X-Message-Number: 2277 Subject: CRYONICS Joan Rivers Show From: (Charles Platt) Date: Mon, 24 May 93 18:29:16 EDT For those who like to know about media events featuring cryonics: On June 2 the Joan Rivers Show will be devoted to the topic of immortality. I was at the taping this afternoon, and I appeared in a brief segment dealing with cryonics. Bill Faloon (Saul Kent's partner in the FDA-fighting Life Extension Foundation) appeared in a separate segment dealing with vitamins and other drugs. Unfortunately, the entire first half of the hour-long program was taken up by the Eternal Flame Foundation, those amiable folks who think that by mental power alone, they have unlocked the "immortal cells" in their bodies and will live forever. Several people had warned me to expect a hostile interview, but in fact Joan Rivers took cryonics seriously and asked the usual questions in a reasonably sympathetic manner. Afterward I felt the show had gone well, though of course I haven't seen it yet. I regret I didn't answer the usual question about "What if the cryonics organization goes out of business?" with sufficient force, but otherwise I felt I made a reasonable case for cryonics. The producer had refused beforehand to allow mention of Alcor's 800 number on the air, but I managed to state the organization's name three times and its location in Riverside, California. Bill was excellent in his segment, referring repeatedly to the "criminal FDA" with obvious relish, and arguing vigorously for freedom to buy drugs of one's choice. As for the Eternal Flame people ... they committed the cardinal sin of being not only ridiculous, but dull. Basically their position is, "We're going to live forever because we believe we can." How do they know this? "We just know." Did they get some sort of mystical revelation? "No, we just know." But aren't they already showing significant signs of age? "Yes, but not as much as most people." And so on. Bill feels that viewers may be so disgusted by the first half-hour, they won't bother to watch the rest. I hope he's wrong. The Joan Rivers Show is a CBS program, but they don't network it, they syndicate it. This means that it may be on your local CBS station, or it may be on some other station, or it may not be aired in your area at all. Check your listings for June 2. Incidentally, watching Bill deal with the Eternal Flame people before we went on the show was a lesson in how in- person PR should REALLY be done. I avoided talking to the Flamers, since I regard them as so irrational, there doesn't seem much room for conversation. But Bill immediately started talking to them about anti-aging drugs, charmed them, showed them some of his products, and by the end of it they invited him to speak at their annual conference (attended by about 1500 people). True, the conference will be full of nuts, but they will be nuts who are very interested in staying alive forever, and I'll bet that Bill convinces some of them to start using his products. Unfortunately, I don't have the conviction to "sell" cryonics one-on-one with that kind of forcefulness. I prefer to lay out the facts, let the facts speak for themselves, and let people make up their own minds. I think this may work better in print than in person (which is why I'm a slightly reclusive writer, I guess). If there's someone out there who can present cryonics as charismatically as Bill presents anti-aging drugs, I would hand over the in- person public relations work to him or her without any regrets whatsoever. Meanwhile, I have been pursuing the possibility of selling an article on cryonics to Wired magazine. (In case you haven't seen Wired, it's a mass-market consumer-tech magazine for people who are computer literate.) Unfortunately, the editor I dealt with regarded cryonics as boring (because it's all pie-in-the-sky) and technically suspect, so he wasn't interested. I had to settle for writing an article on nanotechnology which will mention cryonics in passing. If anyone can point me toward very recent research into nanotech, I would appreciate hearing from them right away. I have to deliver the article by June 15. My next target for an article on cryonics is Mondo 2000. --Charles Platt Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=2277