Free Radicals

Daniel Shur and Eric Dai
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Interviewing visionaries dedicated to giving humanity control over biology. All problems are solvable, including aging and death.

  1. 3D AGO

    These 30-something Harvard Professors are making biology programmable - AbuGoot Lab

    Two young Harvard professors are coming for the supplements industry. Dr. Jonathan Gootenberg and Dr. Omar Abudayyeh run a joint lab at Harvard Medical School, have co-founded 4 biotechs, and raised over $300M to develop genetic medicines and diagnostics. But what surprised me most: they think like consumer tech founders, not academics. They start with what people actually want and work backwards from there. And best of all? They’re totally longevity-pilled.  In this week’s episode of the Free Radicals podcast, we discuss the biology of aging, the future of longevity therapeutics, and how Harvard can bring legitimacy to the supplements industry. As PhD students at Harvard in Feng Zhang and Aviv Regev’s labs, Jonathan and Omar pioneered research on programmable targeted genetic engineering with CRISPR.  Now Jonathan and Omar lead a joint lab at Harvard, where they develop molecular and artificial intelligence based approaches to program biology, unravel cellular aging, rejuvenate hair, develop next-gen therapeutics, and decode biological complexity with virtual cells.

    1h 15m

  2. MAR 31

    Longevity politics with the Forbes 30U30 lobbyist changing DC - Dylan Livingston, A4LI

    Today’s guest is Dylan Livingston, the 28 year old founder of the Alliance for Longevity Initiatives, known as A4LI. With A4LI, Dylan has created America’s first and only lobbying group focused on advancing longevity initiatives in Washington DC. Since its founding, A4LI has created a longevity caucus composed of 8 congresspeople, and hosted leaders like Dr. Oz, Newt Gingrich and Matt Kaeberlein at their summits. A4LI also played a key role in garnering bipartisan support to advance Montana’s Right to Try legislation, which expands the right for consenting patients to utilize safe experimental medicines in Montana. In this episode, we discuss how Dylan gets bipartisan support for healthy life extension initiatives, what it’s like selling politicians on longevity, and A4LI’s role in accelerating longevity towards its ChatGPT moment.

    56 min

  3. MAR 24

    Ex-BCG leader & David Sinclair’s COO on why evolution selected for aging, and how to get big pharma to invest into longevity therapies - Michael Ringel

    Dr. Michael Ringel is a leader in pharma and biotech who spent over 25 years at Boston Consulting Group, where he served as managing director and senior partner, advising top pharma companies on R&D strategy. Michael is now the Chief Operating Officer at Life Biosciences, a company founded by Dr. David Sinclair, to treat aging with partial epigenetic reprogramming. Earlier this year, Life Bio earned FDA clearance to proceed into human clinical trials with their lead candidate, marking the first time that humans will be administered an epigenetic reprogramming drug, which may be the holy grail of longevity. Michael also sits on the US board of the Hevolution Foundation, an organization that is investing up to one billion dollars per year into longevity research, and is also on the board of the American Federation for Aging Research. In this episode, we discuss Michael’s insightful paper on why aging is an optimization by evolution, why that means it’s malleable, how Life Bio is going into the clinic with the first epigenetic reprogramming therapies to reverse diseases of aging, and how to push the longevity field forward. Why We Age by Michael Ringel: https://www.nature.com/articles/biorev202121 Hastings Center Report: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/hast.5007 And check out Michael's band on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/7hfcgDpc3SuCHfEAIhwWYr

    1h 20m

  4. MAR 17

    Longevity science & philosophy with the blogger leading theory at Sam Altman’s $1B+ startup - Jose, Author Nintil & Head of Theory at Retro

    Jose Luis Ricón Fernández de la Puente is the author of the popular blog Nintil, and Head of Theory at Retro Biosciences. Jose is a prolific blogger, covering a wide breadth of topics across economics, philosophy, progress studies, science funding, and of course longevity. His writing has been published in a16z Future, Works in Progress and by the Adam Smith Institute, and his writing previously won him a fellowship with Emergent Ventures, Tyler Cowen’s competitive program for intellectually ambitious projects. In this interview, you’ll hear how insightful Jose is about deeply technical topics in biology, and you’ll see why Retro Bio was eager to bring him on as their head of theory (the only role of its kind in the entire biotech industry). Our conversation is wide ranging, spanning a deep dive on Retro’s work to replace and engineer microglia to rejuvenate the brain and how our cells have the ability to turn back the aging clock but choose not to. We also covered the technological stagnation and why biological engineering is the new frontier of progress, as well as philosophical topics like transhumanism and how a future of total biological control might impact our values and way of life. Retro Biosciences was seeded with $180M by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman to develop therapies to prevent and reverse age-related disease, and is widely recognized as one of the leading AI for longevity companies. Previously, we hosted Rico Meinl, the head of Applied AI at Retro, so make sure to give that episode a listen as well.

    2h 5m

  5. MAR 10

    Inside the AI used by Sam Altman’s $1B+ longevity startup - Rico Meinl, Head of Applied AI at Retro Bio

    Retro Biosciences was seeded with $180M by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman to develop therapies to prevent and reverse age-related disease, and is widely recognized as one of the leading AI for longevity companies.  Today’s guest is Rico Meinl, the Head of Applied AI at Retro Biosciences. In this episode, we discuss Retro’s work with OpenAI to engineer 50x more effective Yamanaka factors, what it means to build foundation models that can reason across natural language and protein sequence, and why the bottlenecks in biology are more experimental than computational. We also get into the biology of aging and how AI can enable therapies that dramatically advance healthy lifespan.

    1h 16m

  6. MAR 3

    Why DNA Damage is Central to Aging — Christopher Bradley, CEO of Matter Bio

    Christopher is a serial entrepreneur who has dedicated himself to solving aging after his last startup Mana Health was acquired by NBC Universal. His company Matter Bio is developing therapies to enhance DNA damage repair to slow the rate of aging, and to treat cancer through novel bacterial delivery mechanisms. In today’s conversation we discuss the theory of aging as information loss, which Chris contends is primarily mediated through DNA damage, how to unlock new approaches for longevity through large scale genomics studies, and the evolving business of biotech.

    1h 21m

  7. FEB 24

    The moral and economic case for delaying aging - Raiany Romanni-Klein

    Raiany Romanni-Klein is a Harvard and Brown-trained bioethicist focused on understanding why secular people like to narrate death and aging as good things, and quantifying the economic impacts of such narratives. She worked with legends like George Church and Steven Pinker on her PhD, and also played a central role in designing the $101 million dollar XPRIZE for Healthspan, the largest science prize ever awarded.  Raiany is also the founder of a new think tank designed to study and streamline progress in America’s science and technology, and most recently published a paper demonstrating that delaying overall biological aging by just one year could yield $27 trillion dollars in net present value. Today’s conversation is focused on the ethics and economics of longevity.

    1h 9m

  8. FEB 17

    Achieving Longevity Escape Velocity with patient avatars — Martin Borch Jensen, CSO of Gordian Biotechnology

    Martin Borch Jensen is a scientist, entrepreneur and longevity advocate. He is the co-founder and CSO of Gordian Biotechnology, a company whose platform enables the simultaneous delivery and testing of hundreds of therapeutics in individual animals. They have raised over $60M from top investors like Founders Fund, Horizons Ventures, Fifty Years and the Longevity Fund. They also recently announced a partnership with Pfizer to apply Gordian’s proprietary mosaic screening platform to accelerate the discovery of therapeutic targets for obesity. Martin is also a prominent voice in the longevity community and activist. As founder and president of Norn Group, a do tank for longevity, he launched the Impetus Grants program, which has deployed roughly $34 million to scientists across 145 projects, with funding decisions made within 3 weeks to enable speed. In our conversation today, we cover the state of the longevity field, its major bottlenecks, theories of aging, the role of AI in longevity, and much more.

    1h 45m
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About

Interviewing visionaries dedicated to giving humanity control over biology. All problems are solvable, including aging and death.

Information

  • Creator
    Daniel Shur and Eric Dai
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    18
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Daniel Shur and Eric Dai
  • Show Website
    Free Radicals

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