🧬🛍 14 - Longevity - The Who is Who - Part 1
Hello again 👋
This is Curation for Longevity 🧬🛍 by Laura Minquini. I am the founder of MYKIGAI - a discovery and recommendation platform for longevity.
Longevity - The mixed fruit basket 🧺
As I was writing this entry - and it kept growing and growing - my friend Seyi posted this timely tweet:
Since I am not publishing my book -yet- this is a multiple-part post.
This post is intended to enlighten in the most non-scientific manner.
I am reading one of those Silicon Valley startup books called The Impact Equation (Ok, more like listening on Audible) by Julien Smith and Chris Brogan. It is a strategy book on how-to in a world full of content and information, not just make noise, but have an impact.
Sometimes I do feel like someone going around with pots and pans just making noise. I am the person everyone wonders “what is she doing at this party no one invited her to?” but she is still vibing.
For the maximalists, I am a healthspanner – for the healthspanners, I am a non-scientist. For those in the age-tech space, I am part of the crew that supports the vision of billionaires Silicon Valley types – for the Silicon Valley types, I am not a 25-year-old cool dude or Harvard graduate. For the holistic crowd, I am a radical, and so on. You get the picture.
Last week an article in The Guardian came out which symbolizes the complete mixed bag that is the longevity industry. From how it is conveyed, misunderstood, and constantly poorly framed. It was a great example of how great quotes and researchers are still drowned by clickbait headlines and poor reporting.
These articles are so tiresome on how unoriginal and copy and paste they are: always Thiel, Bezos, Live Forever. All you have to do is type “billionaires immortality” and you will see they all used the same headline generator.
The thing that pains me the most is how a lot of people in the industry don’t get that every article which paints the industry as a mix of fringe science, billionaires, and immortalists is detrimental in the branding, and more importantly, in the court of public opinion with the general public. You know, those people that vote for politicians who decide what becomes policy.
This is like making it to the cover of Vogue in your PJs recently out of bed, thinking you are looking like a supermodel.
Glad to see Dr. Morgan Levine —who really gets public perception — can see it too. More on her later; on how I think she could, should, and likely will be a mainstream name soon.
So, let’s delve into “The Who is Who” and “What is what” in and/or around Longevity
First, let’s start with how longevity is being used to define different things:
Longevity Science 🧬
This is about science and research aging, a lot of what this newsletter is about.
Longevity science and research are divided into maximalists (those who want to end aging, fight death, immortality, etc), then there are the “conservatives” called healthspanner. (I finally became a conservative on something!).
Healthspanners are usually geroscientists or researchers looking to solve diseases of aging for better health. Or advocates like yours truly who believe healthy aging is how you truly “disrupt aging”. By maximalist standards, we are not ambitious enough and have co-opted the industry.
Maximalists are the ones who are going to figure out the deep tech that will keep us living forever or at least plan B measures like cryopreservation and upload our minds up to the cloud. Here we usually find the young men of tech/science/ and crypto. Some of them see aging as just another technical problem to solve.
By healthspanner standards, some of these maxis are making us all look a bit like fringe weirdos.
Longevity Economy / Aging
This one is for those in the aging/senior industry who use the term longevity to acknowledge we are living longer lives than before and need to adapt, also known as the “longevity economy”.
Some in this crowd usually decry the longevity science research as part of the Silicon Valley billionaires crew wanting to live forever. It is seen as a negation of the pro-aging movement and “proud to age” influencers.
The influencers in the aging space who are redesigning our new longer lives, tend to be in their 50s, 60s. Why the future of aging is being designed by people who won't be in a long-term future is confounding to me, but that is for another post.
Due credit to Dr. Joseph Coughlin from the MIT Lab who wrote the first book on The Longevity Economy. And special mention out to my advisor and friend Dr. Ira Sobel, who is doing incredible work at the intersection of fintech x longevity and how we are going to finance our longer lives.
The different camps:
Los Padrinos of the #SciComm and health Bros
Oh, to be blessed by being invited as a guest by Tim Ferris or (gasp) Joe Rogan. One baptizes you in the tech intelligentsia, the other one to the mainstream.
Manifesting in my life being a guest one day - says everyone.
I say baptism as when you pass by Tim’s mic, you gain a lot of notoriety. The current kings of #scicomm (science communications) who I call the health & science bros; athletic, good looking, PhDs, Dr. Andrew Huberman, Dr. Peter Attia, all featured by Tim Ferris (and later Rogan) have become huge personalities. Men want to be them, women want to be with them. I think I made this comment once on social media, and since then my comments to Dr. Andrew Huberman go completely ignored, #sadness.
I hope El padrino Tim Ferris invites Dr. Matt Kaeberlein soon so the DogAging Project takes off majorly. Dr. Kaeberlein better start getting some big muscles to fit in with the crew.
Joe Rogan who has been on the cancel block for the last 4 weeks has platformed so many different scientists, including women. My impression is that- thanks to multiple interviews with Rogan - at least there is one very well-known health and #scicomm woman, Dr. Rhonda Patrick. (She too was a guest with Ferris). Like most people, I used to think Rogan was an annoying bro, but when I started listening to his interviews I found a curious, engaging character .
Rogan has also featured the likes of Dr. David Sinclair, who is currently doing his podcast with Huberman’s podcasting company. I can only imagine what a WhatsApp group chat with this crew looks like…
Note: There are a number of very well-known YouTubers with big audiences but the level of notoriety that we are speaking of with the #scicomm bros is more mainstream. I want to highlight in the YouTube category the work of The Sheekey Science Show by Eleanor Sheekey for its ingenuity and reach as she is incredibly popular in the longevity scientific community. I personally love it because of how creative she has been using illustration to explain complicated concepts.
Look out for Part 2 tomorrow!
👉🏼 Los 1 Billion millionaire compadres
👉🏼 Crypto Maximalists
👉🏼 Longevity Biotech
Part 3 - Wednesday
👉🏼 Biohackers
👉🏼 Snake Oil
👉🏼 Longevity / Snake Oil
👉🏼 Holistic Midlife
And many more!
Microbiome Checklist and Protocols - Part 2 to 5
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