For a longtime I've been suffering from gastrointestinal illness, and I became really interested in the bacteria that live in and on my body. And there was a lot of DIY people who were trying to treat themselves for gastrointestinal illnesses and stuff like that. And they were doing this thing called a fecal transplant. And that's basically like it sounds, it's taking poop and transplanting it in your body. Generally either by putting it in a capsule and eating it, or giving yourself an enema with poop. It's crazy.

Yeah, you heard that correctly. A fecal transplant. In order to cure himself, Josiah embarked on an intensive radical experiment to alter the micro organisms inside his own body. To do this, he collected his body's bacteria before, after, and during the experiment, then sequenced his own DNA to figure out how his bacteria was changing over time.

I found a healthy donor, somebody I knew, and transplanted their bacteria in and on my body. And my gastrointestinal health improved drastically, and not only that, the DNA sequencing confirmed that the transplant actually works, like my body took on the bacteria of that person's body. And I think that was the really crazy part, that wow you can transplant these bacteria between people. And they can actually help improve people's health.

Despite the results of this experiment, Josiah's bio-hacking has its fair share of critics. Some claim that there's a lack of knowledge around the potential risks, and that it's dangerous, untested, even reckless. But from Josiah's point of view, he had a problem that needed an extreme solution. He wanted to bio-hack his way to a better, stronger version of himself. And in the process he wanted people to rethink what was possible for the human body.

Our genetics are changeable, that's the thing. So scientists have been editing embryos or even selecting for embryos for years now. This is something we've done and we all know what we can do, but we don't do adult humans. We can alter our genes, like genetics. You know gene therapy, modifying people's genetics has been going on since the late 90s. We know we can modify the things about us, this isn't like a question. Science is this form of data and knowledge that people have, and it's this very ... How do you say, like mundane discipline almost. There's rules you follow, there's the things you do, and that's science.

But to me science is something different, it more tickles my soul. It's more like a artistic endeavor for me. To me science has been that form of self expression to where I can let the world know how I feel.

This way of thinking raises some pretty daunting questions. If we can change our genetic makeup, the material that we're made of, does that change who we are? Is our biology some kind of technology that's hackable?

Every cell that we know of has come from another cell. Scientists have never been able to create a cell from scratch. That doesn't mean eventually one day we won't be able to, so yeah I would say that biology is a technology.

I did a crazy experiment which I wouldn't recommend to anybody else ever do or try. I think maybe I'm just somebody who's in search of something, and I don't yet know what that is.

I'm Claire Evans, and this is you, a podcast about the intersection of technology, humanity and identity, brought to you by Okta. Today we're talking about life extension, of course any conversation about life extension is in effect a conversation about mortality. And when we question mortality, what we're really questioning is what it means to be human.

I'm not sure that I knew who I was when I was younger, so to say that my core identity has changed, not yet. I think I was always that person, I just had to discover who I was. And now I'm at that point where I'm confident in who I am, and take it or leave it.

I do think your core identity is fluid because over time people learn different things and they see different things, so that can change your mindset and that can change how you feel about different things every day. So yeah, I think it's fluid.

I think your core identity definitely changes over time. You're different things to different people, at different times in your lives. And I think that's one of the reasons why I'm kind of pro letting people die at a point. That we all have kind of a usefulness in different things that we're doing, and you kind of end that at a point and you've played your roles and you've played your parts. And then it's time to move on to the next act.

We just heard from bio-hacker Josiah Zayner who's attempt to improve his body was, in a way, a micro form of life extension. By hacking the human organism he tried to overcome his limits. Other people take this a step further and apply the same philosophy to life itself. Our guest today is a woman who calls herself a transhumanist. Someone who believes that science and technology can help us evolve beyond our current human limitations, both physical and mental, and thus prolong our lives.

Hello, I'm Natasha Vita-More, professor at a university in the Phoenix Tempe-Scottsdale area. I'm also an author of the book, Transhumanism: What Is It?, and The Transhumanist Reader.

Natasha, can you tell us a little bit about who you are and what kind of work you do?

My main interest is life extension and human enhancement, how humanity is merging with technology. And that's basically my focus in life. I am deeply concerned about ethics and evidence based science. And in my writing and in my teaching I make sure that is paramount.

Would you define yourself as a transhumanist?

I most certainly would.

Can you explain what that means to a lay audience?

Surely. The transhumanist movement is a global worldwide movement. Basically it's all about improving the human condition, and by that it covers not only health and well-being, but issues with memory and the brain and cognition. Looking at the aging process and disease. But largely it's a practice, meaning that it's how one live one's life. The transhumanist perspective is one that looks at the world through the lens of possibilities and opportunities for humanity. So it went from a philosophy to a practice and a worldview, and now it's a study and how to address the future of humanity. What it means to be human today, how we're merging with technology, and what we might become.

That's heavy stuff. How do you live that in the day-to-day? I mean how do you embody a transhumanist approach or lifestyle as a thinker, but also just as a person going through this world?

Well, basically wake up each morning thinking good thoughts. A world of opportunity and possibilities, that really important. I make my bed every day. But seriously, it's be healthy, number one. All we have is our bodies and our minds, so keep those healthy and enriched with knowledge. Get aways from the negative forces and focus on what possibilities and opportunities are out there. And for humanity with the advent of artificial intelligence and looking and looking at artificial general intelligence, to super AI, looking at now at technology, molecular manufacturing, looking at abundance and all the possibilities that technology can bring us is we're thinking about on a daily basis.

As an outsider I've always associated this school of thought with the practice and the pursuit of longevity, or the idea that we can extend and prolong our lives long into the future. But what you're describing is something that's much more in the here and now.

Yeah. When I wrote The Transhumanist Manifesto in 1983 I had a different view of the future human than I do today. And it's part of the maturation of not only my own thinking, but the movement and the philosophy and the worldview. In the 1990s most transhumanists were involved in encryption and programming and AI. And remember we used to debate whether which would come first, nano technology or artificial intelligence? And AI has gone mainstream. Along with that longevity has gone mainstream, so yes you are absolutely correct that the fundamental core of the transhumanist agenda is longevity.

When did you decide that you didn't want to die?

So the reason I became interested in longevity and addressing the vulnerability of a human body was because I almost died. I was in Japan, I was performing there, became very ill. And a woman saved my life, I was in intensive care for two weeks on high doses of morphine, and lots of pain. And I survived it. It was an evolution for me in my own work. I then started getting deeply more involved in looking at, why is the human body so vulnerable? Why do we get so sick? Why is our lifespan so short?

So it's not that I don't want to die, I want to live. I love life, I love creating things, I love working with people. I love team energy. I love problem solving. And I want to live long enough to see humanity become more humane.

That's an interesting distinction between not wanting to die and wanting to live. It's I guess a question between, or a choice between fear and hope, would you say that's true?

Yeah, I think that's a very good analogy. You know it's interesting, I just wrote a paper for the Nexus Institute, which is located in Amsterdam. And they put on a conference on good and evil, and I was in a round table session with some very astute thinkers. And they were all anti-transhumanist pretty much. I refused to approach evil or goodness from a biblical sense or religious, or even spiritual sense. I was approaching it from a scientific sense. And I think that's a transhumanist approach to these types of questions, good and evil, good and bad, black and white. You know these narratives that define what a human is supposed to be within a box, a certain parameter, size, shape, ethnicity, et cetera. What is right?

And I defy all of that, I think that's the most ridiculous nonsense that humanity came up with. However, from a scientific perspective I also understand why we needed to create those narratives. If you look at every myth, whether it's in religion or spirituality, or mythology, and that is across all sectors, China, Korea, Japan, Grecian myths, Roman myths, Oltecs myths, any myth. It does have this sequitur that you cannot reach too high or go too far, and that's what transhumanism aims to defy. So when we remove that myth then we look at death differently. We don't have to die based on the narrative historically.

Interesting, so you're saying that these historical myths, which I always kind of imagined as being sort of moral parables that are put in place to mostly protect us from danger and to create a sense of social identification with other people, a sense of shared values maybe. If we sort of divorce ourselves from those myths that we'll be able to think bigger. So maybe we need new myths?

Yes, we need new myths. We need new myths that offer narrative storytelling that reaches into our frontal lobe rather than our reptilian brains stem. So all these narratives are our fight or flight, or fear. And we need to exercise that opportunity and possibilities in life.

In 100 years, there's going to be a lot of chaos. I don't know it just all depends on how we act and if we continue to live in the pattern that we're living now, I think yeah it's not going to be a really beautiful place. All throughout history there's been war and corruptness, but I think if we continue to live the way we're living now and not make really big changes to how we live our lives and stuff, then it's not going to be a pretty place. But I think as humans we can change, so hopefully we do. Yeah.

Wow, 100 years. I do think that where we're heading is coming to a peak, or a head. I think eventually we will have to do a 180 from where we are because people right now are very shortsighted, there seems to be less humanity in the world. So I think the push towards them and just science and math and logical things will have to be over corrected to reverse it and move back towards more of human traits and humanity.

You know what, there's an ever changing world and I don't know what the environment and everything's going to look like down the road. I'm happy with the lifespan that we have.

As humans, we share this one thing, which is that we all die. And that allows us to have compassion, to take care of each other, to value the here and now. If nothing else, the fundamental biological constraints of what it means to be human at least gives us a common language. And our sense of life being precious, well that comes from the fact that it's not permanent. One of the strangest things about our present moment is that we're living in a world in which digital remnants of ourselves are going to outlive us. And on some subtle level, this has to redefine our ideas about what life means.

Natasha Vita-More has been thinking about these kinds of questions for over 30 years, so let's get back to our conversation.

From where I sit, I don't know, I mean to me the future seems scarier than it is exciting. I see climate change, I see growing income inequality, I see all these huge social problems. And I have a hard time having the same kind of optimism I guess about the future than you have. I mean, where does this optimism about the future come from? Do you see the foundations of the future that you imagine in the world around us today?

Yeah I do, I do, I do. I'm a very pragmatic, very analytical person. And I look at issues from as many different angles as possible. I see that, okay the trending, entrepreneurs and innovation. Today we're living in a era where everyone wants to be an innovator, an entrepreneur, or create a startup. To fail early and often is okay. And just that in and of itself is mind blowing. In the 1950s you couldn't fail, you never told anyone you had someone in your family who was mentally ill, or an alcoholic. Now, so what, it's changed so much that we're not ashamed of who we are.

It strikes me that the transhumanist approach to things is one of increased sort of fluidity about self expression, right? And discovering new avenues for self expression and self identification. Can you talk about that a little bit?

Yeah, of course. One thing is to break away from the identity of one person, one identity. If we think about it, there are numerous aspects of our one personhood. The transhuman's perspective is that we will have multiple selves that coexist in multiple environments. However, so that that identity is not schizoid or fractured, there will be one core identity, but our sub identities would be able to flourish. Example of that is, right now I'm sitting with you and I'm thinking, wow, she is really an amazing awesome woman. She's not only a pop singer, she also dances on stage. I saw that, I saw that in [crosstalk 00:18:25].

But she also is an author. And an educator and then here she has this podcast. So what's going on in her head? Even as we are two individuals in this physical, biological agency, we are having multiple thoughts separately about other areas of our lives. If we exist more in virtual environments and augmented environments, and the gaming environments, also if we upload and download and cross load into other substrates, whether it's computational or chemical or artificial in other ways, we'll still need to have an envelope, a body. And we will still need to have a continuity of identity.

So the transhumanist perspective of identity in a summation here, is that we have one core identity and a continuity of identity is the continuity of our memories that keep us whole, keep us together rather than fractured. And that we can coexist in multiple environments when they are developed through programming and new technologies.

Do you believe that core identity can change over time?

Yes, I do. I think that there are certain basic fundamental aspects of a person that doesn't change. For me, my level of optimism, I've had it since I was a child. And that is still prevalent in me. A level of honesty and integrity is and I guess, yeah maybe just those two are really fundamental to me. A loyalty pretty much, but not as much as integrity.

Do you think that some of the new possibilities or affordances that you outlined earlier, like this idea of uploading ourselves, or cross loading ourselves into different kinds of virtual environments or substrates, can those things have exclusively a positive effect on one's identity? I mean as I can imagine the possibility of people getting led astray by new realities, or losing themselves in new realities. I mean these are of course problems of the distant future, we have plenty of time to figure them out. But what are the implications of having access to different forms of material embodiment and different forms of experience at that level?

A split identity would be one where you don't know which one is you.

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

And it ties into the prognostication of 10 years ago, oh if we clone ourselves, oh you're going to clone yourself, there's going to be two of you then which one's the real you? Well, the second someone has his or her own experience they're their own person. A clone is like a twin, it's a cell that divides. So if you create a clone, that clone would be its own person.

But if you upload and you go into another environment, let's say a computational environment that's a beautiful architecture like the film Avatar. Then that might be a wonderful environment to hang out for a while. Could someone stay there, maybe just really loving, get drunk on it? Yeah, and that would be that person's choice. But it's just like dreams, we have dreams. And sometimes your dreams are so incredibly powerful that you get lost in them, you wake up and you go, did that really happen or not?

I think, a lot of what I understand to be the defining experience of a human being, and the defining experience of being a human being participating in a society is our shared points of reference, right? It seems to me like a possibility that there would be a hazard if we begin to abstract experience from the material too much. And then people would lose a sense of shared experience. And I think death also is a shared experience in a sense. I mean so much of human identity in society is bound up to this idea of death and of the choices that we make in our lives before we die.

So I think, I mean is this something that transhumanist thinkers are talking about? How we retain shared experiences and shared points of reference in a world where all of these established things might be going out the window?

It is a strong area of discussion to be sure. First off, you mentioned this room that we're in and our shared reality and that we know then a mic is here and the mic is there, and I identify with you, and we're feeling the light on us. And we're having a shared experience. That shared experience can be in a virtual environment. Sometimes you don't have to say a word to have a shared experience. And sometimes you don't have to even see another person to have a shared experience.

But here, there is a technology of sharing experiences that's being developed where I can feel what you're feeling. Or I can see what you're seeing. And so that type of shared experience through augmented reality and virtual reality and the advancement of those fields will become very interesting. I could have a shared experience listening to your music. Or you could have a shared experience watching my videos without me physically there.

The other issue is death, and I want to clarify the transhumanist perspective on death. There is nothing wrong with anyone who wants to die, that's fine. That should be an individual choice, and in my view. So don't tell me I can't die, if I want to die. But the idea of death, the definition of death has changed over the eons. It used to be that when someone's heart stopped, or we couldn't see the moisture on a mirror putting it up against the nostrils we thought the person was dead. So we buried them in the ground in a box. But lo and behold, people would climb out of the box.

What is it called, that box that you put people in?

A coffin?

Coffin, yeah, okay there you have it.

Its such a transhumanist that you don't even know the word for a coffin.

A coffin is so 20th century. But they would have to put a rope or cord into the coffin in case the person came back from an unconscious knocked out state, saying let me out, let me out. Okay, so we learned. We learned. But today we bring people back from dead all the time. Someone's heart stops, which used to be dead, 100 or so years ago. We put electric shock to the heart and bring them back. Someone drowns, we push the water out of their lungs and we administer oxygen into the mouth. We bring them back to life.

We're seeing so many instances today where someone would've been pronounced 100, 200 years ago, where today they're brought back to life.

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

We're replacing body parts with artificial or transplants. In fact, hundreds of thousands of people on a daily basis are waiting for a transplant. So what are we doing to ameliorate that horrific situation that we're facing today? We're looking at cloning organs and growing organs, and synthetic organs. And this is a big field that's being researched at lots of universities, especially ASU. So we're looking at ways to resolve these issues. So the idea of death, the definition of death, the quantifiers and qualifiers of death have changed over the time. And they will continue changing.

Research on life extension, the concept of it is really interesting. And figuring out how we could get around our own flaws as humans, but at the same time it's like you get into point where it's like, are you taking the humanity away from being human, right? Part of I think what makes life sort of more interesting is knowing that it's going to end at some point. So you need to take advantage that. Whereas if you knew you were going to be around forever, I feel like it wouldn't be as exciting.

I think it's great that they're doing more to try to extend the quality of life, but I've had older relatives and I've seen the state in which they live in, so if they can make them more comfortable I agree with that. But I don't necessarily think that we need to live longer with a body that doesn't necessarily work as well as it did once. Or not being able to communicate or not being able to move, I wouldn't want to live longer in that type of body. So if they can keep up the quality of your life, yes, sure.

So in terms of the research of trying to really extend people's life expectancy, I don't find it to be the most worthwhile thing. I think we've got a lot of people who are dying from a lot of things far too young. We have a lot of women dying in childbirth, we have a lot of people dying of preventable diseases, and from things like infectious diseases, HIV, malaria. And so I think we need to be spending a lot more time thinking about those people who are dying young rather than trying to extend our own lives or the lives of the select group of people far beyond what it is right now.

For me mortality has always been a part of what it means to be human. We make decisions about what we want to do with our lives based on how much time we think we have left. And those decisions, those choices, those parameters are fundamental to how we structure our society, how we structure our relationships, and how we live day-to-day. As we get older and approach death our values change, and we make decisions, new decisions about how we want to spend the little time we have left on this earth.

We're talking this week with transhumanist author Natasha Vita-More about life extension. And how changing our ideas about our possible futures changes the way we relate to our present.

So what do you see as being the most viable method for extending life, however you define death? I mean, are you interested in something like dropping into stasis for 10 years? Or uploading your mind into a computer? What's your plan?

Well, I might do that, 200 years from now. I just turned 69 and I plan to retire at 70 from my full-time teaching job. My plan is just to live each life and just be thankful I'm alive. I'm signed up for cryonics, I signed up in 1991.

'91!

1991, I got my cryonics membership, so I'm a neural suspendee. So that means my brain will be vitrified.

See my biggest fear was something like cryonics is waking up essentially alone in a foreign world, right?

Yeah.

Without a friend, without family.

Your head in a jar.

Yeah, head in a jar, worst case scenario. I mean, yeah, or just worse like to be unwelcome in the future, right? I mean how can we trust the future to take care of us, it's a huge responsibility to wake somebody up from stasis and explain to them everything's that happened for the last 100, 200 years.

Yeah, it will be challenging. So we need to really make sure that the cryonics organizations are ethical, they're legal. We need to make sure that our money is secured. We need to make sure that we have friends and family who are signing up too, so we won't be alone. And so yeah there are all these very important tasks that take place, but the future is uncertain no matter how you look at it.

There is this sort of socio-economic implications of all of this-

There is.

-people live a lot longer than ... What does that mean for social security? Or, does it mean that only the people who are of means are able to access this kind of longevity? Whereas people who have less means are not able to live forever. I mean, do you fear, I mean yes you are a very optimistic person, I know. But do you worry about this kind of economic-

Yes. I do.

-disparity in the transhuman-

Yes I do. And I'm going to devote the next 10 years of my life to these issues. So yeah I think it's very important to understand self responsibility, number one, to have a solid identity. You need to know your purposefulness in life, so check off that. What is your desire, what do you want to do? Figure out how to get that done.

I wanted to ask you about consciousness, and what the transhumanist pursuit, what the study of thinking about prolonging life and prolonging memory, what that teaches us in the here and now about what consciousness is?

You ask one of the biggest questions, and I know that no one as an answer for. In fact, people have been pondering consciousness since time immemorial.

We don't need to answer it today.

Okay.

But what kind of inroads are being made in the discussion? Because I think very few people are really actively thinking about the nature of consciousness in a technological or scientific context, the way that the sort of transhumanist-

Okay, the transhumanist understanding, and there are variations on this theme of consciousness is that it is what the brain does. So it's the mind. Thus, your memories, your identity, the continuity of your memories over time form you, your identity, your personhood, who you are. And of course that changes over time through experiences. You learn not to do something so bad. You try to be a better person. You've been in a bad relationship you try not to get in another one just like that. You stick your hand in the fire you go, ouch. You learn not to do that.

So we learn over time better behaviors as we mature. So the consciousness thus, is what the mind does. It's the functionality of the brain, it's a synapsis, the dendrites, the electrical charges, the neurological connections within the brain that form our memory and our identity. Now, you might say, well if you upload. And you're saying that consciousness is the mind within the brain, what the brain does, well if you upload that's not in the brain.

But the upload would be a transfer or a copying of those connections, those neurological connections. So it's the information within those neurological electronic connection, or electrical charges that take the data, the information. Just like a musician, you know, into the computational code. Can it be done perfectly? Who knows. Is it being done now? Yes. There are many cognitive scientists and neuro scientists and computer programmers who are working on developing this.

It's interesting to think that if we manage to live longer and also expand our perceptual capacities, which seems to be two of the major goals here, then we will by definition expand our consciousnesses?

Yes. And our level of humanity, or humaneness.

I don't think I'd want to live forever. It sounds like after a while it would get really boring. And then you would have to have other people that are around you that would also want to live forever, so it doesn't seem worth it.

If I could live forever I would because I feel like it's so much in the world that we could see, so many things that we don't know, so many things that's unexplored. So yeah, I would definitely live forever. Yeah.

I think there's something important and kind of beautiful about letting other people live and have their lifespans as well, and we can't live forever we'd run out of space.

This has been you, a podcast brought to you by Okta. Please do not try a radical bio-hack fecal transplant at home without adult supervision. And this has been me, Claire Evans. I'm still looking forward to the future, no matter how weird it is. And I hope you are too. Thanks so much to our guest Natasha Vita-More and Josiah Zayner. Don't forget to subscribe, share, and leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.

Thank you for listening to you while you're driving, washing the dishes, doing Kegels, or going viral. Until next time.