tend to have organized their succession in advance anyway, so it's as if they were already immortal. So, I mean, come on.

Joe Rogan 26:56 Well, not only the percentage of dictators versus the percentage of regular people is so incredibly small, to not cure aging because of dictators seems like the dumbest idea ever.

Aubrey de Grey 27:07 Well, there you go. I mean, but people are s- people really, you know-

Joe Rogan 27:10 Yes.

Aubrey de Grey 27:10 ... this is what people do, right? They will come up with some reason why aging is a blessing in disguise.

Joe Rogan 27:16 Yeah.

Aubrey de Grey 27:16 And then they will instantly switch off their brains for fear of actually coming up with a refutation of that reason or even listening to it.

Joe Rogan 27:22 Yeah.

Aubrey de Grey 27:22 You know, because the-

Joe Rogan 27:23 The romantic aspects of aging are the weird ones, right?

Aubrey de Grey 27:25 (laughs) Yeah.

Joe Rogan 27:27 You know, the inevitable, like, oh, it's fine. Oh, it's wonderful. I'm looking forward to it.

Aubrey de Grey 27:32 (laughs) Yeah.

Joe Rogan 27:33 It's, it's essentially a disease that we all get.

Aubrey de Grey 27:35 Yeah, I mean, so I have to be very careful with the word disease.

Joe Rogan 27:38 Okay.

Aubrey de Grey 27:38 Some p- some people aren't. So you've had David Sinclair-

Joe Rogan 27:40 A mortality, yes.

Aubrey de Grey 27:40 ... on the show. He's been a great friend of mine for 20 years.

Joe Rogan 27:43 I love him.

Aubrey de Grey 27:43 Um, um, we've, yeah, we have a very similar attitude to, you know, authority. We don't think much of it. Um, and so we tend to push the boundaries a bit, both of us, in our, in somewhat different ways. So he, actually, h- his view of calling aging a disease is a bit different from mine. He's more comfortable with it. I tend to feel that the pro- there's a problem with calling aging a disease, which is that it makes it sound like it's something that can be cured with one-off therapy, uh, like, like, you know, an infection.

Joe Rogan 28:10 Mm-hmm.

Aubrey de Grey 28:11 Um, which isn't, which it isn't. It's a side effect of being alive, and as such, it's something that, you know, you can repair, you can stave off, but you have to do it periodically because the damage is gonna continue to be created. Um, and, you know, the reason why that's important is that it determines what kind of, what kind of medicine we look for. A lot of Alzheimer's research, for example, in fact, I would say most of Alzheimer's research, has been predicated on this kind of mistake, on the idea that if we can just cure Alzheimer's, then it, you know... Uh, and so I would say that, actually, it's not that the word disease is used too narrowly and should be broadened to include aging. Rather, it's the other way around, that the word disease is used too broadly and should be narrowed so as not to include things like Alzheimer's that are actually parts of aging. Because really the difference between the progressive chronic conditions like Alzheimer's that we call diseases and the ones that we don't, like, you know, loss of muscle or decline in the immune system or whatever, you know, the only difference is semantic. Some of them are, you know, they're both parts of aging. They're just, some of them are ones that we've chosen to give disease-like names to.

Joe Rogan 29:26 What would you call aging if you don't call it a disease?

Aubrey de Grey 29:30 Well, I call it a medical problem.

Joe Rogan 29:31 Hmm, okay.

Aubrey de Grey 29:31 Right? That's all I call it.

Joe Rogan 29:32 Okay, that's pretty pure.

Aubrey de Grey 29:34 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 29:34 Yeah. Um, in, in terms of potential future treatments, stem cells seem to be very promising. Are there, are there other competing treatments that you think are equally promising or it's-

Aubrey de Grey 29:50 Oh yeah, oh sure, but they're not competing. So, um, so as I said, because this is a divide and conquer problem with a bunch of different types of damage, all of which we need to fix, then we need to look at the, at what fixes are available for each individual type. So what stem cells are there to fix is cell loss, where cells are dying and they're not being automatically replaced in the body by cell division.

Joe Rogan 30:14 Have you personally experienced any stem cell therapy?

Aubrey de Grey 30:16 No, I haven't done any therapies of, for any, of any kind yet, but of course, you know, I'm paying attention.

Joe Rogan 30:23 Yeah.

Aubrey de Grey 30:23 Uh, uh, uh, I'll see. You know, of course.... the way, the nature of aging is that because it's progressive and because it's only, it only causes functional decline after a certain point, there's a trade-off that one always have to keep in mind in terms of timing of the therapy between how badly one needs it and how rapidly the quality of the therapy is improving. So, you know, if I take a stem cell therapy now, then there's a chance that it'll be bad for me, for whatever reason, okay? Whereas 10 years down the road, I will still, uh, uh, you know, I won't have needed it for those 10 years. 10 years down the road, I may start to need it a bit more, but there, th- they will, it will have benefited from 10 years more of research and refinement.

Joe Rogan 31:03 Hmm.

Aubrey de Grey 31:03 So, next one.

Joe Rogan 31:04 So you're a cautious patient.

Aubrey de Grey 31:06 Oh, sure. I mean, I don't think anybody wants to be the first patient.

Joe Rogan 31:09 I'm in. I'll t- I'll be the first guy.

Aubrey de Grey 31:10 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 31:11 I'm already doing a bunch of stem cell therapies.

Aubrey de Grey 31:13 Well-

Joe Rogan 31:13 Do you do intravenous stem cell therapies too?

Aubrey de Grey 31:16 Well, sure, but I mean the point is, you, you weren't the first to do any of these things.

Joe Rogan 31:19 Oh, for sure.

Aubrey de Grey 31:19 Right. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 31:20 Yeah.

Aubrey de Grey 31:20 Um, so yes, in, in terms of other things, so senolytics do not compete with stem cells because senolytics are there to do a different thing, to affect a different type of damage, namely the accumulation of these bad cells.

Joe Rogan 31:32 Right.

Aubrey de Grey 31:32 And then you've gotta have, you know, cancer therapies. You've gotta have therapies that remove molecular waste products from inside cells. A couple of our startup companies have, have d- are doing that. You've gotta, um, uh, remove waste products from outside the cells, for example. So people have used the immune system to do that. Um, you've gotta repair DNA in, uh, in the mitochondria, these special parts of the cell that do the chemistry of breathing. Um, you know, there's a bunch of different things we have to do. And s- another piece of good news, I told you earlier on that there's been no real change over the past 20 years in our understanding of what the problem is. It's better than that. There's also been no real need to change our preferred approaches to each of, to, to each of the damage repair technologies. We haven't had, we haven't, you know, found bad news that says, "Oh dear, this potential approach to fixing this particular type of damage isn't gonna work for this new reason that we didn't know before, therefore we have to start again and think of a new one." That hasn't happened either.

Joe Rogan 32:28 That's excellent. So it's just essentially refining the procedures or the, the, uh-

Aubrey de Grey 32:32 Yeah, grinding away and actually implementing them. That's right.

Joe Rogan 32:35 Yeah. Wh- is this, uh, is this something that you still truly enjoy doing?

Aubrey de Grey 32:40 (laughs) I wouldn't say I ever enjoyed doing it. You know?

Joe Rogan 32:43 No? Really?

Aubrey de Grey 32:43 I, I, I mean, I enjoy life. I enjoy just, you know, staring at the sky from my hot tub.

Joe Rogan 32:48 (laughs)

Aubrey de Grey 32:48 Um, it's just that I wanna carry on doing it rather than, you know, dying instead.

Joe Rogan 32:53 So almost, I mean-

Aubrey de Grey 32:55 It's an investment.

Joe Rogan 32:56 ... it's an investment, but it's also, I mean, it's obviously some sort of an intellectual pursuit. I mean this is-

Aubrey de Grey 33:00 No, not really.

Joe Rogan 33:00 ... fascinating.

Aubrey de Grey 33:00 It's a humanitarian dis- uh, uh, pursuit. I mean, it, some people view it as an intellectual pursuit, but I don't. I, I really feel, you know, I've ev- uh, ever since I was a young kid, I have wanted to spend my life making a difference to the world, improving the quality and, and of course in this case, quantity of life of humanity. And I've j- I'm just one of those incredibly lucky people who've been able to end up in this position of essentially leading the crusade to do that in the biggest possible way.

Joe Rogan 33:29 So this is something that you felt compelled to do from a really early age?

Aubrey de Grey 33:32 Not this specific thing. So what actually happened was that as a teenager, having pretty much decided that this is what I wanted to do with my life, the first thing I did was I got into artificial intelligence research. And the reason that happened was because when I was a teenager, I tried my hand at programming, I found I was pretty damn good at it, and I thought, "Well, okay, um, one of the big problems in the world is the problem of work, the fact that people have to spend so much of their time doing stuff that they would not do unless they were being paid for it. And therefore, we need more automation. So I'll work on that 'cause I'm good at it." And I had no reason at that time to believe that I was gonna be any good at biology, spec- specifically, uh, particularly. And there were other people who were particularly good at biology. And I had made the mistaken but absolute assumption that everybody realized that aging was by far the world's biggest problem, and therefore biologists would be working on it and grinding away. And of course you didn't hear much, but hey, it's a really hard problem, so that's not a surprise. So it wasn't till my late 20s that I found out that I was wrong. What happened was that I met and married a biologist, quite a senior one actually, who was a full professor at that time at UC San Diego. She was in England on sabbatical. And, um, through her, I not only learned a lot of biology just by accident, you know, over the dinner table, but I also found out gradually that she wasn't interested in aging. I just kind of, it hadn't occurred to me, so it didn't come up in conversation, and I began to notice that it wasn't coming up in conversation. Started asking questions, and she would say things like, you know, "Well, I mean, like, it's just decay, isn't it?" And I would say, "Well yeah, but s- so what?" And she said, "Well, I mean, you're not gonna learn any fundamental truths about the universe from studying decay." And I would say, "Well, that's true, yes, but, but, but it's bad for you." And she would say, "But that's not my problem." And I would say, "Well, it kind of is." And that would be about as far as we would ever get. So eventually I came to terms with it because it wasn't just her, of course, it was all the other biologists I was meeting. Um, and s-

Joe Rogan 35:29 That's a strange closed-mindedness.

Aubrey de Grey 35:31 Well, you know, as I say, people have had to find ways not to think about aging.

Joe Rogan 35:34 Yes.

Aubrey de Grey 35:35 And so eventually I thought, "Well, this just won't do." I, and I had switch, "I, I, I better switch fields." And I happened to have, um, inveigled myself into a position where switching fields was something I was able to do. I had a very undemanding job at the University of Cambridge doing bioinformatics, um, which allowed me to do my artificial intelligence research in my spare time. I was being paid well enough and, you know, I had access to university facilities and all that. So all I needed to do was repurpose my spare time and, you know, start paying my way to go to conferences, 'cause of course back then nobody knew me and I wasn't being invited. Um, and, um, so I, and it went pretty well. I started doing quite well-received stuff.... uh, and, uh, so I became quite well-respected in the field very quickly. Um, and for the first five years, that was all that was happening, 'cause I was basically harmless. And it was then, five years in, in the year 2000, that I had this kind of eureka moment that damage repair was the way to go, and started talking about what the impact could be. And people started to think I'd gone completely crazy, and it took a little while for people to, um, come around.

Joe Rogan 36:41 So when, when you say that at, at an early age, you felt compelled to try to help people, like what, what was that?

Aubrey de Grey 36:48 So what actually happened was this. It was all down to my mother's desire for me to practice the piano.

Joe Rogan 36:56 (laughs)

Aubrey de Grey 36:56 Um, she, you know, she wasn't a particularly good pianist herself, but she wanted me to learn how to play, how to play piano. And so she was, she put pressure on me to practice all the time, and I was resistant. But somehow or other, my mother had already instilled in me a sense of introspection. You know, a desire to understand why I thought what I thought.

Joe Rogan 37:15 Mm-hmm.

Aubrey de Grey 37:15 So I actually decided to think about why I didn't want to play the piano. And it took very little time for me to realize that the fundamental reason I didn't wanna spend so much time tapping away on this thing, was that the best case scenario o- outcome of this would be that I would become a good pianist. And that was just not good enough.

Joe Rogan 37:36 (laughs)

Aubrey de Grey 37:37 You know, because there were already lots of other good pianists. So I would not be, you know, contributing significantly to the quality of life of mankind by becoming a, just another one.

Joe Rogan 37:46 An additional great pianist.

Aubrey de Grey 37:48 That's right.

Joe Rogan 37:48 Yeah.

Aubrey de Grey 37:49 And so I thought, "Well, I won't do." Because, and of course, this was, I was young, so this was gradual after that, but-

Joe Rogan 37:54 How old were you at the time?

Aubrey de Grey 37:54 ... probably eight or nine. Um, so over the next few years, I'm gonna say, this general idea that I, you know, play- playing the piano was a waste of time-

Joe Rogan 38:03 (laughs)

Aubrey de Grey 38:03 ... um, crystallized into the understanding, you know, I would, that I could actually articulate, that I wanted to make a difference to the world. And, um, so that's how I, you know, by the time I was, I don't know, 15 was when I started programming, and I've just told you the rest.

Joe Rogan 38:17 That's an interesting mapping out of your future. You know, at nine years old, recognizing you're not gonna make a significant contribution to the world by doing something other people have already done.

Aubrey de Grey 38:27 Yeah, that's right.

Joe Rogan 38:28 That's a r- really interesting way to look at the world when you're nine. I have a nine-year-old daughter. I can't imagine her thinking like that. (laughs)

Aubrey de Grey 38:36 (laughs) .

Joe Rogan 38:36 I mean, when I started, um, working actually at this bioinformatics project that I mentioned, um, I came, I, I, I had a lot of exposure to a lot of, uh, top-flight biologists. And it turned out that there were fields that were just fashionable, right? Fashionable.

Aubrey de Grey 38:54 And that, yeah, and lots of top biologists would be competing vociferously with each other to make the next advance in one particular narrow thing, narrow area that was just really fashionable. And other areas would be just completely neglected. And I thought, "What is going on here? Why are these smart people choosing to do something that minimizes the likelihood that it will have any impact?" In other words, basically, whatever they, whatever they find out, they didn't mat- they themselves didn't matter at all, because they could have been hit by a truck or done something completely different and someone else would have found out the exact same thing 10 minutes later. So they were making no difference. I never understood it. I still don't understand it.

Joe Rogan 39:37 So you've always felt compelled to make a difference. Is that something your mother instilled in you? Is it something you just had as a child?

Aubrey de Grey 39:43 Yeah, no, I don't really think my mother instilled it in me. I think the introspection was, and I, I, if you ask me how she did that, I have no idea.

Joe Rogan 39:50 Mm-hmm.

Aubrey de Grey 39:51 But, um, but yeah.

Joe Rogan 39:52 Baptismal?

Aubrey de Grey 39:52 Somehow or other ... Nah, I don't think so.

Joe Rogan 39:55 (laughs)

Aubrey de Grey 39:56 Um, um, but no, I think the, um, the, the, the wanting to make a difference is just intrinsic in me and it's just something that I just realized as a result of the introspection.

Joe Rogan 40:06 Hmm. When you look back at that now, that's gotta be an interesting course where you, you've recognized at a very young age that you wanted to make some sort of a difference. But th- th- knowing that you had had that epiphany at a young age when it comes to, like, being a pianist or, or doing something that's gonna significantly impact people, that is not a standard path that many people are going.

Aubrey de Grey 40:29 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 40:30 That's a, it's a very interesting way to set up your life.

Aubrey de Grey 40:37 Well, I wouldn't say I set my life up. I'd say, I, I'd say I had intentions, but if we look at how I got from there to here, an enormous, enormous amount of it was just sheer luck.

Joe Rogan 40:48 Hmm.

Aubrey de Grey 40:48 Right? I mean, you know-

Joe Rogan 40:50 Like most people's lives.

Aubrey de Grey 40:50 Right, exactly. So I would say, you know, I had a, I had a hope. I had a, you know, general, um, you know, aspiration, but, you know, I would say that, um ... I'm just incredibly privileged to have, you know, been able to reach the pinnacle of my chosen field of endeavor. You know? Hardly anyone can say that.

Joe Rogan 41:12 Yes. No, that is, you, you, you're also, well, you fit the part too. You're a weirdo.

Aubrey de Grey 41:20 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 41:20 You know? I mean, you know you're a weirdo, right?

Aubrey de Grey 41:21 Well, certainly, you know-

Joe Rogan 41:23 And a great, I say that with all due respect-

Aubrey de Grey 41:24 Oh, of course. Yeah, absolutely.

Joe Rogan 41:25 ... and, and a compliment as well.

Aubrey de Grey 41:26 Of course. It, it, it definitely, yeah, it's definitely difficult to make a difference to the world if you are following the rules. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 41:35 Hmm.

Aubrey de Grey 41:36 And so I'm, I, I'm always instinctively looking for ways to do things that other people might have overlooked. I mean, even trivial things.

Joe Rogan 41:47 Is there anything that frustrates you about this pursuit?

Aubrey de Grey 41:50 I'm not an easily frustrated kind of guy. I mean, of course, sometimes it gets to me how slow, how slowly things are going, how resistant people are, how irrational the resistance is. But even there, you know, I've, you know, I've already, from some of the things I've already said, you understand that I, I'm, I'm really sympathetic to humanity in this regard (laughs) . I understand that most people just, you know, the psychological burden of the-... pos- the prospect of physiological decline is so enormous that they've got no choice. They've gotta put it out of their minds.

Joe Rogan 42:26 Yes.

Aubrey de Grey 42:26 Uh, and you know, some people feel, I don't know, psychologically stronger or whatever, and they can, you know, bite the bullet and actually work on this even though it's a very, very long haul. Uh, but some people aren't, and that doesn't mean that they are no more... that they are less deserving of the benefits.

Joe Rogan 42:43 It's a very strange thing where people put on intellectual blinders when they're talking about aging and dying. It, it is very weird. Have you ha- had heated discussions with other intellectuals about this? Because, um, I would imagine-

Aubrey de Grey 42:54 All the time. All the time.

Joe Rogan 42:55 Yeah.

Aubrey de Grey 42:55 Yeah. I mean, the whole thing came to me first when I was at Cambridge, actually, as an undergrad. This was some time before, of course. This was early ni- uh, early 1980s. Um, so when I was in my first year, probably 1982, uh, they brought in a stage hypnotist to do a show. You ever seen a stage hypnotist show?

Joe Rogan 43:13 Yes.

Aubrey de Grey 43:13 Okay. So this guy, you know, he's got a, an audience of a few hundred people, all of us, you know, Cambridge undergraduates. And, um, so the first step is, you know, do some stuff that gets some particularly amenable people into a light trance. And he brings a few of them up on stage and starts to go further, right? Um, so there was this one particular part of the show that stuck in my mind. Uh, what happened was, this one guy was brought up and got into a really, really deep trance. And then, the next step was that the hypnotist says, "Okay, this is actually your right elbow, and this is your left elbow." So he switched the guys' elbows, right? No elaboration of the con- the implications of this, just saying, just getting the person to completely, completely implicitly believe this thing, right? And then, he said, "Right, I would like you please to touch your right elbow with your left forefinger." Right? And so of course there was all this wriggling and writhing and so on, you know, couldn't do it, right?

Joe Rogan 44:11 Right.

Aubrey de Grey 44:12 Um, and that was funny in and of itself. Um, but that wasn't the coup de grâce. What happened next was the key thing. The hypnotist says, "Okay, you can stop now." And the guy stops, and the hypnotist then says, "You couldn't do it, could you?" And, and the guy says no. And then, the hypnotist says, "Why not?" Asks the guy to explain why he couldn't do it. And here is the coup de grâce, because what happens is the guy gives a completely unhesitating, lucid, grammatically correct explanation for why he couldn't do it. And the explanation, of course, will have a hole in it the size of Canada.

Joe Rogan 44:49 (laughs)

Aubrey de Grey 44:49 But the fact is, the guy won't say it. He'll just be st- sitting there, with a straight face, just doing this. And his friends are, and the, and these are Cambridge undergraduates, right? High IQ, highly respect for each other's intellect and for o- for, for one, for their own intellect and rationality.

Joe Rogan 45:05 (laughs) .

Aubrey de Grey 45:05 And, um, and they're rolling in the aisles, and the guy's just unaffected.

Joe Rogan 45:11 (laughs) .

Aubrey de Grey 45:12 So, um, when I started to have these discussions with people about aging and started to find out that people make these unbelievable arguments in favor of it, um, you know, I, I coined this phrase, I call it the pro-aging trance. And it was based on that experience from my youth.

Joe Rogan 45:31 Yeah, I've always said to people, "If there was a pill that you can take that would stop all aging, all deterioration, and all diseases, you'd be a fool not to take it. You'd be a fool." Do, do you want to suffer? The idea that this romantic... If, if it was a rare thing that people aged, a very rare thing, we would look at it with great sadness, that someone was afflicted with this aging.

Aubrey de Grey 45:56 Oh, yeah.

Joe Rogan 45:57 We saw someone hunched over with severe arthritis and osteoporosis and deterioration of the joints and decaying of the cognitive function and they don't know where they are, who they are, we'd be so sad.

Aubrey de Grey 46:09 That's right.

Joe Rogan 46:10 But instead we think of it as like, "Well, he's 90, he had a good life."

Aubrey de Grey 46:13 That's exactly right. It's not just the fact that everyone gets it. It's the fact that everyone gets it at more or less the same age, chronological age. Um, you know, so it's considered to be this leveler. And just, yes, absolutely, people do a little bit better, you know, 20% better than average, and there are people that, who are really, you know, happy.

Joe Rogan 46:31 Is there any concern or any thought whatsoever to the idea of exacerbating overpopulation?

Aubrey de Grey 46:39 Of course this is a legitimate question. The thing that's frustrating to me is that I've been answering it for 20 years.

Joe Rogan 46:46 What is the answer?

Aubrey de Grey 46:46 And people still don't listen.

Joe Rogan 46:48 Kill dummies?

Aubrey de Grey 46:49 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 46:50 That's a good move, right?

Aubrey de Grey 46:52 Well, of course, a large part of the reason why, uh, uh, it's difficult to get the real answers across is because so much fiction has, science fiction has been written and of course movies, um, giving wrong answers, and um, you know, making a dramatic element out of it, you know?

Joe Rogan 47:07 Yes.

Aubrey de Grey 47:07 Whether it's Blade Runner or In Time or, you know, any of these movies.

Joe Rogan 47:12 Yeah, they all get it wrong, right?

Aubrey de Grey 47:13 They all make it as if it's act- they, they kind of reinforce the pro-aging trance, right? They make it as if life would be even worse if we had no aging. Okay, so what's the real answer? The real answer is very straightforward. It's simply that other technologies that are coming along already and will be established, well-established and ubiquitous before we get this to happen, are going to solve the problem, because they will increase the carrying capacity of the planet. Remember that the reason why we have too many people today and we've got environmental consequences is not because of lack of space. It's because of the amount of pollution that the average person generates. Specifically of course, you know, biggest thing being, uh, pumping carbon into the atmosphere. But um, of course, you know, whether it's plastics or whatever. And we're fixing that. You know, th- we've got solar energy and wind energy now that are completely exploding, and they're going to completely replace fossil fuels. And we got there without people even having to wake up and realize that climate change is actually quite an urgent problem.... we got there simply because the technology got to be good enough that the production of a kilowatt hour of, uh, of energy is actually cheaper with these renewable energy mec- mechanisms than it is from fossil fuel. And of course, it's not just that, it's also agriculture. So artificial meat, you know, within not very long, it's gonna be both tastier and far cheaper than r- regular meat. And the amount of, um, space we're gonna save, not l- let alone the amount of methane that we're not gonna be generating is going to, you know-

Joe Rogan 48:45 I haven't heard anything saying it's gonna be tastier. Have you?

Aubrey de Grey 48:48 Of course it's gonna be tastier.

Joe Rogan 48:49 How so?

Aubrey de Grey 48:50 Well, I mean, how would it be popular if it were not tastier? Right?

Joe Rogan 48:53 Tastier?

Aubrey de Grey 48:54 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 48:54 I don't think it necessarily would have to be tastier.

Aubrey de Grey 48:56 Well, as tasty would be good, but tastier would be better, right? (laughs)

Joe Rogan 48:59 (laughs) I guess.

Aubrey de Grey 49:00 Right?

Joe Rogan 49:00 I guess.

Aubrey de Grey 49:01 And, and of course, it's not just that. You know, there's, you know, cheap desalination, there's, um, you know-

Joe Rogan 49:05 Mm-hmm.

Aubrey de Grey 49:06 ... uh, plastic-eating bacteria.

Joe Rogan 49:08 Yes.

Aubrey de Grey 49:08 All of these things are coming. And so there is no way that one can make a realistic, plausible argument that denies that the carrying capacity of the planet will rise far faster than the population. We don't even-

Joe Rogan 49:25 I agree with you to a certain extent, but-

Aubrey de Grey 49:26 We don't even need to take into account other things, like the fact that fertility rates are coming down everywhere.

Joe Rogan 49:31 Mm-hmm.

Aubrey de Grey 49:31 Um, and that once you can live a very long time, they're probably gonna come down even further, because people who are now choosing to delay having their kids by five years will be able to delay having them by 50 years, you know? Right?

Joe Rogan 49:45 Jesus. Um, do you have that same optimistic, uh, perception about the ocean?

Aubrey de Grey 49:50 Well first of all, let me, um, say what I think about the word optimism.

Joe Rogan 49:55 Okay.

Aubrey de Grey 49:55 Because I know that you're not doing this, but a lot of people, when they talk to me and call me an optimist, they actually mean that I'm an over-optimist. And when they call themselves a realist, they mean that they're a pessimist. Um, so, but, but anyway, about the ocean, of course. I mean, what's the difference? You know, there's certainly, there's a lot to do. One big problem right now, of course, is the ocean is storing a lot of carbon and releasing a lot as it's warming up. So we definitely have to fix that as well, but it's part of the same problem. You know, the less carbon there is in the atmosphere, the less of, the less of a problem that is. Direct carbon removal from the atmosphere is a technology that's absolutely, you know, burgeoning now. And direct carbon, uh, capture from the ocean seems to be something that's equally plausible, though it's obviously different. So, sure.

Joe Rogan 50:43 Um, I'm, I'm optimistic in terms of the ability to clean up the ocean. Um, I've had Boyan Slat on a, a couple times.

Aubrey de Grey 50:50 Okay.

Joe Rogan 50:50 You're aware of him?

Aubrey de Grey 50:51 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 50:51 Do- his devices that he's created to remove plastics-

Aubrey de Grey 50:54 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 50:54 ... and other, um, garbage from the ocean. My, my concern is wild fish, that, uh, the depletion of the fish populations is at an unprecedented rate. And it seems to be we're somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 years away from a catastrophic-

Aubrey de Grey 51:10 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 51:10 ... complete collapse of wild fisheries.

Aubrey de Grey 51:13 Well, right. And of course, this is, again, a problem that can be fixed by technology. You know, if you can make artificial red meat, why not make artificial fish?

Joe Rogan 51:21 Well, that wouldn't cer- s- n- that would be good, that we could have artificial fish, but that wouldn't necessarily make that population rebound.

Aubrey de Grey 51:30 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 51:30 We would have to make large steps to try to bring back the, the equilibrium of the ocean.

Aubrey de Grey 51:35 That's not clear. I mean, um-

Joe Rogan 51:37 It's not clear?

Aubrey de Grey 51:37 It's not clear, no. I mean, a l- most of, as I understand it anyway, this is not an area I'm expert on, of course, so I may be wrong.

Joe Rogan 51:44 Okay.

Aubrey de Grey 51:44 But, um, most of the severe depletions of populations of specific fish, fish species are because of fishing.

Joe Rogan 51:53 Yes.

Aubrey de Grey 51:53 Because of overfishing. So if we're not doing the overfishing, 'cause we're making the same fish elsewhere on land.

Joe Rogan 51:59 Mm-hmm. Well, I'm sure a lot of it is being done by the United States, but I'm sure ... and Great Britain, and a lot of first world countries, but I'm sure a lot of it is also being done by countries that can't afford to make this artificial fish or don't have the access to it, or at least in the time period that it's gonna take before these fisheries rebound. It's a d- when I talk to people that have an understanding of wildlife and the ocean, they say it's a desperate time. And it's a desperate time that is not really being recognized by the general population, 'cause they can still get sushi, they can still get halibut at the local market. But that, if you talk to the fishermen, if you talk to the wildlife biologists that are really studying the levels, they're like, "Th- this is nearing a point of no return."

Aubrey de Grey 52:41 Mm-hmm. Yeah, I, I, I wouldn't dispute that. I think it's urgent. But all that really says is we should be investing more in the development of these new technologies that will hasten the, um, ability to rebound.

Joe Rogan 52:55 I wonder if they will even bother with wild fish. If they c- I mean, if they can make artificial meat, I wonder if s- people will really get into artificial fish as well.

Aubrey de Grey 53:04 I don't see why not. I think they might.

Joe Rogan 53:05 I guess so, but some of them are not gonna make the cut. Like, no one's getting artificial tilapia.

Aubrey de Grey 53:09 Why not?

Joe Rogan 53:10 It's not that good.

Aubrey de Grey 53:11 E- not yet.

Joe Rogan 53:12 So they have to make it-

Aubrey de Grey 53:13 If there's a market.

Joe Rogan 53:13 ... better.

Aubrey de Grey 53:14 Sure.

Joe Rogan 53:14 Why do you even call it tilapia then? But like, tuna-

Aubrey de Grey 53:17 Because people like the name.

Joe Rogan 53:18 I guess.

Aubrey de Grey 53:20 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 53:20 Um, I'm, I'm really optimistic about artificial meat. I mean-

Aubrey de Grey 53:24 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 53:24 ... it seems that there ... I mean, at one point in time it was like a quarter million dollars for a hamburger.

Aubrey de Grey 53:28 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 53:28 And now they've got it down to a point where you can actually make a, a, an animal meat product-

Aubrey de Grey 53:35 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 53:36 ... that does not come from an animal dying.

Aubrey de Grey 53:38 That's right.

Joe Rogan 53:38 They're very close to being able to make this in a, a mass-marketed way.

Aubrey de Grey 53:43 That's right.

Joe Rogan 53:43 That's interesting. I'm, I'm excited about that. I think that's very interesting. Um, and I'm excited about what you're saying that, uh, I think people think about overpopulation, one things that you should take into consideration is that as populations, uh, increase and places urbanize, the actual birth rate goes down.

Aubrey de Grey 54:04 That's right.

Joe Rogan 54:04 To the point where places like Japan, there's actually a concern that they're not having enough children.

Aubrey de Grey 54:09 That's right.

Joe Rogan 54:09 Yeah.

Aubrey de Grey 54:09 And of course, it is driven by prosperity.

Joe Rogan 54:12 Yes.

Aubrey de Grey 54:12 You know, female education and emancipation and so on.

Joe Rogan 54:14 Mm-hmm. Yes.

Aubrey de Grey 54:14 So at this point-

Joe Rogan 54:15 Careers.

Aubrey de Grey 54:15 ... if you look at the largest countries in the world, the largest dozen countries in the world, the only one that has a really high, um, fertility rate still is Nigeria.... you know, if you exclude Sub-Saharan Africa, it's basically a completely solved problem.

Joe Rogan 54:31 Really?

Aubrey de Grey 54:31 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 54:32 Nigeria is the only one?

Aubrey de Grey 54:33 Yeah. If you look at the big, uh, like, countries that you would not expect like Bangladesh or Pakistan or India, you know, their fertility rate is down below three now.

Joe Rogan 54:40 Really?

Aubrey de Grey 54:41 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 54:42 That's interesting. So their population will level out over the next few decades-

Aubrey de Grey 54:46 Well, it ha- yeah, it's going close.

Joe Rogan 54:47 ... as people start to die?

Aubrey de Grey 54:47 I mean, it's, it's still declining. You know, it's plummeting.

Joe Rogan 54:49 Mm-hmm.

Aubrey de Grey 54:49 You know, people often used to say that the only reason why China's fertility rate is low is because of the one-child policy, which of course they have now discontinued precisely because there were problems like this.

Joe Rogan 55:00 Mm-hmm.

Aubrey de Grey 55:01 Um, but it's not true. I mean, other countries were a little bit behind. The one-child policy did certainly accelerate the process. But if you look at Brazil or Indonesia or any of these countries, you'll see exactly the same phenomenon, plummeting.

Joe Rogan 55:13 Have you thought about what the future looks like when people live to be 4 or 500 years old? Like, how... first of all, how wise will people be?

Aubrey de Grey 55:21 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 55:21 That's what's really interesting 'cause-

Aubrey de Grey 55:23 So, okay, so here's, here's a really important thing that I wanna get across. When we think about longevity... Well, actually, three things I wanna say. First of all, longevity is a side effect of health, right?

Joe Rogan 55:38 Right.

Aubrey de Grey 55:39 So, you know, a huge amount of the so-called debate that goes on about the desirability of all of this just goes away when you remember that people actually quite like being healthy. But in terms of how the world will be, which is the question you asked, there's two questions here. One question is, how will the world actually be? And the second question is, how will people in the near term expect the world to be? And the reason why those two questions are, are important to distinguish is because the question of how the world will actually be is very obviously completely unanswerable even if we look 50 years in the future. I mean, if you look 50 years ago, right, how much of what we have today would've been predicted, right?

Joe Rogan 56:18 Yeah.

Aubrey de Grey 56:18 The world is completely different. And certainly, in terms of longevity, you know, we're only gonna be getting older at one year per year. (laughs) There won't actually be any 500-year-old people for another 400 years, right?

Joe Rogan 56:29 Oh, really?

Aubrey de Grey 56:30 (laughs) Well, yeah. I mean, it-

Joe Rogan 56:31 I don't know. I don't know what you're gonna be able to do.

Aubrey de Grey 56:35 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 56:36 You, you think it's funny.

Aubrey de Grey 56:36 We're not, we're not gonna be able to change the pa- change the rate of the passage of time is my point, right?

Joe Rogan 56:42 I understand what you're saying.

Aubrey de Grey 56:43 Right. But expectation is a completely different thing. And here's why that matters. There's gonna become a point, there's gonna come a point where people, in general, the general man in the street, starts to realize that they're probably going to live an awfully long time because they're not gonna just get progressively sicker as they get older. And, you know, lots of other reasons are gonna exist why they're gonna live a long time. Like we're gonna have self-driving cars that pretty much eliminate, you know, road accidents and so on. So they're going to want a lot of different things than what they wanted when they thought they were gonna live only slightly longer than their parents. They're gonna want very different pension plans, very different life insurance, health insurance, very different inheritance arrangements. And these are huge, big-ticket items, right? They basically drive the global economy. So policymakers and decision-makers around the world had damn well better be ready for that shift in public expectation of how long they're gonna live, right?

Joe Rogan 57:49 Yes.

Aubrey de Grey 57:50 Now, therefore, it is absolutely critical to estimate and to communicate the estimate of how soon that shift in public expectation is going to occur. Which means how, well, what events have to happen, how much progress needs to happen in order for that, in order to, in order to cause that shift. Now, this is where I am terrified because I think it's gonna happen really soon. I think it could easily happen in the next three to five years. And that when it does happen, it's gonna happen incredibly suddenly. Here's the sequence of events that I think is gonna happen. Step one, we're going to have sufficient progress in the laboratory or the clinic that most of my scientific colleagues are going to be willing to come out and say, more or less, "Yeah, Aubrey de Grey was right all along." They're gonna say, "Yeah, you know, it's a-"

Joe Rogan 58:54 You're very excited about that.

Aubrey de Grey 58:56 No, I'm terrified, and I'm gonna tell you why.

Joe Rogan 58:58 You're a little excited. A little excited.

Aubrey de Grey 59:00 I mean, I know I have been a...

Joe Rogan 59:01 (laughs) Okay.

Aubrey de Grey 59:02 Recognition is never something that's driven me. Um, um, but yeah, they're gonna, they're gonna come out and say, "Yeah, it's only a matter of time before we lick this aging thing." Now, what do you think is gonna happen next? You're our media guy, right? Here's what I think is gonna happen, but I want your, uh, I wanna know whether you think I'm right.

Joe Rogan 59:18 Okay.

Aubrey de Grey 59:19 I think the next thing that's gonna happen is that real opinion formers, people like you, people like Oprah Winfrey, are going to hear that being said and written, you know, in the media, and they're gonna say, "Oh, shit. This is actually gonna happen." And they're gonna say so on air, and they're going not only to say s- say what their opinion is, but they're gonna say what they think people ought to do. In particular, they're gonna say, "Well, look, you know, let's actually... if we're, if, if it's only a matter of time, the, uh, if we're losing 110,000 people every day worldwide to this phenomenon, then we do kind of have a bit of a moral obligation to make it less time if we can." So my sense is that once that happens, the following day, it's gonna become impossible to get elected unless you have a manifesto commitment to, you know, have a war on aging, you know, pr- throw proper money at this. I mean, I really mean a proper war on aging, not just like the war on cancer was. Lots of money, not just to do the research but also to frontload all of the investment in infrastructure, and, you know, training of medical personnel and so on, okay? And everyone's gonna know it.... like the world, the public is going to make that switch I just mentioned of expectation, like at once. So it's gonna be ridiculously sudden once it happens. And the first step is going to be that shift in what my colleagues in the biogerontology community feel able to say on camera and on stage. Now, therefore, the question is what amount of progress is gonna be required for that to occur? Now here's the thing, there aren't very many of us. It's a small field. The number of people at the top of the field who actually talk to the media quite a bit is, you know, a dozen maximum. There's me, there's David that you've had on the show, there's, you know, very few others. And we all know each other. We're all good mates, right? So we know exactly where our heads are, you know, what the drivers are. The number one reason why my colleagues don't already say what I say is funding. The fact that unlike me, those people are reliant for most of the money that drives their research on peer-reviewed government money, government grants. And they just won't get them if it's possible to accuse those, accuse them of saying irresponsible things to the media, things that get people's hopes up unduly.Remember there's hardly en- There's n- there's nowhere near enough money. There's less than 10% of the necessary money to fund research at the moment. So the committees that decide who gets money and who doesn't are always desperately scouting around for reasons to say no-

Joe Rogan 1:02:14 Hmm.

Aubrey de Grey 1:02:14 ... that can be justified. And saying, "Oh, this guy says irresponsible things to the media," is a totally safe way to say no. Right? So anyway, so this is, this is the problem. This is why my colleagues have to be really pretty curmudgeonly. Even David. David is probably the person out of my colleagues who pushes the envelope as much as possible out of people who have regular faculty positions. But, you know, he's just written a book, which I see you have on your shelf-

Joe Rogan 1:02:41 Mm-hmm.

Aubrey de Grey 1:02:41 ... called, you know, uh, Why We Age and Why We Don't Have To. It, he could not have written that book with that title five years ago-

Joe Rogan 1:02:49 Hmm.

Aubrey de Grey 1:02:50 ... and kept his job.

Joe Rogan 1:02:51 Wow.

Aubrey de Grey 1:02:52 Um, so, you know, the question is how much has to change? And actually, it's not very much. You know, there's a balance here. There's a, there's a, there's a tension here between, on the one hand not saying things that can be characterized as irresponsible, but on the other hand not saying things that can be charact- uh, characterized as simply untrue. (laughs) Like, right? So the more progress is made in the laboratory, not even in the clinic, just with mice, right? In terms of actually, you know, rejuvenating them, making them live longer with treatments that were given to those mice when they were already in middle age. The more progress is made, um, you know, the more impossible it's gonna be to carry on being pessimistic and refusing to, uh, to, to make timeframe predictions or anything like that.

Joe Rogan 1:03:36 So there's a, almost a forced pessimism-

Aubrey de Grey 1:03:39 Correct.

Joe Rogan 1:03:39 ... that's created by the establishment?

Aubrey de Grey 1:03:40 Correct.

Joe Rogan 1:03:40 Well, I think what you're saying makes a ton of sense in that once it does get to the point where this is undeniable, this is p- peer-reviewed, proven, established science and also implementable-

Aubrey de Grey 1:03:54 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:03:54 ... this is something that can be at scale-

Aubrey de Grey 1:03:58 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:03:59 ... distributed worldwide, yeah, things are gonna get real weird.

Aubrey de Grey 1:04:01 So people are already, people are obviously still gonna be saying, "It can't be done in humans." You know?

Joe Rogan 1:04:07 Right.

Aubrey de Grey 1:04:07 "It can't really be done," you know, until the cows come home-

Joe Rogan 1:04:11 Yeah.

Aubrey de Grey 1:04:11 ... you know, just in the same way as h- has had happened for any other pioneering technology throughout history. But what matters is what the center of gravity of expertly s- ex- stated expert opinion is.

Joe Rogan 1:04:25 It is a really, really polarizing subject. I mean, it, it is funny how w- what you're saying rings so true that academics and intellectuals have to be cautious about talking about even what is potentially possible, even though in private they probably are more than aware that there's just a few steps to go before this stuff gets implemented and we see really catastrophic, I mean really s- spectacular rather, changes.

Aubrey de Grey 1:04:54 Yeah. And I mean, I'm not saying that all of us absolutely agree on 100% on everything in the science. Certainly I would say that I'm slightly on the optimistic end of the spectrum of expert opinion. But yeah, my colleagues are n- not all that far behind me in that, in terms of what they would say the timeframes are.

Joe Rogan 1:05:10 What you're saying in terms of people discussing it in the media makes absolute sense to me, that as soon as that, that Pandora's box gets opened, then people are going to be looking to establish clinics everywhere. And it's, it could be very strange.

Aubrey de Grey 1:05:24 Well, even if, even if m- even if a lot of these things are not yet available for clinical use, even if some of them are still at the beginning of the clinical trial process and we're still maybe 10 or 15 years away from the real McCoy, you know, that will still be enough to trigger this pandemonium.

Joe Rogan 1:05:40 Hmm.

Aubrey de Grey 1:05:41 And that's why policymakers, decision-makers in every way, in, both in government and in key aspect of industry, need to, I, I call it anticipate the anticipation. They need to be, have a- already thought through and prepared for this change in public expectation of how long they're gonna live.

Joe Rogan 1:06:00 So you think that this, uh, one day will be a gigantic public issue in terms of elected representatives, that they, they're gonna need to have some sort of an anti-aging policy?

Aubrey de Grey 1:06:11 Mm-hmm. That's right. And the switch from essentially s- situation normal, you know, business as usual, to this completely new world will be ridiculously sudden. It'll happen in a week.

Joe Rogan 1:06:22 And do you think one of the motivating factors will be the price of healthcare, that the argument would be part of our issue with healthcare and the, and, and incredible amount of money that needs to be spent on hospitalizi- h- ha- hospitalizing peos- people and treating them with diseases, we could eliminate that?

Aubrey de Grey 1:06:40 Oh, yeah. That's a huge part of it.

Joe Rogan 1:06:41 Yeah.

Aubrey de Grey 1:06:41 So at the moment when you talk to any p-... you know, any people, any elected representatives anyway of, of any persuasion about the, um, aging question, then their immediate knee-jerk reaction is always, "Oh God, we definitely don't wanna fix that. How would we pay the pensions?" Right?

Joe Rogan 1:07:00 Hmm.

Aubrey de Grey 1:07:00 'Cause they, obviously they know it's the economy, stupid, right? It still is, right?

Joe Rogan 1:07:05 Yes.

Aubrey de Grey 1:07:05 Um, and so, that's the first thing they think. And the fact is you're not gonna be able to get away with that kind of thinking anymore. It's going to have to be a case of redesigning a large number of really (laughs) big parts of the economy from the ground up.

Joe Rogan 1:07:18 Well, especially places like where you live in England, or use- where you're from rather, in England, where they have socialized medicine. The enormous cost of that would be decreased radically-

Aubrey de Grey 1:07:28 It's the same-

Joe Rogan 1:07:28 ... if people were healthier.

Aubrey de Grey 1:07:29 It's, it's got nothing to do with private versus socialized medicine. It, in, in the-

Joe Rogan 1:07:33 It's just medicine.

Aubrey de Grey 1:07:34 Yeah. In, in the US and the UK and everywhere else, the overwhelming majority of medical expenditure is on the health problems of the elderly, which will go away.

Joe Rogan 1:07:43 Hmm.

Aubrey de Grey 1:07:44 Now of course, the medicine that makes those problems go away is not gonna be free.

Joe Rogan 1:07:49 Right.

Aubrey de Grey 1:07:49 I mean, to produce and to deliver. So, but prevention is always better than cure. But that actually is only a minority of the economic benefit. The real economic benefit comes from the indirect costs. First of all, the fact that the kids of the elderly are gonna be more productive 'cause they're not having to spend time looking after their sick parents and, you know, related things like that. But also, the huge thing that the elderly themselves are still going to be able-bodied and therefore in a position to, um, you know, continue to contribute wealth to society.

Joe Rogan 1:08:20 Right.

Aubrey de Grey 1:08:20 Now that doesn't necessarily mean anything to do with the retirement age. This comes back to another aspect of the interaction between emerging technologies. So of course we've got automation coming. I don't work on it anymore, but lots of people do, right? We're making huge progress in artificial intelligence and most people, even conservative pro- uh, um, commentators say that most of the jobs that exist today are gonna be gone 20 years from now 'cause machines will be doing, doing things perfectly well. So you know, we're gonna be completely unable to continue this system of a, an economy based on full employment. You know, last time this happened with the Industrial Revolution, we got away with it by inventing an entire new sector, you know, the service sector that replaced all the jobs that people didn't have anymore in manufacturing and agriculture. You know, well that's not gonna happen this time. It's just not gonna happen. You know, how many people do you need in the entertainment industry? You know, we've got you, for one. Come on. Uh, so (laughs) um, so you know, we're going to have a different... And of course people are still already thinking about that with things like, you know, universal basic income.

Joe Rogan 1:09:21 Yes.

Aubrey de Grey 1:09:21 Which is an extraordinarily blunt instrument. It's just a starting point. But um, you know, that kind of thing is going to have t- going to happen. I can totally imagine a situation in which, um, you know, 30, 40 years from now work is something like national service used to be or conscription.

Joe Rogan 1:09:40 Yes.

Aubrey de Grey 1:09:40 Yeah, where you, you know, when you're, uh, uh, when you're young and insignificant you do a bit of, a few years of actual work and then you...

Joe Rogan 1:09:48 (laughs)

Aubrey de Grey 1:09:48 Right. Um, uh, yeah. Uh, uh, but that means that the whole concept of pensions, it's ridiculous to think about that. So we've gotta get policy makers out of that mindset and to get them to think in more global terms about the health benefits and the benefits to quality of life of everybody and so on.

Joe Rogan 1:10:03 It is funny that work or the concept of work is sort of inexorably connected to society to the point where you think you have to work. But you know, meanwhile people lived for hundreds of thousands of years without even the concept of that, you know, like a, a place where you go where they give you gold coins.

Aubrey de Grey 1:10:19 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:10:20 You know?

Aubrey de Grey 1:10:20 Well right, exactly. Exactly.

Joe Rogan 1:10:21 Yeah.

Aubrey de Grey 1:10:21 Exactly. Yeah. I mean, of course you do have to have something that makes-

Joe Rogan 1:10:25 Something.

Aubrey de Grey 1:10:25 ... something that fulfills, something to do that-

Joe Rogan 1:10:28 Yes.

Aubrey de Grey 1:10:28 ... you find fulfilling. But-

Joe Rogan 1:10:29 That's the argument for universal basic income, right? The argument against it is human nature, that people need to be motivated and they need something to d- sort of guide them-

Aubrey de Grey 1:10:39 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:10:39 ... towards excellence.

Aubrey de Grey 1:10:40 Yeah. My take is the only thing that needs it is better education.

Joe Rogan 1:10:43 Hmm.

Aubrey de Grey 1:10:43 Which of course is something that we could spend the money on that we save-

Joe Rogan 1:10:46 Yes.

Aubrey de Grey 1:10:46 ... from not having to... Um, uh, yeah. And I kinda-

Joe Rogan 1:10:48 You are a glass half full guy. (laughs)

Aubrey de Grey 1:10:49 Well, I don't know anybody well-educated who gets bored, you know?

Joe Rogan 1:10:53 Yeah, I agree with you. Or anybody who's been exposed to interesting things.

Aubrey de Grey 1:10:57 Right. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:10:57 There are so many things in this world. I mean, if I had... I would love to live five different lives concurrently. I would love to.

Aubrey de Grey 1:11:04 That's the plan.

Joe Rogan 1:11:05 I would, I would, I would love to just have a-

Aubrey de Grey 1:11:06 But they don't have to be concurrent. They can be-

Joe Rogan 1:11:07 Well, I mean, but I, I want to per-

Aubrey de Grey 1:11:09 ... sequential.

Joe Rogan 1:11:09 ... just dive into the like... I, I would love to live different lives 'cause there's so many different things that I would have loved to pursue.

Aubrey de Grey 1:11:16 Well, you can't live them concurrently-

Joe Rogan 1:11:17 (laughs)

Aubrey de Grey 1:11:17 ... 'cause you've only got one brain. But let's try-

Joe Rogan 1:11:19 Right.

Aubrey de Grey 1:11:19 ... and make you live them sequentially instead.

Joe Rogan 1:11:21 Yeah, well sequentially would be fun. I, it would be really interesting to take up a whole new career at 70, you know? And so this three to five year timeline, what, what makes you think that three to five years from now is when all this stuff will take place?

Aubrey de Grey 1:11:35 Well, of course it's subjective.

Joe Rogan 1:11:36 Yes.

Aubrey de Grey 1:11:36 It's based on, um, you know, um, aggregating a whole bunch of different areas of research. But of course I'm fairly well-informed about where research currently is and how rapidly it's moving in a var- variety of different areas. And so just you know, just I'm putting all that together in my head and I'm saying, "How soon are we going to be able to take mice that normally live let's say two and a half years and do nothing whatsoever to them until they are one and a half, and get them to on average live to four instead of two and a half?" Right? Now if you can... And of course those extra years would be healthy years because we would be rejuvenating the mice, right? So I believe that that would be sufficient. And even, that's actually a little bit conservative. I think a less dramatic breakthrough than that might be enough to switch most of my colleagues over that, get them over the fence. Um, but I think that would definitely be enough. And I think that that is close.

Joe Rogan 1:12:31 What, what was the research done with mice with myostatin inhibitors? Did that not increase lifespan as well?

Aubrey de Grey 1:12:37 So yeah, sure. I mean of cour- a lot of things have extended, uh, extended lifespan a fair bit. But what we have at the moment is not...... all the components of what I just said. If you do something genetic to mice, or if you do it s- you know, to them throughout their lives, then we can already get that year, year and a half out of mice, certainly a year. Okay. But not if you start at 18 months. If you start at 18 months, y- the best we can do is maybe four months. So that's the difference. You've got to be able to start late and get the big extension. And you're not gonna get that without bonafide rejuvenation.

Joe Rogan 1:13:15 Hmm. So that's not gonna come by way of genetics?

Aubrey de Grey 1:13:18 Well, e- even if it did come by way of genetics, it wouldn't matter. It wouldn't persuade my colleague or me that we were on the brink of doing it for humans who have the misfortune of being already alive.

Joe Rogan 1:13:29 Hmm. So the rejuvenation is gonna come through some sort of biologics.

Aubrey de Grey 1:13:34 Well, yes, through the kinds of things we're working on that I mentioned earlier.

Joe Rogan 1:13:36 Yes.

Aubrey de Grey 1:13:37 Stem cells, gene therapy to do various things, to introduce, for example, bacterial enzymes that can break down waste products.

Joe Rogan 1:13:43 Mm-hmm.

Aubrey de Grey 1:13:44 Senolytics that I talked about, pharmaceuticals to do other things.

Joe Rogan 1:13:48 Um, what about the use of CRISPR?

Aubrey de Grey 1:13:50 Sure. Well, CRISPR's a very p- very important part of this. So...

Joe Rogan 1:13:54 Can you please explain what CRISPR means for people who don't know what we're talking about?

Aubrey de Grey 1:13:57 Sure, yes. So CRISPR is a technology that was first developed about eight years ago now, and it is the exploitation of a bacterial mechanism that allows bacterias to defend themselves against viruses. Uh, essentially how it works is that it allows us to change the sequence of our genome in a particular cell, um, in a very specific way. T- basically, it's often called gene editing. And there are other technologies for gene editing that, uh, already existed before CRISPR that are very laborious, very expensive, and very clunky. This is far, far cheaper and easier to use. So what that does is it allows us,