Free Online Book Talk · Reprogramming Life: Beyond the Limits of Aging, Gender, and Identity with Molecular Biologist Dr. Dana Larocca

Monday, March 22, 2027
7pm ET (NYC time)

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Join us for a story involving the quest for immortality, the meaning of transformation, and the nature of identity. It is also a story of the transformation of a scientist through her research.

In this talk, molecular biologist Dr. Dana Larocca will explore the central thesis that biology is far more flexible than we once imagined. Drawing from her new book Reprogramming Life: Beyond the Limits of Aging, Gender, and Identity, she will trace her career as a scientist devoted to extending healthy human longevity. From an insider’s perspective, she will share its major milestones, from gene therapy, stem cells, and regenerative medicine to cellular reprogramming and the study of extreme human longevity.

She will also share here own story. As she witnessed biology’s remarkable capacity for transformation, she began to wonder about her own. Could she ever allow her true inner self to unfold as naturally as life itself? From an extraordinary childhood experience, she knew at a deep level that she was female, yet being assigned male at birth kept her living in a false world, not unlike the Matrix. She kept this truth to herself for decades while building a career, raising a family, and maintaining a social life. Dr. Larocca will describe how she learned to cope with the help of the virtual world of Second Life, which ironically seemed more real because she could finally see herself—and be seen by others—as female.

She will also explore changing attitudes toward trans people from the mid-twentieth century to the present, and how she chose to transition in 2017. She will discuss the neurobiology of innate sex identity, and why the biology she had studied throughout her life convinced her that the path forward was to alter her body to align with her deepest, most authentic self.

In 2006, just as she was entering Second Life to explore her own identity, stem cell researcher and Nobel Prize laureate Shinya Yamanaka was learning how to change the identity of mature adult cells, turning the clock back to an earlier embryonic-like stem-cell state from which all the cells of the body arise. A decade later, as she reached her own tipping point, scientists were discovering that aging itself was astonishingly malleable. Related reprogramming approaches could reverse signs of aging in old cells, tissues, and even animals, this time without erasing cellular identity.

Dr. Larocca will demonstrate how these discoveries helped usher in today’s era of longevity biotechnology. She will end by examining what a future of greater biological freedom might mean for humanity. How far should we go in changing our own biology? If we could dramatically extend healthy life—or even escape death altogether—should we? What ethical boundaries should guide us as our power to reprogram life continues to grow?

Dana Larocca, PhD, is a molecular biologist, biogerontologist, biotechnology entrepreneur, and author of Reprogramming Life: Beyond the Limits of Aging, Gender, and Identity. Her career has explored some of biology’s most fundamental questions: why we age, how cells acquire and change identity, and how regenerative medicine might allow us to reshape biological limits once thought fixed.