Who Gets to Live Forever? A Conversation about Biotechno-solutionism with Tamara Kneese and Santiago Sanchez

More than a penchant for suffering, and more than a need to challenge ourselves, humans are a species that can adapt. In times of flux and epochal change, there’s often a peculiar strain of natural law among nervous, conservative minds — the “natural” way of man is right, so don’t meddle with it. This strain was there when we developed immunization... See more

Even as entrepreneurs, thought leaders, and billionaires invest their time, bodies and fortunes in the project of cheating death, they’re also increasingly finding solace in something else: an ancient Greek intellectual tradition that views the natural rhythms of the life cycle—which is to say, dying—as a central fact of being. Which, most would ar

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Extinction → Precarity: The philosophical construct of considering ‘life as precarious’ (Ann Tsing) foregrounds both life and death. It focuses on how human existence is deeply interdependent with other life and therefore necessitates the need for care of others, the need for being vulnerable to others and to put unpredictable encounters at the cen... See more

How many illegible others, human and nonhuman, have perished because we did not attend to them properly? I think of the terrifying rates of species extinction, as well as the disproportionate death rates of queer, racialized, and otherwise marginalized bodies. How many have not perished, but are reduced in some way, smaller versions of the beings t... See more

With the emerging ability to improve the embodied experience for all sentient beings, our species is entering a painful adolescent phase. We must realize it is no longer acceptable to coast along on values and purpose inherited from the past, without needing to exercise agency and responsibility to decide what we will work toward. We have to accept... See more