Even though it’s undeniably...aesthetic-challenged, the naked mole-rat is the envy of the longevity world. Its risk of death barely changes with time; it shrugs off cancer, stays fertile for decades and seems to skip every hallmark of aging that hobbles the rest of us.

But why? What evolutionary forces gave a mouse-sized, subterranean rodent near-immunity to aging - and what can its biology teach us about extending healthy human life?

Comparative biologist Prof. Rochelle Buffenstein (University of Illinois Chicago) - who has maintained the world’s largest captive colonies and authored 200+ papers - joins LEVITY to dissect the evidence.

In this episode

✅ Rochelle’s journey: from Zimbabwe farm kid to the pre-eminent naked mole-rat researcher.

✅ Eusocial society: queens, worker castes and lethal succession battles.

✅ No Gompertz slope: hard numbers that show mortality risk stays essentially flat for 40 years.

✅ Cancer resistance → high-molecular-weight hyaluronan, unusual immune cell profiles.

✅ Telomere maintenance and DNA-methylation reversal.

✅ Proteostasis on easy-mode: slow translation, durable proteins, super-charged autophagy.

✅ What actually kills a mole-rat?

✅ Translational angles: small-molecule screens, CRISPR edits, and why funding is still an uphill battle.

✅ Other long-lived species worth studying - and how young scientists can break into comparative gerontology.

🚀 Special offer for our LEVITY audience: Join Vitalism today and receive a 30% discount on your membership using the code LEVITY at checkout. https://www.vitalism.io/membership

Show notes for this episode will be available soon after this airs. Sign up for the LEVITY newsletter to get them straight to your inbox: reachlevity.com

LEVITY is co-hosted by Patrick Linden, philosopher and author, and Peter Ottsjö, journalist and author.

00:00 Teaser

02:37 Meet Prof. Rochelle Buffenstein

07:04 Naked mole-rats crash course

10:23 Eusocial life: Queens, workers, death matches

11:46 Extreme underground lifestyle (Low O₂, High CO₂)

18:12 Problems with inbreeding?

26:07 Don’t call them cold-blooded!

29:15 Keeping the world’s largest colony of naked mole-rats

31:45 Eating naked mole-rats

36:01 Lifespan of the naked mole-rat

38:20 Two remarkable papers

50:53 How long can they live?

52:45 Resistance to cancer

57:03 The Hallmarks of aging are no match for this rodent

59:48 Surprising immune defense

01:04:18 What’s the evolutionary rationale?

01:10:08 Translating the research

01:18:51 Other longevity champions

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🎁 Our giveaway is live!

10 winners will receive FMD kits from Prolon. It’s free to enter – just follow the link below 👇

https://gleam.io/NaVa0/prolon-fasting-mimicking-diet-giveaway

🔬 Can food rejuvenate you from within?

In this special episode of LEVITY, Peter talks with Andrea Ghirardi, CEO of L-Nutra Europe — the company behind Prolon, the fasting-mimicking diet (FMD) developed from Dr. Valter Longo’s research.

🧠 We cover:

– How Prolon mimics fasting without starvation.

– Real-world results: 2.5 years bio-age reversal.

– Why FMD may beat GLP-1 drugs for long-term health.

– What’s inside the new NextGen kit.

– Prolon’s potential as a medical treatment.

📘 Dive deeper with our companion article:

https://reachlevity.com/p/the-fasting-mimicking-diet-explained-5ce17b65d00c14c1

💌 Our newsletter: Weekly biotech + aging breakthroughs:

https://reachlevity.com/subscribe

LEVITY is co-hosted by Patrick Linden, philosopher and author, and Peter Ottsjö, journalist and author.

Note: Nothing in this post or episode is medical advice. We're not doctors. Before trying this, you should consult your physician. Prolon is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any diseases.

CHAPTERS

00:00 Teaser

00:41 A message from Peter

02:35 Introduction to L-Nutra and Andrea Ghirardi, CEO

05:02 What is the fasting-mimicking diet?

07:23 The clinically validated formulation

08:32 The formation of L-Nutra

13:22 How does FMD compare to other fasting methods?

18:07 Are weight-loss drugs a tough competitor to Prolon?

20:05 What's inside the 5-day Prolon kit?

22:54 The next-gen formula

25:41 Peter's and Andrea's experience of trying the FMD

28:23 FMD studies

35:15 The future of FMD and L-Nutra

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When is someone really dead? What does it mean to survive? Is mind-uploading really a possible future way of surviving? These are some of the questions we are discussing with Dr Ariel Zeleznikow-Johnston.

Dr Ariel Zeleznikow‑Johnston is a neuroscientist and Research Fellow at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, whose work delves into the neural basis of consciousness - from understanding how genetics and environment shape cognition to exploring the subtle qualities of perceptual experience such as color qualia. A 2019 PhD graduate from The University of Melbourne, he has published extensively on how cognitive function changes across the lifespan.

He is the author of The Future Loves You: How and Why We Should Abolish Death, which advocates for brain preservation technology as a means to suspend death and revive individuals in the future.

Check out Peter's review of the book here: https://reachlevity.com/p/a-clear-case-for-cryonics-a-review-of-the-future-loves-you

His multidisciplinary approach combines rigorous neuroscience with philosophy and ethics, positioning him at the forefront of contemporary debates about identity, mortality, and the future of human life.

🔍 In this conversation:

✅ When do we consider someone to be dead?

✅ What is vitrifixation?

✅ Cryonics.

✅ Palliative philosophy.

✅ Personal identity and the connectome.

✅ Are neurons the same over time?

✅ Teleportation as a test of the information view of personhood.

✅ How do we make the future love us?

✅ Survival and medical priorities.

🚀 Special offer for our LEVITY audience: Join Vitalism today and receive a 30% discount on your membership using the code LEVITY at checkout. https://www.vitalism.io/membership

🚀 Show notes for this episode will be available soon after this airs. Sign up for the LEVITY newsletter to get them straight to your inbox: reachlevity.com

🚀 LEVITY is co-hosted by Patrick Linden, philosopher and author, and Peter Ottsjö, journalist and author.

CHAPTER

00:00 Intro

03:45 Jonathan is 190-years-old

07:00 Learned helplessness

10:00 Incoherent medical strategies

11:30 Aging is unhealthy

14:22 Palliative philosophy

20:44 The book in brief - how to cheat death

23:30 Different ways of biostasis - vitrifixation

35:01 Digital snap-shot emulation of our essense

37:59 What is a person? Connectome preservation

43:30 Do neurons stay the same over a life?

47:00 Is mind-uploading preserving personal identity?

01:03:52 We are not our brain - is the connectome model a dualist view?

01:07:50 Teleportation and survival I

01:14:19 Duplicate myself to increase utility

01:15:31 Teleportation and survival II

01:24:30 "Dead people" may not be dead

01:33:30 Saving lives by biostasis brainpreservation

01:36:04 Priority of medicine

01:38:05 Saving everyone that can be saved

01:40:07 Justice and survival - an unusual angle

01:43:36 What kind of world will we wake up to?

01:44:48 How to make the future love us

01:44:59 What are the odds of today's cryonics working?

01:49:10 What year is resurrection?

01:56:33 Ariel's book recommendations

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Just about the hottest thing in longevity science right now is partial reprogramming - using Yamanaka factors to rewind the biological clock in our cells. Billion-dollar giants like Altos, Retro and New Limit are betting on it.

But in this episode a far smaller player, Shift Bioscience, argues that the field may be looking in the wrong place. CEO Daniel Ives explains how his team used AI-powered virtual cells to uncover a single gene that seems to match OSK-level rejuvenation without the tumor risk that haunts classical reprogramming - and why their just-released data could change the game for aging research.

🔍 In this conversation

✅ Daniel’s journey from mitochondrial PhD work to founding Shift Bioscience.

✅ Why Yamanaka-factor–based partial reprogramming excites the field and why it’s inherently risky.

✅ Epigenetic clocks 101 — Horvath, single-cell versions, and what they really measure.

✅ Building AI “virtual cells” (transformers / GNNs) to run millions of in-silico experiments.

✅ Discovery of new rejuvenation factor sets - including SB000, a lone gene that rejuvenates without inducing pluripotency.

✅ Early wet-lab validation across fibroblasts & keratinocytes; next-step mouse studies already under way.

✅ How inhibition targets (not just over-expression) could slash timelines from 15 years to ~5 years.

✅ Mapping a “risk landscape” of age-linked diseases and why fibrosis may be the fastest clinical entry point.

✅ Funding Shift: from personal redundancy money to a $16 M seed and the next raise.

✅ Timelines, escape-velocity hopes, and where cryonics still fits.

✅ What Daniel would ask Jeff Bezos, and why the pharma ecosystem needs to “plug in” now.

🚀 Special offer for our LEVITY audience: Join Vitalism today and receive a 30% discount on your membership using the code LEVITY at checkout. https://www.vitalism.io/membership

🚀 Show notes for this episode will be available soon after this airs. Sign up for the LEVITY newsletter to get them straight to your inbox: reachlevity.com

🚀 LEVITY is co-hosted by Patrick Linden, philosopher and author, and Peter Ottsjö, journalist and author.

CHAPTERS

00:00 Introduction to Daniel Ives

05:34 The Evolution of Shift's Focus

13:25 Understanding Aging Clocks

19:28 Commercial Clocks is ”Mostly Entertainment”

21:03 A Pivotal Meeting with Steve Horvath

24:35 A Brief Crash Course in Yamanaka Factors

28:16 Finding Something Better Than Yamanaka Factors

33:20 The Origin Story For This Approach

36:50 What Does Shift’s New Results Show?

37:33 Defining the Virtual Cell in This Context

44:22 The Gene is Called SB000

46:45 “This Could be Hugely Important”

01:01:44 Speeding up Drug Development with AI

01:11:12 What do Investors Say?

01:17:15 What Daniel Hope Will Happen Next

01:19:34 What Would Daniel Ask of Jeff Bezos?

01:27:00 Why is the company called Shift?

01:32:55 The Pride Day for Closeted Aging Biologists

01:42:28 How Should We Think About Cryonics?

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We think that death is bad, but why exactly is it bad? We cannot suffer when we do not exist, so why would it be bad?

In this episode we have a long, deep conversation with Professor Travis Timmerman, whose philosophical work delves deeply into the nature and ethics of death. An Associate Professor at Seton Hall University, Professor Timmerman has become a prominent voice in contemporary discussions about whether death is bad for us, how we should understand the harm of dying, and what moral obligations we might have surrounding death and dying. His work engages both timeless questions and urgent contemporary debates—offering fresh insight into topics like the timing of death’s harms, the ethics of procreation, and our attitudes toward mortality.

What you'll learn in this episode:

✅ Why death is bad

✅ How it can bad to not have been born earlier

✅ What the ancient Mirror Argument gets wrong

✅ How it can be bad for a 95-year-old to die

✅ Whether we should wait to have children

✅ How an analytical philosopher thinks about death

🚀 Special offer for our LEVITY audience: Join Vitalism today and receive a 30% discount on your membership using the code LEVITY at checkout. https://www.vitalism.io/membership

🚀 Show notes for this episode will be available soon after this airs. Sign up for the LEVITY newsletter to get them straight to your inbox: reachlevity.com

--CHAPTERS--

00:00 introduction

00:50 Why is death bad? The Deprivation account

15:30 Lucretius

18:10 A reason to live is a reason to see death as bad

20:20 James Stacey Taylor vs Travis Timmerman

26:20 Deprivation account and mercy killing

29:20 Counter intuitive implications of the Deprivation Account - overdetermination of death

37:20 What would have happened if I had not died? Possible worlds and the badness of death

40:40 The badness of a 95-year-old to die

47:00 Thomas Nagel - death and normalcy

51:49 Reasons and the good and the bad

53:40 The Timmerman style of analytic philosophy

01:00:49 Philosophers and prolongevity in history

01:08:28 Philosophy as therapy

01:09:40 Time and intrinsic good - what matters most?

01:14:36 Is health overrated?

01:16:27 The eternal philosophical dialogue

01:17:56 If longevity were impossible, how would that change philosophy of death?

01:21:35 The Mirror Argument

01:26:55 Could I have been born earlier?

01:39:22 When should we have children?

01:42:47 Better never to have been?

01:48:09 A world without consciousness

01:52:27 Can we wish for the impossible?

02:02:07 Meta-philosophy and ironing out the wrinkles of the Deprivation account

02:03:00 What Travis is working on

02:08:02 What what we should read

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There were two reasons why Dr. Valter Longo was featured so prominently in my longevity book Evigt Ung (2022).

First, if you had to name a single scientific thread running through the history of longevity research, calorie restriction is hard to beat. And few have done more to modernize and translate that insight into real-world practice than Longo.

Second, I hold Valter Longo in the highest regard. I've tried his Fasting-Mimicking Diet (FMD), I’ve followed his work on The Longevity Diet, and I find his scientific contributions both rigorous and unusually translational. He doesn’t just publish papers - he builds systems, tests interventions in clinical trials, and tries to implement science into healthcare.

In this conversation, we cover the science, history, and application of fasting, nutrition, and longevity - including new work on cancer, metabolism, and organ regeneration. We also discuss the philosophical and political obstacles that stand in the way of real change.

What you'll learn in this episode:

✅ The story of Longo’s early music career - and why he left it to study aging.

✅ How calorie restriction shaped modern longevity science.

✅ Why Biosphere 2 and Roy Walford's work was both inspiring and cautionary.

✅ The origins and mechanisms of the Fasting-Mimicking Diet.

✅ What Longo learned about autophagy, stem cells, and organ regeneration.

✅ Why protein intake before and after age 65 should be treated differently.

✅ What the media and doctors get wrong about obesity, food, and metabolism.

✅ The dangers of high-protein and ketogenic diets.

✅ Why Longo is deeply skeptical of TRT, growth hormone, and biohacking shortcuts.

✅ How fasting can enhance cancer treatment - and why Longo wrote his new book Fasting Cancer.

✅ Why we need a new kind of “digital school” for lifestyle medicine.

🚀 Special offer for our LEVITY audience: Join Vitalism today and receive a 30% discount on your membership using the code LEVITY at checkout. https://www.vitalism.io/membership

🚀 Show notes for this episode will be available soon after this airs. Sign up for the LEVITY newsletter to get them straight to your inbox: reachlevity.com

--CHAPTERS--

00:00 Introduction to Dr. Valter Longo

02:44 From Music to Aging Biology

06:40 The Supposed Longevity Zones of Italy

09:04 Personal Experiences Shaping Research

12:04 The Path to Aging Biology

13:15 Calorie Restriction and Roy Walford

26:25 Transitioning to Fasting Mimicking Diet Research

34:56 The Eureka Moment

39:51 The Rationale For the 5-Day FMD

52:54 The Un-conspired Conspiracy

01:01:18 Conflicts of Interest

01:04:52 Protein Intake: Balancing Muscle Health and Longevity

01:14:30 Autophagy: The Body's Self-Repair Mechanism

01:21:12 The Power of Genetic Variants in Longevity

01:27:18 The Debate on Growth Hormone and Aging

01:36:18 Insights from Laron Syndrome and Longevity

01:40:10 Fasting Mimicking Diet: A Path to Health

01:46:06 Valter's New Book, Fasting Cancer

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is our first — and probably our last — episode where the guest has brought with him an actual punch card and proceeds to explain why it is, in fact, caca (which is Spanish for 💩, by the way).

Welcome to the wild world of José Cordeiro. Stick around and you might hear anecdotes about Robert Kennedy Jr. in Memphis 🎸, late-night karaoke sessions 🎤, and a man shouting “immortality!” to anyone and everyone. But behind the eccentric props and the shameless self-promotion (José didn’t just bring punch cards — he also brought his books 📚, his merch 👔, and his signature Death of Death tie — to the point where we had to clarify we’re not actually sponsored), there’s a deadly serious mission: José wants to end aging and defeat death.

A futurist, MIT-trained engineer, and bestselling author, José Cordeiro argues that humanity is on the brink of longevity escape velocity 🚀 — the moment when medical advances will start adding more years to our lives than time takes away. In this episode, we explore his bold predictions, from reversing aging by 2045 to launching a global “war on aging.” We cover the science 🔬, the politics 🏛️, the money 💰, and the wild optimism driving the longevity movement — with cryonics ❄️, Martians 👽, and €10 immortality claims all making appearances.

This might be our strangest — and most fascinating — conversation yet. Buckle up.

-- IN THIS EPISODE YOU'LL LEARN ABOUT --

✅ Why longevity escape velocity may be closer than we think

✅ How AI will aid longevity

✅ Why technological optimism is rational

✅ How the Covid pandemic was a relatively minor pandemic

✅ How the concept of work will change

✅ What the future of energy may be

✅ A personal history of Marvin Minsky, Ray Kurzweil and José Cordeiro

✅ Where to meet Cordeiro and demonstrate against aging

✅ Why immortality is probable by 2045

🚀 Special offer for our LEVITY audience: Join Vitalism today and receive a 30% discount on your membership using the code LEVITY at checkout. https://www.vitalism.io/membership

🚀 Show notes for this episode will be available soon after this airs. Sign up for the LEVITY newsletter to get them straight to your inbox: reachlevity.com

-- CHAPTERS --

00:00 Introduction

05:33 Cordeiro's struggle to end aging

12:28 Traveling the world to spread the word of The Death of Death

18:36 The small Covid Pandemic vs the huge aging pandemic

26:00 Scientific optimism

29:37 "Next time we meet we will be younger."

32:28 The concept of work through history

35:50 Exponentiality of progress - a personal history of computers

43:30 Kurzweil and Cordeiro mentored by Marvin Minsky

50:26 The future of energy

57:56 When will we reach LEV and what happens 2045?

01:03:00 Madrid as a Blue Zone

01:06:30 AI coming and helping with science

01:17:00 The amazing point of the human timeline we are on - biology can be immortal

01:19:50 We are mostly water - immortality for 10 Euros per year

01:22:40 Advanced bio engineering and disruption from outside

01:24:30 Zuckerberg to cure all diseases in this generation - billionaires to the rescue

01:28:40 Elon Musk will change his mind

01:29:34 Trump administration and visiting Elvis with RFK

01:36:40 The importance of campaigning for life - we need action now

01:47:22 Cryonics

01:51:56 Sing karaoke

01:53:00 What to read

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Lately, there's been growing pushback against the idea that AI will transform geroscience in the short term.

When Nobel laureate Demis Hassabis told 60 Minutes that AI could help cure every disease within 5–10 years, many in the longevity and biotech communities scoffed. Leading aging biologists called it wishful thinking - or outright fantasy.

They argue that we still lack crucial biological data to train AI models, and that experiments and clinical trials move too slowly to change the timeline.

Our guest in this episode, Professor Derya Unutmaz, knows these objections well. But he’s firmly on Team Hassabis.

In fact, Unutmaz goes even further. He says we won’t just cure diseases - we'll solve aging itself within the next 20 years.

And best of all, he offers a surprisingly detailed, concrete explanation of how it will happen:

building virtual cells, modeling entire biological systems *in silico*, and dramatically accelerating drug discovery — powered by next-generation AI reasoning engines.

🧬 In this wide-ranging conversation, we also cover:

✅ Why biological complexity is no longer an unsolvable barrier.

✅ How digital twins could revolutionize diagnosis and treatment.

✅ Why clinical trials as we know them may soon collapse.

✅ The accelerating timeline toward longevity escape velocity.

✅ How reasoning AIs (like GPT-4o, o1, DeepSeek) are changing scientific research.

✅ Whether AI creativity challenges the idea that only biological minds can create.

✅ Why AI will force a new culture of leisure, curiosity, and human flourishing.

✅ The existential stress that will come as AI outperforms human expertise.

✅ Why “Don’t die” is no longer a joke — it's real advice.

🎙️ Hosted - as always - by Peter Ottsjö (tech journalist and author of Evigt Ung) and Dr. Patrick Linden (philosopher and author of The Case Against Death).

🚀 Special offer for our LEVITY audience: Join Vitalism today and receive a 30% discount on your membership using the code LEVITY at checkout. https://www.vitalism.io/membership

🚀 Show notes for this episode will be available soon after this airs. Sign up for the LEVITY newsletter to get them straight to your inbox: reachlevity.com

-- CHAPTERS --

00:00 Introduction to Derya Unutmaz

05:22 Derya’s work at Jackson Laboratory

09:37 The impact of AI on research

15:04 AI as a collaborative partner

20:50 The nature of creativity in AI

30:21 Predictions for the future of AI and humanity

37:46 The future of AI in medicine

44:35 The impact of AI on professional identity

47:45 Education in the age of AI

01:01:32 The ethics of AI development

01:14:46 Longevity and AI's role in accelerating science

01:20:55 Virtual cells and digital twins

01:29:02 Can we do it in silico all the way?

01:33:08 Derya and Patrick will both talk at Vitalist Bay

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Peter Fedichev is a visionary scientist, biotech entrepreneur, and physicist at the forefront of longevity research. With a background in theoretical physics, he has seamlessly merged cutting-edge science with real-world applications, making groundbreaking contributions to the fields of aging, biotechnology, and artificial intelligence in healthcare. As the co-founder and CEO of Gero, a pioneering biotech company, Fedichev is revolutionizing our understanding of biological aging, using AI-driven approaches to uncover ways to extend human lifespan and combat age-related diseases. His work has been featured in leading scientific journals, and his insights are shaping the future of personalized medicine and longevity science. Driven by a relentless curiosity and a passion for pushing the boundaries of human potential, Fedichev is not just studying aging - he’s working to redefine it.

🚀 Special offer for our LEVITY audience: Join Vitalism today and receive a 30% discount on your membership using the code LEVITY at checkout. https://www.vitalism.io/membership

🚀 Show notes for this episode is available here: https://reachlevity.com/p/age-reversal-will-never-work-a-controversial-take-from-a-physicist-5935af91034fd123

-- EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS --

✅ The founding of Gero

✅ The physics of aging

✅ Why age reversal will not work

✅ What SENS gets right

✅ What SENS gets wrong

✅ AI and the longevity industry

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode of LEVITY, we speak with Laurence Ion, a tech entrepreneur whose experience with a rare genetic disease led him to tackle one of humanity's greatest challenges: aging.

Starting as a shy coder who 'couldn't talk to strangers,' Laurence has become a movement leader pioneering a bold new approach: creating specialized cities where extending human lifespan isn't just a goal - it's the future of humanity.

-- EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS --

✅ Laurence's personal journey with multiple hereditary exostoses and how it shaped his perspective on aging and mortality.

✅ The founding and evolution of VitaDAO, a decentralized science organization funding longevity research.

✅ How crypto-based communities are accelerating anti-aging research outside traditional funding models.

✅ The concept of special jurisdictions for medical innovation where regulatory frameworks can move at "warp speed".

✅ Viva City's vision to create physical communities and hubs focused on longevity.

✅ The $2 million recursive finder's fee for anyone who helps secure a location for the first major Viva City jurisdiction.

✅ How living in community environments like Zuzalu and Aevitas House naturally promotes healthier lifestyle choices.

✅ The Frontier Tower project - a 16-story "vertical village" designed for longevity-minded living.

✅ JellyfishDAO's mission to change cultural narratives around aging through film and media.

✅ The relationship between AI advancement and longevity research.

✅ How decentralized clinical trials could dramatically reduce the cost and time of bringing treatments to people.

✅ Real-world examples of companies already offering experimental longevity treatments in special jurisdictions.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.