Speakers
Greg McKeown, Sergey Young
Greg McKeown
Sergey Young, been too long since we’ve had a chance to really talk. For people who don’t know you, I hardly know how to introduce you. Of course, business leader, innovator launched, many companies invested in many more. But now, and for several years now invested in a different, bold, moonshot type endeavor, where you’re trying to work out how to, to elongate life, to extend it, to 150 years to 200 years, you have just written a book, intensely researched, but also like a guinea pig, you are living and striving to live these ideas in the book, the science and technology of growing young, founder of the longevity vision fund, all around great person, someone I love calling my friend, Sergey young, welcome to the What’s Essential podcast
Sergey Young
Hi, Greg. Hi, everyone, I’m so happy to be here. Thank you,
Greg McKeown
Let’s get to this, make the case for why someone should want to live to 150 or 200 years old?
Sergey Young
Well, it’s number of ideas behind that. I think when we are not sure of yours, we can switch from this deficit man mentality to like, what I can do for people around me, what I can do for this planet, what I can do for myself? And this is the things like spending more time with kids and the loved ones. The other things is taking back responsibility, and enjoy this responsibility for our own health and the health of the planet. This is about realizing our dreams. And this is the idea that we can live very diverse life, like changing careers, every decade or so. So for me, I mean, it’s a dream to go to Mars, however, was crazy. It souns but like if you live in 75 years, this is obviously health joke and health serious stuff. But if you live in like 75 years, so that’s the average lifespan for developed world. You can basically enjoy this time on Earth. But if your lifespan is kind of 150 years, you can always excuse yourself for two or three years and say to your loved ones, guys, I’m going to be back in three years’ time, I’m going to Mars and I’m going to come back and, and see you in a couple of years. So that’s just give you more resources. But then it’s up to you how you use these resources, mostly time.
Greg McKeown
I mean, I think what you’re hypothesizing here is that a lot of the challenges of our lives are based on having such a pathetically short amount of time here. And so you’re saying, if you extend how long you have here, then you suddenly have an abundance of time. Lots of good things grow out of that to you. You have more time for family, more time for your own development more time for achievement of goals.
I mean, I don’t think I exaggerate this that. Did you see this as an asymmetric scenario, there’s only really upside, there’s a little downside may be here a bear but really, it’s an upside proposal. And I’m not knocking that. But I just want to push on it a little for a moment. And then let’s get to let’s say I’ll give you the challenge to identify for us in a moment. The five things based on your research and your work, that we could apply ourselves to extend life and increase our longevity.
So now it’s just challenging this for still a second more, is it? Is there not? Is there not a downside to the idea of twice, extending life twice? The average? Is that is that nothing, we should be cautious of your thoughts?
Sergey Young
Yeah. Well, that’s a great question. And that’s actually why chapter 11 of my book, it’s actually a last chapter in the book called morality of immortality. I’m not a fan of immortality, obviously. So it’s just, it’s just a metaphor for radical life extension. And what I’m always saying that in 20-25 years from now, the biggest obstacles for extending our lifespan and our health span is not going to be science is not going to be technology, it’s going to be human ethics, and regulation. What I see in in longevity and an extreme longevity is an opportunity to start a conversation, how we need to change the ethics of our society, the rules of our society, our relationship with other human beings, and with the world with the mother nature, for us to embrace the idea of living longer. And you’re right, Greg, depending on the country, but like, if you look at us, and UK, and UK, 65 to 75% of people, if you ask them, if they want to live longer, they say no. And that’s a wakeup call for all of us. We, as I always say we have created technology to extend our life. But we haven’t created life that we want to extend. So this is my biggest worry. And, and that’s why I’m waiting for the horizon of longevity, which will like technologies, which will be available to us in next 25 to 50 years, like human avatars, integration of our brain with artificial intelligence, a lot of sensors in our body with combination of excitement, but also fear. And I do think today is the time to start a conversation, to start to change, how we would like to see the world where we going to be living longer. And it is about solving inequality gap. It is about redefining our life, for life to be more spiritual, purpose full, dedicated, not only to financial resources, but a lot of different things.
Greg McKeown
Yeah that’s so interesting, as you’ve been thinking and pushing the boundaries, I would say as much as anyone, anywhere on trying to imagine what, you know, what could happen as you just sort of indicate very quickly there some of these bombastic possibilities 25-50 years from now is you’ve been extending your own mind and imagination and vision into this subject matter. You’ve also been discovering more than certainly the average person about people’s hesitancy about this, what a profound statement that is that so many people When asked, say no, I don’t want to live longer. That’s a very profound statement to me. When at the same time, it’s so typical for people to say, Well, I don’t have enough time. You know, I wish I had more time. I wish I could go back and redo things. You already talked about some things at the surface level. But what would you say? Is the primary thing we could do to make it for people that they would want more time? Your thoughts?
Sergey Young
Oh, it well, it’s not even $1 trillion question, Greg. It’s, it’s a question that we’ve been trying to solve for probably the whole evolution of humanity? Well, it’s a very prompt answer. But what I’m thinking about, I’m particularly concerned about inequality gap. So my, again, hypothesis, whether it’s right or wrong, if we will work on that, if we will provide basic level of health care, which is going to be super-efficient, highly technological, extremely affordable, to the people around us, to the nations and to the countries and to the world. Well, that’s amazing. That’s why I’m always talking that my mission is to change lives by providing affordable and accessible version of healthcare, rather than, you know, working out the solution for a handful of rich people and the rest of the planet going to suffer. If you’re going to go further with that, then we can think about universal basic income, I do believe if you cover the basic needs of the people, and including right to be healthy, and, and right to have access to basic health care, we have more time, we have more intellectual resources, we have more reason to become a better version of ourselves.
Greg McKeown
It reminds me of sort of the Hobbs Ian idea Thomas Hobbes was describing famously, that life was, was often nasty, brutish, and short. You’re, you’re really saying, if we could do something to make it less nasty, brutish, and short? Well, no, you’re saying, if you can make it less nasty and brutish, then people will be incentivized to make it long? Because it’s, it would it would be, it would be a great pleasure to be here. We would, we would want to continue on. So let’s, let’s answer the question in one slightly different way. You clearly want to live 150 years. I mean, I have to assume that you do. Otherwise, why the whole you know, longevity vision fund. You know, why found that way do this, you know, and of course you think it’s good for other people too. For what it is, it’s so exciting for you because I’m not advocating in this conversation, that it’s that it’s not exciting. We just wanted to access this idea that for some people, it’s not but it is for you. Why?
Sergey Young
Okay, great. So first of all, I’ve been always like such a positive person and I’m trying to see the opportunity Just everywhere. So when I started to do my visualization that, um, you know, I have an opportunity to live longer, well, let’s say 150 years, whatever the number is, well, just amazing feeling. And it just changed your overall mentality and your relationship with people around you and where the world. Like what is the best practice to be healthier, and happier man or woman today? Of course, I would dream to leave to spend more years on Earth, because I have plenty of ideas, plenty of moon shots. But to tell you the truth, I don’t really care, whether it’s going to be me, or next generation, like our kids or our grandkids, was going to enjoy this opportunity to live healthier and happier life. So for me, it’s just act of sharing with the world. And obviously, I can’t really explain it in every conversation. But like, even if I die in the age of what 80 or 85, whatever the average lifespan is on Earth. But if I can make a contribution to make humanity healthier, and give a lot of people who are I need access to affordable, accessible version of longevity and digital health care, My mission is complete. If my kids or grandkids and and this whole kind of next generation will have completely different opportunities created by me and 1000s and millions of other people in longevity field who are sharing the same mindset, I’m gonna be super happy.
Greg McKeown
I love all of those distinctions that you’re making. And one of the things that put in my mind is part of your argument seems to be the inevitability of longevity, that that even though there are many forces that still keep the the average the average life expectancy to what it is currently, over time anything like the long run many of these forces are giving way you know, so we can start on the on the on the one side where we see you know, enormous progress being made in terms of basic literacy, you know, basic levels of health care. And so life expectancy is even in the most sort of dire estimations from the United Nations and others that have gathered data on this. The expectation is if you go forward into the future, 50 years, 100 years, the life expectancy will just continue to go up the world over. But then you add something even beyond that, where you say, well, the technology advancement is so immense, and, and can’t even again, if you, if you even just work, say well, there’s just slight upward progress, and you multiply that by a long period of time, you’re going to find innovation that currently seems shocking. You’ve named some of them. But that will suddenly become plausible, and even normalized.
Sergey Young
Like in the last 100 years, we’ve doubled our average lifespan on Earth. So I agree with you, it’s kind of happening, whether we want it or not. And then it’s up to us, whether we want to be reactive about this and then deal with what this one has happened. Or we can ask ourselves all these important questions. Like can we be more long term here, in terms of our personal plans, as well in terms of just our relationship with the loved ones, with people around us or with our communities or with our nations? That’s one or how, what will happen with my, with our social structures, like with marriages, or relationships with keys, even with gifts from different generations, or what will happen, if I will, will outlive my finances? There’s so many questions and we don’t need to be scared by that. I do think it’s, you know, if you think about this early on, you have all the opportunities to solve it in the best possible way for yourself and people around you.
Greg McKeown
Tell me from the research that you’ve done from your thinking on this subject, what are five things, the most essential things that a person listening to this could start to do? He says, Well, I do want to extend the longevity of my life, I do want to be able to participate in some of the advantages that we’ve been discussing. What can they do?
Sergey Young
Again, as we discussed before, reaching the near horizon of longevity, which is going to be available to us in 10- 15 years from now, it’s gene editing and gene therapy, organ regeneration and regenerative medicine is a new class of drugs, it’s going to be longevity drugs, so which will influence the aging processes in our body and therefore decrease the risk of us getting the cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer’s, diabetes, there’s something that we can do now. By applying all his principles from five longevity buckets. This is how I call them. You can add 10 or even 20. And what is important, healthy and happy years to your life. So number one, and when I have my 30 seconds on longevity, when people ask me, I talk about only this thing, it is about importance of your annual health checkup. This is one of the most important days of your life every year. So I’ve got mine on June 8, this year in San Diego in human longevity center. And you can do it in the hospital next door. It’s a pretty standard procedure available from your healthcare providers or your health plan. You know, all you do is easiest, you just check in the early signs of cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and neurodegenerative disease. And this is like 90% of death happening because of this reason after age of 50. At least in in developed world. And, and the beauty of today, there’s unlike 20 years ago, well, let’s look at cancer. Cancer was kiss of death 20-30 years ago, people were delaying their date of their cancer screening. Because if you knew you have cancer, you have what another six or 12 months to survive? Well, it’s not anymore. If you if you can catch cancer, through dog early diagnostic tools, at early stage, your recovery rates for some cancer types as 93 to 100%. So that’s very important. There’s so many things that technology can help you to do today. But again, this is not rocket science, like every knowledgeable doctor will be like so happy to discuss with you what you can do once a year or every six months to monitor your health and be healthy.
Greg McKeown
Underlying what you’re suggesting is this sort of step one is this is the premise of the power of prevention. There’s a whole chapter of this in an effortless because I care in that book about residual results. And although it’s a slightly mind bending way to get to it, what else is prevention then, then a residual result if you can remove something early if you can address something quickly, then you then you remove from your life, having to manage and d eal with a problem many, many, many times over. So it’s a residual result in a sort of an inside out way,
Okay, number two?
Sergey Young
Number two, I call it don’t die stupid, or passive longevity. We were doing so many. Yeah, I can even call it stupid things, which really harms our health, like tobacco smoking, this is basically minus 10 years from your life. Or, like, some of the countries or they’re where people don’t use their seatbelts, where when they are on a rear seat of their car. And this is minus two years, from your lifespan, or some of the countries or states when you can actually drink, you know, a glass or two of wine, and you still going to be okay for driving based on the current draw. So like in our family, we have like zero alcohol policy, for car driving, whatever the regulation in this place does, or just not taking them.
Greg McKeown
We have the same rule.
Sergey Young
Yeah, okay, perfect. I like that, or not taking unnecessary risks. Like, I have a very good friend from California. She’s amazing woman, interpreter. She’s, she’s a big fan of mountain climbing. And I just got an email from her. She said, we’ll see again, I’m going to approach this August. And I’m going to try to climb the most dangerous mountain on Earth, it’s called K-2 it’s in Pakistan. mortality rates on average there is 25% just for a second, Russian Roulette is 17%. And it’s like super dangerous. Laurie right there you can play. But I guess why someone would need to take a risk of just dying in one out of four cases.
Greg McKeown
You’re saying and I absolutely love it. Principle number two principle don’t do dumb things. The primary obligation of life is to live. Which means I think that what you’re saying is absolutely right. Don’t do the dumb things, try and get a sense of what those dumb things are, what the high-risk things actually are, and just don’t do those things. There’s plenty of enjoyment fun creativity, there’s plenty of things to see and experience that are actually managing the risk quite low. Number three.
Sergey Young
Number three is about your diet. Like the key thing here is decreasing number of calories that you take every day. However simple, it sounds like, it’s just a lot of disagreement in the academic world, what actually extends our life today. But there’s one agreement, even the most skeptical ones, like Aubrey de Grey agrees that if you decrease the number of calories that you take every day by 15 to 25%, you’re going to be living longer, and you can add like three to five, you know, up to seven, healthy and happy years to your life. So I mean, the obviously, it’s just easier to say than to do that. So my life hacks on that go as plant based as possible. Because vegetables, they, they have such a lower calorie density.
Greg McKeown
For people that haven’t read The China Study, this is a this is kind of the most thorough research and data pool that has ever been gathered on contrasting the effect of diet on health and therefore on longevity, it was based on data that was that had been created by, by an experiment that the Chinese Emperor had initiated by insisting that certain cities and regions and China wouldn’t, you know, would not eat certain foods. And so basically, you know, enforced a plant diet for whole regions and compare them to regions that, that were eating what we would think of as a kind of Western diet or the Kings diet, as it was noted in Medieval Europe, where it’s, you know, basically very heavy on meat and, and, you know, what we would now think of is quite an unhealthy diet. What they found was that in the cities and regions where it was almost, you know, let’s say under 10%, animal product diet, is that there was literally no evidence of heart disease, none. That it just completely disappeared. An d so the book, The China Study goes on to experiment on that now through a Colombia if I remember, right, Colombia, and maybe Cambridge University collaboration to try and experiment and see if that was, could be proven now in a lab and in controlled experiments, and they found that it could, in fact, it could reverse many of these. These, you know, conditions and disease, even after somebody had heart disease or cancer.
Sergey Young
Yeah, I was just wanted to say about China’s study. This is where my longevity journey started. It’s it’s really old book. I think they publish this back in 2005. We actually have the same publisher benbella books who publish the science and technology of growing young and that’s why I’m I love working with them on it, because they so keen to change people lives through changing their health, and their state of mind. That’s a great book. And I think they still like 3 million copies all around the world. I do fast, 36 hours every week, from Monday evening to Wednesday morning. But like, you don’t need to be so radical. You can do like this window fasting when you fast for 18 hours, including your normal sleep hours, and then you consume your food within six hours interval. That’s a great place to start. And I’ve seen very rare cases when, because of the health conditions, people couldn’t really fast. So you obviously if you think that you are in the risk category, you can consult with your doctor. But again, this is like the easy way to decrease the number of calories that you take in. So that’s, there’s, there’s so many things you can do both on quantity and quality as well. But otherwise, if you want to experiment, just do like 21 days, only on vegetables, and you see how your body and actually your mind will respond to that. You don’t need to be like vegetarian for the rest of your life but just give it a try.
Greg McKeown
Yeah, we just did. And I just did a whole 30 we pretty much did it. You’re kept to it for 30 days, which you’re just really eating whole foods. You’re there’s you know, there’s a few things that you remove out of it. Give us give us the next item.
Sergey Young
Number four, it’s about physical activity. And we have this like a mindset on physical activity, which is very binary. Like I’m either like running full marathon or are a man or a woman or I’m just sitting at my and watching, you know, sport on TV. And we don’t need to be binary right world is not black and white on that. So what I like, use any wearable that you use sorry for that and measure 10,000 steps a day. Because you can walk pretty much, you know, all around the clock, and you can integrate walking rather than running or doing doing like a fitness sport. In so many activities like you can even do calls or zooms while walking in the park or, and the district nearby. And I like it because I do think it’s complete, like two thirds of the physical activity agenda. And then on top of that you can have whatever you want, whether it’s cardio or weightlifting, or stretch stretching in the form of yoga or any other form the light. And this is extremely important.
Greg McKeown
Yeah, I so agree with this. And again, what one of the things that that I’ve been trying to focus on myself and with our family has been trying to add the term lifelong, onto whatever goals we’re trying to set. Now, not all goals have to be lifelong. But if you say lifelong, if you say we’re learning, and you think about it in terms of formal education, and okay then we’re going to be done with the learning portion of our life and onto something else. That’s very different than saying lifelong learning. If you commit to lifelong learning, you can take it quite gently, quite sustainably, but you can think of how much you can read and learn and understand and a whole life of lifelong learning. And the same for exercise. And so I’ve had a bias towards things that are tailored towards activities that I can do now at my age, but I can also do and I can see people actually doing at 70 and 80, and even 90 years old, so for me, that’s things like tennis, it’s swimming, it’s walking, it’s building that into the natural flow of a lifestyle. Give us number five.
Sergey Young
So number five is I call it peace of mind. It is about your mental health, your spiritual health, which is remember, often when we when we talk about our health, we start with the physical health. So we don’t really go into like mental health or spiritual health thing. And for me, it’s really three things. One is about sleep. This amazing book, you obviously know by Matthew Walker. Oh, yeah. And my rule is like eight hours in a bath, seven hours of sleep. And after reading this book, I basically rethought my and changed my approach to sleep in this second is mindfulness and meditation. And whatever spiritual or meditation practice you, you take it, it’s very important to take down the cortisol, which is stress hormone in, in our body down, but also just reconnect to like, the best part of us. Like being grateful. And, and as I always say, like, you don’t need any app or tool for you to pray or meditate. We just need to sit down in silence and listen to your raw voice and and be grateful and think about and dream and think about, like, good things in life. The third thing, I call it sense of purpose, but it’s just ages only basic rules of us being kind and good people and, and, and just taking out this old social conditioning. For us, that forced us to be overachiever for us to be insecure, and just share the best of you with the world, give more than you take, have a sense of purpose in life. And usually you find it in that in helping other people to succeed or be healthy. Think about spiritual leaders that you’ve seen, or you’ve met, they all shine, they actually all live in longer, and they look healthy. And they like they radiate this beautiful light. And I know it sounds a little bit idealistic. But like if you dedicate your focus to socialization, if you dedicate your focus to helping others to share in the best of you and making the world a better place, this is like, I mean, in my own terms, this is at least plus five, plus 10 years to your lifespan. And I can assure you, it’s going to be one of the best of your years, because of your dedication, and you have a sense of purpose.
Greg McKeown
What you’re describing makes me think of all sorts of leaders have I’ve known and religious leaders, and in some of the most inspiring to me, have been people who have, who have lived life in crescendo, who seem to have contributed more, as their life has gone on. And you know, I’m thinking of two religious leaders, leaders of both of them, global leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints at their time, Gordon B. Hinckley who lived into his 90s, I think 97 years old, but it’s not just that he lived a long time, and not just that he was mentally able and capable. It’s that in the last 10 years of his life, he made a greater contribution than in any other decade of his life. I mean, it crescendoed the same could be said for the current leader, Russell M. Nelson, who’s 96 years old, he was still skiing into his 90s I don’t know if he still is or not. But but it’s, it was really what you just said there a second ago about, about well, you know, light the countenance what what is going on within somebody, and what what their what they seem to be exuding into the world. And so, of course, I’m not, I’m not making a I mean, this is a religious, religiously agnostic point. There are there are leaders within, within all sorts of traditions, who exemplify exactly what you’re describing. And it’s, it’s, it’s a good place for us to, first to rap with, with a phrase that I read quite recently, the Quakers have an idea, they say, let your life speak. And that is to get quiet enough in life. That you can hear that voice of conscience, that sacred voice speak to you. And that you can you can let that strengthen you renew you give you direction, and purpose. I mean, we can we can, you know, in a sense now, come full circle in our conversation to this idea that we discussed at the beginning this hobby and idea that and you know, his more precise phrase was, was that there’s life could be solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. He’s not saying that it has to be. But but surely, what we’re what we’re crescendoing here in our conversation is is exactly the opposite. It’s about focusing maybe maybe not denying that life can be that but that you that you have, the why to live and the why to live there for longer is to be able to help life be less solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short for other people. And that is I think, exactly what you’re trying to do and why you’re doing this with such deep conviction and why it’s not just about you, but for your children, grandchildren, and many, many others beyond you.
Sergey Young, thank you for being on the What’s Essential podcast.
Sergey
Thank you, Greg. Thanks, everyone. Stay healthy and happy
