Longevity science & philosophy with the blogger leading theory at Sam Altman’s $1B+ startup - Jose, Author Nintil & Head of Theory at Retro

Jose Luis Ricón Fernández de la Puente is the author of the popular blog Nintil, and Head of Theory at Retro Biosciences. Jose is a prolific blogger, covering a wide breadth of topics across economics, philosophy, progress studies, science funding, and of course longevity. His writing has been published in a16z Future, Works in Progress and by the Adam Smith Institute, and his writing previously won him a fellowship with Emergent Ventures, Tyler Cowen’s competitive program for intellectually ambitious projects.

In this interview, you’ll hear how insightful Jose is about deeply technical topics in biology, and you’ll see why Retro Bio was eager to bring him on as their head of theory (the only role of its kind in the entire biotech industry).

Our conversation is wide ranging, spanning a deep dive on Retro’s work to replace and engineer microglia to rejuvenate the brain and how our cells have the ability to turn back the aging clock but choose not to. We also covered the technological stagnation and why biological engineering is the new frontier of progress, as well as philosophical topics like transhumanism and how a future of total biological control might impact our values and way of life.

Retro Biosciences was seeded with $180M by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman to develop therapies to prevent and reverse age-related disease, and is widely recognized as one of the leading AI for longevity companies. Previously, we hosted Rico Meinl, the head of Applied AI at Retro, so make sure to give that episode a listen as well.