I was first introduced to Vatalik as the founder of Ethereum. And over the course of a few years, I've gotten to know that there is so much more to him. Welcome to the B sides of my conversation with Metallic. The outtakes, the behind the scenes, the weirder stuff, where we get to know Vitallic even more. We talk about longevity, the value proposition of the moon versus Mars, how San Francisco should be just as big as Hong Kong and why dark chocolate is better than white chocolate.
I'm Morgan Beller, and this is the NFX podcast. I know that longevity is one of your growing interests. So for those of us who want to learn more, wish we knew Morgan, or if you were having dinner with your friend's parents and you wanted to leave them with one thing about longevity and anti aging that they probably don't know about. What's that one thing? So I, you know, I I still recommend, Alberta Grey's book, ending aging.
It was, written in, I think, 2007, and that was the book that kind of originally indoctrinated me into life extensionism. And, that's, great. Like, I, yeah, when I talked to Aubrey more recently, like, he still recommended that book to me. I think even as a, what recently is, like, 2 or 3 years ago, and he basically said that, you know, yes, he still basically are the 7 categories of aging that are, I mean, by far the most, the most significant.
So that's, a good primer if he wants to do a kind of somewhat understands the basic concepts. And and then I'm sure you can just, like, follow the organizations and follow and follow their websites and the end of some of the more recent articles that they're pushing out. There's also a subreddit, reddit.com /r/longevity. So that's one that I follow and go to from time to time.
Is there any longevity challenge trial that has recently been published or that you've read about that you wish you could participate in. I think right now, things are still, like, 5 years too early to be, like, doing it's really serious stuff. So, like, there's, a list of, of things that keep that longevity people think have small effect and Pete are kind of debating back and forth and having studies back and forth about.
So Umwagandha is one of those examples, mid 4 minutes, one example, and then there's this kind of longer list that that goes on. What else was there? There was, there was some interesting recent results around, kind of paribiosis. So this was this idea that kind of got reported on a few times because it just plays so perfectly into the kind of evil solo compality, like vampire stereotypes.
The idea a few years ago was basically that if you had, like, take an older person or the spiritual animals too, and you basically just kind of connects their bloodstream to the younger person, then the older person would be kind of you know, quote, rejuvenated with the young and of younger persons blood to some extent. And, like, there were some some experiments on this. There were some, like, kind of results, and it was somewhat inconclusive.
But, of course, you know, it really captured the imagination, just like, you know, because of the bloody optics of the thing. But then there was this interesting study from a year ago that I think, or somewhere close to a year ago that kind of really changed the narrative on this. Basically, it turns out that you don't need, like, young blood for this.
Like, it turns out that if you just replace a part, like, part of a person's blood with, I think it was, like, water and we'll, like, saline and albumin and, like, oh, like, basically just, like, water with a couple of other dumb things, then you can you can have basically all the same positive effects. Right? So it turns out that the gains from that procedure don't come from, like, younger people having, good ingredients. They come from older people having damaged ingredients.
And if you can flush those damaged ingredients out, then you can potentially make basic reduce the level of damage in a person's body. So that was interesting. Like, once again, this is a sort of thing that's still significantly too early to be, like, really doing, but it's the sort of thing that, you know, would is definitely worth a kind of doing more research and looking into Morgan but, you know, there are communities that are starting to do more research in Atlanta.
We'll look into this sort of stuff more. So And then at the same time, there's also more radical therapies. Like, there's people trying to come up with the drugs that target very explicit categories of damage. Trying to deal with us and Beller, which are basically just essentially cells that turn into zombies and start screwing around and doing bad stuff in your body.
There's, drugs that go after just the various kinds of kind of protein related, damage And so far, it's still kind of in early stages, but it's kind of all slowly progressing. So there's a lot of interesting things happening. I mean, I definitely encourage people to kind of look into it and follow along this space. It's there's definitely a fine line between waiting as a cost and too early, especially when it has to do with things you're putting inside human bodies.
So we'll see if anyone cracks cracks the code there. Longevity, we could talk about that for hours. The fact that you're not worried about it and the second order, social, and cultural effects is encouraging. What there has to be something that worries you about longevity. What is the risk, if anything, socially, culturally, biologically, economically. I think the the things that worry me are probably around, like, human enhancements in ways other than longevity.
Beller, like, just some people being much stronger and much smarter than others is, definitely one risk. The and just like the least kind of making sure that the enhancements we end up creating actually are kind of available to everyone. But then even if available to everyone and, like, different people may well end up choosing different enhancements. And so we may end up having kind of more differences between each other a century from now, than we do today.
And, you know, that might, like, that could be a source of could also be a a source of, like, really interesting new ways for us to compliment each other. So Like, that definitely worries me a bit more than, longevity itself does. So one thing I'm not worried about is There's no such thing as, a gene for, obedience to the communist party.
Now there might be genes that correlate with obedience in general, but if you give someone that Pete, then there's no way to be sure that they're going to be more obedience to you instead of, being more obedience to the first cults that reaches out to them on the internet, whose goal may well be to overthrow you. What is illegal? Either should be legal and or will become legal just because laws of physics, it's silly over the next, let's say, 5 to 20 years.
One big category that I think we already talked about is just that participating in experiments at some earlier stages of, a product's life cycle, whether that's, I mean, is, like, whether that's medical or whether that's drones or whether that's, like, self driving cars or whatever Beller.
I, like, I definitely hope to see a kind of more movement in the trend of, like, people who once to try things early being having, having ways to try things early, and I definitely expect, as I mentioned, and if COVID, Like, you have a nice push in that direction. What other things? Oh, here's, a fun one. It looks like it's becoming more and more, Beller to build like, actually reasonable amounts of housing in California.
And it looks like the, yeah, the, it looks like the GNB movements are finally making some progress And I saw whether there's, like, parking minimums got struck down in a lot of places, and there's more and more movements toward up. So that means Really, San Francisco should be as big as Hong Kong. Right? Like San Francisco should have a population of, you know, 7 million Pete, and it should have the skyscrapers and all that, but like instead, it's like barely 1,000,000.
And, you know, it does feel like the, like, San Francisco and California politics essentially kind of suicided to some extent by it by just getting into existing residents demands. They're just not building any, not building anything else. And, it feels like, you know, the political wins, behind those original, kinda pressures are finally crumbling, at least to some extent. And that's something I'm happy with. I mean, it'll Pete to lower rents for people.
It'll lead to more people being able to live where they want to live. Do you think San Francisco is dead? I definitely think that Stanford Sysco was never again going to be, like, considered a necessary place for anyone to be in the way that it was up until around the 2000 and or so, I expect it to continue to have a strong community, tech community with a lot of people there.
But, like, I would not be surprised to, if, 30 years from now, San Francisco was widely viewed as a kind of establishment Beller town, like basically well, I guess the the millennials will be the new boomers by then, but, you know, you know what I mean. Right? Like, yeah, just like, you know, you have your app on your Facebook and all of these kind of old world companies that just have to be based there because they have too many capital investments.
And, all all the cool stuff is happening in that the next Silicon Valley, which, is, well, the set of, interesting and innovative small countries is, I think, one kind of area, powerful candidate for that. And then just generally, it'll be much more distributed. One of my favorite moments of last year Pete pandemic was we were in Israel together, and I feel very lucky that we not only had the opportunity to visit Palestine last year, but we had the opportunity to visit Palestine together.
And for me, this was a really eye opening experience having visited Israel separate several times, but never crossing the border. So for you, I know you've you you work with a lot of Israelis. You had been to Israel before. You had never been to Palestine before either. How did visiting the other side of the wall, change your views on Israel at all, if at all, I don't know.
Like, that that definitely seems like a very far from optimal situation on so many levels, but, like, it's just, Like, even, you know, if you just notice, the facts that, like, falafel Pete 15 shekels on the Israeli side of the border and, 5 the 10 shackles on the other side of the border.
Like, you know, you just know, which which side of the which side of that whole situation is, a better of a Beller place to to be at the moment and to just, like, which side has, like, kind of just, like, more unfairness and stacked against it. So, also, the the the way that the wall, says exit you go from Israel into Palestine, but, like, doesn't say exit when you go from Palestine into Israel. Like, that was, I found that strange. And maybe maybe symbolic of something.
So many signs, that there's, like, something strange and wrong. And, like, you know, you know, which which direction the wrong this is going. So let's do some rapid fire questions. Some this or that questions to end on something quick and fun and see where this goes. Deep ocean or space? Space. Low Antarctica is also underrated. White or dark chocolate. Dark chocolate. I, I usually prefer 90%. So lately, I've been getting, more comfortable with some of the Robinson.
So Vitallic tracks every percentage of dark chocolate that he has ever tried. Yeah. So I have this a long term dream of eventually trying every Europe from, 80 to 100. And so far, I've had, let's see if I remember it. I've had 8083, I think 85, 86, 88, 90, 92, 95, 99, and 100. I believe though there those are the ones that I've tried. So it's still about about 10 in districts that I need to go through at some point.
And we have to find those we have to find those other ones, and we'll find a way to send them to you. This one, I know you've got Blue Morgan or SpaceX? SpaceX has been doing amazing work. I, Blue Morgan, and I think, like, the problem is they haven't really released as much. So it's just harder to judge them so far. But, I hope they do great things, and maybe with that, Bezos finally, yeah, getting out of Amazon.
He might end up focusing on states that they're doing some great things there, but we'll see Mars or the moon? I feel like Mars and the moon have somewhat different value propositions. Like, the moon is interesting because first of all, it's pretty close to the Earth. And so if you have a conversation with someone on the moon, like the, the round trip latency has been established, it's only about 2.3 seconds. So it's be worse than that this conversation.
But, you know, on the bars, on the other hand, like, you know, it's somewhere between, like, something like 5 to minutes away. I forgot the exact number. So with, Mars, you have a much more, asynchronous experience, interacting with the communities in land. So that's one difference and I think, like, it definitely makes the moon more convenient. The, the other interesting thing about the moon is, like, the low gravity is interesting.
I would just, like, really looking forward to, running a marathon in one sixth gravity. Like, I just wanted she has to feel what it's like. You know? So overask Mars, like, goes up to something like 40% of the Earth or whatever. So it's, like, interesting too, but less extreme.
Mars The fact that it's further away, it's also Flint, interesting value proposition, like, you know, like, the, the sci fi trope of Lara's comparing independence says, much more realistic than the Pete than the moon declaring independence. Well, okay. I guess, the there was one Robert timeline novel in then, you know, they're just way Morgan, sci fi and almost a lot more of becoming into becoming installing things. So, by, sci fi narrative evidence like it, that's just more likely.
In terms of, like, what we can do in both places, and, yeah, Yeah. I don't know. It ends up, and they've gotten, like, just when people want out of space travel, and, you know, do they just want the different bits experience, do they want to, be in a place setting, like, kind of disconnected from earthly concerns? Do they have some kind of industrial mining and it's something else entirely? I don't know. Yeah. We'll see.
This, this is in a this or that question, but since clearly I have space on my mind and a lot of my questions are space related, what's something that you think will happen in space that seems so sci fi today. So, like, I personally believe a lot of the next $1,000,000,000,000 industries will happen on space, space farming, space, manufacturing, space, drug development. You could think I'm crazy, which is fine.
Or you can agree with me and say something that you think will be outsourced to space at some point in the next, let's say, 100 years. That seems crazy today. The one really boring example is using space as a method for points of travel from, Earth to Earth. I mean, I'm gonna go up and just be, like, much faster than in airplane can Beller. Like, the energy expenditures are pretty comparable and so forth. So, no, that'll be interesting.
Like, I'm, I'm definitely excited to know you know, San Francisco is singable in 65 minutes or whenever the number ends up being. Aside from that, I definitely expect to be kind of a combination of, you know, mainly a tourist thing for, together with some industry is happening and just stuff being built in 0 gravity. I'm not sure exactly what kinds of things that make sense to be Beller in 0 gravity. I'm just like not that much of an expert on those topics.
But but what would be interesting things? San Francisco or Miami or Austin, because those That's those are the places where people seem to be being sucked out of here too. There's also the quieter options. So I'm like, Denver is one the Ethereum Foundation has been mildly, setting up a base that has more and more people in Denver. Denver's kinda cool. And I get I met the governor. I'm a, James Bullis.
He was, willing to read a crypto James children's book with me on stage, which I thought was, really nice and amazing. And if all of him on Twitter, he just James with like the AJ, lovely, a pragmatic chap. That's a, And then the Colorado was right beside Wyoming and Wyoming has all of that crypto friendly regulation. So I think, like, that's definitely one of That's like the pool that, you know, neither the old guard nor the self styled leaders of the new of the new guard.
I'd talk about that much. But it it I know it's it was lovely. The the aspect of being 1600, Pete it's above ground. It's interesting. I need to, like, properly try doing a run there. We'll see how that goes. And then, what else? Miami. I was, I've been to Miami a few times. It seems interesting, though I don't understand that well enough. So I definitely want to try to understand Miami Morgan the other interesting thing about Miami is that Miami is like, a de facto gateway to Central America.
Right? Like, all the flights going from random US and Canadian cities to, like, far you know, Central And South America places unless they're direct state. The hub. And, you know, we have, a lot of Cuban immigrants are going to Florida. A lot of our other Latin Americans, in Florida. So I I definitely think that, like, Latin America as a region is a region that, the US is going to start a kind of learning to care more about. I mean, I know.
I mean, like, it may just it may just, like, take, China trying to, like, put up a couple of Beller and road projects or whatever, or whatever they call them in, a couple of South American Currier. And then US people will kind of get scared and, Omri realize that they, need to compete somehow or it could just happen on its own. I don't know.
But, you know, generally, like, it feels like Latin America does feel like one of these kind of slightly forgotten places that, probably the u the US white needs to, do more interfacing with, and I see this as someone who has done far less kind of Latin American than I wanted to. Like, unfortunately, South America in particular is still the one continents I've, never been to yet, though that's going to change with the next defcon in Columbia when it happens.
So This is, another one of those that kind of we'll Pete, kind of situations, but, like, basically, if, US Latin America relations go well, then, Miami will be very well poised to what benefit from that. I I agree. We shall start learning Spanish. What? Oh, how many languages do you speak? This is complicated because it depends how I need to speak them. Like, we're speaking English. I can speak Russian well. I can speak Chinese reasonably well.
French and German, I tend to kind of understand decently, but, I don't really have enough practice as speaking of them. Spanish, I kind of know a little bit of, but and I can, you know, kind of make my way through some blog articles, but I definitely wants to, really improve it. As I Aside from that, not too much.
I mean, I did study a lot in the ancient Greek in high school, but I, yeah, I never regrettably do not remember too much of either That's, something else I'll also never forget is being in Bethlehem with you and we're all, you know, taking selfies and your translating the Latin on the side of the church. Hey. It's it was like my one opportunity to read a Latin in the, like, 5 years. Metallic. You make me laugh. You make me smile. You expand my brain. Thank you. This has been so fun.
Thank you, Morgan. This has been fun. You've been listening to the NFX podcast. You can rate and review this show on Apple Podcasts, and you can subscribe to the NFX podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or wherever you get your favorite podcasts. For more information on building iconic technology companies, visit nfx.com.