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Welcome to Pneuma—wellness with depth.
I’m Daniel, a PT who believes in strengthening body and soul.
Here, we blend practical health tips with timeless wisdom.
From the Shake Weight to Shakespeare, Pilates to Platonism, we’ll dive into it all—always with a mission of helping you live more deeply.
If you'd like your questions featured on the show (or just want to chat!) send a message to pneuma.finneran@gmail.com. I can't wait to connect!
Hello, my friend, and welcome to Pneuma. On this episode, I had the distinct pleasure of speaking with Hunter Zizeng, cofounder and chief of partnerships for a new health company called Longevity AI. Longevity AI is a physician guided AI powered platform on which you, the newly empowered user, can more effectively manage and take better control of your health. A financier by trade, Hunter is at the vanguard of the revolution in health care in which, hopefully, in the coming years, we will all be participating. I urge you after listening to this fascinating episode to check out longevity's website to which in the show notes below, you'll find a helpful link.
Speaker 1:Without further ado, my chat with Hunter. So Hunter, we want not only to live long, but well. Can you advise us on a few ways that will aid in the achievement of both longevity and the kind of durable, robust wellness that makes our added years a joy? Yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, that's a pretty loaded question, But thanks for having me on. You know, I think, you know, you've been reading a lot about longevity, longevity doctors, functional medicine, all these all these tests, all these supplements. And there's a lot of cool stuff coming into the marketplace and we're analyzing a lot of that with our company. But I think for me, it's always been sleep, diet and exercise. And you can throw out all this longevity stuff.
Speaker 2:Most of the science if you just eat well, get some exercise and you know get decent sleep because decent sleep means less stress. I think you've solved about 90% of the longevity problems and health scan problems.
Speaker 1:Yeah absolutely sometimes the simplest implementations are the most profound, the most powerful. So thank you for that little bit of advice and I want to turn now specifically to you after addressing that kind of large and an intimidating question. Your career began in finance including investment banking and the development of partnerships. These were big deals with big important people. Given your unique background, I have to ask what inspired you to involve yourself in longevity AI, the revolutionary health tech startup of which you are the co founder and about which we will be talking at some length today?
Speaker 2:Yeah sure. I am at a young age was always into sports, bike racing, skiing. I've been racing and riding bikes my whole life And I went to work for an investment bank in California that the CEO was very big on hiring athletes. And, you know, athletes tend to be good students. They're up at six in the morning.
Speaker 2:They're doing their work. They're working out there. Their minds are on their games. And we specialize in healthcare and consumer technology companies. I did that for twenty years.
Speaker 2:And my founder of my company was also the president of the US ski team and a big cyclist and he actually founded the US discovery and postal cycling team, which you know Lance Armstrong went on to win seven tours. So cycling and outdoor activity was always in my life. Right around when I turned 40, my dad died somewhat suddenly of pancreatic cancer, not entirely unavoidable, but there's some things he could have done to have gotten in front of it. And then four of my friends all passed away from infectious diseases. Some were cancer related and not entirely preventable, but prolongable.
Speaker 2:So that sort of kind of set into my head that bothered me because I had this, you know, healthy outdoor active life and many of these people were not and then they weren't on top of their health. But you know, had always towards the end of my career there, was actually helping a lot of my friends find better health through exercise, diet, nutrition and sleep. And I actually used to run boot camps in the San Francisco Marina District with my friends, kind of like Spartan like boot camps running around in the sand with logs on our shoulders. It just really made me sort of, it sort of drove me to help people, you know, find better health because I had it and I knew what it meant for me. I just, I just, it sort of moves me to help other people.
Speaker 2:So at age 40, I literally, in a short notice, I left Wall Street and started a foundation, outdoor event series to help fundraise for cancer. I did that for fifteen years.
Speaker 1:Is that organization still ongoing?
Speaker 2:My entity's not. Livestrong still is. So if you remember Lance Armstrong, you can remember him as a as a sort of a lying cheater doper on his bike. But, he what I remember Lance for is what he did for cancer survivors. And he built this company called Livestrong, which is you saw the millions of yellow bracelets that everybody wore.
Speaker 2:It was a product similar to what we're building now with AI for healthcare that provided people that came down with some form of cancer, the tools to navigate through cancer. My entity was the charity of choice foundation, which I had for fifteen years, which was, we raised money and did big outdoor cycling events to raise money for Livestrong Cancer Center. So we were more focused on prevention than we were, you know, after the fact. So it's a long answer to say no I closed that down a few years ago and went into private enterprise.
Speaker 1:Younger listeners to this channel will sadly be unaware of just how ubiquitous the LIVESTRONG movement was in the what would you say maybe the early 2000s or even mid 2000s? I can't remember a single student in my classrooms whose wrist did not was not adorned by one of those yellow bands.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And and and for the younger listeners, so, you know, Lance Armstrong is a I think most of the younger listeners probably know who he is. You know, one seventeen Tour de France was best known for his doping. Everybody was doping and cheating, you know, to get ahead in cycling. He was just better at it and he threw a few people under the bus.
Speaker 2:But he's also well known for Livestrong, which is a takeoff of his name. Lance Armstrong, Livestrong. And the Cancer Foundation basically just helped people that had cancer navigate through it because it's a horrible thing to get. And, yeah, it's, I believe it's still around today. It's obviously not as prevalent given, you know, what Lance went through with his doping scandal.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I believe I believe it is still, intact. Of course, the the brand was somewhat sullied by his his conduct or misconduct during his racing career but as you said it wasn't a behavior exclusive to him alone. I can think of maybe only one other cancer foundation that was as successful from a public facing perspective right I don't know about the numbers behind some of these foundations but it would be the Susan B. Coleman Pink Ribbon Foundation so this was a hugely significant movement it's interesting that there's some intersection between you and your infatuation with cycling and your desire to help other people and the history of cancer and your family and the diseases amongst your friends and also the LIVESTRONG movement.
Speaker 1:Thank you for sharing that personal information. It's an inspiring journey and I mean that both metaphorically and literally and I want to return a little bit more to your background in finance not to kind of overemphasize that but to allow us as listeners to understand exactly how that shapes the way in which you approach issues of longevity in healthcare more generally you know as someone who's you know making deals and crunching data looking at things in a different way, are there certain metrics for instance to which you are perhaps better attuned than say a traditional medical practitioner whose focus might be elsewhere dealing with insurance companies or nurses or other staff members?
Speaker 2:Well, not so much from a medical standpoint, but perhaps from a financial standpoint because I like you and many are frustrated with our medical system. You know, it's been phrased termed or coined as sick here. And it really is. I mean, I I sound like Donald Trump, I think Obamacare is a complete disaster. I couldn't believe it when it came out.
Speaker 2:There's nothing in Obamacare that provides anything to help people, certainly what Livestrong did, guide them towards better health. There's no incentives. It doesn't matter how sick you are. Sick care. In fact, insurance companies largely get paid more money for sick patients by Medicare, particularly elderly patients that know when you're 65 and you go to a nursing home, the longer you live, the sick you are, the more insurance companies make.
Speaker 2:And what frustrates me is aside from my, my view of really wanting people to be helpful and that's, that's sort of my, my soft side and I want people to be healthier, have a happier life. The cost just pisses me off because end of life care in this country is like in the trillions of dollars which could be reduced. And I was laughing a few weeks ago about, you know, Schumer, the Schumer shutdown, whatever you want to call it, and bitching for more health care. How about a health care plan that gives people the guidance and the advice and the incentives to be healthier? Because if you do that, you may not make people live longer, but you'll increase their health span.
Speaker 2:And health span is really a function of how well you live and hopefully how quickly you die. And if you are, if you can prolong problems or get in front of problems, will reduce costs for society. So that's about my finance background. It's purely a numbers game for me. I want to change the nature of preventive health at scale inside society to save society money, not just make people healthy.
Speaker 2:The other thing, know, I'm around long enough is to get involved in DC to change policy. Now, I have nothing to do with my finance background, but I think there's a lot we can do in Washington to change availability of better food, not just healthcare but better food, and better incentives for people to eat better food. And then to, you know, highly regulate the drug companies from their profitability and poisoning us. And I think you saw, two days ago, RFK juniors suggesting that the pharma companies can no longer advertise on TV. I think I kind of like that.
Speaker 2:You know, like cigarette ads went away about forty years ago. So money is what motivates me.
Speaker 1:Sure. Sure. Money kind of mixed with, this this, you know, irrepressible, desire to to see, you know, people's well-being enhanced. You mentioned Trump. You mentioned Schumer.
Speaker 1:You mentioned kind of getting involved in DC. Is that something that you you've been drawn to for a long period of time or do you feel now in your position this is something urgently that in which you need to involve yourself because that's a daunting prospect to begin setting up shop in in DC and and trying to sway the opinions of of our legislators.
Speaker 2:It is more recent. I mean, I go back pretty far with senator John Kerry When he lost the election in 2008, he was mulling around on his bicycle for the summer. We became pretty good friends. And he's a big cyclist and cancer survivor. He invested in my my nonprofit.
Speaker 2:So I got a little taste of Washington, from him. Not not to say that I like it. I don't like it. I I think Kerry, as much as, my conservative friends thinks he's a crackpot liberal is actually he's not really. But he's like most politicians.
Speaker 2:You have to, you know, kowtow to your constituents. Anyway, that's a whole another story. But, you know, my my goal now is to build this company to change health. And then if we're successful enough, you know, spend my grained years working on policy in Washington. So it's a much more recent thing.
Speaker 2:I'm not into politics. I just wanna see change happen.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And I think that's a sentiment shared by so many people in America today. We well, I don't wanna say for the most part, don't have strong opinions one way or the other. I I think that there is a vast swath of the American public in the middle, right, more or less, who simply want the improvement of our country and fundamental that improvement is is our health, our well-being. We know that it's in a bad place.
Speaker 1:We see that there could be a better way and any positive step in reaching that destination far though it may be in the distance is one that we can get behind. So I'm right there with you as somewhat of a non partisan in wanting you know by any clever means necessary to arrive at this point. So I have a question that comes from a simple or I should say a simple tin from outside Silicon Valley and that is what is it actually like to launch a health tech startup? Like where does one even begin? Maybe you can just take us through the early steps of of this process.
Speaker 2:Well I mean, I guess I would answer more for startups in general. You know, what does it take to launch a startup? It's not easy, particularly in the health care system where you have regulation and insurance. But from our standpoint, was to start small and build a product that is highly effective and useful, but far too expensive, but proven. And then to find a way to scale it to the masses and make it more ubiquitous without running out of money or raising an enormated amount of capital to market and buy your consumer base, which a lot of companies do.
Speaker 2:I mean, you know, at Amazon, Facebook, companies like that raise, you know, billions of dollars before they ever made money. That's a tough game because you need a lot of marketing capital and you can lose money for years and then figure out what to do. I think we're in a position now where companies really need to bring value to the consumer from day one and then they have to achieve profitability with the exception of, you know, a couple of these massive capital raises you're seeing. But it's a tough road. I don't know if I really answered your question, but I admire anybody trying to to do a startup these days.
Speaker 2:It's a very tough game.
Speaker 1:No. And there is no precise answer to my question. I don't expect you step by step to tell me exactly how one launches this company or or a type of company of this nature. I feel as though it's just such an imposingly large task. You're dealing with, a difficult institution, difficult and damaged institution, which is American health care.
Speaker 1:You, of course, are in need of capital as you mentioned, but you need to provide you need to provide value to customers and clients and and patients users of this platform very quickly. Right? You're really trying to transform people's lives and that's not an easy thing to do from the standpoint of the tech, right, the artificial intelligence that's a beast in and of itself and you're dealing with you know client behaviors and investors so to me it's just this this naughty process that must be difficult to manage but given your history in finance and dealing in the health and wellness space you you probably are just the right person to tackle this this issue. Can you perhaps explain to us how your platform works? How longevity AI functions from its ingestion of raw clinical and lifestyle data to the generation of actionable advice, things that we can do on a daily basis in order to improve our well-being.
Speaker 1:Walk us through a little bit of that.
Speaker 2:Okay. Well, I'll start with a sort of the dream in that. In the future, every human in the world will have access to, you know, dollars 100,000 a year doctor concierge program for pennies on the day. It's $10 a month, 33¢ a day. Just throw that number out there.
Speaker 2:And to do that, it's going to take a lot of data crunching and it's going to take a lot of AI and a lot of regulatory changes. We're basically, I think the future of health and longevity is you will become your own doctor. AI will be your companion in the driver's seat, but you will own all your own data and your data is getting more and more complex because there's a lot more advanced testing data out there today. But it's all over the place and it's not being managed properly and there's no sort of platform to help you manage your own health. So that's sort of the dream.
Speaker 2:But you know, to get there, what we did is we built a product, a longevity concierge platform that's cost $11,000 a year. Have you read about Peter Attia? Read his book. Yeah. So Peter Attia, you know, there's others guys out there, Mark Hyman with Function Health.
Speaker 2:There's Tony Robbins. There's a lot of there's a lot of people out there doing some great things to create awareness for longevity. What they're basically doing is you're taking more than what you get when you go to the doctor. You go to the doctor once a year, you might get a, you know, a finger prick, a small blood test and you know, check your EKG and hey, how you doing? Hey, how you doing?
Speaker 2:And hey, listen, do this and don't do the acids that and see me next year. That's about all they do. But the whole, the whole entrance of these functional tests have really done a lot for prevention. So tests like DEXA scans, which is a full body composition scan. My wife's not getting one this morning.
Speaker 2:It measures bone density. Every woman over the age 40 should get a bone density test. It only costs about $100. It also does visceral fat, which is, you know, organs inside your body. The another thing I recommend even for just a couple of weeks is a glucose monitor.
Speaker 2:You know, $20 a week, right? Now, if you have an obesity problem or insulin issue, you know, maybe you wear it for a little bit longer. And, I think really monitoring your sleep and doing some kind of sleep analysis, A blood test, which are very common these days. You don't need hundreds of biomarkers, but there's like 60 or 70 biomarkers. I just had mine done.
Speaker 2:I, you know, some red flags came up on mine and I consider myself super healthy. My creatine was low, testosterone was a little bit low. I'm getting older, no big deal. That combined with my low vitamin D deficiency and a few other things that came up in my DEXA scan. Combining those two made me realize I got to make some changes.
Speaker 2:Particularly I need to start lifting weights. My bone density is dropping. I've been a cyclist my whole life. I get on the, go to the airline, when I fly, I ask somebody else like you to put my bag in the overhead, you know. Joking.
Speaker 2:But the gut biome tests is another great way to look at your body. VO2 max tests are no longer just for athletes. High VO2 blood oxygen, you know, in your lungs is a good indicator of longevity. And those don't cost that much money. So those are just some examples.
Speaker 2:Those are some of the things. And by the way, you can increase your VO2. You don't need to go out and do sprints, but you can do some light intervals to increase your VO2 max. It'll also burn some calories. Anyway, there's a host of other tests, hyperbaric oxygen chambers, there's genomics are some great tests.
Speaker 2:You know, the challenge in the marketplace is that consumers are inundated with all of these tests and they don't know which ones are right for them. So what we did is we built a longevity clinic where we charge $10,000 We do about six tests and we build a whole comprehensive plan around you individually. And then we analyze all those tests specific to you and to your biometrics. And then we come up with a plan, health, diet, nutrition and exercise. And then we follow you throughout the year.
Speaker 2:Very hands on And it's not scalable. It's an incredible value for $10,000 because most of the bricks and mortar clinics are 30,000 or you can go to Peter Attia and spend $150. And I hear he has a waiting list. But it's not for everybody because of the cost. So the next phase of what we're building is using AI with human in the loop is something that's much cheaper and much more highly scalable so that the masses can use it.
Speaker 2:Like I said, dollars 33 a day for $100,000 a year doctor.
Speaker 1:So if I lived in Luray, Virginia for instance and didn't have access to your clinic where I could spend $10,000 at the brick and mortar setting and have all of these data pieces collected, could I access a DEXA scan in my local community and input that data into your platform? I think, it would be useful for you to explain how somebody who might be living in a rural area perhaps in the middle of the country might be able to utilize this program.
Speaker 2:That's a really good question. We right now are in major states on the coast including Texas, you know Florida, New York, California where a high percentage of the longevity market is right now. We are slowly expanding throughout the rest of the country. One, need because we're a full medical practice, we need a doctor in each state. We're not in Virginia right now.
Speaker 2:But we will be. Because we prescribe medicine. We're a fully HIPAA compliant medical practice. The other barrier you just mentioned actually is having all these testing partners because we want to make it very easy for you to go get testing. So we're embarking on a big pilot with a major company in Ohio.
Speaker 2:We're going to build a clinic right inside their they have 4,000 employees. We're building a clinic right inside their health center. And we're going have a DEXIS scan machine. We're going to do the blood tests, the DO2 max test, all these tests that we do, we're going do them right there. That's just for one facility in Ohio.
Speaker 2:But over time, I think you'll see more of these testing centers pop up. And rather than being in the testing business, we'll just partner with them. But that is a barrier because you can't just walk down to the corner you know drugstore and get a DEXA scan. Right
Speaker 1:right although hopefully in some distant age we we will be able to do exactly that. Now speaking about the the hubs in which, longevity is most talked about, you mentioned the coasts, you mentioned Florida, Texas but I want to focus just a little while longer on the big swaths of the middle of the country let's say. Do you think like in the future there will be a readier uptake of this technology or do you think that someone that some that people will remain somewhat wary of a machine organizing their healthcare? We all acknowledge of course the shortcomings of the current system but I think there is some hesitation in partially tossing out what was bad and adopting something totally new to a lot of people who perhaps aren't as acclimated to artificial intelligence, especially as it involves their health care?
Speaker 2:Well, before I started this effort, I visited about 30 assisted living and senior centers, and they all talk to their phones, and they love Alexa. My father-in-law had Alexa and would use it six times a day. In fact, I just got it. We just installed a bunch of smart light bulbs. So I'm starting to walk around the house talking to Alexa.
Speaker 2:So I think the population is coming around
Speaker 1:and being able to talk
Speaker 2:to AI. I think the senior people my age and up don't trust AI or the blockchain or not the blockchain, but the, you know, OpenAI with their data. But your people your age and up don't seem to care. I think that's changing. I think AI is not fully ready nationally for a variety of reasons.
Speaker 2:One, AI still makes mistakes. People know that. Two, from a regulatory standpoint in America anyway, it's not fully ready yet. It's getting there to to become your primary doctor, to actually prescribe medicine, or to order lab work. But that's coming really soon.
Speaker 2:We're going be ordering lab work pretty soon. So I think the perception is going to change. You know, if you look at, you know, Waymo, which is owned by Alphabet, you know, when I first saw my first driverless car in San Francisco, I kind of ran for the curb and that study just came out last week how much safer driverless cars are. Yes. And Harvard and Stanford just did a study recently on the use of AI for diagnostics.
Speaker 2:Okay. I don't know if you remember the show when you were younger, Doctor. House, he was, know, Doctor. House is going be out of business because humans are 76%, doctors seventy six percent correct in diagnosis, seventy six percent of the time, according to the study, doctors are seventy six percent. If they throw a little AI on top of it, it goes to like seventy eight percent on top of their analysis.
Speaker 2:If it's AI only, the diagnosis is ninety two percent correct. So AI is getting smarter. It's getting better. And when it gets in, I think it's people are going to start to really trust it. So I think it's definitely coming.
Speaker 2:But, you know, all things being said, AI can reduce, help reduce the costs and increase the accuracy of health care. But another thing we didn't talk about is it it's not going to help change behavior. That's a whole nother problem. And I learned in my last company that was an incentive platform for exercise that 95% of the people that use it were already healthy. So the problem is, probably more so as you mentioned in the center parts of the country, the lifestyle is less conducive to diet and exercise.
Speaker 2:And that's something I've got huge plans for down the road to change.
Speaker 1:And can you make us privy to some of those plans?
Speaker 2:Sure. I think we need to socialize health the way Meta socialized or Strava socializes exercise. And we need to make health care fun and engaging. Not a bad thing. So like in an app, we can build in some gamification and not just financial incentives.
Speaker 2:Hey, work out more. Oh, I got some cool ideas like one, when we partner with some gym operators, if I can get them to set up some of our test clinics, the more you go to the gym, less you pay. Right? Think about it. The more you go, the less you pay.
Speaker 2:It's counterintuitive. Like gyms love lots of people that don't use the gym. The more you go, the less you pay. Or you can just build in some fun gamification, you know, into an app such as, you know, women's with osteoporosis of Lower Manhattan, you know, out working out on Bowling Green on Sunday, lifting weights together, you know, or, or, hey, Daniel Hunter did, you know, 11,000 steps today and you did five or, you know, hey, you can join some clubs. Are you familiar with Strava?
Speaker 2:Yes. Strava has health challenges. Right? So we will create some clubs, know, like the osteoporosis club. One of the clubs I want to create is fat men 50.
Speaker 2:And you have to be over three hundred pounds to get into the club. And when you get to two seventy five, you get kicked out and you go meet a whole new group of people in your area. And then you get to two fifty and, you know, make it sort of gamified in front. I wanna have a death clock a death clock on our app where if you it behaved poorly for a few weeks, it knows it's tracking you, you know, your health, your data, you're working out. It just kind of prods you with little fun reminders like, hey, your death clock is now seventy two.
Speaker 2:Right? It was eighty six. It's now seventy two. You know, just fun gamified social. I think social is a big thing.
Speaker 2:People need to sort of want people just do better in social groups. And it's the same thing with, now I'm getting off on a tangent, like in other countries, parents live with their children until they die. They're social. They're moving. They're happy.
Speaker 2:They're walking around. They're doing stuff. Right? Our seniors are just sort of put out to pasture here. So this this needs to go right to end of life to socialize seniors and they'll live longer and they'll live better and they'll die quicker and they'll cost society way less money.
Speaker 2:But you know, this country is so fucked up. I mean, we just sort of send our seniors off to the pasture. So my daughter bought a house down the street from me and there's a lot next door that I'm going buy. I'm going to build a smaller house next to hers. And for all the work I've been doing for her and all the college tuition and the weddings and whatnot, I'm gonna be living in her backyard with a with a cane smoking a cigar when I'm 90.
Speaker 1:I love it.
Speaker 2:You're taking care of me. So, anyway, I didn't mean to get off on a tangent.
Speaker 1:No. No. No. No. Please.
Speaker 1:That is a
Speaker 2:Socialist you need to socialize and gamify health care and make it interesting and fun. Otherwise, people just just even with all these tools, it's hard to get people to do stuff. I'm not sure if that's gonna solve it, that's my goal. Empower consumers with data and socialize it.
Speaker 1:Allow me for just me for just a few minutes to join you on that tangent. You said a couple things that I would like to respond to. A few weeks ago I put out a little episode on this channel about the most impactful things that you can do to improve your health. You have probably seen episodes like this, read articles addressing this topic many times a day but Without fail, these articles and episodes always omit what I think is probably the most fundamental contributor to a long and healthy life, and that is to be social. Increasingly we are an atomized society.
Speaker 1:We're highly individualized. We have our food delivered to our houses at our doorsteps. We don't have to even see the face of the man by whom it delivered. Consultations are done remotely, work is done remotely and very seldom do we actually get out into the world and engage with our fellow man or woman. You probably don't know the names of your next door neighbors now in your case you do because you'll be living next to your your daughter studies have shown repeatedly that those with strong social ties are going to live the longest they're going to have the highest happiness quotients and are going to feel as though they are flourishing in the most profound ways.
Speaker 1:I think your insight into the socialization of this platform is going to differentiate it. I think it's going to elevate this platform to I don't want to say supremacy because there are a lot of people competing in this area but to to a different level, to a different higher level. I think that's absolutely integral if we are going to seriously address the the unwellness that this country is is suffering. It's good to increase your VO2 max, it's good to have a low blood glucose, fasting blood glucose, excellent to sleep between seven and eight hours, but if all of that is done by someone who works and spends his time alone doesn't engage with society doesn't seek deep relationships doesn't bind himself to a community it might not be for naught but it might not advantage that person in his pursuit of a long and healthy life. Another point you mentioned the desire to more tightly link families intergenerationally and I totally agree with you.
Speaker 1:We're seeing the trend internationally of the younger generations separating themselves almost totally from their predecessors. It's I think an act of filial impiety, kind of a fancy term that comes from Confucianism. It's this ancient idea that well ancient and enduring idea that children have a serious responsibility to their parents, to their elders. In the American culture it is all but gone but it is also being removed from the Asian cultures. In Tokyo there is an epidemic of seniors committing suicide jumping off bridges and drowning themselves and taking overdosing on medications deliberately because their children have moved away.
Speaker 1:The children are not reproducing themselves, It's a society in which there's a lot of pressure to succeed. The filial ties are being severed and in the process people out of their despair are taking their lives. So to the extent that we're able, I know family sizes are diminishing, the reproduction rate is lowering sadly, but we we should try to to to maintain or if not try to restore and build the relationships with our with our family members because they're so important and I know personally I'm acting on that my my wife and I moved in directly next door to her parents which has just been a delightful experience everyone warned me against doing precisely this but it's been absolutely delightful. Have enjoyed every minute of this move and so has my wife who had more misgivings about it because you know it's her thing and I was the newcomer. I wasn't aware
Speaker 2:of what was happening in Japan and other cultures. Always thought you know like China and Japan you know the families all, Vietnam where I've traveled extensively. You know, see everybody's living together. My generation with my kids, I'm much closer to my kids than I was with my parents. Know, know, the old scene, you know, children should be seen, not heard.
Speaker 2:And I find that my friends hang out more with their kids as I do. Like, we go to concerts together. We do we do travel together. We're gonna live near each other. But maybe this next generation is is going in a separate direction.
Speaker 2:I don't know if that's technology. COVID kind of separated things.
Speaker 1:No, I want to address two things that you said. First about the oriental cultures, this isn't a blanket statement. I think it's increasingly common in the more westernized Asiatic countries so Japan specifically I know that it's a problem. South Korea to perhaps a lesser extent of course their birth rates are so incredibly low that they're in an acute they are facing an acute problem there. I don't know about Vietnam and some of the other Asiatic countries.
Speaker 1:You mentioned the generational shift. I have witnessed exactly the same thing. I can remember vividly the aloofness, the distance demonstrated by my grandfather not only to me but an extent to my father as well. I think it was just the generational way and what you're describing the way in which you and your friends or you know people of your age group the way in which you interact with your children I think is a salutary reaction to the relationships that you had with your parents. My parents and those of my wife are extremely warm and involved and curious about what we're doing.
Speaker 1:They want nothing more than to help and to be a part of our life in a really meaningful way and we've come to the conclusion that this behavior welcome behavior is in many ways a reaction to the ways in which their parents right my grandparents interacted with my parents and it's all for the better I
Speaker 2:think. Agreed.
Speaker 1:Turning back to longevity although we could continue on this road for a long time, I think it's a fascinating and important conversation, I want to focus again on longevity, AI, the program of which you're the co founder. Looking ahead and maybe the next five to ten years, what does success look like? What does it look like for you commercially? What does it look like in terms of real world health outcomes?
Speaker 2:Well, outcomes to me is hundreds of millions of people using a platform that's highly affordable, leveraging AI to help make it more affordable. One. Two, to see people actually changing their health to increase better health span and prevention because that is my dream, which will make people happier and lower costs. Commercially, I don't know. You know, it's everybody investing these days, you know, wants an exit.
Speaker 2:They want a return on their capital and that's fair. I, I've got like a fifty year mission with this company. So I've been telling my friends who've invested in the company, they consider it a gift when you give it and a gift when you get it back. Making my investors money is not high on my priority, which means we probably will. I think we're going to create a trillion dollars in value if we pull this off, which means investors will make a ton of money, but that's not high on my priority list.
Speaker 2:It's it's the outcomes that we talked about. And we're just starting to do some really cool shit. And in fact, I'll just show you this is this is our my AI engine I'm testing right now. Did I show show this to you on our last call or not?
Speaker 1:Is this Jesse? I think we've been, Jesse. And, Jesse, I think is the the name of your co founder Jesse.
Speaker 2:Yeah. We just yeah. So it's it's ask Jesse. Right. So you can so basically the and we just use his voice so we can change the voice.
Speaker 2:The basically, you as a consumer are your own doctor and your own data center through, you know, all your data, everything, your wearable data, your any tests that you've had done, of your, any of and there's some great tests you can get done, different tests for different ages, different, different objectives. Your HIPAA medical records all sit in one place and AI can read it and make recommendations in seconds. You can do it. You can do this on yourself by the way with chat GPT. You don't need us.
Speaker 2:But you do because we're going to train AI how to be a doctor, you know, to get that 92% to 98%, right? Not just for diagnosis, diagnosis, as I mentioned earlier, but for actual recommending procedures. And eventually, for mental health. Right now you gotta be, it's tricky. I mean, I think there was an incident a couple weeks ago where two people took their own lives because chat GPT recommended that.
Speaker 2:I think those are kind of one offs, but but eventually it's incredible what you can do for mental health, like for seniors to be able to talk to it, To remember things about the family. So AI is just doing some amazing stuff. But anyway, so that platform, know, putting consumers in control of their own destiny and their own data and then using AI. And we just want to sell it for 33¢ a day. And even if it's just a pretty wrapper around AI, it does everything for you.
Speaker 2:I mean, there's a reason you have all these services. Like you're not gonna, you know, use use text to communicate with your friends. You're well, you do. But you're to socialize, you're gonna use Facebook or you're going to use Twitter or you're going to use Instagram, right? So I just want an ubiquitous platform with a billion people on it where it's all year.
Speaker 2:It might even be free. It might even be free. But I think to have that data, we can use it to affect health outcomes.
Speaker 1:I just want to take a minute to commend your passion. I feel it. And I hope that the listeners will feel it as well. You're truly a value driven person, interested, of course, in financial metrics, returns on investments, but but your mission is is larger. It's more humane.
Speaker 1:And I think for that reason, it will be all the more successful. So thank you for thank you for your your your drive. I I really want to point that out. Something rare, rarely found in this exit driven world, the finance in which we live.
Speaker 2:Well, that's that's fair, though. You have to, I'm a capitalist. Right? Sure. I do have to make investors money or just finance it myself, but I'm gonna need some capital pretty soon to hire engineers and talent.
Speaker 2:But, so, yeah, there is there is quote and exit. But the way I look at it is more like let's let's create value and if you create value you'll make a lot of money right? Sure.
Speaker 1:And I love that you are kind of the manifestation of of that right you are living proof of, you know, kind of seizing your own health and well-being and
Speaker 2:I guess to put it a different way, maybe my age starting this company and most of my team's half my age, but it's not about money for me. It's about changing the nature of preventive health at scale globally. And it can be done with data and consumer empowerment. And there's a lot that's going to have to happen. And if that happens, someone's going to make a lot of money.
Speaker 1:Sure.
Speaker 2:That's not the objective. Like, hey, can you make some capital introductions for me and I'll do two or three cap raises. Then we're gonna flip this company to somebody else. It's not for sale. Sorry.
Speaker 2:But you know, because of that, you know, somebody else might, you know, beat us to the punch. You know what? If they do, so be it. Somebody can build something that helps change the nature of preventive health at scale. I'm all behind it.
Speaker 2:Doctor.
Speaker 1:There are three general pillars of health care: accessibility, affordability and efficacy. Like how effective or successful it is. It's unanimously, somewhat despairingly agreed that you you can have two of those three, but not the full trifecta, and it seems to me that Longevity AI, your program, is perhaps closest to achieving all of those three. I think only through AI will this be possible of of widening the range of accessibility to include, you know, not only people on the coast, but people in the middle of the country getting buy in and patient client engagement, making it affordable. As you said earlier, you want to reduce this to pennies a day, and and that's something affordable by all, and also effective.
Speaker 1:And sometimes that's lost when the other two are prioritized, the efficacy. And as you mentioned earlier, the accuracy that AI programs are displaying in their ability to diagnose patients is, well, it's frankly incredible. It's unbelievable. And I think in another specialty like radiology, that'll even be more pronounced. So a program like yours, Longevity AI, I think is, as I said, nearest to being able to achieve in all three of those of
Speaker 2:those difficult I think I think from an account accountability, we'll be able to do it through gamification and socialization. I think efficacy will come because it's accurate. Affordability is going to be a tough point because you still need to reduce the cost of health care itself. Right. Not necessarily the procedures that you have done, but the prevention tools.
Speaker 2:As much as I bark and poke at my competitors for selling tests and supplements, there's some cool stuff out there, you know. What we're trying to do is we're trying to say, hey, Daniel, this is the ones that you need. You don't need them all at your age and your family history. These are the ones that you need, but you still got to pay for those tests. So the good news is tests are coming down.
Speaker 2:I think you're going to see hopefully insurance companies and self insured employers are going to start paying for these tests. So I can't mention the name, but yesterday I got a verbal on a multiple 6 figure trial with a major company who's basically going to do six major tests for all of their employees. We're going to test it on 100 or 200 employees. We're going to build a clinic inside. That's one company down is going to be paying for this stuff.
Speaker 2:They're self insured. So to get that third pillar, need to reduce the cost. It's always going to cost some money. I just don't think it should be free. Think it should be incentives from your company, from your insurance company and even Medicare, but it shouldn't be free.
Speaker 2:So but it's still a problem because health care is not cheap.
Speaker 1:Oh sure and I hope I'm not misunderstood nor do I think that that these types of tools should be free. No, mean you need to invest in yourself the most important investment that one can make in his life. Now you you mentioned a pretty wrapper around this AI tool. I I have to to applaud you again and your team. The website design that you've created is is compelling, it's elegant, it is frankly beautiful.
Speaker 1:I don't say this as a as a way to flatter you. When we first connected, you had sent me a preliminary link to the website in its earliest phase and you subsequently sent me a new link to its current iteration and it's it's quite it's quite engaging. It's quite beautiful. So I applaud you and your team for for creating that website. Now I will include a link to that site in the show notes below and I encourage all of my listeners, all of you to simply explore this idea, explore this technology.
Speaker 1:I think this is the direction in which we are going hyper personalized, bespoke and effective healthcare accessible, well frankly in due time by all. I am so impressed by the enthusiasm Hunter that you've shown and continue to show about this platform. It's infectious. You have the financial background, financial backing and vision I think to make this successful. You have a strong medical team who are listed on your website and also the other specialists who are contributing in no small way.
Speaker 1:So Hunter, respectful of our time and that of our listeners today I want to close-up here I hate to do this it's sort of lazy but perhaps I'll leave the floor open to you for any concluding remarks I always hate when podcasters do this But is there any message with which you'd like our listeners to walk away today?
Speaker 2:Let's see. Well, my motto is live large, stay fit. And living large doesn't just mean financially, living large.
Speaker 1:I love that.
Speaker 2:I should do that. I should trademark that. Live large,
Speaker 1:stay Please trademark it, frame it, tattoo it on your shoulder. I love that.
Speaker 2:You know, golly, I could get philosophical.
Speaker 1:Please do.
Speaker 2:I I just think, you know, I always say, you know, we're all just sort of, you know, blips along the universe radar. We're here for a short period of time and try not to stress about stuff. Everybody's got problems that you walk down the street, you've got problems, I've got problems. But if you can focus on your own health, everything else I think just comes your way. Good health means good sleep.
Speaker 2:It means less anxiety. And you don't need to spend a lot of money to do it. Like I said from the beginning of this call, diet, exercise and sleep, you can figure it out. Lastly, you know, all this fancy medicine we're reading about all these tests, you don't need to spend a ton of money. I mean, I recommend a blood test, maybe a DEXA scan.
Speaker 2:You can put all this stuff into GPT and it'll give you some pretty amazing analysis across your tests. I don't think a blood test's enough. But you can do a lot of this yourself and not spend that much money. You don't need to go see Peter or Tia or spend $10,000 on our platform, but just it's so important to stay on top of your health. So yeah with that you know live large stay fit.
Speaker 1:Excellent. Hunter thank you so much for gracing us with your presence with, for sharing this this knowledge and just for being a great human being who's on a great mission.
Speaker 2:Thank you and
Speaker 1:all links to your information will be included in the show notes below. Thank you
Speaker 2:all
Speaker 1:for listening.