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Podcasts

Putin’s plan to live forever<br>Cryo chambers, mini pigs, and $26 billion are fueling his quest for immortality.

by Miles Bryan and Noel King<br>Jun 16, 2026, 11:15 AM UTC<br>Share<br>Gift

Russian President Vladimir Putin walks through the Kremlin in Moscow on June 3, 2026. Ramil Sitdikov/Pool/AFP via Getty Images

“Longevity” — a buzzy catchall for the quest for a longer life — is having a moment. Tech titans like Peter Thiel, Mark Zuckerberg, and Jeff Bezos are spending billions to fund research into how to slow aging. Celebrities like Gwyneth Paltrow and Hailey Bieber are touting peptide use. And the world’s most powerful authoritarian leaders are jumping on the bandwagon too.

Last fall, a hot mic caught Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping gabbing — through a translator — about how organ replacement may soon allow people to live to 150 or older. The conversation caught the attention of Bojan Pancevski, the Wall Street Journal’s chief European political correspondent. He had been curious about Putin’s obsession with health for a long time.

According to Pancevski, Putin is “quite serious about his issues. So I decided to look up and see what he was talking about. It turned out he was actually referencing a state program.”

Pancesvki’s reporting journey led to a viral article on Putin’s $26 billion longevity program. Pancesvki talked to Today, Explained co-host Noel King about how Putin’s scientists plan to replace organs (pity the pigs), the role Putin’s daughter plays, and the long history of Russian leaders pursuing immortality.

Below is an excerpt of their conversation, edited for length and clarity. There’s much more in the full podcast, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify.

The $26 billion is money being spent on this longevity project. And one of the things it’s being spent on, as you said, is organ replacement. Where do the poor pigs fit in here? Tell me what happened.

The mini pigs. Yeah, that’s a bit creepy. Poor little mini pigs.

Essentially, there are two ways they’re looking to achieve organ replacement for humans. One of them is 3D printing. I think everyone by now has heard of 3D printing — they can print a glass, a glove, even a whole house. But there are also 3D printers that print biological tissue, and the Russians are hoping to print organs quite soon. The idea is you print an organ in the lab and implant it into a human being — say, lungs, a liver, or even a heart. That’s the aspiration.

The second thing is the mini pigs. They are genetically close to humans in some ways, and they are genetically modified as well. They’re growing organs in these mini pigs and then implanting them into human beings. I don’t think people who get organs like that live very long — for various reasons, the body rejects the organs. But it is a technique that is actually quite promising. It’s not a fantasy. Other countries, notably China, are doing this as well.

You also wrote that Vladimir Putin loves a “reverse sauna.” What is this?

He loves a cryo chamber. A cryo chamber is basically a room like a sauna, but the exact opposite, because it’s extremely cold. I think it’s minus 170 [degrees] Fahrenheit, if I’m not mistaken.

What he does is, he strips naked, walks in, and stands there for a few minutes in that horrible cold. I discussed this with the former chancellor of Austria, Sebastian Kurz, who visited Putin in the Kremlin. During the conversation, Putin just brought this up and talked about it for quite a while.

Kurz, who at the time was just over 30 years old — I think he was the world’s youngest leader — was listening to this, and he told me later, “That was weird.” Kurz said, “We were here to talk politics, and then suddenly he started talking about health and longevity and how you should use this reverse sauna.”

They’re looking into how to slow down or even stop the actual aging process within human cells. They’re looking into peptides. Again, something very familiar — I think RFK Jr. is very big on peptides.

Related<br>Please don’t inject yourself with bootleg peptides

Putin had one longevity guru who was a geriatric doctor. He was a very esteemed professor of medicine, and he had been looking into peptides for many decades, even back in the Soviet days. He was a peptide pioneer. When asked in an interview, “What is your...