Can AI meaningfully extend healthspan without losing what makes us human?

Journalist and author of Hacking Humanity, Lara Lewington joins me to share a grounded, optimistic view of AI in healthcare. We unpack the real risks to focus on now, the gains already happening in screening and prediction, and why lifestyle is still the strongest lever, with technology finally helping us measure, adhere, and act earlier. We get into wearables and pattern tracking, dementia risk signals, genomics and the microbiome, and the practical ethics of data and access. Most of all, we talk about lifestyle & joyspan, purpose, community, and companionship, as vital health inputs that no gadget can replace.

📌 What You Will Learn

• The near-term risks: disinformation, cyber threats, scaling for bad actors, and job shifts

• How AI is improving cancer and chronic disease prediction and treatment precision

• Wearables in 2025: accuracy gains, long-term patterns, and early brain-health signals

• Joyspan vs healthspan: the non-negotiables of purpose, community, and happiness

• From genome and microbiome to action: what is useful today, and what is not yet

• Robots in real life: augmentation over humanoids at home

• Data, privacy, and making prevention accessible to everyone

  
  

⏱ Timestamps
0:00 – Why balanced optimism matters
3:37 – “Hacking Humanity” and hacking healthcare
6:32 – Wearables, accuracy, and what patterns reveal
10:20 – Real risks in the AI era
13:17 – Joyspan, Blue Zones, and purpose
18:03 – Lifestyle as the lever, tech as the feedback loop
23:45 – Personalization, genomics, and the road to actionable care
27:39 – Lara’s daily stack for healthspan
36:39 – How norms shift as tech matures
50:32 – Breakthroughs vs compounding incremental change
53:13 – One takeaway: choose lifestyle you can sustain

Hacking Humanity, Lara's new book is available to purchase now: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Hacking-Humanity-Personalised-Predictive-Preventative/dp/075356114X

🎙 Hosted by Julian Issa
📸 Instagram: @thebeyondtomorrowpodcast
🌐 Website: www.beyondtomorrowpodcast.com
📩 Email: [email protected]

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