Undisciplinary
Undisciplinary
Don’t Die: on the longevity obsession
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Dr Lisa Mitchell and A/Prof Diego Silva join us to discuss Netflix’s “Don’t Die” and use Bryan Johnson’s longevity regimen to talk about fear, meaning, and the politics of health. We ask what gets lost when anti-aging turns into an identity, a moral badge, or a business model.
• Brian Johnson’s “don’t die” project as a story about wealth, control, and death anxiety
• the tedium of optimization and the way routines become moral signaling
• longevity culture’s overlap with masculinity aesthetics and looksmaxing
• confusion between health, longevity, beauty standards, and virtue
• mind versus body authority and what it means to distrust the mind
• where philosophy and existential dread sit alongside “longevity science”
• ageism debates and the gap between chronological age and health
• level-one basics of preventive medicine versus extreme protocols
• paranoia, environmental toxins, and auditing everyday life
• ethical criticism of calling death the “greatest humanitarian challenge”
• what community, love, and friendship look like across a very long life
Undisciplinary - a podcast that talks across the boundaries of history, ethics, and the politics of health.
Follow us on Twitter @undisciplinary_ or email questions for "mailbag episodes" undisciplinarypod@gmail.com
Welcome And Land Acknowledgement
SPEAKER_00Undisciplinary is recorded on the unceded lands of the Wadarong peoples of the Kulin Nation in Geelong and the Gadigal peoples of the Aurora Nation in Sydney. We pay our respects to elders past and present.
SPEAKER_02Medical history has been made and conducted in action.
SPEAKER_00Welcome to Undisciplinary, a podcast where we're talking across the boundaries of history, ethics, and the politics of health, co-hosted by Chris Mays and Janine Williams. Okay, so welcome to another episode of Undisciplinary. This is the second for the year. We're gonna try to keep up with uh once a month. Uh goal is I guess 10. Because those earlier months don't count so much. Um but uh we're doing something a bit different today. Um we are having a conversation with uh not just Jane and I, but with uh some special guests about a particular topic. Um Jane, how have you been, by the way, before we get straight into what we're doing?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I've been alright, thank you, Chris. And you? Well?
Why Don’t Die Hooks People
SPEAKER_00I've been well. Uh we do have uh a new uh puppy, I think I was telling you about a bit of news on that front. Um so that's exciting. Uh bringing and caring for a tiny little dog um called Pickles. But you know, maybe pickles will come in sometime. Uh but how to segue into this topic. Well, basically, we are going to be talking about a documentary today called Um Do Not Die. And it is interesting to me. I was on holidays, so I guess keeping up a bit more of the personal story. Uh just holiday recently at my parents' house, and there was a book on the shelves called Do Not Die in the Bush, which I bought for my sister once when she was going on a bushwalk. Um, but there it was a very specifically contained thing, you know, do not die in a book in the bush, it makes sense. Uh but the this documentary is um, I guess, about do not die in general, um, as a both a desirable and seemingly achievable uh goal. Uh so Jane, you've watched the documentary, and uh our two guests have also watched the documentary. Do we want to introduce them?
SPEAKER_03Sure, sure. So I'm I'm excited to see how this goes. Um and I'm sure it will go very well. So today we yeah, we've got wonderful repeat guests, Diego Silva and Lisa Mitchell. Diego, we've chatted to before about sports. What else? Men.
SPEAKER_00He's a resident expert on female.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, Diego's a man guy. And uh Diego um is at Sydney Health Ethics at the University of Sydney, and he is what do you call yourself? A bioethicist, I guess. Yeah, that works. Man, bioethicist and man.
SPEAKER_01In that order, yeah.
SPEAKER_03Sorry, I've I've kind of laid this man thing onto you. You've never actually done that yourself. So lest the listener uh think that Diego is some kind of a uh Yeah. Diego's very nice. Um, other guest is Lisa Mitchell, who you might remember from um our blue episode, one of my favorites. Lisa is a geriatrician in Geelong. Um, and she we've talked to her before about I guess age stigma and aging and being old. So welcome both. Hello again.
Meet Brian Johnson’s Longevity Quest
SPEAKER_00Um yeah, so I think uh with the those expertise of um man and age, uh, I think it's quite helpful to bring that in and and there are many many other insights, uh, we're hoping, to this documentary. So maybe I'll just give a brief rundown of what this documentary generally is about, where people can watch it if they so choose. Um so yeah, this documentary is uh available through Netflix. Uh, I believe, Diego, you signed up purposefully.
SPEAKER_01Just for one month.
SPEAKER_00And I have you have you have you cut your subscription?
SPEAKER_01I did, although I am enjoying Archer and uh Rick and Morty and all the other wonderful cartoons on Netflix.
SPEAKER_00Great. Well, I'm glad to hear that you have um cancelled your subscription because I signed up to Netflix about three years ago just for one little thing and I'm still on it. So yeah, this is a Netflix documentary uh called Don't Die. Um, and it's looking at uh this guy called Brian Johnson, not the lead singer of ACDC, um, but a more nerdy version of the Brian Johnson, uh, who is a guy who made a lot of money through um tech stuff, generally speaking, and is now, like a lot of uh people who become extremely wealthy, trying to extend his life um as much as possible. I guess in the uh legacy of Walt Disney, Walt Disney, I was gonna call him Walt Disney. Walt Disney, who, you know, tried to use who's frozen his brain, I think. Um Howard Hughes, who I guess was a bit of a germaphobe but trying to extend his life through different ways, and um Brian Johnson now, and a host of others, Peter Thiel, who are seeing the way that they could use their enormous wealth to um get over that hurdle that I guess people uh that confronts us all, which is death. Uh so this documentary sort of chase traces him, his regimen, how he came to this view, um, and spoiler, he uh doesn't die in the documentary, but you know, who knows what will happen in the sequel. Also, I don't think you need to rush out and watch this documentary necessarily. I think what we're interested in are the way that um Brian Johnson and this issue in general is reflective of maybe a subculture, um, particularly this sort of tech bro, um wealthy, often man who seeks to harness um medical science to transform their body and live as long as possible. But I'd say that it also provides an interesting window into a lot of other um cultural aspects around health, uh dieting, fear of aging, fear of dying, uh, a whole range of things which um we've got these big enormous brains here to uh think through and um discuss. Uh anything that anyone wants to say that I've missed out that I should include in this general overview so far, Jane?
SPEAKER_03A thing that occurred to me, Chris, when we were talking before we started, um where where you were talking about don't die in the bush, and this is about don't die, is that the documentary is introduced with somebody saying, you know, we act as if aging and dying is normal or natural or something. I don't remember what what adjective they used, as if that's some kind of social construct, you know, that we've that we've all accepted that that these things um are true and thus, you know, and that and that we're somehow weaker for having accepted that. So I I do think that that's relevant because, as well as all of the things you said, Chris, it's almost like they're trying to turn some sort of natural life course on its head, as if that's a thing that we've decided exists, but it doesn't in real in some kind of other reality. I don't know. It's weird, all of it.
Tedium, Regimen, And Moral Signaling
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so the um in some of those quotes, so not only do they say natural, but because we think it's natural, we think it's good, is uh because I remember that quote quite distinctly as to um because I think that while most people think death is natural, I'd say that there's a general intuition that it's not a good thing or a desirable thing. Obviously, there are contexts in which it can be, but um but the other things were yeah, the goal of neutralizing aging was one of the other things they talked about um in the sort of setup. Um and that uh there was a quote from a guy called Andrew Steele, who we might visit later, who is one of these scientists who says that aging is our greatest humanitarian challenge. So this sense that because we are all going to die, um, but that's not something we should accept as a fact, um, and that there is this humanitarian ch challenge to harness the powers of science to reverse this uh reality. Um Diego or Lisa, do you uh have anything you would like to respond to from that initial outline?
SPEAKER_01It took me about um well over an hour before I started jumping up and down in dismay. And uh that's pretty good for me. So I thought that um uh there's a lot there's a lot to unpack in in in the movie, but there's also just a lot to unpack in terms of um I think the ecosystem in which the protagonist exists, um, that I think is um that I think is worth sort of investigating, or at least interrogating and um victim or perpetrator, uh, I think is a a question that I I I'm not sure I've resolved for myself. Um I I yeah, there were there were moments where I felt just downright pity for him.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah, I would agree that um I think I was expecting um, and maybe the listener may take from my comments that I was sort of expecting this very sort of uh I guess shallow one-way narrative of here is this guy, lots of money, trying to extend his life. But there is, yeah, certainly a tragic dimension to all of this, and and the the further I got into it, the more um you sort of see not only his own backstory, but then also um I think culturally around death and that or that ecosystem that you were talking about, Diego. Uh a certain yeah, I don't maybe it's patronizing to say uh pity pitiable, but there is um there was something there, I thought.
SPEAKER_01And and I think that I think the invocation, I don't know if you did it intentionally, but the invocation of tragedy is really interesting, right? Because if we think about the classical form of tragedy, where you know we we think about the conclusion sort of foregone from the beginning of the narrative, we know how the narrative is gonna end. It's almost it's uh it's almost tragedy and intentionally anti-tragedy, or at least sort of contra-tra tragedy, in terms of if we think of death as the ultimate end to any story, this is sort of trying to flip that on its head.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01So there is sort of even just playing with the notion of tragedy itself, I think is quite a sort of an interesting angle to that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, definitely. I think that um the the sense that yeah, that denial that death is uh something that can cut short the narrative, um, and a belief that it won't, which seem to, you know, come through in some of his statements about his hopes and expectations uh for you know living multiple hundreds of years uh or at least maybe two hundreds of years with his son, um yeah, was sort of struck me in that sort of tragic register as well. But Lisa, how did you uh sort of experience the documentary? I mean, just watching it like any kind of initial.
SPEAKER_04So my main initial thought was tedium. Um when I started watching it, I thought, oh my gosh, maybe I'll watch the next half tomorrow. And then I realized I'd only watched 11 minutes. Um I found it, there was something kind of very excruciatingly tedious about it for me, although this person's story is really interesting. And I found the framing of it really curious because there is a part of you that gets this sense that wow, this guy's actually gonna be immortal. And I think there was a scene where he was even, I don't know what he was trying to do, it's like a walk on water or something. Like there is the way that people he talks about it and other people talk about him, that he's gonna be the guy that just defies death as as if that's even possible. I found that very interesting because I kind of got sucked into it, even though um I'm one of those people that really does accept that death happens.
SPEAKER_00Talk us to us a little more about the tedium, because there's like tedium, I guess, as a viewer, but his life also seems quite tedious and pretty boring, to be frank, I guess.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, although that part of it, like the structure, the meal planning, the knowing what you're doing each part of the day. I didn't I I kind of I was a bit into that. Um but I did there are parts where you go, gosh, he finishes eating at 11 a.m. in the morning. Like that's a long, that's a long day of being hungry. Um there, I guess there are lots of things that he does that I think most people would find quite challenging. Um, was anyone tempted to get get on board with his lifestyle?
SPEAKER_01I wanted a burger.
SPEAKER_03That's a no from me. That thing about getting up at 4:30 uh in the morning and going to bed early is such a strange part of this, you know. Chris, you were talking about an ecosystem, hey, you know, it's such a strange part of the whole kind of biohacking, um, manosphere-y, fitness-y scene. It's like the earlier you get up, somehow the better you are. Like, there is no reason, given his general life and the fact that he didn't actually do anything except for exercise and take pills and and I don't know, have like a scalp thing that was gonna promote hair growth or whatever it was. Um, like there was absolutely no reason that he needed to get up at 4 30 to do that, you know, and I find it fascinating that getting up in the middle of the night is some sort of marker of moral fortitude. Um, you know, you're not getting up so that you can work your extra job before you go to your main job because you haven't got enough money, you know, you're just doing it. So, um it no, no, no, I I found his days deeply depressing, actually. I was just like, what is it to spend your whole day? I don't even know what it is exactly. I guess working on staying alive, like where's it was hard for me to imagine he he had obvious joy in his relationship with his child, but it was hard for me to imagine any other kind of joy, um, any external kind of joy.
SPEAKER_00The photo shoots were interesting. I don't know he'd have a lot of photo shoots, and they were the aesthetics of those were quite um yeah, so there are one in particular, and and we can get to this later, but the one where his father, his son, and himself and and he they were all wearing jeans and singlets and lying in a golf bunker, um was yeah, that that was striking. I don't know whether he does those sorts of things every day to fulfill that joy component, but um yeah, there were some interesting photographs.
SPEAKER_03There was there was that sort of cheeky little one where he's got the um kettlebell. Oh my god, I forgot when he put the kettlebell in front of his penis. Um also very interesting. There was no hair anywhere. He was very interested in the hair on his head, but he was very hairless, a little bit like one of those cats with no hair. Have you guys seen those hairless cats? Yeah, he looked like that.
Masculinity, Aesthetics, And Looksmaxing
SPEAKER_00Well, look, bodies are cool and everyone's a little bit different. Um, but uh yeah, I mean, I guess it would be good to maybe talk a little bit about that ecosystem, because he seems and not to sort of put you on the spot, Diego, as our resident manosphere expert, but he is kind of manosphere adjacent. Like there were things that he was saying that was certainly part of, you know, I guess everyone's been watching that Louis Thoreau documentary and talking about that, but uh there were parts where he, you know, the fitness, the longevity, those sorts of things, but then there were also things that he was saying that would cut against that. So even with the timing and the sleeping, he was reflecting back on when he was a CEO and would sort of think sleep like you know, only sleeping four hours and working really hard, he recognised that's a bad thing to do and a bad way to model those sorts of things. And he's certainly not, at least you know, from what I can tell, um, although was there a case? He he doesn't seem to be openly misogynistic or violent or anything like that, as far as I can tell, but there still is this, I guess, uh, adjacency to some of the same ideas about sort of fitness and masculinity and and um yeah, I don't know if Diego or anyone else has anything to add to that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I I guess you mentioned the notion of aesthetics there, and I think that's really an interesting, again, um prism uh uh in which to sort of view it. Insofar as there's nothing about like regenerative hair growth that has to do with longevity. Um, you know, who doesn't love frolicking in a golf bunker, but again, not really anything to do with like longevity. So I think there's an aesthetic element to uh there's an aesthetic and a uh an a moral element to the longevity movement that I think is sort of front and center. So I think it's interesting to track what's a virtue and what is a vice. So the virtue being uh and it can be sort of you know aesthetic virtue and vice, moral virtue and vice, as it were. So um a lack of uh a lack of body hair, again, whatever you think of that, but but uh the idea being that that is something that one ought to model. Um and then the waking up early, for example, um again, I think that there is sort of the the the virtue signaling bit that has actually not to do necessarily with longevity. My understanding is if you sleep your eight hours within a certain range, doesn't actually matter. And again, Lisa, you might be able to speak to that a bit more. So I think in terms of what this means to the manosphere, I think it it is interesting in terms of how notions of masculinity are have changed. And I think that we're all kind of in terms of what it's misogyny now, or sort of demarcations or markations of of misogyny or masculinity in terms of uh thinking about what is he doing for himself versus what is he doing for potential partners. So I couldn't help but think also, again, because your mind kind of starts to jump around in terms of like the looks maxing stuff that's going on with younger gentlemen now. And there's a there's a huge element there, right? Looks maxing where you're trying to bruise your face, break your bones, but apparently not, or whatever. You know, is that like a budget version of what he's doing? Right? So there's I think there's confusion in what constitutes masculinity, and there was confusion in this individual and within the ecosystem. There's contradiction. So I think if we try to look for coherence in terms of virtue and vice, both aesthetic and moral, I think we'd quickly run into challenges if we're trying to find that through line, those, those, the that that kind of sense of coherence. Um so I think it it it the last thing I'll say is just I think it it looks even more striking if you think in terms of even senses of masculinity 30, 40, 50 years ago. Right? Um in terms of of children. Um and you know, to what extent do fathers do whatever they need to do for their children? And this is where I think it might be interesting to think about you know the the three generations of of of men in this in the story as well. So it's I think I think it's I think it's really complex. I think it there's um there's generational instantiations of these tropes around um conflation of aesthetic and health that I think is interesting.
SPEAKER_03Um I don't know if I I happened to look online right before I came on here and noted that that main looks maxim guy, who we've spoken about on the podcast before, Clavicular, um overdosed today live while he was live streaming. Yeah, which is awful, awful. And the tragedy of so again, going back to the ecosystem, the tragedy of both exploiting and being exploited is something that I think the Lux Maxes and this longevity thing have in common, where they are clearly making a lot of money from this whole thing, and have people relying on them staff, their business, their followers, their whoever, to keep doing it. I think with both of them, both of the examples that we've just said, it's a bit rooted in self-loathing as well, which is a an incredibly sad thing. And yet they do, I think, a fair bit of damage. You know, it's it's all so so contradictory and so difficult to exactly what you just said, Diego, basically, in terms of the the virtue and vice. Um, yeah, that's my hot take. But I felt genuinely really sad about that young dude. I mean, I don't know, like, you know, hopefully he's getting care right now, you know, and assuming he's okay, I don't know. But that that that's just a a really tragic situation, irrespective of what a deckie is, you know?
Mind Versus Body And Existential Dread
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah, and I think related to that, so that later on in the documentary, and I think the production of these documentaries, I didn't go down a whole rabbit warren about the production of these documentaries, but like who's actually funding them. I mean, this is a classic thing with a lot of these sporting documentaries like The Last Dance with Michael Jordan and all this sort of stuff, like who actually is scripting these narratives and what's getting excluded and not. But um Ashley Vance, Ashley Vance, who's interviewed in it, he's he's a journalist. He's the sort of um he's sort of commenting and said that he's been following for a while. He's also a producer of the documentary. So he's sort of presented as a journalist, but he's also a producer. But he towards the end says um, in speaking of uh Brian, says he turned to this hardcore health regimen as a solution to these mental health problems. And he was the only one who, as far as I can recall, sort of explicitly said anything about mental health, and you know, whether that's just him saying that. But yeah, he's saying, you know, there's this connection, I guess he's seeing between this hardcore health regimen and mental health. And I guess, as you know um, thinking about this in terms of philosophy, um, you know, mm the the fine line, I guess, between mental health and I guess existential dread and existential thinking, um, you know, is sometimes pretty fine. Like when we think about people like Frederick Nietzsche, Soran Kikigore, um, these kinds of ideas of um Foyodo Dostoevsky um people in that tradition of existential thought, there is always this fine line between some kind of mental health condition and being obsessed with death. Um so I was playing, and maybe I'll drop it in here, um, but uh a line from an the birthday party, uh Nick Cave's early band, you know, screaming um hands up, who wants to die? Uh and that kind of fascination, particularly of sort of younger men with death, with what Hardy would talk about, sort of being towards death, um and wrestling with that. But wrestling with that, I guess, intellectually as well as maybe artistically, and uh whereas Brian Johnson is explicitly wanting to get the mind out of this, that this is a physical problem. So a quote from him at the start, he says, the mind is the source of our self-destructive behaviours, and that's where he's talking about, you know, the mind will tell you you want to drink or you want to eat a hamburger, those sorts of things. And he says explicitly we can't trust our mind, um, and then says that he wants to give my body authority, and that it is the sort of body and I guess the science which can read the body um in a more detailed way that should have the authority in deciding what kind of regimen, rather than I guess working through those existential dread questions about what does it mean to be a being who is going to die, um, and how do we wrestle with that. Um, you know, I'm certainly not wanting to make any comment on how people respond to mental health and obviously the connection between bodily health and mental health and all of those sorts of things, but it struck me quite interesting and again, I guess that tragic dimension of not this embrace of the existential fact that we are going to die, but this naive denial that it will ever happen. And that towards the end, they would refer to him as a philosopher, and I'm not wanting to get into turf wars here, but you know, he's not a philosopher because as Socrates would talk about, the role of the philosopher is this preparation for death rather than this absolute well, seemingly absolute denial of death.
SPEAKER_03But I don't know if those thoughts relate to anything that anyone else was thinking, or he specifically says, Chris, the mind is dead at some point, and I wrote it down with quote marks, which is how I know that. Um, because it was so interesting that, like, quite nuts dichotomizing that starts right at the beginning, where he's like, previously I used my mind to decide what to eat, and then I thought, what if my organs told me what to eat? Just like, I don't know how your organs communicate with you. Um, if not through your mind. But yeah, the idea of the mind being dead or the mind not having a role to play in life is really interesting when brain death is how we decide that somebody is dead, right?
SPEAKER_00Well, maybe. I guess there's also some temporary death.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00But yeah, I mean, I I just think there, and maybe this is again, it was it would have been interesting had they interviewed a philosopher. I'm certainly not putting my hand up for that, but I just think it was a very scientist all the other people who were interviewed were scientists as well. So they were all kind of, even if they were critical of well, there weren't even really any people who were scientists who were critical of the framing. They were they they were interviewing a lot of longevity scientists, and the only people who were critical were more facile podcasters, again, hopefully not us, um, but uh uh who were sort of more mocking him rather than anyone who was, I guess, wanting to contextualize this as well, with you know, the transhumanist movement, which again I think he's sort of adjacent to that. I don't know, like he he's not quite seemingly going in for the full biohacking. It does seem to be pretty supplement-oriented and diet changes and exercise regimes rather than um CRISPR.
SPEAKER_04I mean, there was that gene therapy he had, but well, I wanted I wanted to ask a question because um Chris, you're coming back to well, what is philosophy? And there's this idea that it's about the preparation for death and what makes a good life. But science may change and that people will live longer. And would there need to be some new branch of philosophy that is to deal with that? Like what like what does philosophy offer for the longevity movement?
SPEAKER_00Well, there are certainly are philosophers, and um Diego, feel free to jump in who uh are attracted to these kinds of um scenarios of radical life extension, and you know, I find a lot of them quite frightening, the transhumanists generally I would say uh frighten me. Um but I think death is undefeated, uh, and that from my understanding of um I've forgotten his name, he was a guy who's a sort of health economist who because these ideas came into material effect, um, if anyone recalls Joe Hockey's budget, which was disastrous about I don't know when he was the treasurer, but he got sucked in by some of these um uh life's uh life extending people at UNSW, and he either genuinely or cynically uh cut the health budget and said that we needed to um think about the possibility of people living to 150 and how that's going to affect our Medicare system. Um, but and in response to that, you know, the life extension, you know, when we look at population statistics, and I'm not again, I don't want to claim any expertise that, but it's because people aren't dying as young. That's why the sort of uh the age, the the sort of average age is going up, not because we're getting more and more 120-year-olds, but we're having less and less people dying at you know, zero and two and those sorts of things. Is that what you were sort of like thinking? Like, you know, how will philosophy or how will we think through this issue if all of a sudden we do have a bunch of 300-year-olds?
SPEAKER_04Maybe I feel like we'd probably have to make quite a few adjustments as a society. There might be all sorts of follow-in effects from that.
Ageism, Health, And What Longevity Promises
SPEAKER_00But I would like to ask you a question on that both the desire among these communities, um, and again, nothing that this fellow Brian has said, but the both this desire for radical life extension, but I suspect many of those other people I suspect many of these people are quite ageist as well. Like, I don't want to be old and decrepit, I don't want to be like that, I want to be hiking and you know, doing all sorts of weights and things like that um into my uh 200 years. So there's this both wanting to live for a really long time, but also quite ageist at the same time, I'm suspecting. What do you make of that?
SPEAKER_04Well, I think that that's where the concept of ageism can get quite confusing and it ends up cutting both ways because um we would also say that it's ageist to assume that getting old equates to not being able to do those things. So um I feel as though that's where ageism doesn't necessarily help us conceptually. And I was thinking about whether or not this kind of you know, whether or not it's these preventative medicine things that people are doing or other things that people do that increasingly create a disconnect between chronological age and the biological age of the person or the overall health of the person. I think that that could be helpful for ageism because um when we do just believe that aging is equated to bad things happening to you, then that drives ageism as well. So I think it can be helpful to actually accept that you can maybe do things that will prevent ill health and physical disability in older life.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean, I think I might have brought this up when we um had the conversation with you about ageism. I don't know, Diego, if you get these advertisements, but every now and then I'll get like a thing on Instagram or somewhere, like of a man who's clearly, you know, grey and um what have you, but has a like a rippling six-pack and this sort of suggestion that you can be like this. I guess like RFK Jr. Um which seems to also fit uncomfortably in what you're saying, Lisa, in that you know, maybe I'm being ageist to say that you can't be um 75 with a rippling six-pack. But there are, I would suggest, I guess, still biological limits, and there's biological aging processes and what's turning out with most of these people. Um I think since we did the last episode, Jane, it came out that uh some of the I think RFK Jr. but others were having testosterone supplements and a whole bunch of other things injected.
SPEAKER_01So I I think there's an interesting, again, at least I'd be curious to know But what you think, but I think there's an interesting conflation between uh longevity, health, aesthetics, like there's just a bunch of things that are getting mixed, and teasing them apart, I think, is really important. So there's, you know, Jane and I have had this conversation in a different context, but the amount of uh normalization of TRT, of testosterone replacement therapy, as just being like, well, this is what you should be doing. Um, but almost becoming uh like if you don't do this, what are you like what are you crazy? Like there's that sort of, you know, like why wouldn't you want a crazy libido well into your like nine in the 90s and a six-pack and uh old man with a six-pack? Um and I I I think that I think there's again this there's just these just various conflations around what it means to be healthy versus what it means to fit in at different age groups versus what does it mean to live forever, like the idea of infinity uh is just or or you know 200 years. Uh like there's just it's just very very confused, and it seems again I'd be curious to know what other people think. It just seems like it's driven by fear. I mean, I don't know whether that's too reduction reductive, like but it just seems like people are just like straight up scared. And they're scared of dying, but they're scared of something else, they're scared of frailty, they're scared of ugliness. Like they're just there's a lot of just fear. Um yeah, so I don't I don't know how this plays in, but it's again I keep feeling sad about this whole area.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean on that with this with Brian in particular, I think in the background there they showed they showed pictures of him and he commenting on them, basically, this sort of fat phobia. So I think there was in terms of that dimension, there was a sort of a viewing of his past as he was on his uh there was some, you know, he was, you know, on his way to an early grave because I mean he didn't look, you know, particularly he looked pretty happy in a lot of those photos, but you know, that's what he that's how he was characterizing that period, and now he's had this conversion, and I use that sort of specifically in that he sort of then leaves Mormonism and embraces this. I mean, I don't think it's simplistic uh as simplistic as just saying he's replaced one faith with another. I do think there is something, and it's beyond my knowledge, um, and we don't have enough time to go into the ins and outs of particularly these religions that developed in the 19th century around the development of particular sciences. So, you know, Mormonism, Seventh-day Adventism, a lot of these things, you know, Kellogg's cornflakes, and all of this sort of stuff, and sanitarium, wheat bicks, they all came out of these um health movements with that were interconnected with these religious faiths. So I think there is something there as well, as yeah, that underlying f fear of death uh and that we are going to die, and what does that mean that isn't being totally acknowledged or wrestled with, I don't think. I don't know. But I do find it interesting. So in this unit that I teach, uh Love, Sex and Death, we have you know three weeks on death, and a lot of the young students do talk about saying that they would not want, you know, we pose questions about, you know, would you want to live forever? What would that mean? And a lot of them say, no, I wouldn't want to live forever. And um, you know, we talk about you know, does death provide meaning to life and you know, have a lot of rich and interesting conversations, but at least from the exposure of that I get to some young people, then they're not particularly attracted to this idea. So it is curious to think about.
SPEAKER_03At the end of the documentary, though, when they're talking about the branches of the don't die movement, um, the don't die, I guess, community, I don't even know what you would call it exactly, that seems like his um his son is also spearheading. Um, they're all young people, and apparently he's quite big um among the youngins who who you know who are into like Bitcoin and beef jerky and whatever the youngins like that are into. I don't fully understand it. Um but you know that that is surprising to me because I totally agree, Chris, that you know, being young is is the time to lie around and listen to Joy Division and you know think about things being difficult. But I don't think that it's really, you know what, I'm gonna live the healthiest life I can possibly live, and I'm gonna get up at 4:30 and I'm gonna go to bed at 8.30. You know, that that is not the youth that is familiar to me. Um it it's an odd instinct for a young person, I think. Um I'd be curious to to know what you think about that. Or am I being ageist?
SPEAKER_01Lisa, I think we're all waiting for you to speak.
SPEAKER_04I was thinking, well, I don't I don't know what people think, but I I imagine that what he's doing is quite unique and that most people aren't doing what he's doing. And because he attracts so much kind of controversy and people kind of somehow pushing back against what he's doing, it suggests that we're not all on board. Um but yeah, I don't know. Um because when I was Thinking about it, because he showed what the with his I'm going to put inadverted commas longevity doctor, the protocol had three levels. And the first level was what our general understanding of all the things that are very easily accessible and have decades worth of evidence that are good for everybody, like don't smoke and minimize alcohol and exercise and um do get enough sleep and uh um like those things are very accessible, but they're also things that a lot of people will find very difficult. So I don't really know what I'm trying to say, but I think most people don't want to go to level two or level three, and I think most people do want to do level one, but it's still very hard.
Fear, Paranoia, And Auditing Everything
SPEAKER_00I think um what is also I mean, we could talk a lot about the uh longevity doctors uh and the inverted commas that we might want to put around them, how they're all like I think I looked up like some of them like 29, 24, and a number of them seem to be Australian, which was interesting to hear those accents uh come in. Um but uh I think something that is interesting and I that breeds into this, uh, I mentioned Howard Hughes uh earlier, but it can create a kind of paranoia, particularly if you know you take into account environmental toxins, um, and he talks about you know the age of his organs, which makes me think of like epigenetic clocks where we can sort of work out what our age is epigenetically, and um and just incidentally, I tried to find this up, but I had a few heart tests recently, and I I could be reading these forms wrong, but I'm pretty sure that it said that I had like a heart of a 37-year-old, which he has, and I don't I do a lot of the things that he says you shouldn't be doing, and I don't do many of the things that he says that you should be doing. So maybe having a heart of 37 eighth that big a deal. But my point is I have been following him on Instagram now just to sort of see, and it does build up, it seems, a sense of you auditing your whole life the whole time. And so he had this post about how he discovered that the astroturf in his backyard contained this toxins, and he was really upset and frustrated at himself because he, while spending all this effort and time and thinking about everything, he didn't realise that the grass or the fake grass on which he was walking was actually containing these toxins. And I think if you start thinking that way, then you especially the more science around the exposer zone and the way that there are so many things that we are exposed to, you could become pretty paranoid pretty quickly. But also exhausting, like you mentioned tedium at the start, like just if you're just constantly auditing everything that's around you. We're coming up to the sort of end of the hour. Is there anything that anybody wants to say that hasn't been said? Yeah, Diego.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I I think the the part that ups the part that got me pissed was the science the scientists around him and the discussion around longevity. The idea that like the idea that the the greatest ill dealing to humanity is death is that is a really dangerous idea. Like if if we're thinking about or not dangerous, but wrong and morally wrong, that that we're focusing on these extreme cases as if it's generating science. So, you know, even the idea that, well, you know, this is extreme, he's at level two and three, you know, whatever of the protocol, but it's for science, it's like we know it's not. Like, we we know that's not how science works. You know, like the idea that that that longevity is the greatest ill when we have people dying of starvation, like all the other myriad of things, like that's the part that I found most morally repulsive. And so it's not him per se, like again, I think he's the sad individual. It's the manipulation and distortion and mutation of science or purported science, the inverted commas that we keep coming back to. That's the part that I think is just dangerous.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, well put.
SPEAKER_03Um I got a final thought.
SPEAKER_00Yep.
SPEAKER_03Oh, you're in the middle of one, Chris. Um and I was inspired by your mention of your love, sex and death um course. So if we think about what it is that makes a life well lived, if you like, if love is the thing that that makes our lives feel rich and full and worthwhile, you know, being loved, loving others in a whole lot of different ways. And if you're living for a really long time, what happens to your community who is presumably dying, right? Like what happens when he's 150 and the people who he loves died 50 years ago?
SPEAKER_00I guess Lisa would be I mean, this is what a lot of the students say when they talk about, oh, I wouldn't want to live like for like you know, a thousand years because who would I know, and all those sorts of things. But uh, I'm sure Lisa, you have some clients and patients who wrestle with this more immediately.
Science Claims, Moral Priorities, And What Matters
SPEAKER_04Yeah, it's definitely a very common thing that people experience that when they do get to live to advanced age, that their main people may have died, including their children. Um, obviously their parents would be dead and many of their friends. Um and I don't know if it would be easier if people really do have uh more good health and better ability to access the community, but it is quite hard to make friends like I think people even find that in midlife that kind of constantly reprenishing your community is not something that people find easy. Um so yeah, there's definitely some downsides if you do get the opportunity to live very long.
SPEAKER_00Um so don't die, not all it's cracked up to be. But um it does when you did say, Jane, the don't die movement, which is what they refer to it. I can't help but feel that maybe we're all being pranked here. Because it reminds me of, I don't know if any of you heard about the birds aren't real conspiracy theory. Like there's just some kids, and they've sort of created this movement of birds aren't real, and they so you can look it up and see. And I kind of wonder whether, like, just even grammatically, birds aren't real, don't die. Like it just sound like the don't die movement, the birds aren't real movement. It just sort of sounds like some big hoax that uh we're all part of.
SPEAKER_03But um, can I digress here? I think I've already digressed, but you can't I'm taking it further and I'm aware of the time, but I took a uh um covert photo of a guy uh at Bunning.
SPEAKER_00You're not committing to a crime on the podcast, Dave.
SPEAKER_03Well, no, I don't know that it's illegal. It doesn't include his face, but anyway, he's wearing a t-shirt. The back of his t-shirt says, I'm looking at it right now, no C. The C isn't real. Say no to the C. The C isn't real, fish are made up, question tsunamis, waves are man-made.
SPEAKER_00Right, I like it. I love that.
SPEAKER_03I liked it enough to take a photo. Um, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um well, on that note, um thank you so much, Diego and Lisa, for uh joining us on this experiment. Um, yeah, I probably also should have said at the start that uh Lisa and Diego were asked to watch the documentary and then asked to come on here. So neither of them were had a burning desire to watch the documentary or talk about it. So thank you for your willingness to participate.
SPEAKER_04Thank you for me too. Thank you so much. Thank you.
SPEAKER_02Thank you.