The Business of Staying Young and Living Forever (with Kara Swisher)

Summary

Business History – "The Business of Staying Young and Living Forever"

Hosts: Jacob Goldstein, Robert Smith
Guest: Kara Swisher
Release Date: April 22, 2026
Podcast by: Pushkin Industries

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Jacob Goldstein and Robert Smith dive into the historical and modern business of immortality—how the pursuit of living longer (or forever) has fascinated the rich and powerful for centuries. With veteran technology journalist Kara Swisher as their guest, they explore the intersections of tech, wealth, healthcare, snake oil cures, and genuine medical breakthroughs. They examine past and present efforts, from ancient emperors' elixirs to today's billionaires bankrolling longevity startups, ultimately questioning what it means to "live forever," and what really promotes a longer, healthier life.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The Rich and the Quest for Immortality

• Historical context: The pursuit of extended life or immortality has long been the domain of elites, from emperors to tech billionaires.
• "If they could hack the world, could they hack life itself?" —Kara Swisher (04:44)
• Mention of Qin Shi Huang, first emperor of China, seeking an elixir (05:22), dying from mercury poisoning—reflecting the dangers of such quests.
• Ancient practices: blood rituals, mummification (07:21), Ponce de León’s fountain of youth.

2. Science, Pseudoscience, and Charlatanism

• Wellness as business: The rise of modern "concierge medicine" for the wealthy, selling hope more than cures (08:45).
• Full-body MRIs, expensive supplements, and devices are often pushed without strong evidence—creating a lucrative but questionable industry.
  • "They take advantage... having the money to spend ridiculous amounts of money on solutions that aren't actually solutions." —Kara Swisher (08:45)
• The phenomenon of "incidentalomas" from advanced scans: more testing can mean more unnecessary procedures and anxiety (09:23).

3. When Money Shapes Medicine, for Worse… or Sometimes Better

• Historical examples:
  • Lindbergh and Alexis Carrel collaborating on organ preservation tech, which would have eugenics undertones (11:24–13:20).
  • Kellogg’s quest for the "perfect" human body via nutrition and wellness spas (07:55).
• Technology can also drive real advances:
  • CRISPR and sickle cell anemia—funding and access lag for underprivileged groups (13:22).
  • AI promises in drug development and early diagnostic tools, with real breakthroughs being drowned by misinformation (10:46, 16:20).

4. Gurus, Influencers, and the Internet Age

• Brian Johnson as "N=1" experiment: Johnson’s extreme biohacking and supplementation (21:40–23:41).
  • "He’s an experiment unto himself, which is not an experiment. Just to be clear, that is not the way science works." —Robert Smith (23:07)
• Social media now amplifies snake oil sales, making unregulated health advice rampant and dangerous (24:10).
• Historical analogies: 19th-century doctor injecting himself with animal testicle extracts; placebo effects and public gullibility (24:44–26:25).

5. Exercise and Simplicity: The Proven Longevity Boosters

• Fitness as the un-glamorous answer:
  • Jack LaLanne, mid-century fitness pioneer, promoted basic, inexpensive exercise (31:00–32:38).
  • "You don’t need to buy all the crap… Just get up and move." —Kara Swisher (32:38)
• American obsession with silver-bullet solutions—more isn’t always better (28:24–28:53).
• Practical tips: walk after dinner, focus on sleep, avoid expensive gimmicks (30:38–33:36).

6. Gender, Marketing, and the "Wellness Industrial Complex"

• Wellness has historically targeted women (skin, dieting), now increasingly men ("body hacking," supplements from male influencers) (38:26).
  • "When women do things around food and health… body dysmorphia. When men do it, it’s body hacking. Give me a break." —Kara Swisher (38:42)
• Men as a new market for tactical wellness; influencers like Peter Attia and Andrew Huberman profit from the movement.

7. Life Extension Startups and Techno-Optimism

• Sam Altman's longevity startup: More interested in expanding healthspan than lifespan, and leveraging AI for diagnosis and drug discovery (39:27–40:34).
• The danger of conflating real preventative science with marketing hype (40:30–40:39).

8. Cryonics and Uploading the Mind

• 1960s cryonics—a movement fueled by amateurs and dreams of future resurrection, which devolved into mismanagement (41:02–43:02).
• Futurist dreams: Downloading consciousness—Swisher’s experience with her AI avatar, the limits of technology versus true human experience (44:28–46:43).

9. Real Talk: Mortality and Meaning

• Kara Swisher’s personal experience with early loss and its influence on her worldview (47:07).
• "The more you accept death, the longer you live, the happier you are, the healthier you are." —Kara Swisher (47:28)
• Harvard happiness studies: Relationships, friends, family, and trying new things are the biggest factors in longevity.
  • "Don’t be poor and have friends and family and try new things." —Kara Swisher (49:28)

10. Death Acceptance

• Accepting mortality fuels creativity, happiness, and a meaningful life.
• The show closes with personal and philosophical takes on how the hosts, guest, and past notables wish to die—underlining the importance of facing death honestly and with humor (49:45–52:05).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "If they could hack the world, could they hack the life itself?"
  —Kara Swisher (04:44)
• "One of the things that comes with great wealth and great adulation is the idea that you're a God."
  —Kara Swisher (04:44)
• "The more you accept death, the longer you live, the happier you are, the healthier you are."
  —Kara Swisher (47:28)
• "You don’t have to go from town to town anymore. Now you’ve got Instagram."
  —Jacob Goldstein (24:07)
• "I don't care what the fuck Peter Attia says you don't need that much protein. He's wrong."
  —Kara Swisher (28:18)
• "When women do things around food and health… body dysmorphia. When men do it, it’s body hacking."
  —Kara Swisher (38:42)
• "Don’t be poor and have friends and family and try new things. It creates a longer, happier life."
  —Kara Swisher (49:28)
• "Thank you."
  —Jacob Goldstein (52:05), echoing Suzuki Shunryu’s last words

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Notable Timestamps of Key Segments

• 03:04 – Opening topic: Why do the rich so often pursue living forever?
• 05:16 – Ancient quests for immortality, Qin Shi Huang and early elixirs
• 07:35 – Kellogg, health, and the business of (pseudo-)nutrition
• 08:45 – Concierge medicine and the rise of high-end health services
• 13:22 – CRISPR, inequality, and why some diseases (like sickle cell) are left behind
• 15:20 – Advances in “millibots” for stroke treatment, driven by tech
• 16:20 – mRNA tech and the risk of politicization driving science away
• 21:40 – The Brian Johnson biohacking saga
• 24:44 – 19th-century self-experimentation and charlatan cures
• 28:46 – On the futility and absurdity of diet fads and fitness extremism
• 31:00 – Jack LaLanne and the historic roots of exercise-as-medicine
• 38:26 – How wellness is marketed according to gender
• 39:27 – Silicon Valley “life extension” startups and where the money’s flowing
• 41:02 – The Cryonic Society of California, freezing bodies for future cures
• 44:28 – Uploading consciousness and the limitations of AI avatars
• 47:05 – Kara’s personal experience with death and its impact
• 49:28 – True secrets of longevity (not money or tech, but friends, family, and meaning)
• 49:45 – Philosophical and humorous takes on “how to die”
• 52:05 – Final thoughts and gratitude

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Conclusions & Takeaways

• The business of staying young and living forever is as old as history, with the rich continuously playing guinea pig, sponsor, or victim.
• Real progress in health is slow, incrementally built on scientific evidence and often decoupled from the bank accounts of the ultra-wealthy.
• Amidst the noise of wellness grifts and biohacking fads, the tried-and-true prescription is as simple as ever: relationships, movement, sleep, and happiness.
• Accepting mortality, rather than fighting it at all cost, is key to both living longer and living better.
• “Thank you.” Sometimes, the most profound answer to life and death is simple gratitude.

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Transcript

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[Jacob Goldstein]

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[Kara Swisher]

Visit your nearby Lowes.

[Robert Smith]

Pushkin Too quick?

[Jacob Goldstein]

No, it was perfect.

[Robert Smith]

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Stop.

[Jacob Goldstein]

You got it.

[Robert Smith]

Jacob On Business History we often talk about rich people and the businesses that made them rich. But we rarely talk about what many of those rich people do with the second half of their lives, which is they attempt to live forever.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Yeah, they got all this money.

[Robert Smith]

Why not?

[Jacob Goldstein]

It's really nice. And you know, when a rich person decides they want to live forever, a lot of people show up to take their money to help them. I'm Jacob Goldstein.

[Robert Smith]

I'm Robert Smith.

[Jacob Goldstein]

We have a very special guest today.

[Kara Swisher]

Hi, Kara Swisher. I'm Kara Swisher. Yeah.

[Jacob Goldstein]

This is Business History, a show about the history of business. And Kara, you have a new show.

[Kara Swisher]

I do. I do have a new show. It's called Kara Swisher wants to Live forever. Although I have a lot of business history because I'm old and I've been covering.

[Jacob Goldstein]

You are business history.

[Kara Swisher]

I am business history. So I feel good being here. I've been covering tech since the beginning of the Internet age, I would say, when these people didn't have money. When Jeff Bezos was poor. Right.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Just a poor hedge fund worker.

[Kara Swisher]

Well, he wasn't rich, I'll tell you that. Not like he couldn't buy Venice at the time for his wedding. And I just covered them as a reporter, first at the Washington Post and then I was at the Wall Street Journal for a long time. And it was really interesting to watch them transform the world in a lot of ways. Not just technology, but everything. Social, political, communications, sport, everything. It touched everything. And as it started to change, you would see them change. And one of the things that comes with great wealth and great adulation is the idea that you're a God. And so they started to act like gods, which was some of them, not all of them. And what I found really interesting is their interest started to if they could hack the world, could they hack the life itself? And they kept. Early on they started doing a lot of healthcare related things because it's a big industry and it's a really messed up, inefficient industry. And they just started to get very interested in their bodies, like in terms of what they were doing. And could they hack the brain and the amount of science fiction, Because a lot of science fiction is about that, about the morphing of technology with humans. They started to sort of get into that and they started talking about it.

[Robert Smith]

But you know, it's not just that. It's the new rich and the new technology. I mean, it seems like people who have been rich who think themselves gods have been doing this for a long, long time.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Yeah. We were looking back the first emperor of China, the guy who united China,

[Kara Swisher]

which we mentioned in the show.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Yeah, Qin Shi Huang. Right. So that's hundreds of years BC he put out an executive order for everybody in the empire to look for a life prolonging elixir and sent people out on missions and apparently brought in, you know, doctors slash alchemists slash magicians to his court.

[Kara Swisher]

Right.

[Jacob Goldstein]

And it seems as if he died of mercury poisoning because they gave him mercury to live longer.

[Kara Swisher]

You've got that exactly right. And we talk about those. There's been throughout time, like drinking the blood of virgins, doing, you know, there was all manner of different things. Or bathing in the blood of virgins, for example. Ponce de Leon is sort of the most enduring finding, the foundation of youth, you know, and there's all these ideas around how to live forever and use the word elixir, which is really important because elixir is always in science fiction. And of course, this motivates a lot of science fiction, as I said, motivates a lot of tech people. And the idea that there is a one single solution that will give you life. And then it also morphs interestingly into the ideas behind Frankenstein and Dracula. And, you know, that's all about longevity in some way, and the costs of longevity.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Well, Frankenstein is a book about technology. Right. It's written in the 1800s, kind of amidst the Industrial Revolution, by a romantic

[Robert Smith]

and a cautionary tale, for sure.

[Kara Swisher]

Or is it? Cause I think it does.

[Robert Smith]

Depends on how you read it.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Right.

[Kara Swisher]

You know, the idea of vampires, the idea of all these things is how do you morph your body so that it's immortal in some ways. And of course, Greek mythology, it's Tithonus, a God falls in love with this guy, gives him eternal life, but forgets to keep him young.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Right. It's the curse of immortality.

[Kara Swisher]

Right, the curse of immortality. And that's so all of it. It's throughout our history of humanity. And of course, religion is about the idea of living forever.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Yeah. And that same church emperor who died of mercury poisoning, apparently he's the one with the terracotta warrior army in his crypt to, you know, lead him through the afterlife. So even if he died at 49, in his mind, he was gonna look at it.

[Kara Swisher]

And you don't even get to the Egyptians, which is a whole other industry.

[Jacob Goldstein]

I mean, mummification is an incredible technology and special tools to pull your brains out. Like later, they would take the organs out, mummify them, and then put them back in.

[Kara Swisher]

Put them back in. And actually they're rather well preserved, which is really interesting. And so one of the. And then it got me interested because then in American history, you know, Kellogg's. The cereal was about a health brand. Right. There was all this manner of stuff that these different people would try to perfect the human body through nutrition and usually false nutrition. Right. It was always.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Let's talk about Kellogg for a second, because I think it speaks interestingly to a particular part of your show. So there was John Harvey Kellogg, who was actually his brother, started the cereal company. John Harvey Kellogg was a doctor, and as you know, he had this famous sanitarium, but it was like a fancy health spa. You know, Amelia Earhart went there, and Henry Ford went there, and presidents went there, and he prescribed. He was really into enemas, including yogurt. Enemas also into eating yogurt. So I'm wondering. Probiotics, Light therapy.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah.

[Robert Smith]

Which you did in your show.

[Kara Swisher]

I did, but it's not. Doesn't work.

[Jacob Goldstein]

I'm guessing it didn't work then either. But that particular story of John Harvey Kellogg and what a big deal his sanitarium was and how legit he was and famous he was, it reminded me of. You go essentially to the modern version of that in the show, right. You go to some fancy wellness center. Tell us about that.

[Kara Swisher]

Well, what's interesting, concierge medicine has taken over, and there is a healthcare system for the rich and one for everybody else. And of course, we don't have universal healthcare in this country, but a lot of people are sort of bypassing our broken system and having these concierge medicines where they do extensive amounts of tests, look at everything. They want to check you all the time, they call you all the time. They want to make sure they offer different supplements and different trends. And it's basically. It's been business is what they're trying to do. And they take advantage of sort of people, especially rich people, having the money to be able to spend ridiculous amounts of money on solutions that aren't actually solutions.

[Jacob Goldstein]

I will say, like one that is interesting to me in that regard is like the full body MRI scan for healthy people. Like that. Insurance doesn't cover it. It's a rich people thing. I'm pretty sure that's a bad idea. It is a bad idea because there's lots of. There's this term incidentaloma. I don't know if you came up with that, but it's like it's an incidental finding. It would have been fine if you left it alone.

[Kara Swisher]

Correct.

[Jacob Goldstein]

But now that you've seen it, oh, we better do. Or do something about it.

[Kara Swisher]

Right? And you can. I was actually just interviewed Eric Topol yesterday on my podcast and he talked about that this idea of like you go in there and cause more problems than you first started when it was just a minor cyst, that you don't need to do anything. Surgery, invasive surgery is always full of risks. And so it's this, you know, again, as you say from history, this has been something that's been going on, that there's constantly a solution to something. And the American public especially has been pushed and pulled of what you should do and what you shouldn't do. I mean, there's those famous pictures of people with the things that shake you, you know, and of course now we

[Jacob Goldstein]

have, I think it goes around your belly. Yeah, I love that.

[Kara Swisher]

And now you have shaking things. And I'm always like, okay, show me the science, I'd like to see it. And amid all this nonsense, there are incredible strides like AI everyone's terrified of, and should be for a number of reasons. And at the same time, the idea of drug discovery, the speed at which you could test things, the idea of figuring out like an organ clock, what is your organ clock? We usually look at the body as

[Jacob Goldstein]

a whole, but erect people talks about that when you're talking about television.

[Kara Swisher]

Absolutely true. And AI will help you do that in a faster and more efficient and more accurate way. Cancer detection, cancer drugs. And so I wanted to say, look, there's all this charlatanism happening like heavy duty online and social media like you cannot believe. And at the same time there's all this promise. So you know, in computing you talk to the signal to noise ratio, there's a lot of noise, much of it nonsense. There's a lot of signal too. And so I was trying to find the signal.

[Robert Smith]

And this often happens when rich people, for their own egotistical needs, research something. Sometimes there's things that come out of this. I'm reminded of a historical story of Charles Lindbergh in the 1920s. He was of course the first man to fly solo across the Atlantic. Famous pilot, I don't know.

[Kara Swisher]

Truly horrible person.

[Robert Smith]

Truly horrible.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Truly.

[Robert Smith]

So in the 1930s he meets friend of Nazis.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Well, famously.

[Robert Smith]

Famously so in the 1930s he meets this Nobel Prize winning scientist, Alexis Corral. And Alexis is an actual scientist who's experimenting on keeping organs alive outside the body. And his idea is that people will just be able to swap organs in, in the future and they develop all of these amazing technologies. Charles Lindsberg, because he was sort of a Mechanical engineer sure thought it was interesting. Helps Correll develop the pump that can keep organs alive. It infuses, it's a perfusion device, the principles of which are used to this day. Now it turns out that Alexis Carell, the Nobel prize winning scientist, doesn't believe that everyone should live forever.

[Kara Swisher]

Correct.

[Robert Smith]

He just believes eugenics, that white Aryans should live forever.

[Kara Swisher]

Hence the attraction. Lindbergh had an attraction to that idea.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Well, in the 20s, it was all eugenics. Didn't Kellogg get into eugenics?

[Kara Swisher]

They all did. And of course there were state laws about eugenics. And then it leads to the ugliness of Nazism, which did IND enormous amounts of experiments on people and actual people in order to figure out skin color, eye color, all manner of things, which is horrific at the same time. So it always leads to that is like who should live and who should die. And one of the things that I wanted to get into is the vast inequality in this. And a good example is crispr, which it's a technology very promising. And I interviewed Jennifer Doudna, one of the Nobel Prize winners around it. But like, who. How should we move this out and who should pay for it? Cause it's very expensive. And one of the areas is sickle cell anemia. And using crispr, it's still in its early stages. Let me be clear. You could possibly solve it.

[Jacob Goldstein]

A single genetic mutation.

[Kara Swisher]

A single genetic mutation, and you could just clip it out, essentially. And they're not doing it because it's a population that's poor. It's a population that's African American, primarily. And one of the points that I think one of the people that make is you can be sure if Elon Musk had sickle cell anemia, it would be solved Yesterday. It's a $2 million per person, even if it works kind of thing. And so how do you figure out ways to get these technologies into the hands of as many people as possible, as many doctors as possible, so they could use them? And so I tried to. I was sort of on a search. I myself had a stroke many years ago. I have a hole in my heart, which is now plugged. I know you're. Thank you. A very easy surgery when it used to be a very hard one.

[Jacob Goldstein]

There is technological progress, widespread benefit.

[Kara Swisher]

But I went even further because around strokes there's so much cost. There's this lab in Stanford run by this woman from China, and they're using little tiny things like you remember that movie where they injected a little ship, a tiny little ship into a Human.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Was it?

[Kara Swisher]

Rick Morenus, the Incredible Voyage. Incredible Voyage.

[Jacob Goldstein]

I confused it with honey. I shrugged.

[Kara Swisher]

Rick Moranis did that too. But it's called Fantastic Voyage. If you go watch it. The technology in the movie is terrible. It's like you could sort of see the man's hand moving the stuff down.

[Robert Smith]

Yeah, but they're fighting white blood cell.

[Kara Swisher]

That's. That's right. With their zappers. And one of the things that's interesting is these little milobots and they go into your. They get injected. When you're having a stroke, they get injected into your neck. And one of the problems now is they can use medication to mitigate it, which takes a minute and you could have damage. Or they put this catheter in and go to the clot right now. And the catheter goes in. And just the introduction of a catheter is a problem because it could nick something or whatever. And it goes in and it hits the clot, but. But the clot sometimes breaks up and goes further and gets worse. This millibot goes in and it eats the clot. I don't even. And it's used and it's by magnets and AI.

[Jacob Goldstein]

I feel like I knew that's the most.

[Kara Swisher]

But it's being worked on. Right? I don't know.

[Jacob Goldstein]

We'll leave that at once.

[Kara Swisher]

It's like a video game. And so I was doing it and that was an astonishing thing.

[Robert Smith]

Not to yourself.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Did you cure a stroke?

[Kara Swisher]

I didn't cure my stroke. But think of. You could be in a rural area, inject this thing in someone in a better doctor, a more trained doctor in Boston has already done the program and already mapped this patient's brain. Instantly go in and get the stroke. Do you think? How much money do you save if you don't have damage from a stroke? Same thing with mRNA.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Well. And suffering. Not to leave suffering out of it,

[Kara Swisher]

of course, but I like to appeal to people's money. Sure.

[Jacob Goldstein]

For sure.

[Kara Swisher]

In our country, we pay double. $13,000 a person versus six in every other developed country. So we're wasting money on worse outcomes and we're unhealthy than they are. Or we're very unhealthy, actually. And so like MRNA technology, another incredible technological leap. And of course, it's been politicized because of, like, ridiculous murders.

[Jacob Goldstein]

That's the dumbest one, right? Politicizing MRNA vaccines, vaccine for cancer, vaccine

[Kara Swisher]

for hiv, all this stuff. And now a lot of the. I went and visited the lab of a guy who won the Nobel Prize and he was like, everyone's leaving to go to Canada or France or somewhere else. And we used to have the most robust technological development, but technology moves slowly and then now it's gotten politicized in a way that's problematic. And so on one level, one of the things he said that was really striking to me is the next time we have a pandemic, we're gonna beg China for vaccines. That's how where we could get.

[Robert Smith]

We'll be back with more immortality and Kara Swisher after the break.

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[Jacob Goldstein]

Paris Swisher Tell us about Brian Johnson.

[Kara Swisher]

Oh Brian, he's really interesting. You know, he's someone I've known because he had a technology company he sold around, I think payments or whatever. One of the early kind of startups that did really well. And he made a fortune. A couple hundred million dollars I believe.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Used to be a fortune. Used to seem like.

[Kara Swisher]

Well, it was at the time we were all like, wow, that's a lot of money. He came to my conference, which I ran a big technology conference. I often had presentations by interesting cutting edge technology and I started to really get interested in especially the health stuff. And he came to talk about the brain and he was one of the earliest people to talk about AI and where is the human brain and cognitive issues that were happening. And I thought it was fascinating. And he himself had depression issues and he talked about that. How can we figure out ways to mitigate depression? Really interesting talk. A couple years later, he shows up as this creature, like, who has been like experimenting on himself.

[Robert Smith]

People who've seen this on social media, he looks a little pale and vampirish and he talks a lot about what he's doing to stay alive forever. I'm sorry, what he's doing to not die. Which he makes a distinction.

[Kara Swisher]

He's being very cute about it, you know, don't die. Right, of course.

[Jacob Goldstein]

I gotta give it to him.

[Kara Swisher]

It's a good copy. It's good copy. And so he measures everything in his erections at night, his sleep. He tries things, sees if they work. He was into rapamycin and then, oh no, wait a minute, it's a problem. He just does everything. So he's an experiment unto himself, which

[Robert Smith]

is not an experiment. Just to be clear, that is not the way science works.

[Kara Swisher]

That is correct. It's going to help. How can Brian Johnson live longer? It has nothing to do with you or I.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Well, I mean, if he figures something out. Although to Robert's point, an n of 1 isn't going to work.

[Kara Swisher]

It's not fair enough. No, he's not gonna figure something out with just him. You need these gold standard tests. And so one of the things I put to him was, why don't you just use your hundreds of millions of dollars to help do more testing on stuff that's promising Instead he's doing, you know, trading blood between himself and his son. And it's doesn't work for everyone. It doesn't work at all.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Yeah, okay.

[Kara Swisher]

Let me just say. And so I don't mind him doing it, but the way he's doing it creates all this again, misinformation online. And some of his stuff is very clear. It's like, take olive oil. Great. Good choice, Bryant. But then the supplements always show up. Oh, if you only drank this and ate this and did this. And then it gets into the hawking of like, you know, any snake oil salesman who's been, you know, who used to just go from town to town and sell all manner of crap, you

[Jacob Goldstein]

know, you don't have to go from town to town anymore. Now you've got Instagram.

[Kara Swisher]

Right, Exactly. And one of the things that really disturbed me, and I already was writing about it in a more serious way around anti Semitism and hate and et CETERA was the health stuff. And I started to see people who had no business giving health information, giving health information out, and no one regulates it. And again, if you're on television, you can't do that. But on the Internet, you certainly can say, use this one pill and you'll be fine. And it sort of is offensive to me because it's actually dangerous.

[Jacob Goldstein]

I want to do another one from history.

[Kara Swisher]

Sure.

[Jacob Goldstein]

I want to do Charles Edward Brown, Sacard Doe. Doctor.

[Kara Swisher]

All right.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Famous legit doctor in France in the late 1800s, had taught at Harvard. So in 1889, when he was 72, in decline, he gave this talk in France where he said, I have made an amazing discovery. I'm stronger. I can work longer hours.

[Kara Swisher]

Cocaine.

[Robert Smith]

Close.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Close. Yeah, kind of close. And my favorite of his discoveries, he said, with my new treatment, my urine stream is 25% longer.

[Robert Smith]

You know, Brian Johnson would have loved that.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Jacob Goldstein]

His secret was grinding up the testicles of dogs and guinea pigs and injecting it into himself.

[Kara Swisher]

Oh, my God, it's so dangerous. Sepsis. Hello, Sepsis.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Painful. I mean, there is this obsession with sperm. Basically, for him, it was like, oh, it's the sperm is what's doing it.

[Kara Swisher]

Women hadn't noticed that with men. Interesting.

[Jacob Goldstein]

And kind of. I thought of it when you were talking about Brian Johnson and people selling things online because this became this international sensation. Like, the doctors dismissed him. But in America, people were trying it. This kind of aging baseball player tried it and then pitched a shutout and hit a double and a triple. And all the newspapers were like, let's

[Kara Swisher]

see how it works. Right.

[Jacob Goldstein]

And then, by the way, all these people are getting poisoned by it. And there were deaths and lawsuits. And, I mean, I will say, when I read about this, I thought, well, maybe it's testosterone. Like, I don't know. You know, they hadn't identified testosterone yet,

[Kara Swisher]

but which is in heavy use among men these days.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Indeed, no. They looked back and, like, there's not enough testosterone in what they would have been injecting to men. So it was placebo.

[Kara Swisher]

It was painful placebo, Right, Exactly. I mean, that's today. That's today. Is it nads? Is it peptides? Is it this? Oh, no, it's red light. And the problem is, some of these things are hyperbaric chambers, which I went

[Jacob Goldstein]

in a hyperbaric chamber.

[Kara Swisher]

How was it, by the way? A lot of the early hyperbaric chamber stuff was done at the Brooklyn Bridge and also in France when they were building bridges, because the workers would have to Go down, they'd get the bends. And they were. And there was a lot of doctoring happening, figuring it out.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Well, that's where you actually need it to be clear, if you're working at the bottom of the.

[Kara Swisher]

I did not have the bends and so it wasn't effective for me. It's good in wound healing. It can be properly used in a medical setting. But now people are like, I flew to Europe or I flew to Asia and I'm going to get in the hyperbaric chamber because more oxygen has to be better than normal oxygen. But it's not. And it's also. There's issues of blowing up, but that's another issue. These things can actually explode.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Not good for longevity.

[Kara Swisher]

Not good for longevity. And so all these people are selling them in these expensive high end things to refresh you. And so I go. And it doesn't refresh you. It doesn't. There's no science behind it. There is good science around the bends and wound healing. And the same thing with some of these injections of NADs and wound healing. Yes, there's some really promising. There's incredible stuff happening around that these gels and all kind of stuff. And instead they have to make it a catch all for everything.

[Robert Smith]

So I understand why people sell it, but I'm curious why people buy it. I mean, I've thought about this and I think maybe people feel out of control in their lives and the body is the one thing you can control and you have the right to control and do whatever you want, even if it's. That's not scientific or can actually hurt you.

[Kara Swisher]

Well, look at the diet industry. Oh, grapefruit. If you eat grapefruit. Oh, wait, chicken broth. Oh, wait. If you eat this, like Scarsdale Divide.

[Robert Smith]

I'm still on oat bran.

[Kara Swisher]

Are you?

[Jacob Goldstein]

Are you? No.

[Kara Swisher]

Right now with protein maxing.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Yeah.

[Kara Swisher]

Men, please stop. Because you don't need that much. I don't care what the fuck Peter Attia says you don't need that much. He's wrong. He's wrong. He's actually wrong. You do need protein, that's for sure. But this idea that you're gonna be extra strong if you have extra. It's such an American thing. Like more. If this works, double will be better. And I think there's a hope and a dream, just like with religion, that if I only do this, then this. And it's nothing more than con artists, really.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Let's talk about fitness, because fitness is the one where I think Silver Bullet is pushing it. Nothing's a silver bullet.

[Kara Swisher]

There's no silver bullet.

[Jacob Goldstein]

But it is amazing how good fitness is in how many ways. And I know you talk about it in the show.

[Kara Swisher]

I mean, silver bullet has to do with killing vampires, but go ahead.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Oh, yes. No, you tell me. So you talk about fitness in the show, like, what did you learn? What did you do?

[Kara Swisher]

Look good. Sleep is critically important, but you don't have to monitor every 50, you know.

[Robert Smith]

Where's your aura ring?

[Kara Swisher]

I left it at home. I. I just don't care anymore. I don't like it doesn't.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Or is it, like, not on brand now that you're doing this?

[Kara Swisher]

No, no, I like it. I think. I think it's interesting. I just don't need that much information. It doesn't. Once it stops helping me, I'm like, that's enough with that. It's interesting for sure. But I didn't. The insights were smaller and smaller. Although I like the aura ring, I think it's exercise. Okay.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Exercise is amazing.

[Kara Swisher]

You. Absolutely. I did VO2 max, and I think it's. I think a lot of. If you can afford it. It's a really interesting piece of information for you in terms of improving how your muscles and heart work together. Very interesting that you improve your score, that you do especially cardiovascular exercise.

[Jacob Goldstein]

But that's when you don't have to go do that test.

[Robert Smith]

VO2 Max is just like, you can walk upstairs.

[Kara Swisher]

The only reason I'm saying is because you can do it on some of these devices. The aura and this and even the AirPods is now starting to take numbers, and it's just more accurate. That's all. It's a more accurate version. And so one of the things is you exercise. I've started running again, and I feel great. But what you have to do it is you do. You say, go to 110, then 120 for a minute or two, then 130, but then you have to go down to 100.

[Jacob Goldstein]

You're talking about your heart rate.

[Kara Swisher]

Yes, but you have to bring it down, and that's the efficiency of your heart, and that's. You don't have to, like, run until you vomit.

[Jacob Goldstein]

No. In fact, running slower is better.

[Kara Swisher]

Correct.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Right. Like. Like, I love to run, and it's

[Kara Swisher]

hard for me, there's this slowdown mentality

[Jacob Goldstein]

kind of truism about running is you go too slow on your fast days and too fast on your slow days. And most of your days should be slow days. You should normally be running. So you can be like, having A

[Kara Swisher]

conversation or a simple thing, you know, it's a great thing to do. You eat your dinner, you walk 30 minutes.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Yeah, that's.

[Kara Swisher]

My grandmother said that it is incredibly good for your health to do that.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Good for fighting diabetes. Right. To walk right after you eat.

[Kara Swisher]

All manner of things. Very simple costs, you know how much it costs?

[Jacob Goldstein]

0.

[Kara Swisher]

I'm sure they'll build something that you have to wear some weighted vest that will help you even more.

[Jacob Goldstein]

They have the weighted vest. They have the weighted vest.

[Kara Swisher]

I have a lot of friends who wear it. It's fine. Great.

[Jacob Goldstein]

It's expensive. I looked into it. It's excessive. I want to do another history one here because it's one that I like. We've been talking about a lot of sort of quackery and charlatanism. I love fitness, weirdly. And so Jack LaLanne, you're old enough to.

[Kara Swisher]

Amazing, amazing man.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Amazing man. So he came.

[Kara Swisher]

Everything he says is accurate.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Yeah. And his main thing is like exercise. Right. So he comes up in the 30s, 1930s, basically kind of starts the first health club.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah.

[Jacob Goldstein]

And doctors at that time are anti weightlifting. There's this term muscle bound, where they say, like if you lift weights, you won't be able to move. Well, they say it'll give you a heart attack. Wrong. They were wrong. And then he has a TV show in the 50s, I remember. But it's when TV was just free. Right. And he'll say like, hey, kids, go get your parents. And he'll do like things with like a broomstick, you know, and this is probably pushing it too far, but as I was thinking about this in the context of talking to you, you know, I was thinking like we've been talking a fair bit about things from the 1800s, early 1900s, Gilded Age, which is an age that is like today. Technological change, vast new wealth, new communications technologies, inequality. Jack Lalanne is mid century America. 1950s, 60s, that's peak Jack Lalanne era. That is the opposite that. The era of compressing, declining inequality, of rising equality, of the rising middle class. And I love Jack lalanne as the emblem of that.

[Kara Swisher]

He's amazing. And his outfit was wonderful. That red outfit he wore. I think one of the things he was doing is he was talking about basics, strength training. Calisthenics is the word they would use.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Yeah, I love that.

[Kara Swisher]

Very simple stuff that you didn't need to spend money on. Just get up and move. And so with exercise, strength training is critical, especially as you older, balance training. But not. You don't have to buy all the crap, literally you could stand on one. And so one of the things he was doing is he was simplifying for everyone. And one of the things I was trying to get through is that there's all manner of things everybody can do. And again, sleep's another thing. Do you need to monitor it so much? There's all stuff you can put on your head or a chill pad or this and that. You could also open a window.

[Jacob Goldstein]

How is your sleep?

[Kara Swisher]

It's good. It's good. Yeah. Yeah. Surprising.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Do you have any tips? I have the middle age phenomenon of waking up in the middle of the night.

[Kara Swisher]

I wake up more than I used to, but that's a phenomenon of age. That's all it is.

[Robert Smith]

We should have just done this at 4 in the morning.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah. I never used to wake up. I wake up now twice a night and I go back to sleep. But you know, there's all people who have real sleep problems and there are, there's all kinds of interesting science.

[Jacob Goldstein]

You go to the fancy Equinox sleep, gym, hotel. I do.

[Kara Swisher]

He's an interesting guy. He's changed a lot, some of his attitudes and stuff. But like, like, it's like what they do is they bring the temperature down. That's absolutely true. They close the shades, you know, or they have these softer than extra sheets, this thing on your head that monitors you. You just need to be in a quiet place, go to sleep and put down your fucking phone. Really, it's not really.

[Robert Smith]

And sometimes technology can actually, I think, make it worse. I had a Fitbit that told me my sleep number and when I would wake up in the middle of the night, I would lay there thinking, oh no, my number.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Would you really? That would such a cliche.

[Robert Smith]

I would be like, no, my number. Like this is gonna hurt my number. Because I'm trying to break 90 and I'm like, oh, this is gonna.

[Jacob Goldstein]

And then I'm gonna get a B plus instead of an A.

[Kara Swisher]

Nice thing I had when I had my Oura ring on. I was gonna wear it today, but I actually don't get information I need from it. That's why. And I happen to like the guy who guys who run that is Zeke Emanuel, who's in the documentary later. And he was talking about the importance of social connections which are scientifically proven and also in all manner ways. And he said, and I was wearing the Oura ring. And he goes, why do you wear that? And I go, well, it's interesting numbers, whether I slept well. And he goes, don't you know that when you wake up up, and I'm like, I do. I do, sir.

[Robert Smith]

I could feel it if I forget to check the number. It meant I had a great night's sleep.

[Kara Swisher]

Right. Right. So anyway, that's what I was getting to.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Let's take another break.

[Kara Swisher]

Okay.

[Robert Smith]

When our program continues.

[Kara Swisher]

Okay.

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[Jacob Goldstein]

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[Kara Swisher]

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[Jacob Goldstein]

So you talk some in the show about how wellness is marketed to women. Tell me about that.

[Kara Swisher]

Well, actually it's being marketed a lot to men now, which is really interesting. And especially these wellness. I call them grifters. Wellness grifters.

[Jacob Goldstein]

They use a different word for men, right? It's like tactical wellness. No.

[Kara Swisher]

Well, let me tell you, let me give you an explanation of the. I can explain all of gender issues. When women do things around food and health or diets or whatever, they have body dysmorphia. When men do it, it's body hacking. Like give me a break.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Eumorphia. I think I saw the word eumorphia.

[Kara Swisher]

You know what's interesting is it is marketed women that tends to be around skin and things like that. But men are getting into it much, much more. And you know, you have these influencers like Peter Attia or Andrew Huberman and a lot of it is again selling stuff. They all have supplements, they all have bars, they all have this and that. And it's so narcissistic. And that's what, that's what drives me crazy about all of it. It's not about better health, it's about better you as opposed to everybody else.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Tell me about Sam Altman's longevity startup.

[Kara Swisher]

Well, he's doing a lot of stuff about extension, life extension. And there is significantly good science around where we're going with AI and cancer detection, as I said, or drug discovery and stuff like that. And so some of the things is what are some of the things we can study in a scientific way that will move us forward. And I am all for that kind of stuff. And he's less on the living fore more. How do you have a healthier health span over a lifespan? Because right now our lifespan as a whole is 15 years longer than our health span.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Right. So how do you, how do you have people who are 85 years old and fine.

[Kara Swisher]

Correct. How do you bring those numbers as close together as possible? Because you spend. We're in a sick care system, not a healthcare system.

[Jacob Goldstein]

And it's terrible to be that person, right? It's terrible to have 15 years old.

[Kara Swisher]

The money is over here and it's not in the preventative area. So he's working on the preventative area. I'm fine with that. That's really important. The question is, with AI, they always promise, well, they're doing all manner of unpleasant things. They're promising all these, we're going to solve cancer. And by the way, we're taking all your information so we can sell you shit. Like to me that's can you have

[Jacob Goldstein]

the cancer cure without.

[Kara Swisher]

Right. But they are using it as a marketing item versus a real thing.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Well, it can be both, right?

[Kara Swisher]

To be clear, 100%, that's what I would say.

[Jacob Goldstein]

It seems to be both, right.

[Kara Swisher]

There's some assumptions, which is more subtle things happening in cancer research because of that. You know, DeepMind was working on gene folding. There's CRISPR, there's. There's just so much great stuff. And what it is again is, it's drowned out. But this idea that we will solve cancer. I'm like, we actually will solve cancer. It's just a question of if we have the commitment. And science takes longer than tech wants it to take.

[Robert Smith]

So one more history story. This is the Cryonics Society of California, the 1960s.

[Kara Swisher]

I stayed out of that. I thought about it, but it's amazing.

[Robert Smith]

So this was a bunch of, this was a bunch of amateurs in the 1960s who were thinking, well, yes, we will cure cancer someday, but not now. So what if right before, right after death, we put people on ice and we keep them frozen until there is a cure? It was led by a guy named Bob Nelson, a TV repairman. These were not scientists. And they found the very first volunteer to be frozen, James Bedford. He was a psychology professor and he was dying of cancer. And of course in fact did die of cancer. But I should say that right before he died, his final words were, I'm feeling better. Then he dies and the Cryonic Society covers him in ice that they had gotten from like neighbors freezers. This was not scientific. They eventually put him in a tube. They did this to many people.

[Kara Swisher]

I like this whole thing.

[Robert Smith]

But the problem was they didn't think it out. They didn't think, like, if you are going to preserve someone for decades, centuries, who's gonna pay for it? How are you gonna Take care of these things. They had a bunch of people frozen in tubes in a cave. I guess it was sort of a cave. And then they ran out of money, and then they just sort of unplugged them and they thought, this is the

[Kara Swisher]

plot of Captain America, but go ahead.

[Robert Smith]

Well, James Bedford, that first guy they froze, stayed frozen and is now with a company called Alcor.

[Kara Swisher]

I think it's called Alcor.

[Robert Smith]

Alcor in Arizona. And so he's in liquid nitrogen. They don't know. They think he's in good condition. There's other people frozen in Alcor. But I guess my thought was, now what? There's no decision about how to pay for it.

[Kara Swisher]

How long.

[Robert Smith]

How do we know when to wake him? How do we know how to wake him? We don't know any of these things.

[Kara Swisher]

He's dead.

[Jacob Goldstein]

People just so. They have a thing about saying whether he's dead or not.

[Kara Swisher]

Right?

[Jacob Goldstein]

Isn't that part of the game they're playing?

[Kara Swisher]

Carol Fisher is not a doctor. And I'm telling you, he's not.

[Robert Smith]

Well, that's what we think. It's 2020.

[Kara Swisher]

I thought about it, and then I

[Jacob Goldstein]

thought, weird or too silly?

[Kara Swisher]

No, I fully think someday we're gonna print our livers. They're gonna have. There's all manner of stuff. I do think we will figure out a way to create all manner of things. And I think that is possible and not yet. And of course, one of the things that's a problem with the tech people. You're often saying, you know, actually. And I'm remembering Elizabeth Holmes with the vial of blood. The thing that we do, all these tests, Theranos and all these tech people were totally enam with her. Handed her piles and piles of money. And she always wanted to come to my conferences and stuff. And I went to my brother, I'm like, what do you think? He goes, bullshit. You cannot do this. It's not in the realm of physics. You can't do it. Biology doesn't work like this. And he said, she's a con artist to me. And I said, okay. And I went back to her. I said, I don't really understand what you're doing, and I don't believe you. And I don't have enough knowledge to disabuse you, so I'm gonna pass kind of stuff. And so what was really interesting was so many people were like. Cause the idea of it' like, wow. And I bet someday we will be able to do that.

[Jacob Goldstein]

It just takes a long time.

[Kara Swisher]

Correct.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Have you heard the Term Eroom's law. No, it's Moore's law spelled backwards. Because in drug development, it gets slower and more expensive over time.

[Kara Swisher]

Exactly. Instead of faster and cheaper, as it should.

[Robert Smith]

By the way, what if we give up on the whole having the body live forever and just upload our mind? AI. Who's doing that? Who's doing that and will it.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Singularity.

[Kara Swisher]

Right, Singularity. Well, that's. It's a version of that. That's the body becomes a robot. And, you know, actually, Elon Musk and I had once of a science fiction thing called Made of Meat. And these aliens who are all light and energy that they talk to each other come down and they can't believe we are made of meat. And we talk through our meat holes, which are our mouths, and they're like. They have meat. Why are they using meat to communicate and everything? And it's a great story. It's a radio play. And so the idea that you could continue forever is a big thing that illuminates a lot of tech people that you could download your brain. Now, the brain, let me just say, is the most beautiful instrument a computer. Wishes it were like a brain. A brain is astonishing. Astonishing piece. And it's not technology, it's something else. And we still have never plumbed the real depths of all that's going on there. And it's the kind of connections just for me to pick up this phone is an astonishing thing. And so one of the things they are enamored is downloading everyone's consciousness into the whatever. A lot of it was early to talk to Holocaust survivors in order to get their stories. And then when you're in a museum, you could talk to a real Holocaust survivor who's no longer living. And I think that's a beautiful use of the technology, but you could also create. And I created a caratar, which was me. And the strides because of AI are much different. Used to be they would say something and have a number of responses. Now the avatar can think by itself or use all these patterns and all this information to create new conversations that I never said.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Generative.

[Kara Swisher]

Generative. Exactly. And so it wasn't me. And so I started to have a conversation with it. And it was really interesting is how much it started to really have a conversation.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Who was funnier? You were the Avatar.

[Kara Swisher]

Well, there's a point where I'm like, can you tell a joke? Could you smile more?

[Jacob Goldstein]

You told your avatar to smile more.

[Kara Swisher]

You're not supposed to smile. I know, I know. But it's my avatar. I can tell it to do whatever I want. What was really interesting is I said, you're not really funny. And then it told quite a good joke. And I was like, okay, that was good.

[Jacob Goldstein]

That reflects well on you, I think.

[Kara Swisher]

Yes. Or the avatar. But what was interesting is we were talking about. I said, but I don't think you exist because you don't have empathy. And they were like, no, I don't. I don't have empathy.

[Robert Smith]

But I'm glad your avatar exists just in case Elon Musk lives forever.

[Kara Swisher]

Yes.

[Robert Smith]

There's also a version of you who irritate him. Who can irritate him forever.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah. This avatar needs to be 100% more irritating. I'm gonna work on that.

[Jacob Goldstein]

So we've been spending this conversation talking about people avoiding death or trying to avoid death. But let's talk about death. I mean, you do talk about death in the show. You talk about how it's been present in your life.

[Kara Swisher]

That's right.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Since you were a girl.

[Kara Swisher]

Yes.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Tell me about your dad.

[Kara Swisher]

Well, my dad died when he was 34. He was just starting his life. Three kids he had come out of. Not poverty, but, you know, he went to the Navy in order to pay for medical school and college. And he had just gotten out, and he had a cerebral hemorrhage, essentially, and he died, and that was it. And so my brothers and I, since everything's been informed by the idea that you could die at any time. And I think one of the things that has helped us, and it helped Steve Jobs, too, was in terms of his illness, you have a limited amount of time on this planet. What are you gonna do with it? And I think it can be very inspir. And in fact, I went and found a professor who's at Skidmore who's talking about the idea of death acceptance. And Buddhism knows this already. A lot of world religions know this. The more you accept death, the longer you live, the happier you are, the healthier you are. Those that avoid death are death. Avoidance, polarity, hatefulness towards others, anger, fear. And it creates a really problematic society when you pretend you try to stave off death. And the Steve Job inspiration was. He talked about that death is the single greatest motivator of innovation and creativity. Cause it makes you understand that you're naked. It doesn't matter. You're not gonna be here. And I use quotes like, Ben Franklin said, death takes no bribes. And so they had a more full life. Cause they understood that it ends.

[Robert Smith]

The stoics talked about this, you know, remind yourself that you will die every day.

[Kara Swisher]

Marcus Aurelius always talks about death, but he's not obsessed with it. He's aware of it. Death awareness is critically important to a healthy and happy life. And one of the things that was really interesting, I went and visited a Harvard happiness study people which had been doing with groups of people for almost 70 years or something like that, is friends and family and meaning in your life in some fashion is what creates longevity. And the people that were isolated and let me finish on technology, nothing could be worse for us than having chatbot relationships. The lack of friction, the sycophant as part of it. You need to have human beings in your life in order to live longer. If someone said, what are the two things you could do? Don't be poor and have friends and family and try new things. It creates a longer, happier life. And it's scientifically proven and it doesn't cost anything. And exercise, yes, but don't have a relationship with a chatbot. Don't do it. It's not going to be better for you. Don't have a relationship with this phone. This phone will live after you. By the way. What's not gonna live longer is these relationships that keep you healthier and happier as you move on. And you should move on. And the last thing is, hey, I ask everyone I interviewed how they wanna die. So I'm gonna ask you guys, how do you wanna die?

[Jacob Goldstein]

Quickly. The answer is quickly.

[Kara Swisher]

Really? Okay. Yeah, okay.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Like, not now.

[Kara Swisher]

All right. But.

[Jacob Goldstein]

But when it happens, I want it to be fast. I wanna be old and I want

[Robert Smith]

it to be fast.

[Kara Swisher]

Really? Cause it's the most interesting moment of your life. You couldn't remember your birth. This you're gonna remember.

[Jacob Goldstein]

I'm not gonna remember my death either.

[Kara Swisher]

But it's so interesting. It's supposed to be best because it's last.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Is it like I actually am skeptical? People talk about, I don't know, people's deathbed. You know, wisdom as wisdom. It's not obvious to me that someone is wiser because they're about, I'm sorry to death.

[Kara Swisher]

Shame you. You could die any way you want.

[Jacob Goldstein]

No, I mean, I want.

[Robert Smith]

I want to be surrounded by my family and the Cryonic Society of California.

[Kara Swisher]

Yes, exactly. I'd be a bag of ice from 711 to cover you. Right. The best. The best answer I ever got was this woman who was a twin, who was a twin, said, my twin. And I have thought about it a lot. Some people have thought about it a lot. Some people have not. And she goes, my twin and I want to be shot out of a cannon and shoot each other.

[Robert Smith]

Wow.

[Kara Swisher]

I was like, oh, all right. And one guy was like, this preacher who's amazing in D.C. and he said, when I die, I want my mom to meet me. And we want to watch Phil Donahue together for eternity. Because that's what I used to do. And I go, and guess what? Phil Donahue will be there. So you'll be able to hang out with Phil Donahue and give you the mic.

[Jacob Goldstein]

You'll get the Phil Donahue mic.

[Kara Swisher]

People have the most fascinating answers to. And they're very happy to answer. At first they're like. And then they're like, oh, I hadn't thought of that.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Okay, last line. How do you want to die?

[Kara Swisher]

I talk about it in the series. You're gonna have to wait and see.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Oh, boo. Boo.

[Kara Swisher]

I have a new one. I have a new one that I just decided. I change all the time. One is throwing in the face. Get cremated. Thrown in the face of people I don't like.

[Jacob Goldstein]

After you die?

[Kara Swisher]

Yes. But people answer differently. You don't know. Sometimes it's how they want to have a funeral. Sometimes it's how they wanna die. I just. I don't. I leave it wide open. Steve Jobs, when he does his sister, wrote a beautiful piece about the moment he died. And he looked up and he said, wow. Oh, wow. Which I think he stage managed that, like. You know what I mean? And you're like, what? Exactly. It was perfect death for him. For me, I'm kind of. Kind of a. I'm kind of a troublemaker. And I want to go. I'm sitting there, all my friends and family. I have a lot of kids. Everybody's there. And I go, oh, you're kidding. And then die. I can't believe this.

[Jacob Goldstein]

So here's my favorite last word. I don't know if it's true, but it's Suzuki Shunryu. Suzuki, you know, the Zen master who brought Zen to America. Basically, his last words, apparently, were thank you.

[Kara Swisher]

Oh.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Which for me is perfect. And so I will say that to you right now.

[Kara Swisher]

Thank you.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Thank you very much.

[Kara Swisher]

Thank you.

[Robert Smith]

Thanks for coming.

[Jacob Goldstein]

That was a very special episode of Business History, a show about the history of business. We learned a lot with Kara Swisher. And if you're listening on audio, she was wearing the sunglasses. You can see our show on YouTube. The video is edited by Matt Nielsen. Our showrunner and editor is Ryan Dilley. Our producer is Gabriel Hunter. Chang, and our engineer is Sarah Brugueri.

[Robert Smith]

Thanks for listening.

[Jacob Goldstein]

You're Robert Smith and I'm Jacob Goldstein, and we'll be back next week with more stories about the history of business.

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[Kara Swisher]

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[Kara Swisher]

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