Four For Friday | March 31, 2023
Four For Friday | March 31, 2023
LF35 | America’s plunging life expectancy, Peter Attia’s magnum opus, ChatGPT founder’s longevity bet & airline tickets as NFTs
Welcome to a Looking Forward’s Four For Friday. Four things that have piqued my interest this week relating to Web3, healthy longevity and / or impact. Enjoy!
Americans’ life expectancy plummets
Covid and opioids have hammered US life expectancy more than comparable countries.
“Yes, Americans eat more calories and lack universal access to health care. But there's also higher child poverty, racial segregation, social isolation, and more. Even the way cities are designed makes access to good food more difficult.”
According to the report, COVID was the biggest driver of the decrease in life expectancy, followed by what the CDC classifies as "unintentional injuries," half of which were deaths by drug overdose. (NPR)
New longevity bible dropped
Anyone following cutting edge longevity research will soon stumble upon Peter Attia, MD, whose hosts impressively in-depth podcasts. His long awaited book, Outlive, has just dropped and it is encyclopaedic, synthesising thousands of hours of podcast content and a life of personally motivated research (many of his relatives died early). Hugh Jackman is a client and big fan. Am reading it now and will post more about it soon. (peterattimd.com)
Chat GPT founder bets $180m on a longevity startup
Sam Altman founder of ChaptGPT (and previous head of Y Combinator) has put $180m into Retro Biosciences, a hot startup with a bold mission to “add 10 years to healthy human lifespan”. (MIT Technology Review)
Argentinian airline offers tickets as NFTs
Low cost Argentinian airline Flybondi is offering free NFTs alongside regular tickets. This allows customers to change dates, names and evenresell their tickets, with the airline taking a commission on reselling. An indication of how NFTs can build new markets on top of all manner of things (such as wine). (Coindesk)
That’s all for this week. As always, feedback welcome. Feel free to share insights or links of interest.
- Stephen