#202 – Venki Ramakrishnan on the cutting edge of anti-ageing science

#202 – Venki Ramakrishnan on the cutting edge of anti-ageing science

"For every far-out idea that turns out to be true, there were probably hundreds that were simply crackpot ideas. In general, [science] advances building on the knowledge we have, and seeing what the next questions are, and then getting to the next stage and the next stage and so on. And occasionally there’ll be revolutionary ideas which will really completely change your view of science. And it is possible that some revolutionary breakthrough in our understanding will come about and we might crack this problem, but there’s no evidence for that. It doesn’t mean that there isn’t a lot of promising work going on. There are many legitimate areas which could lead to real improvements in health in old age. So I’m fairly balanced: I think there are promising areas, but there’s a lot of work to be done to see which area is going to be promising, and what the risks are, and how to make them work." —Venki Ramakrishnan

In today’s episode, host Luisa Rodriguez speaks to Venki Ramakrishnan — molecular biologist and Nobel Prize winner — about his new book, Why We Die: The New Science of Aging and the Quest for Immortality.

Links to learn more, highlights, and full transcript.

They cover:

  • What we can learn about extending human lifespan — if anything — from “immortal” aquatic animal species, cloned sheep, and the oldest people to have ever lived.
  • Which areas of anti-ageing research seem most promising to Venki — including caloric restriction, removing senescent cells, cellular reprogramming, and Yamanaka factors — and which Venki thinks are overhyped.
  • Why eliminating major age-related diseases might only extend average lifespan by 15 years.
  • The social impacts of extending healthspan or lifespan in an ageing population — including the potential danger of massively increasing inequality if some people can access life-extension interventions while others can’t.
  • And plenty more.

Chapters:

  • Cold open (00:00:00)
  • Luisa's intro (00:01:04)
  • The interview begins (00:02:21)
  • Reasons to explore why we age and die (00:02:35)
  • Evolutionary pressures and animals that don't biologically age (00:06:55)
  • Why does ageing cause us to die? (00:12:24)
  • Is there a hard limit to the human lifespan? (00:17:11)
  • Evolutionary tradeoffs between fitness and longevity (00:21:01)
  • How ageing resets with every generation, and what we can learn from clones (00:23:48)
  • Younger blood (00:31:20)
  • Freezing cells, organs, and bodies (00:36:47)
  • Are the goals of anti-ageing research even realistic? (00:43:44)
  • Dementia (00:49:52)
  • Senescence (01:01:58)
  • Caloric restriction and metabolic pathways (01:11:45)
  • Yamanaka factors (01:34:07)
  • Cancer (01:47:44)
  • Mitochondrial dysfunction (01:58:40)
  • Population effects of extended lifespan (02:06:12)
  • Could increased longevity increase inequality? (02:11:48)
  • What’s surprised Venki about this research (02:16:06)
  • Luisa's outro (02:19:26)

Producer: Keiran Harris
Audio engineering: Ben Cordell, Milo McGuire, Simon Monsour, and Dominic Armstrong
Content editing: Luisa Rodriguez, Katy Moore, and Keiran Harris
Transcriptions: Katy Moore

Episoder(305)

#0 – Introducing the 80,000 Hours Podcast

#0 – Introducing the 80,000 Hours Podcast

80,000 Hours is a non-profit that provides research and other support to help people switch into careers that effectively tackle the world's most pressing problems. This podcast is just one of many things we offer, the others of which you can find at 80000hours.org. Since 2017 this show has been putting out interviews about the world's most pressing problems and how to solve them — which some people enjoy because they love to learn about important things, and others are using to figure out what they want to do with their careers or with their charitable giving. If you haven't yet spent a lot of time with 80,000 Hours or our general style of thinking, called effective altruism, it's probably really helpful to first go through the episodes that set the scene, explain our overall perspective on things, and generally offer all the background information you need to get the most out of the episodes we're making now. That's why we've made a new feed with ten carefully selected episodes from the show's archives, called 'Effective Altruism: An Introduction'. You can find it by searching for 'Effective Altruism' in your podcasting app or at 80000hours.org/intro. Or, if you’d rather listen on this feed, here are the ten episodes we recommend you listen to first: • #21 – Holden Karnofsky on the world's most intellectual foundation and how philanthropy can have maximum impact by taking big risks • #6 – Toby Ord on why the long-term future of humanity matters more than anything else and what we should do about it • #17 – Will MacAskill on why our descendants might view us as moral monsters • #39 – Spencer Greenberg on the scientific approach to updating your beliefs when you get new evidence • #44 – Paul Christiano on developing real solutions to the 'AI alignment problem' • #60 – What Professor Tetlock learned from 40 years studying how to predict the future • #46 – Hilary Greaves on moral cluelessness, population ethics and tackling global issues in academia • #71 – Benjamin Todd on the key ideas of 80,000 Hours • #50 – Dave Denkenberger on how we might feed all 8 billion people through a nuclear winter • 80,000 Hours Team chat #3 – Koehler and Todd on the core idea of effective altruism and how to argue for it

1 Mai 20173min

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