Welcome to the A16Z podcast. I'm Michael Copeland. There are those who would say that Aubrey de Grey is out to cure death.

But what this former artificial intelligence specialist turned gerontologist is really focused on is health.

And the side effect of health is living a lot longer. In this segment of the A16Z podcast, we talk with Aubrey de Grey on the subject

of aging and health and how his training as a computer scientist helped him approach the problem

in a different way from traditional biologists. The intersection of software and biology and how

this troublemaker from the computer science world is trying to keep us all

healthy for a very, very long time.

Aubrey, welcome.

Thanks very much for having me.

We want to talk about the intersection of computer science and software and biology.

And I think there's a misconception out there that you're out to cure death.

But you shifted from software verification to this idea

that of really health, but extending life. And how did you make that transition and why?

Well, first of all, thank you for putting in that clarification, because it's normally something

that I need to put in in interviews that, I'm just a real medical researcher I work on

health and any longevity benefits that may arise from this work are a side effect of health because

of course being sick is what kills people yes so and of course journalists you know tend often to

sensationalize that they think it sells more papers if they talk about immortality and other stuff like that.

But how did I make the transition?

Well, it was quite interesting, actually, and a lot of luck was involved.

Essentially, in 2000, when I was in the middle of my work in software verification, I met,

and shortly afterwards married, a biologist from the US who was

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