The Immortals - Ep 4. The Hype Cycle

Intrigue

BBC

True Crime, Society & Culture, Personal Journals

4.6 • 4.6K Ratings

🗓️ 11 September 2023

⏱️ 16 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Jesse Karmazin’s Ambrosia Plasma clinic promised the fountain of youth, two litres of young plasma at a time.

For a fee, anyone could go to his treatment centre in the redwood forest outside Silicon Valley and receive an infusion. The results - according to Karmazin - were remarkable. Silicon Valley billionaires were rumoured to be queuing up for their young blood.

The problem was, the scientists whose work in mice he claimed to be bringing to the people disagreed with what he was doing, and he never backed up his claims with data. A journalist stepped in to investigate, and what she found was Silicon Valley hype without any substance.

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	Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know.
0:04.6	My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds.
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0:36.1	BBC Sounds. BBC Sounds, Music Radio Podcasts.
0:41.1	So the first time actually
0:45.0	J.Carmazan called me on the phone on this phone in my office
0:50.0	and started saying something about that what we published in 2016, how it feels with his business model.
0:59.0	And I had no idea what was he talking about.
1:02.0	This is Arena Convoy, one of the research. And I had no idea what was he talking about.
1:03.0	This is Arena Convoy, one of the researchers
1:05.4	who first discovered that old muscles and brains
1:08.3	appear to get younger when a young mouse's blood
1:11.1	is put into an old one. We met her and her research partner husband Mike in episode 2.
1:17.0	The person on the other end of the line was Jesse Carmison, the entrepreneur from the last episode behind Ambrosia Plasma.
1:25.0	Arena said he was very interested in the convoy's research on young blood infusions for old mice.
1:32.0	I looked at up quickly and I realized that his business model
1:36.0	was to inject old people with young blood plasma and I told him I disagree I don't think
	...

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