David Sinclair: Extending the Human Lifespan Beyond 100 Years | Lex Fridman Podcast #189

The following is a conversation with David Sinclair. He's a professor in the Department of Genetics at Harvard, and co-director of the Paul F. Glenn Center for the Biology of Aging at Harvard Medical School. He's the author of the book Lifespan, and co-founder of several biotech companies. He works on turning age into an engineering problem and solving it, driven by a vision of a world where billions of people can live much longer and much healthier lives. Quick mention of our sponsors: Onnit, Cleer, National Instruments, NI, SimpliSafe, and Linode. Check them out in the description to support this podcast. As a side note, let me say that longevity research challenges us to think how science and engineering will change society. Imagine if you could live 100,000 years, even under controlled conditions, like in a spaceship, say. Then suddenly, a trip to Alpha Centauri that is, uh, 4.37 light years away takes a single human lifespan. And on the psychological, maybe even philosophical level, as the horizons of death drifts farther into the distance, how will our search for meaning change? Does meaning require death or does it merely require struggle? Reprogramming our biology will require us to delve deeper into understanding the human mind and the robot mind. Both of these efforts are as exciting of a journey as I can imagine. This is The Lex Fridman Podcast, and here is my conversation with David Sinclair. I usually feel like the same person when I was 12, like when I, right now, as I think about myself, I feel like exactly the same person that I was when I was 12. And yet, um, I am getting older, both body and mind, and still feel like time hasn't passed at all. Do you, um, feel this tension in yourself that you're the same person and yet you're aging?

Yeah, I have this tension that, that I'm still a kid, um, but that helps in my career. Scientists need to have a wonder about the world and you don't want to grow up. Uh, 12-year-olds and, and even younger, I would say six, seven-year-olds, have still got that boy in me and I can look at things... It's a gift, I think, that I can see things for the first time if I choose to and then explain them as I would to a six euro- six-year-old 'cause I, I am that mentally. But on the other hand, I'm getting older, right? I run a lab of 20 people at Harvard. I've got a book, I've got, uh, you know, science to do, companies to run. And so I have to, um, on most days, just pretend to be a grownup and, and be mature, but I definitely don't feel that way.

There's uh, there's something I really appreciated. In the opening of your book, you talked about your grandmother and on this kind of theme, on this kind of topic, uh, she first of all had a big influence on you. My grandma- mother had a big influence on me. And you also mentioned this poem by the author of Winnie-the-Pooh, Alan Alexander Milne. Maybe I can read it real quick 'cause I... (laughs) . On the topic of being children, "When I was one, I had just begun. When I was two, I was nearly new. When I was three, I was hardly me. When I was four, I was not much more. When I was five, I was just alive. But now I am six. I am as clever, as clever, so I think I'll be six now, forever and ever." Um, so this idea of being six and staying six forever, being youthful, being curious, being childlike, this and other things. What, uh, influence has your grandmother had in your thinking about life, about death, about, uh, love?