Sage Geosystems, a Houston-based developer of geothermal energy and storage technologies, has a Department of Defense contract to examine the feasibility of installing a geothermal power system for Ft. Bliss. The U.S. Army Climate Strategy has a target of reducing greenhouse gasses from its facilities by 50% by 2030 (with a net-zero goal by 2050) and installing a microgrid on every base by 2035 in order to enhance energy security. 

Harnessing Dry Rock Geothermal Energy

A unique aspect of Sage’s technology is that it strives to tap into heat and pressure in what are known as dry-rock formations. Most installed geothermal systems are based on hydrothermal formations, where the geology interacts with existing water near the surface to produce steam. While the latter are relatively easy to extract heat from to run turbines for electricity, they are also relatively rare and relegated to regions with volcanic activity. 

“There are 16 gigawatts of geothermal power generation around the world,” said Cindy Taff, CEO of Sage Geosystems. “And all of that is hydrothermal, which geologically is a rare occurrence. Our understanding of geology and drilling techniques are enabling us to realize a goal of deploying geothermal energy everywhere.”

Sage’s technique drills down into rock formations to a depth of 9,000 to 20,000 feet where the ambient temperature is between 218 and 485 degrees Fahrenheit. This heat exists essentially everywhere. Fluid pumped into well reservoirs is heated by the surrounding rock and is then extracted to run a Rankine cycle turbine that runs on lower temperatures. Even better, it can heat “supercritical” CO2 (which has been pressurized to a near-solid state) to drive a turbine, which Taff says is more efficient. Sage has designed and built and is now testing a supercritical CO2-cycle generator. 

In a production facility, about 18 wells are envisioned that would produce a steady output of 50MW, enough to power at least 10,000 homes. Not all the wells are active at the same time. The process of introducing fluid to be heated and extracted eventually cools the surrounding rock. However, this heats back up again over time due to the ambient geological conditions. Plant managers rotate active wells, rather like farmers rotate crops, to keep the facility productive. 

Utilizing Fossil-Fuel Industry Tech

Taff said the company makes use of “off the shelf” drilling and related equipment from the oil and gas industry to construct its geothermal wells and reservoir fields. It’s an interesting example of fossil fuel technology being used to create clean energy. 

“Our technology relies on geological analysis and modeling that also originated in the oil and gas drilling industry,” Taff said. 

If the economics prove promising, the Ft. Bliss feasibility study could evolve into a test facility. Sage performed a similar study at the U.S. Air Force’s Ellington Field base in south Texas two years ago and is now building a prototype geothermal plant there. The technology can also be applied to long-term energy storage by using the Earth’s heat to keep fluid reservoirs at usable temperatures, ready to be tapped. The company has a contract with the Electric Reliability Council of Texas to build a 3MW geothermal energy storage facility for deployment later this year. 

Earth Day 1970 brought people (mostly white, young, and liberal) together on college campuses and in school auditoriums. High schoolers biked through smog-choked Denver and picked up litter on the state capitol lawn. Walter Cronkite hosted a CBS News special at the end of the day in which he concluded, “As a demonstration, it was mixed—beyond expectations here, far below there.” 

He underestimated.

Earth Day rode on a growing movement for environmental reform. Congress had passed the Clean Air Act in 1963 and the National Environmental Policy Act in January 1970. But actions accelerated after Earth Day, including—in fairly short order—the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency; the passage of the Clean Water Act, National Forest Management Act, and Endangered Species Act; and the beginning of the process to phase out leaded gasoline.

Earth Day largely succeeded in its goals: Skies have cleared up considerably from where they were, even in places like LA (although it still has a long way to go). And urban sewers like New York’s East River are now prime waterfront property. What’s more, Earth Day was part of a global trend of eco reform. Paris’s Seine River will (probably) be a competition venue at this year’s Summer Olympics. EarthDay.org claims to be active in more than 190 countries. 

Earth Day’s 1990 Reboot

In my freshman year of college—two decades after the first Earth Day—I joined a coalition of students in Washington, D.C., who united with Hayes and other earlier-generation leaders to reboot the movement.

Some of the environmental threats were still obvious and in the popular zeitgeist. “I’ve gotten real concerned over what’s going to happen with all the garbage,” Andie MacDowell’s character tells her therapist in the 1989 movie Sex, Lies, and Videotape. I felt the same. I could easily smell Staten Island’s massive Fresh Kills Landfill when I visited my big sister in New York City in the early 1990s. (It’s since been buried and turned into a park.)

But climate change was largely invisible. You couldn’t see the floods, droughts, disappearing glaciers, or planetwide coral bleaching that were, at that point, mostly just predicted to happen. So public attention focused on the obvious—like all that garbage. Recycling bins appeared everywhere. My “earthy-crunchy” friends and I even dug through trash cans on campus to redirect glass, aluminum, and plastic to the proper containers.

Corporate America jumped on the new environmentalist wave—in its marketing. The chemical industry assured the public that plastic could be rejuvenated at scale—part of many proclamations by companies that were often little more than feel-good advertising. Three decades later, as little as 21% of all U.S. recyclables make it into the bin, according to new research from The Recycling Partnership. And almost all the plastic that does still ultimately ends up in landfills, according to Greenpeace, which concluded that recycling plastic at scale is essentially impossible.

Of course climate change was on activists’ minds decades ago: It was already the biggest concern for many in my circles. But it was a lot harder to communicate to the public. Earth Day got a second reboot in 2000 to focus more on this greatest of challenges.

Earth Day in the Climate Era

Today is the 54th anniversary of Earth Day. That’s not the kind of round number that usually triggers a retrospective. But this is the most significant Earth Day in decades—the first in which the planet has consistently passed the 1.5 C warming mark that portends a point of no return.

Climate change has met our expectations from all those years ago—in the worst way. And it’s no longer hidden. Unprecedented Canadian forest fires choked the east coast last year and are expected to this year. Torrential rains just doused the Arabian Peninsula, of all places. Half the world’s coral reefs will be subjected to bleaching ocean temperatures this year, and global greenhouse gas emissions are still rising. The list could go on for pages and pages.

But many of the most hopeful expectations have also come true—especially in green power. Since 1977, solar panel costs have dropped from $126 per watt to 26 cents—and solar is now recognized to be the cheapest form of energy in most cases. Wind power prices are actually dropping faster than experts had predicted just a few years ago. CO2 emissions per capita have fallen considerably in the U.S. and China.

The progress on electric vehicles is stunning. General Motors’s all-electric EV1 was quite sophisticated when it debuted in 1996, and even pretty respectable by today’s standards. It was notoriously expensive to develop and produce, however. GM got cold feet, shut down production, and in 2003 began a process of literally crushing nearly all the models as their leases expired. 

But the product’s demise inspired Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning to found Tesla Motors in 2003. Electric vehicles are now the leaders in innovation and style. They may not be taking off as fast as boosters had hoped. But their growth rate is in line with how all new technology gradually ramps up. Sure, electric vehicles accounted for just 7.6% of the U.S. auto market in 2023, but that’s up from 5.9% in 2022, and it could top 30% by the end of the decade, according to Kelley Blue Book.

Changing Views

Hearts and minds have changed, too. Environmental values have progressed from the earthy-crunchy minority to the bulk of people today. A Pew Research Center survey (from 2021) found that the majority of every U.S. generation, from Boomers up, feels that addressing climate change should be a top priority. The percentages generally go higher as respondents’ age goes lower. And the partisan divide may be fading. About half of Millennials and adult Gen Zers who identify or lean Republican felt that addressing climate change needs to be a priority. (Another study shows that anxiety about the climate predominates among younger people across 10 countries, including the U.S.)

A Deloitte survey found that slight majorities of Millennials and working-age Gen Zers in 44 countries research a company’s environmental impact and policies before accepting a job (though far fewer would quit over what they learn).

And many corporations have progressed from greenwashing to serious sustainability commitments that might meet with approval, such as in material sourcing, waste reduction, green-energy purchasing, and more. Several of these efforts are led by people Worth has honored in the Worthy 100 and Groundbreaking Women, such as Vincent Eckert (Swiss Re), Alex Liftman (Bank of America), and Rachel Slaybaugh (DCVC).

Do all these positive technological and cultural developments bring hope that humanity will turn back from the brink? Yes. Are they a guarantee? No. 

Stay tuned.

Musk stated that this new batch of layoffs is due to a “duplication of roles”; however, there is a more plausible culprit. For the first time in the company’s history, its stock has been down over 31% year-to-date, as reported by Business Insider. Furthermore, Fast Company reports that sales have fallen by 8.5% each year since 2020. The company’s analysts describe this as a disaster, as some of Tesla’s competitors—such as Hyundai, Kia, Toyota, and BMW—have increased their sales in Q1. 

But Tesla isn’t alone. Ford, for example, has recently announced a delay in rolling out its new line of electric pickups and SUVs. Ford explained that it will first work on adding gas-electric hybrids, citing a slower-than-expected EV sales market as the reason for the change.

EV Market Shift Isn’t a Reason to Panic

Over the past few months, we have all heard about how the slowing EV market keeps us from hitting our CO2 emission-reduction goals. But there is no reason to panic, as the industry is following the natural product adoption process. 

Any marketing or sociology course will likely include Everett M. Rogers’s idea of the “adoption curve.” It details who and to what degree consumers adopt a new technology or product. Any population can be split into five categories: innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggards. 

The Adoption Stages

Innovators make up about 2.5% of the overall population. They’re eager to try anything new, not scared off by risk or the idea of failure. You can find them on crowdfunding sites like Indiegogo or Kickstarter, investing in products still in their conceptual stage. 

Then you have early adopters, who make up a whopping 13.5%. They’re willing to work around or ignore kinks in a product. But unlike innovators, they’re not as willing to risk failure. Thus, they’ll test it out before preaching it to the choirs. Think of them as the first people to own a Blackberry or iPhone. Were there bugs? Yes. Did they care? No. Did they preach about the usefulness of either product? Also, yes. 

Then, you get to the early and late majority, who together make up 68% of the population. The only real difference between the two is that the early majority is more trustworthy of data that shows a product or technology does solve a problem, at which point they are willing to try it out.

Lastly, there are laggards, who make up the remaining 16%. These are the few who refuse to try new tech even if a product is objectively better than its predecessor. They won’t naturally adopt it; rather, they must be convinced of its use and value time and time again before they even think it might be worth a look.

Where Did the Consumers Go?

So, how does this connect back to Tesla and EVs? 

Simple. Environmentalists, journalists, and market analysts alike were excited about early growth because they looked at sales data driven by innovators and early adopters. Now, we’re confronted by the reality of persuading the majority—which takes time. We jumped the gun in our excitement. That’s all. 

Let’s be frank: EVs have kinks that the majority do not want to deal with. Consumer Reports’ latest annual car reliability survey found that “EVs from the past three model years [have] 79% more problems than conventional cars.” The most common issues are with the battery and charging system, which would be the equivalent of a traditional car having an issue with its gas tank.

If you’re wondering where the majority is comfortable, that’s hybrid and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs). The latter vehicles can run on battery power for an average day around town and then switch to a gas-electric mix if they have to go further. When Pat Ryan, CEO of the car shopping app CoPilot, spoke with NPR, he stated, “The mainstream has adopted hybrids, so hybrid sales are white-hot.” Also, some PHEVs qualify for federal tax credits.

Using iPhone’s Roadmap for EV Expectations

Going back to the iPhone example, we can use its adoption as a roadmap of expectations for EVs. Innovators bought the product in 2008-2009; the early adopters then naturally came in with the iPhone 3GS as the product still had some bugs but nothing that would risk failure. And then with the iPhone 4, the market exploded in 2012. The early and late majority saw the mountain of evidence on how having constant access to their emails and the internet added something to their personal or professional lives but without the bugs. But that was after three years of innovators and early adopters acting as the guinea pigs.

With EVs, we are currently in limbo between the early adopters and the early majority because of persisting issues with charging speed, range, and overall reliability—just as the iPhone was before the 4’s release. In order to have the same boom as the iPhone, EV automakers need to do what Apple did—a complete upgrade. 

The iPhone 4 introduced what are now staple features, including the retina display and Facetime. Overall, it had over 100 new features and upgrades. Steve Jobs effectively took an iron to all of the 3G and 3GS’s wrinkles (antenna gate notwithstanding), such as spotty network connections and issues caused by the battery. Sound familiar?

So, as EV production begins to roll back to a more realistic pace, please note that this is the combination of the natural adoption cycle and the need for automakers to take an iron to EVs’ proverbial wrinkles.

“There are many challenges associated with a concept power plant, and the standoff distance was one of them,” said Ryan Ramsey, First Light’s chief operations officer. “This result has now given us a clear and simpler pathway to increasing the standoff distance in a power plant, which will be several meters.”

Commercial-scale fusion reactors based on this design will require electric guns positioned far enough away to survive the intense heat of the reactor chamber and still be accurate enough to hit the fuel target.

Kicking Off a Fusion Reaction

A number of companies are pursuing various approaches to achieving sustained fusion reactions as a means of generating electricity. First Light is among those focused now on the inertial containment process, where pressure from the bombardment energy helps achieve the conditions necessary for fusion. Other popular methods use electromagnetic fields to produce the needed pressure.

The U.S. Lawrence Livermore National Ignition Facility (NIF) now almost routinely announces headline-grabbing inertial containment advances. These are often touted as examples of how commercial fusion generation is just around the corner. In this context, “ignition” means that more power was generated from a fusion reaction than was used to create it.

According to First Fusion’s Ramsey, the ignition demonstration at the NIF in December 2022 was a watershed moment for inertial fusion. “NIF’s result has revolutionized the way we think of fusion and is one of the biggest milestones towards developing a commercial fusion source, because it proves that the core physics works,” he said.

A Simpler, Cheaper Ignition System

However, NIF’s mission does not necessarily include commercial fusion development, and its expansive and expensive laser-based system is not practical for sustained power generation. 

The trick is accomplishing ignition using more modest means that can be scaled into a commercial power generation setting. First Light has settled on an approach to ignition that uses lower-powered electric guns to create intense pressure instead of massive lasers that create intense heat, as at the NIF.

First Light’s system fires coin-shaped metal alloy projectiles at a special gel surrounding the hydrogen fuel. This gel transmits the inertial energy of impact into a pressure wave that compresses the hydrogen atoms, triggering fusion and a massive release of energy.

Ramsey characterized the design of the fuel-gel package as the company’s “secret sauce” that enables it to use projectiles that can be fired at much lower power levels than laser-powered, heat-based inertial containment systems require. Individual fuel packages may be dropped into a chamber and then hit by projectiles accelerated to hypersonic speeds. The projectiles are pulse-fired at targets, with each ignition event creating intense heat that turns water into steam that drives a turbine to generate electricity. 

Achieving Commercial Scale

First Light says its recent achievement demonstrates that its electric guns can be made accurate, powerful, and reliable enough to deliver projectiles on targets consistently in a power plant setting. At the same time, fusion is still a bit hazy as to when it will generate electricity for consumers. Estimates range from a decade to never. Consider First Fusion’s achievement: There is a long way to go from 10 cm to several meters. Also, the electric gun is only one part of the problem. 

“We have various streams progressing in parallel, too,” Ramsey said. “A major focus for us is to continually improve our amplifier technology that is wrapped around the fuel capsule.” He adds that the company will continue to design and develop a pilot power plant based on its projectile fusion approach. 

The important features of inertial containment remain in laboratory projects and simulations. At the same time, the radical improvement in the standoff range of the electric gun, one of its key components, shows that the way forward is promising.

An Uneven Employment Landscape

But the fortunes vary by industry. The biggest dips, according to data from jobs marketplace Indeed, are in the “knowledge sectors” (a term the other sectors may not appreciate). Jobs for software developers are down 28% on its platform. For mathematicians (including data scientists), they’re down 20%; and for marketers, it’s 19%.

But jobs that must be in person, such as construction and childcare, are “actually booming,” says the company—40% higher than their pre COVID levels.” This may jibe with less-granular government data, which, for instance, clocked over 90,000 new jobs in “health care and social assistance,” in February, and nearly as many in January. The broad “professional and business services” category dropped from 40,000 new jobs in January to 9,000 the next month.

Struggling Job Recruiters

Another profession that’s taken a hit: job recruiters. In a Harris Poll survey of 300 hiring managers, commissioned by Indeed, 65% reported cuts to their recruiting teams. Those who haven’t lost staff are doing a bit better at their jobs, with a 69% average response rate from candidates, vs. 61% for businesses overall.

All this data tees things up nicely for Indeed’s formal launch of a new AI-powered recruiting tool, called Smart Sourcing, that aims to find better job candidate matches, faster. (Announced in September, it was live online at least a day before today’s press release.) But as such a big job marketplace—reporting more than 350 million unique monthly visitors for a stretch of 2023—Indeed’s data and insights are genuinely interesting, beyond their marketing value.

Frustrated Job Applicants

Indeed and Harris also polled 1,107 employed adults in the same February 15-20 timeframe. The results may ring true to anyone who’s been looking for a job, especially in this tougher environment for the keyboard-tapping professions. For instance, 54% of potential jobseekers said it takes too long to hear back about next steps in the evaluation process.

That may line up with how overloaded recruiters say they are—spending an average of 13 hours on each role they need to fill. “Imagine a recruiter having 10 roles [to fill]—130 hours. That’s pretty much three weeks in a month,” said Raj Mukherjee, EVP for Indeed’s Employer division, in a press briefing yesterday.

The long hours are mainly driven by those “knowledge” sectors—with hiring for a manager role taking 15 hours and a technical role taking 14. (Most roles require about 10 hours, per the survey.)

Poorly Aimed Candidate Outreach

But that still isn’t enough time, or it’s not being spent well, according to potential employees polled. Forty percent said they have been contacted about jobs that are not a good fit—in terms of pay, level, and even location or industry. And 70% of the workers who have been contacted say the recruiters should have done more homework before reaching out.

Most recruiters agree, with 63% saying they have contacted the wrong candidates because they didn’t do enough research.

It seems to be a spray-and-pray approach, especially for lower-level jobs. According to the survey, for a VP or higher-level position, over half of the searches reach out to 10 or fewer candidates. For the lowest-level jobs (called “individual contributor”), nearly half of the outreach is to 26 people or more—with about a quarter contacting more than 40 candidates. This seems to gibe with Indeed’s and the Federal government data that lower-level jobs are harder to fill.

This includes reaching out to a lot of what Indeed calls “passive candidates”—people who are not really looking for a job. Predictably, most of these people aren’t interested: Just 36% reply, according to the hiring manager survey. Although higher-end workers are a bit more receptive. Manager, VP, and higher-level recruits reply at 41%.

Promised AI Help

Indeed aims to cut time and improve accuracy with Smart Sourcing. Some aspects seem no-brainers. For instance, the company promises that the service will surface candidates who match the companies’ job requirements—and who have been active on Indeed in the past month (a sign that they are in the market). But the software also exercises a bit of discretion. Indeed gives the example of not ruling out someone who has four years of experience, just because the job requirement states five years.

The tool will explain its recommendation in AI-generated candidate summaries. Smart Sourcing can also generate tailored outreach letters to candidates, promising big time savings.

Given the hit-and-miss nature of text-generating technology over the past two years, it will be interesting to see how well Indeed hits the mark. Or if it incorporates biases—something I (and another reporter) asked about during the briefing.

“We are collecting, all the time, a lot of structured information about jobs, just as we’re trying to collect a lot of structured information about job seekers and what they’re solving for and what they can do,” said Maggie Hulce, Mukherjee’s counterpart on the Job Seeker side of the company.

“Your [the employer’s] job is looking for the following skills in the following types of environments. And this job seeker is a good match for that because of the overlap that we see in this job seeker’s profile and what’s true about the job,” she added. “And that’s fairly easy to give a synopsis on. AI giving sort of additional color commentary on things that might stand out can be helpful. But there’s also the true, clean sort of structured [process]. Like, ‘You asked for these five things, and all of these candidates have all those five things and are interested in this type of role and your type of company.’”

“The creator economy saw exponential growth [in the last five years] in both the number of content creators and audience engagement,” says Piotr Wolanski, founder and CEO of Superjoi, an online community hub and monetization platform for creators. “Creators diversified their content and monetization strategies, and there was a surge in platforms offering more direct ways to monetize, such as virtual tipping, subscription models, and exclusive content access.”

Turning Audiences Into Customers

Some of today’s most successful creators are running mainstream, mass-market businesses built out of YouTube fame. And it’s not just branded t-shirts, mugs, and other low-hanging, ancillary revenue fruit. 

Automotive journalist, creator, and entrepreneur Doug DeMuro is a prime example of what YouTube’s growth and success look like today. While he has hit it big, his success offers lessons equally valuable for creators with much smaller audiences.

DeMuro spent a good chunk of the early and mid-2010s writing about cars for publications such as Jalopnik and The Truth About Cars and then became the editor of Autotrader.com’s Oversteer blog in 2016. 

Simultaneously, he was profiling and reviewing distinctive and quirky cars going back to the 1980s on his YouTube channel, which reached 3.7 million subscribers by 2020. That’s a number significant enough to consider quitting one’s day job, which DeMuro did. That same year, he partnered with entrepreneur Blake Machado to launch Cars & Bids. The auto auction site marries DeMuro’s passion and expertise for a specific automotive niche with the enthusiast fanbase and buyer-seller energy of online marketplaces. 

DeMuro has jumped to 4.79 million YouTube followers (as of early February), and Cars & Bids has exceeded $420 million in total car sales, with $180 million in 2023 alone. In January, it received a $37 million investment from The Chernin Group. In November last year, DeMuro signed with Hollywood talent agency WME to represent him and expand brand partnerships, business ventures, and entertainment opportunities. 

Specificity and Authenticity Online

As with DeMuro’s YouTube channel, what makes Cars & Bids so compelling is that it targets a particular interest category—enthusiast cars from the 1980s to today—that wasn’t already the focus of another online auction site. “There was eBay and Bring a Trailer, but not for a car auction site focused on more modern cars,” he recalls. “I felt that there was some whitespace there and that maybe there would be room for a player who could do that.” 

DeMuro’s authority and personality are interwoven throughout Cars & Bids, which is the bespoke special sauce that you won’t find on more established car auction sites. DeMuro evaluates every car listed and edits a “Doug’s Take” blurb on each one, a personalized and reassuring extra touch that some of his rivals can’t match. And despite now employing 43 people, DeMuro hasn’t changed his YouTube video aesthetic—an enthusiastic and relatable dude in a basic t-shirt, shorts, and white sneakers.

DeMuro covers the history, features, cool factor, and quirks of everything from a Soviet-era 1988 Volga GAZ 24-10 sedan and the original 1994 Ford Explorer SUV to a 2024 McLaren 750S Supercar. He still stars in and produces the same YouTube video reviews and profiles of cars, many of which are up for auction on the site. In addition to live auction talk shows and a podcast, DeMuro has added portrait-mode short clips, or “shorts.” They are increasingly popular on YouTube and TikTok, where they primarily serve as feeder videos back to YouTube and its more sustainable and lucrative advertising revenue share program.

But maybe the most essential reason DeMuro doesn’t mess with the core content that started it all is that it works. “Having the built-in audience is essential because these people showed up on day one,” says DeMuro. Competing auction sites don’t start from that authenticity. Porsche launched Marqued in 2021, an auction site for all brands of classic cars. But the number of cars sold there is minimal. At press time, there was just one auction on Marqued.com versus more than 100 “Ending Soon” auctions on Cars & Bids.

Despite his built-in audience, DeMuro admits that creating an e-commerce business was different from building a YouTube channel and that he was lucky in some respects. Launching the site in 2020, just before the market for used cars exploded during the pandemic, helped. But a crucial factor was finding the right person to build a business with, his Cars & Bids co-founder Blake Machado. “He plugged all of the gaps I had in my abilities and knowledge. His strengths were web design, web development, and the web business. My strengths were the audience and the ability to bring them to the table.”

DeMuro says that finding external revenue sources beyond ads revenue and primary merchandise sales is essential for long-term survival in the creator world. 

“It’s easier to turn attention into dollars than dollars into attention,” says DeMuro. “My advice is to just think of something you could do or some way you could take your audience something that they can do, or have a shared interest in, and that they will buy.”

The Rise of the Nichefluencer

DeMuro may be the poster boy for a successful synergistic business built out of a YouTube content operation. However, pursuing a career or side hustle as a creator is less of a pipe dream today than it used to be. While pro poker player Jonathan Little’s 183,000 YouTube subscriber count is nothing shabby, it’s much less than the millions once considered essential. And yet, a consistent pipeline of poker strategy, advice, hand review, talk show episodes, and short videos on YouTube serve as a complementary gateway to sales of Little’s best-selling books on poker and his online poker classes and coaching at pokercoaching.com. 

“He’s not huge, and he’s not small,” says Clayton Jacobs, CEO and founder of CreatorDB, an influencer marketing platform offering a suite of analytics, discovery, audience targeting, and brand localization. “But he’s a great example of somebody who set up a career for themselves, and they use their content as a primary distribution source for their paid product.”

More creators are out there, and more are making money, according to a study released late last year by the Keller Advisory Group, an influencer insights and analytics agency. It found 27 million paid creators in the U.S., with the average annual salary for the 11.6 million who work full-time at $179,000 per year. “Macro” creators, defined by Keller as those with 250,000 or more followers, earned an average of $344,000 per year.

Those with the most followers still make the most money. But there are now opportunities for smaller-scale creators focused on niche topics with loyal enthusiast followings—everything from the apparent segments like beauty, gaming, tech, and travel to fishing, beekeeping, online comic books, and B2B topics. These channels with access to specific types of audiences and customers are increasingly sought after by brands and companies looking to reach them. 

According to the survey, mid-tier influencers (50,000-250,000 followers) average $129,000 per year, micro-influencers (10,000-50,000) garner $45,000, and nano influencers (10,000 or less) pull in $17,000. More than half (10.4 million) of all creators in the U.S. have fewer than 10,000 followers, putting them squarely in the nano category. 

“A huge number of people have discovered that they can dabble in this, that there are channels and outlets for them to communicate and try to build a community around things that interest them personally and that they can find followers with,” says Keller Advisory Group founder and CEO Ed Keller.

Investing Directly in Creators

So, what has changed to allow a diversification of revenue sources for macro creators and enable a broader swathe of content creators to flourish on YouTube? Where are these new revenue streams coming from? 

Many answers emerged from the keynotes, panels, and after-conference conversations around “Verified,” a creator-economy topic track held at the most recent Web Summit in Lisbon in November. Today, there is more infrastructure consisting of investors, financing, technology, e-commerce, localization, and business development, making it easier to monetize a YouTube channel with a dedicated audience and room to grow. 

According to estimates by Goldman Sachs, today’s $250 billion creator economy will double to $480 billion by 2027. Citi estimates that more than 120 million creators across the globe are generating $60 billion in revenue, which is growing at about 9% per year. Despite a pullback of investment in startups that build tools and communities to help creators grow over the past year, direct investment in creators is still very much alive.

For example, San Francisco-based early-stage venture capital firm Slow Ventures has a Creator Fund that invests up to $5M in exchange for up to 5% of a creator’s future revenue. “They believe, as I do, that the next billion-dollar media companies will be created not by the big [companies] we all know in the media space, but by creators,” said Verified stage host Jim Louderback, the former CEO of VidCon who writes the weekly newsletter “Inside the Creator Economy.” 

Rather than take any IP ownership or long-term revenue share, Amsterdam-based Everbloom provides financing and mentorship in the form of an accelerator program. Creators already generating $50-$100K per year in AdSense (Google’s advertising platform) revenue and have at least 1 million followers are eligible to join. The idea is to help creators with predictable monetization streams grow their team, increase production value, optimize distribution, and expand into other mediums and platforms.

“We always joke around the office that we wanted to build the Y Combinator of creators,” says Everbloom CEO Lukas Runte, referring to the Silicon Valley tech accelerator. “Over the last few years, many more people recognize that creators can become larger, thriving businesses that aren’t just monetizing ads and sponsorships but are building full businesses.” 

While he already has a solid 2.37 million subscribers on YouTube, Tyler Csatari is using Everbloom funding to raise the quality and quantity of his long- and short-form videos. “I’m also spending some time developing [AI] tools that can help me write scripts and solve creative blocks,” says Csatari. “The funding allows me to spend some time working on these workflow optimizations.”

New Infrastructure for Creators

But you don’t necessarily need the deep pockets of investment firms to grow and build revenue, either. “There’s this growing segment of companies that are focusing on building tools, software, products for creators,” says Nikola Sokolov, CEO and founder of Influencers Club. It operates a platform that helps these companies find and onboard creators in different niches as end customers. 

Linktree is one of many “link-in-bio” companies that provide landing pages for creators to feature links to their various social media accounts and commercial endeavors, as well app integrations to help them connect with fans and monetize through sales, services, and more. Kajabi provides a full suite of tools to develop, create, publish, and monetize online courses and membership access. Fourthwall provides a merchandising platform for clothing, accessories, and more and tools to build and run online shops. 

Even Patreon has evolved, serving as a multi-medium hub to help podcasters, video creators, artists, musicians, and game developers monetize their content through memberships, exclusive episodes, chat, and other community tools. 

Content can take many forms. With a combined 600,000 followers on Instagram and TikTok—and just 6,900 on YouTube—low-cal food creator Kyle Smith made the bulk of his $40,000 per month last year . A former law enforcement officer, Smith, whose Tasty Shreds content chronicles his weight loss and the food he makes to stay slim, is an excellent example of a creator who built a business sustainable enough—not through traffic or views or followers—to enable him to quit his day job. 

Regardless of outside revenue sources, YouTube remains the best place to monetize core content, thanks to an established ad revenue share program and the ability to create longer-form content, delivering more advertising proceeds. Follower counts may be easier to build on Instagram and TikTok, but sustaining that audience and monetizing it directly on the platform is harder.

Instagram, for example, has no advertising revenue share program, though it offers basic badges and subscriptions that followers can purchase. The bulk of monetization there is based on brand sponsorships. TikTok caps its compensations, although its still-in-beta Creativity Program aims to compensate creators directly based on traffic, and the app has offered a built-in tip jar feature since 2021.

But TikTok and Instagram are great places to post anyway since the shorts can be used to promote and lead viewers back to a YouTube channel.

With 30,000 YouTube subscribers, Toronto-based finance and travel “micro” creator Reni Odetoyinbo (xoReni, 30.2K subscribers) generates income through a mix of AdSense revenue share, brand partnerships, affiliate marketing, speaking engagements, LinkedIn profile makeovers, financial consulting, Etsy (where she sells a financial tracker), and tips. “My income fluctuates, so it isn’t the same month over month,” Odetoyinbo tells Worth. “Some months I make $15,000 [$11,000 USD] and others I make $60,000 ($45,000 USD).” Though her core content still lives on YouTube, she also posts across other media platforms, including TikTok, Instagram, and LinkedIn, where she has similar micro-level follower numbers.

Bigger Isn’t Always Better on YouTube

Although being a successful creator today is no longer a popularity contest, there’s no easy money here, just more opportunity. According to the Keller study, more than half of all creators—including part-timers and hobbyists—make less than $10,000 annually, and one-third make $1,000-$2,000. 

Still, with hard work, nano creators who aren’t bringing mass-market, mass-appeal content to the table already have resources, options, technology, and new markets to make a living. And that’s different from a decade ago. 

Jacobs, who’s working on a book about the creator economy, says it’s theoretically possible to make an annual median U.S. income of $55,000 with as few as 6,000 YouTube views a day, through revenue streams from classes and memberships to exclusive content and e-commerce.

“Creators are going to have to hustle to get to the point where they’re making money with those numbers,” says Jacobs. “But if you’re well organized, it can be accomplished.” Interestingly, the nano creator space “represents growth for the future,” per the Keller study, so that it may get easier. 

“Creators with huge followings aren’t always the most persuasive,” says Keller. “Kim Kardashian is not like me. Mr Beast is not like me. But someone with a small following who you can follow and may respond to you when you comment, like someone you want to be friends with—that person can be more persuasive because people can relate to them on a more personal level.” 

According to Keller, these nano influencers are still largely untapped by brands looking to reach different types of consumers. “I think there’s a huge opportunity [for brands] to literally create a relationship with them that is two-way, where you know who they are, and they know who you are, and you can help them along their journey.” He says the resulting good will should show in creators’ videos. 

A platform that seems ripe for a creator boom is LinkedIn. “The rise of the B2B creator,” says Louderback, who himself is a B2B creator on LinkedIn. “Nobody’s doing influencer marketing there at scale, but there’s a real opportunity on the LinkedIn side for brands to come in and work with top creators there.”

According to a recent report by Ogilvy, 75 percent of B2B businesses already work with B2B influencers, with 93 percent planning to use even more of them in the future. Companies such as Intel, HootSuite, Teal, and ZenDesk have already created influencer marketing campaigns with creators on LinkedIn. And because LinkedIn doesn’t run its influencer marketing programs, these partnerships result from direct interfacing between the brands and influencers.

AI’s Superpowers for Creators

The creator economy is no exception regarding opportunities (and pitfalls) made possible by AI. As far as enabling technologies are concerned, however, the most intriguing and valuable applications remain those that offer more streamlined workflow, easier localization, and democratization of creative processes. 

AI-powered translation, for example, will help nano and micro creators since they can now own the global audience for a specific niche. Real-time, AI-powered translation and dubbing tools, such as YouTube’s Aloud, are improving daily, and will soon offer voice- and mouth-cloning so that speech looks natural and realistic regardless of the language. “It’s allowing you to create once and deploy across every language,” says Louderback. “Creativity is evenly distributed around the globe.” 

Another area where AI will help creators is with editing, which typically takes a long time, yet it’s the core of what drives engagement. DeScript, for instance, allows people to cut video just by editing the text of the associated AI-generated transcript. Opus Clip can automatically identify and clip out interesting nuggets from longer videos. They simplify storyboarding, character generation, and editing, and can also help repurpose existing content into, say, vertical clips that can be put onto TikTok and Instagram for further promotion back to YouTube. 

“AI will help turn big creators into superheroes,” Louderback, who uses both DeScript and Opus Clip, said in his “Verified” track, “but emerging creators will suddenly become creators that can have a sustainable future and work with brands and much more.”

Keeping It Real and Human

This is AI’s potential, but the flood of bot-aided and -generated content means that humans will be needed even more. “AI will not steal creator’s jobs,” says Louderback. Rather, AI’s ability to scale creates an opportunity for human creativity. “The new trend is returning to quality and authenticity rather than virality,” he says. 

In his “Verified” talk, Stevie Johnson, managing director of influencer marketing agency Disrupt (and a former influencer himself), stressed the increasing importance of authenticity. “Relying on these [AI] tools is going to lead to an overabundance of content, making it ever more difficult for creators to be noticed and for content to hit home,” he said. The solution? Double down on the human. “There is a requirement now to lean into thought-provoking and personality-driven content. Maintaining a human voice is going to be integral.”

Indeed, as the number of creators—nano, micro, or otherwise—gets more crowded with both human- and AI-generated content, the need for personalized, first-person, authentic content will be increasingly important for creators to stand out and gain traction.

The good news for anyone just starting who is intimidated by all those 4K drone shots and slick editing on many a YouTube channel today is that authenticity and voice will continue to trump production value. 

“I have so many people who come to me and say: ‘You should do drone shots, you should do music,’” says DeMuro, “but adding complication is not how to make YouTube more successful. That will not give me measurably more views, and it’ll take a lot more time. The goal is to keep it simple.”  

Unfortunately, most of us don’t make the connection between the way we feel and labels like depression and anxiety. We assume that having low energy and being unmotivated or anxious is what everyone experiences.  

Dr. Uma Naidoo, a leader in the new field of nutritional psychiatry, Harvard professor, and director of the ground-breaking Nutritional & Lifestyle Psychiatry Program at Massachusetts General Hospital, told Worth, “A family member might tell them they’re acting differently, withdrawn, or losing weight. The same with anxiety. Someone may be waking up with a pit in their stomach and not tie it to anxiety.”

Dr. Drew Ramsey, also a nutritional psychiatrist, and author of Eat to Beat Depression and Anxiety, feels the words ‘depression’ and ‘anxiety’ are bandied about so heedlessly and in so many different contexts, that, not surprisingly, they mean different things to different people.  When he and Dr. Naidoo use the words, they refer to diagnoses consistent with the DSM-5, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, which is the bible used by mental health professionals.

A poor diet can cause more than the triumvirate of diseases everyone can recite verbatim–obesity, diabetes, and heart disease. Also, multiple studies conducted over the last 20 years have demonstrated a connection between a poor diet and mood disorders like depression and anxiety. The problem is that most of us haven’t been paying attention to these studies.

According to Naidoo, Here’s What the Scientists Have Found

Sugar. There’s an astonishingly high correlation between sugar consumption (from foods and sodas) and depression. The reason may be that sugar impedes the body’s ability to make a protein (BDNF) that is essential for brain growth, development, and stress management.

High-glycemic-Load Carbohydrates. Carbs that are easily turned into glucose (sugar) in the body. This includes anything made with white flour (like bread and pasta), white rice, and potatoes. However, low-glycemic index carbs, like beans and most fruits, are not damaging. Several large studies have shown a correlation between consumption of high glycemic load carbs and depression.

Artificial Sweeteners. Not surprisingly, these compounds which are hundreds of times sweeter than sugar, have multiple negative effects on the brain. Aspartame (think Diet Coke) inhibits dopamine and serotonin. Sucralose causes mice to develop the same gut bacteria tied to depression in humans.

Bad Fats. This includes trans fats, which were banned in the U.S. in 2020, and saturated fats. It also includes many fried foods because even ‘good’ fats, reused many times and kept at high temperatures, can become harmful.

Caffeine and alcohol (if anxiety and/or sleep are concerns)

The Gut Microbiome in Anxiety and Depression

Everywhere we turn these days, people are talking about the gut microbiome, the living organisms in the digestive tract that help break down food. We now understand they do much more than that. They create and respond to neurotransmitters that, via the vagus nerve and the circulatory system, are in direct conversation with the brain. Joe Weiss, Gastroenterologist, and Clinical Professor of Medicine at the University of California San Diego, told Worth, “First, you must understand that there are over a trillion species of microbes, and they are everywhere, not just in the gut. They’re floating in the air. We all have unique species on our skin, in our lungs, eyes, ears, etc. They’re even inside cells in the body.” This connection starts when we are embryos. The same cells that become the brain and spinal cord travel through the body to form the enteric (gut) nervous system.

The ones in the enteric nervous system are responsible for most of the body’s serotonin. “Everyone thought serotonin worked only in the brain. We now know that only 5% is in the brain. Over 90% is made in the gut and stays there,” he added.

Other heavy-hitting neurotransmitters made in the gut include dopamine (pleasure, addiction, Parkinson’s if too low, schizophrenia if too high), adrenaline (fight or flight), GABA (calmness, ability to focus), and acetylcholine (memory and cognition).

The above is why psychiatrists like Drs. Naidoo and Ramsey know they can improve many psychiatric conditions with what amounts to a prescriptive diet. Their recommendations overlap because both are using the results of high-level studies to shape their advice.  

Leafy Greens. If Dr. Ramsey’s mantra was summed up in three words, it would be “eat leafy greens.” He’s so passionate about this that he’s even published a recipe book entitled Fifty Shades of Kale. He’s softened his stance a little in the decade since the book was published.  He now concedes that people who don’t like kale can expand their options to Swiss chard, broccoli rabe, collards, and spinach, all of which contain folate, a B vitamin necessary for the creation of neurotransmitters.

Rainbow Fruits and Vegetables. Dr. Ramsey’s favorite color in this ‘rainbow’ is the reddish-purple created by anthocyanins, an especially nutritious flavonoid (food pigment). Berries contain a lot of anthocyanins so I asked Dr. Ramsey about acai and blueberries, two fruits that have attained superfood status. He was dismissive, saying, “The reason I don’t rely on them is they’re expensive, they’re fetishized, and they’re unreachable to the average consumer. Most importantly, they miss the point. They’re no better than any other berry. All berries tend to be interesting and good for you.”

Seafood. Primarily fatty fish (for their omega-3 fatty acids) low on the food chain (to avoid mercury.) Dr. Ramsey points out that farmed salmon is dyed pink so he only consumes wild salmon. Also good are bluefish and mackerel. Vegans can get omega-3s from algae, although it is not as concentrated as in fish.

Nuts, Beans, and Seeds. A study on depressed and anxious college students in Australia a few years ago showed significant mood improvement in those who, among other things, added a serving of nuts to their diet each afternoon. Beans are an excellent prebiotic, indigestible fiber that feeds healthy large intestine bacteria.

Meat. The first controversial category on this list. Dr. Ramsey was a vegetarian but now believes that moderate consumption of ethically raised meat (grass pastured) is healthy, sustainable, lower calorie than grain-fed meat, and contains numerous essential nutrients including a nourishing fatty acid profile. 

Eggs & Fermented Dairy. It’s doubtful that anyone was surprised to see leafy greens on the list. We all know we should eat our vegetables, but many readers probably bristled at the often-maligned foods: eggs and dairy products. However, both psychiatrists told Worth that studies confirm choline (eggs) has been linked to decreased anxiety. Along with choline, eggs are high in high quality protein and B vitamins. Examples of fermented dairy include yogurt and kefir.

Dark Chocolate. The item everyone has been waiting for.  It turns out that (dark) chocolate is brain food. A study using U.S. government data from over 13,000 adults showed a 57%(!) reduction in depression in those who ate dark chocolate. However, if the study is to be believed, this group was eating an average of eight ounces of chocolate a day. If you’d like a return for a smaller investment that won’t expand your waistline, less than an ounce a day of dark chocolate reduces salivary cortisol, a stress and anxiety marker.

Although both nutritional psychiatrists agree about which foods are mood enhancers, Dr. Naidoo has a slightly different approach than Dr. Ramsey. In her bestselling book, This Is Your Brain on Food, she focuses on specific foods for specific mental disorders.  

For depression, she suggests probiotics (fermented dairy, miso, kimchi), prebiotics (legumes), omega-3 fatty acids (fish, dark leafy greens), and the Mediterranean diet (fruits and vegetables), almost all foods on Dr. Ramsey’s list. 

Neither doctor is expecting us to adopt a flawless diet. According to Dr. Naidoo, “It’s about exploring a diversity of foods which help your gut, which helps your mind.” So, if kimchi isn’t your thing, don’t worry. Just increase other foods on the list.

Dr. Naidoo believes anxiety is best controlled by cultured and fermented foods, tryptophan (as a supplement, not from foods), dietary fiber, and omega-3s. The latter two have an anti-inflammatory effect and inflammation is correlated with anxiety. She told Worth, “Poor diet leads to gut inflammation which leads to impairments like depression and anxiety, which often leads people to eat a poor diet. It’s a negative feedback loop.”

A sufferer of anxiety herself, Dr. Naidoo has just published a new book completely devoted to the subject, Calm Your Mind With Food.

I highly recommend both doctors’ books. They’re clear and easy to understand. Most importantly, they’re compelling. I’ve changed my diet since reading them. Maybe you will too.  

The Norms of Geek Companies

“I decided to write this book because I became convinced that a bunch of geeks had figured out a better way to run companies,” McAfee tells Worth. “I wanted to understand it and explain it.” One of the core ways that McAfee organizes his findings is by outlining what he sees as “norms” that are true to every geek-run organization. These norms, per McAfee, are like overarching principles or practices in a company’s culture; however, they aren’t written on a wall or in an employee handbook. They’re just common to all geek-run organizations. 

The geek way norms are science, ownership, speed, and openness. How these shake out in any company may be familiar to anyone who has ever worked at a startup or tech firm. But they’re surprisingly not as widespread at all types of organizations or companies, particularly ones that have existed for many years.

By science, McAfee means gathering evidence around a new product or strategy and discussing and arguing about it with others in the organization. He says ownership essentially entails “devolving authority down to an uncomfortable degree and having a fairly atomized organization.” The ownership norm is what developed into AWS (the massive Amazon Web Services cloud platform) for Amazon. “It led to ownership as a leadership principle,” he says. “It was integral in the birth of its participation in the cloud industry to build a modular tech stack so that you can have a modular organization.” 

The third norm, speed, encapsulates the idea of minimum viable product or plan and iteration. This is the essence of agile software development models and the “move fast and break things” ethos of so many tech companies, which has spread to everything from entertainment to politics. “Think about Tesla pushing an update to all of its cars in a week versus VW being years late with its electronic vehicle software,” says McAfee. 

Leaders Managing Their Egos

The last norm is openness, which facilitates a culture where it’s okay to fail and speak your mind. For leaders, it means the willingness to be wrong, to listen to arguments about a product or direction from subordinates, and to have the flexibility to pivot. In one part of the book, McAfee offers three cases in which Netflix CEO Reed Hastings was willing to be wrong about “gut” decisions and reverse them. 

In 2011, Hastings pushed through what turned out to be a disastrous and highly panned spin-off of the DVD-by-mail rental division into a company called Qwikster. In response to the debacle, he instituted official mechanisms that solicited subjective and data-based feedback from other people in the company about any potential new product or initiative launch. The result was that two of Netflix’s most successful initiatives—kids programming and the ability to download content onto devices—went ahead and launched, despite initial reservations by Hastings.

McAfee argues that in addition to exemplifying the geek way norms of openness and science, Hastings and Netflix demonstrate the norms of ownership (the management structure is hands-off and non-hierarchical) and speed (the company has been relentlessly updating new versions of its websites and apps on at least a biweekly basis since 2006).

Yamini Rangan, who took over as CEO of customer relationship software company HubSpot in January 2020, just before the pandemic started, shares her board performance reviews, good and bad, with all her direct reports. She then shares what she plans to do to improve. It’s genuinely walking the walk with a message that says you don’t have to be always winning. And it’s telling that she did it during the pandemic, when it was tough to be truly transparent. 

Even established companies can be revamped with geeky principles. As McAfee writes in the book, Satya Nadella has completely transformed Microsoft since being appointed CEO in 2014, not only through strategy but also by changing the culture. While Nadella and Microsoft exhibit all four geek way norms today, McAfee singles out the implementation of ownership in particular as having a profound effect on Microsoft’s success today. 

“Geek leaders like Nadella work hard to create very different environments,” writes McAfee. “Doing so entails rejecting a lot of the received wisdom of the industrial era about how important communication, cooperation, and cross-functional coordination are and instead striving to build autonomous and aligned organizations that unconstrain people and give them ownership.” To do this, Nadella got rid of silos. He eliminated P&L (profit and loss) management structures and ownership around different areas such as code, data, and data centers and instead aligned everyone around a common goal for Microsoft. “For the norm of ownership, the ultimate geek ground rule is: To reduce bureaucracy, take away opportunities to gain status that aren’t aligned with the goals and values of the company,” McAfee writes. 

Difficult Geek Personalities

Given that many tech companies—and their “geek” leaders—aren’t at the top of any popularity lists right now, it might seem like a strange time to be debuting a geek strategy to build a 21st-century company. But McAfee is careful to separate the norms from the nerds themselves. “I don’t know any person or company that follows every element of the geek way all the time,” he says. “There’s a difference between the four norms of the geek way and what we see in reality. That doesn’t mean that the norms aren’t valuable and powerful. It just means they’re hard to practice universally.” 

McAfee cites SpaceX, founded by Elon Musk in 2001, as an example of a geek way success story. In a little over two decades, it has grown into the only company in the world that builds commercially viable, reusable rockets despite having a fraction of competitors’ funding (and a payments entrepreneur founder with zero aerospace experience). SpaceX was superlative in being the only company that could provide hundreds of portable, military-grade, high-speed satellite internet terminals to Ukraine after the Russian invasion—and was recently in talks with Israel to do the same. However, it faced a backlash when Musk threatened to stop providing the free service after enduring everything from Twitter insults to lack of payment.

“The reason he was able to do that is because he’s the CEO of the only company that could deploy that technology,” explains McAfee. “The way you fix that is with competition. Build more than one organization on the face of the planet that could make something like that. Shame on [Elon] for playing ‘general,’ and shame on the rest of the space industry for not being anywhere near able to deploy that capability.”

“The reason he was able to do that is because he’s the CEO of the only company that could deploy that technology,” explains McAfee. “The way you fix that is with competition. Build more than one organization on the face of the planet that could make something like that. Shame on [Elon] for playing ‘general,’ and shame on the rest of the space industry for not being anywhere near able to deploy that capability.”

One of the more high-profile failures that McAfee covers in The Geek Way is the launch of Quibi, a mobile-only streaming platform founded by highly successful Hollywood producer (and Dreamworks co-founder) Jeffrey Katzenberg. He raised $1.75 billion and hired former eBay CEO Meg Whitman to run the platform, which launched in 2021 and lasted only a year. Quibi’s traditional, top-down organization and pricey entertainment industry production and release models, and its leadership’s unwillingness to be open or wrong, doomed it to fail, per McAfee.

“Quibi positioned itself as an Internet-era startup, but it was structured and run like a twentieth-century Hollywood studio,” he writes. “The company was led by an experienced industry insider who made all the most important decisions. At Quibi there were two of these leaders: Katzenberg, who made decisions about content and user experience, and Whitman, who oversaw marketing the service.”

What about Meta’s disastrous, lackluster, and expensive foray into the metaverse over the past four years? (Meta’s Reality Labs division has lost $46.6 billion since 2019, according to the company’s third quarter 2023 earnings report.) Where was the science on that? “Hubris is a thing—a very, very human thing,” says McAfee, “especially if you have had stratospheric success. They stop listening. They stop practicing in the realm/norm of science, which is having an evidence-based egalitarian argument.” 

“I think we see that Meta got way overextended on the metaverse,” he continues. “I think we watch that with Elon with whatever we’re supposed to call Twitter now. It’s a very common failure mode. You remember New Coke, right? Have the geeks figured out how to eliminate hubris? No, it’s a very hard thing to eliminate.”  

Venture capital firms are partnering with software engineers to train AI-driven machine learning systems (AIML) to provide a competitive advantage in key industry sectors. The most promising of these is weather prediction. Moreover, hedge funds are seizing on these systems to identify weather-related risks to their portfolios better—be it predicting regional citrus harvests or managing energy generation sources for the electric grid. And achieving advantages over their competitors could be worth tens of billions of dollars.

Julie Pullen is a partner at Propeller Ventures, a VC firm specializing in businesses developing ocean and climate technologies. She is building teams to use AIML techniques to enable organizations to customize forecasts for their commercial or scientific needs. Such systems can use proprietary and unique data sources for focused and precise short- and long-term weather prediction not currently available from government sources. 

A research scientist at Columbia University’s Earth Institute and former head of the U.S. National Maritime Security Center, Pullen has stepped into the venture capital world to apply her meteorology, oceanography, and climate science knowledge to train AIML systems. 

“I see a lot of companies being formed around teams of data scientists to improve weather prediction with AI,” Pullen says, citing Google GraphCast, Huawei Pangu, and Nvidia FourCastNet. “There is a lot of competition entering the field. My team is working on achieving a deeper understanding of the Earth’s atmosphere and oceans for people across an array of disciplines and industries.”

Hedge funds are not only eager customers of weather information; their relative success in using it to improve their portfolios (or not) is an excellent way to validate AIML algorithms. 

Customizable Forecasts for Investors

Until recently, weather prediction was such a high-end computing problem that only government agencies, such as the U.S. National Weather Service or the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, could pull it off. Moreover, weather forecasting requires many sensors—satellites, ground stations, aircraft, ocean buoys, and other sources—to inform the models. 

While forecasting has made great strides in recent decades, the scarcity of government service providers, reliable as they are, means everybody essentially has access to the same data. This is great for people planning their day, but it does not offer a competitive advantage to firms whose fortunes depend on atmospheric conditions. 

Weather is a valuable industry because everybody needs information about it at some level. With the primary data sources homogenized, the opportunity is to customize forecasts for specific users who then apply them to their activities. 

For example, IBM acquired its Weather Company business in 2015, integrating the company’s assets with its own data analysis, presentation, and Watson AI tools. In August, IBM signed a deal to sell The Weather Company to private equity firm Francisco Partners. However, IBM says it will continue providing software support and development. But acquisitions or partnerships like these have their limits: The sources of raw data are essentially the same as what everybody else gets—largely from government agencies.

Satellites, radar, terrestrial stations, and oceanographic sensors feed data into the great, government-supported forecasting service computing systems, which analyze them using some of the most complicated software systems on the planet. The atmosphere is a tremendous fluid, and few things are harder to model than a fluid. One of the areas for improvement of government weather service-supplied information is that the massive computing power needed to process complex models limits the number of forecasts to a few per day.

Trained AIML systems can make calculations based on pattern recognition processes much more quickly and as accurately, according to a study published in the journal Science. Another advantage is AIML’s ability to take in various unstructured and custom datasets, including text documents, photographs, audio, video, and other sources not in a machine-recognized format. The key is in the training: Specialists teach the AI to recognize patterns and readings from historic data sources, formatting unstructured data as needed. These may come from government weather services, scientific research, and even fossils and paleoceanography (e.g., core samples of arctic ice or deep ocean mud) from millions of years ago. 

Expanding Risk Assessment with AI

Julie Pullen says the widespread affordability of AIML platforms means that individual systems can be trainable in a wide range of specific tasks and open to an expanding range of sources to inform their analyses.

“Venture capital is actively making bets in that space,” Pullen says. “And one of the best ways of getting feedback on those bets is from the hedge fund industry when it uses those tools. It’s the intersection of the scientific with the financial that demonstrates value for predictions along a range of timescales.”

She points out that the trainable, customizable features of AIML enable hedge fund managers to look at very specific weather conditions with fine regional detail. Funds can better predict extreme weather events such as heat waves and droughts on time horizons ranging from weeks to months to years. These forecasts make a difference to the bets fund managers make. Then they can get rapid feedback on the models, looking at results from shorter time horizons. 

According to Harun Dogo, manager of quantitative analysis at Los Angeles-based hedge fund TCW, widely used weather models are informative. But they make positions in certain commodities expensive to hold because everybody comes to the same conclusion. These widely held positions also come with various levels of risk, not just because they are expensive but also because, at some point, unexpected events—weather-related or geopolitical—will intervene to undermine the common wisdom and destabilize markets. The trick is to be able to make bets against the prevailing wisdom in time and be right about them.

“Artificial intelligence, and really it’s machine learning, is a way to classify patterns in the market and use that information to optimize your positioning,” Dogo says. “What do you think the expected volatility will be? A machine learning algorithm can help you identify risks you didn’t even know you had, things that other quantitative analysts might have missed.”

For example, the world has transitioned from a La Niña weather cycle over the Pacific to an El Niño cycle that shifts global rainfall patterns. Funds dealing in soft commodities (e.g., cocoa futures), energy, and even mining will factor how these predicted patterns may affect portfolios incorporating these sectors. However, everybody has this information. Dogo says AILM offers the opportunity to look at very specific localities on shorter time horizons and discern patterns not covered by historic models of La Niña-El Niño periods.

“So really, the question is, what’s the new information that AIML-enabled climate or weather datasets add to your ability to think about where a particular asset pricing will go?” Dogo says. “How volatile [is it] going to be and what the potential downsides of holding it on particular time horizons will be.”

TCW works with third-party partners to receive AIML information to supplement its analysis activities. At this state of the technology’s development, it is not clear that having an in-house capability is worth the time or the resources. In January, Nvidia announced an agreement with datacenter operator Equinox to offer corporate clients AI and machine learning systems. The field is still in its infancy, and questions of whether AIML is better as a third-party service, or an in-house proprietary tool have yet to be answered.

Hedge fund Citadel reportedly made a significant investment in scientists and computer engineers to develop in-house forecasting tools for giving it competitive advantage for trading commodities, especially in the energy sector. Last year, the Financial Times reported that the weather team helped the company earn $16 billion in 2022 to become the most successful hedge fund. The team produces forecasts that are focused on conditions in regions where opportunities for trading in raw materials are most promising. 

Hedge Funds Mirror Scientific Researchers

The advent of AIML systems that can run on modest networks of desktop computers is expanding the scope of private weather prediction, opening a new professional track for meteorologists. The website eFinancialCareers.com says meteorologist is becoming a hot job opportunity at hedge funds, with top annual salaries north of $1 million.

From Pullen’s perspective, hedge funds are great as enablers of AIML systems development and validators of analyses and forecasts from such systems. Her team at Propeller is not specifically interested in hedge funds as clients: Its mission is nurturing technologies for improving ocean and climate conditions. However, Pullen is focused on the incredible potential of AILM systems for better understanding marine and weather dynamics on Earth. It just so happens that hedge funds value this information as well and offer an excellent proving ground for the technology.

While hedge funds are notoriously secretive organizations and are not prone to sharing their competitive advantages openly, their requirements for using unstructured data from a variety of sources mirror those of the scientific community. The convergence of science with better financial returns is a powerful dynamic for proving AIML algorithms. 

Gordon Gould at San Francisco-based hedge fund Numerai is developing an AIML model that takes information supplied by data scientists to predict the stock market. The fund pays out to subscribers based on how good their data is at enabling the algorithm to foresee market movements. The providers whose data make the most money get the best returns. This sort of on-the-fly data validation is invaluable for better training AIML systems. 

AI Opens Up New Business Understanding

The ability to incorporate and analyze unstructured data will be what separates AIML systems from each other. That’s where the competitive advantage lies. It is also how we will better understand our rapidly changing world.

The reliable, routine sources of data that make it into the government service forecasts and supply private weather services are not going to be enough for hedge funds and other users hungry for information from multiple sources in granular detail. Nor, Julie Pullen adds, will it be enough for the development of breakthrough AILM systems for better understanding the Earth and its atmosphere and oceans.

“It’s the datasets that don’t get incorporated into the top forecasts that you want,” she says.

Mainstream forecasts are not necessarily getting data sets acquired by, for example, scientists who might be going out on a research cruise, dropping sensors over the side of a ship, or releasing weather balloons off the deck. There are a lot of observations going on by commercial ships and aircraft just going about their routine business that could be valuable. Private companies are getting into the instrumentation business, including satellites.

Pullen says that part of the challenge in building standout AILM systems is identifying unique sources of data and then providing a pathway for that information to be incorporated into your model. Not only will this data arrive in a huge number of formats, but it may also not always be available from one forecast to the next. Customers want reliability as well as uniqueness.

“The data can be a little wacky,” she says. “Sometimes it’s [something] buried in the deep mud of the Pacific that tells us just what the temperature was at a certain point in time. Sources can be wildly unstructured.”  

This is not a hard divide. So-called traditional doctors encourage patients to watch what they eat, exercise, not smoke, and more to soften aging and improve their health. But a small, buzzworthy group believes that aging can be arrested on a fundamental level, by reversing the process. They focus on attacking the 12 “hallmarks of aging,” such as accumulated damage to DNA and RNA, abnormal functioning of the cells’ energy-producing mitochondria, and chronic inflammation throughout the body.

Barzilai’s Prominent Role in Antiaging

Some in this camp attract considerable media attention, such as Xprize founder Dr. Peter Diamandis, stem-cell entrepreneur Dr. Robert Hariri, Facebook billionaire Yuri Milner, motivational speaker Tony Robbins, and wealthy self-experimenter Bryan Johnson (infamous for briefly getting blood-plasma infusions from his teenage son).

The name Nir Barzilai may be in the news less, but he’s prominent in this community. For instance, he serves on the advisory board of the $101 million Xprize Healthspan contest to develop revolutionary life-extension technologies.

Some reverse-aging proponents are derided as speculative grandstanders. But Barzilai has serious scientific cred. His paragraphs-long list of roles includes director of the Institute for Aging Research at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and director of the National Institutes of Health’s Center of Excellence in the Basic Biology of Aging.

He’s also a co-founder of the Academy for Health & Lifespan Research. Here he keeps company with reverse-aging celebrities, including David Sinclair, a Harvard researcher working on reprogramming human cells to their youthful state, and Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte, another reprogrammer who directs much of the research at $3 billion antiaging company Altos Labs. (On March 3, prominent aging researcher Matt Kaeberlein announced on LinkedIn that he was leaving the organization, accusing Sinclair, the president, of making repeated false scientific statements.)

A Major Metformin Clinical Trial

Today, Barzilai is most known for his efforts to promote a generic diabetes drug, metformin, as a treatment for all 12 aging hallmarks. Along with organ-transplant drug rapamycin, it’s one of the most-celebrated medications for off-label use to arrest aging.

Both drugs have their skeptics, such as diabetes and cancer expert Dr. Charles Brenner at City of Hope, who suspects they are ineffective against aging and possibly even harmful. Funding permitting, Barzilai aims to address such skepticism this year by launching an FDA-approved clinical trial called TAME, for Targeting Aging with Metformin.

I spoke with Barzilai while researching Worth’s feature article “The Wild Science of Growing Younger.” He’s a prolific, wide-ranging thinker, sometimes providing fascinating answers that had nothing to do with my original question. I’ve extracted some of the best parts of our discussion, edited for length and clarity. 

Worth: Is there anything to the scientific argument that aging is a disease?

Barzilai: I believe aging is the cause of most of the diseases we have. It’s the mother of the diseases. I don’t have any problem with saying that…Okay, so let’s say aging is a disease, and therefore, we have to allow the treatment of aging. And if we are also in a social medicine situation, then we have to provide people with what’s reasonable for them to fight aging.

There’s the popular perception of billionaires who want to live forever, upload themselves, all that kind of stuff. What does that do to your work?

We need an academy because we need to discuss things. We want to be leaders, we want to write white papers, we want to support programs. But in order to get the academy, we are bringing in [to our meeting] between 10 and 15 billionaires…They have to pay $75,000 to come in, rub shoulders with us. And actually, that’s not all they’re doing. They’re also supporting different aspects of research…So, to a certain extent, those billionaires are helping us drive and accelerate the science.

Which billionaires are not helping us? Bryan Johnson [currently valued at about $400 million]…I do appreciate Bryan Johnson in several ways. First of all, I’m also pissed that I cannot stop my aging. I think I’d like him to infect everyone because without spending money, we can all maximize our exercise, nutrition, sleep, and social connectivity…but an influencer com[ing] in saying, “Hey, look at me, I’m stopping aging,” is also a recruitment for our field.

My problem with him is that he is doing an experiment on himself…Part of the experiment, only he can do. For example, how many people are going to take blood from their kids? How many people are going to eat the shit that he’s having?…And he would like to think that he’s paving the [way to] immortality for everybody else. And he’s not. It’s not going to be accepted. And it’s a noise that is also causing us damage.

I was discussing this concept of escape velocity with Peter Diamandis: If I can extend my life another 30 years, and 30 years from now, there will be new technology. It ended with uploading your brain. Is that helpful? Or does this cause exaggerating or stereotyping of what you’re doing?

We’re looking at several issues here. One is Dorian Gray [who] stopped getting older…And I think this is what we’re dealing with now. Not that we stop aging, but there’s a way to delay aging dramatically…

The second issue is reversing aging…Regeneration of organs like the liver or kidney or pancreas are things that are in biotech [and] starting to be in humans. We certainly can regenerate blood cells and deal with genetic programming of cells. We can deal with some terrible diseases…But even if you can regenerate the liver, you cannot reverse the aging of the whole body…

And [then there] is the Peter Pan scenario…There’s an erasing of aging when it comes to stem cells. And there’s a lot of advances here. But the day when you’re 20—and you’ll come and get a treatment every few months or every few years, and you’ll stay 20—is not in a timeline that I think is relevant to Diamandis’s hope.

So those are things that can happen? You don’t necessarily think there’s a scientific barrier to any of those?

There are two scientific barriers. The first one is that our lifespan as a human species now is 115 years. It’s a statistical number. We know that somebody lives to be 122. So we have this statistical barrier, this real barrier.

But we die [on average] when we’re 76 in the United States. So there’s certainly 30 years, 35, 40 years to capture, without doing something more dramatic as changing our genome. Can we eventually be older than 115? I believe it’s possible. I believe that if you do the Peter Pan, and you get the treatment, you can probably break 115 years just by doing that. Of course, whether you’re successful or not, you have to start [at] 50 years and then count 115 years. So the proof of that is 170 years away.

I understand that you are doing a formal clinical trial on Metformin of its effects on aging.

The reason I’m doing TAME is to force the FDA to accept the concept that we can prevent a bunch of age-related diseases. This is the only reason we do it—because the clinical trials have been done. Okay. We know that if you give metformin, you prevent diabetes. We know that if you give metformin, you prevent heart disease in clinical trial. We know in clinical trial that if you have mild cognitive impairment, then giving metformin will slow the deterioration. We know, in clinical trial, that people on metformin die less than any other from all causes…

The point with FDA is to bring it together as a study…because we say that aging drives diseases. We’re agnostic to the diseases. We don’t really care what disease you’re going to get. Whatever it was, we’re going to prevent it.

And so the objective then is, if you can show that you’re able to address any particular disease, that will fit the way the FDA looks at things?

Not disease, it’s a cluster. It’s not going to be significant for any disease. Imagine that we do this study. And after two years, we significantly prevent cardiovascular disease. The FDA will say you have to stop this study because you have to offer the drug to the placebo [group]. And we’ll never show that it’s not only about cardiovascular disease…So we need to design a study that won’t be significant in any one [disease], but it will be significant together when we look at the cluster of diseases and mortality.

Are the actual mechanisms understood right now? Do you know why it’s having these effects on the immune system or on mitochondrial function or things like that?

Metformin affects all the hallmarks of aging. If you’re asking me, “Okay, but which of the hallmarks of aging is it attacking first?” I don’t know if I can tell you. I think there are two of them, actually. But it’s hard to dissect because it also works differently on different organs. So in the immune system, it might work different than on the liver. So it’s hard to say that, but it’s true for all drugs. We don’t know, what’s their mechanisms.

I have a paper from last year, and another paper coming now, on all the FDA-approved drugs that target the hallmarks of aging. And there are 12 of them that have been for another purpose, like metformin was diabetes. And all of a sudden, it’s doing other things. All of a sudden, it’s good for COVID. So there are 12 drugs like that…They’ve been in human studies, they have safety. We can actually start using them. Doctors can repurpose drugs.

People who have diabetes, if the diabetes is treated, of course, they’re going to get healthier overall. Maybe just controlling blood sugar level in itself provides all these benefits?

That’s ridiculous. It’s not glucose-dependent at all. The papers show that metformin is better than other drugs for diabetes to decrease mortality. In those studies, the people on metformin had worse glucose control, for example…And let me say another thing. Rapamycin, which is an important drug in longevity, increases glucose levels, and still is helpful for healthspan. So it’s not about glucose. It’s about what the drugs are doing otherwise.

But the most extreme theories and practices are a veneer over a vast body of laboratory and clinical research, and even DIY biohacking, indicating it may be possible to at least slow the aging process. Could most of us live to or beyond 120 years, considered the uppermost limit of human lifespan? Some advocates, including those with university research labs, think so. Others call it bunk. 

Rejuvenation efforts also promise to brighten the twilight years by allowing people to live longer and be healthier and more vigorous. Picture 80-year-olds with the body of a 60-year-old. Proponents talk about not only extending lifespan but also what they call healthspan.

“It’s this biology of aging that makes us get Alzheimer’s or cancer or heart [disease] or diabetes,” says Dr. Nir Barzilai, director of the Institute for Aging Research at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. “Aging is the mother of those diseases…You deal with the mother, and you don’t have those kids.”

After speaking with a dozen experts or advocates, reading four books, parsing over 30 research papers, and absorbing popular press coverage—I know two things about the possibility of slowing or reversing aging. First, anyone can do a few cheap, simple things (like exercise) to improve their longevity prospects. Second, several new tactics, technologies, and tools might someday work.

It’s worth looking deeper at these ideas—but with a skeptical eye. That’s especially true because proponents and detractors may have a financial stake in the success or failure of new therapies. The quest for longevity is not just a matter of science but of money, personal philosophy, and personal rivalry.

Jump down this rabbit hole with me—tracing longevity science and speculation from the simple to the startling.

We’re Already Living Longer

Life extension is not a new phenomenon. Since 1800, average life expectancy has roughly doubled globally. Much of this was the statistical result falling infant mortality rates. But the ability to live longer has still grown significantly, as has quality of life in older years.

Most of these gains came from basic advances like improving nutrition and sanitation, cutting pollution, and developing vaccines. People can also vastly improve health and longevity with simple lifestyle changes—eat better, exercise more, sleep enough, spend time with friends, handle stress, and avoid nasty substances (especially cigarettes). These so-called six pillars of health are equivalent to dipping a toe into the fountain of youth.

 “First and foremost is exercise,” says Diamandis. “The second thing is minimizing sugar in your diet…The third thing is getting sufficient sleep. You know, these are the basics.”

Advice on those basics forms the core of his latest book, Longevity: Your Practical Playbook. It’s a less-intense counterpart to 2022’s Life Force, his collaboration with Tony Robbins. That book includes pillar-of-health-type advice and goes deep into topics such as stem cell injections and gene therapies. (The book, whose proceeds go to charity, states: “The author and publisher specifically disclaim all responsibility for any liability, loss or risk, personal or otherwise, which is incurred as a consequence, directly or indirectly, of the use and application of any of the contents of this book.”)

Beyond that toe-dip of lifestyle changes, the fountain of youth gets increasingly deep, murky, and even treacherous—with possible deal-breaking side effects from losing muscle mass to developing cancer. 

Trying to Define Aging

The hallmarks of aging are obvious. As Hamlet described a few, “old men have gray beards, their faces are wrinkled, their eyes [are] full of crust and gunk, and…they both lack wisdom and have weak thighs.”

But those are symptoms on the macro level. Humans are vast amalgams of cells (from 28 to 36 trillion in adults). In 2013, researchers proposed a new set of hallmarks. The list began with nine and grew to 12 in 2022. Most focus on critical mechanisms inside cells: proteins misform, DNA degrades, energy systems malfunction, nutrition suffers. Other hallmarks manifest among cells: communication breaks down, old and diseased cells poison their neighbors, tissue-renewing stem cells disappear. A few, like inflammation, range across the body.

The 12 Hallmarks of Aging

1. Genomic instability: accumulated damage to protein-coding DNA and RNA.
2. Telomere attrition: protective caps on DNA degrade.
3. Epigenetic alterations: pattern of turning genes “on” or “off” changes.
4. Loss of proteostasis: malformed proteins created in the cells.
5. Disabled macroautophagy: cells lose the ability to recycle worn-out components.
6. Deregulated nutrient-sensing: cells fail to regulate based on nutrient availability.
7. Mitochondrial dysfunction: energy-producing cell components become abnormal.
8. Cellular senescence: diseased cells excrete inflammatory substances.
9. Stem cell exhaustion: reservoirs of tissue-renewing cells plummet.
10. Altered intercellular communication: a dialogue breakdown has body-wide effects.
11. Chronic inflammation: an over-reactive immune response.
12. Dysbiosis: the balance of microbes in the gut changes.

“I think they’ve been very useful,” says Matt Kaeberlein, who ran an eponymous lab that studied aging at the University of Washington from 2006-2023. “But I think they also cause the field to become narrow and very focused, when there’s still a lot of biology we’ve never explored and don’t understand.”

Even if incomplete, the hallmarks move towards a framework for measuring aging. A person comprised of healthy cells is likely to be a healthy person. The best example of that is a baby.

Dr. Robert Hariri recounts the story of a child who had surgery in utero and showed no scars after birth. “That suggested, obviously, that in the process of building this fetus into a newborn, there’s continual, very functional renovation and renewal of the tissues to a state of optimum biology,” he says. The third author of Life Force is the CEO of a startup, Celularity, developing stem cell therapies.

But whatever may happen at the micro level has to manifest at the macro. Charles Brenner, who heads research on diabetes and cancer metabolism at City of Hope, focuses on the obvious. “If you couldn’t climb the stairs when you were a smoker, and you quit smoking, and then you were able to climb the stairs without being out of breath, that’s a convincing functional improvement,” he says.

Diamandis also wants functional proof. His 28th Xprize has raised over $100 million for awards to teams that can show, in clinical trials of 65-to-80-year-olds, significant improvement of muscle, cognitive, and immune function. (Nir Barzilai serves on the advisory board.) Over 200 teams from about 40 countries had preregistered by early February.

The Hierarchy of (Possible) Rejuvenation

Methods for extending lifespan progress from very practical to highly speculative.

They start with the six pillars (or similar prescriptions). Exercise combats aging mechanisms, including the tendency to lose skeletal muscle mass that begins as early as age 30. “Our glucose disposal depends upon our skeletal muscle mass, our quality of life, and our resistance to accidents and falling,” says Brenner. “As you degrade the ability to do glucose disposal, you tend to get fatty liver and insulin resistance and prediabetes [and] diabetes—which feeds into the increases that we’re seeing in liver cancer. And it is also linked to increased rates of cognitive impairment and central nerve degeneration.” Yep, muscle is key.

Building muscle requires a lot of protein. Layne Norton, nutrition researcher and founder of wellness company Biolayne, recommends at least 0.7 grams of protein per day for every pound of body weight. That’s a mouthful; many advocates recommend at least one gram per pound.

Many other nutrients are critical. “I’ve probably been, the last two decades of my life, vitamin D deficient, vitamin B 12 deficient, omega 3 deficient,” says Matt Kaeberlein. “There’s some low-hanging fruit…those can have a big impact on people’s healthspan.”

Even socializing helps. It boosts the “love hormone” oxytocin, which can lower heart rate, blood pressure, and levels of the stress hormone cortisol. It may also lower unhealthy blood glucose levels. “Social engagement and mental activity is really important,” says Brenner.

Techniques that further build upon the pillars get increasingly involved, uncertain, and potentially dangerous. Here’s an abbreviated hierarchy.

First come quasi-natural remedies that build upon pillars such as nutrition. They include various supplements, which may improve metabolism or other cellular functions. Another tack is limiting calories overall or fasting for chunks of the day.

Then comes the first tranche of pharmaceuticals—current medications repurposed for off-label uses. The big names are metformin—a diabetes drug—and rapamycin—which suppresses the immune system from attacking organ transplants.

Researchers, such as Kaeberlein, are also hunting for brand-new drugs aimed at specific mechanisms that may affect cellular health.

Other remedies propose injecting stem cells to rebuild tissue. These including embryonic stem cells derived from fetuses, adult cells regressed to their fetal state, and stem cells harvested from human placentas.

After incorporating another person’s cells comes rewiring your own. Not only does DNA degrade with age, but the way it’s read to provide protein-building instructions—known as epigenetics—also changes. Restoring proper epigenetics could restore youthful cells—or trigger cancer.

Quasi-Natural Remedies

Beyond essential nutrients that maintain cells, can others renew them? Among the key candidates are supplements that boost NAD, or nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide. “NAD is the central catalyst of metabolism,” says Brenner. It facilitates functions, including the breakdown of glucose and the production of energy-delivery molecules in the cells’ mitochondria. It may also help repair DNA. Levels of NAD decline with age, but Brenner discovered that a vitamin, nicotinamide riboside (NR), can boost NAD levels.

Supplement Controversies

Brenner quickly discloses his financial interest: a side gig as chief scientific advisor for ChromaDex, which sells NR under the name Tru Niagen. (He’s also founder or cofounder of three other companies related to NR or aspects of NAD biology.) Other companies also sell nicotinamide riboside and another potential NAD booster, nicotinamide mononucleotide, or NMN. A prominent promoter of the latter is Harvard researcher David Sinclair. 

Sinclair’s involvement goes back to a 1997 study, in which he found that NAD can help regulate a family of proteins called sirtuins, which improve epigenetic health and boost longevity in yeast. One result was the explosion of interest in resveratrol (found in red wine, and many supplements) to activate sirtuins. (Sinclair claims no financial interest in companies selling resveratrol, NR, or NMN.)

In a 2022 Twitter thread, Brenner called Sinclair’s 1997 report, “a very nice paper,” then tore into its implications, saying it doesn’t even apply to all types of yeast cells—let alone human cells. Brenner has been a strident critic of many of Sinclair’s claims.

Other supplements might help restore healthy epigenetics, says Shelley Berger, director of the Epigenetics Program at the University of Pennsylvania. “There are some very good scientists that have been involved in some of the supplements that are affecting [epigenetics],” she says. When ask for examples, Berger replies, “I’m not going to advertise anything, in particular.”

Supplements are a charged topic, with much controversy over what works and what’s snake oil—and significant tensions between researchers and retailers. “There are so many claims by so many different products,” says Diamandis, co-founder (along with Tony Robbins), of Lifeforce, which sells supplements and meds for off-label uses.

The extreme case for supplements is serial tech entrepreneur Bryan Johnson, who swallows dozens of pills. “When I look at each one of the supplements, I understand why he picked those,” says Barzilai. “In his mind, if he’s taking all of them together, they’ll be additive, or even synergistic…And he’s missing the fact that some of them are antagonistic to each other.”

Slashing Calories

The complement to absorbing more nutrients is consuming fewer calories. “There’s one intervention where you can get 50% lifespan extension in a mouse. And that’s caloric restriction. And that comes from an experiment that was done in the 1990s,” says Kaeberlein. But those conditions were extreme. Mice rations were cut by 40%. And while they lived longer on average, many experienced physical stress and immune system weakening.

Starting in 2007, a massive multi-year clinical trial called Calerie analyzed whether caloric restriction could work in humans, at humane levels (ranging from 12% to 30% cuts). A 2022 analysis of the data found that even lighter dieters showed several signs of better health, including reduced inflammation, and higher production of immune system T-cells and energy-producing mitochondria.

Another dietary option is intermittent fasting or time-restricted eating. It may or may not involve fewer calories overall, but limits when you get them to a few hours a day. A 2022 study in mice hints that such a routine could suppress genes involved in inflammation and improve protein production, among other effects.

But fasting is tough and has downsides, says former intermittent faster Diamandis. “My primary goal has been putting on muscle mass. And to do that, you need a significant amount of protein in your diet,” he says. “And you can’t absorb all of it in one sitting.” It’s one of several instances where methods intended to extend lifespan may undermine its foundation—muscle.

Off-label Medications

Much of modern pharmacy is not about discovering new drugs but new uses for those already on shelves. That’s a major antiaging trend focused on two cheap generics: metformin and rapamycin. (It’s relatively easy to find doctors to prescribe such drugs for off-label use.)

“Metformin affects all hallmarks of aging, not just glucose levels or diabetes,” says Nir Barzilai, citing his own research, among others’. “Its benefits extend to various health aspects, including immune function, and it has been shown to reduce hospitalizations and mortality from Covid-19.” Also on the list of potential benefits: combating cancer and inflammatory diseases, and improving the health of the “gut microbiome”—the mix of bacteria in the intestines. 

Charles Brenner doubts all this. “Metformin is a very useful drug for type-two diabetes,” says the diabetes researcher. “But it’s not been shown to provide benefits to people without type-two diabetes.”

There’s room for disagreement, in part, from lingering mystery around metformin. Even if it does work against aging, no one can say precisely how. “If you ask five different scientists, you’ll get seven different answers,” says scientist-turned-journalist Andrew Steele, author of the book Ageless: The New Science of Getting Older Without Getting Old.

Metformin comes from goat’s rue, an herbal remedy used for centuries to treat ailments including arthritis, flu, and “excessive urination” (possibly a symptom of diabetes). “Metformin—that’s probably the last of the old-school drugs that were just tried, but we don’t really know how they work,” says Dr. Sundeep Khosla, who studies age-related effects on bone at the Mayo Clinic.

One undisputed effect is metformin’s ability to lower blood glucose levels (although how it does that is still unclear). Perhaps that is enough to impart antiaging effects. One (unproven) theory is that metformin mimics the possible age-extending effects of caloric restriction. 

“That’s ridiculous! It’s not glucose dependent at all,” says Barzilai. He points to studies comparing metformin to other glucose-regulating drugs. The patients on metformin had better overall health outcomes, even though they had worse glucose control than those on other drugs. (Researchers didn’t rule out that the rival drug might somehow harm patients.)

But Barzilai acknowledges the uncertainty. “If you’re asking me, ‘But which of the hallmarks of aging is it attacking first?’ I don’t know if I can tell you,” he says, adding that the effects can also vary from organ to organ.

Adverse effects are also uncertain; but once again, muscle loss is a concern. “In fact, there are data showing that it blunts the beneficial effects of exercise in adult people,” says Brenner. That risk persuaded Diamandis to switch to berberine, a supplement that may lower blood sugar. (His company, Lifeforce, does sell metformin.) 

“It’s extraordinarily safe,” says Khosla. But he adds that there is “just a very low risk” of a buildup of lactic acid in the blood, which can result in anything from sore muscles to organ failure. “I think there’s such compelling observational data, and some clinical trial data, for beneficial effects of metformin, that by all means [more research] should be pursued,” he says.

That’s what Barzilai aims to do with a clinical trial called TAME, Targeting Aging with Metformin. Such trials are challenging because they aren’t aimed at addresses a specific disease—as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration likes. 

“The reason I’m doing TAME is to force the FDA to accept the concept that we can prevent a bunch of age-related diseases,” says Barzilai. “We don’t really care what disease you’re going to get. Whatever it was, we’re going to prevent it.”

If he can get the money. Two funders have dropped out, and another cut his pledge by two-thirds. But with about half the money in place, Barzilai aims to start the study this year. (He says he has no financial interests in any metformin-related work.)

Rapamycin

Like metformin, rapamycin is another drug that nature gifted without an instruction manual. Discovered in soil bacteria on Easter Island, it’s a powerful immune-suppressant for organ-transplant patients. Studies also show that it can fight cancer.

Unlike metformin, rapamycin has a clear target in cells—inhibiting an enzyme family called mTOR, the mammalian target of rapamycin. “Rapamycin…improves mitochondrial function, autophagy [recycling materials in cells], how cells deal with nutrient sensing and the utilization of nutrients,” says Yousin Suh, who researches reproduction and genetics at Columbia University. “They even control the gene expression program.”

Studies dating to 2009 seem to show rapamycin extending the lives of elderly mice. More-recent studies hint that it can slow aging in mice and rat ovaries. Suh and a team of researchers are now several months into a human clinical trial with a catchy acronym: VIBRANT, or Validating Benefits of Rapamycin for Reproductive Aging Treatment.

“The ovary ages the fastest in the human body,” says Suh. “The reproduction function declines, already in women in their 30s, with a rather drastic decline, which culminates in menopause around age 50.” Women who develop menopause later live longer and are healthier in their older years, she says—as are their brothers. 

If rapamycin does slow the aging of ovaries in women, it could directly soften or delay the overall aging process, says Suh, and it might hint that rapamycin extends the healthspan for men, too.

It may also have that ever-present negative effect. “Rapamycin and rapalogs [derivatives] are inhibitors of something that helps you maintain your skeletal muscle mass,” says Charles Brenner, referring to chemical processes kicked off by exercise.

And of course, rapamycin can suppress the immune system. But Suh’s test subjects will receive a lot less rapamycin than transplant patients, and they are starting from a much healthier point. “Organ transplantation patients’ use of rapamycin gave a bad rap to rapamycin because of the particular conditions,” says Suh. Some studies show that low doses of a rapamycin derivative could even help the immune system in older people.

While formal human studies are limited, informal experiments by longevity hackers and doctors willing to prescribe to them are legion. To see if they could learn from these hackers, Kaeberlein, Suh, and other researchers set up an online survey that attracted around 300 people who took rapamycin off-label and almost 200 who had never taken it. Dosages were all over the place, and the study relied on what people claimed their health effects might be. 

But the results were still interesting. Rapamycin takers overall reported less abdominal cramps and pain, muscle tightness, eye pain, depression, and anxiety. Also, those who got Covid-19 didn’t seem to get as sick or develop long Covid. One notable side effect was mouth sores—which was expected, based on other studies.

The most significant practical result of the study was helping Suh decide on safe doses for younger participants in the VIBRANT trial on ovaries. Still, she doesn’t recommend making a habit of such informal studies. “Of course, you have to do the right, randomized, double-blinded clinical trials to evaluate the efficacy of the drug and on the outcome,” she says. (Suh is an advisor to longevity-focused venture capital firm LongeVC.)

Charles Brenner agrees. “I think it’s worth figuring out how to do those trials,” he says. “I’m not sure that rapamycin and metformin for the general population are very likely to provide positive results. But there certainly is a community of people that would like to see the trials done.”

Brand-New Medications

Whatever their actual effectiveness, metformin, rapamycin, and other off-the-shelf drugs are just the start. “The next phase, I think, there’s going to be much more mechanism-specific drugs,” says Khosla, “where we truly understand what the molecular or cellular target is.”

Zombie Killers

He’s starting with drugs called senolytics. “The idea is that as cells age and get DNA damaged, they increase and become cancer. But nature evolved the senescence mechanism,” says Khosla. Senescent cells are essentially zombies. They no longer grow or divide to spread their mangled DNA into cancerous growths. But they still harm the body by excreting inflammatory agents. 

Senolytics attack proteins that help keep zombie cells alive. True to form, the first batch of senolytics are repurposed medications or other substances—such as the anticancer-med Dasatinib, as well as quercetin, the bitter-tasting chemical in apple peels. Khosla helped identify such substances and is testing some of them to clear senescent bone cells. (Other senolytic treatments aim to boost the immune system’s natural ability to remove senescent cells.) 

“Senolytic drugs have good effects, but they also have bad effects,” says Khosla, such as the risk of bleeding. There’s another potential danger. If senescence prevents cancer, can messing with this mechanism increase the cancer risk? It’s an open question.

“I think what you want to do is basically continue to modify these drugs, so you can get the beneficial effects without these adverse effects,” says Khosla. He names an in-development medication called UBX1325, designed to clear senescent cells that cause a vision-destroying swelling of the retina. “That’s probably the closest to a drug where we know how it works, that’s actually showing some efficacy,” he says.

Casting a Wide Net

The counterpart to carefully crafting new drugs is to throw molecular spaghetti at the wall. To date, about 1100 drugs have been tested to extend lifespan. Using automated testing, Matt Kaeberlein reckons he can increase that 100-fold, with a project called the Million Molecule Challenge.

In it, petri dishes filled with tiny worms are each doused with a different chemical, and a camera equipped with computer vision records how long the worms continue moving around. If the worms in a particular dish are especially spry, the corresponding molecule becomes a candidate for further study. 

“Figure out what gives us the biggest effect on lifespan, then figure out how it’s working,” says Kaeberlein. He couldn’t get funding for such a study in academia—what researchers deride as a “fishing expedition.” So he went private, co-founding Ora Biomedical to do the challenge. He’s still raising money but has started the testing. (Kaeberlein is also CEO of longevity-focused healthcare company Optispan and has equity in supplements company Novos and epigenetics startup Moonwalk Biosciences, among others.)

The for-profit aspect raises concerns about trustworthiness. “That’s why I’ve been at Mayo for 35 years, because I don’t have my own startup, because that’s not my mindset,” says Khosla. “You really have to have the fundamental biology and never overpromise.”

Brenner has financial interest in NAD-boosting products. Sinclair’s latest declaration of financial interests (from 2022) lists 43 company affiliations. Diamandis says that he has invested in more than 100 biotech and health tech companies and advises more than 30. He and Robins have written longevity advice books promoting their companies, such as Fountain Life and Lifespan. Does that compromise their objectivity? I ask Diamandis. 

“I am not being objective,” he says. “I am investing in the companies that I think are the most important and exciting to move the needle forward.”

Stem Cell Injections

That brings us to the third member of the Fountain Life and Life Force (the book) trio: Dr. Robert Hariri. In 1986, Hariri published the results of an odd test—transplanting diseased blood vessels from old rats into younger ones. “I could…put it into a young animal and come back in a month. And it was indistinguishable from a young vessel,” he says. “I was setting up an opportunity for that vascular template to be repopulated by young cells.”

He then looked for other sources of young cells—and found them in the placenta that nourishes a developing baby. This medical waste is an abundant source of stem cells—which he believes can be injected into other people to repair and rebuild older bodies. (Or, if someone’s parents bank their frozen placenta with one of Hariri’s companies, they could later get injections of their own cells.)

“Every stem cell thinks it’s in a fetus,” he says. “The beauty of the fetal system is it’s in a continual state of regenerative energy, and it’s designed to basically build that newborn and retard or prohibit any events which would damage the quality of the newborn.”

Crashes in stem cell reserves, anywhere between age 20 and 40, are a hallmark of aging. Hariri envisions countering this with some cadence of stem cell replenishment treatments throughout life.

Some stem cell therapies have been going on for decades. A key example is bone marrow transplants—often given to cancer patients, either to swap out defective blood-making cells (in the case of leukemia), or to replace marrow damaged by chemotherapy. 

Skepticism and Alarm

But many in the aging research community need more clarification about effectiveness and safety for antiaging purposes. “There’s very little hard evidence that they truly have clinically meaningful effects,” says Khosla. “The trials haven’t had adequate controls or adequate follow up.”

Hariri offers a personal case study. “I have two horribly torn rotator cuffs in my shoulders,” he says. “Rather than choose to have a total shoulder replacement with a prosthetic, I’ve chosen to use regenerative therapy. It’s given me benefits that I wouldn’t get from other approaches.”

Although he’s CEO of Celularity, a U.S. company developing stem cell therapy tech, Hariri had to go to Mexico and Panama for treatment, since such procedures aren’t currently allowed in the U.S. (Valued at $1.25 billion when it went public, Celularity’s market cap was about $100 million in February.)

He’s joined by fellow co-authors Robins and Diamandis in making such a trek. (Diamandis serves as director of Cellularity, which he describes as one of his major financial holdings in health tech.)

Ageless author Andrew Steele discounts anecdotal results as subject to the wishful-thinking placebo effect. “So even if you do go to one of these clinics, you get an injection of something, and you come back and feel better, that isn’t necessarily proof that what they put inside you is what they said it was,” he says.

Hariri says he won’t recommend overseas clinics to his patients, but doesn’t discourage them from doing their own research and deciding to visit one. “People make choices today on what restaurant they go to, what doctor they go to, which hair clinic they go to, based upon what other people’s experiences are,” he says. According to Diamandis, Fountain Life (of which he and Hariri are founders) does recommend its members to the Regenerative Medicine Institute in Costa Rica for stem cell treatments.

Hariri, Diamandis, and Robbins all say they advocate clinical trials in the U.S. Fountain Life and Cellularity are pursuing FDA approval to start trials at a facility in Florida this year. Hariri is aiming to have FDA-worthy test results by 2026.

Reprogramming Cells with Epigenetics

Why get young cells from other people if you can return your own cells to their youthful vigor? That’s the promise of epigenetic reprogramming.

“All kinds of different cell types originate from one cell originally,” says Shelly Berger of U Penn. “So, the turning on of certain genes to lead to a brain cell or a skin cell or a liver cell is important…And so you can imagine that the loss of that information, when it goes awry, could lead to some big, big problems.”

People talk colloquially about turning genes “off” or “on.” But what’s really happening is winding up or unwinding strands of DNA. Some enzymes in the cell wind genes into spools, known as chromatin, blocking RNA molecules from reading the instructions for producing proteins. Other chemicals unspool the chromatin, making the genes readable. (This isn’t the only component of epigenetics, but it’s a key part.)

Pollution, radiation, bad diet, lack of exercise, and other stressors can damage both DNA and epigenetic mechanisms. Shelly Berger and colleagues are studying a therapy for nerve cells, using an unspooling enzyme called Acetyl Co A synthetase. “That leads to turning on genes that are involved in learning and memory and creating new circuitry in the brain,” she says.

Another take on renewing the epigenome is getting the most hype—and money. And it has a link to stem cells. In 2012, Shinya Yamanaka won the Nobel Prize for developing a way to convert an adult cell—one specialized for brain, muscle, or bone—back into an “undifferentiated” cell, which can turn into anything. These “induced pluripotent” stem cells, are one arm of stem cell therapies. Yamanaka discovered (and lent his name to) four proteins, called transcription factors, that drive this transformation.

In 2016, researchers at the Salk Institute announced that the right mix of Yamanaka factors, administered in the right cadence, could take the process just partway. It converts a cell not back to its undifferentiated form but just back to a younger version, with a youthful epigenome.

They demonstrated these results in whole mice, as well as samples of human cells, which both showed reversal of many aspects of aging. The work was led by Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte—who would go on to play a major role in the multibillion-dollar antiaging crusade.

But the biggest name in cellular reprogramming is David Sinclair. While many proponents speak haltingly about reversing aging—rather than just slowing it—Sinclair and his team are unambiguous. “Our work has led us to identify reprogramming factors that we believe will enable us to reset a cell’s epigenetic status and reverse its age,” reads the Sinclair Lab website. (Sinclair declined an interview but did answer questions over email.) That philosophy is right in the title of his 2019 bestselling book, Lifespan: Why We Age – and Why We Don’t Have To.

(In January 2023, Brenner published “A Science-Based Review” of Lifespan and the accompanying podcast. It reiterates his Twitter critique of the sirtuin and resveratrol theories, and adds warnings about epigenetic reprogramming.)

In 2020, Sinclair and a gaggle of researchers published a paper claiming to have improved vision in mice suffering from glaucoma, using Yamanaka factors to give damaged optic nerve cells regenerative ability. They claimed similar results in individual human cells. “That’s a nice paper,” says Shelly Berger, who was not involved in it.

But the blockbuster came in a collaborative study from January 2023 (which included Berger). Many news articles about the study feature a side-by-side photo of treated and untreated twin mice—one grizzled and gray, one bushy and ebony. A CNN article alluded to Benjamin Button. An interview with Sinclair in the Harvard Gazette was titled, “Has the first person to live to be 150 been born?”

Delivering Yamanaka factors is tough. It requires loading them into viruses that then infect the cells. But a Sinclair collaboration reported last July that “cocktails” of much simpler substances, called small molecules, can imitate what Yamanaka factors do. “This new discovery offers the potential to reverse aging with a single pill,” wrote Sinclair, in July, on what was still called Twitter.

No surprise: Charles Brenner is skeptical. It starts with the dangers in the older process of using Yamanaka factors to create stem cells. “You have to realize, the vast majority of the treated cells either die or go down some very undesirable lineage,” he says, “including teratomas, and malignancies.” Malignancy is spreadable cancer; teratomas are freakish growths in which the wrong kind of cells grow in the wrong places. Imagine hair and teeth growing in your pelvis. (That’s a real-life human case, though not associated with cellular reprogramming.)

Numerous reprograming studies either explicitly say that cancer didn’t occur or don’t mention it as a result. Sinclair says that a reprogramming study from 2020 didn’t find elevated rates of cancer in mice. But that’s not proof enough for Brenner. “I don’t think that healthy humans will ever be enrolled in an ethical clinical trial of Yamanaka factors, because the risk of cancer will be too great,” he says.

Kaeberlein agrees that cancer is a concern but is also cautiously optimistic. “Conceptually, given how it works, and what’s been done so far…it’s possible that we could get to the point where we’re talking about doubling, or even more, the healthy lifespan of a mammal—of a mouse, for example, and maybe someday in people,” he says.

But he’s not impressed by the current evidence and says that the tests of the reprogramming “cocktails” provided only preliminary indication that they might work. “Here’s where the hype has gotten ahead of the reality,” he says. “And unfortunately, this has been intentionally presented in a dishonest way, I believe.” 

Though lesser-known than Sinclair, Izpisua Belmonte, of the original 2016 reprogramming study, is emerging as one of the most-powerful players in antiaging. In 2022, he launched reprogramming company Altos Labs, which has attracted about $3 billion in funding from Silicon Valley captains. It’s also attracted top talent—such as Morgan Levine, formerly of Yale, and Steve Horvath, formerly of UCLA, who have developed (controversial) methods for measuring cellular aging. “There may be some hype, but it’s taken very seriously,” says Berger. “There’s a lot of work being done, and Altos is serious.”

Altos is the biggest, but not the only, massively funded antiaging company. Others include Retro Biosciences, which is working on cellular reprogramming as well as other technologies and has raised $180 million, according to Crunchbase; and drug-discovery company Recursion Pharmaceuticals, which has attracted over $665 million. David Sinclair is a cofounder of Life Biosciences, which works on epigenetic reprogramming and has been funded to $206.8 million.

Such companies and their backers most inspire the trope of the crazy billionaire who wants to live forever. While several billionaires (and other very wealthy people) are backing the antiaging movement, technologies like epigenetic reprogramming are far too nascent to conclude whether or not these supporters are crazy.

Fountain of Youth, or Fount of BS?

If you’d hoped for a conclusive destination at the end of this journey, I’m sorry. But in place of answers, we have a framework for evaluating the many questions that emerge. Science has a good sense of what healthy aging should look like. And objective research can begin to explore if any far-fetched ideas mimic that, without bad side effects.

What the spectrum of players agrees on—from Charles Brenner to David Sinclair to Tony Robbins—is that we already know many ways to combat aging. Do better eating, sleeping, exercising, and just living a full life.

Can “eating” extend to swallowing supplements that boost cell health? It seems likely with some pills—but not nearly as many as are hyped in social media, podcasts, and a Google search. Can healthy diet extend to eating less or on weird schedules? Possibly.

Some medications might slow down some aspects of aging. Or perhaps the side effects of these meds just substitute new health problems for the ones proponents aim to fix. You might wait for more info on that before you swallow.

Can we inject foreign cells to repair our bodies or inject chemicals that reinvigorate our own cells? This seems to work in mice, worms, or petri dishes. But people without vested interests say we need much more evidence. That’s going to take a long time.

Can you trust supplement advice from someone whose company sells supplements? Are they promoting therapies to promote their business, or vice versa? Or both? Would you trust medical advice from a motivational speaker? But what conflicts does even a university scientist, with a commercial side business, suffer? Consider not just what people are saying, but why they might be saying it. Perhaps it’s deception, or just wishful thinking.

For so much of antiaging or reverse-aging science, the old academic refrain applies: “further research is needed.”

Until—or if—better evidence emerges, anyone can goose their chances for living longer and better by maintaining a healthy lifestyle. That might be the first step in reaching escape velocity to a fantastically long life. But even if not, it helps you make the best of whatever life nature affords you.  

Correction: An earlier version of this article misnamed the substance NMN as “NMH.” It also stated that four companies Charles Brenner is involved in relate to NR.