The pursuit of immortality is a fundamental theme in human culture. It reflects our deep fear of death and our desire to transcend our limits. Across myth and literature, this quest involves a long line of experimental medicines, magic elixirs, and life-extending devices, shifting from ancient alchemy to modern cellular science. Supplements like peptides, vitamins like B3 or nicotinamide, and even cancer drugs have been promoted. Devices and technologies like cryogenics, light therapy, advanced wearables, stem-cells, and genetic engineering add to the immortality arsenal. On this episode, we’ll discuss longevity and lifestyle management, not as a fringe fetish of the billionaire tech class and celebrity influencers, but as an increasingly mainstream medical construct to combat the diseases of modernity.

The band Blood, Sweat & Tears’ 1968 debut album was entitled “Child Is Father to the Man.” The phrase was borrowed from a famous line in the 1802 poem “My Heart Leaps Up” by the poet William Wordsworth. Wordsworth meant for the expression to convey that the experiences, wonder, and character of a person's childhood shape the adult they eventually become. From a medical and developmental viewpoint, a child’s early life experiences, biology, and behaviors heavily dictate their future adult health outcomes. This concept is known in medicine as the long arm of childhood and explains the influence childhood has on the future self through distinct biological, behavioral, and psychological mechanisms.

There are many shades of gray between opinion, theory, and fact, which can make it near impossible for healthcare consumers to navigate their choices. The principles of evidence-based medicine were designed to address this huge unmet need. It is the crowning achievement of a 300-year scientific pursuit that has resulted in dramatic increases in human life expectancy; responsible for lowering maternal and fetal mortality as well as a more than 30% decline in annual cancer mortality over the past 25 years. Celebrated for decades, it is now under assault with distrust, cynicism, and conspiratorial accusations by a shadow network of influencers that use pseudoscience and outright lies to enrich themselves while they prey upon the ill, the desperate, and the gullible. We begin our podcast examining ivermectin.