 Boom, what's up, everyone? Welcome to Simulation. I'm your host, Alan Sokian. We are still at the Ross Science Film Festival, the fifth annual, where we are celebrating films that are making tremendous impacts and waves in civilization, inspiring them in science and technology. We are now with Daniel Solinger, who is the Director of Immortality or Bust. Hello, thank you for joining us. Thank you for having me. Really appreciate it, and we really appreciate your film. Your film is incredible. It's really good work, and we've had Zoltanis found on the show before. That links in the bio to that show. This is very important, the transhumanist movement, the ending aging movement, the hard work that it takes to be at the cutting edge of teaching other people about the importance of this. Tell us about the journey. Well, it's been a long journey. I just looked at my thing. It's been a long journey. I just looked at my Instagram feed, and I realized that four years ago is when I reached out to Zoltan and I said, hey, you're running for president for the transhumanist party. That sounds interesting. And he wrote me back, you know, like I basically said, how can I help? And he said, well, you're a filmmaker. Why don't you make a documentary about it? And then I went up to San Francisco and I met with him. And it's been it's been quite a journey, but really exciting and really fun. And then tell us on that on the story side of things, the importance of the transhumanism, the importance of ending aging and getting more people into that realm of thinking. Well, I've been following transhumanism since the early 90s, like the very beginning. And so I've always been very excited about it. And it's been interesting seeing all these technologies come online like CRISPR and stuff that can actually bring a lot of the things that transhumanist community has been talking about for years to actual reality. And so I'm very excited about it. The fact that Zoltan was out there making it, you know, taking it mainstream. I always wondered, like, when is politics going to get involved in the technology that's happening? And, you know, so Zoltan was somebody who was actually taking it out, making it popular, making it mainstream. You know, he was, you know, definitely popularizing it, you know? And so the movie itself, though, I guess the question is about the movie itself is that, you know, we follow Zoltan Esvan on his 2016 presidential campaign. And we go to biohacking labs, cryopreservation facilities, transhumanist churches, you know, all sorts of places where you see, you know, this movement, you know, this very, you know, small but growing movement, you know, happening. And but unfortunately, at the same time, Zoltan is struggling with his dad's failing health and having to juxtapose his his desire and passion for the technology that would enable us to radically extend life and seeing that is not coming online quick enough to help his dad. And that's that's what's sort of the interesting tension in the film. Yeah, Daniel actually had me crying when you did. You had me crying because I started really thinking about how if we frame this as a point for youth and even adults and just tell them, what would it feel like if you were told that you had an ailment that was uncurable and that you were going to die within a couple of weeks or months? How would that feel? Would you care about science and technology then? And so if we put this frame of you or your parents or whomever has this ailment that is unsolvable, you would start caring so much about science and technology to fix this ailment. You'd start caring so much about aging and radical life extension, etc. So when when when when Zolt was there with his father passed for me, that's what kicked in the sense of just it's going to be happening to so many hundred plus thousand people, 150,000 a day die from aging around the world. And so that was a very important and you gave this you went to cryogenic facilities, biohacking studios, etc. You you were totally there showing people like we're already making moves. We just need more people involved in trying new things and and getting politics involved and involved and entrepreneurs involved, etc. That's true. Yeah, I mean, I've had the experience like my father-in-law died recently. I had a nephew that died and, you know, there's there's especially ever since working, you know, on this film. I have such a sense of frustration and sadness because I feel like if they could just have hung on like another 20, like I feel sad for anybody who dies right now because I feel like, you know, in another 20 years, it's going to be a much more optional proposition. You know, it's going to be, you know, whatever they're dying of now, you know, in 20 years, there's going to be all this technology and information to deal with it. You know, so yeah, it's it's it's it's so nice actually to be alive today, but it's also so sad to see that people die like right on the cusp of like when all this technology is coming online. Yeah, yeah. Now, I would like to ask you a bit about, you know, distributions, obviously important. So you guys are aiming to distribute the film. Do you have other ideas for what's coming next for you as well? Yeah. So yes, I do. So this is our world premiere at the Raw Science Film Festival in 2019. And we are I just put it out to sales agents who help us in the selling process of produced 64 movies. So I'm well experienced in getting the movies out there and in front of an audience. And so we have several sales agents interested and then from that and then we're going to go and play at a lot of more film festivals. And through that process of going and playing more film festivals and having a sales agent, we will make the right deal to get it in the widest available places that are possible. Love it. And then other ideas for you for the next upcoming. Well, yeah, I have several other movies that are either in post or, you know, yeah, but they're more narrative films. But in terms of I would love to do more work specifically around the law of accelerating returns and, you know, the technologies that are coming online, I would love to do it. I haven't even talked to her about it. But we over the course of the movie, we interviewed Liz Parrish. And I would love to do a movie on her and what she's doing. You know, yeah, yeah. And I know there's some footage. Maybe I'm like shouldn't say this, but there's some footage of her like getting her test done or her initial injections done. And I don't know if there's I'm sure your audience is aware that she injected herself with a retrofitted virus that lengthened her telomeres, which would be a huge thing in terms of of defeating aging. So and I don't know if that's the movie, but I'm really open to doing more work in this space. I love it. I'm so happy that you care a lot about the law of accelerating returns, exponential technology and highlighting that and getting more people thinking about that. What do you think about the current state of humanity, like geopolitically with all of the exponential technology that's happening? Well, I mean, first of all, you know, when I first started this project with Zolton, I did a movie in the early 90s called Rhymon Reason. It was about hip hop. And at the time, hip hop was sort of like a subgenre, just sort of like, you know, like they wouldn't play hip hop videos on MTV. It was a different place. And I said at that time in the early 90s, like I want to make a documentary about hip hop because this will be huge and end up being huge, you know, obviously. And I feel that way about transfusion. Like when Zolton said, I'll make a movie about this. I was like, yes, because this is going to be an enormous wave that's going to hit the shores of popular culture somewhere down the line. I don't know if it's five years. I don't know if it's 10 years, but it's coming. And the exponential technology, the law of accelerating returns and exponential technologies, they're going to happen. You know, and like whether popular culture or politics or anybody, you know, wants them to or not, you know, I'm like, I'm very into cryptocurrency. And you know, like, you know, there's a lot of bankers, whatever, like, oh, it's a fad or whatever. And like, I just know that they're going to get wiped out the way Napster wiped out the music business. Like, you know, it's just it's just coming. They can deny it or try to change it or try to control it. But it's still just common just, you know, wipe out, you know, the whole financial industry unless they adapt to it, you know. And I feel about that way about all the other accelerating, you know, technology is that, you know, it's a force bigger than any sort of political or, you know, corporate, you know, control. It's just it's going to it's coming and it's going to be huge. And I always tell people and I talk about this stuff with people all the time. And, you know, like regular people, they just look at me crazy, you know, like all my friends, you know, and, you know, my wife, you know, like, they're all like, what is this guy talking about? But it's going to start to get really weird very soon. Like it's starting to get weird. But with the exponential goes, you know, like when we when we have when we have AIS that passed the Turing test, like you can't tell. It's going to get so weird. Like I'm an AI, you can't even tell. Right. Exactly. Or you hadn't you now have a thousand assistants because you've you can clone that AI a thousand times and you can have a thousand AI assistants that understand everything that you want need and just automatically do it for you. Imagine what that world's going to be like. Yeah, I'm glad that I'm glad that you're bringing up all of these pressing future aspects of exponential technology that we really have to have a global conversation about how to best ethically, morally, collectively move forward on just having conversation about what it's going to be like stopping autonomous robots and drones. I'm hoping and I don't want to stay modest here, but I really feel like in our movie, Zoltan goes to the US Capitol and reads a transhumanist Bill of Rights. And it's really good. And I think there will be a day in history when people are going to look back and say that was the moment that was the moment when politics started when somebody had the awareness that the world is different than when human beings were a consistent species. You know, and I don't know when that will be. But I think that I think it was like I think we captured a moment in history that right now I'm like there wasn't a big crowd there. But I think people will look back because we were able to document it. And they're going to say here's the first true effort to change the structure, the political geopolitical structure to understand and take into account cyborgs, artificial intelligence, you know, and all these issues. Yeah, I'm so happy that you brought that up because those six articles of the Transhumanist Bill of Rights are your right. That was right at the start of the inflection point and later on in a couple of decades. Oh, that was it. Those were those first the first time that they tried at the Capitol in DC. It's is it immortality or bust dot com. Immortality or bust dot com. The links in the bio. Last question, what's the most beautiful thing in the world? Well, my wife and child. That's what that one's easy. OK, and then how about past the family? OK, the most beautiful thing in the world. Inspiration, creativity, passion. Yeah, beautiful, beautiful. Thank you so much, everyone. Go check out immortality or bust. It's super good. It's super at the cutting edge. Go and check it out. Daniel, thank you so much for coming on to the show. We greatly greatly appreciate it. Everyone go and build the future. Go and manifest your destiny into the world now. Now much love and we'll see you soon. Peace. All right, good job. Good job. That was great.