Meet the transhumanist candidate taking on Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton

‘I don’t actually feel attracted to robots.’ Presidential candidates have to deny all kinds of things, but only Zoltan Istvan would be compelled to clarify that he’s not interested in sleeping with robots. As the Transhumanist Party’s contender, he’s unsurprisingly enthusiastic about some pretty far-out ideas involving the crossover between people and machines. He even recently injected a rice-sized microchip into his hand, which can literally open doors. That said, with the speed of tech, his chip is almost obsolete: he knows guys working on ones that will ‘allow you to pay at Starbucks’. But it’s useful for when he’s been out running, as he has when we meet at his red wooden house, in a suburb of San Francisco. 

He looks more of a swimmer than a runner — tall and broad, blond and presidential: a cross between Phelps and Schwarzenegger. Not that he’ll win, of course. And he’s aware of that, to the extent that it was significant for him to come out as intending to vote for himself.