Evolution designed us to die fast; we can change that — Jacob Kimmel

Jacob Kimmel thinks he can find the transcription factors to reverse aging. We do a deep dive on why this might be plausible and why evolution hasn’t already optimized for longevity. We also talk about why drug discovery has been getting exponentially harder, and what a new platform for biological understanding to speed up progress would look like. As a bonus, we get into the nitty gritty of gene delivery and Jacob’s controversial takes on CAR-T cells. For full disclosure, I am an angel investor in NewLimit. This did not impact my decision to interview Jacob, nor the questions I asked him. 𝐄𝐏𝐈𝐒𝐎𝐃𝐄 𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐊𝐒 Transcript: https://www.dwarkesh.com/p/jacob-kimmel Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast... Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/3xUw... 𝐒𝐏𝐎𝐍𝐒𝐎𝐑𝐒 Hudson River Trading uses deep learning to tackle one of the world's most complex systems: global capital allocation. They have a massive in-house GPU cluster, and they’re constantly adding new racks of B200s to ensure their researchers are never constrained by compute. Explore opportunities at https://hudsonrivertrading.com/dwarkesh Google’s Gemini CLI turns ideas into working applications FAST, no coding required. It built a complete podcast post-production tool in 10 minutes, including fully functional backend logic, and the entire build used less than 10% of Gemini’s session context. Check it out on Github now: https://goo.gle/4mw9BNg To sponsor a future episode, visit https://www.dwarkesh.com/advertise 𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐌𝐏𝐒 00:00:00 – Three reasons evolution didn't optimize for longevity 00:12:48 – Why didn't humans evolve their own antibiotics? 00:26:08 – De-aging cells via epigenetic reprogramming 00:45:24 – Viral vectors and other delivery mechanisms 01:07:03 – Synthetic transcription factors 01:10:13 – Can virtual cells break Eroom's Law? 01:32:13 – Economic models for pharma