After Hours: Frozen for the Future

Summary

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Podcast Summary: Full Measure After Hours

Episode: "Frozen for the Future"

Host: Sharyl Attkisson
Guest: James Arrowood (President of Alcor Life Extension Foundation)
Release Date: November 20, 2025

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Overview

In this episode of Full Measure After Hours, Sharyl Attkisson explores the controversial and fascinating world of cryopreservation—freezing human bodies (or brains) after legal death in hopes of future revival. Sharyl interviews James Arrowood, president of the Alcor Life Extension Foundation, to demystify the science, ethics, motivations, and evolving mission behind cryonics today. The discussion seamlessly blends scientific ambition with reflections on hope, skepticism, practical applications, and philosophical implications.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. What is Cryopreservation?

• Alcor specializes in the long-term storage ("cryopreservation") of human remains in liquid nitrogen at -320°F.
• The process involves replacing blood with cryoprotectants to prevent cellular damage (“freezer burn”) in hopes of preserving structures for possible future reanimation.

2. Evolution of the Mission

• Past vs Present Focus:
  Decades ago, cryonics was often marketed with an emphasis on achieving human immortality. Today, Alcor’s messaging stresses scientific research and medical potential:
  • This includes advancing organ banking and transplant science, not just speculative revival.
  • The hope is to make the preservation of organs like kidneys and perhaps, eventually, brains for transplantation more viable.
• Quote:
  • “Anytime you look at the origins of what are now established technologies, they were at one point aspirational or emerging... The focus changed a bit because we need to show what we can do today that builds credibility.” — James Arrowood [04:38]

3. Cost & Accessibility

• Pricing Structure:
  • Head/”neuro” only: ~$80,000
  • Whole body: ~$220,000
  • Most members fund this through life insurance (comparable to funeral costs, premiums totaling $30,000–$50,000).
  • Actual operational costs are subsidized; a substantial portion goes into a long-term care trust for indefinite patient care.
• Membership Demographics:
  • Not just “for billionaires”—the majority of members are everyday people.
  • “Most people, including myself, fund this with life insurance. So even as the president I don’t get a crowd preservation for free. I have to pay for it.” — Arrowood [02:17]

4. Potential for Future Revival

• Alcor does not guarantee nor promise eventual revival.
• Funds are set aside ("well-endowed corpus") in the case that revival becomes possible.
• Arrowood cautions against predictions, referencing historical examples (like early skepticism about manned flight):
  • “When people talk about the notion that early adopters or early visionaries, for instance, said 30 years or 50 years, you'll notice that I don't give a time range... But somebody has to go after it. The Wright brothers had to believe they could do it when everybody else said they couldn't.” [07:52]

5. Scientific Breakthroughs & Research Applications

• Beyond revival, a chief current focus is organ preservation for transplants.
• Present limitations for organs (5-10 hour viability window) may be overcome for kidneys through cryopreservation:
  • “If your match is in London and you’re in Los Angeles, you’re just going to die or you’re not going to get that organ. It’s a terrible outcome, but it’s a preventable outcome scientifically that can be fixed.” — Arrowood [05:28]
• Alcor collaborates with some of the world’s leading bioscientists on these projects, emphasizing near-term lifesaving medical benefits.

6. Technological Complementaries and Changing Possibilities

• Advances in neuroscience (e.g., Neuralink, brain-computer interfaces) challenge previous notions of what the brain (and consciousness) could achieve post-preservation.
• “It was inconceivable that you could electrically connect to the brain, cause that to move a cursor on a screen. And that moved a robotic arm. But it’s happening. That’s undeniable.” — Arrowood [09:07]
• While Arrowood personally prefers a biological revival (“I would prefer that I have a biological body”), he acknowledges various future possibilities, including digital continuity.

7. Ethics, Religion & the Soul

• Members come from a variety of religious backgrounds.
• Alcor sees no inherent conflict with religious beliefs; philosophical and theological questions (e.g., the fate of the soul) are met with openness:
  • “If you believe in a monotheistic God, that's all powerful, if this isn't supposed to work, it's never going to work. God's never going to let it work, number one.” — Arrowood [11:16]
  • Argues that religious texts don't present a strict timeline on the departure or return of the soul, leaving space for this kind of scientific pursuit.

8. Takeaways & The Driving Purpose

• Alcor is a nonprofit, research-driven organization, motivated by the desire to save lives and advance medicine, not just sell immortality.
• Their staff are dedicated, working for below-market pay out of a mission-driven ethos:
  • “Nothing we’re doing here is to cause harm or conflict with religious beliefs or anything else. That’s not what this is about… Every day we don’t achieve the goal, there’s people who are dying that don’t have to die.” — Arrowood [13:15]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the affordability of cryonics:
  “Most people, including myself, fund this with life insurance. So even as the president I don’t get a crowd preservation for free. I have to pay for it.” — James Arrowood [02:17]
• On hope vs. hard science:
  “We need to show what we can do today that builds credibility.” — Arrowood [04:38]
• On the unpredictable timeline of breakthroughs:
  “The Wright brothers had to believe they could do it when everybody else said they couldn’t.” — Arrowood [08:31]
• On religious questions:
  “If you believe in a monotheistic God, that's all powerful, if this isn't supposed to work, it's never going to work. God's never going to let it work, number one.” — Arrowood [11:16]
• On broader purpose:
  “Somewhere, someday when we achieve a breakthrough, that means somebody’s going to live who would have died otherwise. And maybe that person changes the world for everybody else.” — Arrowood [14:16]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [00:04] — Introduction to the episode theme and guest
• [02:17] — Cost and funding structure for cryopreservation
• [03:19] — Long-term trust & the logistics of potential revival
• [03:54] — Changes in public interest & member demographics
• [04:38] — Shift in Alcor’s mission toward research credibility
• [05:24] — Medical potential: organ preservation for transplants
• [07:52] — Realism about revival timelines and lessons from history
• [10:47] — Ethics and religious considerations surrounding cryonics
• [13:15] — Final thoughts on mission and motivation

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Conclusion

"Frozen for the Future" provides a nuanced, forward-thinking look into both the promise and pragmatism of cryopreservation. Instead of hype and sci-fi fantasy, listeners are offered a grounded take: today's cryonics may not resurrect anyone soon, but its research could save countless lives and push medical science forward. Arrowood and Attkisson probe the boundaries of science, spirituality, and skepticism in a way that is both candid and thought-provoking.

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Transcript

[A]

Foreign.

[B]

Hi everybody. Cheryl Ekeson here. Welcome to another edition of Full Measure. After Hours. Today, frozen for the Future. Find out how people are seeking immortality by signing up to freeze their bodies after legal death, hoping for future reanimation. Sunday, November 23rd on my TV program full measurement, a half hour special on longevity from cutting edge trends to the latest research. One of my stories will focus on the hope of a future where death is no longer the end. ALCOR is a scientific research and educational laboratory that focuses on the cryopreservation or long term storage of human remains for various research purposes. I'm fascinated by this idea of freezing your body for the future and I first did a story on this, gosh over 30 years ago when I was working for CNN because I also think it's fascinating to learn about the types of people who sign up for this type of service. Hundreds of patients are being stored in liquid nitrogen on site at the Arizona facility maintained at about, I'm told, minus 320 degrees Fahrenheit. Their blood is replaced with cryoprotectants to prevent what I guess we might colloquially call freezer burn, aiming to preserve biological structures for future, as they say, reanimation. James Arrowwood heads up Alcor Life Extension Foundation. This is the nonprofit that runs Alcor and the facility that's pushing the boundaries of life and death. He also says that Alcor's research could do good things in the near future beyond this hope of future reanimation. He says the research could revolutionize organ transplants and serve other medical research purposes. Here is my interview with James Arrowwood.

[C]

How expensive is the process? Let's say I wanted to sign up today and either cryopreserve head only or the whole body.

[A]

What would you tell me when it comes to expense? A lot of people think this is only for billionaires, but that's not correct. Most people, including myself, fund this with life insurance. So even as the president I don't get a crowd preservation for free. I have to pay for it. If you get the right kind of life insurance is about the cost of a funeral. By the time you pay premium is about 30 to 50k. The cost on paper if you paid full price would be 80,000 for neuro or about 220,000 for whole body. And I say about because it varies a little bit. If you live out of the country, most of that money about 140,000 on the 220 goes to Long term trust. So I don't get to use it for operations or research. We're actually 60% funded by donations as a nonprofit, which are tax deductible donations. So we use that money to do the research. We actually lose money on about 50% of our recoveries. But we need the bodies to do the research.

[C]

Does the cost cover the potential that someday in the future when we're living the Jetson life, people could actually be regenerated or brought back to life? Is that included?

[A]

So about the 55% that comes out of the cost goes into this long term care trust. Now some of that money is actually designated for the possibility of what's called revival. So if you were ever brought back in a meaningful way, which we don't promise, we don't even know if that's possible. But if it were possible, there is a corpus of money, it's very well endowed, a lot of money in that. In fact, I wish I had that money for operations. But in any event, there's a lot of money there and that's to treat the patients indefinitely.

[C]

Has this picked up steam in recent years in terms of the number of people signing up or is it something that just ebbs and flows?

[A]

Over the years we have seen a market increase in the number of people signing up to be cryopreserved. Some of those folks want to be crop preserved for future kind of health genealogy. Some people think they'll be revived, but for the most part we get people who think it's better than the alternative cremation or burial. And they don't know if it'll work. But even if it doesn't work, they're contributing to science. That's kind of the motives for many of our members.

[C]

When I worked FOR CNN Over 30 years ago, I was here and I feel like at the time there was much more emphasis on the possibility that people would be brought back to life than the scientific mission, which is more of what you're talking about today. Tell me about this as more of a research institution or facility.

[A]

I think anytime you look at the origins of what are now established technologies, they were at one point aspirational or emerging technologies. And the aspirational goal always has been, hey, what if this could be used to revive your brain? When I came in to lead alcor, the focus changed a bit because we need to show what we can do today that builds credibility. And we have a very important mission in that regard, which is organ banking for organ transplant. Meaning the brain has a lot of complex neural synaptic connections, protein bridges, they're fragile. Before we can get to any meaningful revival of that we have a number of the world's best scientists who say, hey, guess what? Kidneys is utterly possible and it should have been done 15 years ago. And you guys have been doing this 50 plus years. Let's start looking at that too.

[C]

Preserving kidneys for a longer period. For transplants, you mean?

[A]

That's right. So for instance, many organs for transplant only have a viability window of maybe five to 10 hours. And if your match is in London and you're in Los Angeles, you're just going to die or you're not going to get that organ. It's a terrible outcome, but it's a preventable outcome scientifically that can be fixed. So now it's a question of a race to kind of see who does it first. And there's a lot of groups now working on that. But alcor has this 50 plus years of history that's way ahead of pretty much anyone else. So that's what I'm leaning into. Because if we can do it in kidneys, conceptually it's kind of what we call proof of concept, right? And that's what we're doing. That doesn't mean we've lost sight of the ultimate goal. And we still preserve brains, but now we've learned with for instance, CT scans that testing modality wasn't available when Einstein's brain was cut up into 300 pieces. It's lost to history. Never researched that. But we can preserve your brain. CT scans, we can do a non destructive test and we're looking at things like cancer applications for chemotherapy, we're looking at space travel, we're looking at a number of things now that like with many aspirational kind of technologies, now they're emerging technologies and now there's complementary technologies. So this is actually looking a lot more possible than it did 30 years ago when you first came out.

[D]

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[A]

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[D]

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[C]

I understand that you're certainly not holding out any promise that people who sign up as members are going to be brought back to life in the near, even distant future. But again, When I was here 30 something years ago, I really think the founder or the. I really think the person running the show at the time thought it would be possible sooner. In fact, I feel like he said to me that within 30 years, at the time, they thought they would be regenerating people. It's been more than 30 years. There's nothing like that. What are your thoughts about that?

[A]

When people talk about the notion that early adopters or early visionaries, for instance, said 30 years or 50 years, you'll notice that I don't give a time range. And I've studied emerging technology. I actually teach on emerging technology. And you look at things like manned flight, I'll give you a contrapositive in an example. So manned flight. The world's leading scientist, Lord Kelvin, who the Kelvin temperature scale based on him, he actually was quoted in the New York Times, Washington Post at the time, I believe this was 1909. And he said, man, flight won't be possible. It'll be a million years. Or if it is, it'll be a million years. And then 69 days later, the Wright brothers flew, okay. And then the scientists said, oh, well, okay, they flew in this, but they'll never be passenger planes. And then World War II happened. Next thing you know, you have passenger planes. I think the reverse is true here in the sense of, I don't want to make rejection. I want to let the really smart people tell me what ought to be possible and then work towards that goal. Now, when it comes to revival of the brain again, the kidney, everybody says that ought to be possible. They're really smart bioscientists and stuff like that. I don't think there's a big debate on that anymore. There used to be. So when people said that 30 years ago, they were given their best estimate at the time. I'm not going to criticize them, but they were hopeful. And anytime you have visionaries, it requires what I call a sort of irrational confidence. But somebody has to go after it. The Wright brothers had to believe they could do it when everybody else said they couldn't. And so that's what we're doing here. I understand the aspirational goal of the brain revival. Now, mind you, I will tell you this. Think about companies like neuralink. It was inconceivable that you could electrically connect to the brain, cause that to move a cursor on a screen. And that moved a robotic arm. But it's happening. That's undeniable. People can't argue with it. It's a Fact, Right. Okay. So what if the play here isn't, oh, the brain comes back in the body or maybe it connects to something else, and that's why a lot of computer scientists are interested. Now, personally, I would prefer that I have a biological body. Right. But all kinds of opinions on that. I'm not here to debate that. I don't know. I don't have a PhD in that. Right. But I can see what's possible in the near term. And what's possible in the near term can save lives. And someday that life will be somebody, you know, and I want to be the one to help make that happen.

[C]

On an unrelated note, this is something I asked all those years ago because I started thinking about. The gentleman I interviewed told me some of the people who are preserved are religious and they believe in the soul. Some are not. But of those who believe in the soul, they didn't think it was incongruous. But I asked the question, so if you're gone, if the soul, I guess, leaves the body 30, 50, 100 years, what happens when you regenerate? If that's the aspirational goal, or you bring the neurons back, does the soul come back? Or is this something different? What do people think? And have you even thought about this or discussed it with anybody?

[A]

Alcor gets a lot of really interesting questions and kind of philosophical things about religion, for instance. And we do have people from all religions and in fact, some of our staff have their own beliefs, right. A wide variety. Jewish, Christian, Muslim, what have you. I don't think that this conflicts with that. And here's why. My training is as a lawyer and you have to define your terms. And when you look, at least of the Abrahamic religions, we'll just take those, for example. That's the majority of the population on Earth, right. Whether you're Muslim, Christian, Jewish. The definition of God and monotheism is all knowing, omniscient, all powerful. That's an easy one. It's the same issue that culturally was encountered when you talked about heart transplants. People used to think, if you recall, that the soul was in the heart. That's why Valentine's Day is the heart. Right. Your emotion was from the heart. I think scientifically, medically, we know it's probably up here. The point being, though, is, first of all, I'm assuming if God exists, and I'm not giving an opinion on my personal beliefs, but if you believe in a monotheistic God, that's all powerful, if this isn't supposed to work, it's Never going to work. God's never going to let it work, number one. Number two, I think if you look at the Old Testament, New Testament, whichever one you believe in, or both, God's time is not our time. One second is a million years. A million years, one second. What that means is I think if you look at the Book of Daniel, book of Revelations, you look at Corinthians, you look in those books, it's very clear that our sense of when the soul leaves the body is not linear in God's sense. Right. I think if you talk to theologians, which I have, and there's examples in the Bible where people were born again, resurrected, live longer, all these sorts of things, and that's not our timeline. And I think people kind of misplace this when they force it into that box. You know, if the soul leaves immediately, define immediately, is that really now? Because biblically, it's not. Biblically, it's not on our timeline. The Book of Revelations, Book of Daniel, this timeline's already occurred. Right. So none of this is in conflict with that. And I'm happy to talk to anybody about it. I might actually know a thing or two about that.

[C]

And then lastly, what would you hope to be people's takeaway? If they're watching the story, they didn't know anything about Alcor and what you do, what would you like them to know?

[A]

I would like people to understand that what we're trying to do here has good intent and has the intent to be credible in hard science. And that hard science is cryobiology. That's leading to the ultimate goal, which is cryonics, which could just be a kidney. And I think for the majority of people today, they understand that organ transplants are a valid thing. That's saving people's lives might have saved the life of somebody, you know, and we want to progress that. And nothing we're doing here is to cause harm or causal intents or conflict with religious beliefs or anything else. That's not what this is about. This is a hard science mission. We have a very dedicated staff. I need to give credit to my staff. These are people that could go in the private sector. Again, we're a non profit. They could make oodles more money and they don't. Because they want to save lives. They wake up every day motivated because the butterfly effect. Think about this. Every day we don't achieve the goal, there's people who are dying that don't have to die and the for profit companies won't put money into it. So it's us, some universities and us, and we're highly, highly motivated every day because somewhere, someday when we achieve a breakthrough, that means somebody's going to live who would have died otherwise. And maybe that person changes the world for everybody else.

[C]

Foreign.

[B]

For the full story, the whole half hour on longevity, living longer, immortality, and the latest research. Watch full measure Sunday, November 23rd. You can go to Cheryl Atkison.com and click the Store tab for station and time near you. Or if it's easier to watch online, just go to FullMeasure News on Sunday, November 23rd around 11:00 or noon. You'll see the entire program posted after airs on tv. And if you happen to be listening to this afterwards, don't worry. You can find replays of this program and the other Full measure shows at Fullmeasure News or on our unadvertised YouTube channel. That's Full Measure with Cheryl Akeson on YouTube. If you haven't had the chance to check out my latest national bestseller, follow the How Big Pharma Misleads, Obscures, and Prevails. I hope you'll consider doing that. Proceeds support independent reporting causes and as Christmas approaches, please consider visiting the Cheryl Akison Store by going to cherylakkeson.com and clicking the Store tab. It's a great way to support independent reporting causes by finding a unique and original gift designed exclusively for independent thinkers like you and your friends and your family. Products with slogans such as I need to find some new conspiracy theories, all my old ones came true and do your own research, make up your own mind, Think for yourself.