Back in 08 I spent some time to go through the entire archive of TED, and a talk by Aubrey de Grey, a vocal fig­ure in anti-aging medi­cine, was among the few that had a last­ing impression.

The pos­sib­il­ity of being able to see what exists only in sci­ence fic­tion today become a real­ity, even if it takes cen­tur­ies, really fas­cin­ates me, and I was reminded of that pro­spect today when I watched Do You Want To Live Forever?, a doc­u­ment­ary about his cru­sade and oppon­ents, aired in 2007 on Brit­ish TV sta­tion Chan­nel 4. Not sure about the dra­matic Rasputinesque faith healer over­tones (which the crazy beard doesn’t help), but worth check­ing out if you ever con­sidered the same question.

A Wired and Big Think inter­view with de Grey provides more recent and in-depth dis­cus­sion about the implic­a­tions of becom­ing age­less. He also com­ments on the media fram­ing his goal as “immortality”.

I might make a list of all the cool TED talks on a Tumblr blog soon, some­thing I’ve been mean­ing to do... also the qual­ity of pre-HQ You­tube videos makes me sad.