Putin's plan to live forever

**Noel King** (0:00)
How healthy is Vladimir Putin?

**Boyan Panchevsky** (0:04)
Well, you know, he always projects this kind of image of a virile, sort of, strong man. He likes taking his shirt off. He hasn't done it in a while now, but he used to have his picture taken shirtless and, you know, jumping in ice lakes or, you know, sort of riding horses and whatnot.

**Noel King** (0:21)
No one knows.

**Boyan Panchevsky** (0:22)
I do investigative journalism and I speak a lot to Western spooks, you know, the CIA, people like that. And they've always said there's no truth to these claims that he's somehow ill or, you know, decrepit or whatever.

**Noel King** (0:35)
But thanks to some new reporting from the Wall Street Journal, we do know that Putin is spending billions of dollars trying to extend his life, maybe even live forever. And that, in Russia, there's a long and fascinating history of people fiddling with human longevity. That's coming up on Today Explained from Vox.

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Megan Rapinoe here. This week is our last regular episode of A Touch More before I kick off a limited series, A Touch More, The Beautiful Game, a special series for the World Cup featuring in-depth interviews with some of soccer's biggest stars. But for this week, we are closing out the era with a special compilation episode featuring our absolute favorite moments and themes from our last 90 episodes of A Touch More. Check out the latest episode of A Touch More wherever you get your podcasts and on YouTube.

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This is Today Explained.

**Noel King** (2:21)
Boyan Panchevsky is The Wall Street Journal's chief European political correspondent. He recently wrote a much linked to article about Vladimir Putin's $26 billion quest for longevity and it begins with this accidentally overheard conversation between Putin and another world leader.

**Boyan Panchevsky** (2:40)
So there was an interesting moment last year in September. He was visiting Beijing and he got caught on a hot mic while having a little walk with Xi Jinping.

**SPEAKER_6** (2:52)
Their words were inaudible, but their translator, still on mic, can be heard detailing parts of their conversation.

**SPEAKER_7** (2:58)
Biotechnology is continuously developing. Human organs can be continuously transplanted. The longer you live, the younger you become. And you can even achieve immortality.

**Boyan Panchevsky** (3:09)
Xi Jinping seemed to be agreeing, by the way, and he was kind of nodding and giving his own kind of take on things. And I remember the media covered that a bit tongue in cheek, and it was like, oh, this is weird. Kind of, they're shooting the breeze, these two old autocrats, you know, two dictators in their 70s, whatever.

**Noel King** (3:25)
Are Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin best friends?

**SPEAKER_6** (3:28)
Some have made films about it. Song about it.
While Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin have been discussing it.

**Boyan Panchevsky** (3:40)
But I actually knew he was being serious because he is quite serious about his issues. And I had read previously about other stuff he's interested in, in that domain.
So I decided to kind of look up and see what he was talking about. And it turned out that he was actually talking about a state program. And part of what they're researching within that initiative is indeed organ replacement, exactly what he was talking about.

**Noel King** (4:05)
So that $26 billion is money that is being spent on this longevity project. And one of the things that it's being spent on, as you said, organ replacement, where do the poor pigs fit in here? Tell me what happened.

**Boyan Panchevsky** (4:20)
The mini pigs, yeah, that's a bit creepy, poor little mini pigs. So essentially, there are two ways they're looking into to achieve this organ replacement for humans. One of them is 3D printing. It's called 3D bioprinting. It's a bit like, I think everyone's now by now has heard of 3D printing. Basically, 3D printers are printing things. They can print a glass, they can print a glove, they can even print a whole house.
And they're also 3D printers that print biological material, tissues. And the Russians are hoping even organs quite soon. So the idea is you print an organ in the lab and then you kind of implant it into a human being, like say lungs or liver or even the heart perhaps. That's the aspiration. The second thing is the mini pigs. They are genetically sort of close to humans in some ways. They're genetically modified, I think as well. And they're growing organs in these mini pigs and then they're implementing them, implanting them into human beings. It has to be said, this is already being done. I don't think people who get organs like that live long or for various reasons the body rejects the organs or whatever. But it is a technique that is actually quite promising.