About this site

Messy Humans Presents... is an independent publication launched in January 2026 by Aleks Krotoski that documents the utopias we build and the people who wreck them. It’s a newsletter in seasons, with an episode every week over fifteen weeks. It begins, appropriately, with the death of death.

From the epic of Gilgamesh to the alchemy of the philosopher’s stone, humanity’s eternal quest for immortality – and its rejuvenation tricks, therapies and tinctures – has always been our most mortal endeavour.

But now the giants of invention and investment are building a fountain of youth of their own creation: one they not only engineer, but also own and control. Death is simply their next problem to solve, the latest expression of a hubris that regards humans as appliances to be fixed and machines to be upgraded. By harnessing technology to ‘cure’ ageing, and funding cutting-edge – and often controversial – research, today’s immortalists are locked in an arms race to be the first to pocket the profits of longevity.

What was once a wild west of experimentation has wormed its way into Washington’s corridors of power. Award-winning broadcaster and academic Aleks Krotoski journeys from those cult fringes to the heartlands of government to meet the moguls, effective altruists, geroscientists and entrepreneurs who are disrupting death. Along the way she encounters radical life extensionists transfusing their teenage son’s blood, transhumanists who want to upload consciousness to the cloud, biohackers flogging AI-powered wellness apps and billionaire kingmakers building brand-new nations.

What does it truly mean to be human, and do we really want a handful of Silicon Valley techno-fundamentalists to be the architects of our forever?

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Pre-order the book of the first season NOW and get the full copy of The Immortalists: The Death of Death and the Race for Eternal Life when it’s released in the US on March 3, 2026!

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