Nathan Cheng
Creating the MovementThe MovementBuilding the talent, the capital and the culture — making solving aging something society actually decides to do.
Level 3 · Radical Life ExtensionRadical Life ExtensionNot slowing aging down — solving it. The science he is recruiting a generation into.
Live Beyond · A Great Mind on the Quest

Nathan
Cheng

Co-founder · Longevity Biotech Fellowship & Vitalism Foundation
An Apollo programme for aging · Boston · Harvard

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Nathan Cheng is one of 100+ experts in the Live Beyond Project — a father & son quest for longevity.

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80%
Of deaths caused by aging
0.5%
Of the NIH budget on aging biology
1%
Of global GDP — his headline goal
5
Fellowship cohorts, worldwide
Who is Nathan Cheng

The man building the moonshot

Nathan Cheng co-founded the Longevity Biotech Fellowship, a nonprofit whose job is deceptively simple: find the smartest people who already believe aging is worth solving, and get them actually working on it. Every applicant is screened and interviewed. Cohorts of fifty to a hundred spend four intense days somewhere out in the forest — biologists alongside machine-learning researchers, software engineers, founders and investors — drilling into the specific technical bottlenecks standing in the way. Five cohorts so far, on several continents.

He also co-founded the Vitalism Foundation, which exists to make solving aging and death humanity’s number one priority — with a single headline number attached: 1% of global GDP.

His case is arithmetic before it is philosophy. Aging causes roughly eighty percent of all deaths. Around half a percent of the US National Institutes of Health budget goes to fundamental aging biology. A century ago infectious disease was the great killer, humanity decided that was unacceptable, and antibiotics and public health followed. We have simply never made that decision about aging.

So he reaches for the closest historical analogy: the Apollo programme. In the 1960s America spent between a quarter and a half a percent of GDP per year — well over a hundred billion in today’s money — because a society had decided that something mattered. When it decides, he argues, the resourcing follows: people, capital and culture all at once. His question is why we won’t do that for the thing killing everyone we love.

Longevity Biotech Fellowship Vitalism Foundation Apollo Project for Longevity Talent & movement building
Aleksander Piotrowski interviewing Nathan Cheng at Harvard, Boston, November 2024
Aleksander interviewing Nathan · Harvard, Boston

The interview Aleksander led

Where we met

We first met Nathan at ARDD in Copenhagen, and sat down with him properly at Harvard in Boston — the day after we’d interviewed George Church. This one belongs to Aleksander: he ran much of the conversation and asked the closing questions himself. Which is fitting, because Nathan’s whole argument is about who does the work next.

ARDD
Copenhagen
Where we first met — the aging research conference that gathers the field each year.
Harvard
Boston, November 2024
Two chairs by a window, an eighteen-year-old asking the questions.
The Fellowship
Cohorts worldwide
Fifty to a hundred people, four days, deep in the technical bottlenecks.

“Life is good. The universe is so mysterious and so beautiful and wondrous at the same time. But then we have this kind of imposed expiration date.”

— Nathan Cheng, Harvard, Boston
In his words

Can you imagine doing that for aging?

“Put 1% of global GDP into fighting aging and death — because it is the most important and most urgent problem facing humanity.”

Nathan Cheng · Vitalism Foundation

Aging is responsible for about eighty percent of deaths — and only half a percent of the NIH budget goes to fundamental aging biology.

Nathan Cheng

In 1965, most Americans agreed the country should do everything possible, no matter the cost, to reach the moon first. Can you imagine doing that for aging?

Nathan Cheng

A longevity race? Why not. It would be the best race in the world — it would benefit all of humanity.

Nathan Cheng

It needs to be part of the culture. A cultural, social and political movement — the way climate change became one.

Nathan Cheng
In his own words

Straight from the interview

From our conversation at Harvard — the Apollo analogy, why the richest people alive aren’t funding this, and the advice he gave Aleksander’s generation.

His idea: an Apollo programme for aging

When a society genuinely prioritises something, he argues, you can see it in the resourcing — not only money, but talent and culture moving in the same direction at once. Apollo took roughly a quarter to half a percent of US GDP a year. His proposal is 1% of global GDP, for the thing that kills four out of five of us.

“When a society actually prioritises a goal in this way, it’s reflected in the resourcing — not just people, but the capital and the culture.”

Harvard, Boston · from the interview

The billionaire paradox

Marek asked why the ultra-wealthy don’t pour money into this. Nathan’s answer is mostly psychological: we have lived with aging since the Epic of Gilgamesh, so the idea of doing something about it sits outside what almost anyone can grasp — and nobody enjoys thinking about death.

“They’ll say everyone would give their entire net worth to be young again — and then invest nothing in it.”

Harvard, Boston · from the interview

His advice to Aleksander’s generation

Asked by an eighteen-year-old what young people should do for their longevity, he gave the same answer three times — and was only half joking. Sleep, exercise and nutrition matter, he says, but they slow the problem rather than solve it.

“One: drop everything and work on longevity biotech. Two: drop everything and work on longevity biotech. And three…”

Harvard, Boston · from the interview
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From the conversation

Nathan Cheng, in his words

Video interview

The video interview is coming. Recorded interviews go live after the launch of the film & series Live Beyond.

Selected passages from our conversation with Nathan Cheng — Harvard, Boston, November 2024. Marek opens; Aleksander takes over later. Lightly edited for readability.

On his mission

Nathan Cheng“My mission broadly is to get as many people and resources as possible focused on actually solving this problem of aging. I co-founded the Longevity Biotech Fellowship — a nonprofit trying to find really smart people who are interested in working in longevity and aging, connect them together, give them context on what’s going on, connect them with mentors, and actually create new projects, companies and research.”

On why aging deserves an Apollo programme

Nathan Cheng“Life is good. I think most people would generally agree that life is good — the universe is so mysterious and beautiful and wondrous. But then we have this kind of imposed expiration date. Every one of us is basically on track to die of aging. Aging is responsible for about eighty percent of deaths; it’s the number one cause of death. And this wasn’t always the case — a hundred years ago it was infectious disease, and people saw that was bad and decided to do something about it.”

On the numbers that don’t add up

Nathan Cheng“Only half a percent of the National Institutes of Health budget is allocated to research on fundamental aging biology. That’s so small — despite the fact that aging is the thing that kills eighty percent of people. So you have to ask yourself: what could we do if we actually cared about solving this problem?”

On what a society looks like when it decides

Nathan Cheng“If you look to history, we have an example — the United States in the 1960s deciding to do a major scientific and technical marvel, the moon landing. When a society actually prioritises a goal in this way, it’s reflected in the resourcing. Not just in people, but the capital and the culture. Everything is directed towards it. There was a poll around 1965 where the majority of Americans agreed the country should do everything possible, no matter the cost, to be the first nation to land on the moon. Can you imagine doing that for aging — this thing that is killing all our loved ones?”

Marek Piotrowski“We just need to spread the rumour that the Chinese are getting closer.”

Nathan Cheng“A longevity race — why not? It would be the best race in the world. It would benefit all of humanity.”

On why it has to become culture

Nathan Cheng“It needs to be part of the culture. It needs to be a cultural, social, political movement — maybe like climate change. A few decades back that wasn’t an issue people were aware of scientifically, and politically it wasn’t on the map. Now everybody knows about it. There are historical examples of documentaries having a lasting cultural impact — An Inconvenient Truth put climate change on the map and brought it to the masses. Spreading the word is one of the most important things people can do in the longevity space.”

On the billionaire paradox

Marek Piotrowski“If I were a billionaire I’d spend ninety percent of my wealth on longevity research. Why don’t they?”

Nathan Cheng“My co-founder at the Vitalism Foundation, Adam Grieves, calls it the billionaire paradox. These people couldn’t spend all their money in a thousand lifetimes, and they understand the value of time. Warren Buffett famously said everyone would give their entire net worth to be young again — and as far as we know he has invested nothing in aging research. I think we’ve been stuck with aging since time immemorial. The first recorded work of literature we have is the Epic of Gilgamesh, which is literally a story about a guy trying to solve aging and death — and he loses. That’s the moral. It’s so deeply ingrained in the psychology that most people simply cannot grasp doing something about it.”

His advice to the youth — asked by Aleksander

Aleksander Piotrowski“What would you say to the youth now — what should they do for their longevity?”

Nathan Cheng“I’ve interviewed fifty to a hundred longevity experts, and the top three things I’d recommend any young person do: one, drop everything and work on longevity biotech. Two, drop everything and work on longevity biotech. And three, drop everything and work on longevity biotech. It’s great that people do lifestyle interventions — exercise, sauna, nutrition, sleep — that’s all really important. But I don’t think those things will have a meaningful effect on solving the problem of aging. They just slow it down a little.”

Aleksander Piotrowski“But then they’d be working on it for others, not really for themselves.”

Nathan Cheng“I hope that once we get the first longevity therapeutic it will eventually be available to all people. We democratise most medicines that are useful. And not everybody has to work on the biology — there’s investing, there’s media, creating content. Everyone should do their part if they think it’s important.”

His wish for the quest

Aleksander Piotrowski“What would you wish us for the rest of our quest?”

Nathan Cheng“The most powerful thing you can do is shine a light on all the interesting stuff, not just the mainstream longevity stuff. Ask a person on the street about longevity and they’ll tell you about kale and sauna and cold plunges — that’s what most people associate with it. Far fewer know about all the science, all the very smart people working to actually solve this problem. If we can bring that to the forefront in a way that’s engaging and gets into the mainstream, we can really accelerate progress.”

More passages from the full interview will be published here.

Continue the quest

More minds on the quest

Nathan works at the Creating the Movement layer of the Longevity Map — the talent, the capital and the culture that decide whether any of the science ever reaches us. Here are others on the quest, and the full cast of 100+.

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