Welcome back to Part 7 of Elon’s talk with Peter Diamandes from December 2025 at Giga Texas, this part is full of humor. Bookmark it for when you are feeling down, and need a little lift up!

Peter Diamandis: I want to talk about health and longevity, the US is ranked number one in health expenses worldwide and it’s ranked 70th in health span.

Elon Musk: Oh really? 70th?

Peter Diamandis: 70th.

Elon Musk: Is that accurate? Sounds low. (Ask Grok?) I think we’d be better than 70th for health span.

Peter Diamandis: Yeah, well whatever…

Elon Musk: It’s like we just get fat or something.

Peter Diamandis: We’re not the top 10.

Elon Musk: Maybe Ozempic can help us climb the rankings there, haha! We need cupid but with Ozempic! Haha! Mounjaro cupid, haha! But I think that’s a big reason. It’s like if people get really fat, then their health gets bad.

(Elon is rolling laughing at this point. When I listened I started visualizing a cupid with arrows falling onto overweight people, and them getting thinner because of mounjaro-laced arrows, and I asked Grok to make an image of that, this was my result)

Quick Context on the “70th” Ranking Mention (for Accuracy): Peter says the US is ranked 70th in “health span.” Recent data (2023–2025) shows US life expectancy around 78–79 years, ranking roughly 40th–60th globally (e.g., ~48th–61st in various sources like Worldometer or Peterson-KFF), not quite as low as 70th—but it’s still far behind peers (e.g., comparable wealthy countries average ~82–83 years). Health span (healthy years, not total lifespan) is often lower and harder to rank precisely, so the “70th” might be a rough or older figure, or specific to certain metrics. Elon’s skepticism (“Sounds low”) is understandable!

Peter Diamandis: Yeah, well, if you don’t have any exercise, health gets bad. Or if they eat donuts for breakfast every morning. You still doing that?
Elon Musk: No, actually I’m not.
Peter Diamandis: Okay, that’s good!
Elon Musk: First of all, I wasn’t eating a lot of donuts. I was trying to have 0.4 of a donut, which rounds down to zero. Anything below 0.44 of a donut rounds down to zero.
Peter Diamandis: So you and I have had a disagreement on longevity.
Elon Musk: We did!?
Peter Diamandis: A little bit. Yeah. I was saying, you know, we should push to get people to 120, 150. And you were saying people, you know, should….
Elon Musk: (laughing, joking)… die, die, die haha! So how long do you want? Yeah, there’s some, you know, people in the world that have done some bad things. How long do you want them to live?
Peter Diamandis: Yeah, well, it’s okay, we can figure that out. One thing that you said was interesting. You said we need people to die so people change their minds.
Elon Musk: Oh, yes. People don’t change their minds, they just die.
Peter Diamandis: My response to that, Elon, was—my response to that was that the head of GM didn’t have to die for Tesla to come along and Lockheed and Northrop and Boeing didn’t have to go away for—I mean, in a meritocracy, the better ideas will dominate. So I’m hoping that I can get you back onto the longevity train. So there’s a lot going on in longevity right now, right?
Elon Musk: Like what?

ELON CRACKS UP LAUGHING AT POSSIBILITY OF TOO MUCH LONGEVITY

Peter Diamandis: Well, David Sinclair is about to start his epigenetic reprogramming trials in humans. It’s worked in animals and non-human primates. It’s going into humans.

Elon Musk: How is this like a pill or injection or what?

Peter Diamandis: An injection. Right now it’s an injection of an adeno-associated virus. It’s the three Yamanaka factors. Okay, we’ve got a $101 million Healthspan XPRIZE that’s working with 730 teams working on reversing the age of your brain, immune system and muscle by 20 years. By the way, do you know why it’s $101 million?

Elon Musk: No.

Peter Diamandis: Because the primary funder, when they found out your Carbon XPRIZE was 100 million bucks, he wanted to make it bigger. So it’s 101. It was Chip Wilson from Lululemon.

Elon Musk: Oh, okay. Sounds good.

Peter Diamandis: It’s a good story. But then we’ve got folks like Dario Amodei predicting doubling the human lifespan in the next 10 years.

Elon Musk: Ummm, that’s probably correct. I don’t know about doubling, but a significant increase.

Dave Blundin: Which is easily escape velocity.

Elon Musk: Depending on how old you are, haha.

Dave Blundin: Oh, yeah, for sure. Or effective age. Yeah, yeah…

Elon Musk: (laughing) Too much, and you’ll turn into a baby or something…

Peter Diamandis: That’s what I’m telling all the students…

Dave Blundin: It’s like, Peter, what happened? Goo goo, gaa gaa (baby sounds) You got a zero wrong in the dosage.

Peter Diamandis: Just a small factor of 10, haha!

Dave Blundin: You will grow out of it, it’ll be fine.

Elon Musk: You won’t remember it, haha! Literally!

Elon Musk: I mean, wouldn’t it be funny if we do this in like 10 years? Okay, we should do it, we’ll do it in 10 years for sure. And let’s see if we look younger (all laughing hysterically).

Dave Blundin: That’s a good side bet!

ADULT DIAPERS OUTSELLING BABY DIAPERS

Peter Diamandis: My comment was always back then Elon was like, you know, late 40s. Wait till he gets into his 60s. He’s going to want more longevity.

Elon Musk: I mean, I want things to not hurt. It’s like, basically it seems like it’s only a matter of time before you get back pain. Like it’s a when, not an if. When your back hurts.

Peter Diamandis: Arthritis.

Elon Musk: Yeah. Like these things suck. Basically, being able to sleep through the night without going to the bathroom, haha. (Elon bursts out laughing, he is likely picturing adult diapers)

Elon Musk: It’s more than hope, for that one. Oh, man, that would—that’s like the infinite money one!

Peter Diamandis: (laughing) Why did YOU invest in longevity? So I could sleep through the night, and not go to the bathroom, haha.

Elon Musk: Bladder. Bladder duration. I mean, admittedly, if you have to wear adult diapers, that’s a bummer!

Dave Blundin: That is a bummer. That’s not good!

Elon Musk: Adult diapers are real. It’s like one of the signs that a country—it’s not on the right path. It’s when the adult diapers exceed the baby diapers.

Peter Diamandis: Yeah, we’re there.

Dave Blundin: South Korea will be there.

Elon Musk: They’ve already— No, they passed that point

Dave Blundin: Are they past that point?

Elon Musk: They passed that point many years ago. Japan passed that point many years ago.

Dave Blundin: It doesn’t go well, looking at the Japanese economy.

Elon Musk: No, I mean, like, South Korea is like—yeah, one-third replacement rate.

Peter Diamandis: Yeah.

Elon Musk: Isn’t that crazy? Yeah. So in three generations, they’re going to be 1/27th. So 3% of their current size. I mean, North Korea won’t need to invade. They can just walk across. There’s just going to be some people in, you know, walkers or something!

Math checks out for South Korea ~0.33 fertility rate (1/3 replacement): (1/3)^3 = 1/27 ≈ 3.7%

Dave Blundin: There’ll be a bunch of Optimus robots by then that will…

Peter Diamandis: But you, you know, you’ve been very verbal about the, you know, the—not overpopulation, but massive underpopulation.

Elon Musk: Yeah. For ages. Yeah.

Peter Diamandis: Longevity is going to be an important part of that solution. I also think, by the way, if you increased the productive life of most Americans by just a few years, you’d flip the entire economics here, if they’re willing to work.

Elon Musk: Well, AI and robots is going to make everything free, basically. But, how long would you want to live?

Peter Diamandis: I want to go to, you know, to other planetary systems. I want to go explore the universe.

Elon Musk: Yeah.

Peter Diamandis: I mean, you know, I would like to double my lifespan for sure. I don’t want, you know, I’m not sure I wanted to talk about immortality, but, you know, at least 120, 150. It’s a long time.

Elon Musk: One of the worst curses possible would be that you live forever.

Peter Diamandis: Yeah.

Elon Musk: That would be one of the worst curses you could possibly give anyone.

My Two Cents: Humor is a good way to approach our aging population. Adult diapers have always been funny to me, as they were to my grandma Helen Nelson when she needed them periodically at night in her 80’s. She used to joke she was a great big baby. This taught me humor, and with her joyful ways, it taught mew to find the humor in all things.

Helen Sophia Louise Nelsen Nelson lived from 1913-2001.

Always full of humor, life and joy.

Helen Sophia Louise Nelsen Nelson was the first licensed woman Pilot in the state of North Dakota (1951)

This transcript is from Moonshots with Peter Diamandis, Episode #220: Elon Musk on AGI Timeline, US vs China, Job Markets, Clean Energy & Humanoid Robots. Recorded December 22, 2025, at Tesla’s Giga Texas factory in Austin, Texas. Released January 6, 2026.