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One on One Video Call W/George
https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meeting
Support the show:
https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_US
In this explosive episode, Dr. Aubrey de Grey — the pioneer of “damage-repair” rejuvenation biotechnology and founder of the Longevity Escape Velocity (LEV) Foundation — explains:
• Why his foundation is running the largest mouse combination studies ever attempted (2,000 mice, 8 interventions)
• How close we really are to Longevity Escape Velocity (his 50/50 estimate: 10–15 years)
• Why “immortality” headlines are deliberate misinformation and why he actually works on health, not lifespan
• The three ironclad reasons these therapies will NOT be only for billionaires
• Rapamycin, peptides, psychedelics, young blood, biohacking — what actually moves the needle
• Why raising $6 million for the next mouse study is scandalously difficult (and how you can change that)
• The one slogan he wants the movement to adopt: “Make aging the new COVID”
Dr. de Grey also answers live audience questions on overpopulation fears, societal ossification, term limits for centenarians, and whether extreme life-extension is “cancer on a global scale.”
If you care about adding decades of healthy life — for yourself, your parents, your kids — this is the one to share.
Donate to the critical combination studies: https://www.levf.org
Follow LEV Foundation on X: @LEVFoundation
Aubrey on X: @aubreydegrey
Timestamps
24:50 – Crushing every ethical objection (rich-only access, overpopulation, dictators, ossification)
Mahalo for listening — let’s end aging in our lifetime. 🚀
One on One Video call W/George
https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meeting
Support the show:
https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_US
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Support the show:
https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_US
🔥 Save $2,000: Master Plant Medicines from Home (Ayahuasca, Psilocybin, San Pedro & Cannabis)
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Creators and Guests
Host
George Monty
My name is George Monty. I am the Owner of TrueLife (Podcast/media/ Channel) I’ve spent the last three in years building from the ground up an independent social media brandy that includes communications, content creation, community engagement, online classes in NLP, Graphic Design, Video Editing, and Content creation. I feel so blessed to have reached the following milestones, over 81K hours of watch time, 5 million views, 8K subscribers, & over 60K downloads on the podcast!
What is TrueLife?
TrueLife is a story-driven documentary podcast that explores the invisible threads connecting us to each other, the world, and the mysteries of life. Every episode uncovers extraordinary journeys, human transformation, and the relationships that shape our stories.
Host: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the True Life Podcast. I hope the sun is shining, the birds are singing, and the wind is at your back. Today we have the absolute legend who stared into the abyss, stroked the mythic beard, and told death its services are no longer required — Dr. Aubrey de Grey. Cambridge-trained iconoclast, architect of ending aging, founder of SENS, and now commander of humanity’s rebellion against biological time at the Longevity Escape Velocity Foundation. Dr. de Grey, thank you for being here. How are you?
Aubrey de Grey: Very well, thank you. Hope you are too.
Host: I’m great. First, thank you for the decades of work you’ve put in. Tell us what’s on your radar right now — the LEV Foundation especially.
Aubrey de Grey: The main thing I’ve always done is promote a divide-and-conquer approach to keeping people healthy no matter how long ago they were born. At the LEV Foundation we’re focused on the “putting the pieces together.” We now have several interventions that individually extend healthy lifespan in mice. The hard part in medicine isn’t just developing the components — it’s combining them safely in a system as complex as the body. That’s what LEV Foundation does: large-scale combination studies in mice to discover synergies and eliminate negative interactions.
Our first robust combination study (started ~3 years ago, concluded earlier this year) proved the concept — the interventions were additive, giving more lifespan extension together than any one alone. The effect wasn’t earth-shattering, but now many more promising interventions have appeared, so our next study (2,000 mice, 8 interventions) should be dramatically better — as soon as we raise the ~US $6 million needed.
Host: There’s a real renaissance in public interest right now. Do you feel that shift?
Aubrey de Grey: Absolutely. Twenty-plus years ago you couldn’t even mention intervening in aging in polite society or in grant applications. Today it’s almost the opposite — it’s career suicide not to talk about therapeutic intervention. The field agrees combination studies are critical; the only reason more labs aren’t doing them is academic publish-or-perish culture and private-sector pressure to monetize quickly. That’s why LEV Foundation is philanthropically funded and uniquely able to run these big, unsexy but vital experiments.
Audience question (paraphrased): You say 50/50 chance of reaching Longevity Escape Velocity in 10–15 years. What chances does a healthy 30-year-old today have, and what should they do?
Aubrey de Grey: Maximize your probability of being alive and healthy when robust rejuvenation therapies arrive. Basic healthy lifestyle (don’t smoke, don’t get obese, varied diet) is still the foundation. Get regular comprehensive blood work and act early on any weak links. Most importantly: help speed the research — donate if you can, spread accurate information, do advocacy. The more people understand this is solvable, the faster comprehensive anti-aging therapies arrive.
Host: A lot of people bring up ethical worries — ossification of ideas, only the rich getting access, overpopulation, “death gives life meaning,” etc.
Aubrey de Grey:
• “Death gives meaning to life” is vacuous philosophy with zero evidence.
• Sociological fears (overpopulation, dictators living forever, pensions, old people blocking progress) all have trivial policy fixes (term limits, tax incentives, geographical separation, etc.).
• Access: there is zero chance these therapies stay rich-only. The economic imperative is overwhelming — aging-related disease is the main cost of healthcare in every developed nation. Preventative rejuvenation will save orders of magnitude more money than it costs, even when the treatments are brand new and expensive. Governments that don’t subsidize universal access will simply go bankrupt compared to those that do.
Host: Some people look at extreme biohacking (young-blood transfusions, etc.) and say it feels like “cancer on a societal scale” — cells or people taking resources to live forever at the expense of the whole.
Aubrey de Grey: That’s taking analogy to satirical levels. Multicellular life exists because evolution built exquisite cooperation machinery. Cancer happens when a few cells escape those rules. Rejuvenation biotechnology simply augments the body’s own (imperfect) machinery that already prevents cancer and six other classes of aging damage. We’re reinforcing cooperation, not breaking it.
Host: Can you tell us about the current big mouse study?
Aubrey de Grey: Our completed study combined four interventions started at middle age:
1. Rapamycin (positive control — works in mice, not translatable to humans)
2. A senolytic drug (selectively removes “zombie” or senescent cells)
3. Telomerase gene therapy
4. Heterochronic bone-marrow stem-cell transplant (young stem cells → old mice)
Result: clear additive benefit, proof of concept.
Next study (awaiting funding): 2,000 mice, 8 diverse interventions, full factorial design to map synergies. Science is moving incredibly fast — it’s scandalous that raising money for this is so hard.
Host: Why is it so hard to fund?
Aubrey de Grey: Private sector wants quick ROI and owns the IP. Academia wants mechanistic papers for top journals. Our work creates little new IP (we use everyone’s discoveries) and doesn’t test pretty hypotheses — it tests whether the damn things work together. Only philanthropy can currently fill that gap.
Host: Messaging problem — media says “immortality” and “don’t die” which turns people off.
Aubrey de Grey: 100 %. I say ad nauseam: I don’t work on immortality or even longevity — I work on health. Longevity is a side-effect of postponing age-related disease. Journalists (and a few loud individuals) deliberately conflate aging with death because fear and sensationalism sell. It also lets people stay in denial (“death is inevitable in car crashes, therefore aging must be too”).
Host: Peptides, rapamycin, metformin, NR/NMN, MOT-C, biohacking, psychedelics — where do they fit?
Aubrey de Grey: Rapamycin, metformin, NR/NMN etc. are calorie-restriction mimetics — great for worms, modest in mice, tiny in longer-lived species. Useful for health but not the path to comprehensive control of aging. Peptides are a huge category — some may turn out valuable. Biohacking is becoming genuinely useful because of better baseline testing and AI finding patterns across thousands of N-of-1 experiments. Psilocybin extended mouse lifespan this year — mechanism unknown. Academics want to wait until they understand how. I say: it works in mice, let’s include it in the combination studies now and figure mechanism later.
Host: Citizen science and reducing clinical-trial cost barriers?
Aubrey de Grey: AI + better self-tracking is turning biohacking into real citizen science. Regulatory costs are artificially huge (incumbent protection + litigation culture). Progress is happening via “right-to-try” expansion (Montana now allows preventive use of Phase-1-passed drugs) and medical tourism zones (Prospera in Honduras). Still slow, but moving.
Final audience question: When history records that aging was defeated, what sentence do you want next to your name?
Aubrey de Grey: I don’t think about legacy — legacies are for dead people. But history will say how shameful it was that humanity took so long to treat aging as the medical emergency it is. My slogan: “Make aging the new COVID” — show the world we can move at warp speed when we decide a problem is urgent.
Host: Where can people donate or follow the work?
Aubrey de Grey: https://www.levf.org — every dollar conservatively saves at least one life. Thank you.