Welcome to the After-On podcast. I'm your host, Rob Reed.

And this is a series of conversations with thinkers, founders, and scientists.

Take a little time and stretch out because these talks are unhurry and meant to bring you

to a top percentile understanding of something important.

Also, whether you're into start-up score ideas, a techie or a lit major, take your time,

engage your mind, and you'll be glad you did it.

Especially this week when we'll be talking to...

Renegade Gerontologist Aubrey DeGrey

I first met Aubrey over 10 years ago when he presented at the TED conference and his

core message blew my mind. It was and remains that it should soon lie within technology's

reach to eliminate the scourge of human aging. Not merely to arrest it, but even to reverse

it.

People have been making these sorts of claims from time immemorial, but they usually have

a treatment, some goop, or a religion to sell, and Aubrey's peddling none of the above.

The charlatans also typically lack credentials like Aubrey's, which included Cambridge

PhD, any number of academic publications, and now dozens of scientists pursuing his agenda

with full or partial funding from the organization that he founded and runs. Low dozens of scientists,

but still.

Aubrey is charmingly indignant about the lack of urgency most of humanity has about

ending aging. He attributes this to a mindset he calls the pro-aging trance, which we discuss

in detail at the start of our interview. Its roots include the instinctive conviction

most of us have that death and mortality are immutable realities, to which Aubrey would

...