On January 27, 2025, I turn eighty years old. Frankly, this is hard for me to comprehend. I remember when my father turned eighty, and I thought he was so old. Now, all the talk about how Trump and Biden are too old has had some effect on me, even though I am for sure much healthier than either of them, both physically and mentally.
I have an idea about how to celebrate this birthday. I want to create a short book or a website with one page for every year I have lived. On that page, I will have some crucial information, like where I lived, major world events, events in my life, etc. I still need to design it. I will want to have some photos.
It was shocking to realize that if I wrote one page a day every year, it would take me almost three months to complete this task.
Perhaps I should create an application to help me, maybe a form that asks key questions. Hopefully, ChatGPT can assist me.
I think it would be best to navigate with some kind of slider. Perhaps I will add music for each page featuring the hits of that year.
It should probably have a way for people to leave comments and, of course, birthday wishes.
Let me know if you have any comments and suggestions.
There is one place I will not be between November 5th and January 20th, the USA.
While we do not know if Biden or Trump will win the next presidential election, the one thing we know for sure is that if it appears that Biden is the winner, the Trump MAGA Lunatics, led by their would-be dictator, will claim the election has been stolen. And this time, it will not only be Congress that bleeds.
Biden will have control of the military, and the MAGA folks will be armed. I suspect the blood will start running during the actual elections.
Then, on Jan. 6th, the election is to be certified. What do you think the Republicans will do in Congress? The election is to be certified by the new Congress. It is possible that both the Senate and the House will be in Republican hands. What do you think they will do? If there is no agreement/certification, the Speaker of the House will be interim president. If the House was Republican, they could elect Trump as Speaker of the House, and he would become acting President.
Trump would then declare that an insurrection was taking place and use the military to arrest people, including Joe Biden (even if he had won).
How would the Biden supporters react? I don’t know, but there are violent ones out there.
If Trump wins, I don’t know what will happen. Will the Biden supporters accept it. Will they turn violent?
I will be watching all this unfold from someplace in Europe.
Two days ago, I received a short email from my friend Ed Story’s wife, Joey. I had to reread it again and again. My dear friend, Ed, passed away unexpectedly. I was stunned. Ed had just turned 80, just 14 months older than me.He was the epitome of life, full of energy, curiosity, compassion, and thoughtfulness. I thought to myself, my buddy is dead. While I am fortunate to have many friends, Ed was my only buddy.
Joey and Deborah have their birthdays in early Oct. Most years, we would arrange for the four us to be together to celebrate the birthdays. This photo was from the the last time, just over two months ago, in London.
We met in October 2006 at the Four Seasons tented camp in Chiang Rai, Thailand, in an area called the Golden Triangle, where Thailand, Myanmar, and Laos converge on the Mekong River. An area known for being the leading producer of opium in the past.
It was my wife, Deborah’s first trip to Thailand (one of many to come), and she had read that the Four Seasons had a camp where learning to ride elephants was possible. Not to ride them on some platform but by yourself, bareback, sitting on the neck of the elephant with nothing to hold on to and just balancing and giving instructions to the elephant in the Thai language. We found ourselves at this camp. We were “glamping,” but this term did not come into fashion until a few years later.
There were fifteen tents, but I don’t think there were that many people there. I can only remember meeting Ed and his fantastic wife, Joey. We met them at a cocktail party given by the General Manager, Jason Friedman, who was very close friends of the Storys and became our friend as well.
Deborah and I noticed Ed’s clothes. He was wearing a crisp white deconstructed shirt that looked not only stylish but, I knew, expensive. We were standing beside them, cocktails in hand, when Deborah looked at Ed’s shirt and said, “That looks like something you would buy at the Library in London.” The Library is a small boutique in South Kensington, London, where I shopped regularly. Ed overheard Deb’s remarks and said that is where he bought the shirt. It turns out that both Ed and I periodically bought clothes as we were both frequent travelers to London.
Ed was the CEO of a small Oil development company whose primary business was in Vietnam. Since the company’s headquarters was in London and it was listed on the London Stock Exchange, Ed and Joey had an apartment there. But they often stayed in Thailand and Vietnam. We sometimes joined them. Ed was able to speak Thai as he had spent much time in Asia starting in the 60s. He had the most amazing stories of his experiences in South Asia. He was also involved in Mongolia. Ed and Joey owned a penthouse in the capital city, Ulaanbaatar. He became the Honorary Consular of Mongolia in the USA. A Mongolian flag flew in front of his office in Comfort, Texas. I don’t know if it is still there.
I so wish that Ed had written a book about his life experiences. I am sure I only know a fraction of the stories. Ed was a great storyteller. You can read many of his stories here.
Something clicked between the four of us, and we became fast friends. Life is random. Had we not decided to go to the Tented Camp on those days, we would never have met Ed and Joey. But once we met them, we knew they would be in our lives forever. The following year, they visited with us at our home in Sonoma. Then, we visited them at their home in Hill Country, Texas. Over the years, we traveled with them to Bhutan, Thailand, Vietnam, Italy, Greece, Morocco, many places in the USA, Estonia, Finland, Norway, and other places I have probably forgotten.
In some sense, Ed and I grew old together. We were still relatively young when we first met (61 and 62), Ed had recently turned 80 and I will be 79 next month but Ed and I had the kind of friendship you typically develop when you are growing up. That is why I call him my buddy. I don’t think I will ever have another. We were so different. He was a child of the South, an “oil man” from Texas, although liberal in his social and political views. I was Jewish kid from San Francisco, who had a successful career in technology. We rarely discussed business.
Ed and Joey had a large ranch in Hill Country, Texas. I remember walking with him on the property. He carried a rifle. Evidently, there were mountain lions roaming about.
Ed talking about Elephant Polol as a way to protect the elephants
The Four Seasons Elephant Camp raised money for Elephant rescue. The elephants were not abused. It was just the opposite. The local villagers who took care of them were also treated very well. Ed went on to create unique ways to fund the sustainability of elephants in Thailand. He organized Elephant Polo Tournaments to get sponsorships for the elephants and created a store to sell actual elephant-related products called “The Elephant Story.”
Ed actively supported the Cleveland Clinic after that institute saved Joey’s life. He was the head of the “International Leadership Board.” Ed invited me to attend many of their yearly meetings. Deborah and Joey would also participate. I started advising the Cleveland Clinic, a relationship that continues.
Like so many, I will miss Ed, especially his laugh. But part of Ed still lives in my mind and my heart. Not only in memories of the past but now and in the future, for Ed Story became part of who I am, and a part of him will continue to live within me. And in some way, the four of us, Ed, Joey, Deborah, and I will continue our friendship. .
Working on this blog post brought me joy which over came the sadness of losing Ed as I relived so many memories
This week, I accepted a board position and, more significantly, a very intense advisory role in a Nasdaq-listed company called Renovaro (Renb), which is acquiring a medical AI company called GEDi Cube (subject to shareholders’ approval). I will write more about why this combination is so strategic.
For the last ten years, I have been doing my best to avoid making serious commitments like this. While I was happy to advise early-stage companies, I wanted flexibility.
I have been helping set up a Longevity Center in Sheba Hospital for over a year. This activity made me think a lot about health span/longevity. I started to realize that I likely had a lot more time ahead than I thought. Since dealing with prostate cancer in 1996, I decided to live my life as if I only had ten years left. I don’t want to spend those years sitting on the couch watching TV. I want to make a difference. For the last ten years, I have gravitated to my first career, using technology for medical care. So, it is not that surprising that I took the leap and made a commitment.
Health care needs to change. We have been doing the same things the last 100 years, namely treating disease. Because of AI, we now have not only the ability to accelerate that but also make significant advancements in the prevention of disease. It is not enough to live longer; we need to live better longer.
Working with Renovaro will allow me to make a significant contribution. I also intend to continue as a senior advisor to the Cleveland Clinic and the Sheba Medical Center, as well as helping early-stage med tech companies. Last, I will do what I can to ensure that Sommetrics will cross the finish line and provide an effective, tolerable, and safe treatment for Obstructive Sleep Apnea.
Until recently, age was determined by the date you were born, called chronological age. If you were born in 1950 and it is now 2023, you are 73 years old. It was not always this way; before the calendar came about some 5,000 years ago, no one knew your exact age. Even now, there are parts of the world where calendars are not used, mainly in hunter-gatherer civilizations.
I have been thinking about age, partially due to my advancing age. I am now 78. My father’s death a few years back made me the oldest member of my direct family, and recently, my work in helping establish the Sheba Medical Longevity Center has focus me.
When considering age, there are two segments. How long have we lived, which also defines the experiences we had or could have had, and how much time do we have ahead, which will impact our thinking about how we spend our time now and what opportunities we might have in the future?
I suspect before the use of calendars, age was subjective. It would be based on how you looked and behaved.
We have learned that chronological age, while accurate concerning the time spent alive and a good indicator of what you may have experienced, does not tell you the relative age of your body, including your brain. Around 1950, a new term emerged called the Biological Age. It resulted from the realization that we do not all age at the same rate. What’s more, parts of our body also age at different rates. We look at averages when we use chronological age to predict life expectancy. We utilize various statistical methods. Such methods also do not consider changes in health care, for example, that will take place in the future. But it is the best we can do. Life expectancy is increasing by about 1/3 of a year every year presently.
But knowing more about our biological age would allow much better predictions and, importantly, help identify areas where improvements could be made. It is also not about just living longer but living better longer. It is not like you want to stretch out the last year of your life. We want to have every year take more time. For instance, if it takes 14 months to age 12 months, you will get a 16% increase in your life span. We can stay younger longer, not just older longer.
There are several ways to calculate biological age. A search on the internet will reveal tens of biological age calculators. The simplest ones use biographical data. Others use blood markers. Recently, DNA has been added to the mix.
I just did a test with TruDiagnostics. They use blood samples and information from a simple questionnaire.
Using DNA, they calculate Intrinsic Age, the natural aging process as determined by our genetics. They also can determine Extrinsic Age, which results from our behavior. While the extrinsic age would often be expected to be older than the intrinsic age, that does not have to be the case. Happily, that is my situation. Changes in lifestyle and medication can improve the extrinsic age, increasing the health span and overall life span. That is the purpose of longevity medicine, in my opinion.
I was born lucky. My intrinsic age is 10% younger than my chronological age. Instead of being 78, I would be 71. But importantly, my extrinsic age is 14 years lower or 20%, which is pretty significant and is likely the result of my lifestyle choices. So, if all these numbers are correct, I could live to be 100. Since my dad died at 97, it is not so surprising.
I should also say that I do not know how accurate TruDiagnostic is. We are just in the very early stages of understanding biological age. I would not rely on these results. It is likely that extrinsic has a high degree of variability. For instance, I suspect that a simple respiritory infection could add years to your age
Now, the question arises: How would the knowledge of being significantly younger or older than one’s chronological age impact one’s life? Would it alter their choices and perspectives? These are questions that, I believe, will become more relevant as we improve our understanding of aging and longevity.
Many people have asked me to create an audio version of my book, The Flight of a Wild Duck. I understand that some people prefer to listen to books rather than read them. I find it a bit strange. I love reading, although I appreciate that for some, it is easier to find the time when they are driving a car or going for a walk. I listen to many Podcasts while walking or in a car, just not books.
But I did not want to have someone else read my book. I wanted it to be my voice. However, I do not have the patience to read more than 300 pages out loud. I experimented with this but found myself stumbling over words. I got a genuine appreciation for “voice-over” actors.
Recently, I have been experimenting with voice cloning apps. I have close to ten. Eleven Labs is the best one I have found for my voice so far.
Please listen to a recording of the opening of my book. It is far from perfect, but probably good enough. I expect it will get better and better. I would love to get your comments.
