The Death of Death: Should We Choose To Live Forever?

What if ageing were optional? A small, extraordinarily wealthy group of people — Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Sam Altman, Peter Thiel among them — are betting billions that it could become so within our lifetimes. They are funding gene therapies, plasma clinics, AI drug discovery programmes, and private city-states designed to sit beyond the reach of ordinary regulation, all pointed at a single goal: the abolition of death. Some of this is serious science. Some of it is alchemy with a better press team. But before the science catches up with the ambition — if it ever does — the personal, social, and political questions are already here. Would you choose five centuries of life, or even to live indefinitely — more time to love, to learn, to taste everything the world has to offer? Or would you find, on reflection, that something essential about a human life depends on it being finite? What happens to marriage when it lasts for centuries? To democracy when the same people hold power for hundreds of years? To inheritance (that might never arrive!), to ambition ('I can always do it later'), to the feeling that today is precious rather than just one more day in an endless supply? So join us as we pull apart this fascinating and unsettling territory, where Silicon Valley hubris meets some of the oldest questions in philosophy. **Book: *The Immortalists: The Death of Death and the Race for Eternal Life* (2025) by Aleks Krotoski** **Companion reading:** ***[A Guide to the Personal, Social, and Political Questions of Radical Life Extension](https://1drv.ms/b/c/adb4f7488b2eef0a/IQDyh0ZXuhOXSY1hShIPivrVAb994lzRy8NuznN6KIb52lM?e=heHTTk)***[ ](https://1drv.ms/b/c/adb4f7488b2eef0a/IQDyh0ZXuhOXSY1hShIPivrVAb994lzRy8NuznN6KIb52lM?e=heHTTk) (prepared for this meetup) *The Immortalists* is a sharp investigation into the people, science, money, and politics behind Silicon Valley’s war on death. Krotoski — a psychologist, BBC broadcaster, and veteran technology reporter — takes us from immortality cults in the Arizona desert and biohacking clinics in Los Angeles to the corridors of Washington and a private city in Honduras where unapproved gene therapies are on the menu. Along the way, she meets the geroscientists doing genuinely important work on the biology of ageing, the billionaire investors pouring huge sums into longevity start-ups, the lobbyists rewriting FDA regulations in their own interests, and the true believers who have concluded that death is not a fact of life but a failure of engineering. The result is gripping reported journalism, a sober account of what the science has actually established, and a serious political warning about what happens when the people trying to live forever start writing the rules for everyone else. In addition, we’ve prepared a 35-page companion document that draws out the personal, social, and political questions raised by radical life extension. The Krotoski book spends considerable time on the science and on the people pursuing it, but our discussion is likely to centre on the human consequences: whether we would actually want vastly longer lives; what they would do to relationships, work, inequality, democracy, and meaning; and who would benefit if the technology ever became real. The companion document is intended to give us a shared map of these issues, so the conversation can move beyond the biology and into the questions most likely to matter around the table. As always, we strongly encourage you to do the reading before you attend; it will enrich both your own experience and the discussion as a whole. We’ve also included some further resources below for anyone who wants to go deeper. We’ll meet for a drink — and an optional meal — at 6:30pm on Monday, 7 September, on the second floor of the Keg & Brew Hotel in Surry Hills. The venue is close to Central Station and the light rail. We look forward to seeing you there! P.S. If you RSVP yes and later find you can’t make it, please update your RSVP so someone