SmartLess - "David Sinclair"

Episode Date: February 22, 2021

Included in the Time 100 as one of the hundred most influential people in the world, David Sinclair parachutes in to learn us some things. Dr. Sinclair is an award-winning Biologist, Professor of Genetics, and highly-regarded for his profound work in the Ageing & Anti-Ageing field. Listen folks, he’s reversed the age of an eye in a mouse and made the mouse see again. So grab a green-juice and listen up. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey, you're listening to Smartlist. It's hosted by Jason Bateman, myself, Sean Hayes, and Will Arnett. Every episode, we bring on a guest that the other two don't know about it, and it's kind of surprise. And, uh, oh, Will? Hey, man. What's going on? Are you okay? I'm just explaining what the show is. No, I know. I didn't want to interrupt. I'm just over here. I'm just, I'm standing my lane. Oh, I mean, you can chime in if you want. No, you had it. You, I feel like...

I mean, do you have anything to add? No, I think you covered it all, and I just felt, to be honest, I just felt kind of useless. You were doing the intro, and I'm just sitting here like a chump. Well, you can say something if you want, but I feel like I got it all in. Okay, um, it's Smartlist, and it's super fun. Here we go. Smartlist. You can't go to Europe. I'm sorry, I couldn't hear that. You want to chew it, swallow it.

I'm trying. You know, you're working right now. You don't, do you chew while you're acting? This is, this is, this is serious. Just the scenery. Just the scenery. What is it? What is it today? What's the carbohydrate today? You know, it might be less annoying than whatever you're eating now. It's just eating a banana and just making that sound that everybody loves.

That kind of sound. Should I do that? Try it. No, what is it? What do you have going today? Today, I was just having a, I was having the end of a little bit of a cookie. Oh, bless. Did you earn it? Oh my God. I did a huge workout and a hike and everything. What did you blast today? Was it tries or buys?

Do me a favor. Don't say blast. Yeah. Well, isn't that what you always say? It's so gross. Oh, I just blasted my quads. Just blasted me. That's such a gross word. I had my trainer come over and blasted my quads. Listener. Listener. He's wearing a white, really stretched out Nehru t-shirt today.

It's not a Nehru. It's a Henley. Same thing. It's almost looks like you're trying to make us believe that your muscles are breaking through the shirt when really that shirt would fit fine if it was the normal size. This is an extra large baby size. So this is for like a really large baby. For a baby that just got his cookie because he was good today. Baby did get his cookie.

Listen, fellas. Yeah. Today we're going to make a real dent in our smartness. Okay. Today we have a scientist. Oh, I love it already. This is a PhD. He is the co-founder of several biotechnology companies.

He's an inventor of 35 patents. He is a co-director at the Harvard Medical School and he has been named one of Time magazine's 100 most influential people. He is also a three time runner up of People magazine's sexiest man of the year. I'm not sure if that's... Wow. We're going to have to ask him about that. Sean, Will and Listener.

This is Dr. David Sinclair. Dr. Oh, wow. Now look. Now that's a sexy man right there. Sexy, right? Yeah. So that's not true, right?

Three time runner up to the... Did I just add that? It was only two. It wasn't three. That's an exaggeration. Just a two time runner up. It was four. Right.

A quick shot of you with that beard on. I bet you're going to win it this year. It's nice. David, thank you very, very much for joining us. Now guys, I will tell you, I had the pleasure of listening to David speak at a small, casual sort of lecture-ish thingy. At someone's house? At someone's house.

And it really knocked me out. Hollywood doesn't write, don't they? They just bring people in. No, listen. Like, you know what? Bring somebody smart over here and let them talk to us. Right, David? Basically, I know.

They couldn't get anyone else. So I wasn't bothered. I know how it works. And he said some things that really straightened me out as far as my knowledge of general health and mortality. He's a specialist in aging. And I'm going to let him talk to you about some of the things that really knocked me out. I'm going to tee you up here, David.

There is, and please tell me how dumb I am and how much I did not remember. All of us are just him. Just David, the qualified folks. Basically, the just I got, and then I'd love to hear all the specifics again, is that while there is a definite that we're all going to die, science and technology has now sort of given us an opportunity to have a little bit more to say about how we die, when we die, the way in which the end of our life can be enjoyed. Those are all my dumb words, but is that generally what you guys are focused on a lot?

And hopefully you'll give us some tips on how to improve that part of our life today. Yeah, sure. I think you guys all know I'm 106. 106. Listener, if you could see this guy, he doesn't look a day over 30. And it's pretty impressive. Yeah. And I didn't pay you to say that.

That's very kind of you. But we're exactly the same age, Jason. We are, aren't we? I think I remember that from that day. I've always thought that I looked fairly young from my age at 51. Did you? David. I mean, come on.

You always thought that. I have always thought that. I haven't asked anybody to confirm that. But when I look at myself every morning, noon and night, I'm like, oh, look at you. But David doesn't look older than 35, does he? Yeah. Why do you look? Your skin is incredible, actually.

Well, there's this thing on this software we're using. It's called the filter. It works really well. You guys should use it. Yeah. All right. Great. Okay.

First of all, you know that Jason's, you and Jason are the same age. I don't know. Maybe you've already Googled us, but you have to guess my age and also Sean's age. Oh, come on. Come on. Come on. Yeah. Well, here we'll qualify.

I want you to, I want you to guess your age and then tell us how will they actually look. I want you to guess it and then tell us what they actually look like. Go ahead. Yeah. I'm going to regret this so bad. Stop making faces. Well, just look normal.

Don't be nice. Like if you think we're older or whatever you want to do, just really guess. Well, you know, I have the advantage. I've been watching all of you for a number of years. So I kind of know when you popped onto the scene. Only a couple of years for me because I just got started. Yeah, that's true. I would have said 26 for Will.

Sure. I think we're all pretty similar in age. I don't know. I think maybe Sean, you're a bit younger, but the rest of us have been around for a while. Yeah, by a decade. Is that right? Yeah. You're 41, Sean.

I'm 41. Bullshit. I also am a half a century old. 50. Wow. Thanks to you guys. Well, so listen, so we're all okay. I just turned 50.

Oh, you did? Well, yeah, yeah. But David, in 40 years, we'll probably be not shocked if we die. But based on your research and what you can perhaps share with us today, we can make that decade more enjoyable and perhaps not our last decade. Is this maybe accurate? How will we go about doing that? Yeah, so we're kind of at the level of the Wright brothers.

It's 1902. We're figuring out how to glide, but we do know it's possible to fly. So we've done, my colleagues and I, there are about 100 leaders in the world doing this. We call it aging research or longevity research. It's now a fact that modern science is caught up with aging. For a while we ignored it, we thought it was natural, acceptable. That's BS. It's definitely not acceptable.

It's the greatest cause of pain and suffering on the planet. And if you think heart disease, cancer and Alzheimer's are bad, what do you think causes those, right? Young people don't get those diseases. It's a thousand times aging and one time or 20 times these other drivers of these disease. So my point is, if we can understand what causes aging, slow it and even reverse it and we'll get to that, then these diseases either don't happen or you can take them away. And what I was telling you Jason, which I can now tell everybody who's listening is my

field and my lab at Harvard spent about 20 years figuring out what are the genes that control the aging process. And we've been very successful. We have a handful of genes that seem to regulate all life forms on earth from trees to worms, even humans. And we could even, I could read your genes and tell you what the chances are of you living a long time. But now actually that there's some new stuff which is blowing my mind and, you know, my

mind takes a lot to be blown because I've seen pretty much everything happen. But what I didn't realize is that aging isn't just slowable. It's actually reversible. And we can do this in mice very easily. We can reverse the age of the eye in a mouse and make them see again, these old mice. We can make them run 150%, 200% on a treadmill after just a few weeks of treating. And so these are the right brother's days, right? Imagine in 20, 30 years we could have no intercontinental air travel eventually go to the moon.

Do you think that you guys could in a lab maybe regrow a sense of humor? Like, would that be possible? No. Yeah, like how would that... Atrophied and gone. I used to like working on that. It is true though that you are able to change the, instead of the gray hair on mice, now they no longer have gray hair.

That's not true, is it? Well, some people have done that. That is true. You can now reverse gray hair. Actually, there's a drug on the market for cancer that these patients suddenly... I think it was 11 out of 13 patients got their hair back again, the color. Oh, Sean, Will just parked up. Wait, wait, wait.

What's it called? What's it called? What's it called? Who's got a pen? You need to get cancer first. Wait a minute. This is fascinating to me. Right.

Because like think about it. No, you can't catch cancer or leukemia or... So, in other words, it's all that stuff is in us. And there are things that you can do in your life that are not good things that actually turn those little toggle switches on and now all of a sudden you are on your way to getting cancer or leukemia or diabetes or any of these other things. Speak a little bit of that because that really resonated with me, David. Well, so what really is driving all of these diseases is that our bodies become lexodesical

and unable to fight these diseases. When we're young, if a cancer cell pops up, our bodies destroy it. Or if there's misfolder proteins for Alzheimer's, our bodies destroy it. But we lose that ability to defend ourselves against diseases. And most people don't get that. They think diseases are inevitable. No, if you can stay young, physically young, you don't get them. And what we figured out is only part of it is genetic.

I know I said the genes are important, but actually only 20% of our longevity and our health in old age is from our parents. The rest is how we live our life. What we eat, when we eat, how much we eat. So 80%, as far as like nature versus nurture, it is nurture basically. 80% of how you live will dictate how you die as opposed to hereditary. And we know that because there are these twins in Denmark that lived very different lives. Well, you know them, yeah?

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Good. Sorry, David. I know that only part of it is genetic because these twins in Denmark, if they lead very different lives, they have very different lifespans. Got it. So basically, one of the things I remember you saying was that it was sort of very common

for us to kind of die at 50, maybe 100 years ago or further. Like nowadays, you know, you die around 80, 90, 100, whatever. You were saying maybe in like 20 or 30 years, people will look back at this time and say, boy, it's so weird that everybody was okay with dying at 80. We're now living to be 120 because of, you know, not just what David Sinclair taught us and uncovered, but this whole sort of world of technology and science, what you guys are uncovering, yeah? Yeah, for sure.

And multiple technologies are advancing. So we've got some of my technology, which reverses the age of cells. We've got these wearables that are getting better and better. There are blood tests that we can do. I could take your blood, you guys, and tell you. Wait, wait, wait. What's a wearer? I know what an edible is.

What's a wearable? You just get stoned from certain attire. It's a sporty bracelet. Wow. It's just like a THC-based clothing. Yeah. It had to come. It had to happen.

Yeah, yeah. So what's a wearable, David? Well, so it's one of those watches that'll monitor your heartbeat, and they're getting better and better. They can tell you your blood sugar. I'm wearing a ring that tells me how well I slept and what else I got up to last night. I just found out about that. I was thinking I might get one, because I was doing the thing.

I was wearing the Whoop, the sleep band. I was wearing that, and I was wearing the Apple Watch, and I'd wake up in the morning. This is true. And I'd wake up in the morning, and I'd look at how I slept, how many times I woke up and stuff, because I'm a big sleep guy. Right. I go to bed very early, and I wake up early, but I believe in getting a lot of sleep. You're very unemployed.

Very unemployed. Sleep will make you live longer, that's for sure. It definitely will, right? Yeah. So sleep is really good. So, I mean, this is great for all the people who go to Jason's movies and watch his shows, because they get a lot of sleep. You're welcome.

You're welcome. A little naps here and there. What a service you're doing. Sometimes it's 30 minutes, sometimes it's an hour, sometimes it's an hour and a half, full-length movie, you know, whatever you need. I got all cut. You just put it on and walk away. Look at you.

That's the prescription from David. So, but listen, David, you know, everybody's interested in reversing the aging process. I mean, it's a topic that I'm sure nobody's not interested in. So tell us about exactly if, unless I'm jumping way far ahead, can you tell us like what those are and what exactly, how does that work? And is it all food-based? Like, is it, is it only have to do with what you eat or, and what can we do on our own? Yeah.

There's a lot you can actually do. This isn't rocket science. It's actually, it's going to be easy to cure aging and cancer. In your daily life, what the kind of things that I do are eat less often. Get your heart rate up for at least 10 minutes every day or so. Basically, do what we'll did today is a good start. There you go. And the kind of foods, a lot of people argue, is it meat?

Is it not meat? But essentially, you don't want to overload your body with, with protein. Having sometimes when you're lower on protein, so plant-based Mediterranean, that's also very good. And we, as a, you know, group of scientists, people have been saying, oh, eat olive oil, eat, you know, all these plant-based foods, exercise. And nobody really understood until recently why that's good for you. It turns out these genes that we've discovered that control our longevity and make our bodies

fight aging and disease are triggered by these lifestyles. So we can turn on our bodies defenses. It's called hormesis. Hormesis means what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. And really it's putting your body into a state of defensive mode, because if we just eat stuff and we're sitting around and we just watch Jason's movies, our bodies go get tired and they don't react to the onslaught which we're facing every day with chemicals and DNA damage.

And so we have ways to trigger those by being hungry sometimes. I'll tell you specifics in a second, but, but also what's interesting is we've, we've now found certain chemicals that also mimic diet and exercise and give you the benefits or enhance a healthy lifestyle. Yeah, because everybody's looking for a quick fix, pill, anything so they don't have to, you know, exercise or do the things you're saying. They can't eat anything. Yeah.

Do you have the I just worked out for an hour pill? Yeah. We do. Well, we don't know if they work in humans, but in mice, I can take an old mouse and make it marathon runner. I'll take it. How about I just blasted my quads capsule? Yeah.

You might grow some whiskers, but other than that, you'll be really healthy. Super young thighs on will. So how do you find out if you have these, you know, genes that like the respond to it? Yeah. Well, have you guys done your genomes yet? No. What has done your genomes? So there, there are companies, right?

There's a famous one, 23andMe. There are others and says people do it and they tell you what variations. So we'll pretty much have the same genes. Four of us are men. So we pretty much have the same genes, but the variations on those genes and how they're controlled depends on how we live, but also what we were born with. But we can read what we got from our parents very easily. I could take your DNA and in my lab tomorrow, tell you what your genome is.

It used to be a billion dollars. Now it takes it's about a hundred bucks. So there are genes. So the one, there's one called Foxo three, which has it's throughout the animal kingdom. We've got it in worms where it was first discovered. But it's also in whales that can live 300 years. And in our bodies, there are certain variants that are known to be in people that live over a hundred and you can just read it.

So for instance, we all have two copies of each gene and I've got one longevity version and one regular version. And I have three kids with my wife and all three of our kids got two of the best copies. So even if they don't live very well, they have a better chance of making it to 95. Wow. And also here's this, so I have a lot of longevity in my family, my great grandmother died at 105. Three of my grandparents died at 97. Two of them at 97, one at 95, I guess.

We're just going to cut part of this. So I guess I'm saying, is there a medal for that? Like where do I line up for like a trophy or something? It's not a contest. And it usually skips a generation. I used to always, Jason's people all died in boats hauling up nets in the Mediterranean. And they all died at like 42. Okay.

So, but with like a jug of wine broken at their feet. So my question is, I always joke that, you know, people say, why do you smoke cigarettes? And I go, yeah, sometimes I smoke. I said, I have to, because I have to aunt's offset because of the advances in medical science. I know that they're going to make everybody live for so long and I go, I can't keep this going forever. This looks too good. So I need to offset it a little bit. It's unfair to other dudes.

It's unfair because I feel like I'm going to live to be about 130 legit. We can only hope. David, can I come over and will you draw some of my blood? Sure. He cracked himself up on that, David. We can do that. Hey, so. Sorry.

My question, my real question was, does that make a difference? All the different sides of my family with all this longevity, does that make a difference at all? Yeah. And can you change that as well? Well, it's difficult to change it, but we're getting better at going in and changing genes using technologies like CRISPR. But yeah, the genes are important, but remember only 20%. So, Will, I'm afraid you're probably not going to make it that long unless you live a healthy lifestyle too. And we know that people who smoke, not occasionally, but a lot, have accelerated biological age, which we can measure now.

Yeah. So, it might be balancing out. We'll see. We can test it. Okay, good. And you said, you said, depending on what is that word you used, that we have the technology, what was it called? CRISPR. What's CRISPR?

So, CRISPR is about 10 years ago, scientists discovered that you can go in and actually change an exact part of a cell's DNA with an enzyme. And it's being used right now to fix genetic diseases in the eye and restore vision. And eventually, pretty much every disease, this genetic can be fixed. Wow. That's great. What about diabetes? Hang on a second. What?

Yeah, what about diabetes? Potentially. What if, like, Will's got, you know, humorously small feet. So, if he wanted to go from a size five up to, like, a men's size of, like, to change his foot size from a five to a nine, could he go into, like, a crisping tub or something? A crisping tub. I eat plenty of Krispy Kreme. Is there a tub of Krispo that I could go into?

Like fries. Once the fries are done, could he put his feet in there? Yeah, I think there's a gene. Jason hasn't been able to feel anything below his navel for about 14 years. So, is there any way that we could revive him, so to speak? Well, the onion rings are done. No. Sorry, David.

The ultimate age reversal, I'd say. What could one do to turn on these beneficial parts of our sort of our stock system here to fight the stuff that shortens our life? Well, it's much easier changing a life than changing your genes. And remember, 80%. So, it's very durable. So, what do I do? I try to skip at least one meal a day. I feel a little bit hungry, but not too bad.

Just have a cup of tea. I work out four times a week. So, I'm trying to keep my muscles going and flexible. And then I try to keep my heart running. So, every other day, I'll get my heart rate up. And I try to focus on plant-based foods, though I do like a good burger occasionally. But all of that is good. And then I take a few of the molecules that my lab has worked on as well.

Because I remember what you were saying, you alluded to it a few minutes ago, which is if you can trip your system into sort of... I forget the word you used, sort of like a defensive... Chromesis. Yeah. Right, where... And it's triggered sometimes by hunger. Not starvation, but hunger, where the body thinks, Uh-oh, I might be starting to starve here.

It kind of clicks into this mode that is the molecules, the energy, the proteins, whatever it is, you'll tell us, that actually start to fight the bad stuff. The cancer, the diabetes, the leukemia, whatever it may be. We kind of activate that army and it comes out into our system while we are a little bit hungry. And that sort of speaks to kind of micro-fasting. Yes. Intermittent fasting works. Try to be hungry for...

You can do a 16 versus 8 hours, so you can be hungry for 16 hours. Usually, I'll eat dinner at 7 at night and I won't eat until the next day at about noon or one. Perfect. That's kind of perfect, right? Yeah, that's what I do. That's a good way to do it. I'm not sure, you know, drinking whiskey late at night is very good for you. Oh, I have a whiskey drip.

I'm sorry, let that part out. I have a whiskey drip while... Yeah, let him finish, David. Jason's gone as long as 45 minutes without food. Would that be considered good? Like a good run? But it is true. If you don't eat from like 6 p.m. to like noon the next day, if you can honestly go those 18 hours every single day,

you're getting yourself into a state where you're... Not only you're getting gorgeously lean, all right? Let's be clear. But you are killing the things that could kill you. You are killing the things that could kill you. So you're going to be gorgeous, but for a very long time. Yes? In principle, yeah, that's the way to do it.

And it's not that hard. If you're really starving, you're not doing intermittent fasting correctly. You get used to it after about a week or two anyway. I'm not very good at it. I can only go for one or two meals. Some people go for a week. Oh, look at you. Look at you, though.

You're being very humble. Look at you. Look 12. It is remarkable how young you look. I will say that. Yeah, it's crazy. I'm not talking to you, Sean. No, no, it is.

I'm complimenting myself. Sean's looking at a long full-length mirror right now. I bring a hand mirror with me wherever I go. But let me ask you something. So I've never met you. I'm already unbelievably fascinated by everything, but for an idiot like myself, so you are a doctor who specializes in anti-aging philosophies,

science, techniques, whatever this... And Jason mentioned when he was introducing you that you have 35 patents. Like, in what? And what are they and what are they used for? Because I... You know the George Foreman grill? Have you ever seen that?

Yeah. Oh, shit. That's yours. That's yours. Well, it's just the tilt part on it. Just the part that... It just drips off. It drips off.

Without that, you're going to eat all that fat. But what David did was he put it on an angle. It goes into a tray. It goes into a tray and it drips right off. It's unbelievable. And you'll live longer. That's the YouTube video for it. The tray used to be flat.

I fixed that. Right. It's patent number one. No, but tell me about... Because I'm an idiot. So, so far, intermittent fasting, check. Got that. What else can we do and what are your patents for?

Well, the exercise is real. Olive oil is good. Resveratrol in red wine is one of the molecules we worked on. So, red wine in moderate doses is good. What are moderate doses? Careful. One glass or two, okay? Because I need to tell my sponsor.

I've been sober a number of years, but if it's coming from a doctor, I'm just going to say, look, I hate to go over your head on this one, but I want to kind of live a little longer. And I know that you guys frown on the drinking in AA. But yeah, does resveratrol live in anything else other than red wine? Not really.

Not in any amounts. Capsule? Sure. You can buy it pure. Yeah. I stick some of that in my yogurt. You can buy it pure. Yeah.

It's available. You can get it from a reputable supplier. Make sure it's a white or gray powder, not brown. That means it's bad. Not out of the back of a van. No. You don't recommend out of the back of a van. So, are you recommending everybody go get their genes

tested for a hundred bucks or whatever you said. And then from that, it's determined what you should avoid, what you should increase or decrease. And that's your base. And then kind of restructure your life according to those results. Yes, absolutely. That's the way to do it. And it's called optimization.

So, take me for example. I've looked at my genome. I've talked to colleagues. What should I do? I eat this. I should do that. I went from a blood test that said I was 58 and I was actually 48 at the time.

Changed my life. Changed my lifestyle. Lost a bit of weight. The right things. And then that blood test, you know, it's a bit of alchemy, but it's still somewhat interesting to do. It came back and I was 31.4. Wow.

I think there is a lot you can do very quickly in a matter of months to bring your health way back in terms of health and longevity, I believe. You want to hear about the patents? Yes, I want to hear about the patents. And I also want to hear about diabetes because my husband has diabetes. You know that they took a little bit of brain matter from Jason.

They said they had the brain of a three-year-old. Yeah. Did you know about this? Yeah. I got the youth going to the wrong part of it, but I've repointed this stuff. The brain power. I'm trying to age my brain now.

David's writing stuff down. He wrote that down. That's how important that information was. It's all for the deposition, Will. Oh, look at that. Three. Oh, count three. There's something that I want to tell you.

We, because we think we figure out how to reverse the age of cells, and we've done this, as I said, for the eye of old mice. Yeah. And hopefully in two years we'll have tried this in people with glaucoma, pressure in the eye. We're also now doing an experiment to reverse the age of an old brain. So mice get old after about two years, and they forget things

typical like a human would at about age 85. Now we're going to test what happens when you turn the age of the brain back to being young again. Maybe not to three, but let's say to the equivalent of a 20-year-old, do you lose your memories or do you regain lost memories? And we'll know that pretty soon. That's crazy. That's crazy.

I don't know. With all your science, I don't know if you're going to be able to fix this old soul. Enlightenment stays intact. Well, rest assured. David, what is the breakthrough that you are most excited to see if you happen to live long enough to experience? The things that you were exposed to, like, you know, is it living

on the moon or is it, you know, probably in your field, I'll bet you. Yeah, it's probably not living on the moon. Well, you know, I'm trying to, I don't know how old our listener is. Our listener never gets old. Yeah, it's, you know, I'm doing my life's passion. I don't want to do anything else with my life. I would have left a long time ago if I did want to do something else.

So I'm trying to figure out how to reset the body and make it healthy again. And I think we're, we've cracked something here. The fact that we can not just make cells behave like they're young, but actually be young again, reset it. I'm basically back to, you know, 20 year old from an 80 year old in the mouse. Is that because you can start a process somewhere in a cellular area

of the body and that it will sort of, for lack of probably an accurate term, metastasize across the body and make the rest of the body as young as that one spot? Because it would, it strikes me as like, you can't just treat one cell and make that good. They all have to become younger again. And is it sort of self perpetuate? We don't know the answer.

In much the same way that it does on the aging side, right? Like all the cells kind of age and make one another age, I suppose. Well, there are certain cells that communicate to other cells. So if you change the age of the brain, it looks like the brain can tell the rest of the body to, to be young again. But I think we're probably going to have to reprogram most of the tissues separately. And we're working on that.

What we do is we introduce three very early genes, meaning these are genes that we only have on when we're a fertilized egg and developing in the womb. And they stay off when we become adults. But we find that if we turn these three genes on in a mouse that's old, it resets the clock. It resets the, the genome so that it's, that the cell reads it again. But it's of course not one, not one cell.

We're resetting tens of thousands and eventually billions of cells in the body. But it's a true reset. This isn't just, oh, I'll do a bit of exercise and I'll get a little bit healthy. This would be... Right, right, right. It's not conditioning it. Yeah.

Well, we, we actually, we built the system so that when these genes get introduced, they're permanent. And we can turn them on just by taking an antibiotic. Doxycycline, for example, you might use that for Lyme disease or something. It's very safe. And so what we do with these mice is we, we genetically modify their eyes. We can damage their eyes or let them get old. And then we just give them a course of three weeks of antibiotics and they

get the right side back. Imagine that in a human, you re-engineer your body. So you have these three youthful genes and every time you want to fix your body or reset your age, you just take a course of antibiotics for three weeks. Jesus Christ. Would it be similar to how some species can shed skin? And so the old skin goes off and a new skin is right underneath it and it has pushed the old stuff out and it replaces it sort of seamlessly?

Yeah. You're onto something. What we think is sort of, there are species that we know can regenerate. So you cut off a lizard's tail, it grows back. What else? You can cut off the finger of a mouse that actually can grow back. Starfish. Starfish.

A lot of species regrow. Even a jellyfish, you can take a piece of a jellyfish and it can grow a whole new adult. And we can also clone things. We can clone people probably, but we haven't had permission, but you can clone dogs. Do you think someone's done it? Is there, is there a fair chance that somebody's done it? I don't think so. No?

Not because if that person was crazy enough to do it, they'd be crazy enough to have a press conference as well. Right, right, right. I do know somebody who cloned their dog. That was wild. Really? They did. Successfully cloned it.

Yeah. I saw it. Well, you know, my question is this. So you're doing this. This is incredible stuff. And of course, this is like, this is going to shift the conversation of our entire existence, right? And this is getting down to, this is it.

This is the most existential, right? So first of all, you must have, I've spent a bit of time around because of what we do. I've spent some time around some people who are crazy rich, who have all the resources. And the one thing they always talk about, because it's the one thing they can't control is their health and they're getting older. Like it makes them fucking crazy because they've got everything else. They've got billions of dollars. You can only have, you can only fly so many private jets around the world and have so many

yachts. But they're like, fuck. The one thing that they want to have more than anything is youth. And they hang around with younger people because they're like vampires, et cetera, et cetera. You must have all these incredible billionaires, these one percenters banging down your door. Do you not? You're saying, hurry up, hurry up. Can you say?

I want elasticity on my skin again. Yeah. I know a fair number of people. Yeah. I bet. Put it that way. I bet. Also, can I jump line in front of them?

A. Because I'm a cool guy. They're all so fucking boring and I'm a lot more fun to hang out with. I guarantee you, and I'm not going to name names on the air. Can you put some jet hours on that? I can't add jet hours, but I will say this. I can add a lot of laughs and that plane, it sucks if you're not having a laugh. A.

And B, let me have it before Bateman because I want to start getting young. I'm not saying he doesn't get to have any of the magic pills. I want him to have it, but let me have it like a week before. What is your ultimate dream for their human race? Do you wish there was a pill that everybody could take? I mean, we've been told it's all about diet and exercise our whole lives. And of course, that's the answer for everything and everybody knows that answer. It's just up to you whether you implement that or not into your life.

But to you, what is the ultimate goal? Yeah, it's to have a pill or a combination of pills that truly resets the age of the body. And I know we've been working on this as species for the last probably half a million, million years. But nobody's had this technology. No one's been able to take a blind mouse and reset the age of the eye and make it see again. So that's why I say it's like the Wright Brothers, right? The Wright Brothers, everyone said, come on, you can't fly. Humans were never meant to fly.

But they did it and suddenly the world changed. And I truly believe that we're at that point now with aging. Right, right. And has anybody ever discussed with you about the population control thing about like, I imagine, if you're in the business of prolonging people's lives, I'm sure there are people not loving that because you say the world is already overpopulated. And why are we trying to interrupt nature's course of resetting itself? And there's a great deal of money to be made on people that are not in good health.

This comes up a lot and I've written about it. There are two sides to it. There are certain people who will live longer that we probably don't want to live longer. That's one of the downsides. But there's also, you look at history. I like to look at history and use it to predict the future. You know, when people were dying in their 40s and 50s and women were dying childbirth, the world had a lot fewer people.

But was that a better world? And I'm of the belief that humans can innovate their way around anything. And actually, if you do the math, if we were to stop everybody dying right now, we wouldn't get hugely overpopulated, not very quickly anyway. And in Europe and increasingly in the US, we're actually slowing down our population growth to the point of being negative. And so it'll be replacement. We'll probably top out at about 11 billion on the planet.

And then we'll be hopefully steady state with people living 110, 120, eventually longer than that. When do you think that'll be that people will commonly live past 100? Well, so my colleagues often don't like it when I say these things because they want it all to be based in fact, whereas I'm trying to predict the future. It's always dangerous. I would say within our lifetime, there will be medicines available to slow aging and some that will reverse it. But the question also becomes great.

So you live to be 103, but what is your life like? What is your body like? Yeah, the quality of life in that last decade. Well, this is the key. This is the key question. And what we know from these animal studies, whether they're in, I've mentioned mice, but we've done a lot of people done monkey studies, dog studies, and even studies with pills in humans.

We know that these interventions we call them that slow down aging. They slow down aging in the whole body. So it's not like a heart medicine that just keeps your heart healthy, but your brain gets old. It's very different. So what you get are these animals that live a lot better and healthier, they're vibrant, and then they die much quicker. Look at humans that live over 100.

They cost about a third of the healthcare costs of someone who gets sick before 100. So it's also a huge cost saving as well. And these people are productive helping with grandkids, going back to work. It's a huge burden to the economy as well. Right. And so, but that's interesting. You say that people actually, you might live longer, but your period of death is sort of truncated, right?

So you don't die in some protracted, miserable sort of, these machines are keeping you alive. We call that modern medicine, unfortunately. Yeah. That's what we've been trying to do, which is treat one disease at a time, push the patient out the door. If they come back with something else, treat that and repeat until failure. And that's not the way to do it.

It's money. Yeah. Right. Wow. Yeah. Because, you know, also I always hear about Alzheimer's, diabetes, you know, heart conditions, you know, everybody, I always hear about, you know, they're three to five years away.

They're three to five years away of getting a vaccine or a cure or something, some kind of something. And I never see any results of those, you know, like it's just an ongoing thing. It's very frustrating. Obviously it's all financially based. And if we cure something, then there's no money in it anymore. And, but what do you say to that?

Because my mom died from Alzheimer's. My husband has diabetes. Like I know all of these people who have all these issues that we just keep hearing good news is on the horizon and we never get it. Well, we do get it, but it's usually it's small increments. There's never, oh, suddenly we can cure Alzheimer's. That doesn't happen. And the problem really is that it's easy to say it's in five years,

but because now I've lived it, I've started a number of biotech companies. It's way harder than most people think. It's at least 10 years from start to finish and about a billion dollars, which is very hard, of course. To do a trial, to do a series of trials. Yeah, to get a drug on the market and most drugs fail and 90% of them fail. So it's easy to say five years, it's much harder to do. But if you look at the long arc of history, we are making progress.

People are not suffering like they did even 10 years ago, especially in the cancer field, huge breakthroughs there. But for aging, not so much. Sean, I want to quickly tell you about the diabetes area. There are some really good diabetes drugs. I think we have a much better handle on that disease. Type 2 diabetes, not so much one. Is that what you're referring to?

Type 1, yeah. The age associated. Oh, type 1, yeah. That one's harder. Yeah, that's not easy because there's all sorts of cells you have to replace. But didn't they have a big breakthrough in type 1 diabetes about 5, 10 years ago? Well, the stem cell replacement seems to be going well. Yeah, yeah.

But that's really hard. Is stem cells similar to CRISPR? Is that the same thing? Well, it can be together. You can go in and change the cells in your body. Or you can take your stem cells out, fix those and put them back in. And that's actually done. For instance, sickle cell anemia has been cured now by taking out the blood stem cells

and fixing those and putting them back in. Wow. Let me ask you something that might be outside of your specialty. It's just something I've always been fascinated by. Maybe you can tell me something if you know about it. Is the actual science of the brain that I'm sure is sending out all these messages to these cells about how to age and how not to age and whatnot. Some of the limitations come in progress from still not truly understanding

how the brain works and what the brain does as far as sending out messages. Like what is the equation of a thought? Literally how one gets an idea and like how do you, like what does that look like? That's not zeros and ones and it's not proteins. It's like, does it live in that? Are we getting closer to figuring out how the brain actually creates thinking and what that looks like from an equation standpoint? We are actually.

There are some people who are able to model the brain and the problem has been a reductionist attitudes until recently, meaning you go into the brain, you put a neuron in the dish and you look at how the neuron works. That's great, but because you've got a trillion cells in your brain, there's emergent properties as they say. One nerve is not going to be a brain, two nerves isn't going to be a brain, but a trillion will be.

What people are discovering actually is similar to a computer. If you look at one transistor, it's not going to tell you how a computer works, but you have to look at the whole thing. Same with the brain. There's a guy called Henry Mark, who's a really controversial figure in Europe, but he managed to model a mouse brain and now he's done a human brain. He did it because typical neural nets are looking at binary, basically computer code. He said, let's get away from binary, which is how big companies like Facebook and Google do it.

He said, let's figure out how to model a nerve cell and then put a trillion of those together, because nerve cells, they work rather than just on and off like a computer. It's more like a record player or a cassette tape. They have what's called analog information. Long story short, when he built this brain in the computer, it behaved in ways that he could never have predicted with waves of thought going through the system. So I think we're getting close, but you need the trillions upon trillions of little individual machines put together to make that happen.

Wow. So we're all going to be cyborgs in about 2,000 years. Well, yes, but I don't believe that you can download your brain easily. That to me is much harder than solving aging. Yes. Right. All right. Do you ever see a day when this kind of theory has been tossed around in science fiction,

where at a very young age, you can download information into the human brain so that a whole set of encyclopedias are all of Google into your brain. Like in the matrix when I learned how to fly the helicopter. Well, not so much that. What do you mean? Not so much that. But so that just... Do you mean about flying helicopters?

Do you mean about flying helicopters? Do you mean about I go to sleep and I... Can you download information? I go to sleep and I wake up and I know how to speak French. Carianne Moss in the matrix? If I wake up, I'm Carianne the helicopter. Now I look like Carianne Moss in the morning. Now everybody's going to be a bunch of Carianne Mosses wearing tight leather.

Sean, what are you getting at? David, can that work? Do you know that Sean, if you open up a cross-section of Sean's brain, it's like a mouse on a treadmill in the Benny Hill theme song playing. No, that's why I'm exhausted all the time. David, how did you get attracted to studying about aging specifically? Was it kind of just a process of what you became interested in medical school, or was it something when you were a kid,

you lost a relative at too young an age? Yeah, I don't need therapy. Probably this is my therapy. There was a moment when my grandmother, who helped raise me, she was very brutal. She grew up in World War II and she just said everything that was truthful. So like most kids, I said, oh, grandma, will you always be around to protect me?

And I was about three and a half, four years old. And she said, nope, I'm going to die, and then you'll be alone. And I was just like, whoa. Mortality. And we all go through that, but that I think set me in motion. But I've always liked pulling things apart, machines, cocoons, spiders, that kind of stuff. And I figured why not figure out the hardest problem that we haven't solved,

which I thought was aging. And you're feeling bullish that you will see the fruits of your labor before, do you expect to benefit from the science that you are navigating now when it comes your time to slow down a bit? Well, I feel like I'm already benefiting. Whenever I get something that's convincing and safe, I apply it. And then my family, who's a bunch of scientists also applies it. My father's 80 now and out doing his peers.

What about your kids? So are you applying this stuff to your kid's lifestyle? Are they taking it on? Are they like going with their friends and their friends? Are they like, okay, let's grab a big Mac. And they're like, no way. I'm just going to eat this leaf. Why?

Because I'm going to live to be three million and you're going to die next week. Are they? No, I think they're the opposite. They're like, I'll screw what dad says. I'm going to do the opposite. Is that right? Of course. We're a very normal family.

Yeah. Tell me about, I'm sorry to keep going back to this, but tell me about your patents or your favorite two out of your 800. Well, they're mixed. What I do in my lab is I bring together people that have very different views and skills from computer technicians to people can read a genome on a little muesli bar type of thing, health bar. So what we do, I have about 20 or so people at Harvard and we don't work on what's the

next thing to discover from where we are. We just sit around saying what's a really good question to answer. And once you have a good question, then we figure out how to answer it. So one of them, which you might be surprised about, well, actually probably half of them have nothing to do with aging. One interesting one was we were trying to figure out how to speed the transmission of genetic data across the internet. And we came up with the idea that instead of having binary code, which is zeros and ones,

we could use four letters, which is what DNA is based on. So we used what's called base four math. I mean, what happened, it's an interesting story. I'll be very quick. That led to us developing little mini supercomputers in my office on my desk, which eventually moved into my garage, which eventually moved into a company. And then we used that knowledge and better math and algorithms to build what's called a graph, a mathematical graph of the human genome.

Then we used that same technology to build a graph of all known pathogens in the world, including now COVID or coronavirus too. And now it can take anyone's blood at this company and take out the human DNA because we have technology to do that. It's related to CRISPR. Instead of changing genes, we use it as a fishing rod and pull out all the human DNA. What's left behind are the pathogens, the viruses, the fungi, the bacteria. Then we'd read all that DNA, pump it into our supercomputer, and it says, oh, you have

the flu. Don't worry, you don't have COVID-19. And that's actually one of the ones I'm most proud of because my daughter, our daughter, Natalie, a middle daughter, she had Lyme disease. And the test for Lyme disease was taking a week and she was losing her eyesight. And I said, we've got to have a better way to do this. So we invented that. Wow.

Wow. This is crazy. That story, I literally, I did the same thing. I did the exact, all of that. You forgot to patent it. All of that stuff other than the daughter part. You just didn't take the stuff to patent it. But inventing this supercomputer with my buddies and moving it into my garage and then doing

taking out the, and leaving just the fungi and all of it. And I'm like, I'm thinking, nobody's going to relate to this. And then I met David and it's incredible because I can't tell these two idiots. They don't know, but you and I are speaking a language because we're both inventing. So David, if I go out and I get my blood taken and do all this gene research and stuff like that, can I expect to get basically a prognosis, a menu of, okay, Jason, you are susceptible to dying from heart disease, but not cancer or leukemia, not Alzheimer's, et cetera, et cetera.

So then you can be a little bit more sort of focused on the preventive measures that you might take specifically to those. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. Without that, you're flying blind. It's like driving a car without a dashboard. Who would do that? Right.

So I'm very much driven by data and a lot of people are scared by what they might learn. You learn interesting and important things. So one of the things is it's a learning lesson. My kids all have their genome. Actually, I got my grandmother's genome done. She was about 85 and I gave her a tube to spit in. She was thinking worst present ever. Do you have the receipt?

Yeah, right, right. Can we give this back? So we do our genome because it does tell us what we should try to avoid. So I've got genes for type 2 diabetes and obesity. So I changed my lifestyle to avoid that. Same with my father. It's actually quite accurate in our experience. My father had genes or variant of a gene for macular degeneration.

And that's starting to show up. So I highly recommend it. Now, we don't know everything, of course, because we're still learning, but it's getting better and better each year as we learn what these variations lead to. And for instance, my wife, her mother has this bowel disease and she learned, my wife learned that she had the same susceptibility genes when she did the test. So she changed her whole life. She actually, she left work.

She started eating differently. And so those kind of things can really make a difference. Got it. So in addition to perhaps this intermittent fasting, exercise, diet, I think you mentioned that there's also some supplements, and maybe that's not the right term, that you can take that can augment this, amplify that work. Is that true?

Yeah, it is. I have to be careful because I'm not a doctor and also I'm in Harvard Medical School, that frowns on supplements. They like pharmaceuticals that are proven to work. But there's this middle ground where there are these safe, seemingly safe supplements that probably won't hurt you, that have a chance of helping you in the long run. Some of which I take, not a bunch.

And someone who's curious could find these things out by researching you online or reading one of your books or... How does Jason find out what to take? Yeah, I'm trying to get some free medical advice. No one's listening, David. Just whisper it. So my book, the book that came out a few months ago is called Lyspan, page 304, turn to that, and it's the cheat sheet. But try to read the other parts.

It's also a little bit interesting. Jason, a book is, imagine TV, but it's broken into pages. Like chapters. Left to right, top to bottom. Yes. Got it. Yeah. Actually, I put pictures in the book.

What? Oh, this is nice. Can I color those? Pop up? Yeah. And as far as the genes go, when you suggested we all get our genome tested or revealed, whatever, that we could just ask our own doctors and they would have the information on how to do that? Not really.

You just go direct to the companies and they send you a kit. Oh, so one of those. Right, right, right. Can I come to the lab, David? I guess that's what we're all getting at. We just want to come to the lab. You strap me to a table, take all my blood, strip my gene, whatever it is. Take it all.

Take my genes off. No, he's talking about a genome. Genome. Will. My friend. Genome. I just checked. I had somebody go out and check my genome on the yard.

He's Belgian. He's got a little red hat. That's a no. No, no, no. I think he's Belgian. My friend, my friend, Kevin Deeland thought 23 and me was a dating site. Anyway, very good. So, but can we get to Sean's point, like what is the best course of action?

I guess, so it's to get with one of these companies. I think people are worried now because they feel like if they send their DNA into 23 and me, they're going to, you know, next week, their uncle is going to be found out to be, you know, a mass murderer, which seems to happen a lot. Yeah. Which is kind of cool, I got to say. There is that downside. You can ask the companies to keep it totally anonymous.

I think that's the best way. That's what I did. But yeah, it's a slight risk. I'm not actually sure if there is a company that deletes the data once it's done. Yeah. That would be good. But you can come to the lab. You know, the problem is it can't have, you know, 10,000 or 100,000 people listening here,

maybe more come to my lab. But if you guys want to come, I can definitely do some tests and we can film that if you want and put you in the middle and see how you do. Wow. I love that. Very special to partner. Yeah. We do that around sweeps.

Do we have sweeps in podcasting? Sure. We'll create it. David, we have taken a lot of your time. I can't thank you enough. I thought we were going to get all the way through it without anybody making a jeans joke. And then I did it.

But that was too low even for me. That fruit was too low hanging. I could hear you guys restraining yourselves out of respect. But so I apologize for that. But thank you very, very much for joining us and making us a little less on smart today with your stuff. It is fascinating. I love this.

I'm going to check out your book and read more about you. It's so fascinating. David, what's your book called again? Lifespan. Lifespan. Yeah. Why we age and why we don't have to. Lifespan.

I love it. I love it. I can't even remember the name of the book. I'm such a dummy. That's an old brain of yours. I can't wait. Thank you. Thanks, David.

I need to get there. I can't wait for you to give me. Grow me a new brain. It's going to be great. Try being hungry a little bit, Will. For anything. Yeah. What's hungry?

David. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you guys. It's been fun. Thank you, my friend. All right.

Go ahead. Cheers. Bye. So I could have talked to him for nine hours. Isn't it pretty interesting that, you know, you cannot catch any of these diseases that kill you. They're all in us. All of these diseases.

They're all in us. And if you behave a certain way, you will turn those things on and they will kill you. You know what, you know what disease always gets turned on me is the horn dog disease. That always gets turned on. So my thing is like, if there's all of this information about all this anti-aging stuff that works, how is this not bigger news? Like how do we make this?

You know, I was, I was going to mention that to him and I thought, well, that might be offensive. Yeah. Exactly. It's like, like what, what are they holding back? Why is this not leading the national news? I think the problem is that people are so wrapped up. As you know, people are just busy with their, just other shit going on and they just go

like, yeah, that sounds great. Live forever. Okay. That sounds great. You don't understand. I just got insulted on Twitter. Right. It's true.

Those are the things that I think get the most attention is like, you know, the, the beauty product business is like a multi-multi-billion dollar. But then, but then you look at the existential issues like climate control and it's like, it's too far out there. If we do something that's really good today, we won't see the benefits for like 30 years. And this is the same with this stuff. By virtue, by very definition, most existential issue there is, is our existence. Right.

So, so I will not be thinking about it. Well, if you're going to throw up, we can just pause for a second. I almost barked. You know, it's, this is the problem with you snacking while we're working. I was barking. God damn it. And you know one of those hamster, like the water bottle hamster things, he has one for food.

These aren't long sessions. You can go an hour probably without chewing, right? You know what, because, because I need to fuel this chassis because I'm running so hot. I'm running so hot. Maybe why not your shot a little bit? I know what I'm talking about. Let me. Oh, Lord, God help us.

All right, guys. Jason, that was, that's disgusting. Will just pulling up his shirt and it's great. Look at that. Guy, you got to get a job. You're turning a shade of tan that you're going to be on the street one day with that. I work with my shirt off. I'm pretty sure 18 hours in the sun isn't on Dr. Davidson Claire's list of anti-aging.

You're good on vitamin D. The only reason I have 18 hours in the sun is because once it's the summer solstice, I moved to the Arctic Circle just to maximize sun per day. I'm, I'm so the opposite of you. Todd, my friend Todd calls me a human bounce card. Did I tell you that? Yeah, you are. I'm the whitest man.

Do you not go outside at all? You're not, you don't go swimming. You have a beautiful pool. I've swam in your pool many times, never, you've never been in it at any time I've used your pool twice and maybe 14 years. Is that true? Or 20 years? Jason, are you getting in the pool at all with your kids?

It was in about an hour ago. You were? I'm in it all the time. I went, I went for another long hike and stuff outside today. I worked out outside in the morning. What am I going to do? And I just attract sun and David, you guys got it. He didn't say.

Sorry, hang on a second. You attract sun. You attract the sun. Yeah, yeah. I'm like, wow. David said, he didn't say. The sun looks down, sees will and says, oh, let's, let's shoot it over there. This guy, this guy's got more power than me.

Look at him. So David said, and according to David, he didn't even say it, but David said this guy's living forever and you guys saw it. He's got more power than me. That's so disgusting. You're disgusting. You're fucking gross. Thank you.

I don't, I don't understand. You're so threatened. You're both so threatened and Sean, you said better than ever. This is the best I've looked. No, I don't think he did say that. That's true. That is true. You do look.

All right, guys. I love you. Okay. I love you. Okay. That was a great, Jason. That was amazing. I love that.

Great guest. Great guest. God, that was so cool. Honestly. Wait, are you both not going to be thinking about this? Should we once? All the time. Can we please go to Harvard, the three of us and let him move?

Wait, I'm not kidding. That would be nice. I'll do it. Let's do it. All right. Okay. Yeah. What, you guys have gone to, where'd you go?

Bucharest together? Istanbul. Bucharest in Romania. Yeah, we went to. Well, okay. The next door, Budapest or Istanbul. And then we went to, we've also been to Venice, Italy. Venice, Italy.

So we can make it to Boston. We can make it to Boston. Yeah. We can definitely make it to Boston. Yeah, I'm going to fucking Boston. Very special two-parter at the end of the season. We're going to do it for sweeps. We already agreed, right?

I'll fucking go there. I know fucking, as a matter of fact, I know a kid. His fucking mother used to work with me down in Dedum, Bud. He's doing his accents. This means we got to stop. He's turning into accents. Should we stop? Let's stop.

Okay. Okay, bye. Bye. God, it's the worst. I love how much weight we need today. Smart. Less. Smart.

Less. Less. Less. Less. Less. Less. Less. Less.