Episode 681: Peter Ward - The Price of Immortality: The Race to Live Forever
In the tradition of Jon Ronson and Tim Wu,\xa0 an absorbing and revelatory\xa0 journey into the American Way of Defying Death . . .
As longevity medicine revolutionizes the lives of many older people,\xa0 the quest to take the next step\u2014to live as long as we choose\u2014has spurred a scientific arms race in search of the elixir of life, funded by Big Tech and Silicon Valley. \xa0
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Once the stuff of Mesopotamian mythology and episodes of Star Trek, the effort to make humans immortal is becoming increasingly credible as the pace of technological progress quickens. It has also empowered a wild-eyed fringe of pseudo-scientists, tech visionaries, scam-artists, and religious fanatics who have given their lives over to the pursuit of immortality.
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Starting off at the Church of Perpetual Life in Florida and exploring the feuding subcultures around the cryonics industry, Peter Ward immerses himself into an eccentric world of startups, scam artists, scientific institutions, and tech billionaires to deliver this deeply reported, nuanced, and sometimes very funny exploration of the race for immortality \u2014 and the potentially devastating consequences should humanity realize its ultimate dream.
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