The Immortals - Ep 10. After the Dragon
Intrigue
BBC
4.6 • 4.6K Ratings
🗓️ 2 October 2023
⏱️ 16 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The idea of living forever has captivated us for millennia, but rarely do people imagine what would happen the day after the fountain of youth is discovered. Today’s technology entrepreneurs pushing an immortality agenda - through their investments and their influence - seem only focussed on the pursuit.
Whether or not immortality is a distant possibility, how do we cope with living longer en route to forever? Where’s the planning for that? It’s a great opportunity for innovative thinkers but, from what we’ve seen over the last two decades of technological disruption, these real but smaller goals aren’t nearly as enticing as the big ones.
In this series, technology reporter and psychologist Aleks Krotoski explores the frontiers of the extreme longevity pioneers. They've made their money in Silicon Valley. And with their technology solutions - PayPal, Facebook, cryptocurrencies - they've ushered in the world that we live in today, with all its unintended consequences. Some of them now want to solve the "problem" of aging, or even death, and they are making bigger strides than we may think.
Can they? Should they?
A Pillowfort production for BBC Radio 4
New episodes released Mondays. If you're in the UK, listen to the full series of Intrigue: The Immortals first on BBC Sounds: bbc.in/3WEQS5W
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Choosing what to watch night after night the flicking through the endless |
| 0:06.8 | searching is a nightmare we want to help you on our brand new podcast off the |
| 0:11.8 | telly we share what we've been watching |
| 0:14.0 | Fladiated. |
| 0:16.0 | Load to games, loads of fun, loads of screaming. |
| 0:19.0 | Lovely. Off the telly with me Joanna Paige. |
| 0:21.0 | And me, Natalie Cassidy, so your evenings can be a little less |
| 0:25.0 | searching and a lot more auction listen on BBC Sounds, music, radio podcasts. |
| 0:35.0 | I set out at the start of this series to understand the people behind the modern pursuit of longevity. |
| 0:42.0 | But quickly, it turned into a story of radical life |
| 0:46.0 | extension and the Silicon Valley technologists who want to add hundreds, maybe |
| 0:50.6 | thousands of years to our lives, and possibly never die. |
| 0:56.3 | It is a startlingly ambitious goal to solve the problem of death. |
| 1:01.2 | It takes a person who thinks differently to even consider such an |
| 1:05.1 | undertaking. They're not searching for a magical chalice or the fountain of youth. |
| 1:09.8 | They're inventing the thing that will elevate us to immortality. |
| 1:15.0 | To me, it's been the most liberating experience in my entire life that my health just runs on autopilot. |
| 1:21.0 | And I'm able to use my mental capacities in these other ways. |
| 1:25.0 | But as I've spoken with people like Brian Johnson, the entrepreneur whose search for |
| 1:30.6 | eternal life is run by an algorithm, I'm beginning to believe that the pursuit of immortality |
| 1:36.1 | has become the game. No one is really planning for what comes next. And you know what? That is where Professor Nick |
| 1:44.8 | Bostrom's fable of the dragon tyrant ends too, when the dragon is killed. |
... |
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