Steve Austad, Ph.D.: The landscape of longevity science: making sense of caloric restriction, biomarkers of aging, and possible geroprotective molecules

**Peter Attia** (0:11)
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Now, without further delay, here's today's episode. My guest this week is Steve Austad. Steve is a distinguished professor and chair of the Department of Biology at the University of Alabama, and he's the Scientific Director of the American Federation for Aging Research. He also directs the University of Alabama's Nathan Shock Center for Excellence in the Basic Biology of Aging, which is only one of six such centers in the United States. Steve's current research seeks to understand the underlying causes of aging specifically with a long-term goal of developing medical interventions that slow the age-related decay in human health.
Now, I've known Steve for probably about six or seven years, and in that period of time, I really do consider him to be one of my mentors in this space, always generous and gracious with his insights and his time, his wisdom. And I was just really excited to have him on the show today. And we talk about his background, which is, as you'll see, very interesting and very unconventional. And we talk about kind of a history of one of the most important discoveries in aging, which is the relationship of caloric restriction and length of life, but also some of the limitations of this research. And we do a very good case study on what is unquestionably the most important experiment ever done on caloric restriction and dietary restriction. We talk about the possible hypotheses for the sex-related differences that exist between men and women. And we talk about some of the most exciting and interesting gyro-protective molecules out there, including rapamycin, metformin and others. So without further delay, please enjoy my conversation with Steve Austad.
Hey, Steve, as we were just talking about a minute ago, this has been a long time coming. I am so excited about this discussion today.

**Steve Austad** (2:38)
Good, I'm looking forward to it myself.

**Peter Attia** (2:41)
You're one of those people, and there are a handful of people like you, where anytime we sit down, if it's over a coffee, a meal or a short phone call, I feel like my learning increases at a geometric rate. So to now be able to do a very long discussion and then share it with so many people is gonna be awesome. But frankly, any discussion about longevity, I think, needs to begin with your background. I think people need to understand the curious character that you are.
And your journey to where you are today is, you know, it's not common, but yet I think it sort of speaks to the unique lens that you've brought to this space. So give folks a sense of what you did growing up. Like when you were in high school, what were you interested in?

**Steve Austad** (3:29)
You know, it was interesting in high school, I was a math nerd and everybody assumed that I was gonna be a mathematician, including myself. In fact, I was a math major when I first went to college. But what I really did in my spare time in high school, when I wasn't playing sports, is I liked to kick around in the woods.
And this was in Southern California and I would actually go out into the desert. I actually had a high school biology teacher who would take students out in the desert to catch rattlesnakes. And I still am not sure why he was doing that. I think he was milking them and getting money for the venom or something. But anyway, I had a great time doing that. And at that time, I think I was in 10th grade, he said, you're gonna be a biologist. And I thought, that's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard of. No, I'm gonna be a mathematician.
And then after I got to college, I suddenly discovered after the first year, didn't really like math all that much.
And I wasn't about to spend four years doing something I didn't like. So what I really liked to do was read. And so I switched to an English major. And I actually ended up with an English degree. And my goal at that point was to write the great American novel and become the Ernest Hemingway of the latter 20th century.