ZOLTAN ISTVAN

Bestselling visionary author Zoltan Istvan, an American-Hungarian, is a 2016 Presidential Candidate. He is a philosophy and religious studies graduate of Columbia University and resides in San Francisco with his daughter and physician wife. Zoltan recently published The Transhumanist Wager, a fictional thriller describing apatheist Jethro Knights and his unwavering quest for immortality via science and technology. The controversial novel was recently a #1 bestseller in Philosophy and Sci-Fi Visionary on Amazon. 

Music Attribution

ALEX ZHAVORONKOV, PhD

Dr. Zhavoronkov is the CEO of Insilico Medicine, Inc, and adjunct professor of the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. He is a member of the editorial boards of Drug Discovery International and Frontiers in Molecular Diagnostics journals. He is the author of over thirty research articles, analytical reports, white papers and several books including the biotechnology bestseller “The Ageless Generation: How biomedical advances will transform the global economy”.

transcript

SOUND FX: Quick tone To introduce the show

OPENING SEQUENCE

SOUND: CUT up of "highlander" trailer featuring him being immortal

D.S. MOSS

That, of course, is from Highlander, one of the best worst films of the 80s. This is a scene from of the interview portion of the 1994 Miss USA beauty pageant. I shall play the part of Bob Goen, the host of the pageant, and a lovely stranger I met on the street will play Miss Alabama USA 1994...

SOUND: ANALOGUE MISS USA WITH APPLAUSE

D.S. MOSS_MONO

Our interview portion of the competition continues now and we talk to Miss Alabama.

SOUND: Quick intro music bump & Applause

D.S. MOSS_MONO

Miss Alabama, if you could live forever, would you and why?

Random Stranger

I would not live forever, because we should not live forever, because if we were supposed to live forever, then we would live forever, but we cannot live forever, which is why I would not live forever.

(awkward beat)

D.S. MOSS_MONO

Miss Alabama, everybody.

SOUND: Music bumP and audience applause

D.S. MOSS

Now, if you google Miss Alabama USA 1994 and live forever, you'll find a lot of ridicule. Quotes like "the 3 year-old I babysit for could have given a more intelligible and well-thought out answer to that question." and "lol what a dumb blonde".

But, I disagree wholeheartedly. The answer she gave was not dumb at all. It was the beautiful articulation of a rational mind trying to politely answer a totally irrational question. Unless you're Connor McCleod, we can't survive death, yet our conscious mind doesn't know what it means to not exist. It's called meaning threat. Try it, answer the question for yourself: Would you live forever?

Obviously, I hope so. We'll see ... It's one of my very first priorities ... My general feeling is that if you can live the next 25 years, you're golden. Because in the next 25 years, the technologies to live indefinitely will probably apply to everyone. At least to the developed countries. Hopefully within 30 years, all the developing countries will also have all these technologies. We'll all be able to live indefinitely.

MUSIC:"New Yorican" by Mascaras

D.S. MOSS

Well how bout that? Turns out technology may be the key that unlocks immortality. That was Zoltan Istvan, 2016 United States Presidential Candidate representing the Transhumanist party. He was gracious enough to invite me on the campaign trial on his Immortality Bus.

Do you want to live forever? In this episode we chat with futurists and scientists to see if living longer, if not forever, is actually possible. Please join me as we go on the road for Episode 3 of The Adventures of Memento Mori: The Science of Immortality.

OPENING BUMPER

MUSIC:  "Memento mori" by Mikey ballou

Female announcer

From The Jones Story Company, this is: THE ADVENTURES OF MEMENTO MORI, Or, A Practical Guide for Remembering to Die - the podcast that explores mortality. Here's your host D.S. Moss.

CHAPTER 1: PUTTING THE VENTURE IN ADVENTURE

MUSIC: "The count" by keshco

D.S. MOSS

Everyday 200,000 people die worldwide. There are two deaths every second. Six people just died.   Make that eight. Ten. Good morning. Have a nice day. My point for bringing that up is because none of us get out of this thing alive. All of us are going to die and none of us know when. It's the great human equalizer.

And since the dawn of our existence, us humans have been trying to cheat it. Religion, elixirs, fountains of youth, spells, and pills all with the promise of outliving the end.

Person 1

Did you know...in an attempt to stop aging, the Hungarian countess Erzsebet Bathory bathed in the blood of murdered virgins.

D.S. MOSS

We've drunk pure lama urine, eaten mummies, and transfused young blood into old bodies. Nothing has worked, yet. Our ultimate goal is to extend healthy productive longevity by discovering interventions that work on a mutation level and individual. Drugs are essentially the first frontier.

D.S. MOSS

But what about treating aging as a disease and using pharmaceuticals to cure it? It's actually not a new concept. In 1854, Leopold Turck, a french doctor, classified old age as an illness and tried to cure it with electro shock therapy. 

SOUND FX: Electricity Shock + Gasping Woman

D.S. MOSS

But now there's a new crusade and it has billions of venture capitalist dollars behind it. 

CHAPTER 2: INSILICO

ALEX Z

That's kind of a comical scenario in a way, but what we did with our investor,... 

D.S. MOSS

That's Alex Zhavoronkov, CEO of Insilico Medicine. I first learned of Alex from an article I read about a Longevity Bet he made with an investor of his company. 

ALEX Z

He basically asked me, "Hey Alex. How long are you planning to work?" Turned out that I didn't have any specific timeline. I thought it would be a very continuous process without a specific objective. He said "Okay, well we need to set up goals." I said, "My goal is 150 just because it is already achievable."... 

D.S. MOSS

150 meaning his age goal. That's how long he plans to live.

ALEX Z

He said "Oh Alex, you know what? You are taking all of those supplements and drugs, maybe I should also tailor a regimen for myself." He actually also designed a routine for himself and then decided to make a bet with me, so essentially who would live longer. 

D.S. MOSS

Yep, there is a new intersection of technology and biology and it's been ushered in by Silicon Valley. Google has Calico, a side company that is trying to reverse engineer aging.

Larry Ellison of Oracle and Peter Theil of Paypal are also among the heavy hitters to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in the longevity sector. 

ALEX Z

...this is humanity's greatest challenge at the moment and also the greatest opportunity ...

Our goal is to essentially transform the pharmaceutical industry and develop very rapid prototyping scenarios for large pharmaceutical companies to be able to test the drugs, without testing them on large populations. The core of our engine is aging research. We are very focused on looking at various aging pathways.

D.S. MOSS

Hopefully, I'm not being too reductive here, but Insilico uses a software platform and with huge databases of healthy human norms to map out a virtual human genome like a solar system. And then tests drugs against virtual humans to prevent diseases and even repair age associated damage.  

It's taking drugs before you're actually sick. Or, actually, considering aging as sickness and taking drugs to cure it. 

But now we're talking about dependency on Big Pharma, and as capitalists there will be the haves and the have nots. I asked Alex about this and he brought up an interesting point - It's in the government's interest to pay because at the current rate of aging, but aging unhealthy, Medicare/Medicaid will bankrupt the country within the next 20 years.

ALEX Z

Those 17 trillion dollars that everybody is talking about in terms of the National Debt. That is nothing compared to the, it could be 300, 400 trillion dollars owed to the population of the United States, if the lifespans even increase slightly, to lets say 85. Those are the numbers. It makes a lot of economic sense to maintain the population in their healthy state for as long as possible, even if those life spans are not extraordinary. Let's say 150 odd years, I don't consider it extraordinary or dramatic, but will still be very profitable to the governments to keep people in their healthy state.

D.S. MOSS

Alex wouldn't tell me the drug stack that he was on, but I asked him what else I can do to improve my longevity range. For instance, is there an exercise and diet routine I should be on? 

ALEX Z

Well again, exercise and diet will not cure our aging and will not have a very significant effect on longevity. It depends on what you call significant. 10%, 15%, 20% increase, but unlikely that we would be able to really squeeze more lifespan out of diet and exercise.

D.S. MOSS

Ok. 20% of 80 isn't bad. But what else?

ALEX Z

Right, so I would recommend first adjusting your longevity expectations and start off looking at family history and country averages when planning for your own longevity ... I would set my longevity expectations much further than the current 85 or even 90 years of age that many people expect. I would pin it to 150 or even further ...

MUSIC: "Royal Flush" by Keshco

D.S. MOSs

Ok. Set goals, research family history and plan against that information.

ALEX Z

By doing that, you will stretch your longevity expectations and you will change your behavioral patterns. You are going to be most likely to go back to school, to maintain and update your skill set, to behave as a younger person. The longer horizon you see in front of you, the more time you have to really improve yourself. 

D.S. MOSS

Alright, Alex. I'm down with that. In episode 1 I told life coach Devin Martin that I expect to live until I'm 85. I take that back. I'm setting a new life horizon. My goal is to live to 120. 

CALL TO ACTION 1

MUSIC: Emergency exit by Dr. Frankenstein 

Female announcer:

Ever wonder what Elvis's last words were or the most outrageous method of capital punishment in history? Discover titillating titbits about death by visiting our YouTube channel "Yo! Mori" and be the slightly odd yet endlessly fascinating conversationalist at your next party.

And be sure to stay up to date with the quest for enlightenment on Instagram and Twitter by following @remembertodie.

All of this, and more, can be found on our site remembertodie.com. And now, back to show...

CHAPTER 3: PEOPLE ARE CRAZY

Person 2

Did you know...in the 1960s, a popular hollywood trend was to take booster shots of fetal lamb cells to stay young.

Person 3

Did you know...there are regenerating creams made with human baby foreskin fibroblasts currently on the market.

D.S. MOSS

SOUND: CRACKLE2.wav

Pretty crazy, right? I have one more for you, Did you know women who have undergone surgical stem-cell face-lifts have had tiny bones growing in their faces....Yep...

MUSIC: "BOrneo" BY Keshco

D.S. MOSS

Anyway, a few weeks ago I went down to our nation's capital to conduct my first interview of a Presidential Candidate. The following conversation happened in the parking lot of the Pentagon Best Western inside the Immortality Bus. 

CHAPTER 4: GROUP ON BUS

ROEN

So, can I just ask you a question?

D.S. MOSS_MONO

Yeah.

D.S. MOSS

That's Roen Horn, an avid eternal life activist. Also on the bus is independent journalist Alex Pearlman, Chris, Ben, and Zoltan.   

ROEN

Do you want to live forever if you could?

D.S. MOSS

Roen then proceeded to ask Chris and Ben the same question. But before we hear the conversation, I want to share an interesting statistic. The overwhelming majority of people under the age of 35 answer that they want to live forever and the overwhelming majority of people over 35 say they don't. I just find that terribly interesting.

Back to the bus. 

Speaker 6

But I don't think that I would want to live forever just because I'm a procrastinator and like you were saying before about doing something meaningful. Maybe I get an expiration date? Exactly, you could sit on your couch for a month and that's like a blip in eternity. I need to have a deadline.

D.S. MOSS_MONO

How much Beavis and Butthead can you watch?

SPEAKER 6

Exactly. I've watched everything on Netflix, now what?

ROEN

What's so bad about having spare time? Having more time just to have fun?

SPEAKER 6

Spare time is only spare if you have a limited amount, isn't it?

D.S. MOSS_MONO

Perfect.

SPEAKER 6

Otherwise you have endless time. It's all spare. Yeah, I'd like the idea of having spare time as opposed to endless time.

ZOLTAN

My answer to this complex question, which I get asked a lot, is how can you keep from becoming totally bored through eternity?

MUSIC: "Borneo" by Keshco or some other zen master music

D.S. MOSS

And that's Zoltan Itsvan, the Presidential candidate.

ZOLTAN

But one of the great things about technology is that it's always evolving. So we're looking at this question from our range right now which is three pounds of meat. But probably in twenty or thirty years we're going to start augmenting that intelligence with some type of cranial implant or artificial intelligence or some type of technology, meaning our IQ levels could double, triple, become a million times more than they are now.

D.S. MOSS

Soon after this, Alex, Chris and Ben said their goodbyes and ended their trip on the immortality bus.

MUSIC: The Immortality Bus with US Presidential Candidate Zoltan Istvan.mp3 

CHAPTER 5: ZOLTAN & TRANSHUMANISM

D.S. MOSS_MONO

So who are you?

ZOLTAN

My name is Zoltan Istvan. I'm a 2016 US presidential candidate. I am running for the Transhumanist Party which is a small and new political organization that seeks to put science, technology, and health at the forefront of American politics. Transhumanists are people who want to use science and technology to radically modify the human experience and radically modify the human body. Our number one goal is generally using science and technology to overcome death; to make it so that we can live indefinitely and control the moment when we would die if we have to die at all. Many transhumanists would like to live forever.

D.S. MOSS_MONO

In what ways can science in today's methods of scientific technology, what paths are going to take us to that that exists currently?

ZOLTAN

There's a number of path that will allow us to potentially live indefinitely. I think perhaps the number one path is this idea that you might be able to stop or even reverse aging...

One way would be through genetic editing of DNA. You could literally stop the aging process through cutting off certain parts of your DNA that actually make it that you age.

D.S. MOSS_MONO

Treating age as a disease?

ZOLTAN

Yes. Now this is one of the number one things in my presidential campaign is to classify aging as a disease and for people to understand that the body is a machine. That machine just like a car can be fixed, can be modified, can be made into many different things. It can certainly be made into an entity that never has to cease its existence.

D.S. MOSS_MONO

I was at a party recently and I   ...  just made a point to say that or just in conversation, we think of evolution. We think of Darwinism as like chimp or primate to this state. That is evolution. I made a  ...  comment, "But what if that primate to what we are now is just actually the very sliver of our human evolution?" That we're evolving to something that we can't even comprehend  ...  That is kind of what you are saying, right? Is that we are at the beginning stages essentially of human evolution?

ZOLTAN

... I begin every one of my speeches with a single slide. It shows the cosmos and it says the universe is 13.8 billion years old. Now just think about that for a second ... The planet itself is about 4 or 5 billion years. Life itself is one billion years old. The human species as it is now, about 150,000 years old. We are babies in terms of how old the universe is ... We can grow to so much more. We can grow to super intelligences that may be just pure quantum energy just flowing around the universe.

D.S. MOSS_MONO

Talk to me now, describe the bus we're on. We're on the Immortality Bus. Talk about, just about your tour.

ZOLTAN

The Immortality Bus of course shaped like a giant 40-foot coffin is really supposed to be a provocative symbol that travels across the country obviously highlighting my presidential campaign; but not really only about my presidential campaign. Really about the fact that I'm trying to tell people that we're trying to support science and technology to overcome death...

...For us telling people about it is very important because we feel and especially since I'm a presidential candidate, that the United States government spends a huge amount of money on warfares. It spends about 20% of the GDP on defense, on making bombs, and only 2% on science. We thought, "Wow! That's a crazy discrepancy." The balance needs to be better. Why not make less bombs and make more science? Why not instead of having a war in the Middle East have a war on cancer, or a war on aging, or a war on Alzheimer's?

MUSIC: "Wipe My Face away" BY KESCHO

D.S. MOSS

That is a crazy discrepancy, but it raises the question - is science the government's responsibility? Or should science be primarily the responsibility of the private sector? Back with more talk of death and politics in just a sec. 

CALL TO ACTION 2

MUSIC: "O Cerebro do Morto" by Dr. Frankenstein 

FEMALE ANNOUNCER

The Adventures of Memento Mori is an independent podcast and we could use your support. Shop with us. Go to remembertodie.com/shop and buy some merchandise. Get your entire family a "This could be my last cup of coffee" mug this holiday season or be the first one on your block to sport a Mori "Death! Yo." baby tee.   

CHAPTER 7: ZOLTAN FOR PRESIDENT

MUSIC: "LEAVE ME ON THE SUBS BENCH" by KESHCO

D.S. MOSS

We're back on the immortality bus talking with Zoltan Istvan about living forever and running for President. 

D.S. MOSS_MONO

What's the most common / most significant counter-argument to the Transhumanist Party that you generally hear when you're campaigning...?

ZOLTAN

The most common one that I hear ... There's two of them. Let me speak briefly about both. The most common one I hear is that the elite, the really rich people take the technology and run with it and make the rest of us, you know 99% of us, live in some dystopian universe where only the rich become gods and everyone else is sort of their slave...So far most of the new billionaires have been very democratic, and I think very humanitarian at the core. I think the most important thing I hear other than that is this problem that if everyone lives forever, we're going to have overpopulation ... This is a very real argument and this is something that I deal with all the time trying to say, "Wow! It's true. We live on an overpopulated planet. The overpopulation has caused already numerous amounts of environmental crises around the world. It's terrible. I believe in global warming. I believe we're screwing up the planet. What can we do?" ... Maybe we can fix the ozone layer by refilling it with something. Maybe we can overcome cancer so we don't need to worry if the ozone layer becomes depleted. Maybe with meatless meat, we might be able to completely restore forests because we don't need cattle grazing all over the place and to clear cut trees. These are ways that transhumanists would try to offset some of the environmental damage that overpopulation is causing.

D.S. MOSS_MONO

Talk to me in the process of running? The process of being taken seriously; ...  Will you ever for instance get invited to a debate?

ZOLTAN

This has been one of the most difficult times in my life because as someone who I think is qualified to be president in terms of I think I can handle the country. I have the right education. I have perhaps the right family life. I look normal for the cameras, all this other stuff, and can debate as well as many of the other candidates. As a third party candidate, it's absolutely impossible to win. It's absolutely impossible to dent the system. It's because the system is in America for running for the presidency and for running for many other forms of office, is totally lame to be honest. It absolutely needs to be changed. There's no way a third party candidate is ever going to win the presidential election in America. Maybe if you spent $10 billion, you would ...  When they say anyone can run for the presidency in America, it's a lie. Anyone can run but no one can be taken seriously. Luckily because I write a number of international columns, and I've worked for National Geographic and New York Times, I have a bit of a platform for talking about my ideas.

D.S. MOSS_MONO

What would you say to the ... I know that there is a large number of people that view this of even designer babies of playing god. Even like genetically modifying food is playing god ... What would you say? What would you do to calm those or to counter that just in a rational way of living on planet Earth.

ZOLTAN

I'll try not to be aggressive with my statement because when I hear Mother Nature and I hear the word natural. It's the word natural that bothers transhumanists more than anything. Everyone says, "Well, becoming a machine is unnatural." What does natural mean? What does that word even entail? There is nothing natural on planet Earth. We are all in the state of flux. We are all in a state of evolution. Becoming a machine is not anymore natural or less natural than a primate becoming a human being. There's nothing in the world about genetically modifying food, or human beings, or having artificial hearts versus biological hearts that is natural or not unnatural. This is just simply the way evolution and the way the movement of the universe is taking us...

...I would say to everyone, embrace science whether you're religious or conservative,

whether you're liberal or not. It's not important. Living better through science and technology means more happiness. I think everyone can agree that that's a good thing.

D.S. MOSS_MONO

Do you think ... that if the more advanced we get the less romantic we get as far as like the human spirit?

Zoltan

(around 32:40) I think one of the most important things of understanding when we discuss these things is that we're looking at it through the lens of being a human being right now. That lens is stuck in 2015. In the future when we look at these lenses, it might be stuck at 2035 or wherever we are. That might mean I have 18 cranial implants that are augmenting intelligence from some machine or around the world giving me a new sense of romanticism. Romanticism after all is a biological component... 

...It can be modified. It can be manipulated to become even grander through a new type of brain that might have a lot of augmentation ... Maybe it'll be even a greater sense. Maybe love as we know it will seem naïve to us because there'll be a new sense of love that is a thousand times stronger, more passionate than it is. I always tell people that the human being is made up of five senses. That doesn't mean that there are only five senses that exist to super intelligence. There could be a thousand senses. Biohackers are already experimenting with other different types of sense that put magnets on their fingers wherever they want; they feel magnets like Magneto in X-Men and stuff like that. The idea of sensual information coming to us. This idea that we are stuck with the three pounds of meat we carry around is just something temporary. Over the next 50 years, we're going to expand that considerably. As we do so, this idea of getting bored of Earth, or this idea of a ticket to death could change dramatically. This ticket being something that makes life valuable because when we know it's going to end. What if we know it's not necessarily going to end but the creativity is going to expand by a million times of our thoughts. That seems much more compelling in creating a romanticized version of life because adventure after all is one of the core senses of who we are ... The version of being romantic, the version of being passionate about your life can expand greatly, and it can expand through technology because our intelligence will be potentially a million times more intelligent than it is now.

D.S. MOSS_MONO

Next November, when it's all said and done and the dust clears, and someone new is elected. If it's not you, what would you want and that you touched on this about two minutes ago. What would you want, the American people to take away from your candidacy?

ZOLTAN

Transhumanism believes that all problems can be solved by science and technology. We don't need other moral codes, other philosophical codes, other religious codes, other ethical codes to solve our problems. All problems can be solved by science and technology.

MUSIC:"New Yorican" by Mascaras

D.S. MOSS

Well, my mind is blown a bit. Most of it scares the shit out of me, but the future will happen. 

And now that I plan to live until the year 2096 I'm sure I'll witness things beyond what even Philip K. Dick could even imagine. Unless, of course, life has a different plan. 

D.S. MOSS

Thanks for joining me on another episode of The Adventures of Memento Mori. A special thanks to Alex from Insilico Medicine and Zoltan Istvan. Please visit our website remembertodie.com to find out more about the work these folks do. I'm D.S. Moss. Back in two weeks for the next episode with more Adventures of Memento Mori. 

CLOSING BUMPER

MUSIC: End with our theme music

FEMALE ANNOUNCER

The episode was produced by Josh Heilbronner and D.S. Moss with production help Alexandra Mulligan. Theme music composed by Mikey Ballou. This has been a production of The Jones Story Company. Until the next time... remember to die.