Futurist Peter Diamandis, with both MIT and Harvard degrees, has evangelized the vision of a “rich future” driven by exponential technology that will lengthen our lives for much of the past 20 years. Serial entrepreneurs and founders of organizations such as the Xprize Foundation and Shingularity University have developed close relationships with some of the world’s most influential business minds, including Elon Musk.
Admires subscribe to his optimistic predictions and data-filled arguments that technology has already drawn billions from poverty and improved global standard of living. They also buy his books. Critics argue that his techno-utopia vision overlooks an increasing number of inequality and systematic imbalances, including in the United States. There, the lower 50% of households own less than 4% of the nation, with the top 10% taking command more than two-thirds.
Regardless of their views on Diamandis, many have found modern figures that intrigued him. And when we recently had the opportunity to talk to him about abundance and longevity, we grabbed it, including the idea of his former acquaintance, Valin Johnson, who is trying to reverse the aging process. (Diamandis, now 63, says he is “biologically 39”)
You can hear that conversation here. On the other hand, you will find an edited excerpt for the following lengths:
Recently you tweeted. “We are so close to longevity that we encourage you to remember that your only responsibility is to avoid dying from stupid things.” What specifically inspired it?
We feel like we are in the midst of a health span revolution. And this is no coincidence. This is primarily influenced by AI, calculations, sensors, single cell sequencing, and cell drugs. Many convergence techniques (that) help us to understand why we are old, how to slow it down, stop, potentially reversed. There is a concept called life expectancy rate, and it is the concept that science and medicine extend life expectancy for a certain amount of time every quarter of year, every year you live. However, every year you live, science will have a point that will help you develop your life for more than a year. Aubrey de Gray and Ray Kruzweil pioneered this idea, and I researched it, I invested in it. And the current idea is that over the next decade, if you are healthy by rational means, you intend to hit a longevity escape speed. If so, you don’t want to miss it. You know, you want to be in good health and you want to be here.
What does “rational meaning” mean? Clearly, there are a lot of concerns about what is happening in our society (with regard to access to health care). The numbers are moving in the wrong direction.
Is longevity just for the wealthy? Is that what you are asking? First of all, what you can do now is free. First and foremost, it’s your meal. What you eat is fundamentally important, right? Our bodies weren’t designed to consume as much sugar as we take. Sugar is the amount of poison we are consuming. We were taking several pounds of sugar a year 200 years ago. Today we are like 60 pounds of sugar per year. It is neuroinflammatory and heart inflammatory… At the end of the day, your diet is important. Sleep is basic. You need to get 7-8 hours of quality sleep. This means deep sleep and REM. Because of this, you may develop a neurodegenerative disease, Alzheimer’s disease. (And) Exercise is the number one prolongevity you can do. I’m out to the gym for 5 days to maintain my muscle mass and maintain my muscle mass. That’s the key. Again, none of these cost me money. The cheapest thing that is very powerful is your way of thinking… Optimists live 15% longer than pessimists… So when people say, my God, lifespan is only for the wealthy, I scream fouls. No, it’s for those who care about longevity and want to focus on this.
That’s the basics…
There will be the next tier and we will begin to sacrifice access to money. These include medications and supplements. I take a ridiculous number of medications and supplements every day, but I have built up to that point over time. And there are advanced tests to catch the disease early. The test ranges from $500 to $50,000, depending on how deep you want to go.
But there is one last important thing. One of the hottest areas of longevity research is called epigenetic reprogramming. So we are all born with 3.2 billion letters from mom and 3.2 billion letters from dad. It’s our genome. It’s our software…and you have the same genome when you are born, when you are 20, when you are 50, when you are 100. It’s what the genes are and what is turned off. This is like a regulatory mechanism that allows us to turn on and off genes in different tissues in our body as we age. So, the hottest areas of investment – and I’m also investing in some of these companies – epigenetic reprogramming. Can I reprogram the epigenome to return it to a more youthful state? But when it starts to work and we’re talking about single digit years, it becomes cheaper and available to most people.
Does the company you invested in really illustrate an approach to longevity?
For the past 30 years (as founder of the Xprize Foundation), we have launched around $600 million in prizes, promoting $10 billion in R&D. And a year and a half ago, I raised $157 million and launched HealthSpan Xprize. So it’s a $111 million prize. The rest is running the competition and doing all the tests. And with this Xprize, the team must demonstrate their ability to reverse cognitive, immune, and functional aging of the muscles. In other words, it means a group of people aged 60 to 80. Do you think that if you give this therapy from your winning team, you’re as clear and competent as you did 20 years ago? Do you have the ability to install an immune response when you’re 20 years younger? Is your ability to build and maintain muscle 20 years younger? And we’re like a 620 team going into that Xprize. It will be awarded by 2030. They are trying to hand over $10 million to the top 40 teams. They each won $2.5 million this May. So I’m very excited. There are all kinds of approaches to competition that you can imagine with 620 teams.
How do you distinguish your thoughts on longevity from what Brian Johnson does in the blueprint?
I’ve known Brian for 10 years. When he sold Braintree, I took him into the longevity business and he moved to LA (co-founded) there was a company called Down in San Diego, and Brian became an investor and the company’s executive, and we parted ways. So how can I put this? As you know, what Brian is doing is the NOW-ONE experiment. I’m so glad he’s doing that. He’s a kind of pioneer and we’ll see what happens there. I don’t necessarily talk about night erections like he does, but I think he’s got a lot of attention in the media. The approach I’m taking here through the Xprize Foundation is a massive global competition trying hundreds of different approaches. It’s all measured accurately. All competing teams must treat statistically sufficient individuals within the appropriate age range. So it’s a scientifically supported, experimentally normalized competition.
Here you can hear more, including how he came to know about Mask, why he started a health scan company with Tony Robbins, and how he navigates things that may sometimes be visible to outsiders, such as conflicts of interest.