The Superhumans Are Coming!

Liam Malone explained to Rebecca Falconer, News Director stuff.co.nz that “he would have liked to have gone to the Tokyo Paralympics in 2020, but he felt he couldn’t carry on because it would have been too costly and time-consuming to build new blades to meet new rules of the governing body.”

Liam Malone in conversation with Andrea Macdonald founder, ideaXme below:

Andrea Macdonald: We are in London for the 2017 Para-Athletics and I sit here with a superhuman. Who are you?

Liam Malone: I am Liam Malone. I am three-quarters biological human being. I am one-quarter artificial human being.

[00:00:21] I was born with the absence of a bi-lateral fibular bone. At 18 months old, they amputated both of my legs from below the knee, and I was given artificial legs. So that’s who I am. I am the World Number 1 blade runner. I am currently out of the World Championships due to injury. I want to become the fastest man person on the planet.

Andrea Macdonald: [00:00:44] Tell us about your plans to become the fastest person on the planet.

Liam Malone: [00:00:47] Sure, so it comes from a broader world view that the future of consciousness and the future of the body will be artificial. If you look at technology and its interactions with the human body today, the conclusion is the body is becoming more artificial.

So, we’re already using artificial aids, from prosthetic limbs to people wearing glasses which is like an artificial eye or contact lenses, to hearing aids to heart transplants. In two hundred to six hundred year’s time, we will have entirely artificial bodies. Especially if we live on other planets!

And so my small role in participating in that change will be using artificial limbs to become the fastest person to run one hundred metres.

Liam Malone: [00:01:38] Now that might sound like a difficult task if you are a mere human being with the legs of a human being but when you have technology that you can innovate on, it becomes much more likely. So, I have one point three seconds between Usain Bolt’s world record time and my personal best. I can decrease time by order of magnitude through simple innovations like increasing or decreasing the thickness of the carbon fibre, reducing its drag, as you know from the wind, and by changing its shape. There’s a lot that I can do that also influences my body and makes adaptions to it. That is what I am working towards for the next three years.

Andrea Macdonald: [00:02:28] And who are you working with on this?

Liam Malone: [00:02:28] I can’t share that part yet.

Andrea Macdonald: [00:02:32] Has it been confirmed?

Liam Malone: [00:02:34] It’s been confirmed but not confirmed publicly.

Andrea Macdonald: [00:02:38] Is that because you don’t want other athletes to know yet?

Liam Malone: [00:02:43] No, it’s just a bit sensitive at the moment.

Andrea Macdonald: [00:02:44] So, would you say that you were a transhumanist?

Liam Malone: [00:02:44] Yes, a hundred percent. Like I said, intelligence is going artificial. We know that. People like Elon Musk are saying that it’s an existential risk. He is working so that we become symbiotic with artificial intelligence. So, our brains and artificial intelligence, those computing powers, connect. Because if we don’t, we’re going to become extinct.

And so yeah, I think that the role of human beings is to build technology that allows us to increase our self-awareness. We are the universe experiencing itself. We are trying to become more self-aware, and the way to do that is allowing ourselves to live forever.

Andrea Macdonald: [00:03:56] So, that was going to be my next question. If someone gave you the opportunity to live forever, would you go that far?

Liam Malone: [00:03:56] Yes, It just depends on what I am confined to, that is, what sort of body I am restricted to, what value of life I have. I wouldn’t want to be a human being forever, I think that would be dreadful. But I think if you had the opportunity to download your consciousness into different forms and go to different planets and understand different things and who knows there might be multiple universes, none of this we know for sure, but I would certainly want to live for more than 100 years.

Andrea Macdonald: [00:04:27] And have you considered being cryogenically preserved?

Liam Malone: [00:04:32] No.

Andrea Macdonald: [00:04:33] You just don’t think that this process is likely to play a part in the future of this movement?

Liam Malone: [00:04:37] No, I just don’t think the biological body is going to last much longer. It’s much easier to replace them. Our bodies are very complex. When I was born, it was much easier to chop my legs off, than try and reshape and redefine them. It’s easier to just chop it off and replace it with something that’s artificial.

So, it makes more sense if we want to live forever to build alternative vehicles to house the whole consciousness, instead of trying to keep these bodies and stop them from decaying. Preserving them over time doesn’t make any sense.

Andrea Macdonald: [00:05:20] So, in this day and age, let’s say over the next 50 years do you think there’s going to be an increase in people who are considered to be able bodied. (I know you don’t like the terms disabled and able-bodied) but do you think that there’s going to be an increase in (for want of a better word) able-bodied people getting enhancements, for instance, we now have artificial replacements for knees and hips. Do you think there’s going to be much more of that shortly?

Liam Malone: [00:05:58] Yes. It is going to go both ways. The biggest enhancement that every single human has had, has been the mobile phone and the internet. I mean that has given us superpowers. The average human being now has access to more information than the president did 30 years ago.

[00:06:16] So, that’s the biggest increase. I think in the near future you will have people chopping off their limbs and replacing artificial limbs by choice, not because there’s anything wrong with their current body, but I think that artificial bodies in the next 50 to 100 years will be considered really attractive because you can mold your body to work however you want.

I would imagine that this is entirely possible, because human beings are strange! I mean we already have plastic surgery which is basically giving yourself artificial skin through to implants and replacements for different parts of the body including artificial hair. Humans are very strange and there are already signs that there is a small movement of people who are obsessed with amputees because they like the prosthetics and it’s kind of creepy. From knees through to feet, through to hands, the world’s going to become very strange in the next 50 to 100 years.

We’re still at the very beginning of the exponential curve in this sort of technology because building technology in the real world is much harder than building it in the binary world of ones and zeros and software. But it is still happening. I mean, if you take me for example, amputees probably never even lived beyond 30 until maybe the last 300 years because we just couldn’t survive. Amputees had not been able to run until the last 40 years.

[00:07:54] If you look at last 15 years, you have one point in the introduction of a new technology where you introduce carbon fibre and then all of a sudden you have people like myself who are literally on the verge of running faster than able-bodied human beings. I run faster than everyone in my country. So, we’re really at the beginning of this curve of going right up to being able to live forever.

Andrea Macdonald: [00:08:18] Can you take us back to your objective of running faster than Usain Bolt? What’s his reaction to this been?

Liam Malone: [00:08:27] Oh well, I’ve got no idea because I have not been in contact with him. It’s not about beating Usain Bolt. I don’t want to detract from Usain Bolt. I am not trying to compete with Usain. I’m trying to turn my disability into my ability through technology. Unless you are a double amputee, it is not an option for you to run faster than Usain Bolt, unless you do a lot of steroids! And there are a whole lot of health risks associated with that, and of course, they have been banned. If you are someone like me, you can innovate, and I think that’s beautiful, as it tells the tale of technology and human progress.

[00:09:10] So, I don’t imagine that Usain Bolt with his millions of dollars is going to care too much about some kid with two fake legs!

Andrea Macdonald: [00:09:15] Your venture into athletics started very recently with the help of your community, Nelson. Can you talk to us about your journey to this point?

Liam Malone: [00:09:35] Sure. Well, it was not just Nelson, it was also with the support of the wider New Zealand community.

Liam Malone: [00:09:38] I was in my first year at university. I was incredibly depressed. Mum had died the year before. My girlfriend had broken up with me. She told me that I would not amount to anything. I ended up drink driving one night, reversed out of a driveway and crashed into a friend’s car and got down the road and went down a bank in my truck. No-one was hurt fortunately and no charges came. So, I was fortunate but it was an immediate wake-up call. The next day I went back to my university dorm room, and I got a load of sheets of paper and wrote success in the middle. I conducted a very detailed analysis of what I could do in 3 years to add value to the world. And then, of that value what I could capture a percentage of to go on and do other things.

Running was the obvious choice. I thought that out of all the options that I had assessed, that was the chance that I could add the most amount of value in and therefore capture a percentage of that value. But I only had the standard walking prosthetics, which are hard to run in.

Liam Malone: [00:10:56] After I decided what I was going to do, I went into the Paralympics office. I told them “In three years time I am going to go to Rio and win. What do I need to do?”

[00:11:03] They said “You can’t go from being a university student who drinks four nights a week, smokes weed and eats unhealthy food and has your lifestyle to being a professional athlete. That is not realistic. Maybe aim for Tokyo, and we’d love to have you there!” I said “Sure, whatever!”

Liam Malone: [00:11:24] Being the A-type personality that I am, I went home and googled “How much money do I need to pay for the running blades?” I thought maybe I could borrow some money from Dad. I found out that they cost thousands of dollars and this was of course outside my university budget. Another option was starting a company, and I barely had enough money to pay for noodles and a few beers at the weekend and so you know that wasn’t an option either, as I had no capital.

I had to figure out how I could get thirty thousand dollars of capital to run. So, I started reaching out to people. Eventually, I got in contact with this reporter. He emailed me and said that he was coming down to Christchurch where I was studying. He said “I’m bringing a cameraman with me. We’re going to come down and put a video together to pitch to the New Zealand public, and we might be able to raise ten percent of the thirty thousand dollars to get you these blades.” So, he comes down, and he’s in my university room, and he says, “How fast can you run now?” I replied, “I haven’t run in six years”. He goes “That’s an issue! We’re going to have to go out to the track”. So, we go out to the track, and I run fifty metres, and I throw up everywhere!

[00:12:32] At that point, I’m lying on the ground, and I am thinking I’m dying and I feel terrible because I am of the opinion that I have wasted this guy’s time. I feel that I am such an embarrassment. He gives me a hand up, and he says, “In three years time, I think that you are going to win!” So, I think “This guy is nuts, and at least I think he’s as nuts as I am!”

[00:12:50] Anyway, so we put this video together. I don’t think anyone is going to buy into the fact that I could do it but sure enough, we made the video, and within twenty-four hours we get fifty thousand dollars from the New Zealand public.

[00:13:00] I went on TV and said if you give me the blades or the money for the blades, in three years I will win. And from that point, I trained twice a day, gave up drinking, eating unhealthy food and smoking cones, the whole lot. It was almost immediate, a complete lifestyle change and it was very difficult. For the first nine months of my training, it would take me fifty minutes just to walk on my blades. If you can imagine wearing shoes a size too small made of carbon fibre that is what it was like for me to wear my blades. But three years later I went to Rio and won!

Andrea Macdonald: [00:13:41] Do you remember the name of the reporter?

Liam Malone: [00:13:44] Yeah, Phil Vine. We’re still in touch. We are friends on Facebook.

Andrea Macdonald: [00:13:49] It’s incredible isn’t it, how just one person believing in you can change the course of a person’s life?

Liam Malone: [00:13:55] Yeah. It takes just one person.

Andrea Macdonald: [00:14:03] To anybody listening thinking of setting out on a journey like this, whether it is to become a famous scientist or athlete; when it’s likely that most people around them will say “Your dream is too big, don’t bother, go home and take up knitting!” What would you say to them?

Liam Malone: [00:14:25] Sure. That is the reaction from most people. Because most people project how they feel about themselves onto others. That’s just the way it goes and so if you’re around people that are really successful which I had the opportunity to be, you will know that they have an energy about them that’s infectious and they will always be encouraging. They will ask questions that will allow you to think about your dream. “What are you doing wrong”, or “What are you doing right that will potentially allow you to succeed or fail” and they will be really constructive in that but they will never say “You can’t do that because in the past you’ve never done anything like that before”.

Negativity usually comes from friends and family which is tough. You just can’t take it to heart. If you really believe in yourself, you’ll just end up doing it anyway. What is most important is your own internal dialogue, that you get control of that. So, that when people start doubting you, you’re confident in your own mind and you’ll end up doing it anyway.

[00:15:28] And that would be my biggest piece of advice “Take control of your inner dialogue” which is how you talk to yourself. Because that usually will get you through the hardships.

Andrea Macdonald: [00:15:39] How do you cope with, or how have you coped with the pain of injury and the pain of getting used to the prosthetics?

[00:15:48] I mean, when we watched the Paralympics in Rio and the Para-Athletics now here in London, there’s very little dialogue in the presentation of these events about the actual physical pain that people might have to go through.

Liam Malone: [00:16:11] By the time I was in Rio, I wasn’t in any pain. Most athletes aren’t. Most have very good prosthetics. Whatever they are using to adapt themselves for an event, wheelchair or whatever.

[00:16:19] We have the same pains that other athletes go through because you’re putting your body through such rigorous training, in whatever event you are doing, whether it is running or kayaking or basketball. It just comes down to being intelligent about how you treat yourself.

[00:16:51] Making sure that you go through your recovery and a lot of the things that make someone successful, are the “one percenters” and that goes for business or sport or the arts or science, it’s the “one percenters” that make a big difference and they add up to being fifteen to twenty percent and so in sport, that’s your stretching, recovery and nutrition. Making sure that you get massages regularly, making sure you don’t over train on injuries.

[00:17:20] And so, if you can do all of that it puts you ahead. Most athletes are A-type personalities, all they want to do is go out and train regardless of having an injury. That’s what I did this year. I came back from Rio with a slight injury, and I just wanted to keep training. That was a big mistake, then I was on crutches for months because I tried to run on a stress fracture for two weeks.

[00:17:43] So, the only way to deal with that pain is, if you are injured, stop! Some people keep going, and they do okay, but more often than not, it leads to heartbreak.

Andrea Macdonald: [00:17:56] At the beginning of this interview we mentioned that we are talking from the Para-Athletics. Can you give us a quick summary of the Para-Athletics so far? What’s been happening?

Liam Malone: [00:18:01] Sure, so we’re at the Para-Athletics World Championships here in London. There’s been a number of events. We have Richard Whitehead, who is a double amputee. He won the two hundred meters. He’s a phenomenal guy. It’s incredible when you watch these blade runners, and they have no knees. They are running on these sorts of poles from the start of their thighs down to a carbon fibre blade, and it is just absolutely fascinating.

[00:18:29] Johnny Peacock won the hundred meters and the race that I should have been in as well, and I should have naturally won that race. But the UK team, well, Britain have dominated, and we are in the homeland. There is no better country in the world that supports their Para-Athletic team. It’s been phenomenal.

The crowds here have been saying I’m speaking loudly down the camera when I am commentating. But it’s been fascinating to watch. I believe that the Paralympics right now is probably in the best position as a sporting event. It has the best opportunity because we are right at the start of this exponential curve for new technologies in the human body. Whereas you have the Olympics which sort of has all these regulations that you can’t bring in new technologies to help human performance and there is only going to be five more Olympics, and the Olympics will look like the Antique Roads Show of sports.

Andrea Macdonald: [00:19:45] Johnnie’s event last night was the hundred meters, so we’ve got the two hundred and four hundred coming up. You won the silver in the hundred, and the gold in the two and four hundred. Who you think is going to win the gold in the two hundred and four hundred?

Liam Malone: [00:20:01] It will be between Johannes Floors and Hunter Woodhall.

Andrea Macdonald: [00:20:05] When are those events?

Liam Malone: [00:20:08] The four hundred is today. The two hundred is later on this week.

Andrea Macdonald: [00:20:15] Are going to be commentating on either of those?

Liam Malone: [00:20:19] Not today because I am wrecked. I had to have the day off. It’s been a busy week, but I am going to try to get there for the two hundred if they allow me.

Andrea Macdonald: [00:20:27] You are an entrepreneur as well as an athlete?

Liam Malone: [00:20:32] I am not an entrepreneur.

[00:20:34] I’ve just started investing as an “angel”. I couldn’t think of anything worse right now than trying to be an entrepreneur. I have friends who are entrepreneurs, and they seem to get only three or four hours sleep a night which would not align well with my life as an athlete but I’m really interested in technology. It obviously plays such a critical role in my life as an athlete today, so it’s important for me as I go through my career to provide support in the form of capital, or maybe later on starting my own company to help facilitate the increase in innovation technologies whether it is in medical devices such as prosthetics or software.

[00:21:16] I find it really fascinating. These eccentric thinkers, who are both really easy to get along with and the sense that they work well in teams but they’re also very arrogant and have a lot of self-belief in their ideas in the way they view the world which is usually very different and contrary to the way other people view the world. So, I am involved in that ecosystem but I not yet an entrepreneur.

Andrea Macdonald: [00:21:44] Are you frightened of anything?

Liam Malone: [00:21:46] My mum died when I was eighteen. She got cancer when I was twelve years old and from twelve through to eighteen, I would have been in the hospice at least once a year for a sustained period of time, when she came close to death or watching her go through radiation and chemotherapy in the hospital.

Liam Malone: [00:22:07] I saw so many people right before they were about to die. And I learnt that so many people live with regret. It’s frightening when you see someone who lives with regret.

[00:22:18] It’s not something you want in your final moments on the planet. You don’t want to be feeling any sort of regret whatsoever. So, that is definitely something that I fear and living my life without regrets is definitely something that motivates me.

Andrea Macdonald: [00:22:30] You are a person who is very easy to speak to. People love you. You were speaking to everyone around you last night when you were commentating at the Para-Athletics, even having selfies taken. Out of everybody you could meet, who would you most like to meet and what question would you like to ask them?

Liam Malone: [00:22:56] I’ve already met Richard Branson. I was fortunate to have dinner with him, but I’d like to have dinner with him again! I want to talk to him about how he’s branded himself, and I am interested in how he set up Virgin, as a sort of holding company that licenses its brand to other entrepreneurs as I don’t think that there is anyone like him on the planet. I think that he is a fabulous storyteller and the business ecosystem he has built is incredible. The way that he’s done it is fascinating.

[00:23:29] And there is a comedian Joe Rogan, who I’d just love to sit down with. He has a podcast called The Joe Rogan Experience which is just absolutely fascinating but then perhaps Donald Trump as well and I’d ask him what goes through as mind, just to try and figure that guy out.

[00:23:50] But the world is full of incredible people. If there’s one person that I would really like to meet again. That would be my mum because I haven’t seen her since I was 18. I would love to ask her how did she know that I would turn out like this? She even predicted that I would go to the Paralympics and win!

Andrea Macdonald: My goodness!

Liam Malone: [00:24:25] Even back to when I was seven or eight years old, one day by our fireplace when I was watching tv, she predicted what I was going to be like in my twenties. She said I would be into skydiving adventure sports.

Liam Malone: [00:24:50] She always thought that I would accomplish big things. At eighteen I was drinking all the time and a drug dealer selling weed to my friends. I couldn’t even get benefit, my dole money. I even failed at that. There was no indication that I would achieve anything in my life at eighteen years old.

Andrea Macdonald: [00:25:21] But she knew?

Liam Malone: [00:25:22] Yeah, I would love to ask her why she did. Why she thought that.

Liam Malone: [00:25:23] Dad and I are close. He has been an incredible father. He works globally. We clash heads like crazy. We argue all the time. I like to think of it as a good debate!

Liam Malone: [00:25:35] He’s certainly inspired my love of debating and thinking and everything like that. He’s an awesome guy. I used to hate him as a child because he would talk about the importance of being organized, of eating healthily, the dangers of alcohol and importance of fitness. And even before the anti-sugar movement came, he was into all of that and well and truly into being a healthy human being. He is like the ultimate life hacker!

He’s been talking about sleep and the importance of sleep since I can remember. The guy should have his own podcast. I mean yeah, he’s a great guy.

Andrea Macdonald: [00:26:23] What does he do?

Liam Malone: [00:26:23] So, he works hard. It’s hard to describe. He works in the fruit industry. He’s a genius. He’s involved in procurement. He is involved in creating new species of fruit. So, new types of kiwifruit that are resistant to frost. He travels the world. He goes to different orchards. He helps Chilean producers of kiwifruit. He gets their fruit into China, as well as helping the Chinese to develop new types of kiwifruit in their own country through to a whole range of different things.

[00:27:00] He has his hands in a lot of pies. He is very hardworking. The guy works sixteen hours a day. He just loves fruit and communicating the importance of healthy eating. It’s kind of hard to cover everything and describe all of the things that he does.

Andrea Macdonald: [00:27:14] You have incredible ancestry as well?

Liam Malone: [00:27:16] Yes, I do, even going back to England and Ireland. My great great great grandfather was the Lord Mayor of Manchester. He was a radical Liberal at the time and didn’t want to pay tax for his newspaper, so the queen put him in jail. And as a result, the people of Manchester fell out with the queen.

She was supposed to open the town hall and when he was released from prison, they asked him to open the town hall instead of the queen. So, he is fascinating! And then I am related to a bunch of colonels who fought in different wars going back and my grandfather was the Mayor of Nelson. There were a lot of politicians, who all seem to have this trait of enjoying arguing with people and having this A-type personality. So, I guess that’s where it comes from.

Andrea Macdonald: [00:28:21] So you’ve got go-getting DNA?

Liam Malone: [00:28:23] Yes. I have got go-getting DNA, and I am blessed to have that.

Andrea Macdonald: [00:28:30] Talking about politics, would you ever be interested in being a politician?

Liam Malone: [00:28:31] I hope that AI (artificial intelligence) plays a major role in politics in the future. On one level, it could, in the future provide deeper and broader information which informs the public and thereby allows them to be more informed in their decision making, be more engaged in the political process with the result being to strengthen our democracy.

[00:29:24] Hopefully, politics as we know it won’t exist in the near future because it’s just such a mess but in saying that, if politics is still around, which it probably will be then sure I would like to be a politician.

Andrea Macdonald: [00:29:40] Would you like to be a transhumanist politician.

[00:29:44] That would be tough because politicians and technology just do not go together. In New Zealand, the politicians have been deciding whether or not they should make Uber illegal and they just did not get it. You could not explain to them the difference between an Uber and a taxi. So, I think trying to be transhumanist politician would be the most impossible thing to do because you’re talking about people who believe in a system of doing things the way they’ve always been done and the opposite of trying to build the future as fast as possible, which is sort of like transhumanism.

Andrea Macdonald: [00:30:23] As a final point a message to Usain Bolt from you?

Liam Malone: [00:30:30] Your body is outdated.

Andrea Macdonald: [00:30:33] Let’s see how he reacts to that.

Liam Malone: [00:30:40] We will.

Andrea Macdonald: [00:30:41] It’s been an absolute pleasure speaking with you Liam Malone.

Liam Malone: [00:30:46] Thank you very much for having me.

Andrea Macdonald: [00:30:47] Thank you so much for your time, particularly as you are so busy commentating on the Para-Athletics. I appreciate it.

Liam Malone: [00:30:51] Thank you very much. It is always a pleasure!

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Credits: Andrea Macdonald interview video, text, and audio

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