Venki Ramakrishnan

A lot of it is funded by tech billionaires.

Most of them are middle-aged men and they're used to getting everything they want.

And the one thing they can't get is youth.

And there's a famous saying, which is when they were young,

they wanted to be rich.

And now that they're rich, they want to be young.

But of course, they can't buy youth.

But what they can buy is research.

They can fund research in aging.

And so that's funding a lot of research

And it's distorting the field.

The field has become full of hype.

Every time you open up a newspaper or a magazine or a blog, you say, you think of some, you read about some advance, and this could be the cause of aging, or that could cure aging.

and i think understanding the fundamental biology of why we age will not only allow us to live better and also approach life in a better way but it'll also help us see beyond the hype so next time we have we read about an article we can connect it with the biology and we can ask is this realistic

How long do I think this will take?

And what are the actual prospects?

So I think there are a lot of reasons to try to understand that.

Besides, aging and death is something we've wondered about for centuries, for millions of years, probably.

And right now, we're in a position to understand some of the actual reasons why this happens.

Why does it happen at this rate to us and a different rate to whales and to butterflies?