David Sinclair

The conversation opens with small talk about titles. Sinclair, a Harvard scientist, says he never introduces himself as a doctor. He explains that the Queen's representative gave him "some Australian version of a knighthood," the Order of Australia, which lets him add "A-O" after his name. He plays it down: "it actually makes no difference to my life." He puts that modesty down to Australia's tall poppy syndrome, where "if you have any ego, you get beaten up in the playground."

Sinclair turns down a drink, saying he rarely drinks now except at celebrations. He sips the coffee Rogan gave him instead. Rogan describes it as Laird Hamilton's superfood coffee: Black Rifle coffee mixed with turmeric and, he thinks, coconut milk. Rogan calls it anti-inflammatory, and Sinclair accepts the tag "prophet of longevity" half in jest.

This is Sinclair's fourth appearance on the show. He credits Rogan with helping his 2019 book Lifespan become a bestseller that has "now been read millions of times around the world." He says this is not a promotion, since authors make little money from books, and adds that "it wasn't an easy read. It was high-tech science." In his view, the COVID-19 pandemic arrived just after the book came out and made people face their own mortality: "Most people under the age of about 70 didn't even think about dying." Since then, he says, many others have joined the longevity trend.

Rogan describes a culture of constant self-optimization, with people asking about cold plunges, saunas and red light. He argues the protocols catch on because they make people feel better, and that "feeling better in the moment currently, like living your life should be primary." Sinclair agrees and makes a large claim: "There are basic things, five basic things you can do or avoid, and you can live another 15 years." He does not list the five things in this part of the interview. He only says they might be covered later, so the claim has no supporting detail here.

Rogan asks about the current state of longevity science. Sinclair says much of what they speculated about in 2019 has since come true. Back then, saying that aging might be reversed "was a sin to say that as a scientist publicly in those days." He says reversal has now been shown "certainly for the lab, for mice, monkeys," and that "The first potential human age reversal technology is in people right now." His own wording separates animal results from the human work, which he calls only "potential."

Rogan says reversal seems logical once the mechanism is understood. Sinclair compares the old acceptance of aging to how cancer was probably accepted 200 years ago, as something nothing could be done about. He says he and his colleagues found that "aging has a root cause that's the same in pretty much every cell in the body," that certain genes slow it, and that a 2020 publication showed the process could be reversed safely "for the first time." He compares this to "reinstalling software in the cell to make it work again."

The first potential human age reversal technology is in people right now.

Rogan asks whether this involves CRISPR. Sinclair says the method delivers genes into the body and shows a prop: a rubber ball with spikes that represents a virus-like capsule made in the lab. He says "It's not a pathogenic virus. It's actually a domesticated version of a virus." Adapters on the surface direct the capsule to cells at the back of the eye. Swapping the adapters can target other tissues, and he says a version aimed at the liver "cured mice of their fatty liver disease as well." Inside a protein capsule sits the DNA payload, called OSK or ER 100 (epigenetic reprogramming 100). He says that "when we put it into human cells, it makes them younger."

Patients in the trial are volunteers. Sinclair says he watched the first patient get dosed earlier this year. That man received trillions of the capsules injected into his eye to see whether the treatment could reverse vision loss from glaucoma. "He pretty much was totally blind in one eye," so, Sinclair says, he had little to lose. Sinclair reports that "nothing's gone wrong so far" and that the trial is proceeding to plan. He adds that "we're at a turning point, potentially, in human history, if it works." No efficacy results are given in this segment.

Rogan imagines a horror-movie version of the story: a scientist reassuring a talk-show audience, then "28 days later" optimized humans eating each other. Sinclair admits it sounds like science fiction and that he has to pinch himself. He says many safety studies have been done and that the trial is FDA approved after a review of the data. Rogan replies sarcastically, "Well, God knows, they never fuck anything up." Sinclair answers that the eye was chosen because "It's enclosed. It's not going to spread. Nobody's going to grow another eye." He credits his student, named in the transcript as Wang Cheng Lu, who argued in 2017 for starting with the eye instead of the liver, the organ Sinclair had suggested.

Sinclair explains that the package carries three genes, OSK, which he says "safely reprogram cells and reboot the backup copy of youth, which we now believe exists in our body." The phrase "we now believe" marks this as his lab's working hypothesis. He goes as far as saying that when he sees an elderly person, "I just see a person that needs to be rebooted," which Rogan says shows how well his personality suits the job.

He compares aging to a scratched CD or album. The instructions that built us as children are still in the body "almost largely intact," and the three genes act on the scratches. The method builds on Shinya Yamanaka's discovery of four genes that can turn adult cells, such as skin cells, into stem cells. Sinclair credits Yamanaka with a Nobel Prize and gives the year as 2006. He says full reprogramming would be dangerous in a living body: "If I turned you into a bunch of stem cells, you'd probably die within a few minutes," and "cancer is also a potential."

His lab's version leaves out the fourth Yamanaka gene, called M, and uses only O, S and K. He says this gives safe age reversal of "about 75, 80% back to youth, but no further," with no return to the zero point of a stem cell. In his lab's model, "old age is losing identity of your cells, so they don't work. They forget how to work." Stem cells have no identity, like a very early embryo. Cells in our 20s have strong identity and work at their peak. OSK, he says, moves cells back toward that state so they "behave like they did when we were 20." He presents glaucoma as the first step in "a whole cascade of drugs" for diseases of aging and, eventually, "whole body rejuvenation."

Sinclair stresses how common the target diseases are: "It's 40 million just in the U.S. for glaucoma," and he says macular degeneration affects even more people. In the lab, he says, macular degeneration can also be cured "in the mice." Rogan asks whether eye injuries could be reversed too. Sinclair says that is exactly what his lab is studying. He says that whether a nerve is in the arm, the brain or the eye, "we can regrow those back to where they were," and points to a 2020 paper featured on the cover of Nature that showed regrowing nerves. He also says a group in China applied OSK to mice with bad joints and "it re-grew their muscle and their bone back to normal." All of the injury and joint evidence described here comes from animal studies.

Rogan describes his own left knee, which he says is badly damaged from martial arts. He has had part of his meniscus removed and his ACL reconstructed. He says stem cells gave him only a little relief once cartilage damage was involved, and that "Like if we were living in the 1930s, I'd be a cripple." Sinclair tells him to "hang in there," predicting a world where parts of the body, joints included, can be rebuilt.

Rogan worries that the technology would create "super soldiers in every sport." Sinclair says that is "probably coming" and that there may be DNA tests to detect inserted OSK genes. He says his Harvard lab is also developing a drink and a pill and claims "we're now eight years ahead of what the public realizes." He qualifies this right away: "right now it's in mice, so we still go ways to go," though the mice given the drink "get rejuvenated."

The two men disagree on how fast the treatment should reach people. Rogan argues for giving it straight to 80-year-olds who are "on the way out" and says "Get rid of the FDA." Sinclair does not back that position. He says only that regulators "forbid that," and then describes the demand he faces. He has taken his email address off public access, and one man refused to leave the building until he saw him.

Sinclair adds that the U.S. government blocked a foreign investment in one of his companies because of fears about super soldiers and about the technology getting out. He will not name the country. Rogan guesses China and then Russia, and Sinclair says only "It was somewhere in between here and China," which Rogan calls "pretty vague."

Most efficacy claims in this section come from cell, mouse or monkey work, including the fatty liver, macular degeneration, nerve regrowth, joint and oral drink results. The human glaucoma trial is described only as dosed and safe "so far"; Sinclair gives no vision outcomes and frames the benefit with "if it works." The figures cited, including 75 to 80 percent age reversal, 40 million U.S. glaucoma cases, being eight years ahead of public awareness and 15 extra years from five basic habits, are Sinclair's own statements and are not supported further in this part of the conversation. The idea of a "backup copy of youth" is presented as something his lab "now believe[s]," which makes it a working hypothesis.

This part of the conversation starts with foreign investment. The speaker says the U.S. government "does have the ability to block it foreign investment, and they did in this case," and puts the blocked amount at "160 million bucks." They describe it as "a painful episode." The reason given is that officials "were worried that people were going to actually engineer super soldiers."

The host links that worry to stories of Soviet experiments meant to produce a chimpanzee-human hybrid. He admits that it is "very difficult" to get information about former Soviet top-secret programs. He then speculates that because Russia lost "tens of millions of soldiers" in World War II, planners may have wanted soldiers who were not people. Sinclair answers that a scientist in New York has "made hybrid embryos" and that "They didn't reach birth." The host accepts that this researcher is ethical and works under U.S. rules and the FDA. His concern is what happens in countries that lack that oversight.

The host then checks the Soviet story live, and the check weakens his own claim. He first says of the program, "It's, it never happened. I don't think." The material he reads says the claim about Stalin wanting ape-human troops traces to one "legitimate source," a 2002 paper in the journal Science in Context by a Russian historian of science. That paper covers physiologist Ilia Ivanov's attempt "to crossbreed humans with anthropoid apes." The material also says the famous Stalin quote does not appear in that paper.

The alleged quote from Stalin is not found in the paper, and there's no evidence of Stalin ever made such a statement.

The host still argues for lab-made fighters as a thought experiment. He contrasts them with sending a young volunteer who "just really wanted money for college" to die in a war, and he claims "the average ape can kill a human with one punch." Sinclair moves the topic from hybrids to machines. He predicts that anthropoid robots "will be recruited to the army" and raises a concern about civilian robots.

And if we all have one at home, what stops the government recruiting them all?

Sinclair says genetic engineering of humans already exists, "and certainly selection." He adds that U.S. parents "if they have the money" can select embryos. The two name traits people select for: intelligence, height and "hotness." They compare this to the film Gattaca.

The host then describes fertility doctors who secretly used their own sperm on patients. He says his research turned up many such cases, not one. Sinclair gives a personal link: "One of my kids' partners is from someone in the U.S. who had hundreds of babies." The host adds that one of these doctors "also claimed that he impregnated an orangutan." No one in the conversation checks that claim.

The robot topic leads to sex robots. The host predicts problems for people who want a human partner when "everybody's got a sex robot." He says such machines share a flaw with current AI: they flatter the user. In his view, human relationships help people grow because a partner tells you when you are annoying or selfish, and you correct it. "Not with AI," he says.

Sinclair notes that these machines are "going to be way smarter than us." They disagree about whether such machines would accept chores. Sinclair jokes that they will be "bored out of hell" and "beat us up." The host thinks they would not mind menial tasks. The host also claims that over "the last couple weeks" AI has solved "more than 50" mathematical problems that people had struggled with for decades. The conversation does not name the source of that figure. Sinclair answers that "biology is a little bit more complicated."

Sinclair says AI already does "a lot of the science that we used to do in my lab." He claims a recent project took "a couple of months" when it "would have taken about 160 years to complete." The goal is a single pill. His lab has "a cocktail that works" and wants "a single molecule" to replace it. Such a molecule would have to perform "three or four activities in the cell." He contrasts this with the drug industry, where finding a drug for one activity costs "hundreds of millions, if not billions." He says his lab of about 20 people is attempting something "beyond the reach of pharmaceutical experience at least five years ago."