The Death of Death: Should We Choose To Live Forever?
Mon, Sep 7, 8:30 AMFrom The BIG IDEAS Book Club
What if ageing were optional? A small, extraordinarily wealthy group of people — Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Sam Altman, Peter Thiel among them — are betting billions that it could become so within our lifetimes. They are funding gene therapies, plasma clinics, AI drug discovery programmes, and private city-states designed to sit beyond the reach of ordinary regulation, all pointed at a single goal: the abolition of death. Some of this is serious science. Some of it is alchemy with a better press team. But before the science catches up with the ambition — if it ever does — the personal, social, and political questions are already here.
Would you choose five centuries of life, or even to live indefinitely — more time to love, to learn, to taste everything the world has to offer? Or would you find, on reflection, that something essential about a human life depends on it being finite? What happens to marriage when it lasts for centuries? To democracy when the same people hold power for hundreds of years? To inheritance (that might never arrive!), to ambition ('I can always do it later'), to the feeling that today is precious rather than just one more day in an endless supply? So join us as we pull apart this fascinating and unsettling territory, where Silicon Valley hubris meets some of the oldest questions in philosophy.
**Book: *The Immortalists: The Death of Death and the Race for Eternal Life* (2025) by Aleks Krotoski**
**Companion reading:** ***[A Guide to the Personal, Social, and Political Questions of Radical Life Extension](https://1drv.ms/b/c/adb4f7488b2eef0a/IQDyh0ZXuhOXSY1hShIPivrVAb994lzRy8NuznN6KIb52lM?e=heHTTk)***[ ](https://1drv.ms/b/c/adb4f7488b2eef0a/IQDyh0ZXuhOXSY1hShIPivrVAb994lzRy8NuznN6KIb52lM?e=heHTTk) (prepared for this meetup)
*The Immortalists* is a sharp investigation into the people, science, money, and politics behind Silicon Valley’s war on death. Krotoski — a psychologist, BBC broadcaster, and veteran technology reporter — takes us from immortality cults in the Arizona desert and biohacking clinics in Los Angeles to the corridors of Washington and a private city in Honduras where unapproved gene therapies are on the menu. Along the way, she meets the geroscientists doing genuinely important work on the biology of ageing, the billionaire investors pouring huge sums into longevity start-ups, the lobbyists rewriting FDA regulations in their own interests, and the true believers who have concluded that death is not a fact of life but a failure of engineering. The result is gripping reported journalism, a sober account of what the science has actually established, and a serious political warning about what happens when the people trying to live forever start writing the rules for everyone else.
In addition, we’ve prepared a 35-page companion document that draws out the personal, social, and political questions raised by radical life extension. The Krotoski book spends considerable time on the science and on the people pursuing it, but our discussion is likely to centre on the human consequences: whether we would actually want vastly longer lives; what they would do to relationships, work, inequality, democracy, and meaning; and who would benefit if the technology ever became real. The companion document is intended to give us a shared map of these issues, so the conversation can move beyond the biology and into the questions most likely to matter around the table.
As always, we strongly encourage you to do the reading before you attend; it will enrich both your own experience and the discussion as a whole. We’ve also included some further resources below for anyone who wants to go deeper.
We’ll meet for a drink — and an optional meal — at 6:30pm on Monday, 7 September, on the second floor of the Keg & Brew Hotel in Surry Hills. The venue is close to Central Station and the light rail.
We look forward to seeing you there!
P.S. If you RSVP yes and later find you can’t make it, please update your RSVP so someone else can take the spot if there’s a waitlist.
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These are just optional links to consider to supplement the reading of the book and document. Feel free to pass on other useful links in the discussion section.
**Videos**
* Interviews and Podcasts with Aleks Krotoski:
[Intelligence Squared – Could Billionaires Cure Ageing (1 hr)](https://open.spotify.com/episode/7DgTxyg8YezFkX391FNOmX)
[BBC Radio 4 World at One (18 mins)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTQ-tZfRFW8)
* A collection of 15 min BBC Podcasts by Aleks Krotoski:
[The Immortals Podcast](https://www.bbc.com/audio/brand/p0hl8knd)
* Venki Ramakrishnan on the biology of death and aging and why the immortalists' timeline is wildly optimistic:
[Sean Carroll's Mindscape with Venki Ramakrishnan](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNqwamgxNiU)
* Four Corners (ABC iview) *The Race to Reverse Ageing* (July 2026)
* Science documentary: *[Longevity Hackers](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PV0X5U4smY)*[ (2024)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PV0X5U4smY) This is a mostly enthusiastic doco about the possibility of radical life extension; not a rigorous investigation but provides a useful sense of the different areas of research.
* Netflix documentary: *Don't Die: The Man Who Wants to Live Forever* (2025). A documentary on the daily routines, family plasma exchange, and the "Don't Die" philosophy of tech entrepreneur Bryan Johnson, who appears prominently in the book.
* An explainer video on the science and ethics of radical life extension:
[Billionaires Trying to Live Forever - Honest Truth](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5kMFzndPiM)
**Written**
* Articles on radical life extension:
[The Ethics of Radical Life Extension](https://www.scu.edu/ethics/all-about-ethics/radical-life-extension/)
[Three arguments against extending the human lifespan](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2652797/)
* Reviews of *The Immortalists*:
[The Guardian - The Immortalists](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/oct/23/the-immortalists-by-aleks-krotoski-review-the-downsides-of-cheating-death)
* An article version on the ABC Four Corners episode on biohacking and anti-aging science:
[ABC - The Race to Reverse Ageing](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-07-19/biohacking-anti-aging-science-promise-to-extend-human-lifespan/106923024)
* An unfortunate update on biohacker Bryan Johnson (from Netflix series above):
[A recent health update on Bryan Johnson](https://futurism.com/health-medicine/bryan-johnson-autoimmune-disease)
* Two other relevant books for those wanting to dig deeper into this topic:
*\- Morbid: Debunking Modern Longevity Science* (2026) by Saul Newman. To be released in August, the author uses dark humour and rigorous evidence to expose the systemic data errors and corporate grifting behind popular anti-aging trends like "Blue Zones" and youth-blood transfusions.
*\- Why We Die: The New Science of Aging and the Quest for Immortality* (2024) by Venki Ramakrishnan. This book provides a lucid and authoritative look at the biological mechanisms of cellular degeneration, balancing the realistic limits of our current biotechnology against the hyped promises of the immortality movement.
