The Man That’s Ageing Backwards: “I Use My Son’s Blood To Reverse My Age! I’m Now 18!” Bryan Johnson

25:24Genius or sophistication or whatever is in this much broader complexity of statement. It may be two words. Don't die. So Galaxy's 13 .8 years old Earth is 4 .5 right? Like that. Where baby steps away from creating super intelligence. We cannot, we cannot model out what the future is going to be like in any way shape or form. We do not have the intellectual capacity to predict to model to anticipate. We're blind. It's an intelligence far superior than us. In that situation, the only thing we can play is don't die. Don't kill each other. Don't ruin our biosphere. Don't ruin planet Earth. And don't underestimate aligning with AI.

26:21The only objective of the future of our existence. We have to figure out how all intelligence on this planet cooperates. Humans and the planet, artificial intelligence. It's this big tapestry of goal alignment of cooperation. That is the only task humanity has ahead of us. Okay, let's start with number one then. Yeah. So the first one is don't die. So I guess yes or no question. Do you think it's possible for us in the in the short future to live forever? Yes. Okay, right. I'm going to go one step further back. Your health journey before you came to that realization. What did that look like in terms of were you a healthy young man?

27:03Were you drinking alcohol? Yeah. I mean, as a kid, my mother did the best she could under the circumstances. We were pretty poor. She, ground we she made bread for us. We also ate sugar cereal. We put sugar on our sugar sugar cereal. We were in the sun constantly with no sunscreen. We had excessive skin, sun exposure. We ate processed foods. It was just, it was, the United States cultural environment in the 1980s. Like we just were cemented in that cultural norm. So I'd say, you know, not terribly healthy. Then 20 years of entrepreneurship, depression, bad relationship, trying to leave it within.

27:40I kind of destroyed myself body and mind for 20 years. And how do you feel about that now? Because I remember reading a quote where you said, it pains me to think about the damage you've done to your body up until now. It pains me. Really? It pains me to see all the damage I did to myself. Really pains you. It does.

28:03When I, you know, that's a phrase, right? But is there reality to that pain? I feel like I have a relationship to my former self as though my former self were present. I don't view it as a, it's gone by. Because in many ways, when I'm reversing my aging, when I'm becoming more healthy, I'm moving back in time. I'm moving back to a younger biological state. So I'm occupying the person that formerly occupied me. And so I have this relationship of time that is atypical. Where typically I would normally say, like, well, that should happen. And now I just have to go forward. But given where the science and technology is at, I do believe we can travel back in time.

28:42Now it's, you know, we're, blueprint is showing the possibilities. We're not very yet on doing these dramatic things, but I think it's coming. And so yeah, I, I literally feel pain because I'm moving into that space. You feel pain because you're moving into that space. Okay, yeah, that, that is, yeah, most of us consider the past to be gone. Exactly. I don't. I, I feel like I feel like it's recoverable and that I experience it. So take me forward from that point then. I want to know when things started to change in terms of your health perspective. And this do not die. Yeah. Well, I started taking care of myself after I sold brain treat and the divorce and all that kind of stuff.

29:22I started paying attention to my health more so than I ever had my entire life. And it came back to this question, you know, what one thing do I do in existence? That would be meaningful. Not five things or six things, like one thing that matters in the 25th century. And I worked on, I came up with this idea that basically the core of it is I can't trust myself to act, act in my best interest. And it's them from depression. I knew my mind, my mind was encouraging me to commit suicide on a non -stop basis. And I, yes, that's what chronic depression feels like is you desperately want to commit suicide every moment of every day.

30:02You just want relief from the offence and you can't, you cannot imagine feeling not depressed. And so I knew that I couldn't trust my mind when it was doing these things. And so then also I had this problem with food where I would feel so depressed and I would feel stressed from the day from work with my kids. And so it was my inability to stop myself from overeating every single night and walking myself into an early grave. So then I paired those things together like, okay, first of all, my brains, I, hey, once you commit suicide, and two, my body is like, why don't you just eat yourself into oblivion?

30:37And I couldn't stop myself. I thought this is really weird that we humans are the most intelligent species in the planet yet I'm doing these behaviors that are not in my best interest. This is really weird and I can't stop it. I'm totally helpless in doing it. And so I'm piecing together this philosophy of like, okay, this is interesting. We kind of treat planet Earth like we treat our bodies. My behavior is not too dissimilar from what society is doing. And I thought, what is the larger implication of the situation? We humans have a problem of acting in our best interest. Is there alternative structure of authority that could do a better job?

31:14And that's what I really came up with the core of what Blueprint is, which is I said, okay, instead of my mind doing this on a regular basis, I'm going to measure every organ in my body. I'm going to ask it what it needs to be in its best space. So my kidney and liver and heart and lungs, I'm going to take the data, look at scientific evidence, and then create an algorithm. And then I'm going to follow that algorithm perfectly. And so my body is going to call the shots, not my mind. And that was when Adolf Khan and Kin together with trying to piece the other AI of maybe the revolution, is we humans have done a wonderful job to arrive at this point.

31:54Maybe it's time for us to pass the reins to other control systems that manage our long -term interests better. And one of those long -term control systems that you believe can manage are in chest better. For example, now, my mind is not authorized to look at a menu and order. It's not authorized to have a piece of party. It's not authorized to just on the whim decide I want to have a cookie. My body is in charge. My body reports the data, it looks at scientific evidence, and now where the runs. So I have opted into an algorithm that takes better care of me than I can myself. My mind can chirp and can heckle from the bleachers, but it does not have the authority to make the decision.

32:41But you must understand the mind is doing that for a reason. The mind is also concerned with survival. It's not that cause harm to you. That's not subjective. You know, it wasn't, that makes no sense from a survival perspective that you'd have this enemy in your head. So how do you reason why the mind is telling you to do these things? If we just let the data speak. So let's just say we're looking at DNA methylation patterns. And it's these are, this is data that shows how fast the body is aging. It's just a speed of aging. So I take my former self and say, what is the data show? How fast my aging and how fast is disease progressing?

33:19And what's my, what's my likelihood of dying? Then and now and you compare the two, there's no comparison. The system that's running me now so far out competes the other version. It's ridiculous. And so it just from a, so let's just go on later deeper on this. What I did is I, I asked this broader question. So we have AI. We have super intelligence being created. We have to figure out alignment. How do we use AI so that we humans continue to exist? So we don't kill each other so that AI doesn't destroy everything. Like so we're just trying to survive, right? Society just survive. How would you possibly go about doing that problem?

33:59And so I started thinking about this alignment problem within me. So I'm 35 trillion sales thereabouts, maybe more. How could I as an entity align my 35 trillion sales to cooperate? And we're trying to do that with heat with society, right? You're trying to get this huge number of things to cooperate. And then I wanted to measure and say, okay, what is perfect cooperative?

34:23And then I did a hundred of measurements. And we said, okay, here's actually what science can do in this moment. With every, with diet and sleep and exercise all being perfect. Here's the maximum amount of slowing speed of aging from my 35 trillion sales to do. Anything above that? I consider it to be an act of violence. Now we use violence in a society too. We typically associate people beating each other like physical acts of violence. I expanded the term to capture my own behavior. So if I did, if I ate something or did something that would increase my speed of aging, that was an act of violence against self.

34:59Because my 35 trillion sales were no longer aligned. It was like this one aberration. And be like, hey, I wanted to stay, but it ruins 35 trillion sales. I wanted to pose a question. We as a species are trying to figure out how to cooperate. Can I do that with me as a single entity? And that's what I've been trying to do. Go alignment with Imprion Johnson. 35 trillion sales to a single objective exists. So why is the brain our adversary? Why is it being uncooperative with the longevity of the 35 million sales? Let's just say, like, let's just remove all story. Let's just say, if we categorized as violence, anything we did as a species that brought death closer to us, whether it be our personal death or whether it be the Earth's death, and we quantified that.

35:49And we said, how much violence do we do in a self -destructive way? What is that number? Huge. So when you look at that frame, we are a self -destructive species. Now it goes back, this idea of death. Like, if you say death is inevitable for everybody, it doesn't matter if I commit these self -destructive acts. I'm going to die anyway. So why do I care? If it's 10 years earlier than normal, whatever. I'm 35 now, and when I'm 70, I don't care if I live to 80. That's how you think. So that's why this whole death idea feeds the self -destruction, because no one cares. If death is not inevitable, you immediately come back to the thing, the threatens, the thing you care about the very most, which is anything that threatens existence.

36:36And so the society we have right now, the majority of the philosophy is say, be played by these rules, and you get this afterlife. They said death is inevitable, but we're all playing for this later game. And so everyone feels fine in this colossal self -destruction. If you take that away, and then you say you can live in this life, it's an entirely different game. And that's why the 21st century, the singular revolution, could be, don't die. Because it flips the philosophical structure of society on its head. And this will led you to Project Blueprint, which is what? A Project Blueprint is an attempt at, don't die, at every layer of society, individually, collectively, with AI, and the planet.

37:27So you're trying to reverse your age, or you're trying not to die, or you're trying both? And so the same thing is true, just like I've done Blueprint with me, planet Earth is the body. So you'd approach the same problem. You'd measure Earth with millions of measurements at some interval. You'd use scientific evidence to say, what is the appropriate sustainable biosphere, of coral reef, of temperature in the world, of ocean acidity, of all the different parts of our biosphere? And you apply the scientific evidence, and that creates the closed loop system to say, this is how you don't die. Okay, so let's focusing again on Do Not Die, which is actually one of the only rules of my first company now.

38:09It feels like it has new meaning. We rode on the wall when we first moved into the office. We just wrote one rule here, and we just wrote Do Not Die. That's great. We said it as a joke, but you know, maybe... You're under something. I was ahead of my mind. Yeah. When you think about Do Not Die, what are the things that stand the greatest chance of killing us in order of priority? Like, there's basic things on a day to day basis. Like, driving is among the highest risk factors we do, all of the 200 databases. So, every time I get into a car, I have a ritual where I say driving. I say it out loud.

38:40Driving is the most dangerous thing I do. As a reminder, every time I get in the car, don't text, don't be on your phone, like pay attention to the road, because like, you forget, every time you jump in the car, you're so tempted to do all these things that impair all your life. So you say that out loud every time? I'd love to watch you drive. Well, you can drive me whenever you as well, because I feel like I trust you to focus on the road. So driving is number one of things that pose a statistically high threat of mortality. What else? Yeah, I mean, there are... So people have built nice statistical models that show like risk of death, like insurance companies, of course, like they do that.

39:20I'm really after the cultural norms that we have built a society of the world. We're addicted to addiction. We're all addicted. So you just think about this from a 25th century perspective. You put a human like us in an environment, and you encircle them with dozens of fast food chains, dozens of store selling sugary drinks, of junk food, of porn, of infinite scroll, of Netflix binging, alcohol smoking, gambling, nicotine, right? Like you're masturbation. Not, yeah, like there you go. Like your list is, and then you say like, okay, human, on your own with your own willpower, resist this. And then around them, you've got the power of our godlike powers pointing at the individual with the only objective is to getting the person addicted to their thing, their app, their food, their show, their whatever.

40:24Everything's pointing to the individual. The individual is like, I'm overwhelmed. I can't sleep. You know, like I don't feel well. I can't exercise that on many times. We were just sick as a society. And it's because we've structurally built this around this. Yeah, I mean, it's kind of a disaster for us in the moment where we're trying to muster up so -burn us of thought. Of how do we navigate these simultaneous existential risks we face? How do we not destroy our biosphere? How do we align with AI? How do we, humans, not engage in nuclear war or bio warfare or whatever? We're just, we have really serious challenges to solve, and we're all impaired.

41:13It makes you have a great deal of empathy for the human experience. When you frame it as we've taken a human being, you know, baby is born. And then we surround them with fast food chains and sugar and all of these things that are highly, highly addictive. And then we say to them, be healthy. Do your best. Yeah. You know, don't kill yourself. And, you know, good luck. Good luck. It's sad. And then it's, it's, I say empathy because you have, when you frame it like that, I go, no wonder people are struggling. You know, with sleepless nights, obesity, cardiovascular diseases, poor addictions, drug addictions.

41:47You know, because we've manipulated the, I'm not going to try and pretend I'm a neuroscientist, but we've manipulated the chemicals in their brain to control them for, often for, you know, corporate greed and other things. That's right. You mentioned sleep. And you point at this as being really foundational to health. Yeah. When I sit here with these, you know, psychologists and health experts and doctors and heart surgeons and brain surgeons, they always point at sleep is, they all point at sleep is being foundational. The other day you did a tweet about your sleep. Do you know what someone's talking about?

42:22Screen shot. Yeah. I think it was whoop right? Yeah, that's right. And it showed that you'd had a hundred percent sleep for six months straight. Four months straight now. Four months straight. And 99 percent, but so yes, 100 percent for four months, 99 percent for either two months. I'm going for a six month, 100 percent streak. Why is sleep so important? Because you cite it in your work as being one of the most foundational things. I think you're actually called it the most important in one, one interview. Yeah. I mean, if you and I were going to make a list of like the things that are most influential in our lives in how we think about and feel about life, I would put number one as sleep.

43:06Nothing changes my conscious existence more than a poor night sleep or a bad, are there a good night sleep? I agree. I've become incredibly obsessed with my sleep. Some people's obsessions they become a little bit unhealthy, but my, I think, is healthy because it's certainly moved my life forward in every metric or area that I care about. Let's go on and go in and sleep then. So what do you do to achieve this month over month, perfect sleep? Because when I saw that, I thought, what my fucking god, like I use whoop as well as you can see. If I contrast your data to mine, you know, sometimes I'm having like 24 percent recovery, 50 percent recovery.

43:47If I go to a hotel room, then it's even worse. I flew out here to LA. I had three, the first three days my sleep was awful. The fourth day it was fine. What are you doing? Yeah. I'm so glad you have that shared experience for those who do try to track it and even those with whoop. Many don't realize how hard it is. The most important thing is I, I've built my life around sleep. Now that is the exact opposite of cultural norms where sleep is the thing that gets pushed around. So if you want to go out with friends, delay your bedtime. If you want, if you need to finish a work project or a school project, if you want to hang out watch your new show just dropped, you want to watch a few episodes, we push sleep around from our early, so days.

44:33And it's always the thing that can be compromised. And I made a rule that sleep happens every single night at the same time. No exceptions ever. I mean, that must come at a cost. It does come to cost. What is the cost? I mean, that cost is substantially less now because I've made the hard decisions. And so it's no longer getting there as hard. But once you do that and it's the norm, it becomes much easier. You just have to make the life changes. So that's the first big one. I did like a bunch of small things. Like for example, my last meal the day is at 11 a .m. Sorry, well, you lost me in the days at 11 a .m.

45:10Yeah, so I eat between 6 a .m. and 11 a .m. Okay. And so then I'm by the time I go to bed at 8 .30, I've got eight plus hours of digestion. So I sleep best on an empty stomach. Now, some people don't like that. They feel pain. They do much better sleeping towards night. But I ran a few hundred experiments of a time to eat, how much to eat, what kinds of foods to eat, what kind of exercise protocols. I've trialled hundreds of times and I found a protocol that worked for me where when I do this, and I lay down before bed, my resting heart rate is around 45. If I get that, I know I'm going to have a near -perfect sleep.

45:47If it's elevated at like 53 or 54 because of like a few events that could trigger it to a higher, I know I'm going to have a struggle to hit like deep and ram goals and I might be a little more restless. I'll still hit my 100 % objective, but it's not going to be as the same level of quality as if I hit something else. So I know all the little teeny tiny tweaks to get this to be perfect every night. I also do a second ago, I want to make sure I get announced to this. I said, this must come in a cost. Yeah. What is the cost? So my bedtime is at 830, because that's where the data led me. I tried 11, 1039, I tried all the different variations, and this just worked.

46:25So anything that happens past 830, I don't participate in. So sometimes my friends are doing things past 830 that I want to do, but I don't do them. So I miss out on certain social events. Now my friends have been cool enough, whether I'll do things to accommodate my time frame. So do something in the late afternoon where I can do things with them and hang out and have fun and still make my bedtime. And so my friends and family have been great to adapt, to allow me to participate in community while still doing this. So I've been experimenting as well. I mean, I can't help it. To tell you I've been experimenting feels like I'm not going to say my experiments, but what I've got a bunch of hypotheses around my sleep.

47:04One of the big ones is the room temperature. So during summer in the UK, because most houses in the UK don't have air conditioning, because we don't expect the sun. It's a surprise. Through those four weeks where we have sunshine, I don't, my sleep is awful. I'm sweating in bed. What would you say about temperature and also got a broken blind in the room? So, you know, 6 a .m. or whatever the light starts pouring in. What would you say about all those factors? Yeah, I agree. Temperature plays a significant role. Light does sound. Yeah, whether you have a partner in bed with you or not. Yeah, I want to talk about this.

47:42Yeah. Because I actually was speaking to Simon Cinnock last night about this that we went to dinner. And I was talking to him about having sat with Matthew Walker and we discussed. I think Matthew Walker, don't quote him inaccurately, but he said, when there's divorce and couples break up, 15 % of the reason is attributed to sleep. I, them compromising each other's sleep. What do you think about sleeping in bed with somebody else? It's a, it's a hard topic because a lot of people don't have the luxury of sleeping in different rooms. Yeah. When somebody wants to have good sleep, there are some things they can control.

48:19Like trying to go to bed at a certain time is something they have some control over. They need to adjust lifestyles and families and stuff like that. Sometimes that relationship, but so people who do have the fortunate circumstances to be in separate rooms, it is substantially better. Because trying to negotiate with another person their bed time, their sleep hygiene is really difficult. And wake events are very costly. Once you get, once you get woke up and then going back to sleep is very hard. So it's just extremely challenging when you've got to coordinate with another human. So do you ever sleep in bed with someone else?

48:56No. What about hanky panky? No. You have no sex. Not after 830. Okay, so you've got to do like morning glory. Yeah, I mean, so these are the kinds of things, like, you know, so I'm single. Yeah. In circumstances where I've tried to date, the first thing I do is I give them a list of 10 things. Like, here's all the things you're going to hate about me. And it's going to make me an impossible partner for you. And like, you know, those are like, it's a big deal. What is on the list? Give me the list. I mean, so sleep is one thing. You know, like, I got a bed at 830. My food regimen is another. Now, I do compromise on food.

49:39So like, if we go out with friends and we'll have dinner time, then I will save up, you know, certain number of calories and I'll eat something through restaurants, some steam vegetables or something like that. So I do try to be normal. And also when I'm out with people, nothing makes people feel more uncomfortable than an empty plate. You know, it's like, why are you doing it? And are you on a fast protocol? Are you on a juice cleanse? And so I just try to blend into the environment. Like, there's no questions. Everyone can enjoy being present. So I try to do those things. But other things, for example, like my desire to speak, I am not a talkative person.

50:16I don't do small talk. So my son and I have a protocol at the house where there's no exchange of, like, good morning. How are you? You know, I'm deep in thought. Like, my morning, my, I go to bed early, I wake up early and I have these four or five hours of concentrated thought. Where I can think about these really big pictures and try to pull myself out of my situation and just be as sober as possible. Like, what is really happening to the best of my abilities and ask to probe myself to these deep levels. And you can get knocked off so fast. It's like a little teeny interaction. Hey, how are you doing?

50:52How was your sleep? You have to activate this mode of like, I'm going to be a nice person. I'm going to engage with you. I'm going to listen to you. And just shifting that knocks me off. And so there's with the path that I've chosen that I really care about achieving these objectives. I break all these social norms. And it's offensive to a lot of people. You know, that it's just not not an acceptable situation for a lot of people. That's another instance though, as someone would say, oh, he's weird. Yeah, exactly right. And when you, so what I was just saying this, I absolutely am mapped to everyone listening to this being like, that dude, it was awful.

51:30I would never want to be with him. Oh, what a bore. Like, I just imagine I can see all the comments on social media now, like dozens and dozens of people ripping me to be like, oh, that dude, and like making their meanest comment. I know that's going to trigger it. And so I threw out this whole thing, of course, like people are going to grab what I say. And they're going to try to just dissect me and rip me apart for all the things I violate that they don't want to exist. So it's a constrained romantic relationship we're going to have if we're in, we're in use together brine because I can't speak to the morning.

52:02I can't speak to the morning. I can't really do any hanky panking after it. So I mean, there's kind of a small window for a relationship to exist. We're going to have to get a lot done in the like three or four hours. Yeah, we're going to have to have sex. So we're going to have to resolve all of our problems. And then I'm going to have to offload. Yeah. What else is important that tell me about your sleep regime, so the things you do just before sleep, we know you don't eat near sleep. Anything else that's really important. I'd say let me take them off. It's good to bed. Same time every night.

52:34No exceptions. Temperature controlled room and or mattress. What temperature? I currently am at I think 71. I go to bed at 78 and then Fahrenheit and then I sleep at 71. Thereabouts, then I come up for REM at 73. So temperature and then sound. Sound. So I aware of potential. Sources of noise that could wake you up. So if you. If you're in a noisy environment of sirens, I can think city environment or dogs barking or something. Being aware because sound will wake you up. And so you're really trying to minimize it and sometimes you wake up. If you need to do something to limit what gets it your ears or doing white noise or whatever you're doing.

53:24Then identify and when you eat and what you eat. For example, I know from my experience in trying these things, if I were to sometimes I would try an almond crust piece of pizza. Like this is years ago when I'm really trying to start figuring stuff out. That would wreck my sleep. Flower of any type. Reck my sleep. Elevates my resting heart rate into the high 50s. And I know I'm going to have about 50 % less deep sleep. And it's all these little teeny tiny understandings of how a particular kind of food is going to guarantee direct my sleep. Or even three ounces of red wine. Anytime afternoon. I'm going to guarantee to devastate my deep sleep.

54:07And then. So understanding how food intake affects that. And then I know I try to have an hour while a wind down time every night. If I go to bed, if I work right up to when I go to bed. I will ruminate all night long on that topic. And so it will feel like I never actually go to sleep. Because I'm always just in that light sleep, ruminate on this problem. But weirdly, I found that if I follow my entire protocol right before I go to bed now. I'll assign my brain a problem every night before I go to bed. And I now have my very best thoughts in life in my sleep. My brain figures things out much more efficiently in my sleep than I do when I'm awake.

54:49So now to become an asset to me. Versus before is just a terrible experience. And if I, you know, I, I, sometimes I got to be honest, sometimes I have snacks before bed. You know, we're amongst friends here. I can be honest. Sometimes, you know, sometimes it just gets a bit because I feel that because I work quite late into the night. And then I get to 9 or 10 p .m. And I'll be sat there thinking, I've not eaten yet. And I've got this pain in my stomach. So getting just going to bed on with the pain in my stomach feels quite difficult. So I'll just, you know, water something on one of these little apps.

55:24I don't tell anybody because, you know, but then I eat it and you're right. 10 seconds. It feels great. And then after that, I feel like crap. Yeah, you have to pay the price the whole next day. Is there anything that I, you, you can eat later in the day or you can eat at dinner time that has a smaller negative adverse consequence in your sleep? Is it just like vegetables and stuff for that? Vegetables are fine. And this is for me. I need to clarify what I do is for me. Other people thrive on other things. So this is just a data point people can use in their mind that you find to know all these different things.

55:56But I think the data is interesting. I've never seen anyone with a four month streak of perfect sleep. I'm in the 98, 99 .6 percentile of recovery too. So it's not just my sleep quality, which people will often say, oh, you can just game that not a big deal. People who know really know, that's not true. But then also optimize it if you're HRV and your, your respiration rate. My recovery is also 99 .6 percentile. So I'm hitting all the markers on the highest quality possible performance in sleep. And my body's recovering at the maximum capacity. And so it's good data that I'm not just making stuff up.

56:32The data shows I'm potentially best in world on this measurement profile or among. So it's interesting that it's a reasonable way for someone to contemplate what they might do in their life. Do you think there's anyone better in the world at sleeping than you? Probably. There's probably some people may, I wonder if all the years of ruining myself. If it has a carryover effect, like I just can't make up entirely for all the things I did. I wonder if that's the case. And I wonder if people who haven't done that naturally sleep better than me. And that I have to try extra hard now because I'm compensating for all the damage I did to myself.

57:11I don't know. For those in my certain circumstances, I don't think anyone tries harder sleep than me. Hey, Charlie, you mentioned that. Why is that important and what is it? What is it? Yeah, it's a heart rate variability. And it's a representation of your nervous system. There's two parts, your parasympathetic nervous system and your, it's so your auto knock nervous system and you're trying to basically tether between being chill and being in fight or flight. And so when you're stressed, your body is like, all right, like we're ramped up. We've called all the resources to do this job, but you can't be in that high state long.

57:52You need to be in a relaxed state as well. So you're trying to bring the parasympathetic nervous system on in time and to relax the sympathetic nervous system. And so the HRV is representation of, are you chill or are you stressed? Having a high HRV is better than having a low HRV. I worked very hard at it. It's been one of the hardest markers we've had to move. I had a meaningful increase in my HRV over the past 500 days. I started, I was believing the mid 30s range and I'm now up in the low 60s on average. So good gains, but still not anywhere close where I want to be. I thought we'd be at this point.

58:34It's been really, really hard to move. And you hate heart rate variability, right? Yes. Is that what it's called? And what is that as in, is the gaps between your heart beats or something? Exactly. Yeah, it's the interval between. Yeah. So it measures the interval between your heart beats and how much that varies or... That's right. Okay. So you want high, you want... So if my heart rate of variability is like 120, I think. Great. It's definitely above 100, depending on, you know, what I've done that. I've done jealous. Well, yeah. Maybe that's one thing I can teach you about. But what is that?

59:11120 what? I've always wondered. I see it. I know that. Oh, milliseconds. So 120 milliseconds variance between the heart beats. And there's a whole bunch of ways. If you get into the actual math, you can measure them. You can actually do this calculation in a number of different ways. It gets really technical and sophisticated. But the general understanding is you want a higher number. Or you want a bigger number. You do some things before bedtime to improve your heart rate of variability? I do. I've tried several devices. I've used Sense8, which is a vibrational thing in the chest. I've used Polsetto, which is a vibration on the Vegas nerve here.

59:47I've used NeroSim, which is on the left. Tragus here. Anything. Anything work? A little bit here and there. Nonsense. I mean, I... Given the amount of effort I put into my health and wellness, I would like to think I'd be over 100 to my HIV. I can't. It doesn't move. It's just a really hard marker. I wonder if all the decades where I was depressed out of my mind and really stressed out of everything, if I just ruined myself to degrees that are hard to come back from. So we've been trying to find something more advanced that would do something outside of diet and exercise and routine and sleep.

1:00:29We haven't found it yet. It's crazy that one of the most pivotal moments in my life, was when I put my wound upon and the founder told me about this. How important that HIV marker is. How much of an indicator it is of overall health. You know, crackle with my life. Had a glass of wine one day. I wake up the next morning. Yeah. And it's flashing red. And I click on it and it's like, did you have some alcohol last night? And I'm thinking, oh my god. Yeah. Like genuinely, that moment was... was when I realized that these choices I make, however small I think they might be. Especially without alcohol.

1:01:03Yeah. Have my heart notices. And it's saying to me, you're either, it said you're either stressed. You're either sick or you had some alcohol last night. Yeah. I thought, I don't like those three things being a category together. Alcohol. What do you think of it? I used to drink three ounces every morning with breakfast. You used to drink three... Three ounces of alcohol every morning with breakfast. I enjoyed drinking alcohol. I enjoyed drinking the wine. For breakfast. For breakfast. Because I had to create the longest time period between my sleep to avoid it negatively affecting my sleep. Okay.

1:01:37But then I got rid of it because it was too expensive from a color perspective. It was 72 calories for the three ounces. And I couldn't fit it in with my calorie budget. So what do you think of it in terms of longevity? I think the science says in moderation is fine. I just, I don't drink it at all ever anymore. And you've only really been following this protocol for a couple of years now, right? Yeah. I mean, my... I guess I really do understand myself as on a singular mission for intelligent existence to thrive. That is what I am. That is what I'm doing. That's what I'm pursuing. Nothing else matters to me.

1:02:27The question, the ultimate question, I think, in, you know, that you said, all these people are going to say, I'm weird or whatever else. There's this ultimate question because you're very, very clearly mission driven. And there's always a cost. Much of what I do here when I meet extraordinary people is to understand the cost. In fact, the reason I start this podcast is because we, we, that's called the Diary of a CEO, is because we see the CEO stuff, but we don't see the diary. That's why it's called what it is. And it started as me just showing my diary. And I shared everything from masturbation, my mental struggles, everything, my issues with my family.

1:02:58I shared it all to put the cost out there to the world. Cost of my mission, my calling my pursuit, the thing that was dragging me. The ultimate question becomes, are you happy?

1:03:14Never more so in my entire life. Unquestionably. And what does that mean? I've never felt more fulfilled. I've never felt more stable. I've never felt a more expansive consciousness. I've never felt more free. I've never felt more bold. I've never in my entire life been this alive. And you experienced the antithesis of happiness, right? You experienced, I mean, maybe some people would argue that it's something else, but you experienced the bottom of the crevice of depression. You know what that felt like? The voices in your head that were telling you to do things. The unthinkable actions of suicide.

1:04:01What goes on in your head now? What are the same voices saying? It's all play. I've never had more fun. Most of my life has just been aggrined. It's like doing the things to achieve the objective because that's what the societal roleplay says to do. And that's what I'm doing now. I'm not doing this for anyone's expectations. I'm not doing this to achieve anyone's acceptance. This is the game I've selected to play. I don't care what anyone says about it, sincerely. I just feel free. When was your last dark day?

1:04:47It was about something I can't yet talk about. I wish I could. I will be able to soon. Okay. I respect that. Yeah, but I guess my answer is a genuine. In time, this will be a good story. But outside of that, what are the things that are in all the things that get you down these days? I was recently, I was pretty bothered. The hate that comes my way is energizing to me. It's thrilling.

1:05:28When my father did something with me publicly with his plasma transfusions, the internet kind of had their way with him, making fun of him and saying rude things and mean things. That really got to me. Her luck my way, cool. But my father was courageous enough to do this thing publicly and put himself out there. And he just got torn to shreds. And it made me feel very sad and ashamed of humanity. Like my 70 year old dad, you know.

1:06:09He's not the pick of a fight with somebody, you know.

1:06:16What is that? I don't know. Maybe I've always felt like a protector of my dad, maybe. Why?

1:06:33It's just kind of how our roles developed, I suppose. When he was in a state of need, I was in a state of ability to give. Started off when we were young, when I was young.

1:06:50You talked about plasma. I saw the image on your Instagram, when I was waiting for you in there, I was going through your Instagram and looking at all the captions on your posts and stuff and looking. And there was that photo of you, your son who looks very much like you, by the way. And your father, beautiful photo of you, all of you wearing vests. And this was one of the sort of experiments you did. You had a hypothesis, the hypothesis was. Yeah. As a team, we have scoured every scientific study ever done on longevity and lifespan. And we've ranked, prioritized all of them. And we filtered out like which one you animal models, human models, and we tried to decide which things to do, why.

1:07:29And plasma exchanges surfaced as a potential option. And people were doing it for cognitive decline. And so it came up where I was talking to my dad and he said, hey, Brian, I want you to know something that when you begin experiencing cognitive decline, which I have, you don't know. Said, I always thought that if I'm starting to lose my mind, I'm going to pick it up and be like, oh, I'm not as sharp as I used to be. But you don't know. It's invisible to you, which makes sense. And so he said, I've been on blueprint for a couple of months. It's come back. So I'm aware of how fast I was losing my mental acuity.

1:08:00I'm back. So in that conversation, I said, dad, you know, I've been looking at these things. Plasma exchanges. And there's some interesting studies going on right now with cognitive decline, Alzheimer's, and things like that. They're showing interesting results. Now, the science is still emergent. We're not sure it's going to work. But if you were interested in doing this, I'd be more than happy to donate my plasma to you. That's how it happened. And so then I tell my plasma is. Oh, yes. So we have blood in our body and plasma. So you take the blood out, but we're half blood, half plasma. You take blood out, you spin it up, it separates into yellow stuff, which is plasma and the red stuff, which is blood.

1:08:35And so they're just different things in the plasma. So it's basically taking plasma with the body. And so I gave my father a leader of my plasma. But I was talking to my son and I was like, hey, I may give a leader of plasma to my dad. And so my son is like, cool. Can I be involved? It's like, all right. So it's like this really organic thing around my father. And so it was a lot of people learn about this. And then they immediately imagine like, I'm in a dungeon drinking my son's blood. And I'm like harvesting his organs. And the reality was it was a very, it was a whimsical, fun, you know, heartwarming thing that our family was discussing.

1:09:15And so we did it. And there was some sort of efficacy shown in mice, wasn't it? Yeah. Yeah, there's, so this, the evidence is like, not bad. It's not terribly persuasive. It's emergent. So it's not like we were going in there and realizing that we had a slam dunk. It was like, it's interesting. It's safe. So let's give it a shot. And it didn't really work. So you on me on you. Yeah, which makes sense. I mean, I saw I'm chronologically 45. Many of my phenotypic markers are in their 20s. Right. Of course. So my donor was 19. And so it makes sense to age differential given I'm so tuned. It would make sense that you would see a big change.

1:09:55But for my father, maybe because there's a much bigger difference between his health status and my status than different age range do. Was there a difference in your father? Did you not measure? We're still waiting for the results. Oh, okay. Yeah. His, his subjective reporting was that he felt phenomenal. But we really want to see the data. And you also need to probably do more of these. Right. One is, it's not enough. He probably should have succeeded. So it was, it ended up being, even though we approached it as my father's cognitive decline. And we were looking at it through a medical perspective.

1:10:24It ended up being a family bonding experience where we, my father left the church when I was young. He was ostracized. I left the church. I was ostracized by my children and their family. So in my estimation, it was, we were divided by the mind, united by biology. This goes back to Blueprint, which is, are there control systems that help us cooperate? Not the mind. Now our mind, we want to create tribes. We want to fight with each other. And we want to find good and evil and all that sort of thing. Biology doesn't, I mean, biology maybe is a different control system. And so we were just trying to optimize health.

1:11:00And so you go back to that system. What are the control systems running humanity? Running our family. Running you and me. Running society. I thought it was beautiful because it was an experience my father and son and I never would have imagined we'd have. And our entire lives ended up being a spectacular experience of the family that we really appreciated. As you were speaking, I was thinking about something I've just written in the book that I've been writing. One of the pages is when I discovered my father's cigarettes. And it was this like earth shattering moment in my life because I was suddenly haunted by this feeling that my father was going to die.

1:11:32Because as a kid, cigarettes are bad. Everyone tells you that. And then when you find out your father is smoking them when I was like 14 years old, it was this kind of crisis in me that my father's going to die. I was thinking about what your father went through and how that might have introduced the concept of death to you at a young age. Then I was also observing how much he means to you in every word you say about him and your protectiveness over him. And I was wondering if there's some kind of link there. How did you reconcile with it? Trying to get him to stop smoking. Yeah. There you go.

1:12:04I don't know. What'd you do? I think I cried about it a few times, but I think I just made him feel bad about it. Right. Yeah. Maybe that's like the best tool you can use when you're 14. What about you? I'd write him letters. Really? Yeah. Every week. I'd write him a letter, tell him how much he means to me. I'm thinking about him. Yeah. In the hope that. That he. It would give him the power he needed to overcome his addiction. Did you think about his him dying at that age? Had the concept of death crossed your mind? I just wanted a dad. Yeah. I wanted. I wanted him to be a part of my life. It explains why being a dad might so much to you now.

1:12:55Probably. Yeah. I noticed there's something on the chair over there. And I'm actually starving. It's just gone for a clock and I haven't eaten today. But you were very kind in bringing me some food. So I want to talk about food. Jack, could you bring me the food please? And you can tell me what you've brought me to eat. Presumably this is what you eat. That's right. Good. Thank you. Okay, so you've you've brought me a meal today. I did. Just for anyone that's looking at trying to tell to the people can see. If anyone's watching on YouTube or Spotify where you can get the video, you can see what's in these bowls.

1:13:35And you've brought me two little buckets of pills here. And there's a drink here. What is what is this food? This is this is the answer. If you ask the body, what do you want to eat to be an ideal health? This is the answer that a generate. So this is not to say that is the only food you could eat. It is a version of a good eat. So the my daily color can take is 2 ,250 calories a day. Every calorie has to fight for its life. There's not a single calorie in my entire life protocol that exists for any reason other than serving an objective in the body. So dish number one is called super veggie. It's broccoli, cauliflower, black lentils, garlic, ginger, hemp seeds.

1:14:27And over a month, if you were to do this with me, you would eat around 70 pounds of vegetables per month. 70 pounds of vegetables per month. Wow. Wow. And I think we also have in their extra virgin olive oil and chocolate. Yeah, I can taste like cacao like dark chocolate. So I paired the chocolate in here. It's an unexpected pairing. The way we think about this is you could say chocolate is good for you, which might lead you to eat a Snickers bar. The more precise way of thinking about it is you want dark chocolate undouched test for heavy metals and has a high polyphenol count. If you don't do all five layers to qualify the value of the chocolate, you have an inferior chocolate and nutritional value for your body.

1:15:15So everything we do at Blueprint uses that frame of reference of understanding everything a full stack way of how do you serve the body's objectives in the maximum way? That is a mushroom covered in chocolate.

1:15:31How fun. So interesting. Yeah, those are Mataki mushrooms. Mataki mushrooms. This is a normal broccoli, isn't it? That's right. You didn't put anything on it? No. No salt. I used potassium chloride, new salt. And we got some broccoli in there. So is that that dish explained? That's explained. Okay. And then this looks like dessert to me. Nuddy pudding. It is. Many people consider it to be a dessert. It's macadamia nuts, walnuts, flaxseed, sunflower, lachin, pulmagranit juice, berries, and pea protein. And is this the entire meal you'd have in one day? There's one more dish, which we don't have, which varies day to day.

1:16:14Okay. But this is really it. I have three tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil, ones in here, then I have an avocado and a third mille a day. And this drink here that you've given me, what's in here? Yeah, make sure you stir that up. Okay. That's the green giant. So the way that it works is I'll wake up in the morning. First thing I'll do is drink the green giant, take 60 pills, work out for an hour, then eat super veggie, wait for an hour, eat nuddy pudding. Wait for one more hour and eat my third mille a day, and then I'm finished for the day. How many pills will you take in one day? Currently 111.

1:16:46Wow. And you take 60 of them in the morning. That's right. Wow. Wow. That's an interesting taste. I've got to say, it doesn't taste amazing. You know, it's not like something I'd find in a juice bar or something. There's a little bit of an aftertaste to it that's not fantastic. And I mean, I like vegetables. So I like most of this stuff. The chocolate, I think, is a bit of a spanner in the works. It's not like a chocolate that you'd get. It's not a chocolate or a mask bar. It's a very, very dark bitter taste, which is a strange thing to add to a mushroom. Yeah. You could also put the dark chocolate in the nuddy pudding, or you could have it independently.

1:17:29I find it's fun because it's a new experience for people to try. So it's really an optional thing. Oh, this is nice. This nasty pudding is really nice. Mmm. That's really nice. That's really really nice. So what are your principles for eating, then? You talked about calorific restriction. How important is that? Because I eat a lot. And I don't count. I just eat. Yeah. And I'm like, you know, I'm my heaviest. I'm 15, stone, five, which is well, about 100 kilograms or something. So I'm quite heavy. And I eat. And I go to the gym every day, but I eat a lot. I've kind of out of control. It has compelling evidence.

1:18:07Chaloric restriction has compelling evidence that it's one of the most effective longevity interventions that can be done. And what are your sort of wider nutritional principles that people can very easily introduce into their lives? It's, I have this experience where I learned how to fly an airplane. I became a pilot. And we get up at altitude and I would use my hands and try to fly the airplane. And I do a left, right, up, down. I try to be perfectly on the attitude indicator of maintaining exactly the altitude, which I was pegged at, and the direction. And then I would engage autopilot. And this plane would just sit up straight and it would be perfectly pegged.

1:18:45It was so far superior to my ability to do it. And that's kind of how I think about my diet. If I use my mind, I kind of ping pong around life eating this and that. And like I hear this thing there, and I hear this thing there, and I kind of do whatever's available to me. If you think about putting your body on autopilot, I call it my autonomous self. But the body report out evidence algorithm in and it just runs. This is the result. This is autopilot for my body. And so every single thing we do is tracked in the body. Every pill has to justify its existence. If I can't be measured and quantified, we don't do it.

1:19:15And so it's a system, a closed loop system that has an algorithm running me. Which is so far superior to my mind, which is going to do. I'm going to add the cookie to the order and it's going to eat blank because of whatever. I'm assuming you're not going to take these back. Okay, so this.

1:19:40Those are all the pills you take in one day. That's right. 120 odd pills in a day almost. 111. Yeah, that big one right there. You can see the guy right there. This one here. Jesus. What is in these pills? A lot of things you should expect, basics like vitamin D and C. More advanced things like alpha -ketoglutarate or metformin or carbos or other things like that. It spans from basic and common to some more advanced drugs. A lot of my friends when they, well, one of my friends in particular, when he knew that I was speaking to you, he asked me about NAD+. That's obviously something that's become quite popular in the longevity culture.

1:20:22What's your perspective on NAD+. Yeah, he's trying to modulate those levels in his body and there's nice age graphs. So people to enter this into an understandable frame, people, it's not commonly understood what a biological age is versus a chronological age. Somebody can be chronologically, I'm 45, but I can biologically be different. I can be either 30 or 35 or 55 or 70 according to the markers. So in levels of NAD, intercellular NAD, in particular, there are certain levels that would peg you at age 18, age 30, age 50 because they reliably go down with age. And so when you supplement to try to change these, you're trying to peg yourself to a more youthful state because it's a energy the body runs on.

1:21:03And so what I did is I, people in the longevity community do have a lot of questions about how you increase your intercellular NAD levels. And there's a big debate. You do NR or NMN. I think there's big debate and everyone's only wants to fight about it. And so I trialled both. I did 90 days on NR. I did 90 days on NMN and I measured my intercellular blood levels throughout. And I showed that both were basically effective in doing the objective. So I was able to peg my intercellular NAD at the 18 year old mark on both supplements. Oh, wow. So it basically doesn't matter just to get it measured and just titrate your dose to make sure you're getting what you need.

1:21:42Nice. And I want to, I really want to make sure because I feel like you're, if I'm never going to meet someone who I feel like is so well versed in how the things I put in my mouth have an impact on my biological age. So what advice would you give to me about say that you could have a blank canvas and I'm going to, I'm going to believe everything you say. My objective is to increase my health span and to not age poorly. Yeah. What would you say about the things that I put in my mouth? Give me some rules. Do exactly what I've published. Okay. I'm going to make a dead simple for you. I say tongue in cheek that blueprint is the best health protocol ever developed.

1:22:23Prove me wrong with your data. If someone has a better, if someone can achieve better biomarkers with their protocol, it's going to be amazing for me and everyone else because now we have a comparison. But right now the tricky thing for someone like yourself is if you go out into the world and try to figure this out, you've got a sort through 100 gurus. Yeah. Everyone's saying a different thing. Even now if you give five anti -ag experts the same scientific papers and ask them to develop a protocol for you, you'll get a different protocol from every single one. They're not going to agree. There's no way to got there and get consensus in the world.

1:22:56So you need to pick a path and then measure and I've done exactly that. So I've basically tried to punch through all the noise and say is there actually something I can do which has some believability. That's what I've done. So I've published all my data. And so blueprint provides people a starter, a starting point to say I'm going to do something that I can see works and I measure myself and iterate and improve upon it. So the health and wellness is all like religion where the King James version of the Bible supports 100 different denominations. They all say their gods weren't true only. Same with health and wellness.

1:23:28Everyone claims their gods true health and wellness program. And I've tried to punch for the whole thing to say doesn't matter what guru status is. Share the data. Eat in the mornings. If you if I was a blank canvas. I'd say trial. I'd say follow my protocol exactly. See how you feel and then try and experiment what you do later in the day and then compare the two. Sugar zero zero. Zero sugar. Zero sugar. Why? It does nothing useful for your body. And now you like our body needs sugar to run. So if you eat sugar in berries, which you're having now. Yeah. That's great. But how do you process white sugar or cane sugar?

1:24:07There's no value for your body. There's other things of much higher value for your body. God, it's hard to exist in this world without sugar. Isn't it? Do you do anything with your testosterone levels? Yeah, I do a testosterone patch. I supplement with a patch. I assist. I supplement because I'm on a caloric restriction diet. And when you do that, your testosterone naturally goes down. So I keep my testosterone pegged in the normal range between 6 and 800. I'm about 850 right now. So I'm not trying to get above it. Just trying to be normal. One of the reasons why I said to you before you when you sat down that people, men of my age start thinking about longevity is we noticed that our headlines have started to receive.

1:24:46I mean, getting the thing with the receiving headlines is actually quite good. Some of my friends started a little bit earlier. And then we started to see these gray hairs in our heads. You have fantastic hair. And in fact, a lot of the comments I saw, what's he doing with his hair? There was one particular comment. Someone asked him, this was online. Someone asked him how he's got that hair. What advice would you give to me? Listen, I'm at that age now where I've got to make a decision. Do I let this thing go back? Yeah. Or do I fight it? Don't do it. Yeah. Fight. Fight with everything you've got in you.

1:25:16Really? Yeah. Trust me on this. I will. Trust me. You don't want to clean up of... You don't want to clean up aging damage that you can prevent right now. And I can prevent my headline receding? Yes. How? I started losing my hair in my early 30s. Yeah. And it's been a grind to try to keep it. And so my hair protocol is what I do. I have a custom formulation that we've built. It basically has monoxidil and a few other things. So people can get that easily. I have a red light therapy cap. I wear every morning for six minutes in my morning routine. I do PRF. So I inject... I get blood drawn, spun up, and then re -injected into my scalp.

1:26:08Once every maybe a month or three. And then I take a few supplements. That are listed online for the Blueprint website. So basically like four things. Helps prevent hair loss and encourages hair growth. I don't know if I'm going to be able to do one of that and walk my dog. So I'm like, is there a silver bullet that I could... So here's how it works. I know it sounds overwhelming. If you build habits that just make these things so you don't think about it. It sounds overwhelming in the beginning. But if you just get into a routine where every morning you do your thing. And when you're doing that thing, you just throw a cap on your head.

1:26:48And it just is on for six minutes. And then at night before you go to bed, you put a little liquid on your scalp and you rub it in. And then you take a few pills every day with your routine. It's entirely about building systems so you don't think about it ever. So it's never burden on you. My friends are taking different approaches to keeping their hair line. And the side effects of the reason the proposed side effects of the reasons why I've always been scared to do it. One of the clear side effects that people talk about is loss of libido. I haven't had that. So we do the dosage. So if they're taking finasteride, which is an oral, then it does have sexual side effects.

1:27:31But I've not yet encountered any intervention that has compromised my libido anywhere and anything we're doing. How do you measure your libido? Or is that just kind of anecdotal? Yeah, I mean, so I... This historically became known about measuring nighttime erections. So I didn't know. I was talking to a reporter about this and he just had an article on Blueprint. And he read it and he came back and said, Hey, my editors are asking about penis health. And I was like, funny, you ask. I got to tell you something. And so I just bought this high frequency electromagnetic stimulation device working on.

1:28:06Basically, I sit on this little thing. It stimulates my pelvic floor. And I was trying to strengthen my bladder. So I wouldn't get up to go to bed at night. And it had this side effect of every time I woke up, I was erect. And I was like, this is like what happened to me when I was 10. You know, like when you're 10 years old, you're always erect. And I was like, I haven't experienced that for quite some time. I'm always erect. And so I was telling him about this thing. And then I didn't realize it was going into the article. And so then I came out and I was like, oh no. So this guy, then it's like, this dude is so weird.

1:28:41He measures his nighttime erections and he drinks his son's blood. And he started stacking. And people are like, this guy is nuts. And so it just creates this pattern where people are like, yeah, yeah, he's just out there. One of the things that's really distinctive about you is you have the best posture of any guest that's ever sat here ever. Like, it's the point where I was like, slumped. And I looked over and I was like, fuck, I'm out of it. There must be a reason why he sat like that. So I corrected my posture, but I keep sliding back down. Why does that matter to you, posture? I wish somebody would have taught me this when I was a kid.

1:29:15It matters a lot with blood flow. I found out because I have these internal juggy veins, which blood from your brain, brain flows out. And I was born with narrow juggy veins. And so when I have bad posture like this, it stops the blood flow and it builds up my brain and causes intraoccurring to a pressure, which is bad for your brain. I didn't realize I had that until I found in a normal MRI scan, we found that I had some bad things happening in my brain, or like, why is that happening? And we found these internal juggy veins. So then it focused me on posture of how do I actually situate myself to have the proper flow from my brain down into my body and it became a whole thing.

1:29:53And so we started doing a bunch of measurements, trying to look at my intraoccurring to a pressure, looking at my white matter, hyperintensities in my brain, like basically how bad is it? And it was bad. My team kind of went on red alert for three months. Am I going to have a stroke? Am I going to have a seizure? We're trying to figure this out. And so one of the ways we fix this, or we've made positive progress when my symptoms have lessened, is this posture. So I became obsessed with posture to avoid having some catastrophic event with my brain. And it's been useful and helpful. And so I just got into posture and I learned how to do it.

1:30:24But it was really hard. I never realized how many muscles have to be strong to have a good posture. I'd wake up in the morning, I could barely move. I was like, oh my god, everything hurts. Did you think there's a correlation between our health outcomes and our posture? Hmm. The gentleman I work with on this... Strongly thinks that. There's not evidence yet, but he thinks that... It's a significant info. Q1 is often when businesses start implementing new systems and processes in hopes of creating efficiencies for the year ahead. And over the course of my career, I've learnt just how crucial having the right systems in places, one which has helped me across many of my investments is net suite.

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1:31:44That's netsweep .com slash Bartlett. I've done it yet. It was quite surprising to see that you've connected AI to the work that you're doing. The fourth principle you said about not underestimating the necessity to align with AI. Why? Why does AI come into this?

1:32:08To me, it's helpful to think about these kinds of questions by doing a thought experiment and time traveling to the 25th century. Imagine whatever form of intelligence exists in the 25th century. They're observing the early 21st century. What clarity of insight do they have looking back at us that we can't see right now? That helps me spin up certain frames of mind. And it could be that there was this revolution in the human race where we said, don't die. And the two is the only thing we have to do to figure that out is to figure out cooperation on how not to die. Now, when you say that, you have to figure out how to get every single agent of intelligence on Earth and maybe beyond to cooperate.

1:33:01Cool so far? Kind of. Thanks for checking.

1:33:07So, so we want the 25th century AI to look back and see that one of the principles of our humanity was do not die in the hope that it won't kill us. Okay, yes, so let me start building this up. So the first take me as a first example. I'm 35 trillion cells. How do I figure out how to not die? I go through this process to build an algorithm that maximizes existence. We do this between you and me where we have a cooperation algorithm not figuring out how you and I cooperate and we don't die. We have the same kind of thing with planet Earth. So, for example, in my scenario, we say, can the organs talk and can they run me and they can they keep my rascal brain at bay?

1:33:56So it doesn't ruin the show. Could the oceans run planet Earth? We plug into the oceans with measurement and we say you run the biosphere. Kind of a weird idea, but not outlandish. Now you have to basically think about the Earth speaks, our body speak. We speak with each other. Now you have trillions of artificial intelligence agents around all agents of intelligence have to cooperate. If any one of these agents or any group of them violates the cooperation, it could be the end of you or me or the planet or everyone. We have to figure out coexistence in this huge tapestry of goal alignment. It's currently framed of AI engineers need to figure out how to stop AI from killing everyone.

1:34:55That's part of the problem, but it's not the entire problem. So that's the only objective we have as a species. Like, there's nothing else that matters right now. It's don't die from every vector of potential death. And you think by doing that on our level and then at an earthly level that this will just want to make sure I'm clear that this will somehow feed into the artificial intelligence. Or we'll create artificial intelligence with one of its principles that is core to be cooperative. Yeah, I mean, so that you think the AI problem and it's like, so high level you'd say we don't want AI to be misaligned with human goals.

1:35:39Yeah. What are human goals? Okay. And then you start breaking yourself apart, me apart, and we realize we are a disaster set of goals. We want everything all the time and always contradicts. We don't have a line goal. And this is what I was trying to align with myself. Can I answer that question and say, I have a singular goal to exist. Now, if I'm blinding with AI, and if my singular goal is to get to zero self violence, like maximum life, like existence ability, I now have a starting point to talk to with a talk to AI about all of us do. And if we say earth, it's maximum sustainability, this planet, we're on.

1:36:28We have a starting point for discussion, but it has to begin with existence. And we have to overcome the biggest psychological barrier in our current culture, which is we perceive inevitable death. And so therefore anything that happens like whatever we don't care. And so we have to overcome. And this is why I've been playfully challenging the status and authority of Jesus Christ. I made a joke that Jesus fed wine and bread, accelerating aging and inebriating. And I will feed nutrients that will nourish and create life. That why is Jesus the continued representation of a philosophical group of a billion plus people?

1:37:15Why can't someone challenge us that as an authority and say, no, it's not the resurrection, it's not the afterlife. It's this life, it's don't die. You're not a martyr for some higher objective of some rules to be completed. It's this is the boundary conditions that people create. They say this is a philosophical thing. It's sacred. You can talk about it. You can challenge it. What are I sat here with them, one of the founders of Mustafa, one of the founders of deep mind. And we were trying to find solutions to this issue of AI and containment. And I want to make sure I'm clear that you're saying if we change our goals on a human level from being less self -destructive and more focused on do not die in our existence, then we have something that we can align with AI on which will preserve our existence as well.

1:38:01But we can't align with AI because currently we're self -destructive. So for an AI to align with us, it would be self -destructive as well. Exactly. And if you peel back these layers, now this conversation is, if we actually got into the technical details, it'd be much more nuanced. I'm going to make an oversimplification of a statement. Thank you. Humans have this broad set of goals. It's to make money, it's to acquire powers to have influence. It's to change the world they want. And that's when you, when you talk about containment, you talk about corporations, governments, individuals, ideological groups, everyone's gunning for their own thing.

1:38:37And this is why I took myself as an example. If I look at me as the same structure of the world, I've got evening Brian, morning Brian, ambition Brian, entrepreneur Brian, lover Brian. And all these different versions of me want different things at different times. And they're all competing to achieve their objective. And I understand these different versions of me. I had to basically say, hey everybody, like we've got a really big problem. We're all fighting each other after these different things. And meanwhile, we're accelerating death. And I had to basically say we're going to compress this space and we're going to acknowledge I, as a, my mind, cannot act in my body.

1:39:17And I'm saying, the most extreme, I'm saying humanity, if we want to exist, has to contemplate handing over the reins of control to algorithms. We cannot act in our best interest individually, collectively corporations, nation states, we can't do it. We need new control systems of power that acts in our long -term interests. We're playing an existential game right now with existence. We started playing that in the 60s with nukes. And we're now playing it with AI. We're playing it with our biosphere, potentially being an unsustainable place for us. There was to be fine, not fine for us. We're playing Russian roulette with our, with our existence.

1:40:11So are we lethargic as a, as a, as a species? Yeah, we all think we're going to die anyways. And this is why if we flipped it and it's like maybe not and maybe we're walking into the most extraordinary existence. Any form of intelligence has ever had in the galaxy. We may get our act together and say, you know what? Let's think through this thing from these basic principles, like really easy, let's not die. We don't want to ruin this chance we have to exist in this amazing future. A rebuttal you must have had is that in the pursuit of not dying, I don't want to not live. Do you see what I'm saying there?

1:40:46Because when, when I think about the, the sacrifices, I would have to make to my life to not die in the same way that you've reversed your age, I think well then there's no point because I'm not going to get to live. And I want you to just greet that as like a rebuttal. How would you respond to someone that thinks that? Because I imagine a lot of people have heard the, the protocol, the blue, they had about the blue print and they're thinking, well, you know, and I actually saw it. I think I saw it on Rogen or something where the guy was saying like, you know, I rather just die at 90, but having lived a fun life, whatever.

1:41:17Who cares what your mind thinks?

1:41:25Why is your mind the unquestioned authority that gets to say and do whatever it wants? Why does your body not get to say in this? Why can't your heart speak and your lungs? Why do you, as a tyrant, rule, rule and reign with terror on yourself? This is the thing. This is the unthinkable, most offensive revolution that could happen as a species. Our entire existence we've assumed, our mind is the ultimate authority on all things. Even in this conversation, nothing gets passed your mind as having an authority. What if our minds, what if it didn't matter? What our minds thought? What if they were not the authority?

1:42:12What if there are other authorities there? And why do we even trust your mind to be the thing that can decide on your best interest? Is that where you are in your life? You've removed the authority from your mind? Yes. So when you talked about your being upset and I could see the emotion in you when people were attacking your father, is that not giving your mind authority?

1:42:36I don't feel like I have control of those things. It's an emotional response that I... Based on books? Yeah, based upon a reaction that I have this relationship with my father. And so it's complicated. In terms of the thing I've isolated with Blueprint is, can I take my self -violence to zero? There's another layer of, how do I fill up with my father and what is that relationship? Different complexities. This whole thing is incredibly complex. But the simplest thing to do is, can I do this within the control systems that I have? Can I take my life to zero violence? And if I can do it as a 35 trillion -stale organization, can we use this little teeny example and map it to a species and say, can we take this multi -trillion -intelligent computational problem, can we solve this cooperation problem for everyone?

1:43:28Can we? Are you optimistic, Brian? And I want the honest answer here, because people often have ground plans, but the most important question is, do you think it's possible? Yes. You think it's possible? Unquestionably. Do you think it will happen? I do. I do. And here's why. I think that if it were just the human mind in play right now, I would not, I would not fill bullish. I would be pretty fore -learn. I'd probably give up. In humans are no longer alpha on this planet. And whether you realize that, whether someone realizes that or not, there's a new alpha on this planet. It's artificial intelligence.

1:44:12When we're going back to this composition of the biographies, this is inevitable. Artificial intelligence will run us. It will run this planet. And it will run all forms of cooperation. It's inevitable. And we're going to be superseded in our intelligence on a time scale that is surprising to us. We think we have potentially more time than we do. I don't think we do. And that's why blueprint to me is so urgent is of the urgent problems we're looking at. How do you, how do you get society to not kill each other with nukes? How do you get AI to not kill us? How do you get us to not divide a dye individually?

1:45:00How do you avoid the earth's environment, biosphere from collapsing and not supporting our existence anymore? How do you stop existential threats? And the thought processes people have been spinning up is we need legislation. We need new laws. We are going to protest. We're going to make a big thing. And what I've tried to say is I'm going to actually do the thing. No one else is doing. I'm going to point itself. I'm going to say can I solve all of these problems within me? Can I solve climate change within me? Can I solve AI alignment within me? Can I solve cooperation within me? And that's what I've been trying to do is an end of one example of how to solve a complicated system.

1:45:43Now blueprint is like an analog version. Like it's first version, right? It's like it's, but philosophically it's an interesting model. How do you take a complicated system of intelligence like me with all these inversions with proneness for self -destruction? I mean, like if you say what are the risks of AI? AI, are you just like all the things AI does that scare us? That is exactly the same list that I'm scared of for myself. And that you're doing to the 35 million cells? Yeah, like I am AI and I am my own worst risk. Like the risk profile is the same. I'm runaway intelligence doing things that is causing self -destruction.

1:46:23And that's what AI will do if it's allowed to run away. So that's the thing. It's so funny. If we look at AI and we're scared of it, we just look in the mirror. It's the same thing. It's the same risk profile. Intelligence is self -destructive if uncontrolled or... And so how do you build intelligence that's actually sustainable? How do you build it so it's not self -destructive? How long do you think we've got? You said we've got less time than we think. I don't know why we wouldn't spin on a dime right now. And look at every existential threat and go after it. Right now. Like why wait one more day?

1:47:04And why even try to calculate the absolute last moment we can do something before everything becomes catastrophic? We don't know the second and third and fourth order consequences of the biosphere changing. We don't know when AI is going to emerge and what level we don't know what systems are going to do. We don't know. Like you can't model it, you can't predict it. So creating time frames is ridiculous. Like you're emotional about this. I want to exist. I really don't want to die. Like it is like it's really fun to exist. And I don't know what death is like but... I've had moments in my life where I get these small glimpses into this expansive of consciousness.

1:47:46And it could be the case that we are a homo erectus. That we are so primitive, it's just unimaginable. And that if we can step into this future, we could have this expansive consciousness that is mind bending. Like so far beyond our imaginations we just can't even comprehend it. Like we could be right there on that cusp. To me it seems like we are. Like why would any of the other imaginations be practical to assume right now? If superintelligence is in the game here and we're within that mesh of intelligence, why couldn't we recently imagine that we might be along the ride in some capacity? You scared?

1:48:27No, I don't have an emotion of feeling scared. I don't experience that emotion. Ever? Fear? I don't... I mean as people describe it to me, I don't really feel it. Very logical and analytical in the way that you see things, right? You think differently, right? And obviously people that think different, like people like Elon Musk, etc. He's neurodivergent in some capacity. You've got a divergence to your neurology if that's even a word. Which is very unique. And are you aware of that? It's hard for me to see that. There are moments where I was at a dinner a few weeks ago and people were going around and talking about stuff and the contrast was like, whoa, I'm really different.

1:49:18What's happening here? So there are these moments of the sharp contrast. But I generally view the world as crazy. I view everything else, and I'm like, this is nuts. What's even happening here? Everyone is weird. This makes no sense to me. What the world is doing and how people are behaving makes no sense to me at all. And I know that if you flip it, people view me in the same way. But God damn, the world seems crazy to me. People look at you and they think, oh, he's bit weird. And you look at them and think, God, he's bit weird. I think people, I think the world is crazy. Just insane. Someone's right.

1:49:59It's either you or the world. Time will tell. Right? Time will tell. Now, what is the most important thing, Brian? I imagine, I guess, I reckon five million people listen to this. That's my estimate. And based on the conversation, what is the most important thing that we haven't discussed? That those five million people need to know before we close out? That now is our opportunity to band together and experience the most extraordinary existence. That we are aware of in the galaxy. And that this opportunity is going to invite us to divorce ourselves from every sacred idea we have about ourselves and society each other.

1:50:56It's going to require more sacrifice than any generation. And it's going to be incredibly painful. And it's going to test our fortitude on whether or not we choose to exist. The fate of intelligence in this corner of the universe may depend upon us right now creating this bridge to this next evolution of being human and of the fabric of intelligence. It is our opportunity to seize. Equally to lose if we don't recognize the moment and step up. And step one in stepping up is fundamentally stopping the war against ourselves. It's in daily acts of revolting, of revolution against the status quo, which is harmonious and lessening our chances every day.

1:52:16People are accustomed to seeing revolutions happen by storming places and using weapons. The weapons that are disposal are to go to bed on time, to eat healthy, to not watch porn, to not get addicted to things. And it sounds weird and weak and different, but revolting against the culture of death and a self -destruction. With self, with planet earth, and how we engage with artificial intelligence. And these foundations map the future of our existence. And it begins with self. It's not blaming someone else. It's not pointing at someone and telling them how they have to change. It's looking itself and building the revolution within each one of us.

1:53:12What would you do if you found out you were going to die next week in a time of illness? How would you feel? I would feel satisfied that I spent my entire adult life searching for the singular thing I could try to do to create value for the human race. And I found it just in time and articulated the ideas just in time, barely well enough to kickstart this revolution. Are you misunderstood? Because the perception of you that I had before I met you is different to the perception I have of you now. Specifically the perception I have of why you're doing what you're doing. Because when I heard the tale of this Brian Johnson guy, he's trying to be 18 years old, he's a narcissist, he's struggling with the concept of death.

1:54:01He's got so much money now, he's fighting life. So, you know, he's doing this for himself. He probably wants to date someone young. And that's why he's doing what he's doing. It's all sort of self -centered. The proposition you've given me today is very much more about humanity than it is Brian Johnson. It seems like the picture painted of you. I don't know how the press works, right? It's the things that get so clear. Versus the person that sits in front of me today, I feel like two completely different people. I'm not understood. I would almost prefer to be misunderstood because that assumes some level of understanding.

1:54:40And it's not even a close approximation. Like you're saying, it's so far off from what is really what I'm really trying to achieve. Your father, 75 years old. He's not going to live forever. Or is he? How'd you contend with that? I mean, you clearly love a lot, but you understand that there's an inevitability to life for most people who aren't revolting against life in the way that you are with your longevity routines and your anti -aging protocols.

1:55:26Yeah, it's, it's impossible to hear from you to reconcile.

1:55:33You know, like, yeah, one time he, I couldn't get a hold of him for a couple of days. And which is uncommon. And I spiraled in concluding that he had died. And, you know, not being able to call him and hear his voice was beyond devastating. And death is a terrible thing. We've all experienced it. And it would be wonderful if we could bring an end to it.

1:56:26Are you trying to keep him alive? I am.

1:56:35My, both my parents joke that, you know, they get a package that seems like every single day. I'm sending them everything I can. And you know, do this, do that. Sometimes it's too much whether I, Brian, I can only take so many pills a day and I can only do so many things a day. And it's a fun relationship. But I, I am trying very hard to take care of my parents and my children and my family. I care deeply about those around me. And I work very, very hard for the well -being. I believe you, Brian. I believe your intentions. I think what you're doing comes from a very, very good place. I, I think you're wide in a way which is unusual.

1:57:26And that's not to pass judgment on whether we're all unusual in our own ways, right? But you're wide in a very, in a way that's unusual. But because of your wiring, it's very useful. You know, I think that when we think about tribes and chronotypes and the differences within tribes, it's useful to have people that think differently within the tribe because it kind of covers all of our bases. And you present a new perspective about humanity, about the path forward and about the way to live. And I think any new perspective, anyone who is humble and, you know, is searching for truth would welcome a new perspective, especially when it's not harming others, right?

1:57:59You would want a new perspective if you are in the search of truth, not in the search of confirmation of your existing ideas or the alleviation of the cognitive distance we experience. And that's what I, when I experience you, I, that's exactly what I think. I'm open. I'm open to a perspective. I don't have to accept it all into my daily life, but being open to listen, I think is something we should expect of ourselves at a very fundamental level. And I would just wish there was more people that would just, you know, have the fearlessness to present a new perspective. Because as I think we said earlier in this conversation, there's so much potential trapped behind the fear of looking weird in life.

1:58:35So we'd stifle opinions and innovations and creativity because we don't want to look weird. Because there's a cost to that society you get smashed, right? And for whatever reason you've made the decision that that matters less than the mission that you're on. So I respect you and I commend you for that. Am I going to have the 120 pills? I can't make you a promise there. I'm sure I'll take a couple of them. This was nice. Can't imagine putting the chocolate on my broccoli. But you know, there's a lot to learn here. And I hope to make this sort of incremental steps in some of those areas of my health that we, we can all agree upon.

1:59:09Yeah. I would thank you for the conversation today. The as hard as I try to be impervious to judgment in conversations, it's hard to fully go through the expression of ideas when the other person even is making the most subtle of judgments or setting boundary conditions. And I love talking to you because you did none. You just rolled with me and you embraced it and I felt welcomed to express all of this. I appreciate that very much. Really means a lot to me to the point I just got goosebumps because I can't imagine what you've gone through in interviews with people and their judgments when I'm actually getting emotional thinking about it.

1:59:53I can't imagine what you've gone through in interviews because of people's like their close mindedness when they came to have a conversation with you. And how like what a waste of conversation and discourse and progress that is when we come with a close mind. And so I'm so happy you felt that way because it really mattered to me that you did. And because you did you were able to share in such a way, which I actually think is incredibly beneficial to me. And I think everyone that's listened. So thank you for that. Thank you. That's the one of the best compliments I've ever received. So really means a lot to me.

2:00:22Thank you for that. We have a closing tradition on this podcast. All right. Where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest. Not knowing who they're going to leave it for in the Dario Vaseo. The question left for you. I mean, maybe you've answered this. Is it how many netting directions I have? You can.

2:00:48I actually just have a question. What was the cost of you coming into this interview today to your routine? I thought, you know, I'm going to sit with him for two hours, which we've done. There's going to be a cost to your routine. Yeah. None. Because of the timing. I can appreciate that. Yeah. We'll get you home before 8 .30. For your car. The question left for you is, if all. I think it says, if all you could change. Is one thing about the world. What would it be? Hmm.

2:01:18I want to exist.

2:01:23A unwavering, unconditional.

2:01:30Moniacle want to exist. Brian, thank you. Really enjoyed this conversation. And I'm sure it'll be the first of many because I've got a lot to learn. So appreciate your time today.

2:01:51Thanks.

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