Track 11. Anti-Aging Drugs, Battery Innovations, Personal Chatbots

Bullet Train is your express route to the stories, products & concepts shaping our future. No short-term headlines, no fluff—just the innovations transforming the world and our place in it, curated by the team behind the Meco App.

Hey Bullet Trainers,

It’s peak summer, I’m currently traveling, (maybe you’re traveling, too?), so let’s keep this intro short and get right to it.

It’s July 31^st . Today’s stops include:

• The anti-aging drug working wonders for lab mice 🐭 

• The battery business: boon or bane? 🪫 

• Meta wants you to go chatbot yourself 🤖 

And don’t miss our #offtherails segment — not so future-focused, just a bit of fun

Weekly coverage of stories shaping the future — brought to you in streamlined bullet points:

The anti-aging drug working wonders for lab mice

• What to know: in a recent study, the lifespan of lab mice increased almost 25% after being given a drug to reduce inflammation (!!)

• Quantity and quality of life: these mice also had better muscle function, were leaner, had healthier fur, and lower rates of cancer

• The biology behind it: a protein called interleukin-11 (IL-11) found in mice (and humans!) is essential for early development, but with age its levels rise significantly — with no associated health benefit

• How it works: researchers administered a drug to middle aged mice that attacked IL-11 to lower it’s presence in the body — and the results really wowed

• Why it’s different: other medications (such as rapamycin) that also benefit lifespan generally don’t boost quality of life — which is what makes this treatment so compelling as an ‘anti-aging’ drug that could also treat frailty associated with older age

• Will it work for humans: its currently being trialed in people with certain cancers and fibrosis (build up of scar tissue) to help reduce inflammation, and so far, it seems safe

• Scalability: researchers are excited about this drug’s potential, but with the cost to develop it, they say it’s hard to imagine everyone over the age of 50 taking this medication for the rest of their lives

• Where our minds are going: this is a super compelling longevity finding and we’re stoked to see it play out in human trials — but it’s also a reminder that these treatments may never be a solution for the masses, but rather just the few that can afford it

The battery business: boon or bane?

• What to know: there’s a new startup sector targeting in-home batteries — and it has us wondering if batteries are the future of sustainability innovation or yet another environmental debate

• Startups to watch: Copper and Impulse are two fresh-faced companies sticking large batteries into home appliances (stoves and cooktops for now) that can pull and store electricity from traditional wall outlets to be used to power home cooking needs

• Energy implications: the idea is for appliances like these to store excess electricity to power whole homes during outages or send it back to the grid when needed — a promising win-win!

• Where our minds are going: it’s cool to see companies embedding batteries into homes in a way that could change how people think about and use electricity — but it’s clear we’re in desperate need of a better battery infrastructure overall

• Batteries as a boon: batteries are key to a more sustainable future as EVs require them (obvi), renewables are in need of effective energy storage, and power grids are straining under times of higher demand

• Batteries as a bane: on the flip, their production — especially for lithium batteries used in EVs and cellphones — bring a whole slate of environmental issues from mining risks to forever chemical creation

• Innovation incoming: in timely fashion, we are starting to hear promises of solid state batteries, which could offer a cleaner battery solution to lithium options but that still seems like a ways off

• Prediction: we expect to hear a lot more from the battery business in the next few years — and it feels like this industry is under pressure to really get it right, now more than ever

A story that diverted us from our day job:

Meta wants you to go chatbot yourself

• What to know: AI Studio is the latest rollout from Meta, where you can create your own custom chatbot, assigning it whatever interests or personality traits your heart desires

• Clone yourself: Zuckerberg and Co. view it as a tool for creators to create digital mini-me’s that can respond to DMs on their behalf

• Role-playing (a PG version): in a revealing convo with Nvidia’s CEO, Zuckerberg said he envisioned people using it to role-play important conversations (i.e. asking for a raise) or to create personalized coaches (a chef, a fitness trainer, you name it)

• Restrictions: as expected, there are quite a few guardrails — as they’ll attempt to prevent people from creating chatbots that represent another (real) person and block certain topics from being discussed

• Where our minds are going: people get weird (and to be fair, pretty creative) with new tools like these — so we’re guessing Meta’s expectations of how people use it will be expanded* once it’s made available to the masses — and we can’t wait to see it

• How to try it: if you live in the US and have a business account on IG, you should be able to access it today — and it’ll soon show up on WhatsApp and Messenger, before launching at scale later this summer

A bit of fun to round out your ride

• It’s hard to explain why people who have near death experiences share similar stories — regardless of religion, culture, and the time they were raised in — but science is trying to sort it out

• Ocean temps are rising, but there’s one body of water south of Iceland that simply isn’t — in fact, some years it’s gotten colder — and that tidbit of info sucked us into this v eye-opening climate story, worth the longer read this week

• Sure, saboteurs are cutting internet lines, the Seine is too polluted for athletes to compete in, and gold medalists are sleeping on beds made of cardboard — but the Parisian venues are dreamy and the competition is thrilling, and that’s the magic of the Olympics for ya ✨

• And lastly, it turns out raccoons think Cybertrucks look a lot like dumpsters, too

Here’s what Bullet Train readers had to say about last week’s polar(izing) express topic:

What do you think about Spotify becoming more social? 

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ It's a good thing (12%)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 It's a bad thing (88%)

“It's terrible. Not everything has to turn into a social media and copy each other (badly) - the rise of algorithms are bad enough ” - H

Please mind the gap as you get off the train ✌️