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INSIDE MAN

Futurity

Aired April 20, 2014 - 22:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Morgan, how long do you want to live?

MORGAN SPURLOCK, CNN HOST: As long as I can.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Ready? Three, two, one.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Hello.

SPURLOCK: Hello.

How long do you want to live, 100 years, 500 years? How about 1,000 years? It sounds crazy, but a growing number of people believe that in the future, death will become a thing of the past.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: How does it feel to be immortal? Of.

SPURLOCK: They believe one day with a little luck and more than a little science, you might actually be able to live forever. But is the dream of immortality a real scientific possibility or more like science fiction?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm planning to live indefinitely.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Indefinitely.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Forever.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Life is good.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Why would I ever want to see it end?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We will be uploaded into computers.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We will be substrate autonomous person.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Beyond human.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It is not rocket science.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: 100, 500 --

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: A thousand years.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I see myself as the equivalent of God.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: But maybe even better. SPURLOCK: I've been invited to a party tonight in California by a group of people who believe that they are on the path to living forever. I have no idea what do I expect, but it should be interesting.

How are you? I'm Morgan, how are you, sir?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Morgan, nice to meet you.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Welcome to my house.

SPURLOCK: The real question is can we live forever? Is that a real possibility?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, I'm looking forward to a couple of hundred years more.

SPURLOCK: Really?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Absolutely.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I think I can make it to 130.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: If it's 100, fantastic. If it's 150, hallelujah.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Hopefully, we will be having my 200th birthday, I think you know, here.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You want to live forever? I said, I don't know. Check back in a thousand years and ask me again.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I don't want any kind of mortality. We live long enough. We are going to see the emerging technologies that are going to give us open-ended life span.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (INAUDIBLE) forever.

SPURLOCK: How are you, sir? That's good luck in your hands right there?

What are you guys doing to live together?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I try to keep to a Paleo (ph) diet.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What about wine?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Four tablespoons?

SPURLOCK: What are you doing right now?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I take about 30 herbs a day.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Supplements.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I take 25 vitamins. SPURLOCK: I heard a lot of ideas tonight about how to live forever. And frankly, some of them are just bizarre. I mean, I heard them talking about freezing my body, having robots put inside of me. But I have to say I'm intrigued. And I definitely wouldn't mind sticking around for another 100 year. But where do I even begin?

If I wanted to stake that first step towards living forever, what would be the first thing I should do?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The first step is to manage your lifestyle so you can add about five, ten, 15, 20 years to your life right now. It opens up your window of opportunity. That is the first thing to do.

SPURLOCK: That's number one.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes. Number one, don't die.

SPURLOCK: Everybody is just talking about what they're doing to be healthier and live longer. You can't help but feel like you are a complete slacker and that I am somehow missing the boat on doing everything I can to extend my life.

You also start to realize you're not a young pup anymore, especially now with my kid who's six. You know, I want to be around for as much of his life as I possibly can. You know, I will be the first to admit I haven't lived the healthiest life at all. I have enjoyed myself. I've had a good time. So I'm headed towards up with of the foremost longevity centers in the United States to see a doctor dedicated to life extension.

Now it's time to right some of the wrongs.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Hi, Mr. Spurlock, I'm Paula. We'll take you back to see Dr. Grossman.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thank you.

SPURLOCK: Dr. Grossman, nice to meet you.

RICHARD GROSSMAN, DOCTOR: My pleasure.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Would you like a green tea or water?

SPURLOCK: Green tea would be great.

GROSSMAN: How are you today?

SPURLOCK: I'm good. How are you?

GROSSMAN: Super, thanks.

Morgan, how long would you like to live?

SPURLOCK: I spoke to a lot of people who talk about living forever. What would I need to do to potentially be able to live intimately? GROSSMAN: The idea is to live long enough to take advantage of the technological change coming down the line. Humans will have the ability to look at life expectancies and whatever they want.

SPURLOCK: That's great.

GROSSMAN: So, how old are you?

SPURLOCK: Forty three.

GROSSMAN: And your diet?

SPURLOCK: You meant my diet? Who doesn't like a cookie and pie.

GROSSMAN: Sugar is one of the biggest dietary health hazards.

SPURLOCK: Apple pie, blueberry pie.

GROSSMAN: We referred to sugar as the white saint (ph).

SPURLOCK: Coconut cream pie.

GROSSMAN: Just say no. Cut it out completely so that when you get to 75 --

SPURLOCK: I can be the thin, svelte masculine, specimen I'm meant to be.

GROSSMAN: Six packs.

SPURLOCK: Right now, I'm 12 packs. I got like a 24 packs.

GROSSMAN: We're doing a number of tests on you to figure out how you can live long enough to live forever.

SPURLOCK: That's great.

GROSSMAN: Well head to the door. We'll do your physical exam.

SPURLOCK: OK.

And Dr. Grossman's battery of tests leave no stone unturned. There's a lot of tube going on.

GROSSMAN: Can see all the way across.

SPURLOCK: You have nothing there.

GROSSMAN: Open wide and say ahhh. Deep breaths with your mouth open.

OK, everybody come in. Now we want to check his prost prostate. Just kidding.

SPURLOCK: Again?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Nice. Going to go a little faster. SPURLOCK: I must break you.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We are going to go a little faster now. Doing OK?

SPURLOCK: Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And we're going to go up a little more. How you doing?

SPURLOCK: Tell me how am I doing?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You're at 85 percent of your max heart rate.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Deep breath in. I'm going to start taking pictures of your gallbladder, your bile ducts.

SPURLOCK: After the treadmill, this is what I need. Down time to unwind. Take it easy. Get to know my inner organs a little better.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Going to look at your pancreas now. You're going to hear a funny sound.

SPURLOCK: Nice little deejay who lives in my pancreas.

If you want to live forever, I've got to get as healthy as humanly possible and fast.

GROSSMAN: Take a breath in and hold it.

SPURLOCK: So Dr. Grossman will use these tests to create my personal road map to longevity. This is going to look for any plaque build-up inside the coronary arteries.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm going to take a hair sample.

SPURLOCK: What's this for?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Toxin in your body as well as nutrient level.

SPURLOCK: What is this?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This is going to check the blood flow to the brain.

GROSSMAN: The next thing we're going to do is store your stem cells.

SPURLOCK: But Dr. Grossman is not just concerned about my current well being, he's making a plan for the future.

GROSSMAN: Here it goes, a biopsy.

SPURLOCK: And freezing my stem cells for the medical breakthroughs to come.

What will these be use for in the future? GROSSMAN: The stem cells, you could use to print new organs like new heart, new liver, any organ you want, except the brain so far.

SPURLOCK: The one that I need the most.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This is going to test your body fat.

SPURLOCK: It's look I'm getting jump started.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Ready?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Put your hand straight in there. This is going to tell me whether your blood pressure changes, how you react to stress.

SPURLOCK: It's channel my inner stomach.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You have about a minute. There you go,

SPURLOCK: This is very strange journey I'm on, I have to say.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Everyone will get your tongue.

SPURLOCK: What's my tongue say?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Looks like you might have some bacteria growing in your colon. So when you get your stool test results you get to see if there's anything in there.

SPURLOCK: Awesome.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Ready? Are you OK?

SPURLOCK: I'm good.

Feeling younger already. You see it in my face? Look at my face.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We're going to do your genetic testing. Just spit into this.

SPURLOCK: I've done so many tests today.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: One thing we do is check every single bodily function.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Hi, welcome to the age scan test.

SPURLOCK: The next test will help determine my biological age which is different than my chronological age.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: When you hear the tone, press button six as quickly as possible.

SPURLOCK: Biological age is more about how well my body and mind. They are standing the test of time.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: OK, that was great. But you've got to do it faster if you want a good store.

SPURLOCK: This is like crazy pressure.

I'm 43 years old chronologically, but I could be older or younger than that biologically.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Really attack that button.

SPURLOCK: I'm missing the button.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Now get ready to check your muscle movement, speed and coordination. Be aggressive.

SPURLOCK: That's terrible.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This next test will check your lungs. Pick up the tube. Take in the deepest possible breathe you can and blow.

SPURLOCK: I'm trying not to see the funny in that but it's funny. Here we go.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Don't stop. Keep blow, more, more, more, until you just can't exhale anymore. Push out any last bit of air. You should be gasping at the end. You have now finished all the tests. Goodbye and good health.

SPURLOCK: I'm not usually all that tired after a doctor's appointment. But today I'm completely exhausted. The hope is, you know, when I come back and get the information that I'll be armed with another ammunition to get myself to the point where one day I can actually live forever.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SPURLOCK: I'm in Golden, Colorado where my quest to live forever is off to a pretty solid start. After undergoing an exhaustive battery of test at the Grossman Wellness Center. \

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Good afternoon, Morgan.

SPURLOCK: How are you

I'm ready for my results.

So, how did I come out?

GROSSMAN: Here is your results. And we are going to review everything that we did.

SPURLOCK: That is bananas, look how thick that is.

GROSSMAN: Your reports are color coded. Green, that means it is very good.

SPURLOCK: That's cool.

GROSSMAN: Red, those are the ones that we want to do something about.

SPURLOCK: OK.

GROSSMAN: OK?

We begin on page three. And this was your physical exam. Say ahhh. Everything was normal on your physical exam.

SPURLOCK: Great.

GROSSMAN: The next test was the one when we put your hand in ice water and watched what happened to your blood pressure. Your blood pressure went dangerously high. So when you're under stress, medication will be good for you. The next one was --

SPURLOCK: Much more sand place?

GROSSMAN: Much more sand place, yes. The next one was --

SPURLOCK: A lot of red on this page. Four lines of red on this page.

GROSSMAN: Yes. This has to do with your body fat.

SPURLOCK: What's my body fat?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Twenty six percent.

GROSSMAN: Twenty six percent. Men should be between 12 and 20. You should lose about 18 pounds.

SPURLOCK: So maybe I'm just really muscular.

GROSSMAN: Maybe aren't.

SPURLOCK: But it's covered by fat.

GROSSMAN: Yes, that's right.

In terms of other problems, you had elevated cholesterol. You could take a natural supplement called red east rice. Your ultrasound results, we found you do have a build-up of some plaques in your arteries. I would like you to take a specific formulation. That will be on your supplement list.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The liver?

GROSSMAN: The liver.

SPURLOCK: Definitely not a liver model.

GROSSMAN: There's some fat in your liver. Maybe that one month that you spent eating nothing but McDonald's put a little fat in your liver. If it goes on to fibrosis, that's irreversible. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Ready?

GROSSMAN: The next test was the health of your cell membranes. SPURLOCK: like I'm getting a jumpstarted.

GROSSMAN: We got you up on the treadmill and everything was completely normal.

SPURLOCK: That's huge.

GROSSMAN: Your analysis, no abnormalities. So lots of green on this page.

SPURLOCK: Makes up for the other page.

GROSSMAN: That's right. Next we looked at vitamins and minerals.

SPURLOCK: Lot of red there.

GROSSMAN: Your vitamin D level is sup optimal so we are going to have you going to taking about 4,000 units a day. So, going to take quite a bit. Next, we looked at the toxins.

SPURLOCK: Lot of red again.

GROSSMAN: You had elevated levels (INAUDIBLE), mercury and uranium. We're going to put you on something called (INAUDIBLE), it should be enough to clean those out.

Now the biological age test.

SPURLOCK: Thirty four.

GROSSMAN: You came out nine years younger than your chronological age of 43. So my goal is to keep you 34 or younger.

SPURLOCK: Let's do that.

GROSSMAN: Now, one of the interesting test is the length of the your telemeters. Telemeters protect your chromosomes. If you think your chromosomes is kind of like shoe laces, your telemeters are like the little plastic caps on the end. So the longer you are telling me the length the longer you live.

SPURLOCK: Right.

GROSSMAN: I didn't like this test for you very much because you have below average cell and you are like, you know, you are telling me the length is average for someone closer 65 or 70.

SPURLOCK: Yes. So they're like some grandpa right now.

GROSSMAN: Yes.

Now, the last thing I want to talk to you about is your genomics test.

SPURLOCK: OK.

GROSSMAN: You were at higher than average risk of type 2 diabetes. If you continue the way you've been eating, I would say you will get type 2 diabetes.

SPURLOCK: Yes.

GROSSMAN: Some of the other ones that we tested for, you're at increased risk for restless leg syndrome, also (INAUDIBLE) disease. Typical risk of developing obesity, coronary heart disease, age refibilitaion (ph) of lung cancer gallstone, chronic kidney disease and bipolar disease. That's just scratching the surface of what's available in your report.

SPURLOCK: Yes.

GROSSMAN: So, you can dig down and find out a lot of things about yourself. If you go to this and I'll show you how to do it.

SPURLOCK: That's a pretty long list of illnesses. And if these are hereditary, I might not be able to do anything about them. I'm starting to think I might have been happier not knowing.

GROSSMAN: So the first thing I want you to take is these power packs of a multiple vitamin, official capsule. Pact in the morning, pact at night. And then here's your starter packs. So these are the products to lengthen your telemeters. Get rid of the heavy metal toxins. This is the glycine. This is temporary.

We've identified some risks. We're going to treat those risks. So congratulations. You have a very realistic chance to live a lot longer.

SPURLOCK: Step one.

GROSSMAN: Step one.

SPURLOCK: Thank you, Doctor.

GROSSMAN: My pleasure. Take care, Morgan.

SPURLOCK: I can honestly say that was one of the most awesome and frightening meetings I've ever had in my life. Awesome in the fact that suddenly you' got all this information about your life and frightening at the same time because you've got all this information about your life.

I'm not denying it was good news, but all you hear is the terrible stuff. And so then you're given a program to try and fix it, and the tools to do it with. And now the question is, can you?

Armed with my test results, I'm ready to face the first day of the rest of my life. And since I want to live forever, that's the start of a regiment. Diet, exercise, more exercise, supplements, yoga, am I going to have to keep this up forever? That's beginning to sound like a very long time.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SPURLOCK: At Grossman Wellness center, I was put on a bath of longevity. My goal, try to exercise more, increase my supplemental intake. To stay healthy and young so that I will actually still be around to take advantage of those future breakthroughs that can keep me around longer, maybe even indefinitely. And it turns out the future may be closer than we think.

At the Wake Forrest Institute for Regenerative Medicine, a team led by Dr. Anthony Atala is doing something that was once pure fantasy -- growing human body parts right in the lab.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: One of the strategies we use is take a very small piece of tissue, less than half the size of a postage stamp, you can grow those cells outside the body and we use those cells to three dimensionally reconstruct a tissue of interest.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The next thing we're going to do is store your stem cells.

SPURLOCK: Remember those stem cells that I have stored? Well, if I'm ever in need of an organ, they might just come in handy.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A stem cell has the ability to become many other cell types, a wind-type (ph) cell or a heart cell or a liver cell.

SPURLOCK: Kidney cells, bladder cells, skin cells, heart cells, lung cells, you name it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It is one cell becomes a universal donor.

SPURLOCK: Next step, engineering the body part. In one of Dr. Atala's latest breakthroughs in organ engineering is truly groundbreaking. Printing. Yes, printing body parts.

DR. ANTHONY ATALA, WAKE FOREST REGENERATIVE MEDICINE: The first printer we used was actually typical desk top printer. And instead of using ink, we would just use cells.

SPURLOCK: Miraculously, using that inkjet printer, the same one you might have in your home or office, Wake Forest scientist printed out a two chamber mouse heart with a heartbeat and all.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We now have much more advanced printers.

SPURLOCK: Dr. Atala's lab has printed kidneys, skin, ears, finger, and this is just the beginning.

ATALA: The goal is to be able to create all organs so we can put them into patients and maybe even some day print them inside the patient.

SPURLOCK: The work he's doing is truly remarkable. But why stop there? Why not begin fixing health problems where many of them start in our DNA.

One of the things people talk about all the time is like if you have a health problem, you have an issue, ell because it's in your DNA. It's in your genes. Remember that genetic testing I did at Dr. Grossman's office? He did that test to see what kinds of illnesses I was genetically predisposed to, to see what kinds of things might shorten the length of my life, no matter what I did.

What if you could fix that problem, what if you could correct it as an adult or before you were even born? Turns out in the future, even the information hard wired in our genetic code will be something we can change.

How you doing?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hey, Morgan.

SPURLOCK: Good to see you.

SPURLOCK: Austin Heinz is the CEO of Cambrian Genomics, a start-up company in San Francisco, California. But he's also the company's leading innovator and a bonafide bio-hacker.

AUSTIN HEINZ. CEO, CAMBRIAN GENOMICS: So this is the DNA laser printing facility.

SPURLOCK: You are literally printing genes here?

HEINZ: We're literally printing life.

SPURLOCK: So if there's some gene in my body that lead to an early demise.

HEINZ: We make the DNA to fix the mistake.

SPURLOCK: That's crazy.

HEINZ: So you can take out what's existing and put in what you want.

SPURLOCK: DNA is the building block of all life. Nothing living on earth exists without it. It is the unique genetic code that makes me me and you you. But our DNA also contains mistakes or mutations. And just one of those mutations can cause anything from a minor health problem to a deadly disease.

Austin is creating technology today that can change all of that in the future.

HEINZ: So we will look at your 23 in the test results.

SPURLOCK: OK.

HEINZ: Other than risk for getting type 2 diabetes, scroll down here, inherited conditions, Morgan Spurlock has one copy of a mutation in a hexigene. You do carry the recessive gene for Tay-sachs.

SPURLOCK: OK. And what it Tay-Sachs?

HEINZ: So Tay-Sachs is a disease. It is basically losing the ability to function cognitively. And results and death by the age of about 4- years-old. On side, it is about six months.

SPURLOCK: Wow.

HEINZ: So if your partner has it and you have another child --

SPURLOCK: My kid would get it.

HEINZ: Yes.

SPURLOCK: How would I change that gene?

HEINZ: We will look at hexi sequence here and look at the particularly mutation. Here's the error. And literally that's the one letter that is wrong. We're going to correct that copy.

SPURLOCK: That's nuts. And so, how do you get that into my body to fix that problem?

HEINZ: There is a viruses, there is hijacking your immune system, but currently the technology is not, I think, really good enough. We need to make ways that are much safer that don't result in problems like your immune system going crazy.

SPURLOCK: Shut downs?

HEINZ: Exactly.

SPURLOCK: Yes.

HEINZ: We don't want that.

SPURLOCK: No.

HEINZ: We're going to show you how we make the DNA.

All life comes from four chemicals. There's an A, C, there is a T and there's a G. We take code and turn it into physical A, C, T, G strands that can be run inside of cells.

SPURLOCK: Synthetic DNA is already being used experimentally in gene therapy to treat or prevent disease. But costs of the current methods are extremely high. It can cost billion to correctly print human DNA.

HEINZ: If you want to turn on the laser.

SPURLOCK: With his DNA laser printer, Austin Heinz has figured out a way to do it on the cheap.

HEINZ: Fire the laser, which is ejecting the good sequence of DNA it into a collection plate.

SPURLOCK: So basically, with each shot of the laser --

HEINZ: Is $100.

SPURLOCK: Is $100. The falling prices mean the technology to design an print manmade DNA could become easily available to anyone who wants it. Paving the way for widespread bio-hacking.

Would you ever hack your own genes?

HEINZ: I would definitely hack my sperm. Nobody wants to have a kid tell why do I have this and why do I have that?

SPURLOCK: Is that what my kids is going to say to me when he is ten?

HEINZ: You're blameless because the technology wasn't there.

SPURLOCK: Have people said what you're doing is unethical?

HEINZ: We get letters in the male, for sure. But as a society, as a species we're going to evolve. And there's going to be an ethical responsibility that we have to our kids to make them healthy. You know, a whole generation that basically, we would betray if he didn't help them. Basically that's cruel.

SPURLOCK: So, what are the scary aspects of where this could potentially go?

HEINZ: I think it will get very hot in the next few years adding genomes for babies.

SPURLOCK: Where you'll be able to go in and order the perfect child?

HEINZ: Yes. We could potentially see like an arms race among families --

SPURLOCK: To create the fastest, biggest, strongest, smartest?

HEINZ: Yes. Well, let's take out the correct copies of DNA.

SPURLOCK: This is incredible.

So for me to live forever, I need to hack my DNA.

HEINZ: We will eventually be able to write the code, not only to fix our current mistakes but also fix mistakes as we age. And that's going to be critical to living forever. There you go.

SPURLOCK: That's nuts.

HEINZ: Correct copies of your DNA. So if you want to access any these sequences, you will break the foil, add some liquid.

SPURLOCK: Brad new genome, I'm just add water. That is remarkable.

HEINZ: It's kind of like evolution.

SPURLOCK: Are you guys playing God?

HEINZ: We are God.

SPURLOCK: Really? Just like that, boom, they hacked my genetic code. And here, the ability to fix my problems. Now I just have to wait up for technology to catch up with this so I can put it in my body safely. But the good things is, believe it or not, this will last a million years. Much longer than you or me or maybe not.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SPURLOCK: I've been struggling to keep up my regiment in a quest to live forever. And putting a lot of energy in preserving my physical body for as long as I can, but nobody is going to live forever. What I want to know is can we outlive our bodies?

I'm going to go see a guy, one of the leading futurists in the world who has some ideas about this.

How are you? I'm Morgan. Great to meet you. Should I take my shoes off?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Sure. Would you like coffee because I --

SPURLOCK: Sure.

Ray is an accomplished inventor and currently chief engineer at Google. He's been called the most radical futurist on earth.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Caffeine is good. It is good for your brain.

SPURLOCK: And today, he's going to tell me how if I just live long enough, I might be able to cheat death all together.

That's part of my longevity plan. I'm taking supplements. I'm taking about 26 a day.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: OK.

SPURLOCK: How many do you take?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: 150 pills.

SPURLOCK: 150 pills?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.

SPURLOCK: Yes.

I got to tell you, I'm a fan of chocolate at breakfast. Good way to start the day.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You can have fun and be healthy.

SPURLOCK: So what is your goal with everything you're doing?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, I would like to live till tomorrow. And I feel tomorrow I'll feel the same way. And I think we have the opportunity to live long enough to live indefinitely. So that's my goal.

SPURLOCK: So is death not a good thing?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think death is not a good thing. Do you think it's a good thing?

People only want to die if they're suffering. If they're in good shape, people have aspirations. And up until recently, there was nothing credible that we could do to circumvent death. Rationalizing it was a good thing.

SPURLOCK: But according to Kurts While (ph), there soon could be a way to circumvent death and the key to mortality lies in technology.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Health and medicine has undergone a grand transformation enabled by the general project. To where this now and information technology. Information technology grows exponentially and that's quite radical. This is several billion times more powerful than the computer that I used when I was an undergraduate. This amount of competition will be the size of a blood cell in 2030s, is going to be a billion times more powerful and 100,000 times smaller in 25 years. That's the radical implication of exponential growth.

SPURLOCK: So there will be little robots actually swimming in our bodies?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Right. It will computerized the vises and basically will augment the immune system.

SPURLOCK: They'll get cancer cells. They'll go after leukemia.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Right.

SPURLOCK: According to Ray, we'll use these nanobots to accomplish a seemingly impossible transfer the entire content of our brains to a computer.

But in the future, you think we will be able to just upload our thoughts?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I believe we are actually already there. So I think our thinking is augmented with our technology. We now wear this on our bodies. And this is intelligent. You can translate languages, you can access all of human knowledge. It is an indirect connection from our brain to the cloud.

Hundred years from now, people will think it was amazing when we went throughout the day without backing up our mind file. And if our thinking is partly biological and partly non-biological, the non- biological part is expanding exponentially. It's doubling in power every year.

According to my calculations by 2045, we will multiply our intelligence a billion fold. The non-biological part is going to dominate.

SPURLOCK: That's amazing.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's such a profound transformation that we borrowed this metaphor of physics.

SPURLOCK: That moment, that's the singularity.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Right.

SPURLOCK: (INAUDIBLE) calculations predict the singularity will hit in 2045, a time when man and machine will be so connected that we will be able to transcend the limits of biology once and for all.

Could I ultimate end up becoming another person looking like another person with the same memories that I have of my life?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, we're going to be spending more and more of our time in virtual environments. One of the advantages of virtual realities, you can be someone else. It's going to be very realistic in the future.

SPURLOCK: Now I shed this body but that's backed up, where will that be down loaded into?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There's lots of scenario where you could create a body in physical reality let's say with the smaller metabox.

SPURLOCK: Will you have the ability to bring, say, someone back or do something with that like my grandmother or your father?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I have a project to bring back an avatar of my father. I have all of his correspondents and letters to my mothers and videos and pictures and so on. And we can access his DNA at his grave site. So if you imagine the future AI, artificial intelligence, is very, very smart, take all this information and create an avatar, that avatar would pass a test being indistinguishable from the original result to people who knew him.

SPURLOCK: Is it ethical? The question be the ethics around scientific advancement for years.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It is ethical to overcome human suffering. If you have a better treatment for cancer is, that ethical? I mean, nobody debates that.

SPURLOCK: Yes. Any advice for me as I'm going down the path of longevity.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You have a very good chance, you know, 15 years from now getting the benefit of (INAUDIBLE) or the biological technology revolution, and that is just the greatest to nano technology and ultimately go on enough decades being able to back up who you are and expand who you are. I think you're on a very good path to do that.

SPURLOCK: OK, thank you, Ray. Absolute pleasure.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SPURLOCK: Everyone I talked to is a true believer in the power of technology to radically extend our life spans. But how do they know and could they be wrong? I can't help but wonder if I'm getting ahead of myself. Can technology really help us live forever?

Jaron Rainier is virtual reality pioneer helped create the very first avatar, but he has a surprising message. Technology might not be the key to immortality.

So, you know, as a virtual reality guru, what are your thoughts on this idea that we will one day be able to merge ourselves with technology to live forever?

JARON REINER, VIRTUAL REALITY PIONEER: My old body Ray talks about uploading people in the virtual reality, and you know, having built a lot of virtual reality in the scenes, it's a great place to visit. It's not a place you want to live, really, especially not forever.

Right now, we don't know how the brain encodes information. Yes, but sure we'll be able to down load the brain. I mean, there's a bit of hubris there, you know, I mean. We have a lot more to learn about the brain. So, hypothetically, but you know, if we're talking about that already, we're being kind of nutty.

SPURLOCK: And maybe Jaron has a point. After all, lots of technologies haven't quite worked out the way the futurists thought they would.

REINER: You know, the digital world has spawned what's basically a new religion. And there's nothing wrong with that. Like I don't feel like it's my place to judge somebody else's religion.

SPURLOCK: So when you hear about the singularity, you people continually talk about it, you see that much more as a kind of religious movement versus a technological movement?

REINER: It's really similar to traditional religion. It is this notion that we have the secret to control death, to cure death, you can live forever because you'll be uploaded into the machine. If you miss out, my God, then you're going to be left to die and you won't be uploaded when the singularity happens. You know, it's in the eye of the beholder. If you want to believe in it, I can't tell you not to.

SPURLOCK: Yes. Maybe it is more a matter of faith rather than fact whether technology will help me live forever.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're going to spend more and more time in virtual environments. Our brain will be partly biological and non-biological.

REINER: Hypothetically.

SPURLOCK: But Jaron got me thinking. What will it really mean if some of these predictions do come to pass?

All the first reality experiences have been clunky and gamey. The question I have, is through something like virtual reality, can you find something as believable to experience real life?

The Stanford virtual human interaction lab is the state of the art facility, housing some of the most advanced immersive virtual reality technology available.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And this is the multisensory room that we are very excited about there.

SPURLOCK: Director Jeremy Balenson (ph) and his team are exploring just how real a virtual experience can be.

That is the coolest thing.

JEREMY BALENSON (PH), DIRECTOR, STANFORD UNIVERSITY: So the question is, does virtual reality feel real. And is it real enough that it's going to change your behavior and psychologically affect you?

SPURLOCK: Yes.

BALENSON (PH): And I think the first world we're going to put you in will answer that question.

How does that feel?

SPURLOCK: I hear your voice but there is nobody here. This is so like the matrix right now.

BALENSON (PH): So now I want you to look down. Do you see that piece of wood?

SPURLOCK: Yes.

BALENSON (PH): You know there's no hole in this floor.

SPURLOCK: Yes.

BALENSON (PH): But your body should be telling that you you're actually standing on the edge of a cliff.

SPURLOCK: That is crazy.

BALENSON (PH): OK. So you walk over that plank and stop when you're halfway across.

SPURLOCK: Whoa.

BALENSON (PH): Now stop. And now I want you to take a step off.

SPURLOCK: OK. This is crazy. You are giving me a heart attack.

I am sweating. I'm completely sweating.

BALENSON (PH): Great job.

SPURLOCK: My heart is racing.

BALENSON (PH): You know, there is no hole on the floor, but your brain can't know.

SPURLOCK: So it feels real.

BALENSON (PH): So walk right through that block. Walk into it.

This experiment, you're going to fly like superman. Put your arms over your head and you're going to take off. Point to where you want to go.

SPURLOCK: That's' incredible.

BALENSON (PH): Get up a lot of speed and go right through a building.

SPURLOCK: I'm drowning. I'm swimming inside. To see all the fish and to be in this place, it feels spectacularly immersive. Every classroom in the world should have one of these.

It is like coming back to reality and suddenly a very different experience. I'm feeling a disconnect from reality. You kind of want to stay in.

BALENSON (PH): The nature of addiction with this is something we think about a lot.

SPURLOCK: I could play with this all day.

BALENSON (PH): There is an article (INAUDIBLE) that birth rate in Japan are going down because of virtual girlfriends, Men have no interest in sex anymore. I believe VR should be VR and physical life should be physical life.

SPURLOCK: So could I theoretically have the ability to future like to upload myself into an environment like this?

BALENSON (PH): Turns out we have actually spent some time building you. So look around, what do you see in here?

SPURLOCK: I have such a nicer apartment in the virtual world.

BALENSON (PH): And his is the 3D model that it take us about 15 minute to make of you.

SPURLOCK: Look at that handsome guy. Yes. Feeling it. Yes.

BALENSON (PH): Are you ready for your aged self?

SPURLOCK: I'm ready. Time is not my friend. I'm shaped like a penguin.

BALENSON (PH): If supersize me had gone up for six months, this is what you would have looked like.

SPURLOCK: That is fantastic. All right, done. I'll go to the gym, I promise.

And so, I think it is more real. How long until I will be able to create an avatar like this for myself. And theoretically, is this forever in technology.

BALENSON (PH): If you would have asked me five years ago, I would have said centuries. (INAUDIBLE) released his decades and, you know, the answer in my opinion probably somewhere in between.

SPURLOCK: So maybe in my life.

BALENSON (PH): Every year I feel like that's less far off.

SPURLOCK: Yes.

BALENSON (PH): Here's what I think we may be able to do in a lifetime. We will be able to capture the virtual organ that will live forever that others can't tell isn't you. God forbid, if you die, your legacy will live on even if our biology isn't.

SPURLOCK: And my great kids will be able to talk to that avatar.

BALENSON (PH): Sit on your virtual lap, have you say their name and stories that you tell. This technology is coming like a freight train. So you'll be able to work after you're dead.

SPURLOCK: Do some pic for my kid?

BALENSON (PH): That's right.

If there was ever a question that going into the virtual world would create some sort of psychological or physical response --

The answer to that is yes. The ability to create an avatar of myself that I could have this living legacy, I'm fascinated by.

Wouldn't you have loved to have a conversation with your great, great grandfather?

I know I would. So, no one is going to find out, scientists are looking for a way to get that done.

What we are planning to do today is something that we have never done before. A new full body, full resolution all points of view digital hologram of yourself.

SPURLOCK: Really?

BALENSON (PH): Fifty simultaneous camera, 6,000 LEDs. Eye resolution geometry scanning.

SPURLOCK: I'm literally the real guinea pig?

BALENSON (PH): If you're up for that.

SPURLOCK: I'm game.

BALENSON (PH): And lights. OK. Open your eyes.

Are you ready? SPURLOCK: Yes.

BALENSON (PH): Three, two, one.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Hello.

SPURLOCK: Hello.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Is it OK if I ask you some questions?

SPURLOCK: Sure.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Who are you?

SPURLOCK: I'm Morgan Spurlock.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Tell me what your childhood was like. What's on your mind?

BALENSON (PH): Three, two, one, go.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SPURLOCK: So, I'm back at USC. It has been a couple of months since I was on the light stage getting my -- this capture . And now, I'm going to go inside and actually meet my digital avatar. Welcome to the future.

Hello.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So bananas.

SPURLOCK: How's it going?

I feel great. I'm excited to be talking to you.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Are you really me? I mean am I really there?

SPURLOCK: Yes, you're really here.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It really does look like me.

SPURLOCK: If only you had exercised more. I could have looked so much better if you exercised more.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm trying my best.

H SPURLOCK: Thanks, buddy.

SPURLOCK: He does look acts like me, too. Idiot.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Almost a double chin, see? Even in a hologram, this is what you gave me.

Let me see you turn around.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You want to check this out?

SPURLOCK: Just when you thought it couldn't get more perfect, suddenly it did.

Let's see how much like me you really are. I'm going to ask you some questions only I would know the answers to.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Sure, go ahead and answer some questions.

SPURLOCK: What's your earliest memory?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A few months before I turned 3 years old. And we had just move to our new house, in fact, it was Virginia. And I remember moving men unloading the truck and I can see myself walking across the lawn towards the moving truck. That's my earliest memory that I have.

SPURLOCK: Wow. And what's the happiest you've ever been?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Probably the happiest day of my life was -- it was the happiest and the scariest, the day my son was born, I was ecstatic. And then so incredibly frightening that now I have to take care of this thing for the rest of my life. Because suddenly you're not the most important person in the world anymore. Now, this little person, this little man suddenly means more than anything. That's probably the happiest and scariest I have ever been.

So why do you want to live forever?

SPURLOCK: I don't know if I want to. I mean, are we really meant to live forever?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think -- that's a good question. I think as cool as this is. It's still not as cool as talking to a real person. This is great, but the actual feeling you get from connecting with another person, from touching their hand, from kissing their skin, from look into their eyes. So this is an incredible thing we've accomplished, but it's still not quite as good as the real thing.

SPURLOCK: So any final words of wisdom?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: More important thing, you actually get to go out into the real world, see what it's still all about. You should do that. Because I'm stuck in here forever. So please, go. Enjoy while you can.

SPURLOCK: I will. Thank you.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Good luck, handsome. I'll see you soon.

SPURLOCK: So far, I've stuck to my life-long regimen and I intend to keep doing it. Ultimately, who's to say how long I'll live. Maybe this will all pay off and I'll live another 100 years or more, but living longer doesn't necessarily mean living better. Maybe how we spend those years is what really counts. Making the most of the time that we have no matter how long that may be.