Mike Israetel
speaker
1,094 appearances
5 recordings
5 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard May 2025
Mike Israetel’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
But I think your approach of, listen, back in the 1940s, there's a serious discussion of quality of life versus longevity. You tried to sell someone no more beer, no more cigarettes. Like, why? So I could live 20 years longer? For what? Yeah, exactly. So I could work in a fucking factory 20 years longer and grind my fingers off on the stamping press? You're like, okay, noted.
Here are your cigarettes and beer back. In the mid-2020s, legitimate thinkers in the space
Are talking about longevity escape velocity are talking about true immortality Not capital i immortality lowercase I like you still get hit by a bus an asteroid could still break the earth into pieces But like yeah like brain in the cloud type of stuff now is probably the most pertinent time We're reading your book consuming your material listening to your stuff and your experts that you have on is the smartest thing especially people in their 40s and 50s and 60s could do because
Look, if you're in your 20s, whatever, rock on. If you're in your 40s, 50s, 60s, you might make it to this paradise stuff in the 2030s, but barely, and tell yourself, thank God I ate some friggin' broccoli and went to bed at 9pm. Whereas an alternative, you could have had one too many margaritas and Cheetos and not made it that far.
Up until a few years ago, I thought I was going to have kids and I was very aware of all the trade-offs and I played it the exact same way. So probably not. It's all statistics. Again, I could die tomorrow. I could never die. Who knows anything between.
I'm statistically likely with my current exposure and no increase in biotechnology throughput to croak in my 70s or 80s, probably more like 70s, maybe late 60s.
Realistic worst case.
Very heuristically. But I'm familiar with what kind of cycles other people have done, what kind of body weights they've gotten to, body fats, health metrics. And I've seen and noted and heard of lots of people in our industry look like most bodybuilders from Arnold's era are still ticking. And you attribute that to the fact that they were just using a fraction of the drugs.
It's by no means clear they were using a fraction of the drugs. Some of that's true. Some of it's not true. Some of those guys were cranking it. Yeah. It does not take a rocket scientist to realize that when you take more of something and grow more muscle, you're going to do a lot of it. They were using fewer drugs on average, but with many exceptions.
I attribute that to the fact that as long as your blood pressure is not chronically elevated and as long as you don't have shitty genetics for longevity, longevity genetics are very robust and you can do a lot of shit to yourself and still make it quite far. Whereas other people take great care to do everything and they croak in their mid-50s because that's just the card they were dealt.
Most pro wrestlers, bodybuilders, etc., most of them are older and they're still with us. Some pretty decent fraction of them have died, many because people just died in their mid-70s. But some of them, because of grotesque abuses, I mean, pro wrestling is mostly a cocaine problem, to be completely honest. The steroids are just a drop in the bucket at that point.
But it's just not true to say that anabolic androgenic steroid use, even in extreme circumstances, just straight up drops you like a fly. It doesn't. Severe alcoholism? That'll do you in. Not a lot of 70- or 80-year-old severe alcoholics. Anabolic steroid abuse is just a category of risk lower than that. Now, it's gnarly, and it can get you. It's just not as likely.
So I assess, yeah, there's a 5- to 20-year lifespan reduction that I've engaged in.
So it really makes sense. I don't like the term abuse. It has a moral connotation. Intelligent, purposeful, high-dose androgen exposure, we'll call it that. Yeah, it's definitely taken years off my life, but I think it'll probably peg me into my 60s somewhere. And again, I was born in 1984, so I'll be 60 in 2044. If Every variable has lined up like the ones so far through all of measured history.
2044 is not going to be a time where there are biological humans that die short of them choosing to do so.
There are three groups of people in bodybuilding today. People that have emphatically adopted the use of GLP-1s. Group two are people that either use or don't use, but don't say much about them. Either don't care, don't know, or they're using, but they're kind of shush about it.
And then there's another group that is just absolutely viciously opposed to them for reasons that are almost always wildly irrational, but moralistically understandable.
You have to suffer through the hunger to earn your right to call yourself a competitive bodybuilder. What do you think about that? I could probably steal manna.
Yes, I'm in that camp as well. There are at least two things those folks aren't considering. Thing number one is that if you can achieve a certain level of body fat through caloric restriction without GLP-1s, When you use any given dose of GLP-1s to reduce your hunger, you get two things out of that. One is now you can push to even more exotically lean levels, which you should be.
We're not trying to race to the same point. The destination changes. If you can get some faint glute striations and win a few shows without GLPs, maybe you can get completely stripped out of your mind with them. It's just as hard. You're just as hungry. But just as hungry at 3% body fat is a very different look than just as hungry at 6%. One is GLP-enhanced, one is not.
Showing 701–720 of 1,094 · page 36 of 55
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