Better Sex, Better Hair, Better Sleep: ‘Humanmaxxing’ Is Here
6/11/20261 hr 12 min
We can enhance athletic performance, lose weight with a pill and even take psychedelics to alter consciousness. At what point does all this self-optimization become self-obsession? When does it get in the way of our humanity itself? My guest this week is the German biotech entrepreneur Christian Angermayer, who believes scientific breakthroughs to extend our lives — and even put us in touch with the divine — are close at hand.
0:00 - Intro
01:40 - Investing in longevity, A.I. and psychedelics
6:06 - The vision for the Enhanced Games
13:45 - Normalizing enhancements for everyone
20:02 - Ozempic is the first of many...
30:00 - The five basics for health and well-being
36:52 - Psychedelics trips and spiritual revelations
59:20 - Christian skepticism
01:04:22 - "Jesus is not human-maxxing."
Thoughts? Email us at interestingtimes@nytimes.com.
Read the full transcript here: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/11/opinion/better-sex-better-hair-better-sleep-humanmaxxing-is-here.html
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Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsSpeaker 10:00
This podcast is supported by PhRMA. Big nonprofit hospital systems are making billions on medicine markups. Thanks to the Federal 340B program, they can mark up medicines a thousand percent or more, and with no guardrails, hospitals can spend program profits on luxury perks and at the same time engage in aggressive debt collection practices. They get rich, and patients pay the price. Washington should fix 340B. Visit phrma.org/340Bmarkup to learn more. So what are you putting in your body?
Christian Angermayer· Guest0:34
Testosterone is one thing.
Speaker 10:36
Right.
Christian Angermayer· Guest0:36
Since my thirties, I'm doing TRT. I'm taking GLP-1s because I'm kind of stress eater. Like, I'm taking DHEA, a hormone-like substance. I do one medical drug for sleep, which is called Quviviq. I have not tried any recreational drug except of coffee. Yeah. And psychedelics, but that's another topic for later.
Speaker 10:53
We'll get to that in a sec.
Christian Angermayer· Guest0:54
Yeah.
Speaker 10:54
But... Christian Angermayer, welcome to Interesting Times.
Christian Angermayer· Guest1:02
Thank you for having me.
Speaker 11:04
So recently, you probably heard about this, the Pope put out an encyclical, a big document on artificial intelligence, and one of the most striking passages in that document was a critique of what the Pope called transhumanism, which is basically you could define as the idea that a lot of the fundamental constraints that human beings face, aging, illness, mental suffering, maybe even