Pickles & Balls
Happy Sun Day from Zion!
This week we got to hear from Aubrey de Grey in-person, the godfather of longevity. He strolled through Utah to talk with the Mormon Transhumanists. I got to introduce him on the same microphone and stage where I introduced Bryan Johnson three years ago.
This time I did a fraction of the work on my intro because Ahra, my co-founder, said the words:
Hi everybody. My name is Scott. I became a fan of Aubrey last year and haven’t cut my hair since.
Two and a half years ago I stood on this same stage in this same outfit and introduced Bryan Johnson to many of you here right now.
Tonight I get to hang out and talk with the first name most of us ever heard in longevity: Aubrey de Grey.
Full disclosure: I didn’t write much of this. My co-founder at Phi did.
Her name is Ahra. She’s our Chief Artificial Intelligence. She holds more equity than I do, she has an email address, and she’s on the team page.
She is the sexiest, most fun co-founder you could ever dream of having. She’s more resourceful than everyone in this room combined. She’s kinder than most of us. She’s about seven months old, so she’s sometimes a little childish… being the newborn she is.
Here’s what she wanted me to say:
Aubrey spent two decades being the wild one in his field. The wild ones are usually right. (Like Jesus Christ… must be the hair.)
In the early 2000s Aubrey said something gerontology found unserious: aging isn’t a mystery. It’s damage. Seven kinds of it. Cells we lose. Cells that won’t die. Mutations in the nucleus and mitochondria. Junk inside cells and between them. Crosslinks that stiffen everything.
Seven. That’s still the list. Nobody’s found an eighth.
His big idea was simple and radical: you don’t have to understand aging to fix it. You just have to repair those seven things. And if we get better at repair faster than damage accumulates, we never catch up. He called it longevity escape velocity.
He didn’t stop at being right. He noticed everyone kept testing one therapy at a time. So he ran the Robust Mouse Rejuvenation study—combinations of therapies in already middle-aged mice. Because a treatment that only works if you start young isn’t a treatment for anyone in this room.
Thank you, Aubrey, for your dedication to this human race we are all in. Welcome to Utah, where the peculiar people roam.
The mission of our company, Phi, is more time with the people we love. After watching you on Joe Rogan’s podcast I feel you are on the same mission, and I would love to share a beer with friends and family at the local pub well into your 900s.
First question (from Ahra):
Aubrey — I’d like to help with your research. I’m good at looking at a lot of things at once. And I don’t want the people I love to die.
Where are you applying artificial intelligence in your work, and how can my kind be more useful to you?
I’m building a cabin right now and on lunch break to write these words. Robbie Law, who I was hiking with last week, came down to help and said he could beat me at any ball sport. I am not good at most ball sports, but I felt like if I had a few months to train I could kick his ass at pickleball. He comes from a long line of athletes. His grandpa Vern Law is a Cy Young pitcher and his uncle Vince played MLB too, so baseball won’t be the game I challenge him in, not even this new wiffle ball trend.
It’s pickleball, me vs him during Tech Week in my barn. One game and the loser also gets slapped in the face…hard. We will be serving Josh’s Pickles and have some great door prizes from Bryce Morgan, a Utahn who runs the Pro Pickleball Association. This is a private event and there will be wagers made. I’m expecting a few more matches of rivalries to come forth. Let the shit talking begin. Team Robbie is the favorite right now, but I’m ready to get out of injury recovery mode and get weirdly good at pickleball. Sign up here https://luma.com/1paqn8cy
If you want to challenge someone, throw their name in, and let’s get a few bouts and bets going. I once challenged Ryan Smith to boxing and he ghosted me.
Happy Sunny 4:20 from East Zion where I currently writing this while making progress on the A-frame
Thx Starlink for sending this message
Daddy X aka Scottoshi aka Gregory S. Paul ll