Kara Swisher Wants to Live Forever (2026) s01e03 Episode Script
How to Hack Loneliness
1
- The tech billionaires
are terrified of death.
- Are you scared of dying?
A lot of tech people are.
- I am not.
- Science is entering
uncharted territory
as the slow grind
of academic research collides
with Silicon Valley's certainty
that it can hack biology,
which is ambitious,
given it still hasn't
solved customer support.
- The challenge is that
biology is really complicated.
- What's gonna happen
in a world where
the ultra-wealthy have
access to this,
but the rest of us don't?
- How do you equitably
distribute that?
- Mm-hmm.
- I don't know.
- Every technology has
problems, people.
We should talk about them.
We're adults.
- Seeing an attack
on this technology
- It's a crime.
I'm sorry.
It's murder, slow murder.
- It is.
[pensive music]
♪
[intriguing music]
- I am a student of history,
and technology has really
helped humanity live longer.
Whether it's electricity,
whether it's clean water,
whether it's clean food,
et cetera,
people live longer
because of technology
and the advances of technology.
[peppy electronic music]
♪
For most of modern history,
medical breakthroughs
followed a familiar path.
The public funded
basic research,
scientists built on it slowly,
and eventually,
those discoveries reached
the rest of us.
But now,
as artificial intelligence
and private tech money pour
into health and longevity,
that system is
starting to change.
- It would revolutionize human
health, and I think one day,
maybe we can cure all disease
with the help of AI.
- The question isn't just
what science can do next,
it's who gets to decide on
which problems get solved
- We can cure all disease.
We can give everybody
a great education.
- whom those solutions
are really for,
and what could possibly
go wrong?
A lot of really important
technologies become invisible.
We turn on a light every day.
We don't think about it.
It's invisible.
You didn't get up
today and think, oh,
I'm on the electrical grid.
Like, you don't even think
of it, and that's
That's great technology.
That said, there's
all kinds of damage
that happened in the early
stages of electricity.
All kinds of fires,
people getting blown up.
Every technology has
this implication.
If history has
taught us anything,
it's that we better
take a hard look
at where this is all headed.
- It's the new things
that AI can do
that I hope we spend a
lot of effort worrying about.
- Sam Altman is one
of the most powerful
and controversial figures
in tech.
He's the CEO of OpenAI,
the company behind ChatGPT.
You might have heard of it.
And whether he likes it or not,
he's become one
of the public faces
of artificial intelligence
itself.
He's also deeply interested
in longevity and the idea
that technology might
radically extend human life.
All right, we're gonna
talk about both OpenAI
and some of your investments.
- OK.
- All right, are we ready?
- Yeah.
Go for it.
- I had a passing interest
in longevity for a long time
and what technology can
do to improve healthcare.
- Where did it come from?
Where did this interest
Was it you wanted to live
longer or what was the
Or you were interested
in sci-fi or what?
- I remember once someone saying
that most diseases are
diseases of age.
20-year-olds don't get nearly
as sick as 80-year-olds.
- Sure.
- And so if we can figure out
the general purpose thing here,
maybe we can improve healthcare
outcomes across the board.
And then when
the partial reprogramming
discoveries began to happen
- Explain what
that is for people.
- The idea that we could
sort of rewind
cellular age a little bit.
Not all the way
back to a stem cell,
which, you know, we don't want
to be turned back into goo,
but we could, like, make your
cells a little bit younger.
And I ended up making a
large investment in a company
called Retro to pursue that.
- It may sound like
science fiction,
but what Altman is
referring to is very real,
and there's already
been success.
In mice, at least.
He's put $180 million
of his own money
into Retro Biosciences,
a startup trying to slow down
the biological clock.
In its Silicon Valley lab,
Retro is running experiments
with cellular reprogramming,
manipulating mouse cells
to make their bodies function
as if they were young again.
- The goal is add 10 years
of healthspan,
somehow do something
to your cells
that will partially
reprogram back
Them back to a younger state.
- Altman isn't just pouring
money into longevity research.
He's putting OpenAI's muscle
behind it too.
The company developed
GPT-4B Micro,
an AI model designed
to warp speed
cellular reprogramming
discoveries.
- People will say things like,
there's no way
that the model can read
a million papers
and come up with a new insight.
- Mm-hmm. And?
- Because humans can't do that.
- Right.
No, we can't.
- This is an area where AI will
be significantly superhuman.
- According to OpenAI, and yes,
they're grading
their own homework,
GPT-4B Micro
helped design proteins
that performed
more than 50 times better
than standard versions
in lab tests.
You said, by 2035,
you anticipate AI will
be able to cure most diseases.
Really?
- Um
- "Cure's" a big word.
Mitigate?
- Treat yeah, treat, mitigate,
something like that.
This will be one
of the biggest things
to happen to scientific
progress in a long time.
- Let me read you a quote
from Boris Power.
"But I think there's also
a gap between the AI world
"and the bio world
in us being able
to talk together effectively."
- Yes.
- Talk about that.
- Yes.
The world as a whole
Individuals, companies,
groups at all these levels
People have a lot of inertia
in the way they work.
So if you are a biologist
and you've been, you know,
on the bench for 20 years,
you have a set
of beliefs and a style,
and it's worked for you about
how you want to do things.
And then when a company like
OpenAI comes along and says,
hey, I can actually find
your discovery in simulation,
they just
They say, definitely not.
- No, I need a pig to do it.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- And this is the safe way,
and they're nervous about you,
what you what do you
think the problem is?
- It's skepticism.
It's like, this can't work.
There's no way you can
This can, like, deliver.
- AI could unlock
a new era of medicine,
faster discoveries,
smarter treatments,
maybe even cures
we once thought impossible.
But breakthroughs are
only half the story,
because when private
companies and computers are
driving the innovation,
another question emerges.
Who decides who benefits?
You know, people are
already sort of up in arms
about billionaires
and the people getting
Getting the juicy parts.
Is that something
that has to be fixed,
the democratization of this?
- I mean, the version of this
I think about this much more
for AI than longevity,
but for AI, yes,
it absolutely has to be fixed.
- What would you be
doing at Retro,
if you suddenly came up
with that treatment,
that it benefits everybody
versus less than 1%?
- If we came up
with the pill version,
we would make it super cheap,
and we would
The company would still
make plenty of money.
That'd be fine, you know.
- What if it is
a super expensive thing?
- Well, then I don't know.
If it's, like, you know,
gonna cost a million dollars
a person, until we can
automate it with roboticists
because it's got
to go through there
and do something to
every individual cell
or who knows what
- Mm-hmm.
- I've thought about how you
equitably distribute that,
especially if it's
an expensive thing.
I don't know.
That's really hard.
- A lot of the problems
with a lot of tech people,
and Sam is not different
in this regard,
is they don't want
any responsibility
for the things they make.
They're always like that.
They're always like, oh,
we didn't anticipate
the consequences.
One lesson from covering
Silicon Valley for so long
was that they never anticipate
They're, like, consequence free.
Silicon Valley loves to imagine
itself building the future,
and many of the tech barons
grew up watching "Star Trek."
- We're gonna speedrun
"Star Trek."
- Yeah.
- Yeah, yeah.
- Speedrunning "Star Trek"
would be cool.
- Yeah.
- Which is why I'm
in Ticonderoga, New York,
where a 13,000 square foot
former grocery store has
become a Mecca for Trekkies.
- Live long and prosper.
- It's a painstaking recreation
of the 1960s "Star Trek" set,
with nearly every
blinking console
and sliding door accounted for.
[whimsical music]
All right, OK.
Our favorite room.
- OK, it's the transporter.
- Oh, my God.
- Yes.
[laughs]
Oh, shit.
- Adam, you have to calm
the [muted] down.
- Yeah, no worries.
- All right, let's look.
I'm joined today by Adam Becker,
who's got a PhD in astrophysics
and has written two books,
most recently,
"More Everything Forever,"
a critique of Silicon Valley's
questionable roadmap
for where we're headed.
- You have to get
up there, too, though.
- All right.
OK, fine.
All right.
You can say "energize" now.
- Yeah, sure.
- OK, go ahead.
- Energize.
- You don't do that.
- [laughs]
- That's not how you energize.
- Fine.
Hold on.
Hold on.
Here we go.
Here we go.
Energize.
[warbling]
- I grew up inspired
by "Star Trek,"
a universe
of limitless technology,
abundance, and exploration.
But the tech oligarchs tend
to forget one small detail.
In "Star Trek," humanity
came before profits.
"Star Trek" kind of informed
the tech industry,
whether it's
- Oh, yeah.
- You know,
getting rid of diseases
or scanning yourself
or living longer.
Talk a little bit
about that science
that techies are pushing
quite heavily.
- These are the visions
of the future
the tech oligarchs of today
all grew up with.
They think it's an
instruction manual as opposed
to, like, a reflection
of where we are and
- As people.
- a conversation. Yeah.
Elon said something like,
science fiction shouldn't
remain fiction forever.
They're like, I want to
be a science fiction hero.
I, Elon Musk, will
upload our brains
into chips using Neuralink
and then send it all
to Mars and save civilization.
What do
science fiction heroes do?
They go to Mars.
They don't solve climate change.
- Right.
- I mean, look,
I watch "Star Trek"
and I think, wow, you know,
what a beautiful world
where people work together
to create a better place
to take care of each other.
- Is there any of the science
that you think is interesting?
- Oh, I mean, there's all
sorts of interesting science,
but it is kind of striking to me
that the science that
most scientists think
is most promising is the stuff
that these guys actually
seem to care the least about.
[pensive tune]
- There used to be
this idea that it was
worth it for our government
to invest in research.
This research would take time,
and you never know
how it's gonna go.
There used to be a
really wonderful triangle
of research universities,
government,
and the private sector.
That is what's great
about our country.
That's a perfect situation
that doesn't exist
anywhere else on the planet.
- We have to honestly
and aggressively attack
the universities
in this country.
- The vice president of
the United States, JD Vance,
said universities are the enemy.
Every accusation is a
confession with these people.
He is the enemy in terms
of science and good.
- Government funding plays
a unique role.
It often supports
basic research,
the kind that companies have
less incentive to do,
provided free to the entire
scientific and technological
community
so that all can use it
to experiment and innovate.
♪
- At UC Berkeley,
there's a discovery
that wouldn't have
been possible without
that very same
government funding.
The technology we're talking
about is called CRISPR,
a gene-editing tool that
cracked open the code
of life itself.
- The 2020 Nobel Prize
in chemistry, Jennifer Doudna.
- It was co-developed
by Jennifer Doudna,
and it's one of
the most groundbreaking
advances in modern medicine.
Explain what CRISPR is for,
I don't know, a five-year-old.
- It really started
with bacteria,
figuring out how
to fight off viruses.
We figured out that
these organisms have
a molecule called CRISPR-CAS9.
It's a protein that works
like scissors on DNA.
It has the ability
to target DNA in a cell
and make cuts in it.
The cell sends
repair proteins in to fix it,
and in the process of fixing it,
it can change it.
- Doudna is a biochemist
at UC Berkeley
and the founder of the
Innovative Genomics Institute,
where her team is working
on everything
from curing diseases
like Alzheimer's
to helping crops fight
against climate change.
- We realized, hey, we can
We can manipulate it ourselves.
- In terms of gene editing?
- Yeah.
Kind of it opened the door
so we can now study
the function of genes,
and we can also change genes.
- There's lots of diseases that
you could target with this.
- What if you could
actually reduce risk of
Of developing
Alzheimer's by making
a genetic change?
Huge impact, right?
And, you know, you could imagine
people living the same
lifespan but healthier.
- CRISPR holds enormous
promise with the potential
to transform
how we treat disease,
maybe one day even
bring back the dodo bird.
But breakthroughs
like CRISPR don't
come from hacks or shortcuts.
They come from
curiosity-driven science
and following the evidence.
- You know, one of the things
that I'm interested in
is the process of innovation,
the process of discovery.
And I think one of the things
that I've been fascinated by
with the whole field of CRISPR
now
is that it came out
of very small science,
kind of mom-and-pop,
curiosity-driven projects
that were government funded.
And I think that is
very telling,
because it to me,
it kind of signifies the way
fundamental breakthroughs
are at least sometimes made.
They're not made
by predicting something
and then doing the experiments
to prove that it's true,
which is more AI.
It's the other way around.
It's just asking a question.
How does this work?
"I wonder how
bacteria fight infection"
was kind of that question.
- Unlike government funding,
private companies can't afford
the budget or timelines
that support the exploration
of open-ended
scientific questions,
even if AI might help once
discoveries are finally made.
So talk about the use
of AI in this,
because it's being used
in all kinds of ways
Drug testing, drug discovery.
Does it have
an application here?
- The challenge is that
biology is really complicated.
It's certainly accelerating
the pace of science
in the sense that, you know,
it means that you don't
have to do a lot of experiments
that you had to in the past.
However, taking that knowledge
and then trying
to apply it in a body
is gonna be very different.
I don't think AI is
gonna replace innovation.
It's not gonna replace
human beings who are
asking the original questions.
- Let's do a thought
experiment, then.
- Yeah.
- What if someone like Mark
Zuckerberg invented CRISPR?
What would he make?
- It's a little bit of
a hard question to answer,
and the reason is that I don't
think that most technologists
and folks
in Silicon Valley that
At least that I've
interacted with,
know enough biology
to be able to use
something like CRISPR today.
So you have to really
kind of understand
what kinds of questions
and what kinds of problems are
you solving with this tool?
- News flash.
If we want a future
where tools this powerful are
used responsibly and benefit
more than just the 1%,
we have to protect
the kind of science
that made them possible
in the first place.
- I want CRISPR
to be widely available.
I want it to have broad impact.
I want it to be accessible
to people that need it.
Many of those people are
not going to be wealthy.
They're not going
to be connected.
And this is what I love
about CRISPR, frankly,
is that it has that potential.
We could see that
from the very beginning.
It's not a technology that
requires a huge infrastructure.
I mean, it's not like
AI in that sense, right?
We don't need to have
billions of dollars.
And so, as a result,
there's the potential
for this technology, CRISPR,
to have very broad impact,
I think, in the future.
- What actually keeps
you up at night with this?
Is there anything?
- For me, it's primarily
this issue of access.
We've got to work on it.
I don't want my legacy
to be that a few dozen people
on the planet were
able to benefit
because they had connections
and, you know,
they could use this technology
and nobody else was able
to get it.
[pensive tune]
- I give Silicon Valley
plenty of grief,
and trust me, they earn it.
But I'll also be
the first to point out
when the road from discovery
to a real world breakthrough
runs straight through a startup.
Welcome to my backyard.
Actually, it is my backyard.
I live two blocks from here
for 20 years in San Francisco.
I still have my house,
and this is where
I took my dogs and my kids.
Which is why I'm curious
about a company trying
to turn
a big scientific question
into a product.
[quirky music]
- Oh, Della, please
don't bite her.
[laughs]
- That's OK.
Look at that.
- Paw.
Oh, yeah.
Good girl.
So, I mean, I've grown
up with dogs and cats,
and the worst part is always
watching them decline.
- Decline.
- They're so perfect
and innocent,
and they don't deserve
to be in pain.
- Right, right.
And they do.
My dog, just before
we could put him down,
I remember seeing the life
go out of his eyes.
- I'm remembering putting down
my previous dog,
and, like, it's very traumatic.
- I'm here to meet
Celine Halioua,
founder and CEO
of Loyal for Dogs,
a startup that's well on
its way to make history
as the first company
to get FDA approval
for a drug that specifically
targets aging itself.
- I got interested in
aging from the pathway
of all these diseases that are
so impossibly hard to treat
Parkinson's, Alzheimer's,
brain cancers.
They all are age related.
They all go up
exponentially with age.
Why don't we develop something
that prevents them
or reduces the risk
or delays it?
And so one of the things
we're working on is,
can we develop a drug
that will take a dog
and bring them
to a metabolic state
that is younger and healthier
than what they were previously?
- Loyal is developing
three treatments
One for aging
in all senior dogs,
and two aimed
specifically at big dogs
by targeting a growth
hormone called IGF-1.
Across the animal kingdom,
from mammals to birds,
fish, and even fruit flies,
IGF-1 fuels early development.
But later in life, that same
hormone can speed up aging,
and large dogs can have
up to 28 times more of it
than small ones.
- Oh, hello.
- [laughs]
- See, that's why
he's gonna live longer.
People should do
this more often.
You're grounding,
in San Francisco terms.
In Silicon Valley, if you
think you can solve a problem,
the next step is
to raise money and try.
Loyal is applying that
playbook to aging,
using venture capital
to push an idea
through the scientific
and regulatory channels
that turn discoveries
into medicine.
- One company is
making some headway.
Loyal, giving NBC News
a letter from the FDA,
saying its drug, meant
to increase dogs' lifespans,
just met one of the many
conditions needed on its way
to market approval.
- So talk about
the FDA right now, this
This sort of longevity, because
longevity is an important issue
around a lot of these,
both for humans and dogs,
because they are related.
- Yeah, so, basically,
we wanted to get
the first drug FDA approved
for lifespan extension,
which has never been done
in any species.
No drug is ever
approved for this.
Drugs are developed and
approved for diseases, right,
like cancer or osteoarthritis.
And this was really
important to me,
because if there's one industry
that has fallen prey,
I would say,
to kind of overpromising
and under-delivering,
it's the longevity field
Right, for for centuries.
- Charlatans is the word.
- Charlatans.
Exactly.
- You're a good boy, aren't you?
[intriguing music]
- Dogs are a really, really
good model of how we age.
- Talk about
the transition to humans.
Any kind of do you
think about that at all?
- Yeah, yeah.
I mean, that was kind of
always the OG thesis is,
can we take
what we learn in dogs
and use it to develop
human drugs?
I mean, if we can
extend a dog's lifespan,
it's teaching me
about how humans age.
- The question used to be what
scientists could discover.
Now it's also what investors
are willing to fund.
Right, so how is it
attracting investors?
- It's always hard.
Like, it's much easier to raise
if you're an AI company
than if you're
building dog longevity.
- Just say AI dog longevity.
- There is no AI
in Loyal as of today,
but I was able
to raise $5 million
off of a slide deck and an idea,
of which most of
the details were wrong,
and that's really only
something that could happen
in Silicon Valley, honestly.
- Right.
An innovation
this game changing also
forces a harder question.
Who owns it and who
actually gets to benefit?
- People are always concerned
about if we have aging drugs,
are we going to actually
further the dis-equity
that we have in this world.
- Right.
- And I would actually say
it's the opposite.
The least equitable
drugs we have today
are acute treatment drugs.
It's things like our dogs
getting treatment for cancer.
Most people cannot
spend $10,000.
- On dog care.
- On dog care.
In human health, the healthcare
that is the most accessible
is basic preventative care,
and that's what we're
trying to develop.
- Well, we did it
to play with dogs.
We did.
But there are certain resonances
between humans and dogs.
Like if we can solve something,
this problem,
maybe it has some applications
for humans.
This is not just a placebo.
This is serious science
going towards solving
a problem for a lot of people.
People love their dogs,
and maybe it'll have
some applications for people.
And we wanted
to play with dogs also.
[pensive tone]
- One of the problems
with health is,
there's so much data
that we don't understand.
At the same time, it has
Health is the most
private thing.
With people uploading
all this information,
obviously the most
pressing issue is
who gets their hands on it,
right?
And to me, I always say,
I'm not scared of AI.
I'm scared of
the people who use AI.
And so if it's
a bad group of people,
you can think of any number
of dystopian scenarios
of control and surveillance
and everything else.
If it's good people,
you can think of all manner
of wonder, right?
It could go either way, and it
will go both ways, actually.
- Healthcare is one of
the biggest uses of ChatGPT.
People use it to understand
their health all the time.
They upload their
medical records.
They ask it questions
about symptoms.
Obviously, we think
that's great.
So with GPT-5, we did a
big push to make it better
at health-related queries.
- You know, there used
to be Dr. Google.
Is it now Dr. ChatGPT?
And is that
- People do say that.
- Yeah, is that a good thing?
- I think it's a good thing.
- So explain how that's
a good thing for people.
- The number of patient stories
that we hear
from friends of ours,
family of ours, saying, like,
I had this health situation,
couldn't figure it out,
put all my stuff in ChatGPT,
and now I'm cured,
like, those are great stories,
and we hear a lot of those.
- In ten years,
what could it be?
- I've heard a lot of doctors
and healthcare workers say
that they hope that in ten years
everybody gets an AI
medical advisor service,
and you can say,
here's what's going on for me.
Here's my sleep data,
what I'm eating,
my blood tests, my symptoms,
and a service could
early on say,
hey, you're at risk of this.
You need to go test for this.
- And it would then do what?
You're saying, it will
then tell you what to do?
- It will say,
would you like me to, like,
make a file you can print
and show the doctor?
- So talk about
the risk of utilizing
the technology for our health
with hallucinations
and mistakes.
- [chuckles] I heard a doctor
who was testing ChatGPT,
sent me a note,
which is like, you know,
every doctor thinks
that you can't
use ChatGPT because
it hallucinates
too much on medical stuff.
I believe these doctors
have not tried it
since the GPT-3.5 days
when it was true.
I promise you, any human
doctor hallucinates
far, far more than GPT-5 does.
- [laughs]
The last few questions.
You know, there is this idea
of it spiraling
beyond human control.
When you think about
controlling it
and it helping you
in ways like that,
that seems like a lovely future,
where, you know, get up,
have this, don't eat that,
and it bothers
you until you do
Sort of an irritating angel.
- Then I would just turn it off.
- But but you can't.
That's the whole point.
You have to listen to it.
It's sort of your
conscience in a lot of ways.
Should we abrogate our agency
to an AI conscience,
when it comes to health,
particularly?
- We probably don't have
enough time
for the whole free will debate
here, but, like,
I don't think you will have
any more or less free will
than you have today with an AI.
You will still be telling it
- Oh, I don't know.
- You'll still be deciding
to turn it off,
turn it on, whatever.
- What if insurance
companies get all that?
- I actually have no problem
with insurance companies giving
people who, like,
prove they work out lower rates.
I don't have a problem.
That seems like good
behavioral economics to me.
- Except if they get it
without your permission.
- That yeah.
- And HIPAA concerns.
One of the things I have
- I am concerned about that.
Again, this is
happening really fast.
But we do need some concept
like privilege for AI.
So when you go talk to a doctor,
you can talk about whatever
is really going on.
You can have confidence
that that will be protected.
But if you're getting that same
medical advice from ChatGPT,
there's not a concept
of AI privilege.
So I believe, over time,
we will
I don't know
how long it will take.
We will decide
to extend that to AI.
- Why not now?
Why don't you do that?
- Well, it's not up to us.
- Well, you could push
If OpenAI said,
let's pass this bill
- We are pushing
I mean, we do advocate for it.
- You know, I think he has
The mentality is,
you know, we're looking into it.
We didn't anticipate this.
They're always like that.
They're always
like, oh, we didn't
anticipate the consequences.
They don't imagine
things have an impact.
And very last question,
are you scared of dying?
A lot of tech people are.
- I am not.
- A lot of them are.
Why is that?
- Why am I not or
why are other people?
- Why are you not
and why are they?
- I don't really want to
speculate about other people's
psychological issues.
- Overall?
- Why do you think?
- Mostly, I think
many of them didn't
get hugged enough as children.
That's always been my thing.
But
- Plenty of people got
hugged a lot as children
and still don't wanna die.
- Because they think
they can hack everything.
They think everything
has a solution
when it and that
everything else is details.
Poverty isn't gonna be
solved by tech.
It could be helped.
- Helped.
It will be helped.
- Helped, but they think solved.
Solved.
Everything is "cure and solve,"
and I think they
Certain things just
aren't solvable,
which I think is very difficult
for people.
- Yeah, I think that's hard
for people to sit with.
[pensive music]
♪
- Hey, guys.
Are you having fun?
- Now that I've looked
at the hype around AI,
I'm headed to the
University of Pennsylvania's
Institute for RNA Innovation
to meet 2023 Nobel laureate
Dr. Drew Weissman.
Like AI, this particular lab
has attracted
plenty of controversy,
but unlike AI,
most of that outrage is
entirely unwarranted.
- Oh, hey, Drew.
- Dr. Weissman has assembled
more than 70 of
the world's leading scientists
to explore
the clinical potential
of one of the most promising
but extremely politicized
technologies of our time mRNA,
the technology behind
the COVID vaccine.
Every technology has
problems, people.
MRNA is a incredible
breakthrough for all of us.
Most people didn't die of
COVID because of these vaccines
and how quickly they
were created, right?
Again, could be some problems.
We should talk about them.
We're adults.
We can talk about
heart issues or whatever.
We should study them.
No one's saying we shouldn't.
But we were in a crisis,
and guess what,
science makes mistakes.
Overall, if you want
to do a risk-reward analysis,
far fewer people died
of COVID than would have
without the vaccine.
[intriguing music]
♪
Talk about the differences
between every other vaccine
and this.
- This is a molecular vaccine.
Most vaccines are based
on the virus or the bacteria.
We only use the sequence.
So when COVID-19 was
sequenced in 2019,
we didn't need the virus,
and within a couple of days,
we had COVID-19 vaccines.
- Why is that speed important?
- Every year, we make
a new influenza vaccine.
- Influenza vaccine.
Right, exactly.
- Because the influenza drifts.
Right now, they start
six to eight months
before influenza season.
They have to guess what
virus is gonna be prevalent.
With RNA, you need
a couple of weeks.
- Right. It's sort of like
spray and pray
in the other way.
- Right, yep.
- What are you
most excited about
when you think about
the future of RNA therapeutics
as an opportunity for lots
of things, not just COVID?
- There is so much
that has developed
in the past five years for RNA.
We have gene therapies
in clinical trials
that are curing people
that otherwise would
have died of their diseases.
- 20 years out, 30 years out,
if you could dream what
it would be, what would you
- So we've got a new idea
called an interception vaccine,
where we can treat
genetic variants that lead
to increased risk of cancer
before the cancer ever forms.
It's unbelievable,
the potential.
I haven't thought of, you know,
10% of what you can do with it.
[upbeat music]
♪
- Vaccines are just one piece
of what mRNA therapeutics
could ultimately deliver.
To understand
what else is possible,
I'm turning to a couple
of up-and-coming researchers
pushing this technology forward.
- So there are actually
just five components.
- Right.
First up is Dr. Ted Kreider,
an immunologist focused
on developing mRNA vaccines
and treatments for HIV.
MRNA stands for?
- Messenger RNA,
which is ribonucleic acid.
It's a mouthful.
None of us say it,
so don't worry.
And the reason
it's the messenger is,
it holds the instructions
to make proteins.
- Right.
- And if you remember back
from ninth grade bio,
proteins are
the workhorses, right?
They are the things
- Sure.
- that do stuff.
- If you say so.
Yeah, OK.
All right.
- So within a cell
- It tells them what to do.
OK, all right.
- This is a schematic
that we use frequently.
An mRNA vaccine only
has five components.
So the first component is this
little squiggle in the middle.
That's the mRNA.
- This little eyebrow here.
- Yeah.
- What's the technical term?
- I use squiggle.
- OK, squiggle.
I like it.
- And so all of the information
for making whatever type
of protein we want
is in that little squiggle.
But then it's modifiable.
- With the M part, right,
where it's going.
- Yes.
You can decorate the outside
with either antibodies
or other proteins
or other molecules,
and this tells the LNP,
don't go to this cell,
go to a different cell.
It's like a LEGO.
- Oh, OK.
I know those.
- It builds yeah.
- I have four children,
so go ahead.
Please.
I'm completely fluent in LEGO.
- You can build
your intervention
and tailor it exactly
to whatever problem
you want to try to
- With the same pieces.
- With the same pieces.
- Of different colors.
- Of different colors.
- Thank you.
Yes, I should win
the Nobel Prize for that.
- [laughs]
- Yeah.
Yes, like LEGOs, mRNA uses
simple, modular building blocks
that make it possible
for researchers to adapt
the technology
to a wide range of diseases,
from infections to cancer
to autoimmune disorders,
and to do it faster than
traditional approaches.
This leaves the door
wide open for accessible,
personalized therapies.
- And just to say I'm not lying,
this is an actual
picture of LNPs.
- Oh, wow.
- So if we're gonna
make an HIV vaccine,
I generally go to
a government resource.
- Are they still there?
- This is the importance
of these types of resources.
- I agree.
There's no picture of
Kristi Noem popping up.
Anyways.
- So this is the
Los Alamos National Database
that anybody can access.
And we're just gonna
choose an HIV string.
I can download this sequence
and then literally copy
and a paste,
and I think I was
under a minute.
- Right.
- This is now
the template for making RNA.
- Wow.
- But I would love
to show you the next step.
- Sure.
- So Jilian's gonna talk to you
about a vaccine to try
to prevent diabetes.
You're gonna make your
own lipid nanoparticles.
- OK.
- Not with this RNA.
With some other RNA.
- All right.
Good, good.
OK, great.
Have we barred the door
from RFK Jr.?
Great. Let's go.
Shh.
We're making medicine.
- We've got lipids.
We've got RNA.
I'm going to show you how we
combine all of these lipids
to make a vaccine.
- Next in my high school
science refresher
is Dr. Jilian Melamed,
whose research focuses
on using mRNA therapeutics
to treat autoimmune diseases
and allergies.
- And this is what science is,
combining small volumes
of clear liquids
into other small volumes
of clear liquids.
- Nothing's gonna
blow up here, right?
- Oh, you'll see the boom.
The most important
lipid component
is the ionizable lipid.
The job of the ionizable lipid
is to become
positively charged
when it enters cells.
It interacts with
the negatively charged RNA,
and that's how it's
able to encapsulate
and protect the cargo.
It can traverse the body
and be taken up by cells.
So now we're gonna add
it to our RNA solution.
This is the mRNA becoming
encapsulated within an LNP.
What you're going to see
is what we call
a spontaneous nanoprecipitation.
- Uh-huh.
I always say that.
- Of course.
Every day.
- Like this?
You push it all the way in?
- Yes.
Perfect.
Did you see that?
- Yeah. Wow.
- You made a vaccine.
- So that's a vaccine?
- That's a vaccine.
- This is a vaccine
that would cure, what?
- Type 1 diabetes.
- Type 1
- This is a vaccine
that contains
our insulin-encoding mRNA.
- Wow.
So they don't have
to take insulin, correct?
- Correct.
- Wow. Amazing.
- So where vaccines for cancer
and for infectious diseases are
training the immune system
to see something
and to attack it,
the vaccines I'm developing
train the immune system
to see a protein
and leave it alone.
This is called
a tolerizing vaccine.
So imagine we could take
a blood sample from a patient
with type 1 diabetes and develop
an mRNA vaccine that
is going to retrain
their exact immune response.
That's the excitement of mRNA.
- So it's at a very low cost?
- At a very low cost.
- And they would take this
regularly or just once?
- We have to go through
testing to find out.
- Right, to find out.
Right, OK.
But testing costs money,
and that money has
been slashed by
the current administration,
threatening to leave
researchers scrambling
and progress stalled.
So the attacks on
mRNA research, how do you feel?
- It's hard to believe,
honestly,
because we saw how
the COVID vaccines saved lives.
Seeing an attack on this
technology that has nothing
but promise and potential
for all kinds of diseases,
it doesn't make any sense.
- No.
It's a crime. I'm sorry.
That's what I feel like.
- I agree.
It's a crime.
- Yeah, yeah.
It's murder.
Slow murder.
- It is.
[upbeat music]
♪
- AI is a tool to help us
get research done faster.
Like, that's how
we should look at it.
It is not gonna come up
with all the answers.
A combination of humanity or
human beings and scientists
and AI working together
It's like, I don't know,
the plow, like,
and having a tractor.
Like, it's a tractor,
and the human beings
have to be part of that.
One of the complaints,
of course, is that
And it's not just you
And it happened early
in the internet.
I remember a lot
of these companies saying,
we're here to help humanity.
And I thought, no, you're not.
You're not really.
How do you push back
against the idea
that health goals is
just marketing
for the other things
you're doing?
- I would bet it's
a top-three use case
of ChatGPT at this point.
Like, it's a significant
It's a significant thing.
It is fair that it's
only one of our goals.
- Talk about all
the funding going to AI.
Is it taking funding away
from scientific research?
- I don't think it's taking
Like,
the VC firms pumping
money into AI companies
I don't think otherwise would
be funding science with it.
- The question is where
the next breakthroughs will
come from,
universities or AI startups
flush with private money?
- I think
academic institutions still do
some things really well,
but I think there's, like,
another kind of work which is,
like, you know,
the work OpenAI has done
or the work that
I hope Retro will do
that academic institutions
are not well set up for.
I think there's a whole
bunch of other problems
with academic institutions, and
I think they've lost the plot
in a lot of ways,
and I think really hard
about sending my kid to college
in the world today.
- In Silicon Valley,
being a college dropout
can be a badge of honor.
But a lot of
the breakthroughs driving
today's biotech industry
actually began
in university labs
that culture loves to dismiss.
- I think my role right now,
honestly,
is to try to help build
the next generation
of scientists that are gonna
make those next breakthroughs.
I just want to see those
folks have opportunities
that I feel I had
early in my career
to make the next discoveries.
- So measles in Texas,
people are now dying
these unnecessary deaths.
But vaccines could
single-handedly change that.
In August, HHS secretary RFK
announced
$500 million worth of cuts
to mRNA vaccine research.
What do you have
to do to get that back?
- There have always been
anti-vaccine people.
This is the first
time that a government has
sponsored anti-vaccine.
It's gonna take decades
for us to recover.
- Decades from this two year,
three year?
- Yeah, because all
of our young researchers
are going overseas.
They see what's happening
to scientists,
and they say, that's not for me.
So in ten years,
for the next pandemic,
we're gonna be begging
China to give us the vaccine
they just developed.
250 years ago, 40% of children
didn't make it to adulthood.
Nowadays, it's 4% worldwide.
That's principally
due to vaccines.
We're headed in
the wrong direction now.
- It's the
confederacy of dunces now
running our health agencies,
with top dunce at the top.
Top dunce who needs
some mental health help,
you know, obviously.
And so why wouldn't
you be furious?
We're on the cusp of saving
Helping people with diabetes.
A vaccine for diab what?
Like, that would be amazing.
Think about all the things
people go through with diabetes.
A vaccine for HIV,
a vaccine for cancer.
And they can
They can direct them
and they can make
them cost effective.
That sounds fantastic.
It would relieve the pain of
so many people, needless pain.
And if you're a medical person,
you'd be pretty fucking
pissed off about that.
- Mistrust of experts.
It creates all
of these problems.
A preventative vaccine, the
treatment of autoimmune disease
for cancer
I see these things
on the horizon.
Scientists expect
things to fail.
Most of what we do,
our experiments don't work.
We have so many exciting
things that are working,
and that's
That's why I have hope.
- Some of the great medical
advances of our time came
from publicly-funded scientists
doing slow, stubborn work
nobody could monetize yet.
Now politicians slash
research budgets,
and tech moguls decide
which diseases matter.
Climate change.
- Mm-hmm.
- Vaccine technology.
- Yeah, yeah.
- Cancer technology.
These are the ones
that will help us live longer
and more healthfully.
- Look, the tech billionaires
are terrified of death.
Larry Ellison over at Oracle,
he has said very explicitly,
I don't want to die.
I don't think I
should have to die.
And it's not I don't think
anyone should have to die.
It's I don't think
I should have to die.
- Because I am
contributing so much.
- Exactly, yeah.
So what's gonna happen
in a world where
the ultra-wealthy have
access to this,
but the rest of us don't?
Technology is a tool.
We can make decisions
about where we want
technological progress to go.
I think that what we want
is to find a way
to build a better world
for everybody.
- The "Star Trek" future
is possible.
We just have to choose it.
We have to choose that
we don't hate on people
that are different from us.
We have to choose that
we don't make the rich
get to make all the decisions.
We've got to choose
that we don't have
an incredibly corrupt
political structure
where everybody's in it
for theirs.
It's a choice of
the citizens to demand better
from their elected officials
and from leaders.
Or maybe we don't have
them as leaders.
- The tech billionaires
are terrified of death.
- Are you scared of dying?
A lot of tech people are.
- I am not.
- Science is entering
uncharted territory
as the slow grind
of academic research collides
with Silicon Valley's certainty
that it can hack biology,
which is ambitious,
given it still hasn't
solved customer support.
- The challenge is that
biology is really complicated.
- What's gonna happen
in a world where
the ultra-wealthy have
access to this,
but the rest of us don't?
- How do you equitably
distribute that?
- Mm-hmm.
- I don't know.
- Every technology has
problems, people.
We should talk about them.
We're adults.
- Seeing an attack
on this technology
- It's a crime.
I'm sorry.
It's murder, slow murder.
- It is.
[pensive music]
♪
[intriguing music]
- I am a student of history,
and technology has really
helped humanity live longer.
Whether it's electricity,
whether it's clean water,
whether it's clean food,
et cetera,
people live longer
because of technology
and the advances of technology.
[peppy electronic music]
♪
For most of modern history,
medical breakthroughs
followed a familiar path.
The public funded
basic research,
scientists built on it slowly,
and eventually,
those discoveries reached
the rest of us.
But now,
as artificial intelligence
and private tech money pour
into health and longevity,
that system is
starting to change.
- It would revolutionize human
health, and I think one day,
maybe we can cure all disease
with the help of AI.
- The question isn't just
what science can do next,
it's who gets to decide on
which problems get solved
- We can cure all disease.
We can give everybody
a great education.
- whom those solutions
are really for,
and what could possibly
go wrong?
A lot of really important
technologies become invisible.
We turn on a light every day.
We don't think about it.
It's invisible.
You didn't get up
today and think, oh,
I'm on the electrical grid.
Like, you don't even think
of it, and that's
That's great technology.
That said, there's
all kinds of damage
that happened in the early
stages of electricity.
All kinds of fires,
people getting blown up.
Every technology has
this implication.
If history has
taught us anything,
it's that we better
take a hard look
at where this is all headed.
- It's the new things
that AI can do
that I hope we spend a
lot of effort worrying about.
- Sam Altman is one
of the most powerful
and controversial figures
in tech.
He's the CEO of OpenAI,
the company behind ChatGPT.
You might have heard of it.
And whether he likes it or not,
he's become one
of the public faces
of artificial intelligence
itself.
He's also deeply interested
in longevity and the idea
that technology might
radically extend human life.
All right, we're gonna
talk about both OpenAI
and some of your investments.
- OK.
- All right, are we ready?
- Yeah.
Go for it.
- I had a passing interest
in longevity for a long time
and what technology can
do to improve healthcare.
- Where did it come from?
Where did this interest
Was it you wanted to live
longer or what was the
Or you were interested
in sci-fi or what?
- I remember once someone saying
that most diseases are
diseases of age.
20-year-olds don't get nearly
as sick as 80-year-olds.
- Sure.
- And so if we can figure out
the general purpose thing here,
maybe we can improve healthcare
outcomes across the board.
And then when
the partial reprogramming
discoveries began to happen
- Explain what
that is for people.
- The idea that we could
sort of rewind
cellular age a little bit.
Not all the way
back to a stem cell,
which, you know, we don't want
to be turned back into goo,
but we could, like, make your
cells a little bit younger.
And I ended up making a
large investment in a company
called Retro to pursue that.
- It may sound like
science fiction,
but what Altman is
referring to is very real,
and there's already
been success.
In mice, at least.
He's put $180 million
of his own money
into Retro Biosciences,
a startup trying to slow down
the biological clock.
In its Silicon Valley lab,
Retro is running experiments
with cellular reprogramming,
manipulating mouse cells
to make their bodies function
as if they were young again.
- The goal is add 10 years
of healthspan,
somehow do something
to your cells
that will partially
reprogram back
Them back to a younger state.
- Altman isn't just pouring
money into longevity research.
He's putting OpenAI's muscle
behind it too.
The company developed
GPT-4B Micro,
an AI model designed
to warp speed
cellular reprogramming
discoveries.
- People will say things like,
there's no way
that the model can read
a million papers
and come up with a new insight.
- Mm-hmm. And?
- Because humans can't do that.
- Right.
No, we can't.
- This is an area where AI will
be significantly superhuman.
- According to OpenAI, and yes,
they're grading
their own homework,
GPT-4B Micro
helped design proteins
that performed
more than 50 times better
than standard versions
in lab tests.
You said, by 2035,
you anticipate AI will
be able to cure most diseases.
Really?
- Um
- "Cure's" a big word.
Mitigate?
- Treat yeah, treat, mitigate,
something like that.
This will be one
of the biggest things
to happen to scientific
progress in a long time.
- Let me read you a quote
from Boris Power.
"But I think there's also
a gap between the AI world
"and the bio world
in us being able
to talk together effectively."
- Yes.
- Talk about that.
- Yes.
The world as a whole
Individuals, companies,
groups at all these levels
People have a lot of inertia
in the way they work.
So if you are a biologist
and you've been, you know,
on the bench for 20 years,
you have a set
of beliefs and a style,
and it's worked for you about
how you want to do things.
And then when a company like
OpenAI comes along and says,
hey, I can actually find
your discovery in simulation,
they just
They say, definitely not.
- No, I need a pig to do it.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- And this is the safe way,
and they're nervous about you,
what you what do you
think the problem is?
- It's skepticism.
It's like, this can't work.
There's no way you can
This can, like, deliver.
- AI could unlock
a new era of medicine,
faster discoveries,
smarter treatments,
maybe even cures
we once thought impossible.
But breakthroughs are
only half the story,
because when private
companies and computers are
driving the innovation,
another question emerges.
Who decides who benefits?
You know, people are
already sort of up in arms
about billionaires
and the people getting
Getting the juicy parts.
Is that something
that has to be fixed,
the democratization of this?
- I mean, the version of this
I think about this much more
for AI than longevity,
but for AI, yes,
it absolutely has to be fixed.
- What would you be
doing at Retro,
if you suddenly came up
with that treatment,
that it benefits everybody
versus less than 1%?
- If we came up
with the pill version,
we would make it super cheap,
and we would
The company would still
make plenty of money.
That'd be fine, you know.
- What if it is
a super expensive thing?
- Well, then I don't know.
If it's, like, you know,
gonna cost a million dollars
a person, until we can
automate it with roboticists
because it's got
to go through there
and do something to
every individual cell
or who knows what
- Mm-hmm.
- I've thought about how you
equitably distribute that,
especially if it's
an expensive thing.
I don't know.
That's really hard.
- A lot of the problems
with a lot of tech people,
and Sam is not different
in this regard,
is they don't want
any responsibility
for the things they make.
They're always like that.
They're always like, oh,
we didn't anticipate
the consequences.
One lesson from covering
Silicon Valley for so long
was that they never anticipate
They're, like, consequence free.
Silicon Valley loves to imagine
itself building the future,
and many of the tech barons
grew up watching "Star Trek."
- We're gonna speedrun
"Star Trek."
- Yeah.
- Yeah, yeah.
- Speedrunning "Star Trek"
would be cool.
- Yeah.
- Which is why I'm
in Ticonderoga, New York,
where a 13,000 square foot
former grocery store has
become a Mecca for Trekkies.
- Live long and prosper.
- It's a painstaking recreation
of the 1960s "Star Trek" set,
with nearly every
blinking console
and sliding door accounted for.
[whimsical music]
All right, OK.
Our favorite room.
- OK, it's the transporter.
- Oh, my God.
- Yes.
[laughs]
Oh, shit.
- Adam, you have to calm
the [muted] down.
- Yeah, no worries.
- All right, let's look.
I'm joined today by Adam Becker,
who's got a PhD in astrophysics
and has written two books,
most recently,
"More Everything Forever,"
a critique of Silicon Valley's
questionable roadmap
for where we're headed.
- You have to get
up there, too, though.
- All right.
OK, fine.
All right.
You can say "energize" now.
- Yeah, sure.
- OK, go ahead.
- Energize.
- You don't do that.
- [laughs]
- That's not how you energize.
- Fine.
Hold on.
Hold on.
Here we go.
Here we go.
Energize.
[warbling]
- I grew up inspired
by "Star Trek,"
a universe
of limitless technology,
abundance, and exploration.
But the tech oligarchs tend
to forget one small detail.
In "Star Trek," humanity
came before profits.
"Star Trek" kind of informed
the tech industry,
whether it's
- Oh, yeah.
- You know,
getting rid of diseases
or scanning yourself
or living longer.
Talk a little bit
about that science
that techies are pushing
quite heavily.
- These are the visions
of the future
the tech oligarchs of today
all grew up with.
They think it's an
instruction manual as opposed
to, like, a reflection
of where we are and
- As people.
- a conversation. Yeah.
Elon said something like,
science fiction shouldn't
remain fiction forever.
They're like, I want to
be a science fiction hero.
I, Elon Musk, will
upload our brains
into chips using Neuralink
and then send it all
to Mars and save civilization.
What do
science fiction heroes do?
They go to Mars.
They don't solve climate change.
- Right.
- I mean, look,
I watch "Star Trek"
and I think, wow, you know,
what a beautiful world
where people work together
to create a better place
to take care of each other.
- Is there any of the science
that you think is interesting?
- Oh, I mean, there's all
sorts of interesting science,
but it is kind of striking to me
that the science that
most scientists think
is most promising is the stuff
that these guys actually
seem to care the least about.
[pensive tune]
- There used to be
this idea that it was
worth it for our government
to invest in research.
This research would take time,
and you never know
how it's gonna go.
There used to be a
really wonderful triangle
of research universities,
government,
and the private sector.
That is what's great
about our country.
That's a perfect situation
that doesn't exist
anywhere else on the planet.
- We have to honestly
and aggressively attack
the universities
in this country.
- The vice president of
the United States, JD Vance,
said universities are the enemy.
Every accusation is a
confession with these people.
He is the enemy in terms
of science and good.
- Government funding plays
a unique role.
It often supports
basic research,
the kind that companies have
less incentive to do,
provided free to the entire
scientific and technological
community
so that all can use it
to experiment and innovate.
♪
- At UC Berkeley,
there's a discovery
that wouldn't have
been possible without
that very same
government funding.
The technology we're talking
about is called CRISPR,
a gene-editing tool that
cracked open the code
of life itself.
- The 2020 Nobel Prize
in chemistry, Jennifer Doudna.
- It was co-developed
by Jennifer Doudna,
and it's one of
the most groundbreaking
advances in modern medicine.
Explain what CRISPR is for,
I don't know, a five-year-old.
- It really started
with bacteria,
figuring out how
to fight off viruses.
We figured out that
these organisms have
a molecule called CRISPR-CAS9.
It's a protein that works
like scissors on DNA.
It has the ability
to target DNA in a cell
and make cuts in it.
The cell sends
repair proteins in to fix it,
and in the process of fixing it,
it can change it.
- Doudna is a biochemist
at UC Berkeley
and the founder of the
Innovative Genomics Institute,
where her team is working
on everything
from curing diseases
like Alzheimer's
to helping crops fight
against climate change.
- We realized, hey, we can
We can manipulate it ourselves.
- In terms of gene editing?
- Yeah.
Kind of it opened the door
so we can now study
the function of genes,
and we can also change genes.
- There's lots of diseases that
you could target with this.
- What if you could
actually reduce risk of
Of developing
Alzheimer's by making
a genetic change?
Huge impact, right?
And, you know, you could imagine
people living the same
lifespan but healthier.
- CRISPR holds enormous
promise with the potential
to transform
how we treat disease,
maybe one day even
bring back the dodo bird.
But breakthroughs
like CRISPR don't
come from hacks or shortcuts.
They come from
curiosity-driven science
and following the evidence.
- You know, one of the things
that I'm interested in
is the process of innovation,
the process of discovery.
And I think one of the things
that I've been fascinated by
with the whole field of CRISPR
now
is that it came out
of very small science,
kind of mom-and-pop,
curiosity-driven projects
that were government funded.
And I think that is
very telling,
because it to me,
it kind of signifies the way
fundamental breakthroughs
are at least sometimes made.
They're not made
by predicting something
and then doing the experiments
to prove that it's true,
which is more AI.
It's the other way around.
It's just asking a question.
How does this work?
"I wonder how
bacteria fight infection"
was kind of that question.
- Unlike government funding,
private companies can't afford
the budget or timelines
that support the exploration
of open-ended
scientific questions,
even if AI might help once
discoveries are finally made.
So talk about the use
of AI in this,
because it's being used
in all kinds of ways
Drug testing, drug discovery.
Does it have
an application here?
- The challenge is that
biology is really complicated.
It's certainly accelerating
the pace of science
in the sense that, you know,
it means that you don't
have to do a lot of experiments
that you had to in the past.
However, taking that knowledge
and then trying
to apply it in a body
is gonna be very different.
I don't think AI is
gonna replace innovation.
It's not gonna replace
human beings who are
asking the original questions.
- Let's do a thought
experiment, then.
- Yeah.
- What if someone like Mark
Zuckerberg invented CRISPR?
What would he make?
- It's a little bit of
a hard question to answer,
and the reason is that I don't
think that most technologists
and folks
in Silicon Valley that
At least that I've
interacted with,
know enough biology
to be able to use
something like CRISPR today.
So you have to really
kind of understand
what kinds of questions
and what kinds of problems are
you solving with this tool?
- News flash.
If we want a future
where tools this powerful are
used responsibly and benefit
more than just the 1%,
we have to protect
the kind of science
that made them possible
in the first place.
- I want CRISPR
to be widely available.
I want it to have broad impact.
I want it to be accessible
to people that need it.
Many of those people are
not going to be wealthy.
They're not going
to be connected.
And this is what I love
about CRISPR, frankly,
is that it has that potential.
We could see that
from the very beginning.
It's not a technology that
requires a huge infrastructure.
I mean, it's not like
AI in that sense, right?
We don't need to have
billions of dollars.
And so, as a result,
there's the potential
for this technology, CRISPR,
to have very broad impact,
I think, in the future.
- What actually keeps
you up at night with this?
Is there anything?
- For me, it's primarily
this issue of access.
We've got to work on it.
I don't want my legacy
to be that a few dozen people
on the planet were
able to benefit
because they had connections
and, you know,
they could use this technology
and nobody else was able
to get it.
[pensive tune]
- I give Silicon Valley
plenty of grief,
and trust me, they earn it.
But I'll also be
the first to point out
when the road from discovery
to a real world breakthrough
runs straight through a startup.
Welcome to my backyard.
Actually, it is my backyard.
I live two blocks from here
for 20 years in San Francisco.
I still have my house,
and this is where
I took my dogs and my kids.
Which is why I'm curious
about a company trying
to turn
a big scientific question
into a product.
[quirky music]
- Oh, Della, please
don't bite her.
[laughs]
- That's OK.
Look at that.
- Paw.
Oh, yeah.
Good girl.
So, I mean, I've grown
up with dogs and cats,
and the worst part is always
watching them decline.
- Decline.
- They're so perfect
and innocent,
and they don't deserve
to be in pain.
- Right, right.
And they do.
My dog, just before
we could put him down,
I remember seeing the life
go out of his eyes.
- I'm remembering putting down
my previous dog,
and, like, it's very traumatic.
- I'm here to meet
Celine Halioua,
founder and CEO
of Loyal for Dogs,
a startup that's well on
its way to make history
as the first company
to get FDA approval
for a drug that specifically
targets aging itself.
- I got interested in
aging from the pathway
of all these diseases that are
so impossibly hard to treat
Parkinson's, Alzheimer's,
brain cancers.
They all are age related.
They all go up
exponentially with age.
Why don't we develop something
that prevents them
or reduces the risk
or delays it?
And so one of the things
we're working on is,
can we develop a drug
that will take a dog
and bring them
to a metabolic state
that is younger and healthier
than what they were previously?
- Loyal is developing
three treatments
One for aging
in all senior dogs,
and two aimed
specifically at big dogs
by targeting a growth
hormone called IGF-1.
Across the animal kingdom,
from mammals to birds,
fish, and even fruit flies,
IGF-1 fuels early development.
But later in life, that same
hormone can speed up aging,
and large dogs can have
up to 28 times more of it
than small ones.
- Oh, hello.
- [laughs]
- See, that's why
he's gonna live longer.
People should do
this more often.
You're grounding,
in San Francisco terms.
In Silicon Valley, if you
think you can solve a problem,
the next step is
to raise money and try.
Loyal is applying that
playbook to aging,
using venture capital
to push an idea
through the scientific
and regulatory channels
that turn discoveries
into medicine.
- One company is
making some headway.
Loyal, giving NBC News
a letter from the FDA,
saying its drug, meant
to increase dogs' lifespans,
just met one of the many
conditions needed on its way
to market approval.
- So talk about
the FDA right now, this
This sort of longevity, because
longevity is an important issue
around a lot of these,
both for humans and dogs,
because they are related.
- Yeah, so, basically,
we wanted to get
the first drug FDA approved
for lifespan extension,
which has never been done
in any species.
No drug is ever
approved for this.
Drugs are developed and
approved for diseases, right,
like cancer or osteoarthritis.
And this was really
important to me,
because if there's one industry
that has fallen prey,
I would say,
to kind of overpromising
and under-delivering,
it's the longevity field
Right, for for centuries.
- Charlatans is the word.
- Charlatans.
Exactly.
- You're a good boy, aren't you?
[intriguing music]
- Dogs are a really, really
good model of how we age.
- Talk about
the transition to humans.
Any kind of do you
think about that at all?
- Yeah, yeah.
I mean, that was kind of
always the OG thesis is,
can we take
what we learn in dogs
and use it to develop
human drugs?
I mean, if we can
extend a dog's lifespan,
it's teaching me
about how humans age.
- The question used to be what
scientists could discover.
Now it's also what investors
are willing to fund.
Right, so how is it
attracting investors?
- It's always hard.
Like, it's much easier to raise
if you're an AI company
than if you're
building dog longevity.
- Just say AI dog longevity.
- There is no AI
in Loyal as of today,
but I was able
to raise $5 million
off of a slide deck and an idea,
of which most of
the details were wrong,
and that's really only
something that could happen
in Silicon Valley, honestly.
- Right.
An innovation
this game changing also
forces a harder question.
Who owns it and who
actually gets to benefit?
- People are always concerned
about if we have aging drugs,
are we going to actually
further the dis-equity
that we have in this world.
- Right.
- And I would actually say
it's the opposite.
The least equitable
drugs we have today
are acute treatment drugs.
It's things like our dogs
getting treatment for cancer.
Most people cannot
spend $10,000.
- On dog care.
- On dog care.
In human health, the healthcare
that is the most accessible
is basic preventative care,
and that's what we're
trying to develop.
- Well, we did it
to play with dogs.
We did.
But there are certain resonances
between humans and dogs.
Like if we can solve something,
this problem,
maybe it has some applications
for humans.
This is not just a placebo.
This is serious science
going towards solving
a problem for a lot of people.
People love their dogs,
and maybe it'll have
some applications for people.
And we wanted
to play with dogs also.
[pensive tone]
- One of the problems
with health is,
there's so much data
that we don't understand.
At the same time, it has
Health is the most
private thing.
With people uploading
all this information,
obviously the most
pressing issue is
who gets their hands on it,
right?
And to me, I always say,
I'm not scared of AI.
I'm scared of
the people who use AI.
And so if it's
a bad group of people,
you can think of any number
of dystopian scenarios
of control and surveillance
and everything else.
If it's good people,
you can think of all manner
of wonder, right?
It could go either way, and it
will go both ways, actually.
- Healthcare is one of
the biggest uses of ChatGPT.
People use it to understand
their health all the time.
They upload their
medical records.
They ask it questions
about symptoms.
Obviously, we think
that's great.
So with GPT-5, we did a
big push to make it better
at health-related queries.
- You know, there used
to be Dr. Google.
Is it now Dr. ChatGPT?
And is that
- People do say that.
- Yeah, is that a good thing?
- I think it's a good thing.
- So explain how that's
a good thing for people.
- The number of patient stories
that we hear
from friends of ours,
family of ours, saying, like,
I had this health situation,
couldn't figure it out,
put all my stuff in ChatGPT,
and now I'm cured,
like, those are great stories,
and we hear a lot of those.
- In ten years,
what could it be?
- I've heard a lot of doctors
and healthcare workers say
that they hope that in ten years
everybody gets an AI
medical advisor service,
and you can say,
here's what's going on for me.
Here's my sleep data,
what I'm eating,
my blood tests, my symptoms,
and a service could
early on say,
hey, you're at risk of this.
You need to go test for this.
- And it would then do what?
You're saying, it will
then tell you what to do?
- It will say,
would you like me to, like,
make a file you can print
and show the doctor?
- So talk about
the risk of utilizing
the technology for our health
with hallucinations
and mistakes.
- [chuckles] I heard a doctor
who was testing ChatGPT,
sent me a note,
which is like, you know,
every doctor thinks
that you can't
use ChatGPT because
it hallucinates
too much on medical stuff.
I believe these doctors
have not tried it
since the GPT-3.5 days
when it was true.
I promise you, any human
doctor hallucinates
far, far more than GPT-5 does.
- [laughs]
The last few questions.
You know, there is this idea
of it spiraling
beyond human control.
When you think about
controlling it
and it helping you
in ways like that,
that seems like a lovely future,
where, you know, get up,
have this, don't eat that,
and it bothers
you until you do
Sort of an irritating angel.
- Then I would just turn it off.
- But but you can't.
That's the whole point.
You have to listen to it.
It's sort of your
conscience in a lot of ways.
Should we abrogate our agency
to an AI conscience,
when it comes to health,
particularly?
- We probably don't have
enough time
for the whole free will debate
here, but, like,
I don't think you will have
any more or less free will
than you have today with an AI.
You will still be telling it
- Oh, I don't know.
- You'll still be deciding
to turn it off,
turn it on, whatever.
- What if insurance
companies get all that?
- I actually have no problem
with insurance companies giving
people who, like,
prove they work out lower rates.
I don't have a problem.
That seems like good
behavioral economics to me.
- Except if they get it
without your permission.
- That yeah.
- And HIPAA concerns.
One of the things I have
- I am concerned about that.
Again, this is
happening really fast.
But we do need some concept
like privilege for AI.
So when you go talk to a doctor,
you can talk about whatever
is really going on.
You can have confidence
that that will be protected.
But if you're getting that same
medical advice from ChatGPT,
there's not a concept
of AI privilege.
So I believe, over time,
we will
I don't know
how long it will take.
We will decide
to extend that to AI.
- Why not now?
Why don't you do that?
- Well, it's not up to us.
- Well, you could push
If OpenAI said,
let's pass this bill
- We are pushing
I mean, we do advocate for it.
- You know, I think he has
The mentality is,
you know, we're looking into it.
We didn't anticipate this.
They're always like that.
They're always
like, oh, we didn't
anticipate the consequences.
They don't imagine
things have an impact.
And very last question,
are you scared of dying?
A lot of tech people are.
- I am not.
- A lot of them are.
Why is that?
- Why am I not or
why are other people?
- Why are you not
and why are they?
- I don't really want to
speculate about other people's
psychological issues.
- Overall?
- Why do you think?
- Mostly, I think
many of them didn't
get hugged enough as children.
That's always been my thing.
But
- Plenty of people got
hugged a lot as children
and still don't wanna die.
- Because they think
they can hack everything.
They think everything
has a solution
when it and that
everything else is details.
Poverty isn't gonna be
solved by tech.
It could be helped.
- Helped.
It will be helped.
- Helped, but they think solved.
Solved.
Everything is "cure and solve,"
and I think they
Certain things just
aren't solvable,
which I think is very difficult
for people.
- Yeah, I think that's hard
for people to sit with.
[pensive music]
♪
- Hey, guys.
Are you having fun?
- Now that I've looked
at the hype around AI,
I'm headed to the
University of Pennsylvania's
Institute for RNA Innovation
to meet 2023 Nobel laureate
Dr. Drew Weissman.
Like AI, this particular lab
has attracted
plenty of controversy,
but unlike AI,
most of that outrage is
entirely unwarranted.
- Oh, hey, Drew.
- Dr. Weissman has assembled
more than 70 of
the world's leading scientists
to explore
the clinical potential
of one of the most promising
but extremely politicized
technologies of our time mRNA,
the technology behind
the COVID vaccine.
Every technology has
problems, people.
MRNA is a incredible
breakthrough for all of us.
Most people didn't die of
COVID because of these vaccines
and how quickly they
were created, right?
Again, could be some problems.
We should talk about them.
We're adults.
We can talk about
heart issues or whatever.
We should study them.
No one's saying we shouldn't.
But we were in a crisis,
and guess what,
science makes mistakes.
Overall, if you want
to do a risk-reward analysis,
far fewer people died
of COVID than would have
without the vaccine.
[intriguing music]
♪
Talk about the differences
between every other vaccine
and this.
- This is a molecular vaccine.
Most vaccines are based
on the virus or the bacteria.
We only use the sequence.
So when COVID-19 was
sequenced in 2019,
we didn't need the virus,
and within a couple of days,
we had COVID-19 vaccines.
- Why is that speed important?
- Every year, we make
a new influenza vaccine.
- Influenza vaccine.
Right, exactly.
- Because the influenza drifts.
Right now, they start
six to eight months
before influenza season.
They have to guess what
virus is gonna be prevalent.
With RNA, you need
a couple of weeks.
- Right. It's sort of like
spray and pray
in the other way.
- Right, yep.
- What are you
most excited about
when you think about
the future of RNA therapeutics
as an opportunity for lots
of things, not just COVID?
- There is so much
that has developed
in the past five years for RNA.
We have gene therapies
in clinical trials
that are curing people
that otherwise would
have died of their diseases.
- 20 years out, 30 years out,
if you could dream what
it would be, what would you
- So we've got a new idea
called an interception vaccine,
where we can treat
genetic variants that lead
to increased risk of cancer
before the cancer ever forms.
It's unbelievable,
the potential.
I haven't thought of, you know,
10% of what you can do with it.
[upbeat music]
♪
- Vaccines are just one piece
of what mRNA therapeutics
could ultimately deliver.
To understand
what else is possible,
I'm turning to a couple
of up-and-coming researchers
pushing this technology forward.
- So there are actually
just five components.
- Right.
First up is Dr. Ted Kreider,
an immunologist focused
on developing mRNA vaccines
and treatments for HIV.
MRNA stands for?
- Messenger RNA,
which is ribonucleic acid.
It's a mouthful.
None of us say it,
so don't worry.
And the reason
it's the messenger is,
it holds the instructions
to make proteins.
- Right.
- And if you remember back
from ninth grade bio,
proteins are
the workhorses, right?
They are the things
- Sure.
- that do stuff.
- If you say so.
Yeah, OK.
All right.
- So within a cell
- It tells them what to do.
OK, all right.
- This is a schematic
that we use frequently.
An mRNA vaccine only
has five components.
So the first component is this
little squiggle in the middle.
That's the mRNA.
- This little eyebrow here.
- Yeah.
- What's the technical term?
- I use squiggle.
- OK, squiggle.
I like it.
- And so all of the information
for making whatever type
of protein we want
is in that little squiggle.
But then it's modifiable.
- With the M part, right,
where it's going.
- Yes.
You can decorate the outside
with either antibodies
or other proteins
or other molecules,
and this tells the LNP,
don't go to this cell,
go to a different cell.
It's like a LEGO.
- Oh, OK.
I know those.
- It builds yeah.
- I have four children,
so go ahead.
Please.
I'm completely fluent in LEGO.
- You can build
your intervention
and tailor it exactly
to whatever problem
you want to try to
- With the same pieces.
- With the same pieces.
- Of different colors.
- Of different colors.
- Thank you.
Yes, I should win
the Nobel Prize for that.
- [laughs]
- Yeah.
Yes, like LEGOs, mRNA uses
simple, modular building blocks
that make it possible
for researchers to adapt
the technology
to a wide range of diseases,
from infections to cancer
to autoimmune disorders,
and to do it faster than
traditional approaches.
This leaves the door
wide open for accessible,
personalized therapies.
- And just to say I'm not lying,
this is an actual
picture of LNPs.
- Oh, wow.
- So if we're gonna
make an HIV vaccine,
I generally go to
a government resource.
- Are they still there?
- This is the importance
of these types of resources.
- I agree.
There's no picture of
Kristi Noem popping up.
Anyways.
- So this is the
Los Alamos National Database
that anybody can access.
And we're just gonna
choose an HIV string.
I can download this sequence
and then literally copy
and a paste,
and I think I was
under a minute.
- Right.
- This is now
the template for making RNA.
- Wow.
- But I would love
to show you the next step.
- Sure.
- So Jilian's gonna talk to you
about a vaccine to try
to prevent diabetes.
You're gonna make your
own lipid nanoparticles.
- OK.
- Not with this RNA.
With some other RNA.
- All right.
Good, good.
OK, great.
Have we barred the door
from RFK Jr.?
Great. Let's go.
Shh.
We're making medicine.
- We've got lipids.
We've got RNA.
I'm going to show you how we
combine all of these lipids
to make a vaccine.
- Next in my high school
science refresher
is Dr. Jilian Melamed,
whose research focuses
on using mRNA therapeutics
to treat autoimmune diseases
and allergies.
- And this is what science is,
combining small volumes
of clear liquids
into other small volumes
of clear liquids.
- Nothing's gonna
blow up here, right?
- Oh, you'll see the boom.
The most important
lipid component
is the ionizable lipid.
The job of the ionizable lipid
is to become
positively charged
when it enters cells.
It interacts with
the negatively charged RNA,
and that's how it's
able to encapsulate
and protect the cargo.
It can traverse the body
and be taken up by cells.
So now we're gonna add
it to our RNA solution.
This is the mRNA becoming
encapsulated within an LNP.
What you're going to see
is what we call
a spontaneous nanoprecipitation.
- Uh-huh.
I always say that.
- Of course.
Every day.
- Like this?
You push it all the way in?
- Yes.
Perfect.
Did you see that?
- Yeah. Wow.
- You made a vaccine.
- So that's a vaccine?
- That's a vaccine.
- This is a vaccine
that would cure, what?
- Type 1 diabetes.
- Type 1
- This is a vaccine
that contains
our insulin-encoding mRNA.
- Wow.
So they don't have
to take insulin, correct?
- Correct.
- Wow. Amazing.
- So where vaccines for cancer
and for infectious diseases are
training the immune system
to see something
and to attack it,
the vaccines I'm developing
train the immune system
to see a protein
and leave it alone.
This is called
a tolerizing vaccine.
So imagine we could take
a blood sample from a patient
with type 1 diabetes and develop
an mRNA vaccine that
is going to retrain
their exact immune response.
That's the excitement of mRNA.
- So it's at a very low cost?
- At a very low cost.
- And they would take this
regularly or just once?
- We have to go through
testing to find out.
- Right, to find out.
Right, OK.
But testing costs money,
and that money has
been slashed by
the current administration,
threatening to leave
researchers scrambling
and progress stalled.
So the attacks on
mRNA research, how do you feel?
- It's hard to believe,
honestly,
because we saw how
the COVID vaccines saved lives.
Seeing an attack on this
technology that has nothing
but promise and potential
for all kinds of diseases,
it doesn't make any sense.
- No.
It's a crime. I'm sorry.
That's what I feel like.
- I agree.
It's a crime.
- Yeah, yeah.
It's murder.
Slow murder.
- It is.
[upbeat music]
♪
- AI is a tool to help us
get research done faster.
Like, that's how
we should look at it.
It is not gonna come up
with all the answers.
A combination of humanity or
human beings and scientists
and AI working together
It's like, I don't know,
the plow, like,
and having a tractor.
Like, it's a tractor,
and the human beings
have to be part of that.
One of the complaints,
of course, is that
And it's not just you
And it happened early
in the internet.
I remember a lot
of these companies saying,
we're here to help humanity.
And I thought, no, you're not.
You're not really.
How do you push back
against the idea
that health goals is
just marketing
for the other things
you're doing?
- I would bet it's
a top-three use case
of ChatGPT at this point.
Like, it's a significant
It's a significant thing.
It is fair that it's
only one of our goals.
- Talk about all
the funding going to AI.
Is it taking funding away
from scientific research?
- I don't think it's taking
Like,
the VC firms pumping
money into AI companies
I don't think otherwise would
be funding science with it.
- The question is where
the next breakthroughs will
come from,
universities or AI startups
flush with private money?
- I think
academic institutions still do
some things really well,
but I think there's, like,
another kind of work which is,
like, you know,
the work OpenAI has done
or the work that
I hope Retro will do
that academic institutions
are not well set up for.
I think there's a whole
bunch of other problems
with academic institutions, and
I think they've lost the plot
in a lot of ways,
and I think really hard
about sending my kid to college
in the world today.
- In Silicon Valley,
being a college dropout
can be a badge of honor.
But a lot of
the breakthroughs driving
today's biotech industry
actually began
in university labs
that culture loves to dismiss.
- I think my role right now,
honestly,
is to try to help build
the next generation
of scientists that are gonna
make those next breakthroughs.
I just want to see those
folks have opportunities
that I feel I had
early in my career
to make the next discoveries.
- So measles in Texas,
people are now dying
these unnecessary deaths.
But vaccines could
single-handedly change that.
In August, HHS secretary RFK
announced
$500 million worth of cuts
to mRNA vaccine research.
What do you have
to do to get that back?
- There have always been
anti-vaccine people.
This is the first
time that a government has
sponsored anti-vaccine.
It's gonna take decades
for us to recover.
- Decades from this two year,
three year?
- Yeah, because all
of our young researchers
are going overseas.
They see what's happening
to scientists,
and they say, that's not for me.
So in ten years,
for the next pandemic,
we're gonna be begging
China to give us the vaccine
they just developed.
250 years ago, 40% of children
didn't make it to adulthood.
Nowadays, it's 4% worldwide.
That's principally
due to vaccines.
We're headed in
the wrong direction now.
- It's the
confederacy of dunces now
running our health agencies,
with top dunce at the top.
Top dunce who needs
some mental health help,
you know, obviously.
And so why wouldn't
you be furious?
We're on the cusp of saving
Helping people with diabetes.
A vaccine for diab what?
Like, that would be amazing.
Think about all the things
people go through with diabetes.
A vaccine for HIV,
a vaccine for cancer.
And they can
They can direct them
and they can make
them cost effective.
That sounds fantastic.
It would relieve the pain of
so many people, needless pain.
And if you're a medical person,
you'd be pretty fucking
pissed off about that.
- Mistrust of experts.
It creates all
of these problems.
A preventative vaccine, the
treatment of autoimmune disease
for cancer
I see these things
on the horizon.
Scientists expect
things to fail.
Most of what we do,
our experiments don't work.
We have so many exciting
things that are working,
and that's
That's why I have hope.
- Some of the great medical
advances of our time came
from publicly-funded scientists
doing slow, stubborn work
nobody could monetize yet.
Now politicians slash
research budgets,
and tech moguls decide
which diseases matter.
Climate change.
- Mm-hmm.
- Vaccine technology.
- Yeah, yeah.
- Cancer technology.
These are the ones
that will help us live longer
and more healthfully.
- Look, the tech billionaires
are terrified of death.
Larry Ellison over at Oracle,
he has said very explicitly,
I don't want to die.
I don't think I
should have to die.
And it's not I don't think
anyone should have to die.
It's I don't think
I should have to die.
- Because I am
contributing so much.
- Exactly, yeah.
So what's gonna happen
in a world where
the ultra-wealthy have
access to this,
but the rest of us don't?
Technology is a tool.
We can make decisions
about where we want
technological progress to go.
I think that what we want
is to find a way
to build a better world
for everybody.
- The "Star Trek" future
is possible.
We just have to choose it.
We have to choose that
we don't hate on people
that are different from us.
We have to choose that
we don't make the rich
get to make all the decisions.
We've got to choose
that we don't have
an incredibly corrupt
political structure
where everybody's in it
for theirs.
It's a choice of
the citizens to demand better
from their elected officials
and from leaders.
Or maybe we don't have
them as leaders.