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Extreme Longevity: The Science of Living Forever

Jan 1618 min read

Updated: 22 hours ago

First and foremost, we acknowledge the devastating fires in Los Angeles and our hearts go out to all those affected.


This episode is the first in our health and wellness series, and in it we explore the frontiers of human longevity, starting with tech billionaire Bryan Johnson's controversial anti-aging regime. We examine the growing popularity of longevity clinics, and the surprising health benefits of simple soil contact. We discuss how cryopreservation offers a path to potentially preserving life for future revival. Along the way, we question how the path to longevity might include a combination of cutting-edge technology, reconnecting with nature and community, and grappling with deeper spiritual questions.





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Episode Transcript:

Raakhee: Welcome to Signal Shift, by Horizon Shift Lab. We're your hosts, Lana Price, Raakhee Natha, and Sue Chi. Each episode, we explore the latest signals in technology, culture, and society, uncovering insights that will impact our daily lives in the future. Join us as we shift perspectives, explore possibilities, and delve into real changes in our world. Curious to learn more? Go to horizonshiftlab.com.


[0:40]


Raakhee: Hello and welcome to Signal Shift in 2025, this is Raakhee. We have released some episodes of this year already, but those were pre-recorded, so this is the first time that Lana, Sue, and I are seeing each other and speaking to each other in the new year. So a very warm welcome to all our listeners. We hope you had a good festive season and hope that you have a great 2025.


As I may have mentioned, as you might know, I am based very close to Los Angeles. It's been a truly devastating week for everyone out here. The fires have just destroyed so much, lives have been lost, and many, many, many lives upended. It is hard to talk about it. We have just come through the worst parts of the fires that are now mostly contained, but we have strong winds this week and, you know, no one is at a place where we're really off guard. There's still a lot of fire risk for us. 


To the many affected, we are so, so sorry -- this loss is beyond words. You know, we hope and pray, of course, that time will help with recovery and with healing as well. So I will leave it at that, but please continue to pray, support, and donate to LA in this time. This is not the start anyone would have imagined to the year, but people have such big hearts. People are also so resilient, you know, there's a lot of neighborly love and community love that is surrounding us all. So you know, we're going to focus on that and keep moving forward.


So with that, today's episode is all about living forever, or not dying. And it's a stark juxtaposition to nature, showing us our fragility with these fires. But today's episode is part of a broader focus on health and wellness that we're going to be doing for the next few episodes and really addressing those big questions we all have when it comes to our health and wellness. 


And Lana’s teased this on a previous episode, right, but there's going to be a chance to be more involved and a lot more coming. So we'll share more soon, but in the interim, sign up to our newsletter so you don't miss any announcements about what's going on.


[3:07]


One of the biggest questions we have around our health is how do I reverse aging or how do I live longer, right, the better health span in that time? We're all trying to find new ways to biohack our health, not just for wellness, but for longevity. Ultimately, we don't want to die, right? And it's this need that Bryan Johnson, tech billionaire turned longevity experimentation guinea pig, is tapping into. His documentary "Don't Die" recently released on Netflix. He is giving talks around the world and he has an upcoming conference called the Don't Die Summit in LA and New York and Miami.


His regime is extreme and so are the alternative therapies he tries. Some of what he does, we can all get behind: consistent sleep patterns, plant-based eating, strength training. But it's the plus 50 supplements, the plasma exchanges, experimental gene therapy, that's a bit questionable. 


You know, if what it takes to live longer looks like his lifestyle, some people have publicly said they would prefer to die. So very interesting to examine all of this. And all of this really sits in the sphere of transhumanism, which is the belief or theory that the human race can evolve beyond its current physical and mental limitations, especially by means of science and technology. So yeah, today our signals are going to focus on how we get to live longer and maybe not die. So Lana and Sue, excited to hear what you have to share with us today.


[4:51]


Sue: This is Sue. I can go first and, Raakhee, I just want to echo everything you say about Los Angeles, which was my home for a long time. And so just share a lot of those emotions with you and also just felt very strange thinking about at the same time, what are we going to do around longevity? 


But I know at this point in time, the best thing I can do for myself is to create the self-care habits that I know can just help improve anxiety and all the things that come along with it.


And so yeah, I agree with you in terms of Bryan Johnson at his core. I was happy to know that I am now following a lot of the basic things that he is doing, you know, and I don't know if you can call it biohacking or not, but just the old adage like you got to sleep well, you got to eat healthy, you know, exercise, great. 


But the price tag he has on his regime of $2 million a year, that I cannot do. And a lot of people can't do that either. What they also can't do is even these luxury wellness resorts that are now going into some of more of the medical and clinical work, as well, are, you know, five figures a pop, sometimes even more than that. And it's just not accessible for a lot of people.


Well, what I found recently was actually a signal I saw in real life backed by some articles. There is a place not too far from where I live called Restore. And for the longest time, I thought it was the donated goods item for Habitat for Humanity, like they have a store called Restore, right, you can buy things there secondhand. It wasn't that, it was actually Restore Hyper Wellness Center. And when I saw it, it was offering a lot of these services that Bryan Johnson might have at home, but you can actually get through membership.


So they offer things like cryotherapy, IV drips, infrared sauna, stuff like that, where I might have seen it a long time ago and thought, oh, this is kind of a woo-woo thing, like nobody's really doing it. Well, the article that I saw is saying that it is really this growing trend. And it's really picking up on this idea that it's not just about disease prevention anymore. It's really proactively about longevity and aging well.


And so there is a clinic group called Next Health, it's actually based out in Los Angeles. They are planning to grow to 150 longevity centers by 2027. And so this is a group that does the cryotherapy, like all of those things. They also are offering what they're calling “executive physical fitness exams” that run close to $15,000 a year. They're also doing the plasma exchange that Bryan Johnson was doing, right, for 10 grand for every time.


So, but yeah, they're growing. There is the Restore Hyper Wellness Center I just mentioned here. They are planning to grow to 500 locations around the country. So it is definitely a thing now. 


And I think, you know, in the future, I'm just thinking about the places I would go to for a massage, you know, no longer is it going to be a place where you're getting kind of these more, quote unquote, like traditional therapies, they might be mixing it in with you get a massage here, but you also have to have your sauna session, you know, all of those things, may be some clinical supplements that they might have you do. And so I can definitely see that happening in the future.


And then I'll just share this one other real life signal about the growing popularity and interest in this. Over the holidays, I went to Quebec City where they have a Nordic spa, right? So you have the hot bath, cold plunge, all of those things. Well, no line for any of those treatment rooms or for the baths, but the one place I had to wait, infrared sauna. And I just went out of curiosity and that was the only place there was a line. So it's like, oh, there is definitely something here. So I think in the future, you might see me, you know, checking one of these places out soon to see what it can offer. So that was my signal. 


Raakhee: I love it. I love it too. So exciting. And I think making it so possible, right? And feasible that, oh, wow, we can all access stuff like this and have a membership somewhere. And I think it just shows, like you were saying, Sue, that it's just going to grow and grow and hopefully with the growth be more affordable for more of us. So very, very cool.


And Lana, where did you go with the longevity? 


[9:33]


Lana: And I will say for the record, like, I do not want to live forever. I'm not interested, but of course, I want to be healthy. But I think some of this, like, “optimization,” yeah, I'll be on the side where it's like, I don't know if the trade-off is worth it and so I'll stay that up front.


But this article that I found was recently in Wired and the author of it is Kathy Willis. She's a professor of biodiversity at Oxford and she just wrote this book called Good Nature. And so it's something that we have talked about many times, but this article and the studies reveal how spending time in nature can dramatically improve our gut microbiome and our immune system.


And so in the study, children who played in areas containing forest soil, put their hands in the soil, showed significant increases in beneficial gut bacteria and improved immune markers in just 28 days. 


And they had other studies where people went for a walk in the woods and they would swab like their nasal cavity, for the children playing in the soil, they would swab the skin on their hands, you know, afterwards. And they were tracking sort of these benefits, you know, the benefits, they could see the difference between those folks and the participants who did not do that.


So this presents like a really interesting contrast, I think, to Bryan Johnson's Blueprint approach, which is, you know, he's all about microbiome monitoring and intervention and as you mentioned the supplements and the testing and, you know, just thinking about the microbiome system, like it's something that's to be measured, to be controlled, to be enhanced, right. 


And then these researchers, I mean, this is like so basic, right, this is like put your hands in the soil for 20 seconds. And afterwards, don't use soap when you wash your hands, right, just rinse your hands. That's all it takes, right, to show some benefits.


And, you know, they even had a study, like, if you can't go outdoors, right, that now we're seeing, like, this is not something that everyone has access to, right. If you can't go outdoors, if you can't go for a walk in a forest, bring plants indoors, right. They even have studies that show one spider plant in the house starts to change the atmosphere of your living situation.


And so, you know, I think this is like an ongoing paradox that we've talked about, right, in this tension, whether, like, is our path to optimal health going to come through technology and come through control, you know, or are we, you know, can we reconnect with natural systems that our bodies evolved to interact with, you know, as a possibility. 


And so, you know, so that's sort of one thing. We know this already, but just more and more evidence to say, you know, if you don't have to go this, like, very expensive path, there are simple solutions in front of you as well.


Raakhee: It's true, we've lost so much of sense of oneness with our surroundings, you know, which, yeah, you know, many generations back people always had, so, yeah, I think definitely something either ways to focus on so I do love that.


[13:43]


So I'll share mine, it speaks a little bit to some of the things you're speaking about, Sue, about wellness interventions that we know of, right, and interventions that we do know of would be, you know, cryotherapy, right, which is quite big, which is cold plunging and just using the cold to help our bodies because it helps with reducing oxidative stress, it increases hormone production, it flushes out toxins, it improves circulation, reduces inflammation, all those things it really does do and this all helps to slow aging.


So I see this kind of cryotherapy as we see as a very standard thing in gyms and spas and I'm sure it'll even lead to like a professional, I don't know, cryo coach role, like we saw with ketamine and right, like I'm sure it's a whole world, that’s arising. 


But my signal is about the extreme end of this and that's cryonics or cryopreservation and it's, that is really the science-based method of freezing the human body to preserve it and bring the body back to life at a later stage.


So it's prompted by a documentary, a short documentary that's shortlisted for the Oscars this year, where a man by the name of Nasar Ghafoor, he is not a billionaire but he works at one of the Virgin companies, he's about 59, probably maybe 60 now, he signed up to be cryogenically frozen on death. And he's kind of just showing a little bit of his journey and the documentary is really more about his family's reactions and will they do this one day. And he's part of why he's doing it is that his wife is a lot younger, he got married later in life, his kids are all still really young and he knows that 70 is kind of that limit around where he may lose his life so he wants to possibly come back and see them get married and all those sorts of things.


So and he's kind of raising questions for them, like are we all going to do this, is this what we do as a family, like other families have tombstones, we are all going to be cryopreserved? But I thought what an interesting concept around the idea of not dying, living forever, the extreme end of it. But this, of course, is happening and the oldest patient who's actually been cryopreserved is someone called Dr. James Bedford, this happened in 1967 so he's still preserved. And the thing with cryopreservation is right now the freezing can happen, that can happen and the body can be frozen, it's happening, it's happened since 1967. But what we don't have, right, up to date right now is the ability to revive and that's obviously what the science is missing.


So when you do sign up for this, you are taking a bet on the future in a big way and hoping the science is going to be there. And of course those in this world and scientists in this world their strong belief is that we will get there and we will get to a point where we have the science to revive people. 


But yeah cryonics it's a thing, I think it's really interesting to see how more people can sign up for something like this. It is something that is both equally now affordable to, you know, of course there's more expensive ways to do it. So it can cost anywhere from $20,000 to $200,000--$20,000 for a lot of people to live forever, I think it could be reasonable. This particular individual in the documentary, he took out life insurance for this.


So, you know, there will be ways to actually do this, right, if it's legal in your country. You can even simply freeze some of your DNA or your tissue. You can even simply freeze just your head - I'm not kidding. Companies would do this; you can sign up for it. Those are the costs. Doing just the head is cheaper, and the reason to just do DNA with a head, I know this is on the other end, is that there's the belief that those are the things you want to hang on to and that's what makes you you. We could also be cloning bodies in the future, so your body could just be remade and you could have a clone, and then your DNA could be added to the clone in the future.


And if that sounds crazy, you know, in 2008 a whole bunch of healthy mice were cloned from lumps of frozen tissue. They've done that exact process with mice and it's worked, and a lot of those mice clones lived to adulthood. 


So yeah, this is a whole world. There are summits for this - there's a TransVision Summit, there's a Society for Cryobiology Conference. It's quite an intense process as to what happens. It has to happen immediately on death so that you're in your most preserved state, like flash freezing.


So yeah, it's something else, but it is an option for people who really want to, in essence, live forever because you're not technically dead once they do that - you're preserved. What is coming up for either of you on these? 


[19:10]


Lana: That's a great one, so provocative. Yeah, I will say, you know, I will link this signal, but they can already clone pets. It’s exactly what you were saying. Which is that if you have a beloved pet that you are considering, you know, that you want to clone, you have to do it like immediately - it's like start that freezing process. So they can already do that, you know? 


So I guess this is obviously removed, but yeah, and so I think this concept of these folks placing this bet on the future, that even though the revival is not possible right now, that they're basically saying "I believe that we will be able to figure this out" - that is really incredible.


I mean, I think the other thing that it brings to mind is obviously some, you know, we can freeze eggs and embryos, right? And we are facing like a lot of these ethical and other philosophical maybe decisions about what to do with the capabilities that we currently have, and so and as this gets more complicated. So yeah, that’s really fascinating take on literally living forever.


Sue: Yeah, I had very similar thoughts, Lana, on what we can already do with cryopreservation, but I was thinking, going back to this whole "don't die" movement. You know, if you're diagnosed with some kind of disease that we don't have a cure for yet, you could easily see this being an option, saying "Well, when you got a cure, wake me up." This is what I'd like to do for some people who really want to make sure they can outlive that and find a cure for that. So I thought that was interesting. 


[21:22]


And then Lana, to your point around the Good Nature, I saw this article about Bryan Johnson. He has some website that is like a Longevity Contest, and they've created all these indicators that kind of help rank you in terms of who is aging or not aging or reverse aging the best. Anyway, this 64-year-old woman outranked Bryan Johnson. So of course there was an interview with her, and you know, she generally does the basic things like eats well, sleeps well, you know, all that stuff, but she was all about social relationships. She said what keeps her going is her kids and her 11 grandchildren, and having that relationship with them is what keeps her healthy every day.


So I just also loved having that natural, like more relational perspective that we've also talked about - this idea of community keeping you strong is extremely important. 


And then just building off of that, you know, one thing I haven't seen is specifically around women's longevity. So many of these articles are around what men are doing, especially wealthy men, like all those things. And just seeing the 64-year-old woman talk about what's important to her just made me wonder - yeah, if women are biohacking or doing these things, where do women's reproductive systems, women's longevity come into play? And I know we talked about this a while ago about ovarian health as a big part of women's longevity.


It was interesting - I didn't really see those two things coming together when I was searching for a signal, so I would love to see that in the future. Like if you do have these longevity clinics, is there kind of a special menu, you know, just a menu option for other things that are really important to women and additionally for men? Who knows, that might be different, so that might be coming in the future.


Raakhee: Yeah, Sue, I think you're right, hitting the nail on the head there. I recently, for the first time - it's the first thing I ever saw - there's a Women's Health Longevity Summit. It's with, you know, we spoke about this person who's doing all these extreme things for longevity, and she was dating somebody and he had to buy into that first before she would be with him. Yeah, so she's one of the people - I think her name is Kayla Barnes, I might be wrong, something like that - and the lady from Levels, Casey Means, Mindy Pelz, the gut doctor, speaking to everything you do, Lana. So there's a couple of them, and I think they're doing their first conference in the next couple of weeks. It's the first time I've seen anything about women's longevity, but I think you're exactly right - I think that's gonna be the big next thing, right, with everything that's happening in the women's health space.


[24:15]


And then Lana, I think about what you were speaking about around the ethical concerns and just the - I mean, for me, I guess the question comes up of like, if I am being preserved, like what about my soul? Like, I'm not in that body, you know - where am I? Right, like am I in limbo, so am I a ghost technically? You know, there's that question. Which is - yeah, I for me, I felt, and I'd love to hear what you both feel about this - with the Bryan Johnson documentary, because he speaks a little bit about his past and religion, it's definitely things that have happened to him that have led him to being here, you know? He's kind of like - yeah, but there was nothing around spirituality in his regime, like nothing around that.


I think he recognized relationships because he seemed really concerned that he is alone. He knew there was a risk, but I think he's finding community in the work he does now. But there was nothing around spirituality - it's kind of like science is God, which, you know, it's an interesting perspective. But for me, that's definitely the part that I - yeah, I don't know, that I can’t wrap my head around that part. What do you both think?


Lana: Yeah, I think going back to the comment about the pets who were cloned, that's, you know - and this is a big service. So they would tell the pet owners, you know, just be aware that the clone's not going to have the same personality. Like they are just going to be their replica in terms of how they look, but they might be different, you know? 


So that really speaks to kind of what you're saying, which is like we're really just talking about the physical aspect, right? And so like cells and the biology - and these other aspects like a soul and the personality and the things that make you you - I mean, this, the physical is just like your meat suit, right? Like the thing that makes you you is your essence. And so I'm really glad that you brought that up. I'm, you know, to like think critically about this - how can you talk about not dying or living forever without acknowledging like having a spiritual belief system? So there's definitely something - something seems amiss there.


Sue: Yeah, as you are talking, Raakhee, I put two big questions. I said "Consciousness? Soul?" - what happens? And yeah, if you are someone who believes in that, like there's all this - all these other implications of what that means for you in your life. It's very hard to wrap my head around.


Raakhee: Yeah, I think we could spend the year talking about this topic a lot because there's so many layers to this. But - and Lana, I have to mention - the Cryonics Institute, do offer pet cryopreservation and 170 people have already signed up. It hasn't happened yet for those people, I believe, but 170 people have signed up.


So I guess this will be one of those episodes that's going to leave you thinking about a lot of things and a lot of questions, and also knowing wow, there's really interesting things you can do for longevity, you know, and increasing both health span and lifespan. It's important to be healthy with the life you have.


Setting some really great things coming in the future that's going to enable us all to be healthier, and then really simple things we can do, like play with the soil. So yeah, if that's something to do this weekend then go out there, you know, get some nature.


But we hope you enjoy this episode and we will be back again next week. Thank you so much for listening and as always go to horizonshiftlab.com, sign up for the newsletter so you don't miss any announcements, and we'll see you next week. Thanks and bye for now.


[28:39]

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