We are in the middle of the so-called health span revolution, where an increasing number of people are finally realizing that living longer is not a myth but a scientific possibility. Zach Gurick takes a deep dive into this exciting medical breakthrough with David Donnelly, the brilliant mind behind the documentary film Forever Young. He shares how he travelled all over the world to talk with the leading professionals and experts on what it takes to extend your health span, strengthen the body, and sharpen the mind with purpose and meaning. Zach explains how to take control of your health and longevity by making major changes in your lifestyle and living environment, all without losing hope and optimism every single day. Discover why you should strive not to live forever, but do everything in your power to add several healthy years to your life.

The information presented in Fully Alive is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified healthcare provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition or treatment and before making changes to your health regimen. Guests’ opinions are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of the podcast host, production team, or sponsors.

—

Listen to the podcast here

  

Unveiling The Forever Young Revolution With David Donnelly

We spend a lot of time on this show talking about how to extend our health span, how to strengthen our bodies, sharpen our minds, and stay vibrant well into our later years. This conversation asks a deeper question. What if the real fear behind longevity isn’t aging and it isn’t even death? What if it’s the possibility of living longer without meaning, without connection, or without purpose? My guest is David Donnelly, Writer and Director of the award-winning documentary, Forever Young.

David is a cultural documentarian whose work explores how science and technology reshape everyday human life. In this film, he steps into the rapidly accelerating world of longevity research, featuring leading scientists from Harvard, Stanford, and the Buck Institute. Instead of focusing only on the breakthroughs, he asks what all of this means for our relationships, our communities, and our sense of urgency. If we add years to life but don’t add depth to those years, what have we really gained? This is a thoughtful, honest, and deeply human conversation about mortality, connection, and what it truly means to stay young. Let’s welcome David Donnelly to the show.

  

  

David, thank you so much for joining us. I’ve had the privilege of watching your film and I’ve really been looking forward to having this conversation to learn from you myself, to share your story and all the things you’ve learned with our audience and so thanks so much for taking the time to be here with us.

Thank you for having me. I’m excited for this conversation.

David’s Career Journey And The Creation Of Forever Young

You spent three years traveling around the world, interviewing all the top thought leaders in the longevity space to create this amazing documentary. I’m just so curious, tell us your backstory, what led you to do this, how did the desire to even to do this come about?

Initially, I was pre-med before I went to undergrad so there was always an interest, I think, in science and in medicine but by the time I was a sophomore in organic chemistry, it was pretty obvious that wasn’t going to work out. I got interested in film, and long story short, moved to Los Angeles after I graduated college and started getting into that world.

I really enjoyed the process of making documentaries and the last few years, that’s been the majority of my work. I think when you do hit a certain age, especially in your 40s, you start to look at things a little bit different and I started seeing all this stuff in my newsfeed pop up about these breakthroughs that were happening and longevity, this word that now just kept popping up all over the place. I was curious like, “How much of this is BS?”

That really is what drove that first push like, “I’d really like to learn more about this.” I spent the next three and a half years just answering that question, “Is this real?” What I learned just absolutely blew me away. The film itself is 88 minutes but we captured more than 100 hours of footage and so there’s so much more that didn’t make it into the film, just didn’t really fit into the story.

It was a really amazing experience and very transformative for me to capture what I really believe is a revolution that’s unfolding before our eyes that a lot of people don’t understand that it’s happening or it’s still hard to process the gravity of what’s occurring. If you could put yourself in a different time period throughout history and imagine having been living through one of these revolutions, it’s hard to see what’s happening if you’re living through it.

That was the challenge we’re trying to show that it is step by step, it’s not happening overnight but there really is something special happening right now. It’s full of hope and optimism that we can all spend more years with the people that we love and care about and that’s really was the driving force behind the film.

Thanks for sharing that, thanks for doing that work. Three and a half years, 100 hours of film and then squeezing it. I’m always fascinated by how do you even start an editing process where you take 100 hours down to 80 minutes.

It’s terrible. I’m getting anxious just thinking about it. I think our original cut was something like four hours because this topic too it’s such an important topic so it’s like, what do we cut out? Pretty much everything, every sequence that’s in the film, there could be a whole separate story behind that and more knowledge behind that and so we could have chosen to go deeper into any of these categories.

It was a really hard decision but ultimately, people have to watch it so it has to be something that people can digest and something that’s paced in a way that’s not overwhelming where if they want to learn more, hopefully the film will inspire them to be curious and to take some steps regardless of where they are in their longevity journey.

I noticed one of the themes in the film that kept reoccurring was it’s possible to extend your health span, to live healthier for longer. It’s happening, like you’re saying. We’re in the midst of this health span revolution. It’s just most people don’t know this information and getting that information out, so thank you for doing the work to get that information out in a way that is captivating and compelling and inspiring and, like you said, full of hope and optimism. You did a great job.

Yeah, you’re very welcome. It was not just me obviously we have hundreds of people that were involved in the making of the film. I’ve got two amazing producers that really made this happen, Dr. Jim Johnson and Dr. Thomas Lewis. They were a real inspiration to work with every step of the way and because this was independently financed and independently made, we were able to retain the scientific integrity that the story deserved. I can’t imagine what would have happened if we had taken a more traditional route and had to go through a larger distributor or studio from the get-go.

It was real important to us that we honored the science behind it and let some of these ideas and arguments play out without having to worry about is this going to get enough clicks, which is really what distributors care about that was a lot of freedom that I was allotted because of the structure that was set up. I’ve got to really thank Dr. Johnson and Dr. Lewis for making that possible. By the way, they are both in the film too.

Interviewing People And Organizations Across The Globe

I’d love to dive into the film itself for our readers. Obviously, this is going to be new to them. The film is just coming out. You traveled around the world, you interviewed people from the Buck Institute and Harvard and Einstein College of Medicine and Michigan, Stanford, all these top thought leaders that are really leading the way, these top scientists that are leading voices in that space. I love how you didn’t show just one side of the story either you showed the naysayers and things like that as well you had a psychiatrist looking at this. Can you just tell us the process you went through? How did you determine who to interview? What led you to what led you to where you ended up?

I went into this as a skeptic. As I said earlier, I didn’t know what the story was going to be. Sometimes documentary filmmakers depending upon the type of story that you’re trying to tell, you might have a general idea of a beginning a middle and an end. In this case, we do have the science fiction storyline which is narrative so we scripted that part so we knew how that was going to end. The documentary itself, as far as the people we’ve interviewed and where the science was going to take us, I didn’t know where it was going to end up. We started at the Buck Institute. That was the first shoot that we did. This place I had never heard of until I started to really learn about this world.

You go to Novato, California, fly into San Francisco, you go up these ridiculous long driveway and entrance and this cathedral-like building and the whole thing is just like a really crazy spiritual experience and you realize that there’s this place that’s devoted to the science of aging. The entire place just has these brilliant scientists that are all focusing on different problems that they’re solving and that started everything off.

Having gone there and being in that space, I know about this place. It’s also so visual, the architecture, and it’s just a really beautiful venue. The process was to ask questions and to see where it took us. Once we started filming other questions would come up and it’s like, who’s best to answer that question? One scientist would recommend another scientist. What’s funny is that a lot of the people that are in the film are not common names and yet, they’re going to be in the history books but nobody really knows who they are.

I saw that as an amazing opportunity to bridge that gap and to shine a light on the amazing work that they’re doing. The real science that’s being done is painstakingly pragmatic and day by day and making small incremental discoveries. It’s not the wild crazy stuff that gets all the clicks. Yet, at the same time, to me, it is so inspiring to know that yes it is slow but steady.

As a result, already there’s this foundational knowledge that if the average person knew could really be transformative and given them a better quality of life. The goal with the film was to try to share that and to package it in a way that says there are these things that you can do regardless of the pharmaceutical aspect of it or the treatments, there are basic things that we do and now the science can show us why and how this is so important and just how impactful some of these basic things are.

Could you walk us through like you started as a skeptic, you went to the Buck Institute, you met the CEO, you started asking other scientists there questions like how did the scales fall or were there little moments along the way that were just a-ha moments or big shifts that moved you from skeptic to like, “This is real?”

Yes, absolutely. The Buck Institute, the shoot initially was with Dr. Eric Verdin who’s the CEO and then I just learned about all the different people that are in that organization and I was like, “This building alone just has these amazing minds that are all doing this incredibly remarkable work. That building by itself was just such a great starting point.

One of the things that Eric said was just that your genes are not your destiny. That really stuck with me and that was the first interview. I loved the way that he framed that because, especially where I’m from in the Midwest, I’m from Northern Kentucky, it’s not the healthiest environment. It’s very inspiring to know that there’s these things that you can do to take control of your own health and longevity and that there’s a knowledge base out there that if you take the time to self-educate can really work.

That was the one thing that I think stuck out right away. There were so many things that interview which of course all made it into the film. One of them is about if you want to know one of the greatest indicators for how long you’re going to live in the United States is your zip code, which just shows how much not just wealth but environment plays into it. There’s this whole aspect of longevity and equity and how do we make sure this knowledge gets out there to everyone and that’s one of the reasons that we made the film.

Anybody can watch the film and there’s a lot of really good stuff in there that we hope will inspire people to make major changes in their life or to inspire them to keep going. Also, there’s so many different controversies that are occurring and then you can start to see some of these tensions between the different groups of people and the scientists as individuals.

It’s an incredibly competitive market. They have to go out there and fundraise, they have to publish, they have to be public figures in some sense and attend these conferences and make claims. They have to also make claims that can be backed up. It’s an interesting game and I started to see the rules of that game play out. You meet all these characters and there’s just so many unique people that are in that space.

When the same names kept coming up, that’s when I was certain that I had to interview that person. Three or four different scientists told me, “This is the person that you have to speak with for this particular topic.” That also really helped. That wasn’t necessarily the person that would come up first if you were to search about that particular topic. I think the public persona of some of these individuals versus the academic credentials that they have within their communities are two whole different sets of rules and we were really trying to bring that together to the public.

I love that you touched on it. There are some controversies out there. I love how you handled the controversy like with Dr. David Sinclair from Harvard Medical School. Can you tell us a little bit about that for the readers that aren’t familiar?

I will say that I’m actually very excited about the work of Dr. Sinclair. In the film, I think there’s things that have happened and he’s got a lot of naysayers, first of all. The reality is anybody in a revolution, if they’re really pushing the limits, there’s going to be pushback. There’s going to be haters. I think it’s good that there’s people that are pushing those limits. In 2026, Life Biosciences, Sinclair’s company, is doing human trials for what might be the first FDA-approved anti-aging drug. That is absolutely crazy. Calico Labs is also doing something similar.

There will always be pushback when people are pushing the limits of a revolution.

It all sounds completely wild and I think we wanted to show the argument that people have back and forth and they’re all very brilliant people. We wanted to let that play out and then also pull back and remind people that time’s going to tell, ultimately. There’s so much happening right now but when the dust settles, then the science itself will last. I think that was very delicate to handle so hopefully, that that answers your question. I want them to watch the film to learn more about what we talk about.

Why Longevity Is About Epigenetics, Not Genes

You’ve got to meet the top scientists in this field and in this space. You’ve mentioned a couple of things. To just back up to what Eric at Buck Institute said, your genes are not your destiny, and I love at the start of your film. It’s like 93% of factors related to longevity are actually epigenetic or not related to just your genes and so that’s important for people to realize and understand that your lifestyle makes a huge difference.

The argument that I think is becoming more accepted is that we have a lot more control over aging than we had previously believed. Even in med schools, not too long ago they, there was this idea that your genes are so important to determine your future of your health. Now we understand that lifestyle is just so crucial and there are things that if we adopt at an earlier age also can delay the onset of the problems that we associate with aging. Especially if you haven’t had those problems hit yet, it’s also so important to realize that you can adopt these habits that you know are long-term going to have a real impact.

Could we talk about some of those things? What are some of the other a-ha moments or things that you learned that were like, “This is going to be life changing for me?” I’m curious like how has your life changed as a result of filming this?

I’ve made some massive physical and personal transformations. I think a lot of that is my trust in the science has gotten to a different level to where I’ve been more open to trying more things when it comes to the treatments and the pharmaceutical options that are available. I think if you’re not comfortable with the science or you haven’t got to a point to where you’ve self-educated enough to understand these different levels of risk, then it can be very terrifying to think that maybe you want to go down this journey.

One of the most important things that I learned was the value of getting your blood tested regularly, your blood work, and what to get done and how to monitor that. It doesn’t sound like some big breakthrough but to me personally, it was. The second part of that is when you do get these results is to understand that if you’re looking at that against a scale of what’s considered normal, especially in the United States, most people are actually sick if you really look at it.

If you’re comparing the results and you’re like, “I’m okay because I’m within this little chart that they gave me,” are you comparing that to the right people? Your own personal optimal health is not necessarily going to be reflected in a lot of the feedback that you get unless you know what to compare it against. Having access to doctors that focus on longevity and I’ve really taken it to heart and applied a lot of what I’ve learned.

When I was just in the middle of the whole thing and traveling around and editing, it was like a blur. Now that the film is done, I’ve actually had an opportunity to be like, “Maybe I should actually take some of the advice that I spent all this time learning myself.” That was one aspect of it. Second aspect of it was trusting some of the doctors that are in the longevity space. Just in general, gps might not be trained on a lot of what’s out there and the technology is moving very quickly and so it is important I think there are people out there that have a different knowledge base that can help in a different way.

Somebody evaluating your blood work that knows your lifestyle you might get a different response on ways to improve your health versus if you go the traditional way. Not to take anything away from traditional doctors. They spend all this time training and it’s such a challenging profession and they’re doing amazing work. The overall system is becoming archaic and the science is advancing so much quicker than the infrastructure in the system. There needs to be a paradigm shift.

We’re in the middle of that right now and it’s so daunting and overwhelming that it’s like where do you start? How do you reinvent a system for people that are living to 90 and 100 instead of 65? Everything needs to start being reinvented and it is a lot to take in and we’re in the middle of that right now. It’s very exciting but it’s also a little bit terrifying unless we can just take it one step at a time. Hopefully, the film takes you through step by step here’s what’s happening and leave them with a sense of optimism and hope instead of just dread that the world is changing faster than we can process.

I’m just curious, what are you doing to monitor your own blood work now or where do you get that done and what things are you looking for and how have you made some changes?

Without going into too much detail, I have been exploring some various peptides. I’ve also really got a hold on the way that I exercise. I think just going to the gym, you think if you go to the gym then somehow, that’s like the same thing no matter what you do there, like, “I’m just going to the gym.” You really start to think about as you age, what you’re actually doing when you’re there and with that time. You can do so much more in 30 minutes that’s more effective that’s better for your body, that’s better for your long term health than just going in there and throwing around some weights.

That was really inspired by workouts that I did with Dr. Johnson who’s much older than me. When his personal trainer would come to his house and we’d work out in his garage and I’d see what he’d do, I’d be like, “This is pretty interesting.” I’d see the things that he focused on. There are things that you can do that are longevity-oriented that might not be necessarily what you think of like when you go to the gym.

Leg press is one of those things. This guy’s knocking out leg press several times a week but working out your lower body is so important as you get older. Number one, it burns more calories when you work out your lower body. Number two, it’s good for balance and all these things that happen if you fall. It reduces that. Leg strength is a major one, grip strength is another one. Also, what he does which really still amazes me is planks. He’s doing planks for several minutes and this is a full-body workout that works your cardio that works and I was like, “If this guy can do planks, then maybe I should start doing some of those too.”

Thinking about what I’m doing when I’m there versus just sticking to the same things that I had done in a long time that didn’t see results. Trusting some of the lower risk drugs that are out there that have been approved, for example, diabetes, and are being reapplied to aging. This is a unique time right now because the FDA does not recognize aging as disease. There are things that people are taking for their long term health for longevity but it starts to get a gray area.

I’m not a doctor so there is an element of trust, who do you trust how much do you take? There are longevity specialists but there are risks with anything. Yes, I now have, I would say, a very balanced, pragmatic approach to my health and I’ve seen remarkable results. It’s also evolving. I keep changing it based upon what I’m learning and how I’m feeling and what the what the results say.

Do you mind sharing some of the things that you’ve had good success with or that you’ve noticed a difference?

Metformin is something. That’s a drug that was originally created for diabetics. Dr. Nir Barzilai, who’s in the film, is a huge proponent of Metformin for longevity. That’s something that, over a period of time, if you’re getting your blood sugar monitored, you can start to see. I’m not diabetic but my father’s diabetic and so I always want to make sure that I that I monitor that. I think that has been helpful. Some of the other stuff I’ll tell you after the interview.

It’s just like anything else. There’s levels of risk and there’s levels of extremes that people are taking it to. I’m not a biohacker. I don’t have any interest in living the Brian Johnson lifestyle. That doesn’t interest me. I am interested in improving my quality of life, my energy levels, how I feel mostly. Improved quality sleep. Also, I travel still quite a bit. Not as much right now because we’re not filming heavily but it really took its toll on my body.

In a period of about 10 years, I was in 40 different countries and so you don’t realize it while you’re doing it because you’re on this adrenaline rush but it takes its toll on your body. Stretching is a big one. Not something that you think about how important it is but that’s made a huge impact on just how I feel. Spending a lot more time stretching. Those are little things.

I’m also not the poster boy for optimal health and I don’t claim to be that. I do think that there’s fundamentals that once you understand the science behind them then it’s not just some ancient wisdom that’s being passed down. It’s suddenly like, if you walk for 30 minutes a day, it’s going to reduce your chance of getting sick dramatically by 30% or 40%, whether it’s chronic illness or something. It’s like these are things we now know, 30 minute walking every day.

It doesn’t seem like that’s such a big breakthrough, but at a time when we have a sedentary lifestyle and the average American spends something like seven hours a day in front of a screen, then yeah, it becomes more important. I think just to remind ourselves that these are things that, over time, make a big difference and start to compound. There are some ways that you can take control of it.

When small things start to compound, they can make a big difference.

For example, being in Europe or in the UK, it’s just easier to do that because you walk to the market, you don’t have these massive shopping carts and you have your groceries for a week. There’s things that you do on a daily basis that require you to walk around a little bit. Especially in the United States, if you’re sitting in a car for hours at a time and then you’re going home and you’re exhausted and you’re sitting and watching something, it’s understandable.

In the office, you’re sitting in front of a screen. These lifestyles in general are hard on our bodies and we have to do things to offset the cultural implications of living a modern life. Over time, I think that will start to change but right now, somehow, there’s not like some big PSA spot that’s going out there of we need to make these big changes. Hopefully, the film serves that purpose of just saying we got to start making some changes. We’re in the midst of a longevity revolution and we’re not prepared. We’re not prepared for it. The information’s not getting out there but you can do something now to start taking advantage of what’s happening.

  

  

Understanding Longevity Escape Velocity

You mentioned Brian Johnson and you do touch on that a little bit in the film the idea of longevity, escape velocity and also just the idea of there are people that want to live forever. I love how you handled that in the film, though, that there’s two sides to that coin. I also loved how they described longevity escape velocity.

I’ve heard Ray Kurzweil talk about that and it’s not that you have to live forever but if you can add 20 healthy years to your life, then something’s going to come through in the next 20 years that will add 20 more years. You could keep doing that in in perpetuity. That idea that if we can add 10 or 20 healthy years, then by that time something else, that will add 10 or 20 more. What do you think about all that?

The analogy that I think stuck with me is imagine if you’re a train and you’ve got railroad tracks and this train’s moving forward but there’s the end of those tracks. Can you build more tracks before the train gets to that point? Science has always been there to hopefully extend those tracks but with AI, we’re building tracks faster. That’s just the basic way to understand escape velocity. It’s that you don’t have to not get sick or something. You just have to be able to survive long enough to where there’s a cure for whatever ailment that you’re facing. Of course, you could still get hit by a car, so there’s that. Something bad could happen that’s outside of that. That’s the general concept.

Before having really well-credentialed people explain it to me in a way like that, I really just felt like it was science fiction and not something that was a little bit more achievable. Peter Diamandis also has a great way of explaining this. When you hear this guy talk about it, it’s pretty persuasive, I have to say. It’s a pretty persuasive argument. At the same time, you have to look at it realistically. How far could you push it? There’s also the hard science of lifespan, not health span, which is how long our species can actually live.

Dr. Steve Horvath who’s in the film is just like, “Here’s the reality. 122 is probably the longest a human can live. There’s no evidence to show otherwise. You can talk about all this stuff all you want. Until we figure out a way to deal with the realities of our species, then it doesn’t really matter. We have to deal with the idea that we’ve got a hard cap at 122.”

There are all these different scientists and they’ve all done these amazing things and so who do you believe and what’s the reality, that’s what’s exciting about it. We don’t know. We’re living through all these changes. I don’t think it’s a bad thing that there’s people out there that are pushing for that. I think it’s always good to have people push to these extreme limits.

In some sense, they are getting more clicks about longevity in general, although the downside of that is to get the actual science confused with the people that are experimenting with more of a philosophy. It’s crucial for people to realize that there is real science that’s being done every single day that is slowly starting to accumulate and that’s not getting as much attention as this other stuff.

How To Determine Your Biological Age

You just mentioned Dr. Horvath. Could we talk about organ clocks? I think a lot of people might not know.

Sure. I actually saw him when we did a screening at Cambridge and so I just did a Q&A with him after afterwards. Dr. Horvath’s big breakthrough was what is now called the Horvath clock. The big problem we had when it came to longevity prior to what we’re now calling the biomarker revolution was that there was no real way to measure biological age versus chronological age. There was no way to quantify it.

As he says in the film, you have to be able to quantify something in order to do an experiment around it. He discovered that within our DNA over time, there’s a process called methylation and we can measure methylation and that will show us your true age, your biological age not just how many years you’ve been alive.

Using that data really blew things wide open when it came to biomarkers. Now, there was all these various ways that we could start to measure how we age. That gave the whole sector a tool of measurement that then could really just advance things. It was a huge breakthrough. That was the first of now many different biomarkers that we use to determine people’s biological age versus their chronological age.

It’s pretty amazing that we’re able to do this and then make adjustments and then see if we’re going in the right direction or not.

It is and it’s all happened within our lifetimes. These were not tools that were available to our predecessors.

Finding Purpose In Prolonging Your Life

I love one of the scenes in the movie. I don’t want to give away too much because I want people to watch it, but I do love how you showed the other side of that coin of a longevity escape velocity or living forever. I think you quoted Emily Dickinson and about what makes life so sweet and the right questions are actually what’s worth living for and what’s worth dying for. If you have something forever, then it’s no longer precious. We want life to be sweet and precious and each day is a gift. Having that mentality and philosophy is super important.

As we were making the whole process, I also realized what was missing from the whole longevity science conversation. It became pretty apparent after the first year and a half that this revolution is real, this thing is happening. It’s not just something that you’re reading about. This is a real revolution that we’re living through. I started to think, “What happens next? What are the consequences of this?” We can already start to see them happening. People are retiring and they’re living much longer than they thought in their retirement, all the different things that happen when that happens.

What happens with our sense of leisure, what do we do with our lives? What about relationships? Are you going to be married for 100 years? To me, those questions became equally, if not more important than can we live forever or how long can we push it? If you don’t have this sense of purpose and meaning and we’re not having a quality of life, then what’s the point of all this?

There’s the biological realities, too. If we can push health span further or lifespan further, how do we protect our minds? Right now, people’s biggest fear is not cancer. It’s dementia. If you are living to 90 or 100, what’s the point if you don’t have your mind? We’ve got to start dealing with the realities of that, which is a whole separate conversation.

Also, there’s what I believe is already an existential crisis happening. We have the decline of religion in the United States, particularly with religious institutions. We have the rise of artificial intelligence. We have a loneliness epidemic. We have people spending hours and hours a day in front of their screens isolated away from others. You put all this together and what you have is a recipe for a massive scalable existential crisis.

If there’s no value system that we put in place, then what we’re going to have is just millions of people, billions of people living longer than ever before that are more anxious and depressed than ever before. We have to ask the philosophical questions have to be a part of that longevity conversation because if we remove them from that, then what happens is we’re just extending this without asking why we’re doing it in the first place. These are tough questions. I’m not saying I have an answer to all these but these are things we have to deal with at some point.

Without a value system in place, millions and billions of people who live longer will just be more anxious and depressed than ever before.

Are we ready? As you said, this is happening and our systems aren’t really set up for it, so it’s going to be it could be a little bit messy along the way as well.

There’s so much that didn’t make it into the film that’s so important. Some of the stuff that did make into the film, we went to Japan, for example. We were in Tokyo and we filmed this nursing home. Japan is the future of where we’re going demographically, so they’ve got all these people that are “aging out” of the labor force and there’s enough young people to take care of them.

To solve that problem, a lot of what they’re doing there involves technology and so they’re utilizing these robots that come in and communicate with them, lead them in dances. They’ve got robotic animals that they pet that have fake fur and stuff like that. You can see it in the film but it is just wild to see that. They love it. They get so excited when they see these things.

It’s great but I also learned throughout this process the value of things like intergenerational friendships. How great would it have been if those same people were visited by college kids and they were to play cards with these people? That’s a hard thing to do. I’m not saying that, especially at scale, like how do you arrange that? However, there are solutions that don’t cost any money that can help solve these different problems at the same time.

There’s also the reality of how close you live to your loved ones, especially grandparents and grandkids. Grandparents that live in a closer proximity to their grandkids, in some cases, live longer. That’s also hard to do, especially for a variety of reasons. They’re tough challenges to face. It’s very clear that we’re not prepared for what’s happening right now and the time to start asking these questions and start trying to find solutions is now. Not ten years from now when you add into everything that’s happening these massive changes that are occurring with AI and the labor market and everything else. Hopefully, the film inspires some conversations to help people start to realize we’ve got to start dealing with these problems.

Why Relationships Are A Primary Indicator Of Health Span

In this show, a lot of times, we talk about having purpose and meaning. It’s not just about living longer but I love the idea of extending our purpose span along with extending our health span, that we can continue to have purpose. There’s a study that’s been done too that the quality of your relationships when in your 50s determines a lot about your longevity. There’s another study about long-term relationships and the quality of your relationships is a primary indicator of your health span too. That social aspect and social connection. I love how you wove that in throughout the film.

  

  

Dr. Sarah Centeno, who is in the film, talks about that quite a bit. She considers the value of relationships as a fifth vital sign, just as important as blood pressure and heart rate and everything else. I love that concept. Dr. Lewis adds on to that by saying when you go to the doctor, they ask you if you exercise, do you smoke, what’s your weight, etc., but they never ask you what’s the value of your relationships. That was one of these a-ha moments that we now have the science to show just how valuable our relationships are, yet those are very hard to measure.

Just like Horvath had this breakthrough as a biomarker with methylation, how do we somehow quantify the value of relationships? It’s still one of the things that is intangible. Will we ever be able to do that? I don’t know. There are people that are taking that more seriously and that are digging into that, but at least now we can recognize the importance of it.

It does make sense. How do we punish people? The worst possible punishment is to put them into isolation. That’s how we punish people. At the same time, that’s happening all over the place in the United States to people that are not realizing that they’re in this isolated prison, or are realizing it and don’t have an answer to get out of it. Recognizing that it’s a medical problem, that it’s affecting all these different areas, I think, is a really important step forward to recognizing the importance of mental health in the longevity conversation.

The worst possible punishment anyone can experience is to be isolated. This is happening all over the US, and not everyone realizes they are in an isolated prison.

There’s also Dr. Laura Carstensen, who’s not in the film, but she does a lot of great work at Stanford, Stanford Center on Longevity, and she’s asking a lot of these tough questions in the bigger picture as far as how do we solve some of these larger social problems. She focuses a lot on everything from the architecture of the world that we live in to the way that our educational system is, to what we consider adolescence and development. This all needs to be completely updated and these systems are so large. How do we even start to do that? There are people out there that are dealing with these problems and I think that work is just as important as figuring out the biology of aging itself.

How To Change Your Environment For The Better

I think you did a beautiful job of putting those two together in the film. To go back to something you mentioned earlier, as I know we are winding down here on our time allotted, but you mentioned how your zip code is one of the most important things. Your environment really dictates your longevity in a lot of ways. I was shocked to hear that the life expectancy in Marin County, which is close to where Buck Institute is, is 88 years old. It’s like ten years longer than the average parts of America. Getting this knowledge out to people is such a crucial thing that you’re doing and pioneering there. I’m curious on that note too. How have you changed your own environment as a result?

I’m fortunate in that I lived in California for more than a decade. In general, I think California is a healthy environment. I think in the UK and also in Europe, there’s a lot of walking and a lot of lifestyle choices that do fit more into the longevity paradigm just because of the environment that you do live in. I think I’m fortunate to spend a lot of time traveling in places to where you are walking a lot. I spent, I guess, a month in Ikaria, one of the blue zones in Greece, and that was an amazing experience to absorb what was happening there.

That is really funny too, the whole blue zones concept because these people don’t necessarily look healthy. It’s not like they’re super fit necessarily or anything. I think out of all the things that I learned spending time in a place like that was being able to walk down in the mornings, this very mountainous environment that already just walking up and down these mountains is quite a workout.

To see people that were seeing each other for coffee in the mornings and laughing and having coffee together. I’m like, okay, that’s it. It’s the sense of community. That was a very inspiring thing for me to witness. I think I’m more aware of the environments that I’m in more than anything else. I haven’t made any major decisions on where I live based upon what I’ve learned. I have visited a lot of different places, though, just curious about different lifestyles and seeing how that influences people.

I’m a huge fan of the Mediterranean diet. If I could choose a diet to have the most to be around that you don’t have to artificially have without this natural seasonal change, that would probably be it. I’m just more conscious, I think, of it. You definitely get a vibe when you’re near the Buck or in Marin. Everybody looks really good. You go to these grocery stores and they look about 10, 15 years younger. There’s tennis courts everywhere. People are walking, they’re hiking.

I think it’s infectious if you’re in that environment. If you were to take a drone and go up above where the Buck Institute is, for every mile that you start to go away from there, you’re losing life expectancy. That’s disturbing, I think. At the same time, it can be positive in saying, “What are they doing right here,” and then learn from that.

Where To Watch Forever Young

Thank you so much for the amazing work you’ve done. How can people see the film? What’s the best way to go about it? How can we all watch this, learn from this and then what’s next on the horizon for you?

Sure. You can go to ForeverYoung.film, and right now, you can watch the film available as a rental. We also have virtual screenings that anybody can host and set up, which has been a lot of fun and we’ve had a lot more interest in that than we had originally anticipated. Groups of friends and family members are hosting their own screenings to where they can watch it with their friends and other people and comment throughout and then do Q&As afterwards with their own guests or their own organizations.

We also have a Substack that’s growing much faster than we had anticipated. There’s a free option as well as a paid subscription option. We are doing 2 to 3 content pieces a week. There are deep dives into really serious conversations and unique analyses on topics that are in the film and longevity. There are also shorter bits of insights that we learned along the way.

There’s also a lot of the footage library that we amassed during the course of filming. We are going through that library and mining that for gold and wisdom and then releasing that to our Substack audiences. If people are really curious about this stuff and want to continue the journey after watching the film, then the Substack is something that we’re really proud of and are putting a lot of energy into getting it out there.

Thank you so much for sharing that and we’ll definitely look into getting you down here for a screening here at Shell Point. I think that’d be a lot of fun too.

I’d love that. I would love that. I love Florida. One of my happy places.

We’ll make it happen. David, thank you so much for dedicating a big chunk of your life to this work, to get this knowledge out to people and sharing it with the world. ForeverYoung.film, rent it, set up a screening, enjoy it and learn from it. I’m really excited to share that with all of our readers and thank you so much for being here with us and we’ll let you go so you can go be on dad duty, as you mentioned.

Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.

Thanks so much, David.

—

I hope you enjoyed that conversation with David Donnelly. ForeverYoung.film is the website again to go check out the film for yourself. I’ve watched it a couple of times and I want to watch it again. There’s so much in there. It really is extremely informative but also just asks a lot of really great questions like we discussed in here.

Some of the things that stuck out to me, a few highlights for me. We did mention at the beginning that there is this health span revolution, this longevity revolution that’s unfolding and it is filled with hope and optimism. I love that he even started off as a skeptic, as he says, and now he’s definitely been turned into a believer that this is happening, regardless of what we think.

How is that going to affect us? How is that going to affect our society? We have to figure out what we do with purpose and meaning. How do we extend our purpose span along with our health span and our longevity? A few other things that we mentioned in there, Dr. Horvath, the Horvath clock this biomarker revolution and understanding that our biological age can be different than our chronological age and we can actually quantify that and measure that.

There are these treatment and pharmaceutical options that having regular blood work done and understanding and evaluating, and measuring that can really help us optimize for ourselves, not just compared to population health stats. Our science is advancing faster than our infrastructure and I love that metaphor and analogy he gave of the train tracks are being built faster now because of the utilization of AI, so that the train can keep going. It is happening, it is something that’s happening all around us.

If we can take control of our own health a little bit more and we can optimize some things, then we could add significant time to our health span and to our lives. We need to make sure that we have purpose and meaning and amazing relationships and social connections along the way to make it worthwhile.

I hope you enjoyed it. Go check out the film, ForeverYoung.film and check out the Substack as well, or host a virtual screening for you and your friends or family members. That’d be a fun thing to do. We’re hoping to do that here at Shell Point. I hope you have an amazing day and we’ll see you back here next time on Fully Alive. Thanks so much for tuning in.

 

Important Links

• Forever Young
• Forever Young on AppleTV
• Forever Young on Substack
• Forever Young on Instagram
• Forever Young on X
• Forever Young on Facebook
• Forever Young on YouTube

  

About David Donnelly

David Donnelly is an award-winning filmmaker, writer, and visual artist whose work investigates the collision of culture, technology, and the human spirit. His films, installations, and mixed-media works have appeared in major museums, international festivals, and private collections worldwide.

His debut feature, Maestro (2015), featuring Paavo Järvi, Joshua Bell, Hilary Hahn, and Lang Lang, was translated into 12 languages and broadcast across 5 continents. Together with Nordic Pulse and Forte, it forms a landmark trilogy documenting the global world of classical music and the story of the Estonian Singing Revolution.

Donnelly’s films have been showcased at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art, the Kennedy Center, the Hamburg Elbphilharmonie, the Beijing Music Festival, and the Arvo Pärt Centre.

In 2021, he co-founded the production company CultureNet with his college friends, expanding into themes of digital culture and emerging technology with the feature documentary The Cost of Convenience, which is currently streaming on major platforms. His latest film, Forever Young, premiered at the 2025 Mill Valley Film Festival and won the Audience Favorite in its category.

A frequent traveler, he has filmed in more than 50 countries and maintains a growing body of visual art collected internationally. Donnelly is currently developing his next slate of films and writing The Last of the Analogs, a science-fiction trilogy.

You can subscribe to Donnelly’s Substack here.