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Big Think •

The price of Silicon Valley's obsession with immortality

Excerpted from The Price of Immortality: The Race to Live Forever, written by Peter Ward and published by Melville House.Since the 1980s, wave after wave of technological change originating from Silicon Valley has crashed over the world. Each jump in progress has spawned new industries, fortunes, and even universes. A growing band of geeks steadily grew wealthier, and their influence expanded along with their bank balances. Behind each multibillion-dollar company was a flock of venture capitalis...
PenguinRandomhouse.com •

The Consequential Frontier by Peter Ward: 9781612198002 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books

“A lucid, bright and essential work of reporting, analysis and genuine care. Peter Ward has given us a new way to think about private endeavors in space. Superb.”⁠—Rivka Galchen, author of Little LaborsThis in-depth work of reportage dares to ask what’s at stake in privatizing outer spaceEarth is in trouble—so dramatically that we’re now scrambling to explore space for valuable resources and a home for permanent colonization. With the era of NASA’s dominance now behind us, the private sector is...
PenguinRandomhouse.com •

The Price of Immortality by Peter Ward: 9781612199528 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books

“Mr. Ward combines thorough reporting and lucid scientific explanations in a fluent and balanced account of a diverse movement. From the tragicomedies of cryonics’ early years, to tales of scam artists and reckless zealots, he is a vivid storyteller” — The Economist  “The writing is vivid  … A great intro to the topic … Those looking to get started on living forever would do well to begin here.” – Publishers Weekly “The Price of Immortality... evaluates with a journalist’s eye our best atte...

Cleaning up the cosmos

The sky and the land were once connected, far more than they are today, according to the Gamilaroi people of Eastern Australia. In their creation stories, a traumatic event occurred aeons ago, which ripped humanity apart from the skies above. Other indigenous groups across the country teach similar stories, and many perform ceremonies to rebuild their bonds with Sky Country.
As humans become an increasingly space-faring species, we might feel we’re getting closer to our Sun, the planets and sta...

The pursuit of immortality

Gene therapy could be the key to longer lives. But some longevity fanatics, tired of waiting for the technology, are taking matters into their own handsHumanity’s pursuit of longevity has yielded impressive results over the last century. Life expectancy is up dramatically in most parts of the world, and new medical breakthroughs are tackling the most prolific of killers – cancer and heart disease. But the mission to radically extend life has hit something of a ceiling, as we realise that healthy...
Inverse •

Inside the Scientific Pursuit of a Universal Cure for Disease

There comes a point in one’s life — sometimes it’s the big 3-0, sometimes later — when getting old starts to come with some unfortunate side effects. Our joints creak, our muscles ache, and our senses dull. Some people invest in skin fillers or a new training regime to try and spackle over the problem — maintaining the illusion of youthful health, at least for a while. But Wolf Reik is among a small cabal of scientists chasing a Holy Grail of medical innovation that would be a more lasting solut...
Inverse •

How Darren Aronofsky's oddest sci-fi movie inspired a real quest for longevity

Chris Hemsworth realized he might have made a mistake when he fully submerged in Arctic waters.“It's one thing to be swimming in an ice bath with your head out of the water, but once I put my head in and I'm swimming and going for it, it was one of the worst pains I've ever felt, this sort of ice cream headache,” the actor best known portraying Thor Odinson in the Marvel Cinematic Universe tells Inverse.But this wasn’t a stunt for the latest Avengers movie. Instead, Hemsworth had teamed up with...
Inverse •

Inside the cults that survive even when the prophecy fails

In 1959, Charles Paul Brown experienced a “cellular awakening.” According to Brown, his body glowed, Bible verses flashed before his eyes, and he felt a “piercing through to the core of the cells and atoms of the body,” which, as he put it, awakened his DNA. He was unable to get out of bed for months after the incident. When he recovered, he declared he was immortal.Brown ultimately gave up on a career as a gospel preacher and instead founded his own religion centered on immortality. In 1982, Br...
The Guardian •

‘Medical tourists’ are travelling the world in search of the elixir of life | Peter Ward

Every year millions of people cross borders to undergo medical treatments that are either unavailable in their home country or too expensive. For many, this is a last resort to ease the pain of a debilitating disease or defy a terminal diagnosis; for others the goals are purely cosmetic. But in the past few years a new type of “medical tourist” has emerged: those seeking to radically extend their lives.There are more older people than ever before – and more people in search of longevity. In the...
Inverse •

Why Apple’s Steve Wozniak’s paradoxical plan to solve space junk just might work

If you have never heard of Privateer, then know you are not alone. The start-up, co-founded by Apple’s Steve Wozniak, just emerged into the public sphere in March 2022. Its mission is not to reinvent the iPhone, however. Instead, it plans to clean up a specific area of Earth’s environment that is currently suffering from a massive junk problem: Low-Earth orbit.Privateer is, in part, the brainchild of Moriba Jah, a self-styled space environmentalist and associate professor at the University of Te...