What if the first person to live to 1,000 is already alive today, walking around in their fifties or sixties? This episode traces the unorthodox life of biomedical gerontologist Aubrey de Grey, who moved from computer science into biology and set out to treat aging as an engineering problem rather than an inevitability.

We follow his framework, his funding battles with the scientific establishment, and the controversies that later reshaped his career.

• His Cambridge computer science background and the marriage to a geneticist that pivoted him toward biology.
• The SENS framework that breaks aging into seven categories of damage, including his graveyard search for microbes to digest cellular junk.
• His concept of longevity escape velocity and the idea of a pro-aging trance blocking funding.
• The 2005 MIT Technology Review debate, his inherited fortune, and millions donated to his own research foundation.
• His accidental contribution to the Hadwiger-Nelson math problem and the 2021 harassment allegations that led to his removal.