Putin's plan to live forever

Summary

Today, Explained — "Putin's plan to live forever"

Date: June 8, 2026
Host: Noel King
Guests: Bojan Panchevsky (Wall Street Journal), Aaron Brown (New Lines magazine)

---

Episode Overview

This episode investigates Vladimir Putin’s reported $26 billion pursuit of human longevity—possibly even immortality—tying it to a longstanding Russian fascination with transcending death. Featuring Wall Street Journal correspondent Bojan Panchevsky and New Lines editor Aaron Brown, the hosts explore Russia’s secretive state-backed scientific projects, Putin’s personal habits and motivations, and the deep philosophical roots of “immortality science” in Russian history.

---

Putin's Billion-Dollar Longevity Quest

Guest: Bojan Panchevsky
[02:18–13:22]

• Hot Mic with Xi Jinping ([02:37])

  • In September 2025, Putin is caught speaking to Xi Jinping about longevity and biotechnology. Their translator is overheard saying:

    "Biotechnology is continuously developing. Human organs can be continuously transplanted. The longer you live, the younger you become, and you can even achieve immortality."
    (Expert/Scientist, [02:54])

  • Panchevsky notes, “He was being serious...he is quite serious about his issues. And I had read previously about other stuff he’s interested in in that domain.” ([03:05])

• Putin’s $26 Billion Investment

  • Russia is spending billions on state-sponsored research into human longevity.
  • Two key methods:
    • 3D Bioprinting: Printing and implanting lab-grown organs into humans ([04:17])
    • Mini Pigs: Genetically-modified animals are being used to grow human-compatible organs for transplantation.
      • “It's a bit creepy. Poor little mini pigs.” (Panchevsky, [04:17])
  • This science is real and also being pursued in China.

• Putin’s Personal Obsessions

  • Cryotherapy:
    Putin uses cryo-chambers (“reverse saunas”) for health and lifespan extension.

    "What he does there, he kind of strips naked and walks in and stands there for a few minutes in that sort of horrible cold."
    (Panchevsky, [06:19])

  • He discusses cryotherapy and longevity therapies unprompted, even with world leaders.

• Soviet and Russian Longevity Gurus

  • Peptides are a focus; some scientists believe they can slow cellular aging ([07:28])
  • Historic “longevity gurus” worked closely with Putin and other autocrats, but have failed to live as long as their aspirations:

    “People are actually programmed to live 120 years old. And he quoted the Bible as his source for that.”
    (Longevity guru via Panchevsky, [08:06])

  • Notably, these scientists themselves died at much younger ages.

• Putin’s Daughter’s Involvement

  • Maria Vorontsova, Putin’s daughter, is a medical doctor engaged in state-funded longevity research ([09:31])
  • “Putin has recruited his own family members, he’s recruited scientists he really trusts to work on this issue. So it’s very close to home for him.” ([09:31])

• Historical Precedent: Russian Interest in Immortality

  • Stalin had a “longevity guru” who organized the world's first longevity conference in Kiev in the late 1920s/early 1930s.
  • This figure also died young, which reportedly irritated Stalin ([10:42])

• If Putin Succeeds, Will Others Benefit?

  • “If Vladimir Putin were to find the source of eternal youth, I mean, obviously he’ll be hogging it for himself first and for the members of his family or the elite. But eventually these things trickle down.” ([12:17])
  • Contrasts with Russia’s short life expectancy for men (68 years) and the irony of seeking life extension while waging a deadly war in Ukraine.

---

Russia’s Philosophical and Historical Roots of Immortality Science

Guest: Aaron Brown
[17:27–28:20]

• Nikolay Fyodorov and the ‘Common Task’ ([17:48])

  • Fyodorov, an ascetic thinker in 1860s Russia, conceived of a future where all humanity collaborates to resurrect the dead and abolish death.
  • His vision:

    “That humanity could in fact, resurrect everyone who had ever lived and achieve immortality for those who are living now, and that we could all live together, both on the Earth and in worlds beyond.” (Brown, [18:52])

• Vision and Influence

  • Fyodorov’s “common task” was harnessing technology for life, not war:

    “There is not a single invention which the military are not bent on applying to warfare...if it were made the duty of the armies to adapt everything now used in warfare for controlling natural forces, this duty would automatically become the common task of humanity as a whole.”
    (Fyodorov, quoted by Brown, [21:08])

  • Highlights the utopian ideal: not immortality for elites, but for everyone.

• Connections to Russian Literature

  • Fyodorov’s ideas influenced Dostoevsky (“Brothers Karamazov”) and Tolstoy, albeit with some wariness about his ascetic practices ([23:08])

• Survival of Cosmism through Soviet Times

  • Despite Soviet repression, “cosmist” ideas persisted through secret circles, inspiring visions of space travel and the Soviet space race ([24:50])
  • Revived and re-venerated in post-Soviet Russia, especially as technology advances.

• Modern Techno-Elite and Transhumanism

  • Today's “transhumanists” (Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, etc.) echo Russian cosmism goals, seeking technology-assisted immortality ([26:11])
  • Brown contrasts Fyodorov's vision (“immortality for everyone”) with the “techno-elite” vision of longevity for the privileged.
  • Critique:

    “A civilization that exploits but does not restore cannot have any other result than the approach of its own end.”
    (Fyodorov, through Brown, [28:00])

  • The episode concludes that Fyodorov’s warnings about collective morality are largely being ignored by modern immortality pursuits.

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Putin’s pursuit:

  “He can commandeer the resources of state the way he likes it. And obviously he’s decided this is a subject that merits a lot of research and a lot of funding and the input from people he really trusts, including his own daughter.”
  (Panchevsky, [09:31])

• Irony of Russian demographics:

  “There is a bit of a macabre irony that he’s now trying to prolong the lifespan of a nation that he’s dragged into this incredibly damaging and deadly war.”
  (Panchevsky, [13:01])

• Morality of immortality efforts:

  “The real difference between Fyodorov and the likes of...Elon Musk is that he was really concerned with this quest for immortality extending to everyone...”
  (Brown, [26:11])

---

Key Timestamps

• [02:37] Hot mic moment between Putin and Xi: immortality ambitions
• [04:17] Russian organ replacement projects: 3D bioprinting, mini pigs
• [05:52] Putin’s cryo-chamber obsession and health routines
• [08:06] Putin’s “peptide pioneer” longevity guru argues for biblical lifespan
• [09:31] Putin’s daughter, Maria Vorontsova, works on longevity science
• [10:42] Stalin’s failed immortality quest and early longevity conferences
• [12:17] Discussion of distribution if life extension succeeds
• [17:48] Aaron Brown introduces Russian cosmism and Nikolay Fyodorov
• [21:08] Fyodorov quote: redirect technology from war to life
• [24:50] Cosmism’s survival in Soviet times, space travel legacy
• [26:11] Modern transhumanism vs. Fyodorov’s collective vision

---

Summary

Through a captivating discussion, Today, Explained connects Putin’s cutting-edge longevity ambitions to Russia’s long-running philosophical engagement with immortality. The episode juxtaposes state-backed scientific programs and elite techno-utopianism with Fyodorov’s collective, moral vision—ultimately questioning whether today’s techno-elite share the cosmists’ hope to conquer death for all, or simply for themselves.

Transcript

[Noel King]

How healthy is Vladimir Putin?

[Bojan Panchevsky]

Well, you know, he always projects this kind of image of a virile sort of strong man. He likes taking his shirt off. He hasn't done it in a while now, but he used to have his picture taken shirtless and, you know, jumping in ice lakes or, you know, sort of riding horses and whatnot.

[Noel King]

No one knows.

[Bojan Panchevsky]

I do investigative journalism and I speak a lot to Western spooks. You know, the CIA, people like that. And they've always said there's no truth to these claims that he somehow ill or, you know, decrepit or whatever.

[Noel King]

But thanks to some new reporting from the Wall Street Journal, we do know that Putin is spending billions of dollars trying to extend his life, maybe even live forever. And that in Russia, there's a long and fascinating history of people fiddling with human longevity. That's coming up on Today. Explained from vo.

[Plan B Advertisement Voice]

Plan B is a backup birth control option that's there for you when things don't go according to plan. It specifically works after unprotected sex and before pregnancy occurs by temporarily delaying ovulation. Plan B is available nationwide at all major retailers and through delivery apps like DoorDash, no ID, prescription or age requirement. It's the number one OBGYN recommended brand of emergency contraception and it won't impact your future fertility. That's freedom to be use as directed.

[Bojan Panchevsky]

Lyme disease is one of the fastest growing threats to human health around the world.

[Expert/Scientist]

It's often difficult to diagnose, it may be difficult to treat. And now we have a vaccine that is safe and effective in preventing it.

[Bojan Panchevsky]

That is, we had a vaccine back in the early 2000s, but then the Lyme vaccine became a cautionary tale. That's this week on Unexplainable. Wherever you get your podcasts,

[Podcast Host/Announcer]

This is today explained.

[Noel King]

Bojan Panchevsky is the Wall Street Journal's chief European political correspondent. He recently wrote a much linked to article about Vladimir Putin's $26 billion quest for Longev. And it begins with this accidentally overheard conversation between Putin and another world leader.

[Bojan Panchevsky]

So there was an interesting moment last year in September. He was visiting Beijing and he got caught on a hot mic while having a little walk with Xi Jinping. Their words were inaudible, but their translator, still on mic, can be heard detailing parts of their conversation.

[Expert/Scientist]

Biotechnology is continuously developing. Human organs can be continuously transplanted. The longer you live, the younger you become, and you can even achieve immortality.

[Bojan Panchevsky]

Xi Jinping seemed to be agreeing, by the way, and he was kind of nodding and giving his own kind of take on things. And I remember the media covered that a bit, tongue in cheek, and it was like, oh, this is weird. Kind of. They're shooting debris. These two old autocrats, you know, two dictators in their 70s whatever, are Xi

[Aaron Brown]

Jinping and Vladimir Putin best friends?

[Bojan Panchevsky]

Some have made films about it, sung about, while Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin have been discussing it. But I actually knew he was being serious because he is quite serious about his issues. And I had read previously about other stuff he's interested in in that domain. So I decided to kind of look up and see what he was talking about. And it turned out that he was actually talking about a state program. Part of what they're researching within that initiative is indeed organ replacement. Exactly what he was talking about.

[Noel King]

So that $26 billion is money that is being spent on this longevity project. And one of the things that it's being spent on, as you said, organ replacement. Where do the poor pigs fit in here? Tell me what happened.

[Bojan Panchevsky]

The mini pigs. Yeah, that's a bit creepy. Poor little mini pigs. So, essentially, there are two ways they're looking into to achieve this organ replacement for humans. One of them is 3D printing. It's called 3D bioprinting. It's a bit like. I think everyone's now, by now, has heard of 3D printing. Basically, 3D printers are printing things. They can print a glass, they can print a glove, they can even print a whole house. And There are also 3D printers that print biological material, tissues, and the Russians are hoping even organs quite soon. So the idea is you print an organ in the lab and then you kind of implant it into a human being, like, say, lungs or liver or even the heart. Perhaps that's the aspiration. The second thing is the mini peaks. They are genetically sort of close to humans in some ways. They're genetically modified, I think, as well. And they're growing organs in these mini pigs, and then they're implementing them, implanting them into human beings. It has to be said this is already being done. I don't think people who get organ like that live long or, you know, for various reasons, the body rejects the organs or whatever. But it is a technique that is actually quite promising. It's not. It's not. It's not a fantasy. It's something that other countries are doing as well. I mean, China, notably, is doing this as well.

[Noel King]

You also wrote that Vladimir Putin loves a. A reverse sauna. What is this?

[Bojan Panchevsky]

Yeah, he does. He does a cryo chamber. He loves a cryo chamber. That's what they call them. A cryo chamber is basically a room, like a sauna. But the difference is it's the opposite of a sauna because it's extremely cold. I think it's minus 170Fahrenheit, if I'm not mistaken.

[Podcast Host/Announcer]

Oh, it's ridiculously good for inflammation, ridiculously good for any aches or pains.

[Noel King]

And my leg started to tingle, and

[Expert/Scientist]

I'm like, okay, this is a little

[Aaron Brown]

bit what hypothermia feels like.

[Bojan Panchevsky]

What he does there, he kind of strips naked and walks in and, and stands there for a few minutes in that sort of horrible cold. I discussed this with the former Chancellor of Austria, a guy called Sebastian Kurz, who visited Putin in the Kremlin. And then during the conversation, Putin just kind of brought up this thing and then talked about it for quite a while. And Kurz, who at the time was a young man, he was just over 30 years old. I think he was the world's youngest leader, even. And then he was listening to this, and he told me later, that was weird. You know, I didn't expect him to start to start doing. I don't understand why, why he mentioned that. He was kind of, you know, we were here to talk politics and things, and then suddenly he talked. He started talking about health and longevity and how you should. You should use this reverse sauna. They're looking into how to slow down or even stop the actual aging process within the human cells. They're looking into peptides, something again, something very familiar. The RFK Junior is very big on peptides. I mean, I'm a big fan of peptides. I've used them myself. Putin had one longevity guru who was a geriatric doctor. He was a very esteemed sort of professor of medicine. And that guy had been looking into peptides for many decades, even since back in the Soviet days. So he was a peptide pioneer. And he was asked in an interview, you know, what about, you know, what is your research? How does it relate to Putin? And he said, the idea is to preserve, to prolong the life of a leader who is so important to us that if he were to die, our country would be thrown into a crisis. So that's how he saw his mission. And he also said that people are actually programmed to live 120 years old. And he quoted the Bible as his source for that.

[Aaron Brown]

The Old Testament, Sarah's lifetime, the span of Sarah's life came to 127 years. The book of Genesis, Aaron was 123 years old when he died on Mount Hor. The book of Numbers, chapter three. Moses was 120 years old when he died. His eyes were undimmed and his vigor unabated. The Book of Deuteronomy, chapter 34, verse 7.

[Bojan Panchevsky]

So it was kind of interesting for a, well, credentialed scientist professor even to quote the Bible as a source of medical knowledge. But the thing is, he then died when he turned 77. So he didn't, he didn't reach. He didn't reach the age that he, he prescribed himself and that he, I guess he was hoping Putin might reach. So then Putin had to find another longevity guru after the early demise of that guy, and then now he's got a guy who's much more focused on the mini peaks and the 3D printing.

[Noel King]

I was genuinely impressed to learn that Vladimir Putin's daughter is involved in this. She is a legit scientist. Yeah.

[Bojan Panchevsky]

She is a doctor.

[Expert/Scientist]

Yeah.

[Bojan Panchevsky]

Her name is Maria Vorontsova. She is a endocrinologist. She looks into glands and the sort of endocrine system of the human body. And she has received quite a substantial grant of money from one of these state programs to work on research related to longevity. So Putin has recruited his own family members, he's recruited scientists he really trusts to work on this issue. So it's very close to home for him. That really shows that it's something very, very important to him as a leader of a state and as an autocratic leader. You know, it's not a real democracy. Russia, it's pretty much a military dictatorship nowadays. You know, he can commandeer the resources of state the way he likes it. And obviously he's decided this is a subject that merits a lot of research and a lot of funding and the input from people he really trusts, including his own daughter.

[Noel King]

And to your point, Vladimir Putin is not the first Russian autocrat slash dictator to want to try to live forever, is he?

[Bojan Panchevsky]

Not at all. I was surprised to learn in the, while researching my article that actually Russia is kind of the cradle of modern longevity science, going back to Joseph Stalin, the, the, the dictator of the Soviet Union. He had a longevity guru himself. And that longevity guru organized what seems to be the world's first longevity conference. Back in the day, I think it was at the end of the 20s or the early 30s. It happened in Kiev in today's Ukraine. Then it was the Soviet Union. And that guy also claimed in his studies and his medical work that people will be living up to 140 years of age. And that guy too, unfortunately died age 65. So it seems to be a trend among these longevity gurus that they don't really reach the biblical age. You know, and I didn't include this in my article because I couldn't really find hard evidence for it. But there, there are some anecdotal sort of stories about Stalin being very angry about, about his longevity guru dying young. He didn't, he didn't like the sound of that.

[Podcast Host/Announcer]

Bad look.

[Noel King]

All right, so Vladimir Putin is spending a lot of money, a lot of Russian money on this project. It may work, it likely will not work. But let's say, let's say it does work. Let's say there are some real advances here that come out of scientific advances. Is Putin going to share? Will he share with Russia? Will he share it with the world?

[Bojan Panchevsky]

If Vladimir Putin were to find the source of eternal youth, I mean, obviously he'll be hogging it for himself first and for the members of his family or the elite. But eventually these things trickle down. You know, it's worth remembering that Putin is extremely concerned about the demographics of his country. And the demographics were awful to begin with. Life expectancy for a Russian male is 68 years. It's very, very low for an industrial nation. And so that's terrible. And on top of that, there is this extremely lethal war that he started and he's waging against Ukraine, and it's not going well for him or for anyone. There is a bit of a macabre irony that he's now trying to prolong the lifespan of a nation that he's dragged into this incredibly damaging and deadly war, and that he's trying to somehow undo something that he's done himself.

[Noel King]

Bojan Panchevsky. He's the Wall Street Journal's chief European political correspondent. Coming up, Revolution's French and Russian Dostoevsky, a cryptic futurologist who what on earth. Support for Today explained comes from Vanta. What's one thing in business, Vanta asks, that's spreading as fast as AI? AI risk, says Vanta. Every new tool that your team signs up for, every vendor that turns on AI features, every new integration has the potential to create a risky situation for your company. And most security programs were not built for AI's pace of growth. Enter Vanta. Vanta is the leading agentic trust platform used by over 16,000 fast moving companies, companies such as Ramp, Cursor and Harvey, to ensure they're always audit ready. And now Vanta is helping companies like yours watch for the risks that show up between those audits across your vendors, your AI tools, your whole environment. The Vanta agent works like a 24.7grc engineer in the background finding issues, drafting fixes, cutting vendor assessment time by up to 50%. Whether you're a fast growing startup or a global enterprise, Vanta is here to help you automate your security and compliance and earn improve trust. You can get started [e-mail] explained. That's V A N T A dot com explained.

[Podcast Host/Announcer]

Support for Today Explained comes from Chime and if you're thinking about you know your doorbell, then you got another thing coming. Because sometimes banking can feel like going through an obstacle course, constantly trying to avoid overdraft fees, minimum balance requirements and monthly charges. Chime wants to make things easier. Chime is changing the way people bank by offering rewarding fee free banking. Banking built for you because why should you pay to get your own money? A question as old as time and Chime wants to answer it. Chime isn't a traditional bank in that they won't charge you overdraft and monthly fees and they even have thousands of fee free ATMs for you to use built for you. Not the 1%, the pesky 1%. Chime is not just smarter banking, it is the most rewarding way to bank. You can head to chime.com explained that is chime.com explained it only takes a few minutes to sign up.

[Chime Advertisement Voice]

Chime is a fintech, not a bank. Banking services for MyPay and Chime card provided by Chime's bank partners. Optional products and services may have fees or charges, stated annual percentage yield and cash back for Chime prime only. No minimum balance required. Checking Account Rank based on a J.D. power survey published October 20, 2025. For more information on APY rates, my pay Spot Me and travel perks go to chime.com disclosures.

[Podcast Host/Announcer]

Support for this show Today explained is coming from ProtonVPN today. You know how dangerous the Internet can be, but you still want to navigate the digital jungles without worrying about pop up ads and data thieves. You, you, Tarzan, you. With Proton VPN it's easy to protect yourself from bad actors and annoying advertisements. Proton VPN is a secure VPN securely designed for people who want to prioritize their digital privacy and security. It keeps what you do online private and lets you access the Internet like it should work open, secure and on your terms. Proton says that unlike most VPNs, they're backed by strong European privacy laws and years of expertise creating a safer, faster and more open Internet for everyone. Sounds nice. It's easy to get started. Right now, ProtonVPN is offering our listeners 70% off a two year plan. When you go to ProtonVPN.com explained, that's P R-O-T-O-N VPN.com explained. For 70% off your two year plan, that's ProtonVPN.com explained.

[Aaron Brown]

Today, explained.

[Noel King]

Aaron Brown, editor at New Lines magazine. In the first half of the show, we heard about Vladimir Putin's deep and profound interest in immortality. You wrote a story about how the quest for immortality in Russia does not start with Vladimir Putin. In fact, it goes back way, way, way earlier than him. Where does this all begin?

[Aaron Brown]

Yeah, so it's not even just the quest for immortality in Russia. In fact, there's a whole movement right now that's called the transhumanism movement, right? And it's these guys like, like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel and Brian Johnson and, you know, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping who are thinking about how to use technological vectors to achieve immortality. But even though these guys come from lots of different kinds of backgrounds, they actually all have one patron saint, and it's this guy named Nikolay Fyodorov, who was an ascetic living in Russia in the 1860s. Now, the 1860s was kind of a wild time in the Russian Empire, right? This is when the Tsar had just liberated the serfs, they were instituting local governments. There was a lot of upheavals around what the future of the Russian Empire would look like. And there were a group of students who were reading a novel that was really interested in the questions of socialism, right? It's called what Is To Be Done? And a lot of them were looking for examples of this kind of socialist future. One of them, a young guy named Nikolai Pavlovich Peterson, actually ran into a real life example of kind of the perfect man, the new Cincinnatus. When he was out teaching at a country school in Nizhniy Novgorod. It was this guy, Nikolay Fyodorov, who was, he was actually the son, illegitimate son of a big princely family. And he'd fallen sort of out of his charmed lifestyle when his father died and he was kicked off his family's estate. And he had gone from city to city, town to town, teaching in little schools. And all the while he had been developing this kind of wild thesis, this wild idea of the future that he called the common task. And it wasn't about creating utopian communes or socialism in the future. It was instead this idea that you could. That humanity could in fact, resurrect everyone who had ever lived and achieve immortality for those who are living now, and that we could all live together, both on the Earth and in worlds beyond.

[Noel King]

Okay, so young man interested in socialism, goes out to the country, starts teaching, has a weird and interesting colleague. And the colleague's name is Fyodorov. He's. You said he's living like an ascetic, so he's living very simply. What is this dude's deal? Why is he so compelling to. To the young teacher?

[Aaron Brown]

So he has these ideas that take the kinds of energy and fervor that we were seeing in the French Revolution and taking them one step further, right? The French Revolution is all about, like, liberty and equality and brotherhood. And he says we don't need liberty and equality if we have actual brotherhood, if we're actually taking care of one another. And he had this idea that at that moment, basically all of the technology of the world was being used for warfare. Anytime there was a leap forward in anything from like sewing to chemistry, governments were using this to find new ways to wage war. And he said, instead, what if we took. Right, what if we took all of these efforts and all of this energy and turned it instead towards this task of trying to figure out how to cheat death?

[Expert/Scientist]

There is not a single invention which the military are not bent on applying to warfare, not a single discovery which they fail to turn to military, military purposes. So if it were made the duty of the armies to adapt everything now used in warfare for controlling natural forces, this duty would automatically become the common task of humanity as a whole. Nikolai Fyodorov the Philosophy of the common

[Aaron Brown]

TASK Every philosophy in the world sort of accepts death as an. As an inevitable. And he instead was like, I don't think I can accept that a better

[Expert/Scientist]

knowledge of physiology and psychology should make it possible to prevent the decomposition of corpses and. And achieve bodily immortality.

[Aaron Brown]

I think there has to be a way that we can overcome this and that we can not only, like, live forever, but we can resurrect our ancestors and live with them. Now, of course, there was a problem with this, which is, if you're resurrecting everyone who's ever lived, you're going to be living in, like, a sardine tin on the planet Earth. And so one of the things that the Pyotr was thinking about was, how do we get off of the planet Earth and start populating other parts of the solar system so that everybody has enough space to live and live well,

[Expert/Scientist]

the Resources of any planet, however great, are eventually limited, and consequently, an isolated world cannot maintain immortal beings.

[Noel King]

Okay, so Fyodorov is this random, if very interesting man at a random country school. How do his ideas become ideas that everyone is aware of?

[Aaron Brown]

Yeah, so he eventually moved to Moscow and he got a job at the. What's essentially the Russian State Library. And he was the worst writer. You couldn't. You cannot read his writings in Russian in translation. It is turgid, it is dry.

[Expert/Scientist]

So long as participation in knowledge does not embrace everyone, pure science will remain indifferent to struggle and depredation.

[Aaron Brown]

He became essentially kind of the Socrates of Moscow. And he had a little. A little group of acolytes who would listen to his ideas and then translate them to other people, either orally or write them down. And in fact, Peterson, his acolyte, wrote down a bunch of his ideas and sent them to none other than Fyodor Dostoevsky, who really latched onto them and became obsessed with them. In fact, you can really see some of these ideas in the Brothers Karamazov. So one of. One of the great questions of the Brothers Karamazov is, you know, who does not desire the death of his father? And all throughout this, you see Fyodorov's ideas kind of percolating up and bubbling into it. So he was really influential among the kind of literary set. He also met and had kind of a frosty, a little bit of a prickly relationship with Liev Tolstoy as well. Tolstoy greatly admired Fyodorov, but was not about to buy into his ascetic lifestyle. Even when he was pretending to kind of go back to the land as a peasant serf, he still wore silk undershirts. So he was not about to get on Fyodorov's train of sleeping on a trunk with newspapers as a blanket.

[Noel King]

Okay, there is something looming on the horizon here, which is, of course, the Russian Revolution and then the Soviet era. This is a massive change in Russian society. Right. And I can imagine when power changes hands, when there's this big upheaval, this guy's ideas vanish into nothingness. And yet, I suspect something different happened.

[Aaron Brown]

Yeah, not entirely. So. So his ideas were building, but obviously, with the entrance of the Soviet era, there were. There were a lot of revolutionary ideas, and there were a small group of kind of an offshoot, sort of second and third generation of Fyodorov acolytes who, you know, really grabbed onto the language of the time and declared, you know, death is ugly and inadmissible. And these sorts of things. But under Stalin, a lot of the great thinkers of the Russian empire were sent to labor camps or killed, and that included a lot of the early cosmists. But what was interesting is that some of his acolytes had been the initial kind of people who had thought about what it might look like to travel into space. So even as early as 1903, he had kind of an acolyte who was drawing rocket boosters and airlocks. And eventually his ideas came back kind of roaring back in the 60s as the Soviet Union entered the space race. And so he is considered sort of the grandfather of these ideas that push people to consider, like, could we get to the cosmos? And he is slowly being, like, re. Venerated in Russia because of this.

[Noel King]

Okay, so because that is persisting into this century, the standard bearers today are tech leaders.

[Aaron Brown]

Yes, exactly. Right. I mean, I think it's quite easy to see why somebody like Elon Musk loves a guy who's kind of the offbeat thinker, the person who is, you know, thinking beyond his time and also thinking about putting people on other planets, since that is a huge part of what Elon Musk wants to do. But the real difference between Fyodorov and the likes of, you know, Peter Thiel and Brian Johnson and Elon Musk is that he was really concerned with this quest for immortality extending to everyone, he said, not for oneself and not for others, but with everyone and for everyone. Right. That we couldn't actually achieve immortality if we left anyone behind. And. And I think a lot of the critics nowadays of the transhumanist movement, right, this idea that at one point we will use technologies of vector to achieve immortality is that it's largely serving a techno elite class and that the morality that Fyodorov was so concerned with has fallen by the wayside. Right. Elon Musk wants to be immortal for himself so that he can extend his power indefinitely. And perhaps he would extend that immortality to others. But is that so that they can achieve some kind of a higher cosmic purpose? Or is it so that they can work in an Amazon warehouse or, you know, on. On a terraformed Mars space camp for longer? So I think in a way, a lot of Fyodorov's warnings have gone unheeded. He also said that a civilization that explored exploits but does not restore cannot have any other result than the approach of its own end. And I feel like, in a way, he's kind of a Cassandra out there saying, like, hey, we can do this, but we have to do it together, and we have to do it for the right reasons. And I don't know if that managed to get translated into the 21st century.

[Noel King]

Aaron Brown is an editor at New Lines magazine. Myles Bryan produced Today. Amina El Saadi edited and pitched a Weird One, Gabriel Dunntov checks the facts, and Patrick Boyd and David Tadashore engineered I'm Noel King, It's Today, explained.

[Aaron Brown]

Sam.