I feel like I was thinking about this yesterday that everything that we've seen over the last six months with AI, where there's kind of this sudden, oh my gosh, we've created machines that seem to have mastered language and intelligence on some early level. Like this is a big deal. And it, but it's been in the works for 50 years. It would be nice if there were movies in which AI wasn't either Star Wars or dystopian because it's all extremes. But I tend to think people are losing their mind a little too much.
Last month, longtime New Yorker staff writer Michael Specter released a brand new audiobook with our friends at Pushkin. It’s called “Higher Animals: Vaccines, Synthetic Biology, and the Future of Life,” and it’s an inspiring account of the emerging field of synthetic biology — a field where scientists combine chemistry, engineering, and computer science to develop new drugs and therapies for treating diseases of all sorts.
This month, Steven Johnson, a frequent guest on this show and a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine, is publishing a brand new audiobook of his own. It’s called “Immortality: A User’s Guide,” and it was produced by ... us! (You can get a copy here.) The premise is this: we might well be on the cusp of a revolution in the science of aging and we are not prepared for the consequences.
You can see the overlaps, right?
So we decided to get Steven and Michael on the horn to talk about breakthrough technologies, radical life extension, and the future of our species.