Dr. Patrick Linden
I believe that absolute immortality is something that belongs to a mystical perspective or religious perspective, but not to a, realistic, physical, scientific perspective. I think what we can hope for is this kind of contingent immortality.
Nadine J. Cohen
Welcome to "Grave Matters", a lively look at death.
Anthony Levin
All of us at "Grave Matters" would like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land we are recording from. We pay our respects to the Cammaraygal people and their elders, past and present. We also acknowledge the traditional owners from all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander lands and other
First Nations territories from which you are listening.
Nadine J. Cohen
A warning. This episode contains references to death and other themes related to dying. Please take care.
Anthony Levin
Nadine J. Cohen. Hi.
Nadine J. Cohen
Anthony Levin, Talofa Lava. Samoan.
Anthony Levin
Oh, love it.
Nadine J. Cohen
I'm sorry. To anyone Samoan listening for butchering your language.
Anthony Levin
I think that sounded rather authentic to my uneducated ear.
Nadine, can I ask you a face melting question?
Nadine J. Cohen
Sure. Face melt me away.
Anthony Levin
Okay, here goes. Is immortality something humankind should strive for or is it better consigned to science fiction?
Nadine J. Cohen
See, my, like, instinct is always like, hell, no. Like, I don't, I don't quite understand it, but I guess my reasoning on that is I see we live till what now? Like, the age expectancy generally in this country for some people is what, between 60 and 80? 60 and 90? Mostly towards the top end. But
that top end doesn't look very fun for most people. Yeah, and I guess the thing is, is that, like, maybe we could strive for immortality if we're in good condition the whole time. But also the pressure on the planet, like, how are we just going to have all these people all the time? Yeah, I know
this is very inarticulate of me, but, yeah, I lean towards no.
Anthony Levin
No, that's fair. I think. I think there's a bit of a, instinct about these things and you got to go with that. But also the health system. How would it support people to live a healthier existence for longer when we're already spending most of our budget on supporting the ageing and people towards
the end of life who need care?
Nadine J. Cohen
Yeah, there's so many systems that would go into like major panic. Infrastructure, health, all of these things. If we just, everyone just stays here forever. Like, that's bizarre.
Anthony Levin
Yeah, I mean, this is an issue that I think we should explore further and I frankly don't know the answer, but I guess I would like to see people having healthier end of life experiences. That seems like a,
Nadine J. Cohen
That's what we should be striving for, in my opinion. Making later life better.
Anthony Levin
Yes. And if it's longer, so be it.
Anthony Levin
Yeah. Well, there are these two historians of social progress, and they're Pulitzer Prize winning historians, Will and Ariel Durant. And they have argued, as many people do, that life has no inherent claim to eternity, that death is natural, and that the only truly immortal things are the ideas of,
you know, the great poets and philosophers of history. But in today's episode, we are going to turn the wise thinkers on their heads.
As we tackle the idea of curing death, we ask, is human mortality the ultimate fallacy? Could we eliminate ageing and live indefinitely? And if we are marching towards never ending scientific renewal, what are the risks for humanity or the planet of becoming an ageless civilization? Okay, Nadine, I
really want to know. What's your ideal lifespan? Like, when do you want to go out?
Nadine J. Cohen
I just want to go out when everything starts to turn for the worse. I don't know, it's a really interesting one and I guess I come from a point of like, both my parents died very young. My mom was 56 and my dad was 62. So I'm like, I don't know if I'm gonna have a long lifespan. But then at the same
time, their parents and their generations lived into their 90s. And like, all I can say is it's not an age thing. It's just when life starts being too difficult, too painful, too existentially painful, whatever it is, that's when I want to go out.
Anthony Levin
Yeah, yeah, I understand that. Well, my mission is to make sure you live for as long as possible.
Nadine J. Cohen
Thanks. That's like really sinister.
Anthony Levin
Not like that.
Nadine J. Cohen
No, I know, I know.
Anthony Levin
Well, today we're speaking with philosopher and longevity enthusiast Dr. Patrick Linden. Patrick is a lecturer at the University of Europe for Applied Sciences in Berlin, and has taught philosophy and ethics at NYU's Tandon School of Engineering. He has a PhD in moral philosophy and speech,
specialises in the philosophical issues surrounding life extension. He's also the author of a book called "The Case Against Death" and he's a co host of the Levity Podcast which focuses on ageing, science and radical life extension. Dr. Patrick Lyndon, welcome to "Grave Matters".
Dr. Patrick Linden
Thank you. Delighted to be here.
Anthony Levin
Lovely to have you.
Patrick, can you tell us the moment in your life which fundamentally shaped your perspective on death?
Dr. Patrick Linden
Well, like many people, I discovered death around 6, 7 years of age, something like that. And, my grandfather was playing with me and I thought, wait, he's not going to be able to play with me in a little while. And, most people get over that dread of death. They push it away and they don't think
much more about it. But I have not done that. I have kept that with me up until to now. So it wasn't so much death, perhaps, though, it was more that I felt that time was slipping away very quickly. When I was young, I got into philosophy in my teens and I was interested in time. What is this thing
that, as Schopenhauer says, is pushing up against us, this task master? I just looked at the things I wanted to do, and I looked at the time that I had, and, and, there was a big discrepancy here. I studied philosophy, I, I did my PhD and so on. But it was all in an analytic tradition. So we didn't
talk about existential issues very much. But then at dinner there was a conversation about death. And one of the, ladies there, she said, well, I hope I die before 80, you know, would be boring to live much longer. And I love ageing because I don't want to be stuck in the same stage all the time. So
I got a nice word for that. What happened? I was triggered. I was really triggered by that because I had. Yeah, I mean, that term was just perfect. And so because I had thought that we all, all felt that time is too short, life is too short, and it's terrible. And also, we don't want to go out of
existence. I felt we, we were all kind of haunted by that, but not. So, and then I talked to people around me, and most people were quite, complacent about death. I mean, they thought more about, like, while they still were alive, they didn't want to suffer too much, etc. But like, not existing was
not such a terrifying thought for most people. And so I started to look into the ideas here. And, I... Well, I, I discovered that there's a big tradition of accepting death. And so I wrote about that in my book, "The Case Against Death".
Nadine J. Cohen
You've taught undergraduates on the philosophy of death at the NYU School of Engineering. And each semester you ask them a question, the results of which apparently surprise you. Can you tell us about that?
Dr. Patrick Linden
Yeah. So each class I began with a survey, and these were questions regarding death and longevity. And, one of the questions was, how long do you wish to live in good health? And I know what I think the right answer is, and that is indefinitely. But the answer I got was always around 85 years, 90
years around there, which is exactly what we get if we live in a, developed country in the world. So the way things are is the way things ought to be. It seems like their idea was the natural lifespan is also the ideal lifespan. And that surprised me. But I mean, it's not just my students. I also
compared the results I got from larger surveys by the Pew Research Centre, and there you also got an average of, around 85 years as the ideal life.
Nadine J. Cohen
To me, that is based on more the physical side of things. And that, at 85 you're most likely to have some problems with your body and they're not going to necessarily improve. And it's, you know, quality of life versus quantity of life at that point. Is that, what a lot of people are basing this on,
Dr. Patrick Linden
I think you're absolutely correct. And there are other studies where. There's a study made by Stanford in 2015 where they actually ask the right questions because they ask, well, if you can have physical health but not mental health, how long would you want to live? And then you get the same result
around 85 or so, right? If you can have mental health but not physical health, you get the same answer. But if you can get both, how long do you want to live then? Most people want to live even beyond 120 years. So you're absolutely right. But here's the interesting thing. The question is, how long
do you ideally want to live? So ideal, when you think in terms of what's ideal, you usually abstract away things, right? You say, okay, then in an ideal world I would also be healthy. I mean, there are people who live to 100 who are healthy, quite healthy, healthy enough. But here it's as if they're
thinking really inside the box. They're expecting themselves to be really fragile after 85, and so they rather be dead. They think, they estimate. But if you ask in a different domain, if you ask, for example, how many people in this world ideally, do you want to be exploited by other people? How
many vulnerable people, groups of people, do you want to be exploited? People would say not, well, a couple of million or a few hundred thousand, this ideal, they would say zero. No one should be exploited. Right. Is that at all plausible or possible? It's not at all. It's completely ideal thinking.
So in other domains people can abstract away and think completely in terms of what's ideal. Well, when you ask them about how long they want to live, they really anchored at, ah, exactly where we are, around 85. It's as if they can't think outside the box about a longer life. That's very
Anthony Levin
You took the words out of my mouth when you said anchor. Because really it is an anchoring bias which is the effect of our current knowledge of average life expectancy. If people believe that average life expectancy in their country or in their region is about 85, that the anchoring bias is that
that's what they will live to. And therefore they're almost conditioned to think that that is the point at which life ceases to be worth living. But of course we could prime people so that they didn't think that, you could show them what life might be like beyond 90, 95, 100, even up to 120. And if
they saw that the conditions of life were more favourable, maybe their answers would be different.
Dr. Patrick Linden
Exactly, exactly. I think that people's attitudes are really right now a little bit, unsteady and ambiguous, and ambivalent because it's, it's a different time than new scientific possibilities and we don't quite know what to think about ageing and death. Now I would say, I mean also fewer people
are very religious and so a lot of people don't have access to those ways of handling ageing and death. So it's an, it's an issue that we, we need to look at, ah, closer.
Anthony Levin
Now the central thesis of your book, Patrick, "The Case Against Death", is that death is evil and we should rebel against it. You say mainstream culture is "death complacent" and you describe yourself as a "death abolitionist". Can you tell us what do you mean by those terms?
Dr. Patrick Linden
Yeah, so by "death complacent", I mean that people largely accept death rather passively. They're more afraid of the pain of dying than death itself, for example, they're more afraid of not being healthy than death itself. That is, ceasing to exist doesn't frighten people as much as we, we normally
would think. Complacency is also in that there isn't much of a call for the government to do something about ageing, for example, and that's a bit surprising because ageing is something that afflicts everyone and harms everyone. But there isn't this, what are we going to do about ageing? It's not,
for example, comparable to what are we going to do about, COVID. Right there, you want a response? A huge response. Right. And yet, COVID 19, the average age of people who died was. Yeah, I think Australia was around 82.
Nadine J. Cohen
Patrick's pretty close. According to the Australian bureau of Statistics, the median age of death from COVID 19 was 85.5 years old. What's the difference between average and median? Um... maths.
Dr. Patrick Linden
And yet no one was saved. Of course, their death was just delayed a little bit. Because the real problem here is ageing. But no one now is saying, all right, you know, COVID, that was really bad. A lot of people died. But you know what's even worse? The ageing that was a part of most. And that's
still going on. So why is, are we back to normal? Do you see? so that's a complacency, right? It's a societal level complacency. And it's reflected in, in public health spending and budgets that. So about 80% of spending on health is related to ageing.
Nadine J. Cohen
I mean, 80% of my personal budget is spent on anti ageing. As I can, there is, there is an entire industry or more who benefit from ageing.
Anthony Levin
It is a $77 billion industry, as I discovered.
Dr. Patrick Linden
Yeah, well, I mean, I am talking about what is really invested in real and basic anti-ageing science or ageing science, or the biology of ageing science so that we can slow the process down. So that's a complacency.
And I think there's also a taboo here, about expressing a wish to be young and to not die. There's no taboo in wanting health, but in saying, well, I also don't want to age and I also don't want to die, that's a bit much. I describe it as the wise view. And you're supposed to say this, death happens
to everyone, that's okay. And ageing is a natural part of life and I'm fine with it. I just want to age gracefully. Well, I want healthy ageing. But I think healthy ageing is an oxymoron, really. It's, a contradiction in terms. Because what is ageing but, but breaking down. And then of course, the
real symptoms are just getting worse and worse. There's a reason for why people who are around 90 are frail and have a 1 in 6 or 1 in 5 chance of dying over the next year.
Nadine J. Cohen
Just back to death abolitionism, if that's an ism. Can you break that down a bit more?
Dr. Patrick Linden
So a death abolitionist is somebody who says, well, death is a bad thing, and we should have as little of that as possible.
Dr. Patrick Linden
And we should fight it. We shouldn't say, oh, I accept it. We should say, no, this is terrible thing. I don't want to lose the people I love. I don't want to die. And we should take the steps that we can in order to prolong our lives. That is abolitionist. So I don't think in the physical world it's
possible to live forever. Because I think that if we are made out of parts. Everything that's made out of parts, logically, at some point can come apart, you know, at the very least at the heat death of the universe. Right.
Anthony Levin
If you're wondering what the heat death of the universe refers to, it's a scientific theory which says that eventually all the energy from the Big Bang will spread out over near infinite distances and the universe will stagger towards a cold and lonely death. Scientists call it the Big Freeze. I
call it the Cosmic Kaput. When all the galaxies go night night. When will this happen exactly? Set your alarm for 100 quintillion years from now.
Dr. Patrick Linden
So I think we can probably live a very, very long time, But I think real immortality is impossible now. So when I talk about, death abolitionism, yes, I think it would be the ideal would be not to die. I don't think it's something that realisable in a physical world. But I think it should be our
goal. Even though it's not obtainable, perhaps we should strive for it.
Anthony Levin
I was struck by the throwaway manner in which you said the heat death of the universe, as if this is a kind of trifle. But I guess what you're saying is that there are physical limits. The laws of physics itself limits human lifespan. And so you sort of espouse something which you call contingent
immortality. Is that more accurate?
Dr. Patrick Linden
Yeah. So that's a very important distinction, the distinction between absolute immortality and contingent immortality. So absolute immortality is when you cannot die, then you are truly immortal. Contingent immortality is that you're not going to die unless something happens to you. That is there is
nothing biologically necessary in your death. And your chances of dying do not increase by how long you have lived. There can always be accidents of various forms. But there's no necessity that you will live this long. But it's contingent on there being oxygen, food, etc. And not a big truck running
you over. Absolute immortality, on the other hand, it's like what the angels have or God has, right? And so I believe that absolute immortality is something that belongs to a, mystical perspective or religious perspective, but not to a, realistic physical, scientific perspective. I think what we can
hope for is this kind of contingent immortality.
Anthony Levin
Can you canvas for us what are the major orthodox arguments which comprise the wise view?
Dr. Patrick Linden
Okay, so the wise view is also known as apologism in the history of philosophy. And so the wise view consists of various justifications for death. So it says, well, death may seem terrible, but it's actually not bad. And then there's a tradition of showing how it's not bad or it's necessary, or it
would be worse if we did not have death. And so the arguments can be psychological. They can say, we humans, we are not built for eternity. We would go crazy if we lived too long. We would lose our motivation if we lived too long. We would be bored if we lived too long. We would lose our identity if
we lived too long. I mean, the person 500 years from now, me, what does that person, future person, have in common with me? We might lose ourselves along the way. And so we can't benefit from living for that much longer, though. Even arguments that we become immoral if we live too long. So these are
various psychological limitations that philosophers think that we have. One of the most famous arguments here is Bernard Williams' argument that it would be a tedium. It would be tedium of immortality, you know, just repetitive and meaningless. And then there are arguments that point to the social
effects of us living much longer and that society needs death in order to be renewed. Society needs death for new ideas to emerge and in order for us to not overpopulate the planet. And then there are the kind of moral justice point of view, the distributive justice point of view, the saying that
only the rich will benefit from life extension. So those are some of the arguments, and we have seen them since the ancient Greeks, right? In fact, you find almost all of the arguments that comprise the wise view in Lucretius, who was an Epicurean active in the century before the Common Era.
Anthony Levin
This is an interesting point because I accept what you say about that. And I thought to myself, well, given these attitudes of apologism are so ubiquitous and so enduring, surely that means there's something to them. How could so many thinkers throughout history, perhaps even before Lucretius and
Dr. Patrick Linden
Yeah. So a couple of answers here. I think one of the answers that I like is that there can be different purposes to philosophy. That one purpose is that philosophy helps us lead better lives. That's what can be known as kind of the therapeutic aspect of philosophy. And then there is philosophy as
truth finding. And I think that a lot of apologism is philosophy about how we live our best lives. That is, what kind of attitudes should we have to ageing and death if we want to live our best lives? And the philosophers mostly have said, acceptance. This is something that's going to happen. You
are going to age and die. So it's very counterproductive for you to resist it. On the other hand, I say, fine, put aside whether disbelief is going to make you happy or not, if it's going to make you live a happy life or not a happy life. Is it true that death is not bad for you, the ageing is not
bad for you? Just looking at it like that, I'd say, no, it's not true. Ageing is bad for you and death is bad for you. But I'm not saying it's going to make you happy to believe it or that your life is going to be much better if you believe it. Not at all. That's not what I'm doing. I'm doing
philosophy as just truth seeking, nothing more.
Nadine J. Cohen
There's the statement that the minute you're born, you start dying, that some people like to quote. But there's also the fact that like from, from birth, we're actively trying to avoid death, to bait death, to, you know, it's like our number one thing we, everything we do in some way is about
Anthony Levin
There's a tension there.
Nadine J. Cohen
And so marrying that with accepting that we're dying is just that harder reach, I guess, for people.
Dr. Patrick Linden
Yeah, I mean, I think it's a difficult topic and we have very ambiguous feelings about it. So on the one hand, we usually say that people can do anything to survive, and in some contexts that's right. But why then when you ask them if they want this life extending science, do they say no? For
various reasons, they value their health higher than they disvalue death or something like that. I mean, they rather be dead than, than keep on if they're sick. Right. So there are other things that they value. For example, there's a survey that shows that most people say that they rather die than
be a burden to people around them. Why do 38% say they do not want radical life extension that keeps them young and healthy and so on, and live beyond 120, as they did in the study by Pew Research survey. So, yeah, I mean, I think the truism that, you know, we all want to live and life seeks life
and so on, when you look at actual choices and answers, I mean, I think some of these answers are actually an effect of the fact that we are living in a society that has a wise view.
Anthony Levin
One of the criticisms of your work, Patrick, is that you give too much credence to the wise view that it is not the popular orthodoxy which you say it is. That is a lot more nuanced. Nuanced, in fact, how do you respond to that?
Dr. Patrick Linden
That it is a lot more nuanced, of course. But I still want to defend my view, and I think there are very good evidence in favour of my view. So there's a study from 2015 by Alan Alvarez in Norway, and he asked students if radical life extension is compatible with their cultures and their own deeply
held beliefs, moral beliefs. So radical life extension with technological means. They were presented this option and they said, if you compare with your culture's values and your deeply held beliefs and so on, is this compatible with those? How many said yes?
Anthony Levin
You want us to guess? Yeah, As a percentage, I'm going to go, with 35,
Dr. Patrick Linden
11. 11% of students said that radical life extension was compatible with their values and their society's and culture's values. They were also asked if they wanted to avail themselves of this in their older age, and again, I think it was 13% said yes. And so I think that reflects where society is
here. There's a great deal of suspicion here around this. So. So I, I think they are actually correct. They are actually correct in saying that society, the values of society, are not really in favour of radical life extension. Okay, so that, that's, that's one. And of course, there are
philosophers, and have been philosophers in history that have not embraced the wise view. And so you could perhaps say Aristotle, but I'm not so sure. All he does is in part, of his writing, he questions, you know, if we could perhaps age slower and live longer. And there are some Stoics who report
that Aristotle was complaining that we humans live shorter than some animals, like a tortoise.
Nadine J. Cohen
What was life expectancy in Aristotle's time?
Anthony Levin
The life expectancy for most of the humans who have lived in history, until about 100 years ago was, was under 30.
Dr. Patrick Linden
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. But the thing is, it wasn't like Aristotle made a sustained argument for why we should live longer or anything like that. In fact, it would be somewhat against the main drift of his philosophy, which is that we should live in accordance with nature like most Greeks
thought, right? I don't know anyone else in the ancient world that argued in favour of longevity or against death. And then you jump forward and you do get some people like Descartes, for example, was very much into life extension with science. Of course he died when he was, I guess 50. So he went
to Sweden, he got, caught a cold. I mean, he was, he was supposed to be the tutor of a queen and she insisted that he get up like at 5 in the morning. And he was French. I mean, he liked to sleep. It's like was a culture clash that killed him, and the cold.
Nadine J. Cohen
I want to write a book about Descartes. I'd call it "He Went to Sweden and Had a Cold,
Nadine J. Cohen
and Died". I mean, yeah, technically Descartes was 53 and he died from pneumonia. But we never let the truth get in the way of a good laugh. To misquote our favourite dead philosopher, "cogito ergo lol".
Dr. Patrick Linden
I'm not just saying that, that philosophers have tried to come up with reasons for why we should accept death and why death isn't so bad. It's also that it's in our stories that we tell. If you look at the stories where longevity is a theme, it's always a problem.
Anthony Levin
Interesting.
Dr. Patrick Linden
I mean in, in "Harry Potter", what, what is it the villain wants? Voldemort.
Anthony Levin
You can't say his name.
Dr. Patrick Linden
No. Okay, I'm sorry. He was immortal, but then he has to kill Harry Potter. It's typical, right?
Dr. Patrick Linden
And the ring, in the "Lord of the Rings", it extends your life, but then you become a creep like Gollum, right? And Bilbo says, oh, I can feel my life is too extended, too long, right? So yeah. In so many stories we tell. This is the message. You know what Sisyphus did?
Dr. Patrick Linden
Why Sisyphus had to push the rock?
Anthony Levin
That was his punishment.
Dr. Patrick Linden
For what?
Anthony Levin
Well, did he not make a deal for immortality?
Dr. Patrick Linden
Well, he actually tricked the death to release him back into life. So he died and then he came up with a story, a subterfuge to fool death, to release him back to life. He said, you know, my wife hasn't made the right kind of sacrifices. You need to release me from death so I can go back and fix
things. And once he's back into life, he stays there. He's trying to trick death.
Nadine J. Cohen
Always blaming his wife. Always blaming women.
Dr. Patrick Linden
And so he gets this punishment. Where he has to do this futile labour forever. Right. And so it can be used and has been used by authors to show, look, immortality would mean we would be like Sisyphus. We would just keep pushing the rock. Always the same. Right.
Nadine J. Cohen
I think my references are a little more modern. I think of "Dorian Gray" and I, think of. This is a little bit more niche, an amazing film called "Death Becomes Her", with Goldie Hawn. And both "Dorian Gray" and "Death Becomes Her" deal with the aesthetics of ageing as a means of immortality.
Dr. Patrick Linden
Well, all of these stories the moral is always the same, that we shouldn't wish for immortality, and somebody who does is evil. Yeah, I mean, do you know a story where the hero is seeking immortality in this world and the villains are trying to stop him or her?
Nadine J. Cohen
No, but I might write one now.
Anthony Levin
Talking about the aesthetics of ageing might be a nice little, leap into talking about Bryan Johnson.
Nadine J. Cohen
Ugh. Do I have to?
Anthony Levin
I know this is your favourite topic, Nadine.
Nadine J. Cohen
Look, he may have caused me to make a wrong turn on my way here.
Nadine J. Cohen
Because I was so angry at him for what he was saying.
Anthony Levin
Or was it because you were crushing so hard?
Nadine J. Cohen
I was crushing very hard on him. He sounds like the ideal man. He sounds like great fun. You can never go to a restaurant, you can never go to a movie.
Anthony Levin
Talk about Sisyphean Tedium. If you're unfamiliar with Bryan Johnson, he's a tech entrepreneur who made his fortune acquiring and later selling the mobile payments app Venmo for a cool $800 million. What did he do with all those dollar bucks? Well, he invested them in AI neurotechnology, and now
Blueprint, a business dedicated to developing the ultimate life extension protocol. Since doing so, he's arguably become the world's longevity poster child, touting himself as "the most measured person in human history". It's just worth noting that this is a person who, as part of his experiment, he
takes over 100 supplements a day. He's received blood transfusions, including from his own son. He's undergone gene therapy, which has been tested on mice. So pretty out there. He uses shock therapy on his genitals. There's a whole other podcast about that. And in April, he admitted that his use of
the drug rapamycin may have actually sped up his ageing process. So there's been a lot of media coverage of this person and a lot of criticism of what he's doing.
Nadine J. Cohen
Mostly from me.
Anthony Levin
I guess our question is, is Bryan the guinea pig we need to trailblaze a path to human longevity. Or should we be more cautious about attempts by, often, billionaires to live longer?
Dr. Patrick Linden
Okay, so the positive thing with Bryan is his slogan, don't die. I think that's very sound advice.
Nadine J. Cohen
Patrick is referring to the mantra at the heart of Bryan Johnson's ethos. The idea is to achieve what is called longevity escape velocity. For every year that passes, a person gains more than one year of life expectancy. In fact, what began as a one man trial has since become the Don't Die movement.
With chapters of Don't Diests springing up in cities around the world. They profess to be at war with death. And while it might sound fanciful to fight death one pill at a time, the science is catching up. According to David Sinclair, an Australian geneticist at Harvard, one day in the not too
distant future, we will solve ageing.
Dr. Patrick Linden
Now, the positive thing I also think, is that he's not necessarily saying that everyone should emulate him. Well, they couldn't even, right? He spends, one or two million dollars a year on himself.
Nadine J. Cohen
Well, just on not ageing. On himself I'm sure he spends a lot more.
Dr. Patrick Linden
Yeah. So I think the positive thing is that he brings this idea into the discourse, that "don't die" becomes a thing people have to make their mind up about, how they think about, right? And the negative thing is, and the thing that you hear from people in the longevity community, the kind of
internal criticism is one, the way he goes about it when he tries so many different supplements. If you try 100 different supplements, how do you really know which one works and which one doesn't work? And how do you know how they combine to work or not work and if they're dangerous or not? Now, he
is always measuring himself. So he would probably catch most adverse effects earlier. So for example, he stopped doing rapamycin because he thought it had adverse effects. But there are people, scientists who only take rapamycin who report more beneficial results. So what can we make of Bryan
Johnson's use of rapamycin? When it's done in conjunction with the 99 other supplements, it's very, very difficult to know the scientific value of what he's doing. And there is also another criticism. He is very wealthy so why not instead of doing this one person experimentation with tonnes of
different ways, why doesn't he sponsor or pay for real scientific studies of these things with many participants where there's just one variable? But overall, I think, despite everything, I think he's still beneficial because he starts a conversation. We're having a conversation.
Nadine J. Cohen
Yeah, absolutely.
Anthony's written a question here saying Brian Johnson's experiment isn't purely altruistic. I would argue it's not altruistic at all in any sense. Also, he's referred to it as an ethical framework, and I don't understand how that's possible. Can you weigh in on that? He said, the Don't Die movement
is a religion. It's a spirituality, it's a philosophy. It's whatever you want it to be.
Anthony Levin
It's a fugazi. It's a fugazi.
Nadine J. Cohen
The one I took issue with was ethical framework, because I don't, please explain to me how that is.
Dr. Patrick Linden
Yeah. I'm not familiar with his doctrines close enough to give a fair criticism, I think. Okay. Working off what I know, of course, there is good core value in that he values life, for sure. And I don't think there's any reason to suspect that he values being the only man who lives longer. I mean, I
think he probably has friends. I think it would be very difficult to be friends with him since he has to keep this very strict schedule about everything. The thing is, people are very different, and I, I think, you know, Brian, do your thing. And he has people around him who may be just, different
in the way he's different. I mean, he was speaking at the conference, and I got to ask a question. So, I basically asked the question that a lot of people want to ask. And that is, I mean, isn't this unbearably boring? So he, he lives according, he lives according to this protocol, right? It's,
it's, and it's like he made this perfect, algorithm that controls his life, you know, into how many grams of everything he has to eat and so on, and when he has to sleep and all that. I mean, isn't it very confining? And he says, oh, no, no, it's great. It's very liberating. And on one level, I can
see there is an argument here, right. The more things we make into habits we don't have to think about, which liberates us. That is true. I mean, if we had certain frames around our lives, there's a lot of decision we don't have to make, then it creates more freedom to make the kind of decision we
do want to make. And some people find a pleasure in that.
Nadine J. Cohen
Well, I think he was raised in the LDS Church as a devout Mormon, and there is a rigidity and a control of life in that. So he's no stranger to control and willpower and all of the above. So I think clearly there's a comfort in it, but he described himself, or Louis Theroux actually described him,
as having no vices. But I would argue that the whole, his lifestyle is a vice.
Dr. Patrick Linden
Yeah, but I mean, I don't want to rest my criticism on the fact that he's different and he's very different from, for example, how I am. Right. So I mean, it's good, you know, he can do Bryan Johnson. And here we are talking about it and we're talking about longevity. And if something really works
for him, it's tremendous. I mean, if something, if he starts to isolate. Well, look, this, this seems to be the most important thing that I'm doing, then that's something we can all learn from and then maybe we can get another healthy year from that.
Nadine J. Cohen
Yeah, he's not hurting anyone.
Anthony Levin
No. Well, I mean, he's hurting his genitals, but yeah, that's his business.
Anthony Levin
That's entirely his business. But what I would say is just to emphasise your point that there is questionable scientific value to this so called experiment for the very reasons that you've articulated. And now he's commercialised his regimen into Blueprint. And to be fair, he's not the only near
billionaire or billionaire to do this. I mean, Jeff Bezos also has a biotech company called Altus Labs.
Nadine J. Cohen
Anthony, can you just say what Blueprint is for the people listening?
Anthony Levin
Sure. Well, Blueprint is Bryan Johnson's website where you can go and purchase products, supplements that will purportedly improve your lifespan and your longevity. And look, I got the whole suite.
Nadine J. Cohen
Takes you four hours to take them every day. How long does it take him to take 100 supplements?
Anthony Levin
Yeah, well, in the Netflix special you see him, you know, eating the grey vegetable gruel and taking the million supplements and that's his day.
Nadine J. Cohen
For those curious about the life of Bryan, the Netflix documentary is called "Don't Die: The man who Wants to Live Forever".
Anthony Levin
Look, we try to reserve judgement about these things because maybe in 50 years we'll be eating our hats. Maybe, you know, we will all be doing things that take us to 120 and Bryan will be our Lord, the benefactor.
Nadine J. Cohen
It's not that I think everything he's doing is wrong. I can't say that.
Nadine J. Cohen
Like, I'm not a scientist, I haven't done a study. I can say everything. I just find him insufferable in how he's going about it. Cos he keeps saying he's doing this for humanity. No, you're not.
Anthony Levin
Yeah, well, that's been one of the major critiques of this whole thing, is that was there an underlying agenda all along? And, I mean, who knows? The jury's still out.
Dr. Patrick Linden
I think, though, if you say, would the world be better off, without him being the way he is? And I would say, no, I actually think he's in that positive.
Anthony Levin
We wanted to interrogate the idea that longevity science would ever be accessible to the masses rather than simply being the plaything of plutocrats. But Patrick was adamant that accusations of elitism were misguided. We asked him to tell us why.
Dr. Patrick Linden
Well, a lot of reasons. I mean, if the principle is that we can't develop anything until we also have a guarantee that everyone can immediately access it, then we wouldn't develop anything. Uh-huh. At all. Nothing at all. I mean, there are things we have to accept that we wish that more people could
have them, but it's still good that some people can have them. So, for example, heart transplants. Oh, no, we should not have developed that because maybe we can't distribute them. No, rather we develop them and then we work as hard as we can to distribute them in an equitable way.
So it would be, just a ban on progress at all if we, if we first had to, you know, distribute everything else fairly. I mean, anything starts with some people adopting it, and then usually if it's good, it spreads, like cell phones, for example. In Sweden, we called them, "yuppie teddy bear". It was
like a status symbol. You know, the yuppies carry them like this. They're so big.
Nadine J. Cohen
That's so great.
Dr. Patrick Linden
They have to have, like, people call them so they could be important and show that they had it right. And now, you know, now a dirt farmer in Africa can have a cell phone. Also, if you look at the billionaires, the problem is exactly the opposite to what you hear in the media. The problem is not
that billionaires are spending too much money on, on slowing ageing. It's absolutely the contrary. They're not spending enough money. So there's a study by Adam Gries and Nathan Cheng that shows that among the possibly - We don't know exactly how many billionaires there are in the world, but there
might be around 6,000 billionaires, only about between 10 and 30 actually investing for real in anti-ageing science. That's almost no one. It's quite amazing. It's as if they are, competing to be the richest men in graveyard. I mean, if you have all the money, wouldn't you want more time to spend
Nadine J. Cohen
I'm not overly surprised by that.
Dr. Patrick Linden
The whole popular media and the media has a narrative where the billionaires are spending all their money on life extension, when in fact it might be, you know, top 30 out of 6,000. Almost no one. And you talked about Altus Labs before. And so Jeff Bezos is rumoured to invest in that perhaps $3
billion, but that's like one percentage of his net wealth. And I looked at what he spent on his, luxury yacht. Hm. And I think that was 500 million. So he spent not that much more on trying to live longer than he spent on his yacht. I mean, I think the problem is that they spend too much money on
yachts and dumb things. Not that they spend it on helping us live longer, healthier lives.
Nadine J. Cohen
I think it's more that they're spending it on themselves living longer lives.
Dr. Patrick Linden
Yeah. I mean, the thing is, I think billionaires are people who have been very lucky, but they're, not necessarily the wisest people. I think they also believe in the wise view that acceptance is what they have to do. And look at Elon Musk.
Nadine J. Cohen
I mean, I'd rather not.
Dr. Patrick Linden
If he took a bit time to reflect, I think he would come to perhaps a conclusion that living longer would be a good idea.
Anthony Levin
So there's one chapter in your book that I kept coming back to, and that's the one about overpopulation, because it touches on a pretty common objection, a tricky issue. And in that chapter, you debunk several arguments about the relationship between living longer and our supposed resource scarcity,
which is something we explored in season one. What do we really misunderstand about overpopulation? And what does it have to do with what you call "lingering guest phenomenon"?
Dr. Patrick Linden
Okay, yes. So, first of all, the overpopulation argument has been with us for at least 2000 years. So even in Lucretius, there is the argument that we must die in order to make space for the next generation. So imagine that at the time where we were, all of humans, were maybe 100 million on this
planet. We were concerned about overpopulation, right? And then, of course, it's mostly connected to Malthus at the point when he wrote we were about a billion. So we were a billion in 1800. In 1900, we were about 2 billion, and now we're about 8 billion. So it looks like we're on the way to kind of
catastrophic overpopulation. But because the birth rates are declining so sharply, we are not, in fact, we are bound to stabilise at the end of this century, stabilise around 8, 9, at most 10 billion people, and then to, sustain or decline in population. And the UN is predicting this while also
believing that we are going to increase in life expectancy, so we are going to live longer, yet the population is going to stabilise or drop.
Nadine J. Cohen
Patrick, spot on. The UN predicts that by the year 2085, the global population will peak at 10.3 billion.
Dr. Patrick Linden
Now, if you look around the world, most people live in countries that do not have population growth. And that's despite us, doubling average life expectancy since 1900. They are stable or they are losing population. And why is that? That's because population growth is governed by birth rates more
than death rates. It's not how long we live, it's how many children we have. That primarily determines population growth. So you look at the longest living countries like Japan, Sweden, Norway and so on, they also have a declining population if you just look at population growth without looking at
immigration. So that's not a sustainable number. So there are about five countries in the world where we might have a population problem. Afghanistan and Bangladesh, Nigeria and Egypt. And, those are basically the only countries with a large population that is also seeing a large population growth.
But most of the world, the population is coming down. So that just establishes that despite a doubling of life expectancy, we can also have a stable or shrinking population. Up to a point though, and here is the lingering guest problem. So if, though we had a treatment that could give us a doubling
or a ten doubling, a tenfold increase in life expectancy, what then would happen? And what if each woman started to have more children, right? And then they would have children who will have children, who would have children while nobody would leave. So no one would leave the planet and they would
keep coming generation after generation after generation. So in such a very extreme scenario, could we be overpopulated? And the answer is yes, we could be. But we are not rabbits, right? So we don't have to be. We're human beings, we have a choice. And this is something that's over, like, so often
overlooked here. It's this kind of extremely bleak determinism where human beings are like some insects or like, rats or rabbits or. It's as if we can't be aware of what we are doing. And so the lingering guest problem is that we can get overpopulation, just like you can get too many people at a
party if people keep coming. And no one leaves. so then of course, you can have, a kind of principle for solving that. You can say, okay, we can't have any more new guests until some guest leaves. That's how nightclubs often work.
Nadine J. Cohen
I want to be the door bitch for Earth.
Nadine J. Cohen
You? No. You? No.
Anthony Levin
While Nadine wielded her newfound power, we shifted gears and asked Patrick a more personal question. Does he fear death?
Dr. Patrick Linden
Okay, this is a difficult question. Fear can mean a behaviour of avoidance. So I fear death in the sense that I see that it's bad for me and I'm trying to avoid it. Fear as kind of a visceral emotion. I don't have time to get into that fear. I have felt it. But you need a little time to kind of not
be distracted by every day and everything you have. Like, when I prepare for this podcast, I'm not sitting there being, oh, my God, I'm going to die. I'm focusing on, okay, now I'm going to prepare for a podcast and now I'm going to have fun with you on the pod. I'm not afraid, I'm smiling. I'm a
happy person. I have felt fear of death and, and most people think that, okay, how can we get rid of that feeling? And I don't think we should get rid of that feeling. I mean, we should if it destroys your possibilities of living a happy life, etc. Right. And, but just to have the recognition that
being annihilated can be a bad thing. I see that as, knowledge really, and not something to overcome. It's just I understood that complete blankness and nothingness is worse for me than continuing existing. And then I could feel a fear.
Nadine J. Cohen
Patrick, what would you like your family or friends to say about you at your funeral?
Dr. Patrick Linden
Well, that, I was honest and that, I was reliable. Those are, I think, amazing two virtues, that I strive for.
Nadine J. Cohen
I love that.
Anthony Levin
Very succinct. And what if you were on your deathbed? Would you confess?
Dr. Patrick Linden
There is another question I rather answer, and that is what would my last words be? I think I have a lot of self control and I also think I know what is culturally expected of me to say. I'm expected to say something that doesn't scare people. Like, I've been blessed, I had a full life, thank you.
Something like that. Now, as somebody who's a enemy of death, that would be a kind of defeat. So I'm playing with the idea of saying something defiant. Right. I've only just begun. No, I don't want to die? I think that would probably be more honest. But am I going to go gracefully or, or with
resistance, completely, just ungracefully? I haven't decided yet.
Nadine J. Cohen
I choose humour. My favourite, I think, one of my favourites is Spike Milligan's last words. Famously were, I told you I was sick.
Dr. Patrick Linden
You know what they said Oscar Wilde said?
Nadine J. Cohen
Ah yes, remind me.
Dr. Patrick Linden
He said, either those curtains go or I do.
Dr. Patrick Linden
Because those are hideous curtains. They go, or I...
Anthony Levin
Mine would probably be, I'm pretty sure it was the salmon mousse. Reference to the great Monty Python sketch about the Grim Reaper. Well, Patrick, like a true philosopher, you've, navigated very treacherous territory. And when you didn't like the question, you came up with a new one that you
preferred, which I applaud you for. And we wish that you don't die for a long time, but when you do, you go to the Big Bezos Yacht in the Sky. Thank you for being a guest on "Grave Matters". It's been a delight.
Dr. Patrick Linden
Thank you. I had a wonderful time.
Anthony Levin
So that was Dr. Patrick Linden. Nadine, after all that talk of life extension, are you going to rush home and zap yourself in the crotch?
Anthony Levin
Okay. I thought that would just be the first thing that comes to mind to achieve this longevity.
Nadine J. Cohen
It's not Wednesday.
Anthony Levin
And maybe, the elixir of life is not NAC and Resveratrol and all these other supplements, it's...
Nadine J. Cohen
Crotch zap.
Anthony Levin
And on a more serious note, Nadine, what are your thoughts on not dying?
Nadine J. Cohen
I mean, my thoughts, I think, were made pretty clear during that conversation. I think that, you know, this is interesting and, you know, good on these guys for, like, pushing boundaries. But, no, my thoughts are just, No. But more importantly, I need a T shirt that says "Earth's Door Bitch". And
you need to make that happen.
Anthony Levin
So thanks again to Dr. Patrick Linden. In our next and final episode of the season, we talk to psychosexologist Chantelle Otten about Freud, grief, terminal illness, and finding your kink.
Chantelle Otten
I help people feel accepting within themselves and within their own reality and preferences. I get to hear a lot of naughty stories and a lot of fun stories Unfortunately, I get to hear a lot of terrible stories. But that's the shitty side of my job, too, and that's my responsibility to hold that.
Nadine J. Cohen
If this episode has raised issues for you and you'd like to seek mental health support, you can contact beyondblue on 13002024636 or visit beyondblue.org au. Also Embrace Multicultural Mental Health supports people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. Visit embracementalhealth.org
.au. For 24/ 7 crisis support call Lifeline on 13 11 14, or in an emergency please call 000.
Anthony Levin
"Grave Matters" is an SBS podcast written and hosted by me, Anthony Levin, Nadine J. Cohen and produced by Jeremy Wilmot. The SBS team is Joel Supple, Max Gosford, Bernadette Phuong Nam Nguyen and Philip Soliman. If you'd like to get in touch, email audio@sbs.com.au. Follow and review us wherever
