The business of not dying
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 796 Ratings
🗓️ 4 June 2025
⏱️ 17 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Is longevity the next growth industry? We look at why billionaires are betting on 'rejuvenation' tech and whether any of this could help more of us live beyond 100.
We meet the entrepreneurs selling 'superfoods', personalised health plans, and longevity consulting, hoping to cash in on a longer life. Their methods are unproven and sometimes extreme, but could the billionaires be on to something?
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Presented and produced by Thomas Mason
(Picture: A silhouette of a man stargazing under a clear, starry night sky with the Milky Way visible. Artistic composite. Credit: Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to Business Daily from the BBC World Service with me Thomas Mason. Today, |
| 0:07.8 | how and why are Silicon Valley billionaires attempting to buy their way to a longer life? |
| 0:14.6 | Life expectancy has gone up by about two and a half years a decade. So every day that you |
| 0:18.9 | survive, your life expectancy goes up by five or six |
| 0:21.8 | hours. That's PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, now an investor in a firm trying to reverse aging |
| 0:27.4 | at the cellular level. And he's not the only one. So are these billionaires just in it for |
| 0:32.9 | themselves, or early investors in what could become a huge market? It could potentially be the biggest market opportunity ever, because this is something that affects |
| 0:42.3 | everybody, nobody wants to become less functional. |
| 0:45.6 | And if the billionaire's experimental biotech eventually trickles down to help extend all of our |
| 0:51.9 | lives, could it be good news for everyone? |
| 0:54.5 | AI can help personalisation be more accessible for everyone and better for everyone too. |
| 0:59.2 | But there's a warning, the biggest leaps in life expectancy could already be behind us. |
| 1:04.5 | It's been largely a result of saving children. The only gains that are left are now |
| 1:10.1 | declines at older ages. |
| 1:12.0 | And that's where aging gets in the way. |
| 1:14.1 | Here's longevity, the next growth industry. |
| 1:17.3 | That's all coming up on Business Daily from the BBC World Service. |
| 1:25.6 | Let's start with life expectancy. |
| 1:28.4 | That's the average number of years a person can expect to live. |
| 1:32.2 | It varies widely by country and by income. |
| 1:35.8 | UN data suggests Hong Kong has the highest life expectancy at 86 years. |
| 1:41.3 | And in Nigeria, where there's still significant property in places, it's just 54 years. |
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