20/10/25 – 26/10/25 – Aging and the Machine

Welcome to Monday’s News on the March – The week that was in my digital world.

Rhonda Patrick, Ph.D. — Protocols for Fasting, Lowering Dementia Risk, Reversing Heart Aging, & More
Video interview at Tim Ferriss

From someone who has NOT taken particularly good care of themselves for much of their adult life, I’ve been trying to turn back the clock – to undo, if possible, some of the harm I’ve inflicted on myself. Part of that process of mending both mind and body, so that I can live as actively and comfortably as possible in the second half of my life, has involved learning from experts in nutrition, exercise, longevity, and wellbeing.

Today’s all-encompassing video on aging well, featuring biomedical scientist Rhonda Patrick, was, for me at least, something of a “tick-the-boxes” exercise – just to make sure that what I’m currently doing aligns with best practices for healthspan and aging well.

What I’ve found most evidently beneficial in my own life – the “biggest bang for buck” strategies that overlap neatly with the findings of Dr. Patrick and others – are:

• Intermittent fasting (16/8), with low carbs and minimal sugar
• Resistance training (weights)
• HIIT (High-Intensity Interval Training) – VO₂ Max work
• Zone 2 cardiovascular training
• Vitamin and supplement regimen — Creatine, Vitamins B, C, and D3, Omega-3, Collagen, Glycine, Magnesium Glycinate
• Sauna and spa use

It would also be great to hear what nutritional habits and physical activities you’ve incorporated into your own life that have made a positive difference. Of course, it goes without saying that anyone considering lifestyle or dietary changes should first seek professional medical advice.

Rhonda Patrick, Ph.D. is a biomedical scientist and the founder of FoundMyFitness, a platform dedicated to delivering rigorous, evidence-based insights on improving healthspan and mitigating age-related diseases.

Paul Kingsnorth: How to fight the machine
Video interview at Unherd

Now, bear with me – I’m taking the meandering route to get to the relevance of UnHerd’s recent interview with Paul Kingsnorth.

Baby Boomers (and those before), Generation X (inc. yours truly), and the early Millennials are the first humans in history to have faced the sudden intrusion of digital technology and social media into daily life. To quote Seinfeld: “That’s a pretty big matzo ball hanging out there.”

Meanwhile, younger Millennials and Gen Z (and now Gen Alpha) have never known life without these technologies – a fact that may be an even bigger matzo ball when it comes to their mental health and the “coddling” of the mind.

I’ve always leaned on Daniel Schmachtenberger’s line, from his discussion with Bret Weinstein, to capture the dehumanising effects of our digital age:

“Porn and online dating are to intimate relationships what Facebook and Twitter are to tribal bonding.”

What’s become increasingly clear to me is how corporate stakeholdership has sunk its claws deep into these technological and consumerist systems – controlling our lives through our dependence on convenience and materialism. This consolidation of corporate power – what might be described as a form of Western Maoism – was most visibly embodied in Klaus Schwab’s “Great Reset” initiative at the World Economic Forum (UN), launched in lockstep with the draconian restrictions imposed following the onset of the pandemic.

“We… the majority of humans, have never been consulted about what we might visualize for an appealing, positive future for mankind. Rather we are being DRIVEN to it by creatures who don’t want our input at all… we are not WE… it’s THEM and what THEY will decide to do with or to US. That’s why humans, rightly so, are concerned and anxious, because we know in our bones… that something evil this way comes.”
— Random YouTube comment

This fusion of corporate stakeholdership and digital platforms has created what some call a Mass Formation – a culture of dependence and subservience to corporate structures in place of family, religion, community, and local governance.

If you want to see this dynamic play out – humorously yet all too realistically – on an everyday level, check out the satirical video Attempts to order a Coffee in 2025. It perfectly captures our absurd surrender to faceless systems and algorithms.

This erosion of individual power, the decline of local and face-to-face interaction, and the rise of the disembodied “information order” that now dominates the world are what Paul Kingsnorth calls “The Machine.” And as Kingsnorth insists – we have to fight it.

“Buy local. Meet face-to-face with the person who grew it or made it, wherever possible. Avoid multinational corporations. If you have a choice, live in a rural community.”
— Another random YouTube comment

Video description:

Kingsnorth has spent decades charting the alienation and upheaval brought about by modernity. In this wide-ranging interview he sets out why he sees today’s technological order as inhuman, why AI may be the ‘Antichrist’, and why he believes the West must be allowed to die. What does it mean to live as a dissident inside the Machine? And what lines must we draw if we are to remain human?

That is all. Thank you for reading.