The Beyond Tomorrow Podcast with Julian Issa

What if the fastest way to a longer life isn't a miracle drug, but a wartime mentality against aging?

This episode is brought to you by AgelessRx, where aging becomes a puzzle that can be solved. The mission is to help you live longer and healthier by adding more life to your years through science-backed solutions and personalized care. Learn more at agelessrx.com/beyond-tomorrow.
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On this episode of Beyond Tomorrow, four heavyweights of the longevity field take a rapid-fire statement format and turn it into a real debate. Aubrey de Grey, Alex Zhavoronkov (Insilico Medicine), George Church (Harvard Medical School), Michael Ringel (Life Biosciences) argue over whether hype helps or hurts the field, and when longevity escape velocity, the point where damage is repaired faster than it accumulates, might actually arrive. Aubrey puts it at a 50/50 chance within 12 to 15 years. Alex says 20 to 50 years and doubts drugs alone can get there. Michael pushes back on the idea of infinite lifespans entirely, while George suggests we may already be gaining years without the evidence to prove it.

From there the panel digs into the FDA's new interest in aging, why the TAME metformin trial never opened the floodgates, and whether AI will really shrink clinical timelines. George cites a gene therapy that reached a patient in seven months, while Alex, running many programs, argues that biology still moves at the speed of traffic. The back half covers biohacking and early adopters, the gap between everyday "longevity" and longevity biotechnology, the science of epigenetic reprogramming, what could happen by the XPRIZE Healthspan deadline in 2030, and what each panelist thinks the "ChatGPT moment" for longevity will look like.

About the Panelists
Aubrey de Grey has spent his entire career in the nonprofit sector, coined the term longevity escape velocity, and has been signed up with Alcor for cryonic preservation since 2002.

Alex Zhavoronkov is the founder and CEO of Insilico Medicine, a public biotech company with a large pipeline of drug programs that uses AI to compress early discovery work.

George Church is a Harvard Medical School geneticist and an optimist on gene therapy and exponential technologies, who argues that regulators embrace new technology and that trial parallelism could dramatically cut development time.

Michael Ringel left a career at BCG to join Life Biosciences as chief operating officer, where he works on epigenetic restoration as a path to treating age-related disease and, ultimately, aging itself.

⏱ Timestamps
00:00  Intro
00:20 Is Hype Necessary for Longevity?
02:49 When Hype Goes Too Far
04:14 When Can Longevity Escape Velocity Happen?
09:52 The FDA and Aging as a Focus Area
19:49 Will AI Transform Longevity Research?
24:04 Can AI Shorten Clinical Trials?
26:57 AI Optimists vs. Skeptics
28:38 Alex on Being the Field’s Biggest Skeptic
32:00 Do Critics Need a Drug in the Clinic?
35:24 When Criticism Does Harm
36:45 Is Biohacking Hurting Longevity’s Credibility?
46:57 What Could Be Possible by 2030?
50:49 Optimism vs. Skepticism: Final Thoughts
54:01 Cryonics
54:36 The Longevity “ChatGPT Moment”

Connect with Aubrey: 
X: https://x.com/aubreydegrey 
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aubrey-de-grey-24260b 

Connect with Alex: 
X: https://x.com/biogerontology 
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zhavoronkov 

Connect with George: 
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/george-church-2b86301 
Website: https://colossal.com/george-church/ 

Connect with Michael: 
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-ringel-b272a2 
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/msringel/ 

Connect with Julian
Instagram: @thebeyondtomorrowpodcast / @juliankissa
LinkedIn: julian-issa
X: @juliankissa
Website: www.beyondtomorrowpodcast.com 
Email: bookings@beyondtomorrowpodcast.com

Are we living in a simulation?

Dr. Roman Yampolskiy explains how scientists run experiments inside simulations, why boxing AI may not hold, and what it would mean if AI breaks out of its safe environment, or if humanity escapes its own.
Watch the full episode here: https://open.spotify.com/episode/2R7oKzVSOWTR5079TYrZsg?si=7fd6c78a016a4b67

What happens when millions of people hand their lives to AI agents, and nobody has built the rules of the road?

This episode is brought to you by AgelessRx, where aging becomes a puzzle that can be solved. The mission is to help you live longer and healthier by adding more life to your years through science-backed solutions and personalized care. Learn more at agelessrx.com/beyond-tomorrow.

MIT Media Lab professor Ramesh Raskar argues the real danger isn't the AI engine, it's agents with no governance. His case: decentralize AI so billions of people run their own agents, and build the licences, inspections and audit trails agents need, instead of trusting a few labs to make the engine safe. His P(doom) has fallen from 90% to under 10%.

The conversation covers what an AI agent actually is, personal agents like Dot, Muse, Instinct and CC, the DRIVE framework for gradually trusting an agent, why there's no such thing as "zero-shot AGI," the OpenAI and Hugging Face incident, prompt injection, and the shift from an attention economy to an intention economy. One question runs through it all: can we get the benefits of AI agents without handing control to a handful of companies, or to the agents themselves? Ramesh's answer: don't just build better engines, build the roads, the rules and the governance.

Key Takeaways
An agent is an LLM in a loop with tools: the LLM is the engine, the agent is the car, the internet is the road.

Build trust with DRIVE (Discover, Request, Instruct, Venture, Execute), and start with reversible tasks, no credit cards.

Decentralized agents shrink the blast radius, which is why Ramesh's P(doom) has dropped sharply.

Cost is the bottleneck: running an agent per user costs far more than serving a social media user, so expect revenue-share deals.

Prompt injection is the top risk because LLMs can't separate commands from content. Agents need licences, inspection stickers and audit trails.

About Ramesh Raskar
Ramesh Raskar is a professor at the MIT Media Lab, where he works on decentralized AI and the Internet of Agents. His research focuses on how personal AI agents can be built so power stays distributed instead of concentrated in a few companies.

⏱ Timestamps
00:00  Intro
00:00 Why AI Is Moving So Fast: The Intelligence Economy
01:27 What Is an AI Agent, Really?
04:00 Ramesh's P(Doom) Update
05:46 Is Decentralized AI Safer Than Centralized AI?
09:54 How to Use Personal AI Agents (Dot, Muse, Instinct)
13:35 Will AI Agents Become the New Super App?
17:44 The Agentic Web Explained
20:14 Can Personal Superintelligence Exist?
25:17 A Model That Learns How to Learn Everything
29:19 AI Literacy: What to Do If You're Not Using AI
31:16 From OpenClaw to Muse
36:25 It's Not About Bigger Models, It's About Better Agents
37:51 Road Safety Rules for AI Agents
42:58 What a Safe Agentic World Looks Like
44:23 Surfing the Web With AI Agents
48:44 Voice, Screens or Taps? The Future of Agent Interfaces
50:05 Where Will AI Agents Be in One Year?
53:00 The Best Advice on Agent Autonomy
55:12 The Best Things AI Agents Can Do Today
57:12 Prompt Injection: The Command vs Content Problem
01:03:35 If Tomorrow was Your Last Day...

Resources & Mentions
Muse (Meta): https://muse.ai 
Dots (OpenAI): https://siliconangle.com/2026/09/29/openai-launches-dots-always-on-ai-agents-in-chatgpt-with-their-own-cloud-computers/ 
OpenClaw: https://openclaw.ai 
Hermes Agent (Nous Research): https://hermes-agent.nousresearch.com/docs/ 

Connect with Ramesh: 
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/raskar   
MIT Media Lab: https://www.media.mit.edu/people/raskar/overview/ 

Connect with Julian
Instagram: @thebeyondtomorrowpodcast / @juliankissa
LinkedIn: julian-issa
X: @juliankissa
Website: www.beyondtomorrowpodcast.com 
Email: bookings@beyondtomorrowpodcast.com 

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AI safety researcher Roman Yampolskiy breaks down his P(doom) estimate and why he believes artificial superintelligence could be a death sentence for humanity if development keeps moving this fast. His warning isn't anti-AI — it's a case for keeping AI as a tool we control, not a replacement for human judgment.

Watch the full episode: https://open.spotify.com/episode/2R7oKzVSOWTR5079TYrZsg?si=302dfca33e9f4c04

Is "AI is dangerous" a warning, or the world's best marketing line?

This episode is brought to you by AgelessRx, where aging becomes a puzzle that can be solved. The mission is to help you live longer and healthier by adding more life to your years through science-backed solutions and personalized care. Learn more at agelessrx.com/beyond-tomorrow.

On this episode of Beyond Tomorrow, I sit down with Thore Graepel, co-creator of AlphaGo and former researcher at Google DeepMind. I asked him straight up how close we are to superintelligence, and his answer surprised me: there won't be a single moment we can point to, and he argues human organizations like companies already count as a form of superintelligence. We get into why he thinks "AI will destroy humanity" is the biggest myth in the field, the near-term risks he does take seriously, and why I pushed him on the incentives behind the AI safety messaging coming from the labs.

From there we go deep on his core technical argument: that today's transformers are black boxes that mix knowledge and reasoning in the same weights, and that scaling alone will never make them trustworthy. He lays out a different approach built on explicit beliefs, hypotheses and evidence, and I found it one of the clearest explanations of AI transparency I've heard. In the back half, we talk about his time at Altos Labs, why biology is a reality check for the "cure all disease in 10 years" claims, and his cell annealing theory of rejuvenation.

Key Takeaways
Thore sees AI progress as a "jagged frontier," not a single superintelligence moment, and by his own definition, AGI is already here

He argues companies and institutions are already a form of superintelligence

His P(doom) is very low: extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and he doesn't see it

About Thore Graepel
Thore Graepel is a computer scientist and AI researcher who recently left Google DeepMind, where he was a co-creator of AlphaGo and worked on multi-agent systems, reasoning and consciousness research. He has also spent time at Altos Labs, applying his machine learning and physics background to cellular rejuvenation, and writes about AI, reasoning and safety on Substack.

⏱ Timestamps
00:00  Intro
00:06 How Close Are We to Superintelligence?
01:42 Are Human Organizations Already Superintelligent?
02:56 Is Anyone Trying to Destroy Humanity?
04:45 Near-Term Risks: Jobs and the Economy
08:08 Why the Transition Will Be Hard
10:06 Post-AGI Planning and the Case for Positive Futures
14:35 Capability vs. Diffusion: The Train Driver Problem
16:46 Optimization vs. Game Theory
18:53 The Incentives Behind AI Safety Messaging
22:26 What Is Thore's P(doom)?
23:25 Why Transformers Are Black Boxes
29:19 How Do We Build Safer, More Transparent AI?
33:01 Separating Knowledge From Reasoning
37:39 Safety vs. Capability and the Trust Ceiling
39:45 Narrow AI vs. General AI
44:02 Do You Believe in God?
47:15 Consciousness and Whether LLMs Are Alive
51:08 AlphaGo and Move 37
58:29 Credit Assignment and Moral Reasoning
01:04:31 Who Sets the Moral Guardrails?
01:09:37 The AGI Race: US vs. China
01:11:53 Longevity and Altos Labs
01:16:01 The Biology Reality Check
01:23:04 Pockets of Computability and AlphaFold
01:26:05 Yamanaka Factors and Cell Annealing
01:35:51 Will the Singularity Happen in Your Lifetime?
01:36:49 Rapid Fire Questions with Thore
01:41:35 Thore's Best Piece of Advice

Resources & Mentions
AlphaGo and AlphaFold (Google DeepMind)
Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
Altos Labs
Stephen Wolfram's "pockets of computability"
David Deutsch on simulation and the limits of experiment
Thore's Substack 

Connect with Thore: 
Github: https://thoregraepel.github.io/ 
LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/thoregraepel 
X: https://x.com/ThoreG 

Connect with Julian
Instagram: @thebeyondtomorrowpodcast / @juliankissa
LinkedIn: julian-issa
X: @juliankissa
Website: www.beyondtomorrowpodcast.com 
Email: bookings@beyondtomorrowpodcast.com