वेंकी रामाकृष्णन: लंबी उम्र जीने का विज्ञान और उसका हाइप (Hindi version)

**Nicolai Tangen** (0:01)
Hello, welcome to In Good Company. I am Nicolai Tangen, CEO of Norwegian Sovereign Wealth Fund. So, the long term is one of the hottest topics in the world. Billionaires are investing money in it. When they were young, they wanted to be rich. And now, when they are rich, they want to be young. The wellness industry is selling it, and the way of living is getting more and more attention. So, we wanted to know what is the truth, what is just hype, and how close we are to becoming immortal. To understand this, we have Venki Ramakrishnan with us. He is a Nobel Prize winner in chemistry, former president of Royal Society and author of the amazing book, Why We Die. Venki, welcome.

**Venki Ramakrishnan** (0:46)
Thank you.

**Nicolai Tangen** (0:47)
You started your book with Pharaohs of Egypt, who believed that they could escape death. Why did you start from there?

**Venki Ramakrishnan** (0:55)
Look, the story of Pharaohs is very interesting because man has been trying to escape death in different ways.
Plan A is to escape death somehow. The plan is also to believe that even if you die, your whole body will be alive again, and you will go to some paradise. And the plan is that even if your body is rotten, you will have a soul that will survive after you, And you can go to other bodies, and in the same way, go to the future as well.

**Nicolai Tangen** (1:29)
So, after thousands of years, how close are we to staying alive forever?

**Venki Ramakrishnan** (1:34)
I think that this is not a physical or chemical law, which says that our lifespan should be the same as it is today. I mean, if you look at it today, Let's go. There is only one person who has gone 120 years ahead.
There is no physical law, it doesn't mean that anything can happen. Because there is no physical law on this either. We can't live in other galaxies.
But if you are only interested in going to Mars, Put your eyes on the difficulties. So you will understand how difficult it is. That's why I keep living in the same category for a very long time, that is, for hundreds of years, which is very unrealistic in today's time. But then, even if you listen to anything about it from people who create different types of hype.

**Nicolai Tangen** (2:32)
Before we go into the depth, tell us how you define aging?

**Venki Ramakrishnan** (2:35)
Yes, so aging, I will say that it is the decrease in the ability to work in our systems. That is, from our molecules, cells and tissues to the whole body, with time, due to the accumulation of damage and changes, it starts to stop working slowly. And I will define aging in this way.
I will define them. Now, we can see the outer features of it. You are not as strong, you are not as strong, you have the effect of infections quickly. So, there are many outer features, but behind it, there are the damage in our cells and tissues, and finally, it starts with our molecules.

**Nicolai Tangen** (3:17)
By the way, you are 74 years old, I don't see so many outer features in you.

**Venki Ramakrishnan** (3:21)
But anyway, I am lucky because my skin is dark, and I live in a cold climate place, so it becomes a delusion from top to bottom. But if you look inside my body, then you will know that I have become quite old.

**Nicolai Tangen** (3:36)
Anyway, we should talk about this later. But it seems like two ideas are getting mixed.
Ageing means to slow down the aging process. And to rejuvenate the cells means to make the old cells young again. So, what's the difference between these two?

**Venki Ramakrishnan** (3:51)
Okay, so, most of the time, the entire role of anti-ageing strategies is to prevent damage, or to slow down damage and dysfunction. Okay, but a class of strategies is such, in which cells are tried to be rejuvenated in development. They are tried to be rejuvenated in the development of the body. And the way to understand this is that a fertilized egg can turn into all kinds of tissues in the body. It does this, right? And there are many cells in the initial embryo, but every cell can become any kind of tissue. These are called chloropotent stem cells. But as the embryo develops, these stem cells become specialized. So some cells can only be made of the blood system cells. Others can only be made of the nervous system cells. And the same goes for the future. There are many types of cells, but still there is a small class of cells. But this process never goes back to the past, A child born from an old parent, like a child born from a 30-year-old parent.