When Jim O'Neill was nominated to be the second in command at the US Department of Health and Human Services, longevity enthusiasts were excited. As Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s new right-hand man, O'Neill is expected to wield authority at health agencies that fund biomedical research and oversee the regulation of new drugs. And while O'Neill doesn't subscribe to Kennedy's most contentious beliefs--and supports existing vaccine schedules--he may still steer the agencies in controversial new directions. O'Neill is well-known in the increasingly well-funded and tight-knit longevity community. In speaking with more than 20 people who work in the longevity field and are familiar with O'Neill, it's clear that they share a genuine optimism about his leadership.

Alex Lacamoire has hearing loss. But the Tony-winning music director of "Hamilton" wants you to know, he's no Beethoven. He's heard that you can see teeth marks on the wood inside Beethoven's piano "because he would bite it to try to be able to hear the vibrations," Lacamoire said. My hearing is not that bad." When he was 2, growing up near Los Angeles' Koreatown, Lacamoire would sit in front of the stereo and stare into the speaker, drawn to music like a drug. When he was 3, his mother observed him sitting too close to the TV, following the characters on "Sesame Street" with his eyes. "I noticed that when I called him, he'd run away like he wasn't paying attention," Maria Lacamoire said. She took him for a hearing test, where it was discovered that he had mild hearing loss. "I think I was a little bit too young for it to really understand," Lacamoire said. "All I remember is, like, oh wow, they're putting this weird goop in my ear to mold me [for hearing aids] and then I walked away and I had these little apparatuses behind my ears." When he was 6, the school district recommended that Lacamoire attend a special class that combined sign-language instruction along with spoken language. "That was devastating for me," his mother said, "because I didn't notice any other problem with him, because he was very smart." She appealed the decision, and Lacamoire was given an IQ test. He not only joined a mainstream class at Commonwealth Avenue Elementary School but also skipped the first grade. "Alex was the most outstanding student I ever had," said his second-grade teacher, Dorothy Chapman, who taught at Commonwealth for 25 years and retired in 2002. Children with hearing loss, especially when that loss is identified late, often lag behind their peers because they've absorbed less vocabulary and less information. Chapman said the charming little 6-year-old would finish his assignments in five minutes, whereas it took his classmates 20, so she would give him third-grade work. "I've just always been drawn to design, whether it's uniformity or harmony -- and by harmony I mean symmetry and balance and those kinds of things," Lacamoire said. He found beauty and design in the piano, and starting lessons at age 4. After his family moved to Miami when he was 9, he attended an arts high school and then the New World School of the Arts. For Lacamoire, music was "as fluid to me as writing down words.