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  • 2 days ago
Don't Die: The Man Who Wants to Live Forever 2025
Transcript
00:00:00Talent is the ability to hit a target no one else can.
00:00:21Genius can hit a target no one else can see.
00:00:24And if we say in the early 21st century, what is the genius target for us?
00:00:30For our time and place.
00:00:32And I would put forward that it's the ability to stop our self-destructive behaviors and neutralize aging.
00:00:43You must have heard of the curious case of Benjamin Button.
00:00:47A story where a man ages in reverse.
00:00:50One man wants to achieve that feat.
00:00:53His name is Brian Johnson.
00:00:55Brian Johnson is determined to live forever or die trying.
00:00:59And is putting his vast fortune and own body on the line to achieve it.
00:01:05As a species, we accept our inevitable decay, decline and death.
00:01:12I want to argue that the opposite should be true.
00:01:15I walked into this because I was marching into an early grave.
00:01:22And now I've built an algorithm that takes better care of me than I can myself.
00:01:27I think this is the first time in the history of the human race that it is not known how long and how well I can live.
00:01:36Three, two, one, action.
00:01:42This is the man spending millions to become 18 years old once again.
00:01:46Brian Johnson.
00:01:47My name is Brian Johnson.
00:01:49I've been spending millions of dollars creating an anti-aging protocol.
00:01:52Two dozen supplements and medicines.
00:01:54Exercise an hour a day plus high intensity three times a week.
00:01:56This 45-year-old millionaire has reversed his age by five years.
00:02:01His doctors claim he has the heart of a 37-year-old.
00:02:04Using his life as a science experiment to see just how long he can live.
00:02:09A.K.A. Project Blueprint.
00:02:12Hi, everyone.
00:02:12The past three years, we've been trying to master the basics.
00:02:14Sleep, diet, exercise.
00:02:16Today, we're doing the first next level therapy.
00:02:19Gene therapy.
00:02:20Oh, shut up, Brian.
00:02:22Fucking Brian.
00:02:23Anything taken to an extreme can potentially be harmful to the body.
00:02:27I don't think I particularly want 33,000 images of my bowels.
00:02:30You've got to have a bit of fun in your life.
00:02:31Where do you find the fun?
00:02:32When do you go raging?
00:02:33Do we really believe that he went from being old to young?
00:02:37I don't.
00:02:38If I had $400 million, I wouldn't be doing what you're doing.
00:02:41This is not an accessible method of reversing the effects of aging.
00:02:45This guy's in his own fucking world.
00:02:47It's not really reality.
00:02:50If you look at all the discussions about me, many times people will say,
00:02:53this is a rich person trying to live forever.
00:02:56Is it going to be so awesome when they get hit by a bus?
00:02:58Lol.
00:02:59Because these are really hard ideas to get your head around.
00:03:02And so to me, the only relevant thought experiment that each of us can do is,
00:03:07do we want to live tomorrow?
00:03:09Most of us are going to say yes.
00:03:12If we feel healthy and well, there's always something to do tomorrow.
00:03:16And so I want people to embrace that day to day until eventually we say,
00:03:22don't die.
00:03:24So I want people to eat and well,opee.
00:03:28This is the gym.
00:03:58This is the gym and it's my happy place.
00:04:00Every morning I come in here and I exercise for roughly an hour.
00:04:04I do about a 35 exercise circuit.
00:04:09Everything we do, we measure it.
00:04:12So we're able to see in a closed loop way, is it working or is it not?
00:04:18What are you finding?
00:04:19So I had a whole body MRI recently and I'm in the 99th percentile for optimal for both muscle and fat
00:04:26across my entire body.
00:04:29Have you ever been this in shape before?
00:04:31No, never in my life.
00:04:35It feels good.
00:04:40Hey, Ollie.
00:04:42Ollie, we'll do the blood draw real quick.
00:04:47Let's do it.
00:04:48Dr. Oliver Zollman and I were connected by a friend.
00:04:54Oliver had spent his entire adult life scouring the literature on anti-aging science.
00:05:00When Brian first reached out, he seemed a bit lost.
00:05:05Whatever he was doing didn't really seem like it was working optimally for him.
00:05:10So I showed him my longevity level one, two, three protocol.
00:05:15Level one is doing the basic stuff, diet, exercise, and then each layer you go up, it gets more sophisticated.
00:05:23His approach was in order to understand human aging, you needed to look at the organ level
00:05:29because the heart is going to age differently than the lungs and the lungs differently than the kidney.
00:05:33Previously, I would use my mind to decide what to eat.
00:05:38So at the grocery store, walking down the aisles and looking at this thing and that thing and put it in the cart.
00:05:43Zollman flipped it on its head and said, what if I asked my organs to speak for themselves?
00:05:48What if the heart and the liver and the lungs could actually speak what they need?
00:05:53And then my responsibility is to do exactly what the body tells me to do.
00:05:58Blueprint is Brian doing this level one, two, three protocol to the most that it's ever been done.
00:06:04He's been the best guinea pig anyone can ask for.
00:06:09It's probably over a hundred different things I do any given day that the body has asked for to be in its ideal state.
00:06:17And that begins with, in the morning I wake up, I turn a specific light on in my bathroom that gives me sun-like exposure.
00:06:24I take three pills.
00:06:25I do my body temperature with an inner ear measurement.
00:06:29Go downstairs, start HRV therapy.
00:06:31So I put a little electrode here in my ear and it stimulates my autonomic nervous system trying to make my body more parasynthetic and more chill.
00:06:39I take 54 pills with a concoction that I call the green giant.
00:06:45I put a cap on my head for hair growth that has 312 laser diodes.
00:06:50Then I work out for an hour, come in, eat a few pounds of vegetables.
00:06:54I do some high-frequency electromagnetic stimulation on my abdomen.
00:06:58I do 12 minutes of near and red light therapy to accelerate healing.
00:07:02I do audio therapy for my hearing regeneration.
00:07:05I have my last meals to eat before 11 a.m., 34 more pills to take.
00:07:11There's protocols throughout the day here and there.
00:07:14And then my night-time routine.
00:07:17By doing Blueprint, one of the key objectives is to achieve the lowest possible biological age.
00:07:24So just like a tree has rings, we all have a signature inside of our body of our age.
00:07:32After doing Blueprint now for two years, I've reversed my biological age 5.1 years.
00:07:38I have 50 perfect biomarkers.
00:07:41I have 100 biomarkers where I'm less than my chronological age.
00:07:45And my speed of aging is 0.69, which means for every 12 months, I age 8 months.
00:07:52In terms of how far this goes, it's open-ended.
00:07:57We have no idea.
00:07:59But I want to take my speed of aging to the lowest possible number.
00:08:11Step back a little bit.
00:08:13Yeah.
00:08:14And then a little bit closer to the bed.
00:08:17Yeah.
00:08:17Great.
00:08:18And then you can just, like, literally just rattle everything off.
00:08:23Okay.
00:08:23So today is a very exciting day for me because for the very first time ever, after tracking my sleep for four years, I achieved my first perfect month.
00:08:33So I have an average of 100% sleep performance for 30 days.
00:08:38I go to bed at 8.30 p.m.
00:08:40I've averaged 8 hours and 34 minutes of sleep every night.
00:08:44The body loves routine.
00:08:46So go to bed at the exact same time every night.
00:08:48No excuses.
00:08:49Sleep is not something that can be dismissed.
00:08:52So hopefully these tips help you, that you can start inching towards better sleep.
00:08:56It will change everything in your life.
00:09:00Wonderful.
00:09:01Okay.
00:09:01Good.
00:09:03Kate, what's your role on this?
00:09:04I don't even know how to describe it.
00:09:06Take it, take a stab.
00:09:11Um, I just am, I am here on the mission, trying to make whatever needs to happen, happen in order to get there.
00:09:19That's my role.
00:09:21Kate has been with me from the very beginning of Blueprint, yeah.
00:09:26How do you feel?
00:09:26Are you converted?
00:09:27To be honest, when I first started, I was eating McDonald's, um, philosophically converted.
00:09:32When I first met Brian, it was not healthy.
00:09:38And we started talking about the philosophy of Blueprint.
00:09:42And all of a sudden I was like, okay, when I laugh about not being fit and not being able to exercise and that kind of stuff, I'm kind of laughing in the face of my future self.
00:09:53Like, I don't want to be that person, you know, when I'm 60 and I'm unable to run around or, yeah.
00:10:00So, it was a huge wake-up call for me.
00:10:04Now, here I am, like, the other person behind this mission.
00:10:08I mean, like, you could beef it up by saying, like, every morning I do the same four-hour routine and this is what starts it off.
00:10:16That's good.
00:10:17When we first started working together, Brian asked me to develop the communication side of things.
00:10:23His big ambition was to get Blueprint out to the people so that we can all learn from what Blueprint is up to.
00:10:32But it was like hitting our head against the wall for a little while because it was just a bit of an empty void on the Internet.
00:10:39And then one day I had this idea.
00:10:42Okay.
00:10:43What if we publish all of his biometric data online and made it a thing that people could witness and watch?
00:10:50The protocols, the measurements, the recipes, the supplements, we published it all on my website.
00:10:56And this journalist I knew, Ashley Vance, saw this and expressed an interest in doing a profile on Blueprint.
00:11:02Brian put all of his stuff online.
00:11:05I was like, all right, this guy's somewhere between off and, like, very interesting.
00:11:10I went to visit him at his house with his own home laboratory.
00:11:14And we just kind of, like, started talking.
00:11:16When doctors visit our clinic here, they get pretty excited because we have outfitted this so that we can be a medical-grade operation at every level.
00:11:28And I started just asking him questions.
00:11:30He's like, okay, I spent $2.5 million on all this stuff.
00:11:33And this was not a professional athlete who was spending this much money on his body.
00:11:38It was just this random tech guy who's just, you know, absolutely going further than what anyone else had done.
00:11:44And so that's when I really knew this actually was a story.
00:11:47I remember the day before the article came out, Kate and I were in my office.
00:11:53And we both had this moment of crisis.
00:11:58Like, oh, no.
00:12:00Like, what have we done?
00:12:03One man, he spent $2 million to effectively reboot his body.
00:12:08Millionaire entrepreneur Brian Johnson.
00:12:10Brian Johnson.
00:12:11Brian Johnson.
00:12:11Brian Johnson is on a quest to live longer.
00:12:15All of a sudden, every spotlight was turned on Brian and the project.
00:12:20And everything we worked on was under intense scrutiny.
00:12:23I think his rectum went viral, his rectal biological age.
00:12:27There was so much online video people were making.
00:12:31And it's just kind of a blur.
00:12:32We were inundated with interest.
00:12:35Every single product that we published on the Blipper website was sold out within days.
00:12:41Nobody could get anything that we used.
00:12:43We couldn't either.
00:12:44We had suppliers calling us saying, what is going on?
00:12:47It also unlocked a colossal amount of hate.
00:12:51I actually would say he doesn't look that healthy.
00:12:53There's something super weird about looking young forever.
00:12:56Like, he takes, like, 40 vitamins in the morning and 40 more in the afternoon.
00:13:01That seems tedious.
00:13:02I know.
00:13:03It's like, I'd rather just die sooner.
00:13:05And the irony of this specifically is you're seeking more time when you're not even living the time you've been given.
00:13:11I think for most people, the longevity field has always been looked at skeptically.
00:13:22It's just these rich Silicon Valley types chasing the fountain of youth.
00:13:26Jeff Bezos threw more money behind an obsession to become among the billionaires on a quest to defeat aging.
00:13:35Space, Internet, and now live forever.
00:13:38Jeez.
00:13:39It's, like, seen as strange and fringe.
00:13:44It just so happens it is a real field of science.
00:13:48There are proper doctors and scientists that look at this.
00:13:53We're all so used to watching our friends and relatives and pets age and die.
00:13:57We think it's somehow natural and therefore somehow good.
00:14:00But I describe aging as our greatest humanitarian challenge.
00:14:05Aging causes cancer.
00:14:06Aging causes heart disease.
00:14:07Aging causes dementia.
00:14:08Aging causes stroke.
00:14:10It makes us more susceptible to infections.
00:14:11It makes us more frail.
00:14:13And actually, if you look at causes of death across the world today, the leading killers are these diseases like cancer and dementia and heart disease.
00:14:19I think the real promise of this field is that we have the opportunity, by targeting the biology of aging, to delay or prevent many, maybe all, of the functional declines in diseases that go along with old age.
00:14:33And that's huge.
00:14:34We're still, I would say, we're still, I would say, we're still, I would say, at an early stage, but there's already been a number of breakthroughs.
00:14:39There's already a number of interventions, including drugs and diets that, in animal models, slow down the process of aging.
00:14:47We have robust evidence that we can extend the lifespan of a mouse.
00:14:52So, if you're a mouse, we've got you covered.
00:14:55But what that also means is that we have a lot of things to test in humans.
00:15:01Testing Tuesday.
00:15:02Good morning.
00:15:03Let's get started.
00:15:03We are experimenting, and we are trialing out, and I think we will have a revolution in the next coming 10 years of very specific interventions we can apply to humans to then lower the biological age.
00:15:19You could get within four millimeters.
00:15:22That's a lot better.
00:15:23I know.
00:15:23That's really great.
00:15:24I'm benefiting from decades of progress that people have made in the world of anti-aging science.
00:15:30And the scientific interventions are moving forward very fast.
00:15:35And so it has a tangible sense of it's here.
00:15:38And I want people to know about it.
00:15:43I think we'll light them up.
00:15:45Okay.
00:15:46I think a little more.
00:15:48Yeah.
00:15:49I think I just need a little bit of an angle with your whole legs and everything, if you can.
00:15:54Yeah.
00:15:55So we're going to do another test.
00:15:59Wow.
00:15:59That's so striking.
00:16:02Yeah.
00:16:02Hopefully it captures a new zeitgeist that we're after.
00:16:05Yeah.
00:16:05I think everything looks good.
00:16:08I'll just go to different heights.
00:16:11Chin up a little bit.
00:16:14Yeah.
00:16:15My poor son.
00:16:16He comes home, and he never knows what's going to be happening here.
00:16:20That's great.
00:16:23You ready?
00:16:24Yeah, I'm ready.
00:16:24How's Brian as a dad?
00:16:33He's a pretty good dad.
00:16:34Yeah.
00:16:35When his mother and I split, he was with her for the past couple years.
00:16:40And then he decided to move across the country and live with me for his senior year.
00:16:45Ah, good job.
00:16:47Tom was found a stride.
00:16:48He's been smoking me.
00:16:50What's your take on Blueprint?
00:16:52When the article came out, everyone's like, oh, isn't that your dad?
00:16:55So I got, like, so many texts from friends and people at school asking me all about it.
00:17:01Worth it.
00:17:01Did people think it was cool, or did they think you guys were weirdos?
00:17:05Both.
00:17:06Yeah.
00:17:07Even though I've been at my school for months now, people are still asking me questions every
00:17:11day about it.
00:17:12Oh, no!
00:17:15You played so well.
00:17:16That was a good rally.
00:17:17That was good.
00:17:18I've been around Brian since before Talmadge was here.
00:17:22And I remember thinking, like, how is Brian going to get used to having Talmadge around,
00:17:25like, another human being in his space every single day, because he's such a private, introverted
00:17:30individual, but now it's like he's completely restructured his life around Talmadge being
00:17:35here.
00:17:40Today is an exciting day, because how many schools did you apply to?
00:17:44Fifteen.
00:17:45How many schools have rendered their decisions?
00:17:48Twelve, not including today.
00:17:50Yeah.
00:17:51So these are...
00:17:51So this is the last, and then now you're going to have all the information you need to
00:17:55make a decision on what college you're going to go to.
00:17:58And then you're going to leave me in five months.
00:18:05Yes.
00:18:07I only have 150 days left with Talmadge, which makes me incredibly sad.
00:18:16There is just never enough time.
00:18:21Hey, welcome.
00:18:22Nice to meet you.
00:18:23Thank you so much for opening your house and showing us everything.
00:18:26Next challenge.
00:18:27Yep, let's go.
00:18:28You're vegan?
00:18:29Yeah, I'm vegan by choice.
00:18:31Talmadge and I eat the exact same thing every day, every day.
00:18:34And then I've been working on the splits, so we'll go do the splits as we eat breakfast.
00:18:37Okay.
00:18:38I think if you really want to live the Brian Johnson lifestyle, the commitment to that is
00:18:43obscene.
00:18:44I do 2,000 calories a day.
00:18:46Are you ever hungry?
00:18:47I'm pretty hungry.
00:18:48Okay.
00:18:48The saddest part of my day is the last bite.
00:18:51Your entire day revolves around this quite solitary, very rigid kind of lifestyle.
00:18:59Wait, wait, wait.
00:18:59Brian, Brian, Brian.
00:19:00You can't see sunlight.
00:19:02Did you go in the sun?
00:19:03The UV index is well below dangerous levels, so we're good to go.
00:19:07It seems sort of like depressing and like what kind of life are you leading if you're just
00:19:11giving yourself up to this?
00:19:13You know, it's interesting because obviously you have like this extra level of discipline,
00:19:19but we know, for instance, about cigarettes, that people who smoke a lot, like if they smoke
00:19:25three packs a day, on average, you'll live 11 years less than people who don't smoke.
00:19:30So what you're saying is almost like an advanced version.
00:19:33Like if I cut out smoking, I'll live 11 years more than average.
00:19:36If I cut out drinking, I'll live five years more than average and on and on.
00:19:40And yeah, people know this about smoking and they still smoke.
00:19:43Yeah, I mean, you're exactly right.
00:19:46Our minds, which we think are our primary tool of problem solving, is actually the source
00:19:54of our self-destructive behaviors.
00:19:57So I would argue the mind is dead.
00:20:01What the f***?
00:20:02Sorry, the mind is dead and the goal is to give complete control of your well-being over
00:20:07to an algorithm?
00:20:08You know who says stuff like that?
00:20:09Algorithms.
00:20:10The first reaction most people have is panic.
00:20:13It's like, well, my free will is the only reason I exist.
00:20:16And if I can't eat what I want to eat, then I have no reason to exist.
00:20:19Yeah, it tastes like nutrition.
00:20:21That's just a knee-jerk reaction.
00:20:23It's just the mind panicking because it feels like its authority is in question.
00:20:27Ready?
00:20:28Ready.
00:20:29The conscious mind is desperate to hold on to power.
00:20:33The catch is we can't trust our minds because the way we've structured society right now
00:20:40is insane.
00:20:41Every day we eat millions of burgers, pizzas and french fries.
00:20:46Now scientists say we may not only be feeding ourselves, we may be feeding an addiction.
00:20:51We expect people on their way to work to pass 20 fast food places, 20 places selling sugary drinks.
00:21:00We ask them to navigate the addictiveness of social media, the world's most powerful algorithms,
00:21:06trying to get them to spend every waking second on the algorithm.
00:21:08Navigate alcohol and the smoking and binge-watching and porn and every other form of addiction.
00:21:16And then we look at the individual and say, why aren't we happier?
00:21:20We have lost touch with basic self-care.
00:21:24We're inebriated.
00:21:25We can't see straight.
00:21:28Even though we know that eating the wrong kinds of foods or drinking or smoking or not prioritizing sleep
00:21:34accelerates aging, disability, even death, we can't stop.
00:21:41We're in a fight for our lives with ourselves.
00:21:53I have found more relief in demoting my mind and elevating my body than I have in my entire life.
00:22:01It feels so liberating to me because my entire life, I was desperate to be free from myself.
00:22:18From when he was young, Brian was a problem solver.
00:22:21When he was in junior high, he knew that we didn't have very much money.
00:22:30And so there's times like when Brian would not eat lunch and contribute his lunch money.
00:22:36He was always coming up with something to help the family.
00:22:39I remember at some point, Brian took a job at a sandwich shop, but that was short-lived.
00:22:47Brian said that he would never work for anybody ever again.
00:22:50You know, that kind of, I'm going to do it by myself.
00:22:54Now, Brian, you're a lifelong entrepreneur.
00:22:56I am.
00:22:57What do you think you learned more from, the success or the failures?
00:22:59I never dwelled on failure.
00:23:01It didn't discourage me.
00:23:02In the beginning, my entrepreneurial adventures had little to zero success.
00:23:08I had a baby.
00:23:10I couldn't pay the bills.
00:23:12And so I took the only job I could find, which was selling credit card processing door-to-door.
00:23:17This experience got me interested in the world of payments.
00:23:20So I started poking around, and I saw that PayPal was the dominant payment provider that had grown up through the Internet.
00:23:26But then, once eBay had acquired them, the development had discontinued.
00:23:31So I started Braintree with the idea of building modern software.
00:23:35He had this little, tiny office.
00:23:37He was working on a card table.
00:23:39Please look at that.
00:23:40No, please do that.
00:23:41I don't know when he got a desk.
00:23:43I didn't take any outside capital.
00:23:45We were one of the fastest-growing companies in America twice.
00:23:48We acquired Venmo in year five, and we became part of the global payments infrastructure.
00:23:53All right, everybody, let's give it up for Brian Johnson!
00:24:01It was so exciting.
00:24:03So I don't think that I realized that there was also that other side that was haunting him.
00:24:08I couldn't believe how much effort people put into building the company.
00:24:12It was amazing.
00:24:13Staying there all night, multiple nights in a row.
00:24:16When I was building Braintree Venmo, I was just grinding myself into the grave.
00:24:20It was a social norm that an entrepreneur would go days without sleeping, and if you told that story, people would be in awe, and there would be mythology about you, like, amazing that they did this.
00:24:32Now I view this as totally foolish.
00:24:35I would wake up the next day, ornery, not feeling restored, and then having to muster up the strength to walk in and be like, all right, everybody, we're going to work hard, and we're going to solve all these burning problems that are going on.
00:24:46I was stressed out of my mind.
00:24:51Careful.
00:24:52Careful, careful.
00:24:53Careful.
00:24:54Stop it!
00:24:55Stop it!
00:24:56I'm turning this off.
00:24:57Coming home at night and dealing with three kids, I'd be exhausted and unpleasant.
00:25:02After a guaranteed fight with a partner, I would turn to unhealthy food as my soothing mechanism.
00:25:10Pure sugar.
00:25:11And, of course, that just made things worse because my sleep would then suffer, and it would just compound upon itself.
00:25:17I was miserable.
00:25:18I remember one particular visit.
00:25:23He didn't say too much, but at the end, I could tell that it was a really difficult time for him.
00:25:33And when he left, I cried.
00:25:36Had you ever seen him that way?
00:25:38Mm-mm.
00:25:40And I didn't know until then.
00:25:41Sundays were my hardest days because I would go to church, and everything about being there made me dissolve.
00:25:59Growing up in the Mormon church, my entire family was there, my entire community was there, and it gave me all the answers to existence.
00:26:07It had stories about what existed before this life, why we are here on this earth, what's after life, but with the intensity of what life was delivering up.
00:26:19I felt like those answers, the only reality I knew, didn't make sense anymore.
00:26:25I was kind of just dropped into this nothingness.
00:26:29I remember discussions with him where he was having real problems with the religion.
00:26:34Not just like some kind of philosophical dispute.
00:26:40These were things that were so integrated into him, he was having physical symptoms.
00:26:46I would come home from church, and I would lay on my bed.
00:26:49My son at the time, he was seven years old, he would sense something was wrong, and he came up, and he would rub my back.
00:26:55And I was not able to even move.
00:26:58And the only thought that would soothe me was the idea of doing a deal with the devil, and ceasing to exist.
00:27:10I didn't want an afterlife.
00:27:12I didn't want this life.
00:27:14I didn't want consciousness at all.
00:27:17What changed?
00:27:30My mind was like a vicious storm, telling me to literally kill myself.
00:27:36And it became clear to me that the mind is not a reliable source of judgment.
00:27:42I needed a different way of being.
00:27:44It took me several years to rebuild myself.
00:27:51In that time, I sold my company, Braintree Venmo.
00:27:54I got a divorce.
00:27:56I left my born into religion.
00:27:58And ultimately, I found strength and liberation in doing Blueprint.
00:28:05When I give my body authority, it doesn't commit this self-destructive harm.
00:28:10My heart doesn't deliver these stinging insults.
00:28:14My lungs don't do it either.
00:28:15My kidney doesn't either.
00:28:17Removing my mind has been the best thing I've ever done in my life.
00:28:21But leaving the church fractured my life with my family.
00:28:28When Brian decided to leave the church, it was very heartbreaking for me.
00:28:36And I had to go through a process of thinking about the person he is and thinking about what he's doing with his life to find peace.
00:28:50Family is a fundamental teaching of Mormonism.
00:28:54And when my dad left the religion, it felt like it was violating that teaching and that we couldn't be a family anymore.
00:29:02So I definitely, as an eight-year-old, I viewed him as losing his path.
00:29:09Yeah, this book.
00:29:26Oh, man.
00:29:27I went to a church camp last summer before I came out here.
00:29:33And we had these booklets to take notes in.
00:29:36And while everyone else was taking notes about, you know, feeling the spirit, like, feeling good, the community, the scripture,
00:29:45I was taking notes about trying to decipher everything.
00:29:51I felt like I was in this system, and I was trying to take it apart.
00:29:57Prior to moving to California, I was in Mormonism.
00:30:01But ever since I was young, it had never really been my thing.
00:30:04And no one in there saw me or saw the situation I was in.
00:30:09I couldn't talk to anyone.
00:30:11Over the years, me and my siblings would visit my dad periodically.
00:30:16And I started to let my dad in a bit.
00:30:19Talmadge started inquiring me of certain things, like, what about this, what about that?
00:30:23And we established this rapport with each other, where we were able to have these honest dialogues.
00:30:28He just saw me so clearly.
00:30:30He knew the situation I was in.
00:30:32It was wild, because when I would talk, he would then articulate what I was thinking.
00:30:36And I slowly came to the realization that I wanted to get out of the religion in any way possible.
00:30:42After multiple attempts, I eventually managed to come out here and spend my last year of high school with him.
00:30:51I know a lot of my friends, or people in general, feel like their parents misunderstand them.
00:30:57And it takes some experience to unify them, which will kind of make sense with us, took leaving the church.
00:31:07And now, with that shared experience, we can connect on so many deeper levels.
00:31:14Me and my dad, we have the best thing going on.
00:31:18But no one agreed with it.
00:31:23Like, I can't think of a single person who was like, you know what, Talmadge, you should do that.
00:31:26That would be good for you.
00:31:28It was like coming to live with Satan.
00:31:37All right, can you do this?
00:31:38Let's do it.
00:31:39I increased my weight on my curls.
00:31:41I noticed.
00:31:45How's my hip on this, Dad?
00:31:47Let's see.
00:31:51I'm impressed you can do that after that many.
00:31:56Wow.
00:31:59That's art.
00:32:02I wish I had Talmadge's legs.
00:32:05He's kind of the perfect specimen.
00:32:10But you've heard that Brian wants to become Talmadge.
00:32:13Yeah, so, yeah, it's important not to over-rejuvenate because there could be side effects.
00:32:21Have you told that to Brian?
00:32:23Oh, yeah.
00:32:23We discussed this at length.
00:32:26I'm here.
00:32:28Up until this point, we've been doing things people are familiar with.
00:32:31Diet and exercise and sleep.
00:32:33And it's almost like, okay, what's the next level?
00:32:38We looked at every health span and lifespan study that's ever been done, whether it be on humans or mice, and then rank them according to their efficacy of their ability to extend life.
00:32:50And now we're trying to figure out how to do them.
00:32:54We started a human growth hormone.
00:32:58And so you stab this in the leg, and then you press it.
00:33:02Some of these therapies can be very dangerous.
00:33:04And then it's a little teeny needle.
00:33:06You can see that.
00:33:06But we are on the side of, you know, extreme caution.
00:33:12We're doing high-frequency measurements across the whole body.
00:33:15So if we do start seeing side effects, we pick them up fast and try some other therapy.
00:33:21How many pills would you take a day?
00:33:23Today I'll be 130.
00:33:27What's yours?
00:33:2826.
00:33:30We know that it's unrealistic for an normal person to do this wildly rigorous routine.
00:33:36But I think what Brian is trying to do as the first prototype for Blueprint is do the absolute extreme thing.
00:33:47I absolutely acknowledge that not everyone has the time and the resources and the life circumstances that can do it.
00:33:53I'm trying to be on the absolute outermost edge of possibility for the science.
00:33:59I'm trying to show what's possible.
00:34:02It's pretty safe so far.
00:34:04And maybe it'll work.
00:34:05And maybe we can learn something from it and then take that out and everyone else can benefit sooner rather than later.
00:34:16Today is rapamycin day.
00:34:19So rapamycin is a drug that people use to suppress the immune system when they're getting an organ transplant.
00:34:24So you get a new organ in the body, you don't want the immune system to reject it, and so you take rapamycin and it suppresses the immune system.
00:34:32I take this because there's potentially some longevity benefits.
00:34:36It's the kind of thing in the longevity community that people are excited about.
00:34:40Outside the longevity community it's still kind of crazy.
00:34:42Like, you know, if you're like, yeah, I take an immune suppressing drug, that's wacky.
00:34:47Like, why would you ever do that?
00:34:48Rapamycin was a drug that was first discovered in soil bacteria that were isolated on Easter Island.
00:34:56What happened in 2009 was that a really rigorous study in mice found that it can extend lifespan.
00:35:02And it didn't just keep them alive for longer, it kept them healthier for longer as well.
00:35:07And this has been demonstrated in study after study in loads of different conditions, in loads of different labs.
00:35:11The only thing we're lacking is human data.
00:35:15Honestly, I think rapamycin is probably still the most robust candidate for something that would affect human longevity.
00:35:21But they have to be used with caution because you can have bad things happen when you take too much.
00:35:261, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13.
00:35:29Because it suppresses the immune system role, side effects can include very dangerous bacterial infections.
00:35:35Things like pneumonia or cellulitis or pharyngitis.
00:35:40To avoid negative effects, we took a dosage and measured the levels in my blood.
00:35:46Two hours after taking the dose, 24, 48, 72, 96.
00:35:50You can start seeing if you get two high levels or two low levels, then adjust the dose based on that.
00:35:54You know, with this precise formulation, as far as we know, we are on the most aggressive rapamycin protocol of anyone in the industry.
00:36:06Do you follow Brian Johnson at all?
00:36:08I've met him before.
00:36:09What's your take on what he's doing?
00:36:10Some of the interventions that he takes, like rapamycin, they work in mice.
00:36:23We don't know if they would work in humans.
00:36:26We need to have properly designed experiments.
00:36:28Then we could make scientific conclusions.
00:36:31But what Brian's doing, it's not a scientific approach.
00:36:34This is the supplement warehouse.
00:36:37He's taking hundreds of different interventions.
00:36:41And that means it's very, very hard to identify which, if any, of them are working.
00:36:45What you really need to do is a clinical trial where you get thousands of people, not just one,
00:36:50and you give them all the same intervention at the same dose.
00:36:54I think there's value in these individual N-of-1 experiments where people are testing different things on themselves.
00:37:01But it's never going to be accepted by the broader medical community or regulatory agencies.
00:37:09We need the more rigorous clinical trials.
00:37:13Brian blocked me on Twitter because I suggested that he use some of his hundreds of millions of pounds to fund a clinical trial.
00:37:18Specifically, the TAME trial, which wants to find out if metformin is actually an anti-aging drug.
00:37:24Brian takes metformin.
00:37:25So if he wants to know if what he's doing is actually of any use to him,
00:37:28then it will be of huge value to him and the rest of the longevity community to fund this trial.
00:37:32But I'd guess he didn't like me telling him how to spend his money.
00:37:37Whoa.
00:37:38That's really good.
00:37:39What Brian does, I guess, brings attention to our field.
00:37:43This will be positive, but it has almost no contribution to science, right?
00:37:48It's not science.
00:37:49It's just attention.
00:37:50So, yeah, we're going to be filming some shorts.
00:37:53We've been playing around with doing that.
00:37:55So we're upping our social media game.
00:37:58Yeah, we had our first victories.
00:38:01The past two weeks, we had two of our videos get a few million views.
00:38:04Three, just on Instagram.
00:38:06And one on TikTok is approaching.
00:38:08I get messages all the time.
00:38:10Like, hey, can I get connected with your PR firm?
00:38:13Well, you're talking to it.
00:38:14Like, there's two of us.
00:38:16Come on, Brian guy.
00:38:17I appreciate this.
00:38:18Let's go.
00:38:19Is that all you've got?
00:38:21I think you just ate so little.
00:38:23YouTube sent us a box.
00:38:26Presented to Brian Johnson for passing 100,000 subscribers.
00:38:32A lot of people are clearly very interested in anti-aging.
00:38:36We're all aging.
00:38:37We'd all probably like to know how to slow it down at least a little bit.
00:38:40Brian Johnson.
00:38:41If you look at the media that he's doing himself, he's clearly intending to reach as many people as possible.
00:38:46The real question is, what's his motivation?
00:38:50Today I'm going to show you about this device I use to do the equivalent of 20,000 sit-ups in 30 minutes.
00:38:56You sound like an infomercial.
00:38:59I know.
00:38:59I was going to say, like, something's wrong here.
00:39:02If you buy right now the button, low-right $19.99, four easy installments, free shipping.
00:39:07Brian Johnson is going to die one day.
00:39:11Furthermore, it is my personal opinion that Brian Johnson is a grifter who, regardless of whether or not he actually believes he's going to live forever, is absolutely trying to make a quick buck off of people who are terrified of the idea of death and who have more money than common sense.
00:39:31Okay, I've got something special today.
00:39:35What is this?
00:39:36This is the very first Blueprint product we have.
00:39:40Brian Johnson's Blueprint Ultra Premium Extra Virgin Olive Oil.
00:39:47This is the oldest trick in the book as far as self-help scams and just plain old marketing go.
00:39:53You convince people of the problem and then sell them the solution.
00:39:58I've seen 1A take 1, A roll.
00:40:00Get me on your anti-aging routine and do it fast but make it simple.
00:40:05That's the most common thing I hear.
00:40:07How is that?
00:40:09I think that Blueprint is a commercial enterprise.
00:40:13If you go onto his website, every single link on that Blueprint page is an Amazon affiliate link, which means that if you click on it and buy something on Amazon, he gets a small cut of the money.
00:40:20So this whole thing, I think, has been optimized as a money-making venture.
00:40:23I mean, obviously, he's very rich.
00:40:24He's a very talented businessman, so that's going to be the way that he looks at things.
00:40:28Smells like olive oil.
00:40:29I would say very similar to most olive oils.
00:40:32A lot of the hate that we get at Blueprint is kind of interesting in that I make products available for people to also become healthy and make the life changes they want to do.
00:40:40And people hate on me.
00:40:41He's like shit.
00:40:42I see some people on Twitter giving him a really hard time for all the merchandise.
00:40:48I've followed him for years and I'm 100% convinced this was not like the master plan.
00:40:56I remember he was trying to do Blueprint for a couple of years and it was this very personal quest.
00:41:03That's a lot of volume.
00:41:04Seven of these today.
00:41:05He turned to this hardcore health regimen as the solution to these mental health problems.
00:41:12Yeah, I think he believes in what he's doing.
00:41:14It's a huge difference.
00:41:15I imagine this is like emotional for you in a sense that like it sounds like you weren't completely happy with your past self.
00:41:21No.
00:41:23Um, I feel like that person's gone.
00:41:26Should I do this in portrait mode or?
00:41:42Should probably get better lighting though.
00:41:44I have an idea.
00:41:47Oh, I think it looks good.
00:41:48Hmm.
00:41:49Cool idea.
00:41:51The morning rituals that Talmadge and I have together, it's a big part of our lives.
00:41:55And say, what do you think?
00:41:56But soon, Talmadge will be doing this in his dorm in Chicago.
00:42:00And I will be here by myself.
00:42:02How do you feel about that, Talmadge?
00:42:05Talmadge is not looking at this from a fear of loss.
00:42:07Talmadge is looking at this from an opportunity of gain and particularly a girlfriend.
00:42:13Potentially.
00:42:19Kind of repels.
00:42:20Yes.
00:42:25I remember when I was going to college as well, loss of anything in my family environment was not even on my radar.
00:42:34It was entirely about all the new life experiences.
00:42:38Yeah.
00:42:39I'm excited.
00:42:40I do view it as an opportunity for gain.
00:42:42But there is loss too.
00:42:47Yeah.
00:42:49Going through this experience, I guess it invites me to have a lot more empathy for my parents and what they may be going through.
00:42:55Like my dad, if you think about him and age, he said the other day, he googled what happens when you turn 70 or when you're over 70.
00:43:03And he said, jokingly, don't do it.
00:43:07Like every morning you wake up and it's like, how am I doing?
00:43:11Is there one more thing that's broken or that hurts more?
00:43:15Like I wonder what that must feel like.
00:43:17I've always been a mental guy.
00:43:30I've always thought that I could honestly think about 10 things at the same time.
00:43:36But I got to the point where I would write a paragraph that didn't make sense.
00:43:41One day, my father called panicking.
00:43:47He said I would do anything to continue with my mental acuity.
00:43:53And I said, Dad, I'm doing this plasma therapy for myself.
00:43:57There are other people who are doing it for Alzheimer's, Parkinson's.
00:44:01And I said, you know, if you're interested, you can come to Texas with me.
00:44:04And like, I would love to give you a liter of plasma.
00:44:08There it is.
00:44:09There's the plasma.
00:44:09There are certain interventions that truly reverse the ages.
00:44:15For example, this idea of young blood plasma.
00:44:21The reversal effect can be observed in this study
00:44:24where researchers connect a young mouse to an old mouse.
00:44:30They literally connect their arteries and veins.
00:44:34So there's a blood exchange.
00:44:36And you can see that young plasma circulated through the old mouse
00:44:42reverses the epigenetic ages of multiple organs.
00:44:46In one study, we saw a reversal of 50% in a rat.
00:44:51Then in another study more recently, in mice, 30%.
00:44:54When we're looking at plasma, I guess option one, you know, sew me together with a young human.
00:45:02That's not practical.
00:45:03So we said, we can't do that one.
00:45:05So the next case is we look at these plasma exchanges.
00:45:08I didn't see the vision at first.
00:45:10But Brian told me that this would be someone doing something for their loved one that mattered.
00:45:17It was actually an investment in their health by giving them some of your health.
00:45:21And so I tell Talmadge, I'm like, hey, like, Grandpa's pumped about this.
00:45:25So we start talking and like, we said, what if you did it too?
00:45:30You donate your plasma to me.
00:45:32I will to Dad.
00:45:34It'll be this multi-generational thing.
00:45:35What do you think?
00:45:36And he instantaneously said, yes, I'm in.
00:45:40We're 34,000 feet.
00:45:41We're flying to Dallas.
00:45:42We just had some food.
00:45:44Talmadge is right behind me.
00:45:49I need to check in to see what he's eating to make sure his plasma is okay.
00:45:54The plasma stuff always sounds super creepy to anyone who hears about it for the first time.
00:46:00But Brian was not the first guy to do this.
00:46:03Years ago, there would be these stories about Peter Thiel, the venture capitalist,
00:46:07one of the first investors in Facebook, draining the blood of some young, healthy people.
00:46:12I'm not sure that that's true, but this all got out into the wild.
00:46:16It sort of got parodied in the show Silicon Valley.
00:46:19Everything okay?
00:46:20Is Bryce your assistant?
00:46:22No, of course not.
00:46:23He's my transfusion associate.
00:46:25Most Silicon Valley people, if they had a blood boy, they didn't want anybody to know about it.
00:46:30But Brian, being Brian, kind of embraced all this and was out there parading his blood boys
00:46:36around on Twitter and taking photographs.
00:46:39You guys look awesome.
00:46:42It did have the elements of, like, absurdity that I thought would come with Brian,
00:46:46having the whole family show up as if you were going to, like, a ball game,
00:46:50except you were just all going to swap plasma.
00:46:55What?
00:46:56The plasma bus got decorated.
00:46:58Love flows from the heart.
00:47:00I guess it's really the vein, but this is amazing!
00:47:07Hey, look at that.
00:47:09That's pretty plasma.
00:47:11So what's good about this?
00:47:12The color's really nice.
00:47:13It's pristine.
00:47:14I'm actually honestly scared that it's going to be more clear than mine.
00:47:18Like, it'll be embarrassing.
00:47:20So, like, I'm hoping, you know, it's good, but I'm also...
00:47:24Yeah, I understand that.
00:47:25It's competition.
00:47:26I understand that.
00:47:27I mean, this is the way you can tell, am I a fraud or not, right?
00:47:30Like, all right, haters.
00:47:32Yeah.
00:47:33What'd you say about this?
00:47:35I have identified the world's first vampire.
00:47:39Anti-aging fanatic who spends more than $2 million per year to retain youth
00:47:44uses teen son as, quote, blood boy.
00:47:47Bruh.
00:47:48His son needs to watch out right now.
00:47:50His son needs to run.
00:47:52Oh, the dint email's up.
00:47:53Yeah.
00:47:54Okay.
00:47:55Some of the comments on the dint email.
00:47:57What a weirdo.
00:47:58Disgusting and satanic.
00:48:00What a waste of time.
00:48:02Oh, humanity's so great.
00:48:07The plasma transfer blew up on social media.
00:48:10And, of course, the easy place to go is vampire, blood draw, blood boy.
00:48:17And the mean spirit is, instead of drawing my ire and my absolute anger, really made me sad.
00:48:27All right, Dad.
00:48:29Let's get you a new pillow.
00:48:32One thing people don't get, this was an event that transcended a trial of a therapy.
00:48:37You know how special this is.
00:48:40You know, the connection and everything, this is just like a manifestation of all that commitment,
00:48:46everything else.
00:48:47Yeah, better than words.
00:48:49Better than words.
00:48:50When you become invested in the other person to the point that you step up and you share biology,
00:48:58having that kind of intimacy with both Brian and with Talmadge, for me, it was a chance to reconcile.
00:49:10When I was early married, you would never see a more serious MF-er in Mormonism than me.
00:49:16But the problem was, it was not my life.
00:49:20When I was younger, my father went through some difficult times with professional challenges and drugs.
00:49:27His mom and I separated and got a divorce.
00:49:31At that time, I wasn't sure whether to find a girlfriend or have a line of Coke to go to Temple or go have a scotch.
00:49:39When your life is so screwed up to that point, and you have no idea what your moral standards are, it all falls apart.
00:49:49It was like a 95% likelihood that he would fall through on anything.
00:49:56Like, pick me up from school, you know, help me with a homework assignment, like, call me when he said he would like,
00:50:02it just, it would never happen.
00:50:03That probably affected Brian the most of any of the kids.
00:50:07He was the one that wanted to go with his dad.
00:50:11He's the one that waited for him.
00:50:13I think it hurt him a lot.
00:50:18He got arrested when I was 22.
00:50:22And I went and saw him in jail.
00:50:26And that was a moment for him.
00:50:29Guess who came to see his dad?
00:50:30And words of judgment, like, God, Dad, clean up your act?
00:50:36No.
00:50:37You can do it, Dad.
00:50:41Did anyone else come?
00:50:43No.
00:50:48No.
00:50:49Me being at that point, and being at this point, I mean, have Brian holding on to me, having Talmadge.
00:51:09What could be a better statement of reconciliation?
00:51:12I love you, Dad.
00:51:15I love you.
00:51:17What a great experience.
00:51:20You feel the love?
00:51:22It was one of the most precious life experiences we've ever had.
00:51:28It morphed into this multi-generational healing bonding experience, and was less about the therapeutic benefit.
00:51:38I feel like a parent and a child that maybe takes different paths can find a place for a good relationship.
00:51:52But it has to be a joint effort for both.
00:51:56Why are you having that reaction?
00:52:04It's hard work sometimes.
00:52:07And it's not without its heartache.
00:52:09But it can be done.
00:52:14Having this time with my father, I reflected a lot on being a dad.
00:52:21All right.
00:52:22Here we go.
00:52:23Okay, guys.
00:52:24Hi, mister.
00:52:25Hey, Talmadge.
00:52:26It's been one of the most painful experiences of my life where two of my children keep me at bay because I'm not part of their religious organization.
00:52:36So I feel like I missed out on a meaningful part of their lives.
00:52:40And it's been the most special experience of my life where one of my children has fully embraced me.
00:52:47I wish my other children would join me.
00:52:49Hi, Talmadge.
00:53:03How are you?
00:53:04How are you?
00:53:04Cool.
00:53:04Talmadge.
00:53:09Last night, I did a phone call date with somebody I met on a dating app.
00:53:18We're going to go out on a date next week.
00:53:19I wish her the best of luck.
00:53:23You wish her the best of luck?
00:53:24Yeah.
00:53:29Relationships are really important.
00:53:30And, you know, with Talmadge leaving, I guess I need to rebuild my life.
00:53:36I told her why it'd be a bad idea.
00:53:40She seemed undeterred.
00:53:41Normally, when I engage with somebody and we're contemplating being friends, I make a list and I say, here are the 10 reasons why I'm a bad idea.
00:53:54You know, I have this protocol that is rigorous.
00:53:56I'm impossibly hard to be with.
00:53:58And ultimately, you're just going to hate me.
00:54:01And so I try to get in front of it.
00:54:03And oftentimes, people will laugh.
00:54:05I'm like, no, for real.
00:54:07This is really what's going to happen.
00:54:08I don't know.
00:54:09Maybe it's a really bad strategy.
00:54:10Brian deserves to have companionship in his life.
00:54:17And I think he's always struggled to find that.
00:54:22I feel like there's a conflict within Brian between family Brian, the one that wants a partner, wants to just, like, hang out, you know, be around loved ones.
00:54:32And then the ambitious Brian who says, like, every ounce of my energy needs to be dedicated toward this mission.
00:54:40I went on two dates with this one woman.
00:54:51And we got along fairly well.
00:54:56But I think she basically was like, you're so far outside the norms.
00:55:00I just don't know if I, you know, if I can make sense of this whole thing.
00:55:04Are you willing to change?
00:55:09No.
00:55:12Let's just say relationships have never been my strength.
00:55:16I was married at the age of 24.
00:55:18I didn't have any girlfriends before that.
00:55:20So then when I got divorced 13 years later, I had no idea how to deal with partnership.
00:55:26Brian is a complicated person.
00:55:29And I remember we had a conversation with some concerns, am I ever going to find someone that would really fit with me, realizing that he was quite unique.
00:55:38I guess I just kind of stumbled through social interactions, and my first girlfriend, after getting a divorce, has ended up in a pretty ugly lawsuit.
00:55:50Oh, that's a cool headline.
00:55:52Tech mogul Brian Johnson, who spends $2 million a year for an 18-year-old body, cheated and dumped fiancé after she got breast cancer.
00:55:57Lawsuit?
00:55:58What?
00:55:59How is that a lawsuit, though?
00:56:01Johnson had agreed to provide lifelong financial support.
00:56:04Oh, this is where the lawsuit comes in.
00:56:06Then she got breast cancer.
00:56:10She became a net negative.
00:56:13And a bad deal for him.
00:56:16He described her as a business term.
00:56:18Oh, my God.
00:56:20Brian's relationship with Taryn, I think, was a very sweet relationship for both of them.
00:56:28I saw how happy it made them.
00:56:30And so it was surprising to me to hear some allegations.
00:56:35Taryn filed a lawsuit against Brian.
00:56:38Taryn claimed, after the cancer treatment, Brian demanded that she move out of the residence they shared.
00:56:44He told her that he would be willing to assist her with rent and expenses, but only if she signed the separation agreement.
00:56:51Almost like, hey, sign this NDA, and I'll give you the money.
00:56:54She had no independent source of steady income.
00:56:57She tried to resist, but Brian was manipulative.
00:57:00Being labeled as this awful person for all these things, I was rattled deeply.
00:57:06We dated for a couple years, and when we separated, she hired one of the most powerful law firms in the world.
00:57:13They sent me this letter demanding that I pay them $9 million that week, or they were going to make these scandalous statements about me.
00:57:23I felt like they were all false allegations.
00:57:26And so I said, I'm not doing it.
00:57:28Okay.
00:57:29Game face.
00:57:30What is game face?
00:57:31If someone were to put a game face on.
00:57:34We were in arbitration where everything's confidential.
00:57:36But then the media found the lawsuit in the California courts and then published all of her allegations.
00:57:45Facing the destruction of my personal reputation by my former girlfriend and fiancee, it's hard for me to walk into a relationship and trust that there's not some alternative motive.
00:57:59You know, a lot of people, of course, say, like, boo-hoo, you're a rich person problems or whatever.
00:58:04Okay.
00:58:05Uh, sure.
00:58:06Also, it stinks because it does create a significant barrier for meaningful relationships because it's just, it complicates everything.
00:58:14But with Talmadge, our relationship is rich and dynamic.
00:58:22Game on.
00:58:24Woo!
00:58:25That was amazing.
00:58:27Where's Talmadge?
00:58:28I gotta find Talmadge.
00:58:29There he is.
00:58:30Yes!
00:58:31Ha!
00:58:32Did you see time?
00:58:33What is it?
00:58:34I beat you.
00:58:35Oh, no!
00:58:36You can run it back tomorrow.
00:58:38Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.
00:58:41I've never had a relationship in my life that has been this consistent and steady and soothing and fun.
00:58:51It has all the characteristics of everything I've always wanted in a best friend.
00:58:56Yes!
00:58:57You're killing it.
00:58:58And so I think, yeah, there's a meaningful amount of influence that Talmadge has on this project.
00:59:03Talmadge, Brian Johnson.
00:59:05Woo!
00:59:06People think I'm fearful of death.
00:59:11I'm not.
00:59:12I love life.
00:59:14And I love living life with Talmadge.
00:59:18Do you worry about him or you think he'll be good on his own?
00:59:22I do worry about him.
00:59:24Like, yeah, we're gonna really miss each other.
00:59:27Happy birthday, Talmadge?
00:59:28Yeah.
00:59:29Previous generations, you have kids so that you can pass the torch.
00:59:33And now you have kids so that you can journey with them.
00:59:37I mean, don't die is real.
00:59:39Like, I want to journey with Talmadge for some indefinite period of time.
00:59:44I'm serious about this.
00:59:46I really do want to have multiple lifetimes with Talmadge and go through all the different phases.
00:59:54A hundred years is not gonna be enough.
00:59:58Ready?
00:59:59Yeah, whenever you're ready.
01:00:00Okay.
01:00:01Hi, everyone.
01:00:02Today is one of the most exciting days of Blueprint.
01:00:03We're gonna travel to an island just off the coast of Honduras.
01:00:04And I'm going to be injected with my first gene therapy.
01:00:17If you look at the age charts of humanity, humans have a 120-year ceiling.
01:00:22So, if we want to say we're going to punch through this limitation of human lifespan, it's gonna be through gene therapy.
01:00:28Under our socks, shorts, shirts.
01:00:30Gene therapy is considered, you know, taking it as far as you can at this point.
01:00:35So, it's kind of the extreme measure of treating biological aging.
01:00:40The state of gene therapy at the moment is that we're using it in the clinic, but we're using it for very serious conditions.
01:00:45Conditions where we know that there is a single gene that's causing the problem.
01:00:49And we can say editing this gene in this way would be successful.
01:00:52The idea of using gene therapy for aging is hugely exciting.
01:00:57But today, the science just isn't ready.
01:00:59And in fact, there's quite a big risk because there are these things called off-target effects.
01:01:04And so, this is where the gene therapy goes in and it modifies not just the DNA that you're trying to modify,
01:01:08but it modifies some other part of your genome.
01:01:11Many interventions do rejuvenate cells, but that incurs a risk that the cells then turn into different cells.
01:01:21Malignant cells, cancer cells.
01:01:23Gene therapy is dangerous.
01:01:26And we have been evaluating various gene therapies for the past almost two years now.
01:01:31This is the only one that had the potential lifespan extenders that we were looking for that also met our safety criteria.
01:01:40In what Brian's trying to do in his journey, is there any part of you that's nervous for what he's trying to achieve?
01:01:46Yes, yes. I am nervous where Brian's going because me, I'm logical and smart.
01:01:53When I get to the edge of the ledge, I stop.
01:01:58I'm never taking the next step into the abyss.
01:02:02Generally, a person would get a gene therapy in a clinical trial.
01:02:10And the problem with clinical trials is they are limited.
01:02:14Certainly, there isn't gene therapy for aging in clinical trials at this moment.
01:02:19So other than that, you would travel for medical tourism.
01:02:23And one place that gene therapy is being offered is Roatan, Honduras.
01:02:30There is a free zone there called Prospera.
01:02:32Prospera is a special economic zone that the state of Honduras has licensed with the ability to create new business laws that are favorable to innovations like our gene therapy.
01:02:47Here, we're able to operate under an ethics review board and a committee that makes sure that we're doing everything up to standard.
01:02:57All this that you see is Prospera.
01:03:00I'm going to look out for dinosaurs.
01:03:02We're working on an axe.
01:03:04You know, we are planning on doing trials in the United States.
01:03:09However, it's a thing.
01:03:10It takes some time.
01:03:11And it's not necessarily time devoted towards laboratory work.
01:03:16It's more of a thing of legal issues and having lawyers communicate on your behalf with a very large and very bureaucratic regulatory agency.
01:03:28It's go time.
01:03:29All right.
01:03:30This way.
01:03:31If I'm being honest, Prospera is like a batshit crazy idea.
01:03:35It's like you just take over a little bit of land, set up all your own rules.
01:03:40I like Mac and Walter very much.
01:03:43They seem like nice guys.
01:03:44They didn't strike me as, you know, 20 year PhD type scientist.
01:03:51And so it was like the first thing Brian's done where I really was like, is this a good idea?
01:03:58If there's anything you have any questions about, whatever information you need, we will do our best to provide.
01:04:06Any kind of diagnostic, anything.
01:04:08We will do our best.
01:04:10I appreciate that, Walter.
01:04:13When me and Mac started the company, we wanted to make a big difference in people's lives.
01:04:17You know, we're dealt a certain hand at our birth.
01:04:21We're dealt with the genes we're given.
01:04:24And we want to give people options.
01:04:29This gene therapy, which is folistatin, has primarily been used in bodybuilding, where you're looking at increased muscle mass and strength.
01:04:39For some people, bulking up is desirable, but generally with age, sarcopenia, osteoporosis, and frailty are severe problems.
01:04:47Our gene therapy treats that either preventatively in young people or in a reactive way in older people who are already experiencing it.
01:04:55If you look at the mouse lifespan studies where it was used, they had a 30% lifespan extension.
01:05:02And so if I end up looking like a Marvel character, all the better.
01:05:06Can I get some help on this?
01:05:08After the gene therapy, I'm not going to fit in this thing.
01:05:10Or maybe I'm going to, you know, I'm going to Hulk out of it.
01:05:15He's so confident.
01:05:17But I'm a little worried for him.
01:05:20Like, we just don't know how his body is going to react.
01:05:23And I would just, I would hate for anything to happen to him.
01:05:27It's really important to note, any gene therapy that integrates into your existing genome does change your DNA.
01:05:37Our gene therapy does not integrate.
01:05:39Once you get injected, it's not editing your DNA.
01:05:42It's just giving you an added piece of DNA that's parallel and creates a little export factory, a folistatin.
01:05:49Most gene therapies, because they integrate into your chromosomal DNA, once it's there, it's there.
01:05:55And you can't turn it off.
01:05:57Our gene therapy doesn't integrate.
01:06:00And so we've introduced the concept of a kill switch.
01:06:03It's potentially safer because if you want to turn it off, there's a few methods that we could use to make it reversible.
01:06:10Hey, are you ready for this?
01:06:14I'm ready for this.
01:06:16Alright, let's go.
01:06:18Here it comes.
01:06:22Stings just a little bit.
01:06:35Geez, I wish we could drag this out, but that's it.
01:06:39Thanks, Doc.
01:06:40It was clean and injections.
01:06:42Yeah, good.
01:06:43I am now officially a genetically enhanced human.
01:06:50When people see someone like me doing gene therapy, many think of inequality or they see a divide between rich and poor.
01:06:58The way I think about it is if we can prove that this gene therapy is safe and effective and then, you know, 10,000 people are willing to do it, that price is going to go down.
01:07:11Doctor, thanks.
01:07:12You're welcome.
01:07:13Yeah, really appreciate you.
01:07:14Okay.
01:07:15There are very expensive interventions like gene therapy that we need to test.
01:07:19For academics, it's prohibitively expensive to do the human clinical studies.
01:07:24And maybe longevity clinics where people pay a lot of money are places we can at least get some data.
01:07:30So I'm not against having clinics available, but once we find out how things work, we have to figure out how to scale them and make them broadly available.
01:07:40I don't know if we'll live forever, but at least we absolutely will buy the next guy some more time.
01:07:46And, you know, I'd rather give my children more years than I had the opportunity for.
01:07:51So, thank you so much for believing in us.
01:07:53Yeah, thank you.
01:07:54Both of you.
01:07:55That's right.
01:07:56Yeah.
01:07:58Wow.
01:07:59That looks still enough to walk on.
01:08:02If we put a camera on top, I can walk on water here.
01:08:07From Homo sapiens to Homo Deus, testing out whether the gene therapy, if the effects have taken.
01:08:14Be careful, Jacob.
01:08:16Don't die.
01:08:17No one can die.
01:08:23Brian, when he was young, really lived from religion.
01:08:28Yeah.
01:08:30You know, I can remember a stage that he went through where, I mean, he literally wanted to be like Joseph Smith.
01:08:38Joseph Smith, of course, is the founding prophet in Mormonism.
01:08:42And I think the thing that you see is a continuing principle with Brian.
01:08:47He wants his life to be such that he would stick out like a Joseph Smith.
01:08:53His reward will be when he effects change.
01:08:57Change to him is the aphrodisiac.
01:09:00It is the drug.
01:09:02Health and wellness is all like religion.
01:09:03With the Bible.
01:09:04It's not hard to make the argument that he gave up on the church, had to find a new religion, and has turned health and himself into this religion.
01:09:12And it's this very narcissistic enterprise.
01:09:1515,000 views in three hours.
01:09:18585 comments.
01:09:20Receiving attention.
01:09:22Having people care about what he's doing.
01:09:24I think he does care about that.
01:09:26But I don't actually think it, like, undermines what he's doing because it's so out there in the open.
01:09:33I made a statement yesterday that Jesus has had 2,000 years.
01:09:38I don't see any evidence of his work.
01:09:40I've done more in two years.
01:09:42How'd that go?
01:09:44As you might expect.
01:09:46He talks about himself as being, kind of, health Jesus with, like, a little bit of humor, but also, I think, quite a bit of pride.
01:09:54Hi, guys.
01:09:55Hey.
01:09:56He's embracing the culty aspect of this all, and it only seems to be building more and more momentum.
01:10:03How do you think I appear to your friends?
01:10:06I think the only way for me to understand that is if one of my friends' dads was starting a cult.
01:10:11Hmm.
01:10:12And how I'd look at that.
01:10:15And I probably wouldn't think much of it because you're doing it.
01:10:18Am I starting a cult?
01:10:19Yes.
01:10:20Am I?
01:10:21Yeah.
01:10:22It's not a bad thing.
01:10:24It just is.
01:10:26I know Brian's tried to force this to be a religion.
01:10:30There's a part of me, though, that thinks this is almost, like, the right religion for this moment.
01:10:35In some ways, it is, like, this antidote to the way the world thinks about health.
01:10:41There are still serious concerns about the nation's healthcare system.
01:10:44The National Health Service is broken.
01:10:47Why is the system letting doctors and patients down?
01:10:51The approach to health in pretty much every developed nation has really been centered around waiting until people develop a disease and then attempting to cure that disease, but in reality, pretty much just treating symptoms.
01:11:04One of the consequences of that is that the prevalence of chronic disease has increased dramatically over the last 50 years.
01:11:11We think, you know, I'll go to bed at 90 and I'll die in my sleep.
01:11:15That almost never happens.
01:11:16If you go into a geriatric world and you see people incontinent, immobile, if we do look at it, if we stare this in the face, it's particularly unpleasant.
01:11:27At the moment, we are spending so much money treating very sick individuals.
01:11:31I think we have to ask, why wouldn't you invest earlier in life to keep them healthy, to not having so many people with age-related diseases?
01:11:42You know, in the U.S., doctors are generally paid on procedures.
01:11:45And I remember when I was at the Buck doing research on aging, there was a large hospital chain that was thinking about giving a donation to the research.
01:11:54And we talked about Healthspan and the CEO looked at me and said, well, if we do this, you're going to cut our procedure rate by 60%.
01:12:03Why would I do this?
01:12:05And so we need to think about how we really want to focus on the health of the population.
01:12:09I think that's the most, like, admirable part about what Brian is doing.
01:12:16It's the most proactive thing you can imagine.
01:12:19And if the medical system was wired even just, like, a little bit more this way, I think it would probably be good for the rest of us.
01:12:27If we can solve this fundamental problem, we may walk into a future where all of us live healthier and longer with the people that we care about.
01:12:39How many people can go to church?
01:12:41We should go to church.
01:12:42What do we want?
01:12:47Three days.
01:12:48That's so wild to me.
01:12:49I know.
01:12:50It's here.
01:12:52I think of it.
01:12:53I've been acting all tough guy, like, yeah, I'm going off to college.
01:12:56But when I started to think about it, like, ugh.
01:12:58I'm defeated.
01:13:00Oh, shit.
01:13:02I'll get over it.
01:13:03I just feel defeated.
01:13:04It's like you got me, but now you're losing me again.
01:13:08Yeah, yeah.
01:13:14Yeah.
01:13:19Oh, no!
01:13:211921, it's a close game, Dad.
01:13:23I was down, then you were down.
01:13:26Yeah, you came back. Come back. Good job.
01:13:29You too.
01:13:30I've always been the Talmadge Whisperer.
01:13:34From the moment he came out of the womb,
01:13:37I was the one who could quiet him, settle him,
01:13:40and it was just my little Talmadge.
01:13:42And this week, he's ready to go.
01:13:44Hi, mister.
01:13:46Do you need help with anything today?
01:13:49No.
01:13:52My priorities involve stuff I do by myself.
01:13:56Mm-hmm.
01:13:58With kids' help.
01:14:02He's learned everything he needs to learn from me,
01:14:06and I was just going through the typical parental process
01:14:10of having, you know, someone leave your nest.
01:14:13Yeah, I like it.
01:14:14Cute.
01:14:15Yeah.
01:14:26Talmadge Bryan-Chompson, ready to go.
01:14:28As soon as I step past this, I'm out.
01:14:32The voyage begins.
01:14:38Welcome, Talmadge.
01:14:53Talmadge, happy college prep day.
01:14:56Do we have a starting plan?
01:14:58Are we going to kitchen stuff first?
01:15:00Are we following you around?
01:15:02Are we engaged in the process?
01:15:04Do you know what you're going to do?
01:15:06You got linens over here.
01:15:08Linens and a comforter.
01:15:10What's your bed size?
01:15:12Oh, so complicated.
01:15:14Over here, Talmadge.
01:15:18Do you got me?
01:15:19Yeah.
01:15:24Oh, God.
01:15:25I confess, I just about started crying.
01:15:28When we walked by that place, all the little toys.
01:15:30Yeah, I saw you.
01:15:31Yeah, I did.
01:15:32I lost my breath.
01:15:34Kind of goes against your whole emotionless thing.
01:15:36Yeah.
01:15:37Oh.
01:15:38Why am I crying in Target?
01:15:51Why am I crying in Target?
01:15:53x1
01:16:05Are I5s?
01:16:07So much going on inside of me, I don't even know.
01:16:14Okay.
01:16:16Like a blue?
01:16:19Gray, green?
01:16:21I think I'm a green kind of guy.
01:16:26These past 150 days,
01:16:29Talmadge has been this presence in my life.
01:16:32We just love each other.
01:16:34And if we look at all the science about humans,
01:16:37the humans thrive in community.
01:16:39They thrive in positive relationships.
01:16:45Yeah, it's not a good thing to be alone.
01:16:48So I wouldn't be so brazen to think
01:16:52that I'm going to defy what the science shows
01:16:55on human connection and community.
01:16:59Do you have a plan?
01:17:00No.
01:17:09Welcome to the University of Chicago.
01:17:18Do you see it?
01:17:22Right there.
01:17:26This is perfect.
01:17:27Look at the other fan.
01:17:28That's nice.
01:17:29These are nicer than I have.
01:17:31Do you have a preference on which side
01:17:33you want exposed to your skin?
01:17:35See, this is front, face, left.
01:17:37I feel like it's really going to hit
01:17:40once you say goodbye to me when I'm in my dorm.
01:17:44Yeah, I've never felt more understood
01:17:46by anyone than with you.
01:17:50So, yeah, I hope you don't die.
01:17:55I don't know, I just keep reflecting
01:17:57on all the things that have happened this year.
01:18:00All the life lessons.
01:18:02Yeah, it's going to be hard to rival this.
01:18:08I think you too.
01:18:13All right, Talmadge.
01:18:15Brian Johnson.
01:18:18Second version of you.
01:18:23Let's get after it.
01:18:25Yep.
01:18:25Yep.
01:18:25Yep.
01:18:32Let's get after it.
01:19:02The house is awfully quiet.
01:19:20I guess now it's real.
01:19:24It never felt real.
01:19:27And now it's quiet.
01:19:28Just still.
01:19:32I wonder how he's feeling.
01:19:52Can I show you the solution?
01:19:54Yes.
01:19:55You want to look at my screen?
01:19:57So, let's say you're just like
01:19:59on the Blue Room website.
01:20:01You're just looking at food.
01:20:02There's this.
01:20:03How are you feeling today?
01:20:05You know, in many ways,
01:20:06I don't think I really could have gone
01:20:08to the next stage
01:20:08until I got things settled with Talmadge.
01:20:11I really needed him to be in a good place
01:20:13at school
01:20:14or on his next stage of life.
01:20:16And I think he's there.
01:20:17So, I feel emboldened
01:20:19to take my next step too.
01:20:23Ready.
01:20:24Let's do this.
01:20:28Hey, what's up, friends?
01:20:29Today is Don't Die Hike number four.
01:20:31It was less than two months ago
01:20:33that I messaged out on social media.
01:20:35Hey, I'm going on a hike.
01:20:37Join me.
01:20:37And I had 11 people.
01:20:40Today, there's over 400 people.
01:20:43Oh, my goodness.
01:20:43This is a lot of cars.
01:20:45Wow.
01:20:46Wait, there's more people.
01:20:48This is...
01:20:48What?
01:20:49This is crazy.
01:20:51Hi, everyone.
01:20:52Hey, guys.
01:20:52Good morning.
01:20:53Hi.
01:20:54You look 10 years younger than last time.
01:20:57Big group.
01:20:57Hug in the morning.
01:20:58Hug in the morning.
01:21:02Come on, man.
01:21:03Come on.
01:21:05Over time,
01:21:06I guess I've gone through
01:21:07different stages
01:21:08of my feelings
01:21:09about Brian
01:21:10at the very beginning.
01:21:13His lifestyle struck me
01:21:14as quite solitary.
01:21:16But as more people
01:21:17have bought into this,
01:21:18he actually seems to be
01:21:20creating these friendships
01:21:22I never expected.
01:21:23Okay, everyone.
01:21:24Let's go up this way.
01:21:26For Brian,
01:21:28I can tell
01:21:28there's a lot of enjoyment
01:21:29from this.
01:21:31And so,
01:21:32I think he's kind of
01:21:32flipped the narrative.
01:21:34You made it.
01:21:34Good job, everyone.
01:21:36I'll confess,
01:21:38this is a cult.
01:21:40It's a sick
01:21:41and twisted cult
01:21:42to get you
01:21:44to go to bed on time.
01:21:46There's little bits
01:21:47and pieces of that
01:21:47that are unnerving.
01:21:49But I think I see him now
01:21:50almost as like a philosopher.
01:21:52I mean,
01:21:52he's sort of trying
01:21:53to prove a point.
01:21:54Like a cult.
01:21:55It's this like,
01:21:56don't die thing,
01:21:57which I really thought
01:21:59was sort of a joke
01:22:00as I saw this evolving.
01:22:01But there is some merit
01:22:03to it, I think.
01:22:04Whether you believe
01:22:06in Brian
01:22:06or what he's doing
01:22:07or not,
01:22:08it's an interesting question
01:22:09to ask
01:22:09if society has just
01:22:11taken a wrong turn.
01:22:13I think it drives
01:22:14some people crazy
01:22:15and it inspires others.
01:22:17What's up, guys?
01:22:17I'm Talmadge.
01:22:18I'm Charles.
01:22:19I'm Kylie.
01:22:20And we're hosting
01:22:21the Don't Die event
01:22:22in Chicago.
01:22:22Don't die in Chicago!
01:22:25Don't die from Cologne!
01:22:27Don't die Dublin!
01:22:29Don't die from Santa Fe!
01:22:30In Barcelona!
01:22:31In Hong Kong!
01:22:34What we're talking about
01:22:36is really a medical revolution.
01:22:39If there's an opportunity
01:22:40to stay healthy
01:22:41and stay functional
01:22:42and stay your grandkids,
01:22:44would you rather have that
01:22:45or would you rather wait
01:22:46until you get Alzheimer's
01:22:47and take some drug
01:22:48that slows the progression
01:22:49down by 30 percent?
01:22:52Aging is not inevitable.
01:22:53At least it can be delayed.
01:22:55And you can do that right now,
01:22:56probably by changing
01:22:57your lifestyle.
01:22:59Lifestyle factors are obvious,
01:23:01but it's important.
01:23:03From sleep quality,
01:23:05dietary modifications,
01:23:06regular exercise,
01:23:08and social interactions,
01:23:10we can get 10 years,
01:23:1115 years of extra quality life.
01:23:14And that number
01:23:14will probably get bigger
01:23:15with time
01:23:16as we develop
01:23:16more effective interventions.
01:23:18You can see right there
01:23:19that fluid
01:23:20is mesenchymal stem cells.
01:23:23We haven't obviously
01:23:24yet got any human treatments
01:23:25that I'm happy to recommend.
01:23:27But I think because
01:23:27I know that these treatments
01:23:29are being developed
01:23:29and I think they're
01:23:30potentially going to be available
01:23:31within our lifetimes,
01:23:33I'm much more excited
01:23:34by following basic health advice
01:23:35because it means
01:23:36I'll hopefully be alive
01:23:37and healthy long enough
01:23:38to benefit from
01:23:39these first treatments.
01:23:40And what's even more exciting
01:23:41is that then if I benefit
01:23:42from those first treatments,
01:23:43maybe I'll live
01:23:44another few years longer,
01:23:45and that then means
01:23:46that gives scientists
01:23:47even more time
01:23:47to develop the second
01:23:48or the third round
01:23:49of these treatments.
01:23:50Of course it's going
01:23:51to take time
01:23:52to develop interventions,
01:23:54but I'm certain
01:23:55that at some point
01:23:56two teenagers
01:23:58will have a conversation
01:23:59with each other
01:23:59and they'll be looking
01:24:00at their history books
01:24:01and they'll be commenting
01:24:03something like,
01:24:04oh my God,
01:24:04people just withered and died.
01:24:06Isn't that so tragic?
01:24:08The same way
01:24:08as we look at,
01:24:10you know,
01:24:10people just two lifetimes ago
01:24:12and not having an anesthetic
01:24:13or an antibiotic.
01:24:15And, you know,
01:24:16we look back
01:24:16and we go,
01:24:17geez, that's horrendous.
01:24:19When it happens,
01:24:20though,
01:24:21it's completely a product
01:24:21of what we do.
01:24:23How much effort
01:24:24and money and energy
01:24:25we put into this
01:24:26to create a movement
01:24:27of people utterly engaged
01:24:30in keeping people healthy
01:24:31as long as possible.
01:24:32Hi, everyone.
01:24:34I hope you guys feel
01:24:35like you're among
01:24:36your people,
01:24:38like-minded people
01:24:38trying not to die.
01:24:41I'm happy you came.
01:24:43I love you.
01:24:46Are you happy?
01:24:47I've never been happier
01:24:48in my entire life.
01:24:50I don't know
01:24:51if I can do it.
01:24:52I've never seen him happier
01:24:53than he is now.
01:24:55And just think about that.
01:24:56When you're content
01:24:57with who you are
01:24:58and you're engaged
01:24:59in a project
01:25:00that is everything
01:25:01that you want to do,
01:25:02doesn't that set up
01:25:03as a happy place?
01:25:07To hear him say to me,
01:25:09I've never been happier
01:25:10in my life,
01:25:11I think releases me
01:25:13from worry,
01:25:15knowing that
01:25:16he can go on like this.
01:25:19I've experienced
01:25:20wanting to die
01:25:21intensely,
01:25:23and now I'm in a situation
01:25:24where I want to live
01:25:27with everything
01:25:29that I am.
01:25:30and so, yeah,
01:25:43I really,
01:25:43I want to continue
01:25:45to exist.
01:25:47And I don't feel
01:25:48any need
01:25:49to justify myself.
01:25:51I'm a disaster
01:25:52of an intelligent being,
01:25:54but,
01:25:55hey, you know what?
01:25:56I'm trying my best.
01:25:58I'm going to go
01:26:04try to pick up a car.
01:26:07I think you can do it.
01:26:14Love it.
01:26:15Hey.
01:26:15I'm going to do it.
01:26:16I'm going to do it.
01:26:17I'm going to do it.
01:26:18I'm going to do it.
01:26:18I'm going to do it.
01:26:19I'm going to do it.
01:26:20I'm going to do it.
01:26:20I'm going to do it.
01:26:21I'm going to do it.
01:26:21I'm going to do it.
01:26:21I'm going to do it.
01:26:21I'm going to do it.
01:26:22I'm going to do it.
01:26:22I'm going to do it.
01:26:23I'm going to do it.
01:26:23I'm going to do it.
01:26:24I'm going to do it.
01:26:24I'm going to do it.
01:26:25I'm going to do it.
01:26:25I'm going to do it.
01:26:26I'm going to do it.
01:26:27I'm going to do it.