Sana Khadar

You actually spoke to him for the book.

Can you describe who he is and how he came to be so obsessed with the pursuit of immortality or, you know, anti-aging and dodging death for as long as possible?

Right.

Yeah.

N equals one.

Yeah, exactly.

I have two questions on the psychology of all of this.

Like, one is just broadly, why are people throughout time, why have people been so obsessed with immortality and living forever?

You mentioned the fear of death, but, you know, the idea of living forever to me sounds just awful, actually.

Why you would want to stay alive past, you know, everyone you ever loved being alive, I don't understand.

But so why would we want this immortality?

in general.

And then what is it about extreme wealth in particular that starts to make people obsessed about wanting to live forever?

Because, you know, the emperor of China and all these people you've talked about through history, this starts as a real wealthy person's obsession.

You are listening to All in the Mind from ABC Radio National.

I'm Sanaa Kadar.

Today, the extreme lengths people will go to in the pursuit of immortality.

And so far, the angles we've covered have been bizarre, but more or less straightforward enough to grasp.

But things get a bit more theoretical from here on out, because it turns out what it means to be immortal or how to extend human life, that is up for interpretation.

So there's different camps with this whole business, isn't there?