Dr. Xand van Tulleken
speaker
1,565 appearances
10 recordings
2 series
first heard Apr 2026
last heard today
Dr. Xand van Tulleken’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 10 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 5.
Appearances
You live forever.
OK, Zandi, but what has been a common concept across this discussion, across cultures for a very long time, is the idea that there is something out there external to ourselves that can confer on us a longer, better life.
I think we're all familiar with this, Chris.
I guess the Holy Grail would be a great example.
It's part buried in Christian stories, part of it's Arthurian legend.
So there's these old ideas, but we see these vampire headlines now.
There's this much more contemporary idea, Silicon Valley billionaires injecting themselves with the blood of the young to rejuvenate.
So this is a familiar idea, but in fact, if we go back, Chris, to 1492, Pope Innocent VIII, aged 60, his doctors hired three young boys, drained out their blood for the pontiff's benefit.
So the story goes.
It's a difficult story to confirm, but the measures failed.
The pope died, as did all the boys.
It's an unusual operation that has a 400% mortality rate.
But what about hormone supplements?
Because this feels like the most modern idea that we are all aggressively confronted with.
This idea is not new.
It goes back at least to 1889.
Brown Saccard, the great French physician, starts grinding up guinea pig and dog testicles and injecting extracts of them under his skin.
And he reports that he gets stronger, his bowels improve, his brain fog clears, and he urges other physicians to try it
And they do try it and they kill a lot of people.
So whether you're seeing strange practices on social media and that's where you're getting your longevity conversation or whether you're reading headlines in serious newspapers talking about it or scientific journals, it's been a conversation for 3,000 years and it surrounds us more than ever.
Showing 1161–1180 of 1,565 · page 59 of 79
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