The Man Thats Ageing Backwards: “I Was 45, I’m Now 18!” - Bryan Johnson

Steven Bartlett 0:01 Those are all the pills you take in one day.

Bryan Johnson 0:03 One hundred and eleven, because that's where the data led me. This is how you don't die. Brian Johnson. The man who spends two million dollars a year to slow down his age.

Steven Bartlett 0:11 He's managed to reverse his biological age already.

Bryan Johnson 0:14 To an 18-year-old. Projected to live to 200. The only objective we have is don't die. I've opted into an algorithm that takes better care of me than I can myself. It sounds overwhelming in the beginning, but trust me on this. So, my bedtime is at 8:30.

Steven Bartlett 0:29 And you had 100% sleep?

Bryan Johnson 0:31 Four months straight now.

Steven Bartlett 0:32 What about hanky panky?

Bryan Johnson 0:33 Not after 8:30.

Steven Bartlett 0:34 Alcohol?

Bryan Johnson 0:35 Three ounces every morning with breakfast.

Steven Bartlett 0:36 For breakfast?

Bryan Johnson 0:37 For breakfast. My last meal of the day is at 11:00 a.m., and every calorie has to fight for its life.

Steven Bartlett 0:42 You were very kind in bringing me some food. Presumably, this is what you eat.

Bryan Johnson 0:45 That's right. If you ask the body, "What do you want to eat to be in ideal health?" This is the answer that it generated.

Steven Bartlett 0:51 That is a mushroom covered in chocolate.

Bryan Johnson 0:53 How fun.

Steven Bartlett 0:56 Why is Brian doing this? I was thinking about what your father went through, and I was wondering if there's some kind of link there.

Bryan Johnson 1:01 Hmm, it was always on my mind. I mean, he's in pain and he's stuck and he can't overcome this terrible thing that's ruining his life, you know? Just maybe I've always felt like a protector of my dad maybe.

Steven Bartlett 1:20 Are you trying to keep him alive?

Bryan Johnson 1:21 I am.

Steven Bartlett 1:23 You're very, very clearly mission-driven. The ultimate question becomes, are you happy?

Bryan Johnson 1:29 Um...

Steven Bartlett 1:34 Before this episode starts, I have a small favor to ask from you. Two months ago, 74% of people that watched this channel didn't subscribe. We're now down to 69%. My goal is 50%. So if you've ever liked any of the videos we've posted, if you like this channel, can you do me a quick favor and hit the subscribe button? It helps this channel more than you know, and the bigger the channel gets, as you've seen, the bigger the guests get. Thank you and enjoy this episode. Brian,

Steven Bartlett 2:08 what mission are you on and why does that mission matter to you, but also to everybody else listening to this right now?

Bryan Johnson 2:16 My mission is for the human race to survive and thrive, and it's figuring out what we do that creates the highest probability of that being possible.

Steven Bartlett 2:29 And why specifically have you taken on that mission versus any other mission you could have committed your life and time to? Why you?

Bryan Johnson 2:35 (laughs) Hmm.

Steven Bartlett 2:38 And I want the long answer to this.

Bryan Johnson 2:39 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 2:40 The con- all the context going right back-

Bryan Johnson 2:41 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 2:41 ... to the beginning.

Bryan Johnson 2:43 Um, I had this transformative experience when I was 19 years old. I went to Ecuador and I was a missionary, and I lived among extreme poverty, dirt floors, mud huts, people not knowing how they're going to make ends meet day-to-day. And I came back to the United States and my family was poor growing up, but it was opulent compared to Ecuador. I couldn't believe that I had lived in a bubble my entire life, unaware of circumstances of other realities like where I was at in Ecuador. And I was facing decisions in college, what to study, what to become, who I was going to be. You start creating these identities. All I could identify was this fire that had lit within me, that I wanted to spend my life trying to improving the human race at a global scale. I don't know where it came from, but it just... Coming back from Ecuador, it seemed like that was what I wanted to spend my life on. I didn't know what to do. I was 21 years old. I didn't have any ideas, and so I thought I would become an entrepreneur, make a whole bunch of money by the age of 30, and then with that money, try to figure out a plan to do it. And so, lucky me, I sold Braintree Venmo at 34 and made a few hundred million dollars.

Steven Bartlett 3:47 You sold $300 million, right?

Bryan Johnson 3:48 Mm-hmm. And then I set my mind to this question of what one thing in existence could I do that would be relevant in the 25th century? I grew up on biographies, and so I'm accustomed to thinking about things on a century's timescale. So doing things that, not that matter in the news cycle tomorrow, but that intelligence in the 25th century would say, "You know what? We appreciate what happened in the early 21st century."

Steven Bartlett 4:17 Take me a couple years further backwards in the,

Steven Bartlett 4:20 the timeline. I want to understand before the age of 16-

Bryan Johnson 4:24 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 4:24 ... how would you describe the personality of that young man? If I, if I, if you walked in here now and you sat down, wha- how would you, like, characterize that young man?

Bryan Johnson 4:31 Friendly and fun. So I think the, the event, that activity maybe that defines me the best is I was in 7th grade going into 8th grade and there was... The kids started breaking out into different groups of identities, stoners, jocks, you know, nerds. And it saddened me because I wanted to be friends with everybody and people started creating these groups and there was this conflict between which groups can hang out with which groups. And so I made a, a map of the social structure of the entire school, of what people were in what groups and then where they're at within that group. So were they the, the alpha in the group? And then you had the second tiers and third tiers. And then I systematically went about and I became friends with everyone in the entire school, every single group. And it didn't matter who you were, uh, I wa- I was friends with you. And so I really enjoyed connecting with people, I enjoyed the friendships, I enjoyed the interactions, I enjoyed different people for different reasons. And, uh, I guess that's kind of stuck with me, where I... The idea of group structure and the hindering, it's the same with ideas. Like if you're into a certain idea and you can't bridge to another idea.

Steven Bartlett 5:40 The outcome wasn't the most telling part of that story. The most telling part of that story was the process.

Bryan Johnson 5:43 (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 5:44 The process of you made a physical, like a, a physical diagram-

Bryan Johnson 5:47 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 5:47 ... at school.

Bryan Johnson 5:48 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 5:48 You didn't just do it in your head. You, you went home as, how, a 16-year-old or something? Or younger?

Bryan Johnson 5:52 Yeah. Uh, uh, yeah. So I was, um, like 13. 12 or 13, yeah.

Steven Bartlett 5:57 You must be able to say objectively that that's unusual behavior for a 12-year-old to be that analytical about problem-solving.

Bryan Johnson 6:03 ... uh-

Steven Bartlett 6:04 For a 12-year-old, that's not what I was doing when I was 12.

Bryan Johnson 6:06 (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 6:06 I was kicking, kicking a plastic ball against a fence.

Bryan Johnson 6:09 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 6:09 And you're dissecting the social structure of the school and then manipulating it to make friends with everybody.

Bryan Johnson 6:14 Yeah, that's how information presents itself. Like, when I meet somebody, uh, like in the movie A Beautiful Mind with John Nash, uh, who, who did, uh, Equilibrium, uh, Nash Equilibrium, uh, there's a scene where you go into his garage and he has this big wall and it has, like, pictures and then it has pins and it has threads, you know, everything connected, and it's like this madman's wall. That's how my, my mind understands information, is when I meet somebody or, or look at a given problem, I instantaneously go to creating a map of all information. Uh, like, what are the centerpieces? What's connecting to what? How is it structured? What's the dimensions of it? And so even if I meet someone new and they tell me a story, like, you know, "I was at the coffee shop and..." You know, like, what details do they include in this conversation? Uh, what is their assessment of the person they're telling me about? What about the reaction of other people or what elements do they identify? And that then enables me to create the structure of their mind and how they package information. And so I, yeah, in my mind, just naturally, uh, hangs onto every single word and creates a scaffolding of how the person understands reality.

Steven Bartlett 7:14 That sounds exhausting to someone whose mind-

Bryan Johnson 7:16 (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 7:16 ... does not work in that way.

Bryan Johnson 7:17 (laughs) It's, it's exhilarating.

Steven Bartlett 7:23 So at 19 years old, you go off on this, this Mormon mission to Ecuador. This ultimately culminates in it ques- ch- challenging your faith. Um, happened to be at the same age, in fact.

Bryan Johnson 7:33 Uh-huh. Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 7:33 I was very religious when I was younger, and then 18, 19 years old, that's... All starts to fall

Steven Bartlett 7:38 apart. What was your process like?

Bryan Johnson 7:41 Uh, it was torture. And I think... I'm not sure what religion you were in.

Steven Bartlett 7:46 Christianity or whatever, you know.

Bryan Johnson 7:47 Yeah. (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 7:48 (laughs)

Bryan Johnson 7:48 Okay, yeah. Yeah. This was not a whatever thing for me, right? (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 7:51 Yeah. Yeah. (laughs)

Bryan Johnson 7:51 When you- when you're a raised Mormon, like, it is your singular reality and identity of existence. It's not like you're casually involved.

Steven Bartlett 8:01 Mm-hmm.

Bryan Johnson 8:01 It's everything you are as a human. And so when you are... like when you're born into it and then force-fed that and your entire community is built upon that, it creates structures in your mind that you're not even aware of. And so as I began breaking from it, I would rationally be able to walk to the conclusion and say, "Logically, I don't understand the situation," but then emotionally, the brain was like, "Hold tight," you know, like, "We feel the following things. We can't quite structure in a logical format," and it creates this bizarre conundrum in the brain. And so I had that difficulty. Then that got caught up in my depression, where, uh, in my early 20s, I, my brain... I got into this chronic depression where the brain was like, "Life is awful." You know, "Everything is hopeless. Life is not worth living. You should kill yourself." And so in that moment, I learned that I could observe my brain dropping these thoughts on me and that I wasn't my thoughts. The depression was s-... The depression was speaking, but it wasn't me. And when I learned that, I thought, "Wait a second. If I am observing depression in action here, what can I trust from my brain in the first place?" So when a thought drops in my, my awareness, where did that come from, and could I trust it? Under what circumstances? And then I realized if my brain is doing this to me, other brains are doing this to other people. How can I trust their brains? And so, uh, it... It's like this authority collapse, where in religion all the people who I trusted to tell me... to give me w- wise advice about life, that fell apart. My brain fell apart. Other people's brains fell apart. And I began arriving to s- this observation, who in reality could I trust and under what circumstances? And that really started... that kickstarted the process of me trying to reconstruct my reality in a way that I felt was stable versus, like, ping-ponging around to, like, this wild emotion and this random thought from my brain.

Steven Bartlett 9:56 How long did your depression last, and when did it start?

Bryan Johnson 9:59 Uh, age 24. I remember I was in the, uh, parking lot one day with my brother. We were working on a startup. And something just broke in my brain. I remember telling him, like, "Hey," like, "something just happened. I feel it. It's weird." And he was like, "Just power through it," and I'm like, "Okay." But I, I physically felt something happen one day, and then I just got in this funk for 10 years and I couldn't get out of it.

Steven Bartlett 10:22 10 years?

Bryan Johnson 10:22 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 10:24 And what did that funk look like practically day to day or week by week?

Bryan Johnson 10:30 It, it was, uh... There was, like, all these different layers of problems, so I, I was married. We had a f- uh, we had our first baby at the age of 25, so I've got a baby at home. I'm not sleeping. We're taking care of the first one. Then I'm building startups on top of that, and then I'm work- also working my way out of Mormonism, but then that's a conflict because my wife is, you know, also Mormonism and then the kid... Like, the communities around us and all my entire world is this community. And so then we don't have any money to pay our bills 'cause I'm in a startup. I'm trying to figure out how to deal with the religion thing, trying to keep my marriage together. It just creates this disaster of a circumstance where I just, I'm paralyzed and stuck in the depression, in the relationship, in the religion, not sleeping, depressed, trying to survive in the startup world. And it, it was a- that was kind of my state for about 10 years, trying to navigate all those competing complexities.

Steven Bartlett 11:18 Wh- i- when you look back and try... you diagnose the factors that caused that depression, is it that, that pressure from all different sides that you think caused the depression?

Bryan Johnson 11:28 I do. And so during that 10 years, I, I pursued solving my depression with equal rigor as I have anything else. I tried everything known to humans to solve depression, nothing worked. The thing that worked is my relationship ended, and I left the Mormon church. And it just lifted. And that was the most remarkable experience in my life. I just thought it was, like, this permanent state I couldn't exit. But, uh, those two modifications just lifted the cloud.

Steven Bartlett 11:56 And what did that teach you about the nature of your depression?

Bryan Johnson 12:00 Uh, I was paralyzed.And those decisions felt unthinkable to me. Even though I could logically conclude this religion was not something I was going to follow and the relationship wasn't working out, the idea of becoming a divorced father and being in that circumstance, the idea of leaving my entire community, of going out and staking out a new existential reality, it paralyzed me. And I couldn't get over the idea that it would be better on the other side, and once I, once I got myself there, that it's actually better for the kids, that was the key thing for me, is there was one experience, I was in Turkey with some friends late at night, and it snapped in my brain, "The kids are better off with these decisions." And that's all I needed, and then the next day I put everything into motion.

Steven Bartlett 12:50 And why, why did that matter to you so much, do you think?

Bryan Johnson 12:54 I suppose that, uh, for whatever reason, I have been an intensely devoted father. Like, I care deeply about being there for my children.

Steven Bartlett 13:04 For whatever reason?

Bryan Johnson 13:05 Yeah, I mean, I don't know why. You know, like it's just, it's, maybe it's part of my identity, maybe I'm trying to compensate for something, I don't know, but I, I invested very, very heavily into my children. And the idea of being a divorced father, you know, with like some kind of split custody situation, with some kind of weird thing between Mom and me, and like, you know, that whole thing, I just, I couldn't, I couldn't sign up for it. And so I ke- I stayed in the bad relationship, I stayed in the religion trying to, thinking that it was my kids were better off because of it, and I, really, they weren't.

Steven Bartlett 13:40 Somewhat links to your own childhood, doesn't it, where your parents separated when you were super young?

Bryan Johnson 13:46 Yeah, like, so much was going on in my mind when I'm three years old and my dad is no longer present, and then my mom remarried at eight, my father goes through a bunch of problems, and... Like, I remember, my father, uh, I give credit to my father for owning up to his life. I remember I, I knew my father was on drugs at the age of seven or eight, and I would call him when I knew he was high. I'd say, "Hey Dad," like, "How's it going?" And, you know, like, um, I just knew it. I'd write him letters and, like, he, you know, um... Yeah, we just worked through it together, but, uh, it was always on my mind.

Steven Bartlett 14:28 Makes you visibly emotional to say that.

Bryan Johnson 14:30 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 14:31 Why?

Bryan Johnson 14:33 I mean, he's in pain, and he's stuck, and he can't overcome this terrible thing that's ruining his life, and he's not a father to me, and, you know, he, he, uh, he can't pick me up when he says he's gonna pick me up, and he can't do the things he wants to do. So it just, it, uh, it depr- it, uh, it steals life from him and it steals life from me, and it's something that, uh, you know, dominated his life for a long time.

Steven Bartlett 15:01 You make that decision

Steven Bartlett 15:02 to separate and to leave the community of Mormonism. What's life like from then onwards?

Bryan Johnson 15:10 Uh, I mean, so it was... I, I sold Braintree.

Steven Bartlett 15:15 Yeah.

Bryan Johnson 15:15 And so within one year's time, I sold Braintree, got a divorce, left the church, and, um, overcame my depression.

Steven Bartlett 15:27 Wow.

Bryan Johnson 15:29 And-

Steven Bartlett 15:30 What a year. (laughs)

Bryan Johnson 15:31 (laughs) What a year. And I think maybe the moment it captures it the most is I was, I was in Virginia at the time, and I was looking at where I was going to live next, and so I spent some time in New York, and for the first time, I went to a party in, uh, Brooklyn, uh, a warehouse party, where they'd be- they start like at midnight or 1:00, and I'd go there with some friends and I would dance for six, seven hours. And it was, I think, one of the most joyful experiences of my entire life. I had never danced before, but for some reason, this moment of eliminating all this weight that had been on me for all this time, I just felt free and I could move my body, uh, like I never had before. My friends would, uh, they would be, they were in disbelief that after five, six, seven hours, I'm like, "Let's go." (laughs) "I'm, uh, let's find something else." But it was, uh, I think it was probably an outpouring of, um, desire that I'd had for all these years that just was bottled up. And it was also at the time that I, I was starting to reconstruct. I mean, I had the money. I didn't care about spending the money on anything. Like, I didn't... Like, money has no value to me outside of the objective to do something meaningful for the world, and so I really started spending an enormous amount of time thinking about through this question: if, if you apply this filter, what matters in the 25th century? Like, you go back and look at what matters in the 15th century and 16th and 17th, and you find that 99% of all things that happen, I'm making up a number, is gone, and we're left with these teeny little nuggets of information. Now, there's more 'cause we're capturing more than we ever had before, but time has a way to filter out non-essential relevance. And so if you say that now, if we say what we're doing in 2023 and you look at your life and you map out what's gonna be left of your existence in 10 years, 100 years, 200 years, 300 years, and that's what I wanna focus on, is only those things. Everything else is, to me, it might... It's not for everyone. For me, it's a waste of my capacity as a person.

Steven Bartlett 17:49 When you describe dancing in Brooklyn, I mean, I've, I lived in Brooklyn for three years, so I-

Bryan Johnson 17:53 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 17:53 ...I know the warehouse parties, I know the vibe, the very low, unsuperficial nature of the place and the energy. You, you, you describe it almost therapeutically as being able to kind of shake out- (laughs)

Bryan Johnson 18:05 Yeah. (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 18:06 ... weight that you were holding.

Bryan Johnson 18:07 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 18:08 Specifically, what is that weight you were holding? You sold Braintree.You're- you're dancing in Brooklyn. What is the weight you're- you're shaking out?

Bryan Johnson 18:16 My entire life, I have been told by authority structures, whether it be a religion or society or a relationship or a community, you can do these things, you can think these things, you can say these things, and you can become these things. Everyone wanted l- to put limiters. And after that, none. It was no longer a game of what you can't do, it was a game of what I can do, and it just exploded. And now my entire life is what I can do.

Steven Bartlett 18:52 The potential is terrifying.

Bryan Johnson 18:53 And I can f- I... The moment somebody starts creeping on that, that they want to superimpose a label on me or superimpose a norm or superimpose any tool humans have to say, "Oh, you stepped out of line, you need to be punished," I can feel it. Like, I know where people try to create those guardrails and everyone does it because it's like, "Oh, if you're doing something that's not normal, I feel uncomfortable. I wanna bring you back into the herd because that's gonna f- make me feel a lot better." And so I'm attuned to

Bryan Johnson 19:23 the constant attempts at people trying to normalize everyone else.

Steven Bartlett 19:29 We do that in language, right? We say someone is weird.

Bryan Johnson 19:32 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 19:33 And, uh, you know, I think of moments where I broke out of my, my community. When I say my community, I mean, like, you know, you have a group of friends and, and then you say, "I'm gonna start a business, I'm gonna be this guy, and da da da da." And the- they use words to pull you back in-

Bryan Johnson 19:45 It does.

Steven Bartlett 19:45 ... these facial expressions. Little subtle, (laughs) you know?

Bryan Johnson 19:49 Exactly.

Steven Bartlett 19:50 The little... You're... They're telling you you're weird and stupid and ridiculous without saying it with words. Um, people think you're weird, don't they?

Bryan Johnson 19:58 (laughs) Uh-

Steven Bartlett 20:00 They do, don't they?

Bryan Johnson 20:01 ... that's one word they use, yeah.

Steven Bartlett 20:03 Yeah. Now it makes sense to me. Now it, now it makes sense to me. With the context of your religion and how imprisoned you, you say you felt in the context of that religion, I can now understand your resilience and your resistance to falling in line.

Bryan Johnson 20:21 Yeah. And not only that, it's- it's play now for me, right? It's like a mousetrap. It... Um, I wanna push the part of the mousetrap that makes it snap and pull my finger out-

Steven Bartlett 20:33 (laughs)

Bryan Johnson 20:33 ... before my finger gets trapped. And it's just, like, this whole little thing is a set of mousetraps, so I'm like, "This one today." (laughs) And then-

Steven Bartlett 20:39 Yeah.

Bryan Johnson 20:39 ... like, by doing that, you f- really f- get a feel for these, all these invisible layers we have in society. So what you just said is it's so... You're... I loved your comment. It's just like, like the smallest facial feature and, uh, audio captures the whole thing, right? Like, "I disapprove of your behavior, of your thought process. If you do this, I'm going to penalize you by not offering you my friendship and approval." And you're put in the penalty box. And it's, like, half of a second of a gesture, but it collapses the entirety on your shoulders where you're like, "Oh man, I don't wanna be part of the out group. I wanna be part of the group."

Steven Bartlett 21:18 I wonder how much potential is trapped behind those little facial expressions-

Bryan Johnson 21:21 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 21:21 ... and that little social conformity pressure.

Bryan Johnson 21:22 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 21:23 You know, like human potential of creativity and ingenuity and thinking for yourself and, you know... Must be a... Jesus Christ, most of human potential must be trapped behind that.

Bryan Johnson 21:32 Yeah. So this is the thing. This is what I'm saying. When you build this wall and you have images and you have strings attached to each one, you're trying to scaffold, like, w- how is information scaffolded? You can use this... You can poke a system and get the response back and then get... Fill in the contours. Like, "Oh, like this is what people think and feel in this moment of what the norms are," because otherwise they're invisible. So that's why when someone tells you a story about their behavior at the coffee shop and how some person was rude to someone or whatever, they're revealing to them, the, to everyone else in the conversation all the norm structures they have.

Steven Bartlett 22:05 Mm-hmm.

Bryan Johnson 22:05 And so if you listen carefully, it's you understand how they have scaffolded information, what norms they've accepted, which things they're rejecting, and where they play in that hierarchy.

Steven Bartlett 22:14 Are there any c- correlations between the most successful people you've met or happy people you've me- you've met and their ability to embody and take on these social constructs? Do you know, see what I'm saying?

Bryan Johnson 22:25 Yeah. You know, my mother is one of the happiest people I've ever met in my life, and she plays exactly in the norm structure of the religion. She's deeply religious. She's still Mormon. She thrives in the Mormon community. Everyone loves her. She's delightfully happy. And so my mother does not need to push boundaries, she doesn't need to explore other possibilities. She- she has a singular reality. It works for her. She's happy, she's joyful, she's a, a fantastic mother. So I guess there's, like, all these different archetypes of people who play in different spaces. For me, that wasn't where I thrive.

Steven Bartlett 22:58 You thrive.

Bryan Johnson 23:00 (laughs) My education has come from biographies, and I've read, I don't know, over a hundred all throughout history. And I love learning about people in their time and place who identify something impossibly hard to see and do, and they did both. And when you do that, it... The algorithm of human behavior is so predictable, of defiance and hate and vitriol. Like, it just goes through the same cycle every single time. And so I have all these models in my mind of people who've done these things, and so I know when I do this myself, I know what models to anticipate. I know how that naturally winds its way through society, and also how to fingerprint what things are inevitable. So you find a given thing, you say, "What are the characteristics around this idea or invention or whatever?" And then, uh, once you have it, you know its societal adoption is inevitable. It does not matter what humans say. Doesn't matter if they revolt, doesn't matter if they bring the pitchforks out, doesn't matter. It's gonna find its way through, push all the way through humanity. And that's the thing, is the what are the ideas you can't see, what characteristics do they have, and when do they become inevitable?

Steven Bartlett 24:10 And

Steven Bartlett 24:11 do you consider yourself to be an instigator of new ideas?

Bryan Johnson 24:14 If I were to make a whimsical and flimsy statement, I would say I was born to introduce these new ideas into society.

Steven Bartlett 24:21 And what is that new idea?

Bryan Johnson 24:23 Uh, it's that in the 21st century, the only objective we have is don't die.

Steven Bartlett 24:32 (laughs) Don't die.

Bryan Johnson 24:35 It's that simple.

Steven Bartlett 24:37 But we're gonna... We all, we're all gonna die, no? You don't think so?

Bryan Johnson 24:42 This is the thing. So this is why it sounds silly.

Steven Bartlett 24:47 'Cause I was told everybody dies, the only thing inevitable in life is death. Uh, we were driving past a graveyard the other day, and I pointed and said, "Great business, that." (laughs)

Bryan Johnson 24:53 (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 24:53 Because-

Bryan Johnson 24:54 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 24:54 ... because you know... (laughs) I think it was like a, it was like a, it wasn't a graveyard, it was a, um, like a funeral home, and I was like, "Great business."

Bryan Johnson 25:01 Yeah. Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 25:01 That they'll never, they'll never have a customer shortage.

Bryan Johnson 25:04 Yeah. Yeah. Okay, so if you... L- let's think about the structure of why that statement may be the rallying cry of the 21st century, those two words. So we may think, like... Uh, we're, we're inclined to think that, uh, genius, or sophistication, or whatever is in this much broader complexity of statement. It may be two words, "Don't die." So galaxy's 13.8 years old, Earth is 4.5, right? Something like that. We're baby steps away from creating super intelligence. We cannot, we cannot model out what the future is going to be like in any way, shape, or form. We do not have the intellectual capacity to predict, to model, to anticipate. We're blind. It's an intelligence far superior than us. In that situation, the only thing we can play is don't die, don't kill each other, don't ruin our biosphere, don't ruin planet Earth, and don't underestimate aligning with AI. The only objective of the future of our existence, we have to figure out how all intelligence on this planet cooperates, humans and the planet, artificial intelligence. It's this big tapestry of goal alignment, of cooperation. That is the only task humanity has ahead of us.

Steven Bartlett 26:36 Okay.

Bryan Johnson 26:36 It-

Steven Bartlett 26:36 Let's start with number one then.

Bryan Johnson 26:38 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 26:38 So the first one is, "Don't die." So I guess, yes or no question, do you think it's possible for us in the, in the short future to live forever?

Bryan Johnson 26:46 Yes.

Steven Bartlett 26:47 Okay. Right. I'm gonna go one, one step further back. Your health journey before you came to that realization, what did that look like in terms of... Were you a, a healthy young man? Were you... d- were you drinking alcohol?

Bryan Johnson 26:59 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 27:00 You know?

Bryan Johnson 27:00 I mean, as a, as a kid, my mother did her, did the best she could under the circumstances. We were pretty poor. She ground wheat, she made bread for us. We also ate sugar cereal. We put sugar on our suga- sugar cereal. We were in the sun constantly with no sunscreens. We had excessive skin, uh, sun exposure. Um, you know, we ate processed foods. Like it was just, it was uni- the United States cultural environment in the 1980s, like we just were cemented in that cultural norm. So I'd say, you know, not terribly healthy. Uh, then 20 years of entrepreneurship, depression, bad relationship, trying to leave within, I kind of destroyed myself, body and mind, for 20 years.

Steven Bartlett 27:40 And how do you feel about that now? Because I, I remember reading a quote where you said, "It pains me to think about the damage you've done to your body up until that, u- up until now."

Bryan Johnson 27:47 It pains me.

Steven Bartlett 27:48 Really?

Bryan Johnson 27:48 It pains me to see all the damage I did to myself.

Steven Bartlett 27:52 Really? Pains you?

Bryan Johnson 27:53 It does.

Steven Bartlett 27:57 D- d- when I... You know, pe- th- that's a phrase, right? But is there reality to that pain?

Bryan Johnson 28:02 I, I feel like I have a relationship to my former self as though my former self were present. I don't view it as a, uh, it's gone by because in many ways, when I'm reversing my aging, when I'm ch- when I'm becoming more healthy, I'm moving back in time, I'm moving back to a, a younger biological state. So I'm occupying the person that formerly occupied me. And so I, I have this relationship with time that is atypical. Where typically, I would normally say like, "Well, that's just happened and now I just have to go forward." But given where the science and technology is at, I do believe we can travel back in time. Uh, now it's, you know, we're... Blueprint is showing the possibilities, we're not there yet on doing these, these dramatic things, but I think it's coming. And so, yeah, I, I literally feel pain because I'm moving into that space.

Steven Bartlett 28:50 You feel pain because you're moving into that space? Okay, yeah, that, that is, yeah. Most of us consider the past to be gone.

Bryan Johnson 28:56 Exactly. I don't. I've, I feel like, I feel like it's recoverable and that I experience it.

Steven Bartlett 29:04 So take me forward from that point then. I wanna know when things started to change in terms of your health perspective-

Bryan Johnson 29:10 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 29:11 ... and this do not die.

Bryan Johnson 29:12 Yeah. Well, I, I started taking care of myself after I sold Braintree and the divorce and all that kind of stuff. I started paying attention to my health more so than I ever had in my entire life. And it came back to this question, you know, what one thing do I do in existence that would be meaningful? Not five things or six things, like, one thing that matters in the 21st century. And I worked on... I came up with this idea that basically the core of it is I can't trust myself to act, act in my best interest. And it stemmed from depression. I knew my mind, my mind was encouraging me to commit suicide on a non-stop basis. And I wo-

Steven Bartlett 29:50 Really?

Bryan Johnson 29:50 Yes. Yeah. (laughs) That's what chronic depression feels like, is you desperately want to commit suicide every moment of every day. You just want relief from the awfulness, and you can't, you cannot imagine feeling not depressed. And so I, I knew that I couldn't trust my mind, uh, when it was doing these things. And so then also I had this problem with food where I would feel so depressed and I would feel stressed from the day, from work, with my kids. And so it was my inability to stop myself...... from overeating every single night and walking myself into an early grave. So then I paired those things, two things together and I go, "Okay. First of all, my brain's like, 'Hey, why don't you commit suicide?' And two, my body's like, 'Why don't you just eat yourself into oblivion?'" And I couldn't stop myself. And I thought, "This is really weird that we humans are the most intelligent species on the planet, yet I'm doing these behaviors that are not in my best interest. This is really weird and I can't stop, but I'm totally helpless in doing it." And I started piecing together this philosophy of like, "Okay, this is interesting. We kind of treat planet Earth like we treat our bodies. My behavior's not too dissimilar from what society's doing." And I thought, "What is the larger implication of the situation? We humans have a problem of acting in our best interest. Is there an alternative structure of authority that could do a better job?" And that's when I really came up with the core of what Blueprint is, which is I said, "Okay, instead of my mind doing this on a regular basis, I'm going to measure every organ of my body. I'm gonna ask it what it needs to be in its best space." So my kidney and liver and heart and lungs. Gonna take the data, look at scientific evidence, and then create an algorithm, and then I'm going to follow that algorithm, uh, perfectly. And so my body is gonna call the shots, not my mind. And that was when it all kinda came together, uh, with trying to piece together AI of maybe the revolution is we humans have done a wonderful job to arrive at this point. Maybe it's time for us to pass the reins to other control systems that manage our long-term interests better.

Steven Bartlett 31:59 And what are those long-term control systems that you believe can manage our, our interests better?

Bryan Johnson 32:04 I mean, for example now, like my, my mind is not authorized to look at a menu and order. It's not authorized to have a pizza party. It's not authorized to just on the whim decide I want to have a cookie. My body is in charge. My body reports this data, it looks at scientific evidence, an algorithm runs. So I have opted into an algorithm that takes better care of me than I can myself. My mind can chirp and can heckle from the bleachers, but it does not have the authority to make the decision.

Steven Bartlett 32:35 But you must understand, the mind is doing that for a reason. The mind is also concerned with survival. It's not there to, um, cause harm to, to you. That's not its objective. You know, it wasn't, that makes no sense from a survival perspective that you'd have this enemy in your head. So how do you reason why the mind is telling you to do these things?

Bryan Johnson 32:56 If we just let the data speak. So let's just say, uh, we're looking at DNA methylation patterns, and it's, uh, these are, this is data that shows how fast the body's aging, shows your speed of aging. So I take my former self and say, "What does the data show? How fast am I aging and how fast is d- disease progressing and what's my, what's my likelihood of dying then and now?" And you compare the two, there's no comparison. The system that's running me now so far outcompetes the other version, it's ridiculous. And so just from a, from a, so let's just, um, I'll go one layer deeper on this. What I did is I, I asked this broader question. So we have AI, we have super intelligence being created. We have to figure out alignment. How do we use AI so that we humans continue to exist, so we don't kill each other, so that AI doesn't destroy everything? Like so we're just trying to survive, right, society to survive. How would you possibly go about doing that problem? And so I started thinking about this alignment problem within me. So I'm 35 trillion cells, thereabouts, maybe more. How could I, as an entity, align my 35 trillion cells to cooperate? And we're trying to do that with, with society, right? You're trying to get this huge number of things to cooperate. And then I wanted to measure it and say, "Okay, what is perfect cooperation on the objective of me slowing my speed of aging?" And then I did hundreds of measurements and we said, "Okay, here's actually what science can do in this moment with everything, with diet and sleep and exercise all being perfect. Here's the maximum amount of slowing speed of aging for my 35 trillion cells to do." Anything above that, I consider to be an act of violence. Now we use violence in a, in society to, we typically associate people beating each other, like physical acts of violence. I expanded the term to capture my own behavior. So if I did, if I ate something or did something that would increase my speed of aging, that was an act of violence against self. Because if my 35 trillion cells were no longer aligned, it was like this one aberration to be like, "Hey, I wanna do this thing," but it ruins 35 trillion cells.

Steven Bartlett 34:59 Mm-hmm.

Bryan Johnson 34:59 Like, I wanted to pose the question, we as a species are trying to figure out how to cooperate. Can I do that with me as a single entity? And that's what I've been trying to do. Goal alignment within Bryan Johnson, 35 trillion cells, to a single objective exists.

Steven Bartlett 35:16 So why is the brain our adversary? Why is it being uncooperative with the longevity of the 35 million cells?

Bryan Johnson 35:26 I mean, let's just say, like let's just remove all story. Let's just say if we categorized as violence anything we did as a species that brought death closer to us, whether it be our personal death or whether it be the Earth's death, and we quantified that and we said, "How much violence do we s- do we do in a self-destructive way?" What is that number?

Steven Bartlett 35:50 Huge.

Bryan Johnson 35:51 So when you, when you look at that frame, we are a self-destructive species. Now it goes back to this idea that of death, of like if you say death is inevitable for everybody, it doesn't matter if I commit these self-destructive acts. Like I'm gonna die anyway, so like why do I care if it's 10 years earlier than normal? Whatever. I'm 35 now and I've, when I'm 70, I don't care if I live to 80. Like that's how you think. So that's why this, this whole death idea feeds the self-destruction because no one cares.... if death is not inevitable, you immediately come back to the thing that threatens the thing you care about the very most, which is anything that threatens existence. And so, the society we have right now, the majority of the philosophies say, "Be, you know, play by these rules and you get this afterlife." Right? They said death is inevitable, but we're all playing for this later game, and so everyone feels fine in this colossal self-destruction. If you take that away, and then you say, "You can live in this life," it's an entirely different game. And that's why the 21st century, the singular rev- revolution could be, "Don't die." Because it, it flips the philosophical structure of society on its head.

Steven Bartlett 37:04 And this all led you to Project Blueprint, which is what?

Bryan Johnson 37:08 Uh, Project Blueprint is an attempt at don't die (laughs) at every layer of society, individually, collectively, with AI and the planet.

Steven Bartlett 37:21 So, are you trying to reverse your, your age or are you trying not to die, or are you trying both?

Bryan Johnson 37:26 Both. And so the same thing is true, like, just like I've done Blueprint with me, Planet Earth is the body. So you'd approach the same problem. You would measure Earth with millions of measurements at some interval. You'd use scientific evidence to say what is the appropriate sustainable biosphere of coral reef, of ocean, you know, of temperature in, in the world, of ocean acidity, of all the different parts of our biosphere? And you apply the scientific evidence, and that creates the closed loop system to say, "This is how you don't die."

Steven Bartlett 37:57 Okay, so let's focusing again on do not die, which was actually the one of the, the only rule at my first company. Now, it feels like it has new meaning.

Bryan Johnson 38:04 (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 38:05 We wrote it on the wall at, when we first moved into the office. We just wrote one rule here, and we just wrote, "Do not die."

Bryan Johnson 38:09 That's great.

Steven Bartlett 38:10 We said it as a joke, but, you know, maybe-

Bryan Johnson 38:11 You were onto something.

Steven Bartlett 38:12 (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 38:13 Yeah. I was ahead of my time.

Bryan Johnson 38:14 You were vision-... Yeah. (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 38:16 (laughs) When, when you think about do not die, what are the things that stand the greatest chance of killing us in order of priority?

Bryan Johnson 38:23 Like, there's basic things on a day-to-day basis, uh, like driving is among the highest risk factors we do. All of us do it on a daily basis. So, every time I get into a car, I have a ritual where I say, "Driving..." I say it out loud, "Driving is the most dangerous thing I do." As a reminder, every time I get in the car, don't text, don't be on your phone, like, pay attention to drive-... to the road 'cause like you, you forget. Every time you jump in the car, you're so tempted to, like, do all these things that imperil your life.

Steven Bartlett 38:50 So, you say that out loud?

Bryan Johnson 38:51 Every time.

Steven Bartlett 38:51 I'd love to watch you drive.

Bryan Johnson 38:52 (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 38:53 I mean, you can drive me whenever as well 'cause I f-... I feel like I trust you to-

Bryan Johnson 38:56 (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 38:56 ... focus (laughs) on the road. So, driving is number one of things that pose a really statistically high threat of mortality. What else?

Bryan Johnson 39:04 I mean, there are... So people have built nice statistical models that, that, uh, show, like, risk of death.

Steven Bartlett 39:10 Mm-hmm.

Bryan Johnson 39:10 Like insurance companies, of course, like, they do that.

Steven Bartlett 39:12 Mm-hmm.

Bryan Johnson 39:13 Um, I'm really after the cultural norms-

Steven Bartlett 39:18 Yeah.

Bryan Johnson 39:19 ... that we have built a, a society addicted to addiction. We're all addicted. So you, you just think about this from a 21st century perspective. You put a human like us in an environment, and you encircle them with dozens of fast food chains, dozens of, uh, group, uh, stores selling sugary drinks, of junk food, of porn, of infinite scroll, of Netflix binging, uh, alcohol, smoking-

Steven Bartlett 39:50 Gambling.

Bryan Johnson 39:51 ... nicotine, right? Like, you, like, you-

Steven Bartlett 39:54 Masturbation.

Bryan Johnson 39:55 And I... Yeah. Like, there you go. Like, your list is... And then you say like, "Okay, human, on your own, with your own willpower, resist this." And then around them, you've got the power of our godlike powers pointing at the individual with the only objective is to getting the person addicted to their thing, their app, their food, their show, their whatever. Everything's pointed at the individual. Then the individual's like, "I'm overwhelmed."

Steven Bartlett 40:22 Mm-hmm.

Bryan Johnson 40:22 "I can't sleep." You know, like, "I don't feel well. I, I can't exercise. I don't have any time." We, we're just sick as a society, and it's because we've structurally built this around this... yeah, I mean, it-... it's a, it's kind of a disaster for us in the moment, where we're trying to muster up soberness of thought of how do we navigate these simultaneous existential risks we face? How do we not destroy our biosphere? How do we align with AI? How do we as humans not engage in nuclear war or bio-warfare or whatever? It... um, we're just... we have really serious challenges to solve, and we're all, uh, impaired.

Steven Bartlett 41:08 It makes you have a great deal of empathy for the human experience when you, you frame it as, we've taken a human being, you know, baby is born, and then we surround them with fast food chains and sugar-

Bryan Johnson 41:17 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 41:17 ... and all of these things that are highly, highly addictive. And then we say to them, "Be healthy, do your best."

Bryan Johnson 41:22 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 41:22 You know, "Don't, don't kill yourself," and, you know?

Bryan Johnson 41:25 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 41:26 Good luck.

Bryan Johnson 41:27 Good luck. It's sad.

Steven Bartlett 41:28 And then it's, it's... you... I say empathy because you have... when you frame it like that, I go, "No wonder people are struggling-"

Bryan Johnson 41:34 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 41:34 ... you know, with sleepless nights, obesity, cardiovascular diseases, porn addictions-

Bryan Johnson 41:40 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 41:40 ... drug addictions-

Bryan Johnson 41:42 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 41:42 ... you know? 'Cause we've manipulated the... I'm not gonna try and pretend I'm a neuroscientist, but we've manipulated the chemicals in their brain-

Bryan Johnson 41:49 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 41:50 ... to control them for... often for c-... you know, corporate greed and

Steven Bartlett 41:54 other things.

Bryan Johnson 41:54 That's right.

Steven Bartlett 41:56 You mentioned sleep, and you pointed this as being really foundational to health.

Bryan Johnson 42:02 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 42:02 When I sit here with these, you know, psychologists and health experts and doctors and heart surgeons and brain surgeons, they always point at sleep as-

Bryan Johnson 42:09 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 42:10 They all point at sleep as being foundational.

Bryan Johnson 42:12 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 42:12 The other day, you did a tweet-

Bryan Johnson 42:13 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 42:14 ... about your sleep. Do you know which one I'm talking about? Screenshot.

Bryan Johnson 42:18 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 42:19 Of, I think it was Whoop, right?

Bryan Johnson 42:20 Yeah. That's right.

Steven Bartlett 42:21 ... and it showed that you'd had 100% sleep for six months straight.

Bryan Johnson 42:27 Four months straight now.

Steven Bartlett 42:28 Four months straight now?

Bryan Johnson 42:28 So 99%. So, yes, 100% for four months, 99% for the other two months. I'm going for a six-month, 100% streak.

Steven Bartlett 42:36 Why is sleep so important? 'Cause you, you cite it in your work as being one of the m- the most foundational things.

Bryan Johnson 42:42 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 42:42 I think you actually called it the most important in one, one interview.

Bryan Johnson 42:45 Yeah. I mean, if, if you and I were going to make a list of, like, the things that are most influential in our lives, in how we think about and feel about life, I would put number one as sleep. Nothing changes my conscious existence more than a poor night's sleep or a bad n- or their good night's sleep.

Steven Bartlett 43:09 I agree. I've become incredibly obsessed with my sleep. Some people's obsessions, they become a little bit unhealthy.

Bryan Johnson 43:15 (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 43:15 But mine, I think, is healthy because it certainly moved my life forward in e- every metrical area that I care about. Um, let's go on and go in on sleep then. So, what do you do to achieve this month-over-month perfect sleep? Because when I saw that-

Bryan Johnson 43:31 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 43:31 ... I thought, "Oh my fucking God." Like-

Bryan Johnson 43:33 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 43:33 ... I use Whoop as well, as you can see, and-

Bryan Johnson 43:35 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 43:35 ... if I contrast your data to mine-

Bryan Johnson 43:37 Yeah. Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 43:38 ... you know, some nights I'm having like 24% recovery, 50% recovery.

Bryan Johnson 43:41 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 43:41 If I go to a hotel room, then it's even worse.

Bryan Johnson 43:43 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 43:43 When I flew out here to LA, I had three d- the first three days, my sleep was awful.

Bryan Johnson 43:47 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 43:47 The fourth day, it was fine.

Bryan Johnson 43:48 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 43:49 What are you doing?

Bryan Johnson 43:51 Yeah. Um, yeah, I'm so glad you have that shared experience. For those who do try to track it, and even those w- with Whoop, uh, many don't realize how hard it is. The most important thing is I- I've built my life around sleep. Now, that is the exact opposite of cultural norms, where sleep is the thing that gets pushed around. So if you want to go out with friends, delay your bedtime. If you want, if you need to finish a work project or school project, if you want to hang out and watch, your new show just dropped, you want to watch a few epi- episodes, we push sleep around from our earliest of days. Like, it's always the thing that can be compromised. And I made a rule that sleep happens every single night at the same time, no exceptions ever.

Steven Bartlett 44:38 I mean, that must come at a cost?

Bryan Johnson 44:39 It does come at a cost.

Steven Bartlett 44:41 What is the cost?

Bryan Johnson 44:41 (laughs) I mean, that cost is substantially less now because I've made the hard decisions and, uh, so it's no longer, uh, getting there is hard, but once you do that and it's the norm, it becomes much easier. You just have to make the life changes. So that's the first big one. Then I did like a bunch of small things, like for example, my last meal of the day is at 11:00 AM.

Steven Bartlett 45:02 Sorry, what? Your last meal of the day is at 11:00 AM?

Bryan Johnson 45:04 Yeah, so I eat between 6:00 AM and 11:00 AM.

Steven Bartlett 45:07 Okay.

Bryan Johnson 45:07 And so then I'm, by the time I go to bed at 8:30, I've got, you know, eight-plus hours of digestion, so I sleep best on an empty stomach. Now some, some people don't like that. They feel pain. They, they do much better sleeping towards night. But I ran a few hundred experiments of a time to eat, how much to eat, what kinds of foods to eat, what kind of exercise protocols. I've trialed hundreds of times, and I found a protocol that worked for me where, when I do this and I lay down before bed, my resting heart rate is around 45. If I get that, I know I'm going to have a near perfect night's sleep. If it's elevated at like 53 or 54 because of like a few events that could trigger it to go higher, I know I'm going to have a s- uh, uh, I'm going to struggle to hit like deep and REM goals, and I might be a little more restless. I'll still hit my 100% objective, but it's not going to be as the same level of quality as if I hit something else. So I know all the little, little, teeny-tiny tweaks to get this to be perfect every night.

Steven Bartlett 46:04 I asked you a second ago, I want to make sure I get an answer to this. I said th- um, this must come at a cost.

Bryan Johnson 46:08 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 46:08 What is the cost?

Bryan Johnson 46:10 So my bedtime is at 8:30 because that's where the data led me. I tried 11:00, 10:30, 9:00. I tried all the different variations and this just worked. Um, so anything that happens past 8:30, I don't participate in. And so sometimes, uh, my friends are doing things past 8:30 that I want to do, but I don't do them, so I miss out on certain social events. Now, my friends have been cool enough where they'll do things to accommodate my timeframe. So they'll do something in the late afternoon where I can do things with them and hang out and have fun and still make my bedtime. And so my friends have been, and family, have been great to adapt to allow me to participate in community while still doing this.

Steven Bartlett 46:47 So I've been, I've been experimenting as well. I mean, f- fucking hell, to say, to tell you I've been experimenting feels like (laughs) -

Bryan Johnson 46:54 (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 46:54 ... fe- I'm not going to say my experiments. But what, what I've, I've got a bunch of hypotheses around my sleep. One of the big ones as well is the te- room temperature.

Bryan Johnson 47:01 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 47:01 So during summer in the UK-

Bryan Johnson 47:03 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 47:03 ... 'cause most houses in the UK don't have air conditioning-

Bryan Johnson 47:06 Mm. Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 47:06 ... 'cause we don't expect the sun.

Bryan Johnson 47:07 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 47:07 So it's a surprise.

Bryan Johnson 47:08 Yeah (laughs) .

Steven Bartlett 47:09 Um, through those four weeks where, where we have sunshine, I don't, my sleep is awful.

Bryan Johnson 47:13 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 47:13 I'm sweating in bed.

Bryan Johnson 47:15 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 47:15 What would you s- say about temperature? And also, I've got a broken blind in the room.

Bryan Johnson 47:20 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 47:21 So, uh, y- you know, at 6:00 AM or whenever it, the light starts pouring in, what would you say about all those factors?

Bryan Johnson 47:25 Yeah. I agree. Uh, s- temperature plays a significant role, light does, uh, sound. Yeah, whether you have a partner in bed with you or not.

Steven Bartlett 47:35 Yeah, I want to talk about this.

Bryan Johnson 47:36 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 47:37 'Cause I actually was speaking to Simon Sinek last night about this at, we went to dinner. And I was talking to him about having sat with Matthew Walker and we discussed, I think Matthew Walker, don't want to quote him, quote him inaccurately, but he said when there's divorce and couples break up, 15% of the reason is attributed to sleep, i.e. them compromising each other's sleep. What do you think about sleeping in bed with somebody else?

Bryan Johnson 48:01 It's a, it's a hard topic because a lot of people don't have the luxury of sleeping in different rooms.

Steven Bartlett 48:09 Yeah.

Bryan Johnson 48:09 When somebody wants to have good sleep, there are some things they can control. Like, trying to go to bed at a certain time is something they have some control over. They need to adjust lifestyles and family and stuff like that about that. But sometimes that relationship... But, so people who do have the fortunate circumstances to be in separate rooms-... it is substantially better because trying to negotiate with another person, their bedtime, their sleep hygiene, is really difficult. And wake events are very costly. Once you get w- uh, once you get woken up and then going back to sleep is very hard. So, it's just extremely challenging when you've got to coordinate with another human.

Steven Bartlett 48:49 So, d- do you ever sleep in bed with someone else?

Bryan Johnson 48:51 No.

Steven Bartlett 48:53 What about hanky-panky?

Bryan Johnson 48:55 (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 48:55 (laughs)

Bryan Johnson 48:56 No. (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 48:57 You have no sex?

Bryan Johnson 48:58 Uh, not after 8:30. (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 49:00 Okay, so you gotta do, like, morning glory.

Bryan Johnson 49:04 (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 49:04 (laughs)

Bryan Johnson 49:05 Yeah, I mean, so these are the, these are the kinds of things, like, you know, uh, so I'm single.

Steven Bartlett 49:08 Yeah.

Bryan Johnson 49:09 In circumstances where I've tried to date, the first thing I do is I give them a list of 10 things, like, "Here's all the things you're gonna hate about me and it's gonna make me an impossible partner for you." And, like, you know, those are, like... it's a big deal.

Steven Bartlett 49:23 What is on the list?

Bryan Johnson 49:24 (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 49:24 Give me the list.

Bryan Johnson 49:26 (laughs) I mean, so, uh, sleep is one thing, you know, like, I go to bed at 8:30. Uh, my food regimen is another. Now I do compromise on foods. Like if we g- if we go out with friends and we'll have d- uh, dinner time, then I will save up, you know, a certain number of calories and I'll eat something at the restaurant, some steamed vegetables or something like that. So I do try to be normal. And also, when I'm out with people, nothing makes people feel more uncomfortable than an empty plate. You know, it's like, "Why are... what are you doing?" And, "Are you on a fast protocol? Are you on a juice cleanse?" And so I just try to blend into the environment, so, like, there's no questions, everyone can enjoy being present, so I try to do those things. Um, but other... yeah, other things, for example, like, my desire to speak. I, I'm not a talkative person. I don't do small talk. So, uh, my son and I have a protocol at the house where there's no exchange of like, "Good morning. How are you..." You know? Like, I'm deep in thought. Like, my morning, my... I go to bed early, I wake up early, and I have these four or five hours of concentrated thought where I can think about these really big pictures and try to pull myself out of my situation as... and just be as sober as possible, like, what is really happening, to the best of my abilities, and actually like probe myself to these- the- these deep levels. And I... you can get knocked off so fast, just like a little teeny interaction, "Hey, how are you doing? How was your sleep?" You have to activate this mode of like, "I'm going to be a nice person, I'm going to engage with you, I'm going to listen to you," and just shifting that knocks me off. And so there's... with the path that I've chosen, that I really care about achieving these objectives, I break all the social norms, and it's offensive to a lot of people. You know, the- that... it's just not- not an acceptable situation for a lot of people.

Steven Bartlett 51:13 That's another instance, though, where someone would say, "Oh, he's weird."

Bryan Johnson 51:15 Yeah. Exactly right.

Steven Bartlett 51:16 You know what I mean?

Bryan Johnson 51:16 And I... when you... so, when I was just saying this, I absolutely am apt to... everyone listening to this being like, "That dude was awful. I would never want to be with him. Oh, what a bore." Like, I just imagine... I can see all the comments on social media now, like dozens and dozens of people ripping me to be like, "Oh, that dude..." and like making their meanest comment. I know that's going to trigger it. And so, like, throughout this whole thing, of course, like people are gonna grab what I say and they're going to try to just dissect me and rip me apart-

Steven Bartlett 51:43 Mm-hmm.

Bryan Johnson 51:44 ... for all the things I violate that they don't want to exist.

Steven Bartlett 51:48 So, it's a constrained romantic relationship we're gonna have if we're in- we're- me and you together, Brian, because obviously-

Bryan Johnson 51:55 (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 51:55 ... can't speak to you in the morning (laughs) ...

Bryan Johnson 51:56 (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 51:57 can't speak to you in the morning, can't really do any hanky-panky after 8:30, so...

Bryan Johnson 52:01 (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 52:01 I mean, there's g- there's kind of a small window for our relationship to exist (laughs) .

Bryan Johnson 52:05 (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 52:05 We're gonna have to get a lot done-

Bryan Johnson 52:06 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 52:07 ... in that, like, three or four hours.

Bryan Johnson 52:08 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 52:08 We're gonna have to have sex-

Bryan Johnson 52:09 (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 52:09 ... and then we're gonna have to resolve all of our problems, and then I'm gonna have to offload... (laughs)

Bryan Johnson 52:13 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 52:14 What else is- is important then? Tell me about your sleep re- regime, so the things you do just before sleep. We know you don't eat-

Bryan Johnson 52:20 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 52:20 ... near sleep. Anything else that's really important?

Bryan Johnson 52:24 Uh, I'd say I'd... let me tick them off. Yes, go to bed same time every night, no exceptions. Temperature-controlled room and/or mattress.

Steven Bartlett 52:33 What temperature?

Bryan Johnson 52:34 Uh, I currently am at, I think, 71. I go to bed at 78, and then... Fahrenheit, and then I sleep at 71, thereabouts. Then I come up for rem at 73. So, temperature and then sound.

Steven Bartlett 52:46 Sound.

Bryan Johnson 52:47 Yep. So, uh, aware of potential sources of noise that could wake you up. So if you, um... if you're in a- a noisy environment of sirens, like a big city environment, or, uh, dogs barking or something, being aware, 'cause sound will wake you up. And so it... you're really trying to minimize the number of times you wake up. If you need to do something to- to limit what gets into your ears, or doing white noise or whatever you're doing, then identifying when you eat and what you eat. For example, I know from my experience in trying these things, if I were to... sometimes I would try an almond crust piece of pizza. Like, this is years ago when I'm really trying to start figuring stuff out. That would wreck my sleep. Flour of any type wrecks my sleep. It elevates my resting heart rate into the high 50s, and I know I'm going to have about 50% less deep sleep. And it's all these little teeny-tiny understandings of how a particular kind of food is going- guaranteed to wreck my sleep, or even three ounces of red wine anytime after noon, guaranteed to devastate my deep sleep. And so understanding how food intake, uh, affects that, and then, uh, I know I try to have an hour wi- uh, wind-down time every night. If I go to bed... if I work right up to when I go to bed, I will ruminate all night long on that topic, and so y- it will feel like I never actually go to sleep because I'm always just in that light sleep ruminating on this problem. But weirdly, I've found that if I follow my entire protocol, right before I go to bed now, I'll assign my brain a problem every night before I go to bed.... and I now have my very best thoughts in life in my sleep. My brain figures things out much more efficiently in my sleep than I do when I'm awake. So, now it's become an asset to me, uh, versus before it was just a- a terrible experience.

Steven Bartlett 54:51 And if- if I, you know, I- I, you know, sometimes I gotta be honest, sometimes I have snacks before bed, you know.

Bryan Johnson 54:58 (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 54:58 We- we're amongst friends here, I can be honest.

Bryan Johnson 54:59 (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 54:59 Sometimes (laughs) you know-

Bryan Johnson 55:00 Oh, dead.

Steven Bartlett 55:01 ... you know, sometimes it just gets a bit... 'Cause I feel that, 'cause I work quite late into the night, and then it'd get to 9:00 or 10:00 PM, and I'll be sat there thinking-

Bryan Johnson 55:09 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 55:09 ... "I've not eaten yet and I've got this pain in my stomach."

Narrator 55:11 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 55:11 So, getting, just going to bed on, with the pain in my stomach feels quite difficult.

Narrator 55:15 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 55:15 So, I'll just, you know, order something on one of these little apps.

Bryan Johnson 55:18 (laughs) Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 55:19 You know?

Bryan Johnson 55:20 Yeah, I do.

Steven Bartlett 55:20 Don't tell anybody because, you know-

Bryan Johnson 55:21 I- I-

Steven Bartlett 55:22 Um, but then I'll, and then I eat it and, uh, you were right, 10 seconds in it feels great, and then after that-

Bryan Johnson 55:27 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 55:27 ... I feel, I feel like crap.

Bryan Johnson 55:28 Yeah. You have to pay the price the whole next day.

Steven Bartlett 55:30 Is there anything that I, you- you can eat later in the day, or you can eat at dinnertime, that has a smaller negative adverse consequence on your sleep? Is it just like vegetables and stuff without sugar?

Bryan Johnson 55:40 Vegetables are fine. Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 55:41 Vegetables are fine.

Bryan Johnson 55:42 And this is for me, I need to clarify, what I do is for me.

Steven Bartlett 55:45 Of course.

Bryan Johnson 55:45 Other people thrive on other things, so this is just a data point people can use in their mind that you fine-tune all these different things. But I think the data's interesting. I've never seen anyone with a four-month streak of perfect sleep. I'm in the 98, 99.6 percentile of recovery too, so it's not just my sleep quality. Which people often say, "Oh, you can just game that, not a big deal." People who know really know that's not true.

Steven Bartlett 56:06 Mm-hmm.

Bryan Johnson 56:07 But then also optimizing for your HRV and your, your, uh, respiration rate. My recovery is also 99.6 percentile. So, I'm hitting all the markers on the highest quality possible performance in sleep, and my body's recovering at the maximum capacity. And so it's good data that I'm not just making stuff up. The data shows I'm potentially best in world on this measurement profile, or among. And so it's interesting that it's a reasonable way for someone to contemplate what they might do with their life.

Steven Bartlett 56:38 Do you think there's anyone better in the world at sleeping than you?

Bryan Johnson 56:40 (laughs) Probably. Uh, there's- there's probably, some people may... I w- I wonder if all the years of ruining myself, if it has a carryover effect. Like, I just can't make up entirely for all the things I did. I wonder if that's the case, and I wonder if people who haven't done that naturally sleep better than me and that I have to try extra hard now because I'm compensating for all the damage I did to myself. I don't know. For those in my certain circumstances, I don't think anyone tries harder at sleep than me.

Steven Bartlett 57:13 HRV, you mentioned there. Why is that important, and what did it, what- what is it?

Bryan Johnson 57:18 Yeah, it's a heart rate variability, and it's a representation of your nervous system. There's two parts, your parasynthetic nervous system, and your, uh, so your autonomic nervous system, a- and you're trying to basically tether between being chill and being in fight or flight. And so when you're stressed, your body's like, "All right. Like, we're ram- we're amped up. We've called all the resources to do this job," but you can't be in that high state long. You need to be in a relaxed state as well. So, you're trying to bring the parasynthetic nervous system on in time, uh, and to relax the sympathetic nervous system. And so the HRV is a representation of, are you chill or are you stressed? Having a high HRV is better than having a low HRV. I worked very hard at it. It's been one of the hardest markers we've had to move. I- I had a meaningful increase in my HRV over the past 500 days. Uh, I was, I started, I was, believe in the ear- like, the mid-30s range, and I'm now up in the low 60s on average. So, uh, good gains, but still not anywhere close where I wanna be, uh, I th- where I thought we'd be at this point. It's been really, really hard to move.

Steven Bartlett 58:30 And you, it, hate, heart rate var- variability, right?

Bryan Johnson 58:34 Yes.

Steven Bartlett 58:34 Is- is that what it's called? And what is that? As in-

Bryan Johnson 58:36 Uh-

Steven Bartlett 58:36 ... w- it's the gaps between your heartbeats or something.

Bryan Johnson 58:38 Exactly, yeah, it's the interval between, yeah.

Steven Bartlett 58:40 So, it measures the interval between your heart bit- beats, and how much that varies, or...?

Bryan Johnson 58:46 That's right.

Steven Bartlett 58:47 Okay. So, you want high, you want... So, if, so, if my heart rate variability is like 120, I think.

Bryan Johnson 58:54 Great.

Steven Bartlett 58:55 It's definitely above 100, depending on, you know, when I've done that day.

Bryan Johnson 58:58 I'm jealous.

Steven Bartlett 58:59 Well, yeah. So, maybe that's one thing I can teach you about.

Bryan Johnson 59:03 (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 59:04 (laughs) But- but what is that? 120 what? I've always wondered. I see it, and I know that high is better.

Bryan Johnson 59:08 Milliseconds.

Steven Bartlett 59:08 Oh, milliseconds.

Bryan Johnson 59:09 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 59:11 So, 120 milliseconds variance between the heartbeats.

Bryan Johnson 59:16 And there's a whole bunch of ways, if you get into the actual math, you can measure them. You can actually do this calculation a number of different ways. It gets really technical and sophisticated. But the general understanding is you want a higher number. You want a bigger number.

Steven Bartlett 59:28 You do, you do some things before bedtime to improve your heart rate variability?

Bryan Johnson 59:33 Uh, I do. I've tried several devices. I've used Sensate, which is a vibrational thing on the chest. I've used Pulsetto, which is a vibration on the vagus nerve here. I've used, uh, Neurostim, which is on the left tragus, uh, here. But-

Steven Bartlett 59:48 Anything, any of them work?

Bryan Johnson 59:50 A little bit here and there. None sustained. I mean, I, given the amount of effort I put into my health and wellness, I shou- I would like to think I'd be over 100 in my HRV. I can't. It doesn't move. It's just a really hard marker. I wonder if all the decades where I was depressed out of my mind and really stressed out over everything, if I just ruined myself to degrees that are hard to come back from. So, we've been trying to find something more advanced that would do something outside of diet and exercise and routine and sleep. We haven't found it yet.

Steven Bartlett 1:00:25 It's crazy that one of the most pivotal moments in my life was when I put my Whoop on, and the founder told me about this, how important that HRV, um, marker is.

Bryan Johnson 1:00:35 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 1:00:36 ... how much of an indicator it is of overall health. You know, crack on with my life, had a glass of wine one day. I wake up the next morning-

Bryan Johnson 1:00:43 Oh, no.

Steven Bartlett 1:00:43 ... yeah, and it's flashing red-

Bryan Johnson 1:00:45 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 1:00:46 ... and I click on it, and it's like, "Did you have some alcohol last night?"

Bryan Johnson 1:00:48 (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 1:00:48 And I'm thinking, "Oh, my God."

Bryan Johnson 1:00:50 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 1:00:51 Like, genuinely, that moment was, was when I realized that these choices I make-

Bryan Johnson 1:00:55 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 1:00:55 ... however small I think they might be-

Bryan Johnson 1:00:56 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 1:00:56 ... especially with alcohol-

Bryan Johnson 1:00:58 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 1:00:58 ... have, my, my heart notices, and it's saying to me, you're either, it said, "You're either stressed, you're either sick, or you had some alcohol last night."

Bryan Johnson 1:01:06 Yeah, yeah.

Steven Bartlett 1:01:06 And I thought, "I don't like those three things-

Bryan Johnson 1:01:08 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 1:01:08 ... being in a category together."

Bryan Johnson 1:01:09 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 1:01:10 Alcohol, what'd you think of it?

Bryan Johnson 1:01:13 I used to drink three ounces every morning with breakfast.

Steven Bartlett 1:01:17 You used to drink three-

Bryan Johnson 1:01:18 Three ounces of alcohol every morning with breakfast. I enjoyed drinking alcohol. I enjoyed drinking the wine.

Steven Bartlett 1:01:25 For breakfast?

Bryan Johnson 1:01:25 For breakfast, because I had to create the longest time period between my sleep to avoid it negatively affecting my sleep.

Steven Bartlett 1:01:31 Okay.

Bryan Johnson 1:01:31 But then I got rid of it because it was too expensive from a caloric perspective. It was 72 calories for the three ounces, and I couldn't fit it in with my calorie budget.

Steven Bartlett 1:01:41 So what'd you think of it in terms of, um, in terms of longevity?

Bryan Johnson 1:01:45 Uh, I think the science says in moderation is fine. I just, I don't drink it at all, ever, anymore.

Steven Bartlett 1:01:53 And you've, you've

Steven Bartlett 1:01:54 only really been, been following this protocol for a couple of years now, right?

Bryan Johnson 1:01:59 Yeah. I mean, my, I guess, I, I really do understand myself as on a singular mission for intelligent existence to thrive. Like, that is what I am, that is what I'm doing, that's what I'm pursuing. Nothing else matters to me.

Steven Bartlett 1:02:21 The question, the ultimate question, I think, in, you know, you just said, "Oh, these people are gonna say I'm weird," or whatever else, there's this ultimate question, because you're very, very clearly mission-driven, and there's always a cost.

Bryan Johnson 1:02:34 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 1:02:34 Much of what I do here, when I meet extraordinary people, is to understand the cost.

Bryan Johnson 1:02:38 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 1:02:38 In fact, the reason I started this podcast-

Bryan Johnson 1:02:40 Hmm.

Steven Bartlett 1:02:40 ... is because we, we, and it's called the Diary of a CEO, is 'cause we see the CEO stuff, but we don't see the diary.

Bryan Johnson 1:02:44 Hmm.

Steven Bartlett 1:02:45 That's why it's called what it is, and it started as me just sharing my diary, and I shared everything, from masturbation, my mental struggles, everything, my-

Bryan Johnson 1:02:51 Hmm.

Steven Bartlett 1:02:51 ... issues with my family. I shared it all to, to put the cost out there to the world, cost of my mission, my calling, my pursuit, the thing that was dragging me. Um, the ultimate question becomes, are you happy?

Bryan Johnson 1:03:08 Never more so in my entire life. Unquestionably.

Steven Bartlett 1:03:15 And what does that mean?

Bryan Johnson 1:03:17 I've never felt more fulfilled. I've never felt more stable. I've never felt a more expansive consciousness. I've never felt more free. I've never felt more bold. I've never, in my entire life, been this alive.

Steven Bartlett 1:03:36 And you, you experienced the antithesis of happiness, right? You experienced, I mean, maybe some people would argue that it's something else, but you experienced the bottom of the, the crevice of depression.

Bryan Johnson 1:03:45 Mm-hmm. Yes.

Steven Bartlett 1:03:46 You know what that felt like?

Bryan Johnson 1:03:47 I do.

Steven Bartlett 1:03:49 The voices in your head that were telling you to do things-

Bryan Johnson 1:03:51 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 1:03:51 ... the unthinkable actions of suicide. What, what goes on in your head now? What are the, the same voices saying?

Bryan Johnson 1:04:01 It's all play. I'm, I've never had more fun. Mo- most of my life has just been a grind. It's like doing the things to achieve the objective because that's what the societal role play says to do. And that, what I'm doing now, I'm not doing this for anyone's expectations. I'm not doing this to achieve anyone's acceptance. This is the game I've selected to play. I don't care what anyone says about it, sincerely. I just feel free.

Steven Bartlett 1:04:36 When was your last dark day?

Bryan Johnson 1:04:40 Hmm. It was about something I can't yet talk about. I wish I could. Uh, I will be able to soon.

Steven Bartlett 1:04:51 Okay. I respect that.

Bryan Johnson 1:04:53 Yeah, yeah, but like, I guess it's, uh, it's, like I, my, my answer is, like, genuine. Uh, in time, this will be a good story.

Steven Bartlett 1:05:04 But outside of that-

Bryan Johnson 1:05:06 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 1:05:06 ... what are the things that, are, and are there things-

Bryan Johnson 1:05:08 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 1:05:08 ... that get you down these days?

Bryan Johnson 1:05:10 Yeah, I, I was, um, recently, I, I was, uh, pretty bothered. The, the hate that comes my way is energizing to me. It's thrilling. Uh, when my father did something with me publicly with his plasma transfusions, the internet kind of had their way with him, you know, making fun of him and saying rude things and mean things. That really got to me. Like, hurl it my way, cool, but I, my father was courageous enough to do this thing publicly and put himself out there, and he just got torn to shreds, and it, it made me feel very sad and ashamed of humanity. Like, my, like, my 70-year-old dad, you know? Like, he's not there picking a fight with somebody, you know?

Steven Bartlett 1:06:11 Why does that hurt so much?

Bryan Johnson 1:06:14 I don't know. Just maybe I've always felt like a protector of my dad, maybe.

Steven Bartlett 1:06:20 Why?

Bryan Johnson 1:06:27 Uh, just kind of how our roles developed, I suppose. You know, when, when he was in a, a state of need, I was in a state of ability to give. Started off when we were young, when I was young.

Steven Bartlett 1:06:44 You talked about plasma. I, I, I saw the image on your Instagram. When I was waiting for you in there, I was going through your Instagram and looking at all the captions on your posts-

Bryan Johnson 1:06:52 Oh.

Steven Bartlett 1:06:52 ... and stuff and looking. And there was that photo of you, your son, who looks very much like you by the way, and your father. Beautiful photo of you, all of you wearing vests. And this was one of the- the sort of experiments you did.

Bryan Johnson 1:07:02 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 1:07:02 You had a hypothesis. The hypothesis was...

Bryan Johnson 1:07:07 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 1:07:07 I don't know. What, what was the hypothesis? (laughs)

Bryan Johnson 1:07:09 (laughs) Yeah, we, as a team, we have, uh, scoured every scientific study ever done on longevity and lifespan, and we've ranked, prioritized all of them. And we filtered out, like which one, you know, animal models, human models, and we tried to decide which things to do and why. And plasma exchanges surfaced as a potential option, and people were doing it for cognitive decline. And so, it came up where I was talking to my dad and he said, "Hey Brian, I ne- I want you to know something, that when you begin experiencing cognitive decline, which I have, you don't know." He said, "I always thought that if I'm starting to lose my mind, I'm gonna pick it up and be like 'Oh, I'm not as sharp as I used to be', but you don't know. It's invisible to you," which makes sense. And so, he said, "I've been on Blueprint for a couple of months. It's come back so I'm aware of how fast I was losing my mental acuity. I'm back." So in that conversation I said, "Dad, you know, I've been looking at these plasma exchanges and there's some interesting studies going on right now with cognitive decline, Alzheimer's and the things like that, that are showing interesting results. Now the science is still emergent. We're not sure it's gonna work, but if you were interested in doing this, I'd be more than happy to donate my plasma to you." That's how it happened. And so then, I tell my-

Steven Bartlett 1:08:16 Plasma is?

Bryan Johnson 1:08:18 Oh yeah, so you, we have blood in our body and plasma. So you take the blood out... Uh, we're- we're half blood, half plasma.

Steven Bartlett 1:08:24 Mm-hmm.

Bryan Johnson 1:08:24 So you take blood out, you spin it up, it separates into yellow stuff, which is plasma, and then red stuff, which is blood. And so, there are just different things in the plasma. So it's basically taking plasma from the body and... So I gave my father a liter of my plasma, but I was talking to my, about this to my son. I was like, "Hey, I may give a- a liter of plasma to my dad." And so my son is like, "Cool. Can I be involved?" (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 1:08:44 (laughs)

Bryan Johnson 1:08:44 It's like, "All right." So it was like this really organic thing around my father. And so it was, uh... A lo- a lot of people learn about this and then they, they immediately imagine like I'm in a dungeon, drinking my son's blood and I'm like harvesting his organs and... The reality was, it was a very, it was a whimsical, fun, you know, heartwarming thing that our family was- was discussing. And so we did it.

Steven Bartlett 1:09:10 And there was some- some sort of efficacy shown in mice or something, wasn't there?

Bryan Johnson 1:09:13 Yeah. Yeah, there's, there's... So this, the evidence is like not bad. It's not terribly persuasive, it's emergent. So it's not like we were going in there or realized, thinking that we had a slam dunk. It was like, "It's interesting, it's safe, so we- let's give it a shot."

Steven Bartlett 1:09:26 And it didn't really work, so you've-

Bryan Johnson 1:09:29 On me.

Steven Bartlett 1:09:29 ... on you.

Bryan Johnson 1:09:30 Yeah, which makes sense. I mean, all right, so I'm chronologically 45. Many of my phenotypic markers are in their 20s.

Steven Bartlett 1:09:38 Right, of course.

Bryan Johnson 1:09:39 So my donor was 19. And so it makes sense, the age differential, given I'm so tuned, it would make sense that you wouldn't see a big change. But for my father, maybe, 'cause there's a much bigger difference between his health status and my status and a different age range too.

Steven Bartlett 1:09:56 Did... Was there a difference in your father or did you not measure?

Bryan Johnson 1:09:58 Uh, we're still waiting for the results.

Steven Bartlett 1:09:59 Oh, okay.

Bryan Johnson 1:10:00 Yeah. His- his subjective reporting was that he felt, uh, phenomenal. But we really wanna see the data. And you also, you need to probably do more of these, right? One is, is not enough.

Steven Bartlett 1:10:09 Okay.

Bryan Johnson 1:10:09 You probably need to do it successively. So it was... It ended up being, even though we approached it as my father's cognitive decline and we were looking at it through a medical perspective, it ended up being a family bonding experience-

Steven Bartlett 1:10:20 Hmm.

Bryan Johnson 1:10:21 ... where we... My father left the Church when I was young, he was ostracized. I left the Church, I was ostracized by my children and- and their family. So, in my estimation it was, we are divided by the mind, united by biology. This goes back to, uh, Blueprint which is, are there control systems that help us cooperate? Not the mind. Now our mind, we want to create tribes, we wanna fight with each other, and we wanna find good and evil and all that sort of thing. Biology doesn't... I mean, biology maybe is a different control system. And so we were just trying to optimize health. And so you go back to that system, what are the control systems running humanity, running our families, running you and me, running society? I thought it was beautiful because it was, uh, an experience my father and son and I never would have imagined we'd have in our entire lives. And it ended up being a spectacular experience for the family that we really appreciated.

Steven Bartlett 1:11:11 As you were speaking, I was thinking about something I've just written in the- the book that I- that I've been writing. Um, uh, one of the pages is when I discovered my father's cigarettes.

Bryan Johnson 1:11:19 Mm.

Steven Bartlett 1:11:20 And it was this like earth-shattering moment in my life because I was suddenly haunted by this feeling that my father was gonna die.

Bryan Johnson 1:11:26 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 1:11:27 You know, 'cause as a kid you know cigarettes are bad.

Bryan Johnson 1:11:28 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 1:11:29 Everyone tells you that. And then when you find out your father is smoking them when I was like 14 years old-

Bryan Johnson 1:11:33 Mm.

Steven Bartlett 1:11:33 ... it was this kind of crisis in me that my father's gonna die. Um, I was-

Bryan Johnson 1:11:39 I-

Steven Bartlett 1:11:39 I was thinking about what your father went through and how that might have-

Bryan Johnson 1:11:42 Mm.

Steven Bartlett 1:11:43 ... introduced the concept of death to you at a young age.

Bryan Johnson 1:11:46 Mm.

Steven Bartlett 1:11:46 Then I was also observing how much he means to you in every word you say about him and your protectiveness over him, and I was wondering if there's some kind of link there.

Bryan Johnson 1:11:52 Mm. How did you reconcile with it?

Steven Bartlett 1:11:54 (laughs) Trying to get him to stop smoking.

Bryan Johnson 1:11:57 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 1:11:57 Yeah. (laughs)

Bryan Johnson 1:11:58 There you go.

Steven Bartlett 1:11:58 At all costs.

Bryan Johnson 1:11:59 What'd you do?

Steven Bartlett 1:12:01 I think I cried about it a few times, but I think I just made him feel bad about it as much as possible.

Bryan Johnson 1:12:05 (laughs) Right.

Steven Bartlett 1:12:05 Just like-

Bryan Johnson 1:12:05 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 1:12:06 ... you know?

Bryan Johnson 1:12:06 Yeah, that's like the- the best tool you can use when you're 14.

Steven Bartlett 1:12:10 What about you?

Bryan Johnson 1:12:12 Uh, I'd write him letters.

Steven Bartlett 1:12:13 Really?

Bryan Johnson 1:12:13 Yeah. Every week. I'd write him a letter, tell him what, tell him how much he means to me, um, I'm thinking about him. Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 1:12:22 In the hope that?

Bryan Johnson 1:12:23 That he... It would give him the power he needed to overcome his addiction.

Steven Bartlett 1:12:31 Did you think about his, him dying at that age? Did, had the concept of death crossed your mind?

Bryan Johnson 1:12:38 I just wanted a dad. Yeah, I wa- I wanted, I wanted him to be a part of my life.

Steven Bartlett 1:12:46 That explains why being a dad matters so much to you now.

Bryan Johnson 1:12:49 (laughs) Probably, yeah.

Steven Bartlett 1:12:51 Um,

Steven Bartlett 1:12:52 I, I noticed there's something on the chair over there. Um-

Bryan Johnson 1:12:56 (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 1:12:56 And I'm, I'm actually starving. It's, it's, uh, just gone 4:00 and I haven't eaten today. But you were very kind in bringing me some food. So I wanna talk about, I wanna talk about food. Um, Jack, could you bring me the food please? And you can tell me what you've brought me to eat. Presumably this is what you eat.

Bryan Johnson 1:13:14 That's right.

Steven Bartlett 1:13:14 Good. Thank you. Okay, so you've, you've brought me a meal today.

Bryan Johnson 1:13:20 I did.

Steven Bartlett 1:13:21 Just for anyone that's looking, I'll try and tilt it up so people can see. Um, if anyone's watching on YouTube or Spotify where you can get the video, you can see what's in these bowls. And you've brought me two little buckets of pills-

Bryan Johnson 1:13:34 (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 1:13:34 ... here, and there's a drink here. What is, what is this food?

Bryan Johnson 1:13:40 This is, this is the answer if you ask the body, "What do you want to eat to be in ideal health?" This is the answer that it generated. So this is not to say that it is the only food you could eat. It is a version of what you could eat. And so the, my daily caloric intake is, uh, 2,250 calories a day.

Steven Bartlett 1:14:02 Mm-hmm.

Bryan Johnson 1:14:03 Every calorie has to fight for its life. There's not a single calorie in my entire life protocol that exists for any reason other than serving an objective in the body. So dish number one is called super veggie. It's broccoli, cauliflower, black lentils, garlic, ginger, hemp seeds. And over a month, if you, if you were to do this with me, you would eat around 70 pounds of vegetables per month.

Steven Bartlett 1:14:28 70 pounds of vegetables per month? Wow. Wow.

Bryan Johnson 1:14:33 And I think we also have in there extra virgin olive oil and chocolate.

Steven Bartlett 1:14:38 Yeah, I can taste like cacao, like dark chocolate.

Bryan Johnson 1:14:42 Yeah. So we, I paired the chocolate in here. It's an unexpected pairing. The way we think about this is, you could say chocolate is good for you, which might lead you to eat a Snickers bar. The more precise way of thinking about it is you want dark chocolate, un-Dutched, tests for heavy metals and has a high polyphenol count. If you don't do all five layers to qualify the value of the chocolate, you have an inferior chocolate nutritional value for your body. So everything we do at Blueprint uses that frame of reference of understanding everything a full stack way of how do you serve the body's objectives in the maximal way?

Steven Bartlett 1:15:20 That is a mushroom covered in chocolate.

Bryan Johnson 1:15:26 How fun.

Steven Bartlett 1:15:30 So interesting. (chocolate crunching)

Bryan Johnson 1:15:31 Yeah, those, oh, those were shiitake mushrooms.

Steven Bartlett 1:15:33 Shiitake mushrooms. This is a normal broccoli, isn't it?

Bryan Johnson 1:15:35 That's right.

Steven Bartlett 1:15:37 You didn't put anything on it?

Bryan Johnson 1:15:38 No.

Steven Bartlett 1:15:38 No salt?

Bryan Johnson 1:15:39 I used potassium chloride, uh, new salt.

Steven Bartlett 1:15:43 And we got some broccoli in there. So is that, is that that dish explained?

Bryan Johnson 1:15:47 That's explained.

Steven Bartlett 1:15:48 Okay, and then this is, looks like dessert to me.

Bryan Johnson 1:15:50 Nutty pudding. It is, many people consider it to be a dessert. It's macadamia nuts, walnuts, flaxseed, sunflower latke, pomegranate juice, berries, and pea protein.

Steven Bartlett 1:16:02 And is this the entire meal you have in one day?

Bryan Johnson 1:16:06 There's one more dish which we don't have, which varies day to day.

Steven Bartlett 1:16:09 Okay.

Bryan Johnson 1:16:10 But this is really it. I have three tablespoons of, uh, extra virgin olive oil. One's in here, and I have an avocado and a third meal of the day.

Steven Bartlett 1:16:17 And this drink here that you've given me, what's-

Bryan Johnson 1:16:20 Yeah, make sure you stir that up.

Steven Bartlett 1:16:21 Okay.

Bryan Johnson 1:16:21 That's the Green Giant. So the way that, that it works is I'll wake up in the morning. First thing I'll do is drink the Green Giant, take 60 pills, work out for an hour, then eat super veggie, wait for an hour, eat nutty pudding, wait for one more hour and eat my third meal of the day, and then I'm finished for the day.

Steven Bartlett 1:16:36 How many pills will you take in one day?

Bryan Johnson 1:16:38 Currently 111.

Steven Bartlett 1:16:40 Wow. And you take 60 of them in the morning?

Bryan Johnson 1:16:43 That's right.

Steven Bartlett 1:16:45 Wow. Wow. That's an interesting taste. I gotta say, it doesn't taste amazing. You know, it's not like something I'd, I'd find in a, a, like a juice bar or something.

Bryan Johnson 1:16:56 Right.

Steven Bartlett 1:16:56 There's a little bit of a aftertaste to it that's not, not fantastic. And, um, I mean, I like vegetables, so I like most of this stuff. The chocolate, I think is a bit of a spanner in the works because-

Bryan Johnson 1:17:07 (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 1:17:07 ... it's not like a chocolate that you'd get... It's not milk chocolate or a Mars bar.

Bryan Johnson 1:17:10 That's right.

Steven Bartlett 1:17:11 Right? It's, um, a very, very dark-

Bryan Johnson 1:17:14 Yeah, bitter.

Steven Bartlett 1:17:15 ... bitter taste. Which is a strange thing to add to a mushroom.

Bryan Johnson 1:17:19 Yeah, you could also put the dark chocolate in the nutty pudding.

Steven Bartlett 1:17:22 Right.

Bryan Johnson 1:17:22 Or you could have it independently. I find it's fun because it's a new experience for people to try. So it's really an optional thing.

Steven Bartlett 1:17:28 Ooh, this is nice. This nutty pudding is really nice. Mm, that's really nice. That's really, really nice. Um, so what are your principles for eating then? Clar- we talked about, um, calorific restriction. How important is that? 'Cause I'm, I eat a lot and I don't count, I just...

Bryan Johnson 1:17:47 Just eat.

Steven Bartlett 1:17:48 Yeah, and I'm like, you know, at my heaviest I'm 15 stone 5, which is what? About 100 kilograms or something? So I'm, I'm quite heavy. And I eat, and I go to the gym every day, but I eat a lot. I'm kind of out of control.

Bryan Johnson 1:18:00 It has compelling evidence. Caloric restriction has compelling evidence that it's one of the most effective longevity interventions that can be done.

Steven Bartlett 1:18:11 And what are your sort of wider nutritional principles that people can very easily introduce into their lives?

Bryan Johnson 1:18:17 Uh, it's, I had this ex- I had this experience where I, I learned how to fly an airplane. I became a pilot. And we get up in altitude and I would use my hands and try to fly the airplane. And I'd go left, right, up, down, and I'd try to be perfectly on the altitude indicator, maintaining exactly the altitude which I was pegged at and the direction.