Laura Deming is a technologist and venture capitalist focused on anti-ageing and life extension. At 17, she founded The Longevity Fund (followed by age1), the first VC firm dedicated to longevity biotech, after being selected in the initial cohort of Thiel fellows (2011). Today she is also CEO and co-founder of Cradle, a startup pursuing human whole-body reversible cryopreservation.

I speak with Laura at Cradle’s San Francisco office. We start with the philosophical question of personal identity, and ask a deceptively simple question: what, exactly, do we want to preserve? From there we explore what a “more humane transhumanism” might look like, the game-theory of 200-year lives, scientific awe as a research tool, embodied thought-experiments to see inside the cell, how the FDA could shave years off longevity-drug timelines, the anti-memetic qualities of reversible cryopreservation, and why it might be the most leveraged problem in longevity.

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I share the 8 biggest things I learned from my Australian policy series. The conversations totaled more than 12 hours of discussion.

Grateful to my guests and to everyone who attended the live events. Was really fun to meet and hang out with you all!

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This episode is the seventh instalment of my Australian policy series, recorded live in Sydney on April 29, 2025.

I speak with Ken Henry—former Treasury Secretary and chair of the landmark Henry Tax Review—about why Australia hasn’t achieved major economic reform since the GST, and what must change to restart it.

We discuss how AGI could reshape the public service, intergenerational unfairness in the tax system, the collapse in business investment, how to build a new Australian city, and the roots of Australia's long-standing policy complacency.

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