July 9, 2024
S6E15 - The Immortalists' Church (Church of Perpetual Life)
Wanna chat about the episode? Or just hang out? --- Aging and Death can be Optional...We Choose Life & Health. Chris & Kayla head to church to learn how the Creator wants us to live forever. --- *Search Categories*...
Wanna chat about the episode? Or just hang out?
---
Aging and Death can be Optional...We Choose Life & Health.
Chris & Kayla head to church to learn how the Creator wants us to live forever.
---
*Search Categories*
Anthropological; Science / Pseudoscience; Common interest / Fandom
---
*Topic Spoiler*
The Church of Perpetual Life
---
Further Reading
https://www.churchofperpetuallife.org/
https://www.youtube.com/@COPL18/featured
https://cryonics.miraheze.org/wiki/Church_of_Perpetual_Life
https://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/south-florida-church-pursues-eternal-life-through-cryonics-inflaming-critics-and-the-irs-7608632
https://transcend.me/blogs/supplementation/what-supplements-does-ray-kurzweil-take-and-why
https://www.wired.com/story/bioviva-gene-therapies-liz-parrish-longevity/
---
*Patreon Credits*
Michaela Evans, Heather Aunspach, Alyssa Ottum, David Whiteside, Jade A, amy sarah marshall, Martina Dobson, Eillie Anzilotti, Lewis Brown, Kelly Smith Upton, Wild Hunt Alex, Niklas Brock, Jim Fingal
<<>>
Jenny Lamb, Matthew Walden, Rebecca Kirsch, Pam Westergard, Ryan Quinn, Paul Sweeney, Erin Bratu, Liz T, Lianne Cole, Samantha Bayliff, Katie Larimer, Fio H, Jessica Senk, Proper Gander, Nancy Carlson, Carly Westergard-Dobson, banana, Megan Blackburn, Instantly Joy, Athena of CaveSystem, John Grelish, Rose Kerchinske, Annika Ramen, Alicia Smith, Kevin, Velm, Dan Malmud, tiny, Dom, Tribe Label - Panda - Austin, Noelle Hoover, Tesa Hamilton, Nicole Carter, Paige, Brian Lancaster, tiny, GD
Transcript
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Kayla: We believe that all of life is sacred and that we have been given this one life to make unlimited. We believe in our creator's divine plan for all of humanity to have infinite lifespans and perfect health and eternal joy, rendering death to be optional. By following our gospel, we achieve eternal life, creating a heaven here on earth. Hey, Chris.
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Chris: Hey, Kayla.
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Kayla: I don't have an intro for you today.
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Chris: I think that was it.
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Kayla: That was the intro. Welcome to Culture. Just weird. I'm Kayla. I'm a tv writer.
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Chris: Thanks. I'm glad to be here.
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Kayla: Who are you?
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Chris: Oh, I'm Chris. I am not a tv writer.
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Kayla: No, you're not.
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Chris: I'm a data analyst and game designer and podcaster.
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Kayla: And we are here today to talk about cults or just weirds. That's what we do here on the show. Thank you for listening.
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Chris: Thank you for being here.
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Kayla: Before we jump into the topic today, which I'm very excited about, I've been kind of sitting on this one for a minute. We need to take a minute to shout out our newest Patreon patrons. So thank you very much to GD and Ello, who have signed up for our Patreon, where they get exclusive access to our discord. Different things on Patreon. If you want to support the show, go to patreon.com culture. Just weird. And if you also want to hang out on the, you know, free version of the discord, which is still very.
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Chris: Cool, which is crappy, don't. Oh, sorry.
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Kayla: It's extremely cool. We talk about very cool things. You can check it out in the show notes.
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Chris: Yeah, thanks, GD. And you said, lo el. Is it like el o ello or e l l o e?
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Kayla: L l o e l o.
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Chris: E? No, it's oe. Yeah. I don't know. Is that like, how, like, a cockney accent says hello? Like, ello, govna.
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Kayla: Yes, it's actually. That's the first name. Ello. Last name Guvna.
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Chris: Last name's Guvna. Okay, well, thanks for being our patron.
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Kayla: Thank you to our patrons and thank you to all of our listeners. And now, Chris, if you're ready, we can just hop on in.
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Chris: The question is, are you ready?
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Kayla: I mean, yes, I'm the one who.
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Chris: You're doing the.
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Kayla: Wrote the script for the episode and prepared the topic.
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Chris: And, you know, thank you for doing that.
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Kayla: You're welcome. Okay, Chris, we have taken a kind of long and winding road deep into the land of Tessreol. By way, initially of cryonics and humanity plus and transhumanism. And those topics kind of feel, like, far in the rear view now because we've gone so deep, and I know we're going to continue going deeper into that acronym. That's what she said, tess. Real. What is it? Transhumanism?
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Chris: Extropianism?
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Kayla: Singularitarianism.
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Chris: You know, I prefer to say singularity. Wait, no, actually, I don't know what I prefer.
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Kayla: You don't know what you say. Singularityists. What's the c. Cosmism? Rationalist.
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Chris: We did that one. That was less wrong.
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Kayla: Effective altruists and long termism.
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Chris: Right.
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Kayla: That's the bundle that we're kind of focusing on these days. But those initial topics of, like, cryonics and humanity, plus that was, like, episodes and episodes ago at this point. Seasons, like, now we're talking about AGI and, like, expanding human life across the universe, and, like, trillions and trillions of people. And it's a lot motes of dust, a lot of TESCREAL ideologies as well as cryonics. And everything we've talked about so far this season are based largely on, like, the trappings of science or scientific ideas, rational thinking, technology, logic. But as we've discussed, these ideologies butt up against the spiritual. Yeah, I said, but because we're talking about in the same breath, we're talking about things like immortality, the meaning of life, the meaning of death, and what lies beyond.
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Chris: Right, right. It just kind of feels like a different means to the same sort of, like, end that a lot of religions talk about.
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Kayla: Right. So I want to know if. Is it a topic that, well, related to tessarial and the like? Takes a little bit of a different approach, one that is decidedly spiritual or religious, or at least adopts the aesthetics of the spiritual or religious, like, the hard signifiers, stuff that's more in line of what we think about when we think about. Yeah, religion in general.
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Chris: So this is not just like, podcasters being like, you know what? It's kind of like a religion. This is more like them being like, no, yeah, it is. No, that's. That's what we're saying today.
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Kayla: We're talking about something called the Church of Perpetual Life.
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Chris: Church. Okay, so I've heard the word church before. Yeah, I think I.
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Kayla: Where have you heard that word before?
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Chris: Like, with religions? Christianity, I think, is one of them.
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Kayla: Yes.
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Chris: That uses that word.
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Kayla: Yep. Okay, so you kind of know what we're talking about. There's a lot to say about the church of perpetual life, but first and foremost, this is an organization, a community a congregation that is driven by hope. It is optimistic, future oriented, pro science, and of course, a little complicated.
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Chris: What? No, everything's always perfect whenever we talk about anything.
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Kayla: The church is a 501 c three located in Pompano Beach, Florida, just outside Fort Lauderdale. For you Floridians, have you heard about the Church of Perpetual life, Mister Florida?
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Chris: No. I mean, not before you were starting to do these topics.
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Kayla: Yeah, actually. I mean, I guess it opened in 2013 and you had moved out of Florida before then. It has since opened in 2013.
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Chris: They probably waited till I left.
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Kayla: Honestly, they needed to get you out of that state.
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Chris: Like, we don't want that guy to live forever.
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Kayla: No, get him out of here. It hosts monthly services for its congregants, has done so since 2013, both in person and online. The church describes itself as, quote, the only science faith based church in the world. And what's another one?
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Chris: I just think that there are other groups that would at least make the claim to be science based. I don't know. Like church, though.
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Kayla: Not group, not organization, not club, not cohort church.
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Chris: What's Christian Science? Is that a science? That's not a science, is it? Is Scientology a science?
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Kayla: Do you think Scientology would consider themselves a science faith based church? I don't know.
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Chris: I'm not sure. I just. Okay. All I'm saying is, like, it's a big world with a lot of groups, and there's probably at least one, right?
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Kayla: I mean, whatever. This is their claim, okay? I am not here to debunk it. This is simply their claim.
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Chris: All right, fair enough.
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Kayla: Fair enough. This church serves as a place where people can come together over a shared faith in physical immortality. The church believes that unlimited lifespans are mankind's destiny as desired by something they refer to as the creator.
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Chris: Do they use the word faith?
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Kayla: Yes.
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Chris: Okay.
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Kayla: Like, a lot. It's very important. Its followers want to be part of the effort to bring that reality into existence. The church has members who are otherwise christian, jewish, Hindu, buddhist, atheist, humanist, transhumanist, and anyone interested in, quote, age reversal, cryonics, and the singularity.
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Chris: So this isn't like, if I go to a baptist church, I'm like, I can't be a Catholic anymore. This is like, whatever you can be both.
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Kayla: I see some similarities between this and, like, the unitarian universalist organizations, where it's a church that is welcoming to members of all faiths, belief systems, lack thereof, secularness, et cetera. But this has a specific faith in technologies that will extend our life.
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Chris: You know, I say that, and I'm like, I don't know. I don't think the Baptists would care that I was confirmed. And I don't think if I went back to my catholic church, they'd be like, no, no, you can't come back in.
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Kayla: But it's not necessarily explicit that, like, our congregation is made up of a variety of different faiths.
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Chris: Right. That's not, like an advertised.
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Kayla: Our congregation is made up of Catholics.
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Chris: Right, right.
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Kayla: Or people seeking to be Catholic. I don't know. I don't know. I don't speak for churches. So as mentioned with this whole, like, age reversal, cryonics, singularity bent, cryonics is central to the church. If you go on their website, there's a whole section, like, its own dedicated section about cryonics. Entirely about cryonics. There's advertisements for cryonics conferences.
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Chris: They're friends with Aldouse. What are they friends with? Al.
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Kayla: Isn't that an aa thing?
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Chris: Alcor.
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Kayla: Alcor. That sounds like an aa thing. Oh, no, it's friends of Bill. Friends of Bill W. Friends of Bill W is an aa thing.
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Chris: No, this is friends of Alcor.
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Kayla: Friends of Alcor is. They are friends of Alcor. They advertise Alcor. They advertise cryonics Institute. I think they advertise other cryonics companies. They're big on this, quote, ambulance into the future thing.
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Chris: Ambulance into the future.
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Kayla: Yeah. Which is something that I think I first heard cryogenator say when we did our interview. And that is also explicitly like, that wording is used on their website.
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Chris: Interesting.
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Kayla: And that, of course, makes sense if you believe the future holds the key to immortality.
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Chris: Right.
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Kayla: It makes sense that cryonics would go hand in hand with a congregation that is like.
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Chris: Right, right. Freeze me till they figure this out.
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Kayla: Yeah. They're also really big into health. Like, really big.
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Chris: When you say health, we'll get to that.
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Kayla: I thought that this church was, like, when I first started doing this, I thought it was mostly about cryonics. I kind of think it's mostly kind of like, transhumanism is actually largely centered around life extension in general with, like. It's more about the radical life extension technology. And so there's this huge emphasis on individuals kind of, like, taking charge of their own health to ensure the most longevity.
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Chris: So, like, Ray Kurzweil's book, live long enough to live forever.
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Kayla: Yes.
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Chris: Basically the.
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Kayla: And hold that thought, because we're gonna get to Mister Kurzweil in, like, two sentences.
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Chris: We're always talking about Ray Kurt, I.
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Kayla: Know I'm never not thinking about Ray Kurzweil. Presumably this is so that they can all live again, live long enough to hit the singularity or longevity escape velocity, or whatever you want to call it.
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Chris: Oh, yeah, I heard you using that word. Okay, that's. Yeah, that's such an interesting turn of phrase.
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Kayla: I think the first place I heard about it, or I definitely came across longevity escape velocity while I was researching cryonics. I think that we talked about it with crashing as well. And it basically refers to, like, if you google it, the Wikipedia is. It's a hypothetical situation in which one's remaining life expectancy, not your life expectancy at birth. Your remaining life expectancy is extended longer than the time that is passing. Does that make sense?
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Chris: Yeah. Live long enough to live forever.
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Kayla: Yeah.
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Chris: It's that you expect that in the remaining time you have, there will be more years added to your life via technology than the time you have left.
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Kayla: Correct?
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Chris: Yeah. Okay.
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Kayla: So because of this focus and, like, gotta live forever, there is a huge emphasis on vitamins, supplements, and other health aids or biohacking techniques that purport to increase health and extend life expectancy.
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Chris: Which vitamin do I need to take?
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Kayla: Well, if we're talking. If we're gonna call this the Ray Kurzweil approach, since he's known in pro singularity communities for supplementing himself to the extreme, he's taking like, 100 plus pills a day.
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Chris: Holy shit. Is he eating food?
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Kayla: Like, back in, I think, 2008, there was an article about how he was taking. Supposedly he was taking more than that at the time. He was taking, like, 250 pills a day.
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Chris: How did he even do that?
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Kayla: There was rumors and articles about how he. He didn't. He had, like, a hired person who was, like, his pill manager.
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Chris: Oh, my God.
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Kayla: I cannot confirm or deny this, but that is the story around.
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Chris: Does he have a blood boy?
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Kayla: I wouldn't be surprised.
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Chris: We should definitely do blood boy for the show.
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Kayla: We should definitely do blood boys.
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Chris: That didn't sound very good the way I said it.
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Kayla: No, it did not cover blood boys on the show.
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Chris: Cover the topic of blood boys on the show.
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Kayla: So, yeah, so, I mean, he's doing these 100 plus pills a day. He's also doing iv infusions and other strategies in order to live long enough to upload to the cloud or whatever the hell the singularities could be.
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Chris: So if he's not doing blood boy, he's at least doing something directly into his veins.
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Kayla: There is an article that I'll link where he gives his three most important vitamins. If you want to get on the Ray Kurzweil train, go in our show notes. I'll link to that.
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Chris: Oh, my God, Caleb, that is so clickbaity of you.
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Kayla: I just don't remember what they are.
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Chris: I think we should say it on the show. I feel guilty.
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Kayla: I have to scroll down now to my links. So this is a blog post from transcend me.
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Chris: Okay.
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Kayla: In 2018.
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Chris: Wait, can I get it's top three? Can I guess them?
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Kayla: Sure. You're not going to.
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Chris: I'm not. Oh, okay.
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Kayla: But try. Go ahead.
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Chris: So vitamin D is not one of them? Cause that was gonna be my.
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Kayla: That's not the top three. But I guarantee you he takes a.
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Chris: Vitamin D. I'm sure he takes vitamin D. All right. I don't know. He probably takes some weird thing. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. I'm sorry.
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Kayla: I only knew one of them. So he takes the first three. Number one, resveratrol.
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Chris: Oh, I have heard of that. I have heard of that. Isn't that the thing that's in wine?
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Kayla: Yes. Things in the skin of grapes. It's antioxidant in the skin of grapes.
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Chris: Okay.
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Kayla: Then there is phosphatidyl choline.
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Chris: Okay. I feel like I've heard that too.
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Kayla: I have heard choline, and I've heard choline largely as, like, a. It's kind of the new hot thing in, like, supporting natural fertility. And it's found in, like, eggs and kidney beans and cottage cheese. But then, like, okay, I don't know. I don't know why we need it. And I don't know what phosphatidyl is. I don't know.
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Chris: Probably has phosphate.
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Kayla: And then the number three is ubiquinol, which is an activated form of coq ten, which is.
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Chris: Oh, I almost said coq ten.
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Kayla: Coq ten's a biggie.
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Chris: Really?
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Kayla: Those are the top three. He takes 97 others. So, like, good luck.
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Chris: Is it successful? Does he look like a strapping, young 27 year old?
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Kayla: I don't think it matters how he looks. It's just.
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Chris: Does he feel like a strapping, young 27 year old, cancer free, regular bowel movement?
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Kayla: He's only 76. I thought he was much older than that. He'll live forever.
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Chris: That's pretty. He's cutting it close, man.
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Kayla: He'll be fine.
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Chris: But the question is, how does he feel? Right? Does he feel like he's 50?
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Kayla: You'll have to ask Ray.
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Chris: Well, why don't we have Ray on the show.
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Kayla: Maybe we will. I don't know.
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Chris: You can ask Emile. Emile worked with him.
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Kayla: So these are the kinds of things that are talked about in this community amongst cryonics and age reversal and all the other things related to kind of that. TESCREAL bundle. Let's go ahead and take a look at some of the services at the Church of perpetual life in order to better understand what I mean by big into health.
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Chris: Is this like goods and services? Or is this like.
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Kayla: No, I mean, like church service. Like literal church service.
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Chris: Okay. Okay.
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Kayla: This month, the church will host a service with Doctor Leslie Ray Matthews, a trauma surgeon, on the importance of vitamin D. Oh, boy. Particularly in recovery from trauma and illness, as well as, like, the general dangers of vitamin D deficiency. This doctor is very, like. He says that half the world's population is deficient in Vitamin D, and it's, like, really bad.
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Chris: See, the whole wellness bent here has just got me, like, really feeling sus. Like, I. I say this as someone who minds. Takes vitamin D himself.
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Kayla: I know, me too.
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Chris: I also am pretty sure that it's over hyped. So I. But, you know, I'm just a guy. I'm just a guy.
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Kayla: I don't know if that one is.
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Chris: I've seen some things written by people that we've had on the show before that are like, it's. If you see somebody, like, it's basically the one.
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Kayla: It's not a gift.
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Chris: It's not the one trickier thing.
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Kayla: No. If you're saying vitamin D is going to save your life. No. If you're saying vitamin D is probably good for you. Yes.
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Chris: Yeah, yeah. I think, like, as a. As a supplement is what it says. I think it's fine if it's like a. You know, nobody gets enough vitamin D. And if they did, then nobody would have cancer. Like, that obviously is not good.
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Kayla: In the past, other services have covered intermittent fasting to extend lifespan, using FDA approved drugs off label to reverse aging, fighting cancer with stem cell therapy, diets to detox, and quote unquote, reverse obesity, and kind of more of that ilk.
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Chris: Isn't calorie restriction actually a thing that's supported to show that it's. Or is that like rats? If rats eat less, they live longer? But we're not sure for humans, as.
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Kayla: Far as I understand, caloric restriction, particularly when, like, managed medically. And I don't mean, like, managed medically for weight loss. I mean managed medically for, like, ensuring that you're still getting all of your nutrition. But, like, restricting calories to a certain point has some efficacy in. What is it at the end of your DNA? Telomeres.
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Chris: Telomeres, yeah.
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Kayla: Like, making those better.
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Chris: Okay.
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Kayla: Which may be.
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Chris: May or may not contribute.
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Kayla: Yeah.
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Chris: Okay.
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Kayla: I think that all signs point to yes. But it's also, like, not a very practical, viable practice.
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Chris: Right. It also seems kind of, like, risky. Like, if you can do. If you can walk that road perfectly, then okay. But it's like, there's a lot of pitfalls.
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Kayla: And again, I looked into that particular thing, like, a decade ago, and that's when I learned, like, oh, there's some efficacy here. I don't know what the current research says, and I don't think it's, again, like, a super viable strategy for most people. So. Yeah. Like, the transhumanists, they overlap with. These guys care a lot about reversing aging, extending life. But the difference here between the church and other, like, transhumanist organizations, like humanity, is that the church really and truly is that it is a church. Like, the building itself is set up kind of like a traditional christian church where there's, like, a large room, there's wooden pews and rows facing a dais. Where officians lead these services.
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Chris: Is there, like, a crucifix and stuff?
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Kayla: There's not. Do they sing the world? There's a big logo. Their logo is kind of like a big, like, phoenix, like, on fire rising from the outside.
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Chris: Yeah, I think I've seen that. Okay, so they. I mean, that's essentially their crucifix.
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Kayla: Sure. Yeah. It's their. It's their religious icon.
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Chris: Right.
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Kayla: When you attend a service, as you and I did. Spoiler alert. Chris and I did.
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Chris: Maybe that's where I saw the phoenix thing.
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Kayla: Chris and I did attend on Zoom and on YouTube, one of the services, just to, like, get a feel for what's going on, see what they're talking about. And so there was music beforehand, and it was secular music. And this is kind of, again, another, like, unitarian universalist vibe, where secular music is used as, like, ritual.
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Chris: Was it a dark worship ritual? It was on theme. Right. It was like, it's forever young. It was forever young. Yeah. But it was, like, sung by lady.
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Kayla: The beautiful lady with microphone and guitar.
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Chris: Which is, like, such a churchy thing.
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Kayla: Yeah, it was wonderful. I really liked that part.
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Chris: Yeah.
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Kayla: Also, like other churches you might be familiar with, the church of perpetual life has recognized prophets. Like, they have two profits. We'll get into them in a moment.
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Chris: So they make money.
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Kayla: My head hurts. Prophets. Oh, you know what?
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Chris: You can't be mad at me for this. Cause you made that exact same joke I did when were doing the react for that first meal. Torres interview.
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Kayla: You should probably just throw me out the window.
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Chris: I want to.
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Kayla: They have a creed that reads a. I'm gonna read the whole thing. Quote, we believe that all of life is sacred and that we have been given this one life to make unlimited. We believe in our creator's divine plan for all of humanity to have infinite lifespans and perfect health and eternal joy, rendering death to be optional. By following our gospel, we achieve eternal life, creating a heaven here on earth. We follow Nikolai Fyodorov, who taught that the transcendence of the creator will only be solved when humanity, in our united efforts, become an instrument of universal resuscitation, when the divine word becomes our divine action.
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Chris: Is that one of their prophets?
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Kayla: Prophet number one. And we follow Arthur C. Clarke, who said the only way to discover the limits of the. Of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible. And so we. That's prophet number two.
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Chris: Arthur C. Clarke. Fanboy.
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Kayla: Yeah. And so we enter each day energized in spirit and empowered by the words of our prophets to live in joy, serving our creator and all of mankind forever and ever. End quote.
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Chris: Amen.
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Kayla: No. Amen. But forever and ever, I want to instinctually say on.
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Chris: Yeah. No. My brain filled it in.
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Kayla: Congregants refer to themselves as immortalists as a nod to their faith that humanity will one day beat death. They have defined purposes spelled out for the church, and this includes things like providing fellowship for longevity enthusiasts, teaching scientific rationality, along with, quote, the creator's plan that humanity evolved to achieve markedly extended healthy lifespans. Another purpose is to accelerate that plan. Another purpose is to create a sense of belonging and communal support to church members who become ill or hospitalized.
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Chris: That's nice.
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Kayla: Or, like, people who are just having health issues, because health issues are obviously very. They can be very distressing for this congregation.
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Chris: Yeah. I mean, for anybody, but maybe it sounds like them in particular.
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Kayla: And another purpose is to spread the word about the beliefs of the church so that others may become enlightened. But they're not like.
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Chris: So we're doing their work for them.
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Kayla: They're not big, as far as I understand. They're not big like, proselytizers and going out and trying to force people to convert. They're just like, here's our church chain of recruits.
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Chris: Low, I think.
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Kayla: So I don't get the sense that.
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Chris: They'Re like, they're not a pyramid scheme.
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Kayla: They're not a pyramid scheme from what I understand.
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Chris: And they're not like wellness grift, not pyramids.
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Kayla: They're not standing on street corners with pamphlets.
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Chris: Okay.
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Kayla: All in all, seems like a pretty cool place.
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Chris: Yeah, it seems chill. The one that went to seemed chill, if a little tedious.
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Kayla: It's really hard for me to sit on zoom for 2 hours anymore. Like the pandemic ruined me for church services on zoom.
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Chris: Although to be fair, like if I went to a catholic mass that lasted 2 hours as a kid, I think my head would have exploded.
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Kayla: Yeah, it's not a terribly large church from what I can surmise. So they have about 4500 subscribers on YouTube. And when we attended the service, there was, I think maybe a couple dozen folks in the pews and then a couple dozen additional folks watching on the Zoom YouTube stream. As mentioned, their prophets are science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke. So that's the author of the 2001 Space Odyssey series of novels. And he was also a lifelong proponent of space travel. Big on that.
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Chris: Oh yeah. He's also the. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
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Kayla: And they quote that. They quote. That's important to them.
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Chris: Yeah, yeah.
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Kayla: The other prophet we mentioned is russian philosopher Nikolai Fyodorov, a religious thinker and futurist responsible for the russian cosmism movement.
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Chris: Oh, that's him.
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Kayla: That's him.
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Chris: That's why I know that name. Because cosmism is the sea in Tescriel.
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Kayla: Cosmism is the sea in Tescreal. Russian cosmism is obviously the precursor to cosmism, and russian cosmism is actually the precursor to transhumanism in general.
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Chris: Right. It's like. Yeah, some of the soil out of which transhumanism grew.
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Kayla: Right.
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Chris: From what I understand from discussing with Doctor Torres a little bit off podcast, there's definitely a gap in between russian cosmism, pure russian cosmic how it was back then, and what they and Doctor Gebru talk about now as the C in TESCREAL is a little bit different. It's like modern cosmism.
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Kayla: I'm sure they're very different, but we'll.
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Chris: Maybe get to that a little bit. But they're different but same kind of.
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Kayla: Yeah. We'll get more into russian cosmism in a future episode because we want to hit the C in TESCREAL, see it.
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Chris: Up like my grades.
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Kayla: So I don't want to talk too much about Fedorov here. I also think it's important to note that while these are both their prophets, everything I've seen, there's kind of, like, more emphasis on Fedorov than Clarke. Like, he's kind of the more central figure.
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Chris: Yeah, interesting. I mean, I guess maybe because Clark is more of a fiction writer, whereas Fyodorov was more of, like, a philosopher, ideology thinker. Yeah.
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Kayla: So hold that thought. We will get back to Fyodorov one day, but let's talk about some other speakers that have been invited to proselytize at the Church of perpetual life.
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Chris: Okay.
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Kayla: There are a number of usual suspects. We have, of course, Ray Kurzweil, like, most recently, he did, like, a fireside chat eight months ago. We've had services led by Doctor Max Moore, who is the former CEO of Alcor and a key figure in birthing.
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Chris: The transhumanist movement, heavily involved in humanity plus, and essentially the creator of extropianism.
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Kayla: Right. Then there are some other figures that are maybe less well known to you and me and those listening, but are key intestinal circles, such as biomedical gerontologist Aubrey de Grey and Liz Parrish, who is CEO of gene therapy company Bioviva, who, like, we could probably do an entire episode on Bioviva. Go Google Bioviva. There's some interesting articles out there.
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Chris: Viviviva, labio.
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Kayla: And then, unfortunately, there are some speakers who, in my opinion, are pretty big red flags, such as chiropractor and water only fasting enthusiast doctor Frank Sabatino, who I do not know anything about, but just the words chiropractor and water fasting only are red flags to me.
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Chris: Oh, that's not good. Chiropractor by itself would have been like, okay. Water fasting by itself would have been like, no.
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Kayla: And James Stroll and Bernadine, who are the leaders of people unlimited, a new religious movement that we've mentioned earlier that once claimed humans could achieve immortality via will. That was when there were three leaders, and one of the leaders died.
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Chris: One of them died, and now they're pivoted to cry on.
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Kayla: They embrace cryonics as well as other life extending technologies. So it's a little.
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Chris: Okay. I mean, I can see where it's, like, the Venn diagram kind of, like, brushes up against that for these guys, but still, I don't know. That's a flag for sure.
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Kayla: I want to bring these people up, not because I want to knock the church or do some sort of, like, gotcha. These guys suck. No, I just want to showcase, like, what you're talking about, how even these organizations that identify as pro science or science based can often not really hold hard and fast to that claim. And I think that's doubly true when we're dealing with organizations who are embracing things like fringe science, protoscience, pseudoscience, or even, like, you know, cutting edge science.
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Chris: Or hope based science.
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Kayla: The church of perpetual life is not necessarily having mainstream scientists in on the regular to talk about, like, advances in mainstream medicine. It's more about scientists, academics, and business people who embrace the speculation of life extension. And that can make for some pretty strange bedfellows, such as, like, telecommunications, satellite lawyers, turned bioethics lawyers, with groups like people unlimited who have been labeled elsewhere as a cult. Martine Rothblatt is.
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Chris: That was a hell of a sentence.
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Kayla: Martine Rothblatt has spoken there several times, and she is, like, a big activist in this biohacking life extension stuff.
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Chris: Yeah. Isn't she the CEO of some tech company that does some of this, or my.
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Kayla: Yeah, I think so. She also started SiriusXM. Yeah. Oh, she started as. This is like, she's the coolest person. She started as a satellite communications lawyer and then became a bioethics lawyer.
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Chris: Did not know that.
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Kayla: Yeah.
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Chris: Did not know that. Backstory.
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Kayla: Yes.
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Chris: Okay.
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Kayla: So, yeah, so I just wanted to bring that up. And, like, a lot of these people get in bed with some people that you and I think are red flaggy. Like, again, this goes back to how we talked about Radfest, back with cryonics. But, like, you know, Alcor is not this style of. Is currently not this style of, like, faith based science.
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Chris: Right.
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Kayla: But that doesn't mean that places like Alcor don't have a presence or it doesn't mean that Alcor members don't go to things like Radfest that is run by groups affiliated with people Unlimited. And, like, people unlimited and their, like, other companies do things explicitly with, like, Aubrey de Grey. And there's a really interesting overlap here that we keep running into this season, and it popped up again here.
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Chris: Yeah, I think. Yeah, that makes sense because it feels like these topics tend to be on that sort of gray area in between, like, science and speculation and hope and, I don't know, some pseudoscience is gonna get in there, you know?
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Kayla: Yeah. And, like, I wonder how that. I wonder. I wonder if that. What the history of that is, because I do think of some of these, like, big science names that we think of, you know, the Arthur C. Clarks. Sure. But then also, like, I don't know, you just watched a TikTok of like, famous quotes from, like, all of these famous scientists, like, Heisenberg and Oppenheimer and Newton and blah, blah. And, like, they're very spiritual, and they're very pro. Like. Speculation is very important. Like, the quote from Einstein is, like, imagination is more important than knowledge. That kind of shit.
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Chris: Right, right.
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Kayla: So I think that science itself kind of has to be in bed with his stuff sometimes.
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Chris: Yeah.
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Kayla: And that's dangerous sometimes, but also, like, necessary at other times. I don't know.
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Chris: It's very messy to analyze.
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Kayla: Yeah.
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Chris: There definitely isn't, like, an easy answer of, like, oh, they went to that club. That's not good.
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Kayla: Right.
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Chris: It's more of like, well, I mean, I get why they went to that club. And there's some people that are good at that club, and then. But there's other people that I don't know about at that club. I don't know.
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Kayla: And, like, who's to say that scientists aren't allowed to, like, have fun speculating about shit?
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Chris: Right, right. And then there's also the conflation of, like, science isn't a, like. Right monolith. You know, there's no church of science. Right, right. There's just groups, and science is a tool that is used, and some groups may like that tool better than others.
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Kayla: And then there's also, like, hey, come to our church. We're, like, super mortalist, and then this guy's gonna, like, sell his vitamin D pills to you. I don't know if that guy sells vitamin D, but, like, there are people that come to do services. There are people that come and do services about, like, how their detox program is, like, going to save your life and reverse your aging and how their supplements are the thing. And that's also another overlap that gives me pause.
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Chris: Right.
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Kayla: Okay. So we've talked a lot about the beliefs foundational to the church, the prophets, the services, the speakers, but who actually founded the church itself? Who is the man behind the curtain? Next week on call to just weird. We're going to meet a man named Bill Falloon and learn more about his journey to founding the church of perpetual life, as well as other life extension efforts and controversies he's got under his belt.
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Chris: Looking forward to it.
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Kayla: This is Kayla, this is Chris, and.
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Chris: This has been cult or just perpetual life here.
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Kayla: We believe that all of life is sacred and that we have been given this one life to make unlimited. We believe in our creator's divine plan for all of humanity to have infinite lifespans and perfect health and eternal joy, rendering death to be optional. By following our gospel, we achieve eternal life, creating a heaven here on earth. Hey, Chris.
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Chris: Hey, Kayla.
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Kayla: I don't have an intro for you today.
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Chris: I think that was it.
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Kayla: That was the intro. Welcome to Culture. Just weird. I'm Kayla. I'm a tv writer.
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Chris: Thanks. I'm glad to be here.
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Kayla: Who are you?
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Chris: Oh, I'm Chris. I am not a tv writer.
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Kayla: No, you're not.
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Chris: I'm a data analyst and game designer and podcaster.
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Kayla: And we are here today to talk about cults or just weirds. That's what we do here on the show. Thank you for listening.
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Chris: Thank you for being here.
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Kayla: Before we jump into the topic today, which I'm very excited about, I've been kind of sitting on this one for a minute. We need to take a minute to shout out our newest Patreon patrons. So thank you very much to GD and Ello, who have signed up for our Patreon, where they get exclusive access to our discord. Different things on Patreon. If you want to support the show, go to patreon.com culture. Just weird. And if you also want to hang out on the, you know, free version of the discord, which is still very.
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Chris: Cool, which is crappy, don't. Oh, sorry.
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Kayla: It's extremely cool. We talk about very cool things. You can check it out in the show notes.
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Chris: Yeah, thanks, GD. And you said, lo el. Is it like el o ello or e l l o e?
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Kayla: L l o e l o.
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Chris: E? No, it's oe. Yeah. I don't know. Is that like, how, like, a cockney accent says hello? Like, ello, govna.
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Kayla: Yes, it's actually. That's the first name. Ello. Last name Guvna.
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Chris: Last name's Guvna. Okay, well, thanks for being our patron.
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Kayla: Thank you to our patrons and thank you to all of our listeners. And now, Chris, if you're ready, we can just hop on in.
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Chris: The question is, are you ready?
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Kayla: I mean, yes, I'm the one who.
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Chris: You're doing the.
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Kayla: Wrote the script for the episode and prepared the topic.
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Chris: And, you know, thank you for doing that.
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Kayla: You're welcome. Okay, Chris, we have taken a kind of long and winding road deep into the land of Tessreol. By way, initially of cryonics and humanity plus and transhumanism. And those topics kind of feel, like, far in the rear view now because we've gone so deep, and I know we're going to continue going deeper into that acronym. That's what she said, tess. Real. What is it? Transhumanism?
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Chris: Extropianism?
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Kayla: Singularitarianism.
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Chris: You know, I prefer to say singularity. Wait, no, actually, I don't know what I prefer.
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Kayla: You don't know what you say. Singularityists. What's the c. Cosmism? Rationalist.
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Chris: We did that one. That was less wrong.
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Kayla: Effective altruists and long termism.
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Chris: Right.
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Kayla: That's the bundle that we're kind of focusing on these days. But those initial topics of, like, cryonics and humanity, plus that was, like, episodes and episodes ago at this point. Seasons, like, now we're talking about AGI and, like, expanding human life across the universe, and, like, trillions and trillions of people. And it's a lot motes of dust, a lot of TESCREAL ideologies as well as cryonics. And everything we've talked about so far this season are based largely on, like, the trappings of science or scientific ideas, rational thinking, technology, logic. But as we've discussed, these ideologies butt up against the spiritual. Yeah, I said, but because we're talking about in the same breath, we're talking about things like immortality, the meaning of life, the meaning of death, and what lies beyond.
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Chris: Right, right. It just kind of feels like a different means to the same sort of, like, end that a lot of religions talk about.
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Kayla: Right. So I want to know if. Is it a topic that, well, related to tessarial and the like? Takes a little bit of a different approach, one that is decidedly spiritual or religious, or at least adopts the aesthetics of the spiritual or religious, like, the hard signifiers, stuff that's more in line of what we think about when we think about. Yeah, religion in general.
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Chris: So this is not just like, podcasters being like, you know what? It's kind of like a religion. This is more like them being like, no, yeah, it is. No, that's. That's what we're saying today.
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Kayla: We're talking about something called the Church of Perpetual Life.
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Chris: Church. Okay, so I've heard the word church before. Yeah, I think I.
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Kayla: Where have you heard that word before?
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Chris: Like, with religions? Christianity, I think, is one of them.
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Kayla: Yes.
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Chris: That uses that word.
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Kayla: Yep. Okay, so you kind of know what we're talking about. There's a lot to say about the church of perpetual life, but first and foremost, this is an organization, a community a congregation that is driven by hope. It is optimistic, future oriented, pro science, and of course, a little complicated.
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Chris: What? No, everything's always perfect whenever we talk about anything.
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Kayla: The church is a 501 c three located in Pompano Beach, Florida, just outside Fort Lauderdale. For you Floridians, have you heard about the Church of Perpetual life, Mister Florida?
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Chris: No. I mean, not before you were starting to do these topics.
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Kayla: Yeah, actually. I mean, I guess it opened in 2013 and you had moved out of Florida before then. It has since opened in 2013.
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Chris: They probably waited till I left.
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Kayla: Honestly, they needed to get you out of that state.
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Chris: Like, we don't want that guy to live forever.
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Kayla: No, get him out of here. It hosts monthly services for its congregants, has done so since 2013, both in person and online. The church describes itself as, quote, the only science faith based church in the world. And what's another one?
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Chris: I just think that there are other groups that would at least make the claim to be science based. I don't know. Like church, though.
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Kayla: Not group, not organization, not club, not cohort church.
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Chris: What's Christian Science? Is that a science? That's not a science, is it? Is Scientology a science?
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Kayla: Do you think Scientology would consider themselves a science faith based church? I don't know.
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Chris: I'm not sure. I just. Okay. All I'm saying is, like, it's a big world with a lot of groups, and there's probably at least one, right?
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Kayla: I mean, whatever. This is their claim, okay? I am not here to debunk it. This is simply their claim.
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Chris: All right, fair enough.
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Kayla: Fair enough. This church serves as a place where people can come together over a shared faith in physical immortality. The church believes that unlimited lifespans are mankind's destiny as desired by something they refer to as the creator.
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Chris: Do they use the word faith?
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Kayla: Yes.
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Chris: Okay.
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Kayla: Like, a lot. It's very important. Its followers want to be part of the effort to bring that reality into existence. The church has members who are otherwise christian, jewish, Hindu, buddhist, atheist, humanist, transhumanist, and anyone interested in, quote, age reversal, cryonics, and the singularity.
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Chris: So this isn't like, if I go to a baptist church, I'm like, I can't be a Catholic anymore. This is like, whatever you can be both.
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Kayla: I see some similarities between this and, like, the unitarian universalist organizations, where it's a church that is welcoming to members of all faiths, belief systems, lack thereof, secularness, et cetera. But this has a specific faith in technologies that will extend our life.
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Chris: You know, I say that, and I'm like, I don't know. I don't think the Baptists would care that I was confirmed. And I don't think if I went back to my catholic church, they'd be like, no, no, you can't come back in.
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Kayla: But it's not necessarily explicit that, like, our congregation is made up of a variety of different faiths.
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Chris: Right. That's not, like an advertised.
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Kayla: Our congregation is made up of Catholics.
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Chris: Right, right.
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Kayla: Or people seeking to be Catholic. I don't know. I don't know. I don't speak for churches. So as mentioned with this whole, like, age reversal, cryonics, singularity bent, cryonics is central to the church. If you go on their website, there's a whole section, like, its own dedicated section about cryonics. Entirely about cryonics. There's advertisements for cryonics conferences.
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Chris: They're friends with Aldouse. What are they friends with? Al.
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Kayla: Isn't that an aa thing?
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Chris: Alcor.
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Kayla: Alcor. That sounds like an aa thing. Oh, no, it's friends of Bill. Friends of Bill W. Friends of Bill W is an aa thing.
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Chris: No, this is friends of Alcor.
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Kayla: Friends of Alcor is. They are friends of Alcor. They advertise Alcor. They advertise cryonics Institute. I think they advertise other cryonics companies. They're big on this, quote, ambulance into the future thing.
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Chris: Ambulance into the future.
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Kayla: Yeah. Which is something that I think I first heard cryogenator say when we did our interview. And that is also explicitly like, that wording is used on their website.
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Chris: Interesting.
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Kayla: And that, of course, makes sense if you believe the future holds the key to immortality.
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Chris: Right.
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Kayla: It makes sense that cryonics would go hand in hand with a congregation that is like.
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Chris: Right, right. Freeze me till they figure this out.
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Kayla: Yeah. They're also really big into health. Like, really big.
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Chris: When you say health, we'll get to that.
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Kayla: I thought that this church was, like, when I first started doing this, I thought it was mostly about cryonics. I kind of think it's mostly kind of like, transhumanism is actually largely centered around life extension in general with, like. It's more about the radical life extension technology. And so there's this huge emphasis on individuals kind of, like, taking charge of their own health to ensure the most longevity.
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Chris: So, like, Ray Kurzweil's book, live long enough to live forever.
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Kayla: Yes.
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Chris: Basically the.
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Kayla: And hold that thought, because we're gonna get to Mister Kurzweil in, like, two sentences.
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Chris: We're always talking about Ray Kurt, I.
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Kayla: Know I'm never not thinking about Ray Kurzweil. Presumably this is so that they can all live again, live long enough to hit the singularity or longevity escape velocity, or whatever you want to call it.
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Chris: Oh, yeah, I heard you using that word. Okay, that's. Yeah, that's such an interesting turn of phrase.
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Kayla: I think the first place I heard about it, or I definitely came across longevity escape velocity while I was researching cryonics. I think that we talked about it with crashing as well. And it basically refers to, like, if you google it, the Wikipedia is. It's a hypothetical situation in which one's remaining life expectancy, not your life expectancy at birth. Your remaining life expectancy is extended longer than the time that is passing. Does that make sense?
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Chris: Yeah. Live long enough to live forever.
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Kayla: Yeah.
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Chris: It's that you expect that in the remaining time you have, there will be more years added to your life via technology than the time you have left.
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Kayla: Correct?
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Chris: Yeah. Okay.
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Kayla: So because of this focus and, like, gotta live forever, there is a huge emphasis on vitamins, supplements, and other health aids or biohacking techniques that purport to increase health and extend life expectancy.
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Chris: Which vitamin do I need to take?
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Kayla: Well, if we're talking. If we're gonna call this the Ray Kurzweil approach, since he's known in pro singularity communities for supplementing himself to the extreme, he's taking like, 100 plus pills a day.
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Chris: Holy shit. Is he eating food?
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Kayla: Like, back in, I think, 2008, there was an article about how he was taking. Supposedly he was taking more than that at the time. He was taking, like, 250 pills a day.
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Chris: How did he even do that?
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Kayla: There was rumors and articles about how he. He didn't. He had, like, a hired person who was, like, his pill manager.
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Chris: Oh, my God.
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Kayla: I cannot confirm or deny this, but that is the story around.
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Chris: Does he have a blood boy?
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Kayla: I wouldn't be surprised.
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Chris: We should definitely do blood boy for the show.
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Kayla: We should definitely do blood boys.
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Chris: That didn't sound very good the way I said it.
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Kayla: No, it did not cover blood boys on the show.
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Chris: Cover the topic of blood boys on the show.
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Kayla: So, yeah, so, I mean, he's doing these 100 plus pills a day. He's also doing iv infusions and other strategies in order to live long enough to upload to the cloud or whatever the hell the singularities could be.
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Chris: So if he's not doing blood boy, he's at least doing something directly into his veins.
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Kayla: There is an article that I'll link where he gives his three most important vitamins. If you want to get on the Ray Kurzweil train, go in our show notes. I'll link to that.
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Chris: Oh, my God, Caleb, that is so clickbaity of you.
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Kayla: I just don't remember what they are.
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Chris: I think we should say it on the show. I feel guilty.
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Kayla: I have to scroll down now to my links. So this is a blog post from transcend me.
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Chris: Okay.
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Kayla: In 2018.
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Chris: Wait, can I get it's top three? Can I guess them?
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Kayla: Sure. You're not going to.
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Chris: I'm not. Oh, okay.
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Kayla: But try. Go ahead.
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Chris: So vitamin D is not one of them? Cause that was gonna be my.
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Kayla: That's not the top three. But I guarantee you he takes a.
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Chris: Vitamin D. I'm sure he takes vitamin D. All right. I don't know. He probably takes some weird thing. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. I'm sorry.
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Kayla: I only knew one of them. So he takes the first three. Number one, resveratrol.
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Chris: Oh, I have heard of that. I have heard of that. Isn't that the thing that's in wine?
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Kayla: Yes. Things in the skin of grapes. It's antioxidant in the skin of grapes.
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Chris: Okay.
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Kayla: Then there is phosphatidyl choline.
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Chris: Okay. I feel like I've heard that too.
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Kayla: I have heard choline, and I've heard choline largely as, like, a. It's kind of the new hot thing in, like, supporting natural fertility. And it's found in, like, eggs and kidney beans and cottage cheese. But then, like, okay, I don't know. I don't know why we need it. And I don't know what phosphatidyl is. I don't know.
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Chris: Probably has phosphate.
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Kayla: And then the number three is ubiquinol, which is an activated form of coq ten, which is.
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Chris: Oh, I almost said coq ten.
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Kayla: Coq ten's a biggie.
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Chris: Really?
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Kayla: Those are the top three. He takes 97 others. So, like, good luck.
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Chris: Is it successful? Does he look like a strapping, young 27 year old?
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Kayla: I don't think it matters how he looks. It's just.
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Chris: Does he feel like a strapping, young 27 year old, cancer free, regular bowel movement?
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Kayla: He's only 76. I thought he was much older than that. He'll live forever.
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Chris: That's pretty. He's cutting it close, man.
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Kayla: He'll be fine.
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Chris: But the question is, how does he feel? Right? Does he feel like he's 50?
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Kayla: You'll have to ask Ray.
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Chris: Well, why don't we have Ray on the show.
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Kayla: Maybe we will. I don't know.
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Chris: You can ask Emile. Emile worked with him.
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Kayla: So these are the kinds of things that are talked about in this community amongst cryonics and age reversal and all the other things related to kind of that. TESCREAL bundle. Let's go ahead and take a look at some of the services at the Church of perpetual life in order to better understand what I mean by big into health.
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Chris: Is this like goods and services? Or is this like.
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Kayla: No, I mean, like church service. Like literal church service.
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Chris: Okay. Okay.
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Kayla: This month, the church will host a service with Doctor Leslie Ray Matthews, a trauma surgeon, on the importance of vitamin D. Oh, boy. Particularly in recovery from trauma and illness, as well as, like, the general dangers of vitamin D deficiency. This doctor is very, like. He says that half the world's population is deficient in Vitamin D, and it's, like, really bad.
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Chris: See, the whole wellness bent here has just got me, like, really feeling sus. Like, I. I say this as someone who minds. Takes vitamin D himself.
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Kayla: I know, me too.
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Chris: I also am pretty sure that it's over hyped. So I. But, you know, I'm just a guy. I'm just a guy.
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Kayla: I don't know if that one is.
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Chris: I've seen some things written by people that we've had on the show before that are like, it's. If you see somebody, like, it's basically the one.
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Kayla: It's not a gift.
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Chris: It's not the one trickier thing.
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Kayla: No. If you're saying vitamin D is going to save your life. No. If you're saying vitamin D is probably good for you. Yes.
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Chris: Yeah, yeah. I think, like, as a. As a supplement is what it says. I think it's fine if it's like a. You know, nobody gets enough vitamin D. And if they did, then nobody would have cancer. Like, that obviously is not good.
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Kayla: In the past, other services have covered intermittent fasting to extend lifespan, using FDA approved drugs off label to reverse aging, fighting cancer with stem cell therapy, diets to detox, and quote unquote, reverse obesity, and kind of more of that ilk.
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Chris: Isn't calorie restriction actually a thing that's supported to show that it's. Or is that like rats? If rats eat less, they live longer? But we're not sure for humans, as.
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Kayla: Far as I understand, caloric restriction, particularly when, like, managed medically. And I don't mean, like, managed medically for weight loss. I mean managed medically for, like, ensuring that you're still getting all of your nutrition. But, like, restricting calories to a certain point has some efficacy in. What is it at the end of your DNA? Telomeres.
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Chris: Telomeres, yeah.
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Kayla: Like, making those better.
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Chris: Okay.
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Kayla: Which may be.
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Chris: May or may not contribute.
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Kayla: Yeah.
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Chris: Okay.
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Kayla: I think that all signs point to yes. But it's also, like, not a very practical, viable practice.
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Chris: Right. It also seems kind of, like, risky. Like, if you can do. If you can walk that road perfectly, then okay. But it's like, there's a lot of pitfalls.
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Kayla: And again, I looked into that particular thing, like, a decade ago, and that's when I learned, like, oh, there's some efficacy here. I don't know what the current research says, and I don't think it's, again, like, a super viable strategy for most people. So. Yeah. Like, the transhumanists, they overlap with. These guys care a lot about reversing aging, extending life. But the difference here between the church and other, like, transhumanist organizations, like humanity, is that the church really and truly is that it is a church. Like, the building itself is set up kind of like a traditional christian church where there's, like, a large room, there's wooden pews and rows facing a dais. Where officians lead these services.
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Chris: Is there, like, a crucifix and stuff?
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Kayla: There's not. Do they sing the world? There's a big logo. Their logo is kind of like a big, like, phoenix, like, on fire rising from the outside.
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Chris: Yeah, I think I've seen that. Okay, so they. I mean, that's essentially their crucifix.
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Kayla: Sure. Yeah. It's their. It's their religious icon.
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Chris: Right.
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Kayla: When you attend a service, as you and I did. Spoiler alert. Chris and I did.
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Chris: Maybe that's where I saw the phoenix thing.
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Kayla: Chris and I did attend on Zoom and on YouTube, one of the services, just to, like, get a feel for what's going on, see what they're talking about. And so there was music beforehand, and it was secular music. And this is kind of, again, another, like, unitarian universalist vibe, where secular music is used as, like, ritual.
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Chris: Was it a dark worship ritual? It was on theme. Right. It was like, it's forever young. It was forever young. Yeah. But it was, like, sung by lady.
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Kayla: The beautiful lady with microphone and guitar.
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Chris: Which is, like, such a churchy thing.
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Kayla: Yeah, it was wonderful. I really liked that part.
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Chris: Yeah.
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Kayla: Also, like other churches you might be familiar with, the church of perpetual life has recognized prophets. Like, they have two profits. We'll get into them in a moment.
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Chris: So they make money.
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Kayla: My head hurts. Prophets. Oh, you know what?
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Chris: You can't be mad at me for this. Cause you made that exact same joke I did when were doing the react for that first meal. Torres interview.
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Kayla: You should probably just throw me out the window.
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Chris: I want to.
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Kayla: They have a creed that reads a. I'm gonna read the whole thing. Quote, we believe that all of life is sacred and that we have been given this one life to make unlimited. We believe in our creator's divine plan for all of humanity to have infinite lifespans and perfect health and eternal joy, rendering death to be optional. By following our gospel, we achieve eternal life, creating a heaven here on earth. We follow Nikolai Fyodorov, who taught that the transcendence of the creator will only be solved when humanity, in our united efforts, become an instrument of universal resuscitation, when the divine word becomes our divine action.
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Chris: Is that one of their prophets?
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Kayla: Prophet number one. And we follow Arthur C. Clarke, who said the only way to discover the limits of the. Of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible. And so we. That's prophet number two.
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Chris: Arthur C. Clarke. Fanboy.
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Kayla: Yeah. And so we enter each day energized in spirit and empowered by the words of our prophets to live in joy, serving our creator and all of mankind forever and ever. End quote.
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Chris: Amen.
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Kayla: No. Amen. But forever and ever, I want to instinctually say on.
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Chris: Yeah. No. My brain filled it in.
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Kayla: Congregants refer to themselves as immortalists as a nod to their faith that humanity will one day beat death. They have defined purposes spelled out for the church, and this includes things like providing fellowship for longevity enthusiasts, teaching scientific rationality, along with, quote, the creator's plan that humanity evolved to achieve markedly extended healthy lifespans. Another purpose is to accelerate that plan. Another purpose is to create a sense of belonging and communal support to church members who become ill or hospitalized.
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Chris: That's nice.
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Kayla: Or, like, people who are just having health issues, because health issues are obviously very. They can be very distressing for this congregation.
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Chris: Yeah. I mean, for anybody, but maybe it sounds like them in particular.
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Kayla: And another purpose is to spread the word about the beliefs of the church so that others may become enlightened. But they're not like.
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Chris: So we're doing their work for them.
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Kayla: They're not big, as far as I understand. They're not big like, proselytizers and going out and trying to force people to convert. They're just like, here's our church chain of recruits.
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Chris: Low, I think.
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Kayla: So I don't get the sense that.
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Chris: They'Re like, they're not a pyramid scheme.
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Kayla: They're not a pyramid scheme from what I understand.
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Chris: And they're not like wellness grift, not pyramids.
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Kayla: They're not standing on street corners with pamphlets.
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Chris: Okay.
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Kayla: All in all, seems like a pretty cool place.
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Chris: Yeah, it seems chill. The one that went to seemed chill, if a little tedious.
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Kayla: It's really hard for me to sit on zoom for 2 hours anymore. Like the pandemic ruined me for church services on zoom.
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Chris: Although to be fair, like if I went to a catholic mass that lasted 2 hours as a kid, I think my head would have exploded.
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Kayla: Yeah, it's not a terribly large church from what I can surmise. So they have about 4500 subscribers on YouTube. And when we attended the service, there was, I think maybe a couple dozen folks in the pews and then a couple dozen additional folks watching on the Zoom YouTube stream. As mentioned, their prophets are science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke. So that's the author of the 2001 Space Odyssey series of novels. And he was also a lifelong proponent of space travel. Big on that.
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Chris: Oh yeah. He's also the. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
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Kayla: And they quote that. They quote. That's important to them.
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Chris: Yeah, yeah.
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Kayla: The other prophet we mentioned is russian philosopher Nikolai Fyodorov, a religious thinker and futurist responsible for the russian cosmism movement.
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Chris: Oh, that's him.
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Kayla: That's him.
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Chris: That's why I know that name. Because cosmism is the sea in Tescriel.
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Kayla: Cosmism is the sea in Tescreal. Russian cosmism is obviously the precursor to cosmism, and russian cosmism is actually the precursor to transhumanism in general.
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Chris: Right. It's like. Yeah, some of the soil out of which transhumanism grew.
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Kayla: Right.
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Chris: From what I understand from discussing with Doctor Torres a little bit off podcast, there's definitely a gap in between russian cosmism, pure russian cosmic how it was back then, and what they and Doctor Gebru talk about now as the C in TESCREAL is a little bit different. It's like modern cosmism.
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Kayla: I'm sure they're very different, but we'll.
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Chris: Maybe get to that a little bit. But they're different but same kind of.
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Kayla: Yeah. We'll get more into russian cosmism in a future episode because we want to hit the C in TESCREAL, see it.
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Chris: Up like my grades.
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Kayla: So I don't want to talk too much about Fedorov here. I also think it's important to note that while these are both their prophets, everything I've seen, there's kind of, like, more emphasis on Fedorov than Clarke. Like, he's kind of the more central figure.
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Chris: Yeah, interesting. I mean, I guess maybe because Clark is more of a fiction writer, whereas Fyodorov was more of, like, a philosopher, ideology thinker. Yeah.
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Kayla: So hold that thought. We will get back to Fyodorov one day, but let's talk about some other speakers that have been invited to proselytize at the Church of perpetual life.
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Chris: Okay.
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Kayla: There are a number of usual suspects. We have, of course, Ray Kurzweil, like, most recently, he did, like, a fireside chat eight months ago. We've had services led by Doctor Max Moore, who is the former CEO of Alcor and a key figure in birthing.
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Chris: The transhumanist movement, heavily involved in humanity plus, and essentially the creator of extropianism.
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Kayla: Right. Then there are some other figures that are maybe less well known to you and me and those listening, but are key intestinal circles, such as biomedical gerontologist Aubrey de Grey and Liz Parrish, who is CEO of gene therapy company Bioviva, who, like, we could probably do an entire episode on Bioviva. Go Google Bioviva. There's some interesting articles out there.
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Chris: Viviviva, labio.
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Kayla: And then, unfortunately, there are some speakers who, in my opinion, are pretty big red flags, such as chiropractor and water only fasting enthusiast doctor Frank Sabatino, who I do not know anything about, but just the words chiropractor and water fasting only are red flags to me.
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Chris: Oh, that's not good. Chiropractor by itself would have been like, okay. Water fasting by itself would have been like, no.
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Kayla: And James Stroll and Bernadine, who are the leaders of people unlimited, a new religious movement that we've mentioned earlier that once claimed humans could achieve immortality via will. That was when there were three leaders, and one of the leaders died.
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Chris: One of them died, and now they're pivoted to cry on.
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Kayla: They embrace cryonics as well as other life extending technologies. So it's a little.
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Chris: Okay. I mean, I can see where it's, like, the Venn diagram kind of, like, brushes up against that for these guys, but still, I don't know. That's a flag for sure.
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Kayla: I want to bring these people up, not because I want to knock the church or do some sort of, like, gotcha. These guys suck. No, I just want to showcase, like, what you're talking about, how even these organizations that identify as pro science or science based can often not really hold hard and fast to that claim. And I think that's doubly true when we're dealing with organizations who are embracing things like fringe science, protoscience, pseudoscience, or even, like, you know, cutting edge science.
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Chris: Or hope based science.
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Kayla: The church of perpetual life is not necessarily having mainstream scientists in on the regular to talk about, like, advances in mainstream medicine. It's more about scientists, academics, and business people who embrace the speculation of life extension. And that can make for some pretty strange bedfellows, such as, like, telecommunications, satellite lawyers, turned bioethics lawyers, with groups like people unlimited who have been labeled elsewhere as a cult. Martine Rothblatt is.
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Chris: That was a hell of a sentence.
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Kayla: Martine Rothblatt has spoken there several times, and she is, like, a big activist in this biohacking life extension stuff.
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Chris: Yeah. Isn't she the CEO of some tech company that does some of this, or my.
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Kayla: Yeah, I think so. She also started SiriusXM. Yeah. Oh, she started as. This is like, she's the coolest person. She started as a satellite communications lawyer and then became a bioethics lawyer.
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Chris: Did not know that.
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Kayla: Yeah.
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Chris: Did not know that. Backstory.
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Kayla: Yes.
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Chris: Okay.
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Kayla: So, yeah, so I just wanted to bring that up. And, like, a lot of these people get in bed with some people that you and I think are red flaggy. Like, again, this goes back to how we talked about Radfest, back with cryonics. But, like, you know, Alcor is not this style of. Is currently not this style of, like, faith based science.
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Chris: Right.
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Kayla: But that doesn't mean that places like Alcor don't have a presence or it doesn't mean that Alcor members don't go to things like Radfest that is run by groups affiliated with people Unlimited. And, like, people unlimited and their, like, other companies do things explicitly with, like, Aubrey de Grey. And there's a really interesting overlap here that we keep running into this season, and it popped up again here.
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Chris: Yeah, I think. Yeah, that makes sense because it feels like these topics tend to be on that sort of gray area in between, like, science and speculation and hope and, I don't know, some pseudoscience is gonna get in there, you know?
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Kayla: Yeah. And, like, I wonder how that. I wonder. I wonder if that. What the history of that is, because I do think of some of these, like, big science names that we think of, you know, the Arthur C. Clarks. Sure. But then also, like, I don't know, you just watched a TikTok of like, famous quotes from, like, all of these famous scientists, like, Heisenberg and Oppenheimer and Newton and blah, blah. And, like, they're very spiritual, and they're very pro. Like. Speculation is very important. Like, the quote from Einstein is, like, imagination is more important than knowledge. That kind of shit.
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Chris: Right, right.
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Kayla: So I think that science itself kind of has to be in bed with his stuff sometimes.
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Chris: Yeah.
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Kayla: And that's dangerous sometimes, but also, like, necessary at other times. I don't know.
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Chris: It's very messy to analyze.
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Kayla: Yeah.
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Chris: There definitely isn't, like, an easy answer of, like, oh, they went to that club. That's not good.
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Kayla: Right.
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Chris: It's more of like, well, I mean, I get why they went to that club. And there's some people that are good at that club, and then. But there's other people that I don't know about at that club. I don't know.
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Kayla: And, like, who's to say that scientists aren't allowed to, like, have fun speculating about shit?
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Chris: Right, right. And then there's also the conflation of, like, science isn't a, like. Right monolith. You know, there's no church of science. Right, right. There's just groups, and science is a tool that is used, and some groups may like that tool better than others.
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Kayla: And then there's also, like, hey, come to our church. We're, like, super mortalist, and then this guy's gonna, like, sell his vitamin D pills to you. I don't know if that guy sells vitamin D, but, like, there are people that come to do services. There are people that come and do services about, like, how their detox program is, like, going to save your life and reverse your aging and how their supplements are the thing. And that's also another overlap that gives me pause.
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Chris: Right.
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Kayla: Okay. So we've talked a lot about the beliefs foundational to the church, the prophets, the services, the speakers, but who actually founded the church itself? Who is the man behind the curtain? Next week on call to just weird. We're going to meet a man named Bill Falloon and learn more about his journey to founding the church of perpetual life, as well as other life extension efforts and controversies he's got under his belt.
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Chris: Looking forward to it.
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Kayla: This is Kayla, this is Chris, and.
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Chris: This has been cult or just perpetual life here.
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