Why Bryan Johnson Wants to Be God

0:28All right, everyone. The good news is that there's no long-term commitment. So you can just learn more by going to marketingschool.io slash agency. Once again, that's marketingschool.io slash agency to learn more, and we hope to see you inside. All right, Marketing School listeners, this is a 20 to 30 minute segment of a full interview I've done with an amazing founder, entrepreneur, creative, visionary. You're gonna get a ton of insights from this. And if you wanna listen to the entire thing, go search for leveling up with Eric Su. That's the entire podcast that you're going to find. So you get 20 to 30 minutes here.

1:05And if you want the whole thing, you can just search for leveling up with Eric Su. And without further ado, enjoy the episode. This next interview is with Brian Johnson. And Brian Johnson is, he started a movement called Don't Die. And he has a protocol called the Blueprint Protocol. And he's all about just not dying and teaching people how you can live for a very long time, if not potentially forever. And we're going to dive into that. What a lot of people don't know about Brian is that he actually founded a company called Braintree Venmo. So Venmo's in there. And he eventually sold that for$800 million.

1:38So he's a successful entrepreneur. And there's a lot of things we talk about here. We talk about putting Botox in your penis, right? We talk about his sleep protocol. We talk about the efficacy of doing blood transfusions. So he gave his dad his blood and basically helped his dad reverse aging. And so we'll get into that. And we talk about why making money is actually the most expensive thing you can do. And there's a lot more that we explore in here. So it's an action-packed conversation. I hope we have more. But without further ado, here we go. So Brian, I mean, everyone knows you for Don't Die.

2:16And I know you from Braintree Venmo fame. But I have to ask you, what are some wild things you've been trying this year with your health last 12 months? I did my first gene therapy in October. It was full of statin. And so we've been looking at gene therapy for a couple of years. This was the first time we thought it would be safe. And so we did that. And I did mesenchymal stem cells. We've been also wanting to do that for a couple of years. Yeah, we achieved two of the most advanced therapies just recently after a couple of years of doing the research. Got it. And explain to me, like I'm 10 years old, like what, what benefit, what type of gene therapy are you doing?

3:00What kind of benefits were you expecting? Same with the stem cells. Yeah. So it's, so if the goal is to keep the body in good health, then there's a few things you can do. One is, is you can slow down your speed of aging. And so for example, when you smoke two cigarettes you lose 30 minutes of life that shortens life you're wanting to do things that extends life and so by slowing your speed of aging you can press that lever and so for example eating a healthy meal is better than eating an unhealthy meal and then exercising is better than not exercising and you get all these trade-offs and you each one has a certain power of effect gene therapy and mesenchymal stem cells are some of the more powerful therapies.

3:50And so what we've tried to do is to say, of all the things you can do in life, how do you decide what power laws to focus on in order to get the maximal effect? And you have what you call the five power laws. What are those? Yeah, and I would say there's one more ad sleep. So it's don't smoke, six hours a week of exercise, a Mediterranean or blueprint-like diet, a BMI of 18.5 to 22.5, little to no alcohol, and then prioritizing sleep. Got it. And what are you using? So I know for sleep, you've talked about measuring your resting heart rate is 47. I want to get into some of the metrics that you're looking at constantly, like your VO2 max.

4:38Like what are the core metrics that Brian Johnson looks at, I don't know, weekly, monthly, quarterly? We, I'd say on a monthly basis, we probably look at maybe a few hundred biomarkers. And then on an annual basis, you know, a couple thousand. And some are repeat. and so we do like daily we're looking at like my my body temp when i wake up body weight hydration sleep stats exercise and then we look at blood results on a certain interval so we have these measurements at certain time points but we like the when you get into health and wellness there is an infinite number of things you can do to improve your health and you've probably heard in your own private conversations, everyone's got a thing.

5:34And, you know, sometimes it's cold plunge. Sometimes it's their favorite food. Sometimes it's some herb. Sometimes it's Eastern medicine. Sometimes it's whatever. And it's hard to know what thing to do. And so what we did is we sorted all of the interventions we could by evidence and then prioritize it on a power law basis. because otherwise you're chasing endlessly yeah and then i know in social conversation like when you're talking about this everyone brings their thing to the conversation which is the best thing because they've had experience with it or whatever the case may be and then people start chasing those things and then they don't know how to measure it and so it creates kind of a a challenging space where you're not quite sure what to do how to measure and so you're in this continual cycle of trying, but not getting results necessarily, because you're not playing with the power laws and you're not measuring.

6:32Got it. And what would you say your thing is? Pardon me? What would you say your thing is? I know high level, umbrella levels don't die, but if you had to pick one thing, like for me, I think my focus is more on sleep than anything, but what would you say it is for you? Yeah, it's a domino. If you get one thing right, And then it gives you power to do the next thing. It gives you power to do the next thing. And so everyone's got a different domino effect equation. Like sometimes exercising enables you to feel good about eating well. And then eating well makes you feel well about going to bed on time.

7:10Sometimes, though, it can have the inverse effect, where if you exercise, then it's like, well, I burned the calories. I can afford to eat the cookie, right? So it's a tricky situation. And the same is true when people take supplements. It's like, I know I'm doing these good things for me. Therefore, I can do these other things. So our minds are very quick to rationalize. And that's why I try to create this comprehensive protocol of how do you approach health in the most scientific way and be methodical about it. Yes, I think that's the blueprint, correct? Yes. So I think we should talk about that first because I have a bunch of questions that are tied to that.

7:51So what is the blueprint for those that don't know?

7:57So the way to think about this is put it in context of historical explorers. So Magellan said, hey, can I sell around the world? And Watson and Crick said, can we deconstruct DNA? So people have dared to aspire like peak imagination of their time and place. And so my imagination was in 2021, can we escape death? And to do that, that's where the project came alive. And so I thought, okay, to do that, you basically need to look at all the scientific evidence in existence, need to rank it in terms of power laws. and then you need to apply it systematically and measure everything. It's the only way to go about doing it.

8:49Otherwise, you're in a qualitative world and you just can't build. Science begins with counting. And so, yeah, three years in, I'm the most measured person in the world. And also, I have the best biomarkers, comprehensive biomarkers of anyone I know. And so, if all the people working really hard to be healthy and do their thing, no one in the world's posted better biomarkers across the board than me. Now, if they are, great. That's wonderful. I'm trying to set a standard to say, if you're endeavoring to do these health and wellness things, it's best to have the biomarkers and the protocols available for analysis for everyone to benefit.

9:32Got it. And what are, so I remember you sharing some of your biomarkers at that summit that I saw you at. And I think your VOT, what is your VOTX right Yeah, 58.7. Okay, just for those that, I mean, VOT is one of the main measures of how healthy you are. And 58 is basically elite or close to Olympian level, I believe. Yeah, it's up there. Yeah. And I think you said that your VO2 max is like the level of a 28-year-old or something? It's top 1.5 % of 18-year-olds. Got it. And so VO2 max peaks at age 18, and then it goes down from there. That's not to say that you can't get a high as you're older, but yeah, peaks at age 18.

10:16And I think the higher you are, the lower your all-cause mortality, right? Yeah. It's a good predictor of longevity. Got it. Okay. So what goes into the blueprint right now? Because I think my observation is you spent time building your audience for the last two years or so. And then just recently, you started releasing products. I think the information you give away for free, can you walk us through how, I guess, maybe the business of that works? Yeah, this, I started this as a scientific endeavor. It was, my contemplation was, well, it was the thought experiment I did. It was, I imagined being present with the 25th century, and I'm listening to them speak in however they communicate.

10:59and they're observing us right now in the early 21st century and so they're going to compress our entire century into three things even though our lives are rich and full and we have drama and love and we have so much going on 99 plus percent is going to be forgotten and the 21st century will remember three things and so i thought what three things will they remember and it seemed to me possible that they would say that's when homo sapiens figured out that death had previously been inevitable but as a species they were wise enough to see like piece these things together and say death may no longer be inevitable and we evolve from a die species to a don't die species not just individually, but collectively.

11:55And so the don't die idea is not to die individually, but also not to kill each other, not to kill the planet, and to align artificial intelligence with don't die. That's what you do when your baby steps away from superintelligence. So I was basically trying to figure out, what is the biggest thing happening on planet Earth right now? And can I identify that? and that's when I came up with the project and so I wanted to basically be the embodiment of that thing. Makes sense. And I guess we can go a little bit into the future here but with AI, do you see us merging our consciousness with machines?

12:36And that's something I see potentially happening and maybe your physical body dies but then you live on forever. How do you see it? Yeah. I think as a species, we would be a lot better off if we use the words, I don't know, more often. Nobody knows what consciousness is. There's been feeble attempts at measuring it. We don't know so much stuff. Is there a God? We don't know. No one knows. And yet, in our space of not knowing, it doesn't prevent us from speaking and acting as though we know. But if we really, truly are sober about what we know, we don't know a lot more than we know. Yeah. You know, there's a certain, looking at some of your other interviews, you take your time when it comes to answering.

13:40And you take your time, too, when it comes to, like, saying you don't know, right? Where does that come from? Because I'm just looking around your room right now, and there's books on Napoleon, Churchill, Truman. I think there's one on Roosevelt too. There's one other person I think of that's very thoughtful, but for you, where does that come from? Because a lot of, especially entrepreneurs, we're very quick. We talk fast. We often don't think before we talk, but I think it's really important to be thoughtful about how you communicate. I'm just wondering how you worked on it. it's this embedded assumption that is so deep, we don't even realize it.

14:18It's that speaking is better than... The assumption is speaking is better than not speaking. Suggesting you know is better than not knowing. You know, admitting you don't know. Filling the air with words is like the better way to establish your standing and to create respect. And so it's just culturally built into us that we think that knowing and speaking is better than not, than not knowing and not speaking. And I'm trying to, I do this with myself all the time. I mean, I distrust everything. I distrust my mind. I just distrust others. I distrust institutions. I distrust history. There's very few things I trust.

15:05Like gravity is pretty reliable. Math is pretty sturdy. But outside of those things, I distrust everything. And justifiably so. Quick note, this is about my company. It's called Single Grain. And Single Grain is an ad agency where we're focused on driving innovation. And so I want to talk about a couple of new strategies. And if you need help with marketing, great. If not, here are a couple of new strategies that you should try out. One is programmatic CRO. So we are doing programmatic conversion rate optimization on our site. So we're building products that will automatically optimize your site to increase conversion rates.

15:40We're also auto-optimizing, auto-updating from an SEO standpoint. And we're constantly thinking about what else we can do in terms of enriching the visitors that are hitting your website and also tailoring custom messages for them using AI. And so there's a handful of things that we're doing from a marketing standpoint. And our mission is just to drive more innovation. So if you want to learn more, just go to singlegrain.com, grain like rice. So singlegrain.com to learn more and we'll see you inside. Would you say strong views loosely held? Oh, but no, I would say, um, lightly held views eager to be altered.

16:20Hmm. I like that. I like that. So I want to come back to the health stuff real quick and then I'm going to jump around with, with business and marketing just cause there's, we can go in all different directions. But the blood transfusion that you did with your father and your son did with you is interesting because I was reading a post by another kind of – you're not controversial in my mind, but there's a controversial figure on Twitter that talked about blood transfusions with mice and how this transfusions from a younger mouse to an older one led to reverse aging, led to just better health overall, right?

16:56So is there anything you can speak to? I know at the event, it was hard for you to say if there's any results or anything, but have you found out anything else since then? What was the net result of that transfusion with your father and your son? For me, the results were none. But my father, he had one liter of plasma taken out and then my liter of plasma put in and it slowed his speed of aging by 25 years. Wow. So from a 71-year-old to a 46-year-old. And those results have persisted even six months post the therapy. Got it. And that's your biological age, right? So it's – Actually, no. That's my chronological age.

17:41Got it. Got it. So people talk about it. It's like, okay, people talk about, oh, my age has gone back 20 years, 30 years, or whatever. And then you have doctors that are like, that doesn't really mean much. What's your pushback against that? It doesn't mean anything. yeah the the epigenetic ages don't mean anything that they they are not good enough yet it's like cool to talk about yeah it's um there's many more robust markers and this is why i talk about my biomarkers is if you get one interesting result on your epigenetic age that's one thing but you need to show like a hundred clinical biomarkers across the body and your cardiovascular ability your VO2 max and your total bone mineral density and your nighttime erections if you're a male.

18:26And there's like 20 or 30 markers that are relevant for whole body health. And so it's not persuasive to suggest that your epigenetic age is a marker at all of whole body health. It's when you put the whole thing together and they all are agreed upon. They all agree with each other. That's when it's compelling. Got it. And do you have a list of these top 20 things on the Blueprint somewhere? Okay. So I think you just go to, is it blueprint.com? Protocol.blueprint, protocol.brianjohnson.com. Got it. Okay. Yeah. And you talked about one thing I wanted to touch upon. So nighttime boners. Why are nighttime boners important?

19:08They are a bio, they are a biological age marker. As a male, you have a lot of nighttime erections when you're a kid. And then over time, they diminish. And by the time you're 70, 80, they're almost gone entirely. And so it's a sign of aging and decline. And so it's a representation of psychological, cardiovascular, and sexual health. And it can be measured in terms of duration of erection and also strength or quality of erection. Got it. And how many boners should people in their 30s, nighttime erection, should people be getting? Like, is there a number? There is, yeah. Okay. Yeah. So when I measured mine for a 45-year-old, the normal would be between three and five per night for a total duration of...

20:12I think 120 minutes or so, two hours. Got it. Wow. Okay, well, that's every night? Yes. Got it. And I'm assuming this is while you're sleeping too, or? Yeah, that's right. So it happens, you know, these nighttime erections happen to most men. And you're oblivious to most of it because it's happening during your sleep stages. Got it. What device are you using to measure this? Adam Health, a company out of the UK, they build a cube. It's about a centimeter squared. It goes in the base of the penis. And once you put it on, you kind of forget about it. Got it. Got it. And you mentioned also, similar to this, you talked about de-aging your penis too.

20:55So what have you done in that respect? Yeah, I did. So I chose the penis because it was understandable. Like, we were doing this on my lungs and my heart and my thymus, which is responsible for my immune system. But when you do those things, people are like, yeah, don't really care. But you'll get views for this one. So I was like, yeah, like, okay, let me demonstrate the process of how this scientific method works on the penis. And so, yeah, we took all these baseline measurements. One day, I was talking to the team. I was like, all right, like, what would it take for me to have the most quantified penis in the whole world?

21:31Like, what would we do? Like, what measurements do you do? And so then we found every measurement we could do on the penis. We did them all. So we had a baseline measurement, and then we said, okay, now what things can you do to improve the penis? And we found two things. One, two clinical studies that had the appropriate evidence. And so we did focused shockwave therapy, and then we had Botox. And those two, and then we redid the measurements, and my nighttime erections went from average for a 46-year-old. Which is how many? Roughly, I think my measurement was like 132 minutes was my baseline.

22:12Okay. And then post-therapies, it was 179. Wow. So it was better than the average 18-year-old. Wow. So yeah, the average 18-year-old I think was around 145. Yeah. So far better than the average. and what is shockwave therapy it's a it's a technology that uses acoustics to it can be used on any joints the body a lot of people will use it when they're healing from like an acl tear so you use it in conjunction with the the surgery to accelerate healing but it can be also be used on the penis so the clinical study we looked at was used for ed And so we thought if it's used to restore penis function in ED, could it take a normal penis and could it enhance?

23:00Got it. Okay, the Botox idea is insane. So by the way, I don't really know how Botox works, right? But like, you know, a lot of people use it, right? It's to kind of stop the wrinkles, right? So like how did you decide – how did you land on Botox for the penis? A study. yep botox a lot of people will they realize they know it's used for wrinkles but also used for hair growth like it's used for so many things i think there's something like dozens if not a hundred different applications for botox it's a widely used drug got it i don't know that that's fascinating okay so so shockwave therapy and you're doing that here or do you have to go somewhere to do that yeah a clinic that has the specific technology got it and botox i'm assuming you You just go to like a nurse or something.

23:48Yeah, exactly. You went to a doctor that does Botox injections. You definitely don't want to get a vial of Botox. Get a needle ready and jam it into the penis. No DIY. It needs to be like, don't try this at home. The injection needs to be done with precision and with the right technique. You definitely do not want to be doing this at home in the mirror. What are some of the things that you do that, and this might be a lot of things, but I'm just wondering if there's like maybe a small list of things that people should definitely not do at home. So the Botox piece, the shockwave therapy, because I know you have a lot of devices here too, right?

24:23Yeah. Most, yeah. Let me think. Most of the things I do by myself are measurement based. And then anything that is a therapy is usually from a medical professional. Some of the only things I do without a medical professional would be like red light therapy, breathing, meditation, exercise. But yeah, we really do almost everything under medical guidance. Got it.