#644 - Bryan Johnson

10:35Bryan Johnson:That's what I was going to say there. But it starts to bubble up. Yeah. That's right. When your keeper, whoever's operating you on the app. That's right. Yeah. Turns up. Yeah. And the mask slowly starts slipping. It's like, Oh yeah. Like your database is showing dude or something.

10:49Theo Von:Yeah, exactly.

10:51Bryan Johnson:So just so our viewers know, and so many people know about you now, man, there's so many clips you out there. You've kind of, you're kind of this astronaut that hasn't left the planet in a way, kind of, because it's like, you know, you're kind of using yourself as an experiment. That's what it seems, you know, you're life maxing. That's what people say. Can you just explain to us kind of what your general sort of goal is or what your motive has been?

11:15Theo Von:Yeah. So I'd say, here's an example for you. In 1870, the big talk of the town was there was this divide over this guy who had ideas that the reason ideas? Yeah. The reason why people were getting sick and dying is because of these microscopic objects called bacteria. And half the town was like, that's stupid as fuck. What are you talking about? The other half was like, honestly, that could be legit. Now, they didn't have the ability to see these microscopic objects. It turned out, it's true. These microscopic objects are called bacteria, right? They can cause infection. So if you don't wash your hands in between surgery or when you're maintaining hygiene practices, you get infection and increase your risk of dying.

11:56Theo Von:And so that's the kind of example where a new idea showed up. It was seen as crazy. And eventually it turned out to be true. And now today we're like, oh, of course. That happens every year. Every year, yeah, exactly. And so the idea I'm basically suggesting to the world is that we've reached a point of humans on the planet where we may not die. Now that sounds batshit crazy. Whereas in we can live forever. Not even forever, right? Because it's kind of a concept we understand. It's just that we might be able to extend our lifespans to horizons where we can't really imagine. For example, like 150, 200, 500, 1 ,000, like some number we don't even know that breaks our brains.

12:39Theo Von:So it's just not like a 70-year expectancy, right? It's something much longer. And it could be the case that as our lifespans are extended, they get longer and longer and longer and longer. We can't quite see the end horizon. So that's what I'm suggesting is we are at that point with technology. We may be the first generations of humans who don't die. Now, if that's the case, everything changes. And so that's what I've been trying to do is to say, if that is the case, how does a human behave? What do they do? and so that's the whole that's why it's so controversial is because you take status quo and it's like if we're all gonna die anyways well bro you might as well right like do all the stuff

13:21Bryan Johnson:people do today right drink pbr whatever floor it you know send it you know exactly yeah knock up some woman or man now i think you can even knock up you're like what's happening yeah um but i see what you're saying so like if you if you say if you got to the finish line and they're like oh you can't cross the finish line anymore you're like oh if i didn't know that i would have ran the race

13:40Theo Von:exactly right so differently exactly or back in 19 i would have taken my time along the race

13:44Bryan Johnson:instead now i'm just standing there at the finish line decrepit or like with you know just like aftermarket pieces and stuff yeah and um and i would have done it differently that's right so

13:54Theo Von:like right now like you basically if everybody dies then you're playing a game of yolo and so then your game of yolo is like okay what am i willing to well i'm willing to trade life for what? And so for example, in the world I came from, entrepreneurship, the playbook is you don't sleep. You don't take care of your health. You run yourself ragged. You try very hard to make a whole bunch of money. But in doing that, you burn yourself to a crisp.

14:18Bryan Johnson:Yeah.

14:19Theo Von:Right. And then you end up and you're like fat. You're like 40 years older than when you started. Your family's falling apart. You're a crisp or you don't have one. Exactly. But you're just burnt to a crisp. That's what happened to me. And so you basically say, I'm willing to trade life for this money because there's this idea of if you have money, then you get blank. And so you're making this explicit trade-off. I'm willing to trade my conscious existence for money. And I'm saying that trade no longer makes sense. It no longer makes sense to die for something like that. Now, we all have practical things.

14:51Theo Von:We need to pay our bills and stuff like that. But I'm trying to basically say we're a society that has built a society of die. And I'm working on don't die as the new way of being human. So that's like the gist of it.

15:01Bryan Johnson:But do you think it's easier to say that once you have some money and once you have like a, you know, you have a place where you're like, okay, you know, I know that I'm going to be okay. Like, do you think you would have been able to switch that mindset before having, because then you had a company and you guys sold it for, you know, a great deal of money and congratulations. Thanks. And yeah, and that's the American dream, you know, but do you think you would have been able to have that same mindset before? Because that mindset before is like, yeah, grind, get this money, everything will be good.

15:30Bryan Johnson:and it kind of is nice in some ways because there's a goal there. Yeah, do you think you could have had it before or is it easier to have now?

15:37Theo Von:Yeah, I mean, there's two parts to this. One is I'm saying that like fast food companies like McDonald's and Wendy's, they're evil. They use science to make food that addicts you to their food, right? They're building addiction. For sure. Social media algorithms, they're building addiction, right? vape, porn, alcohol, smoking. Basically, as a society, we have a predator-prey relationship where companies prey upon individuals with the best science and technology possible and extract from them life for profit. And so, first of all, the observation I'm saying is, hey, companies, stop being evil. Like, don't use your powers to make people addicted, to make them, you know, to take their life from them.

16:26Theo Von:And then two is, I don't want to blame people because I know that's, it's easy for me to say this once I've been on the other side. So one, I'm just trying to say like, hey, this is fucked up. Number two is, I try to be a really positive role in people's lives to say like, if you're ambitious and you do want to make a whole bunch of money, for example, here's a playbook, right? Like the idea that you're better off working 18 hours a day and sleeping four is just scientifically wrong. Ah, I got it. Right? So like, if you're going to work really hard, make sure you get eight hours of sleep. make sure you do a little bit of exercise, eat well, but you're not going to be doing yourself a favor if you're eating trash, right?

17:05Theo Von:Not sleeping well and not working out. Like it makes your system, like for an engineer, it means like nobody wants to write shitty code. If you don't take care of yourself, you are shitty code. It's like, don't be shitty code and try to build life. And so those are the two things, but I want to be very clear. Like I'm not blaming people. We just live in a fucked up society. And I'm trying to call attention to the fact that like the system you're playing in is not a good one.

17:31Bryan Johnson:And it's heavily stacked against people, especially if there's a lot of things where it is addiction-based. It's like, oh, but they know, there's so much information now of how to get you addicted down to the molecule, down to like the moment of what you're looking at on your phone. Yeah. That it really is a war. It's a battle for your preservation. It's like, it used to be that, you know, the man had to wake up and he was, he had to know where the predator was, where the apex predators are. And now the apex predators are there, you know, they're in our homes, they're in our hands. Um, and it, it really is.

18:03It's, it's still a, uh, it's a battle and that is a battle.

18:08Bryan Johnson:It's like, if you want to take it on and then some days and moments and some people's lives are like, you know, I don't really want to take that battle on. And that's kind of okay too. But I think knowing that the battle is there is pretty, at least makes it that all the cards are on the table. Um, yeah, I saw that you recently, you did a social media fast, right? Yeah, I did. I did. Yeah. Take me through some of that. What was that like? Yeah. So first, I love social media.

18:32Theo Von:I think it's so much fun.

18:34Bryan Johnson:We have great stuff on X. It's like you can't even scroll through X without finding something that's great from Brian Johnson. And a lot of it's really great information, too. Oh, here's the post. I did a 40-hour and then a 70-hour social media fast. I've come to believe that social media is pollution.

18:47Theo Von:Yeah. So first of all, you know, in watching your Netflix specials, like what I love about watching that is you can say anything, right? Like the shit you talk about is so unhinged. Like literally there's like no balance. Maybe you've got material where you're like, probably shouldn't include that one, but like I couldn't detect it.

19:08Bryan Johnson:Oh, yeah. I like just saying shit. Because that's what you're supposed to be able to do.

19:12Theo Von:Exactly. So like what I love about that is the elbow room you have, right there's like when you look at existence you say like my my goal is to entertain you and i have all this open space but then when people don't have that when you when you don't have comedy as the outlet and you're playing in society people sit in a very narrow box they feel like they can only say certain things if they step outside that they get punished by the tribe right like for whatever reason and so what i love about social media is it just has enabled me to create elbow room. Like I posted nudes of myself, you know, like we did the plasma transfers.

19:48Theo Von:Like we basically have done enough things. I did magic mushrooms on a live stream.

19:53Bryan Johnson:Yeah. That's what really made me think, oh, I really want to talk to this guy now because he's going into other realms. And before we get into some of that, what were some of the findings from the social media fast? Or do you think it was long enough to notice anything?

20:05Theo Von:It was honestly, it was kind of life-changing. It was, I did one fast that was 40 hours long. and then I did a second fast that was 70 hours long. And the science behind this is when you're engaged in social media, you basically have dopamine dysregulation, right? Like you're in this addiction state and you don't realize it, but it's actually creating all kinds of harm and then you engage with social media to feel normal again. And then once you pull out of it and you have that break, you kind of get, you're out of the spell. You're not hypnotized anymore and then you get to feel it for what it is.

20:38Theo Von:So now when I pull up the feed, it feels toxic. Like it feels like I've had a fast food meal or like I'm in a secondhand, room of secondhand smoke or like it just feels so bad. And I guess that I pay attention to these feelings because over the past five years, I've been doing like hundreds of experiments to my body. Like what things make my body rejuvenate and what things make my body die. So I have this intuition I've built. And now when I go into social media, It literally feels like death. And so it's complicated though, because I love social media. I love to post. I love to play. I love to interact.

21:16Theo Von:But also when I get on, it's like, I'm like, nah, this is not good. So honestly, it's complicated. I don't know what to do.

21:23Bryan Johnson:Yeah. There's a thing I noticed if I've taken mushrooms before and you'll look at your phone, it's like, oh, get that away from me. You feel it, right? Yes. It's like, oh, that's not real. That's not, that's the most unnatural thing. Like, what is that? it all yeah it's it feels like a kryptonite or if i've done ayahuasca or been on ayahuasca and you're coming out and i see my phone or i'll get home and turn on the tv i'm like oh get that thing away from me that is something that's just resonating like something dark yeah isn't that

21:50Theo Von:interesting like in those moments when you feel sober it's like you do you can viscerally feel it yeah but then once you get in there and you kind of play around for a while you don't you lose that sensitivity and you feel normal again but yeah it's i think and so what's been resonating is So I posted this on social. I said, because a lot of people think that social media is like a vice or like a bad habit. But I reframed it and said, actually, I think it's pollution. It's like microplastics or lead in the pipes or asbestos in the wall or lead in the gasoline. I think it really is like a societal pollution.

22:26Theo Von:It accumulates in the body. It creates low-grade inflammation. And I've been sharing this. So many people are like, I feel this. but they, the problem is you can't like telling someone to turn it off is like telling someone to not breathe coal smoke in London in the 19th century. Like you can't do it. Or like, you know, if there's, if there's, if there's water pollution, like the solution for water pollution in London in the 19th century was not to say, don't drink water. It was like to filter the water. So I think the solution here is like, I proposed this, that if, if people could build AI to basically create a layer of protection between me and the internet, like me and the social feed, extract out all the performative metrics, extract out all the garbage, all the slop and then give me the goodness.

23:11Theo Von:But I want someone to like, it'd be cool if someone could build social media into a longevity therapy versus like, hey, I actually have this cigarette.

23:18Bryan Johnson:Oh, I see what you were saying, like make it a long, slow fire that has like, all a mix of things.

23:25Theo Von:Like help me when I engage with it, I want to feel good. I want to feel like I've drank, like, you know, lemon water and ginger. Right. As opposed to like having a couple of Cokes. Yeah. Oh yeah. Or you slam in a bunch of energy drinks and. Oh yeah.

23:37Bryan Johnson:Dude, my friend keeps a five hour energy drink in his sock.

23:41Theo Von:Yeah, no, like this is the thing, right? This is like, right? People pound like two to three to four a day, like between, you know, 400 and 800 milligrams of caffeine. And they like on top of modafinil or something, you know? So it's like. And kids are doing it.

23:55Bryan Johnson:Kids will get an energy drink before school. I'm like, what are you? Dude, your grades are bad. it's not even performing yeah what are you doing even doing over there dude yeah you just because you're reading the fucking crucible or whatever i gotta get you another celsius or something um uh oh it says hey hey social media users visibly decline one or two points in attractiveness i7 oh yeah i saw you said something that social media even can make us uglier yeah it does this is the

24:21Theo Von:post really yeah yeah this is good science because like when you engage heavily in social media you're basically, you have higher depression, higher anxiety, you've got more inflammation, you sleep more poorly. So these are all things that when the body is in that condition, you just look worse. So yeah, so heavy social media users lose at least a point or two on the attracting the scale. Like you may go from a seven to a five. So yeah, it does legitimately affect appearance.

24:49Bryan Johnson:Yeah. And I think everybody kind of starts at an eight. That's what I think. If you brush your teeth, you're an eight. Yeah, you're right. And you're nice, you're like 8.5. and you give a good hug, you're like nine. Oh, you're already halfway there. Yeah. And then the rest is just the Lord. And if your parents, if they were tens, wow, that's kind of, yeah, because this is interesting because I do notice like, first of all, I'll say to people, I noticed this now, I'll say to people, hey, I'm going to go into my phone for a second. Right? So it's almost like I'm letting you, it's almost like, yeah, I'm going to have a cigarette.

25:18Bryan Johnson:It's like the same sort of thing. And then now it's gotten to me, sometimes I'm just so sick of watching socials. It's just like I'll look at a few things and it's just like, oh, this isn't doing anything anymore. That started the thing too is I don't even – this doesn't feel like it's doing anything anymore. And then that the algorithm that you know somebody is behind it kind of queuing up what is next, it doesn't leave that as much of a whimsicalness about it. Yeah, that's right. Somewhere over the rainbow. there's a moon. I made up that second part, but what I want to tell you about is when I want to add some Bitcoin to my portfolio, MoonPay is the first app I reach for because you don't need to buy a full coin.

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28:36Bryan Johnson:Oh yeah, I saw this one tweet that's just getting a lot of attention that I saw. Mobile phone short video uses negatively impacts attention functions. Yeah. An EEG study says, one thing I do feel like is that there should be accountability for whoever's making the algorithms. Like, cause there's been kids who get affected and then they watch stuff and then they might consider self-harm, right? Or people who you're curious about one video, but then it serves you seven others. And now you have a strong take about a group or about a person or anything. So it's like, shouldn't the creator of the algorithm, like if I make something and I give it to you and I know it's bad and poisonous, you know, there should be, you should be somewhat accountable, it feels like.

29:19Bryan Johnson:I know there's just now a court case, or wasn't Zuckerberg just in court? Yeah, yeah, in LA. Here we go. Mark Zuckerberg grilled about underage Instagram users' social media addiction during landmark trial. In his first time testifying about child safety in front of a jury, Zuckerberg said the company does not seek to make Instagram addictive to younger users, pushing back against claims that the social media app is designed to be harmful to children. I'm focused on building a community that is sustainable. If you do something that's not good for people, maybe they'll spend more time short term.

29:53Bryan Johnson:But if they're not happy with it, they're not going to use it over time. I'm not trying to maximize the amount of time people spend every month.

29:59Theo Von:This is why I was saying that I wanted to reframe, because when people talk about social media, typically the blame is on the person. The person spends too much time on social media, right? They need to be more disciplined. They need to set limits. And when you reframe this and you say, actually, social media is a pollutant. It's like some company manufacturing cigarettes or asbestos or lead. Or when you reframe it that way, it's what you said is, this is a pollutant driving society that it is making society depressed, anxious, lose focus, right? Having all sorts of negative psychological and physiological implications.

30:35Theo Von:When you reframe it that way, it changes the blame from the individual to like, you can't reasonably expect people to want to be part of the tribe, to want to be part of a friend group and then put them in a system like the, it's like lead in pipes. Water is in the pipes, but also lead is too. So it's like, you can't, the solution is not to tell people to get off the phone. You have to do some kind of filtering or something because it's poisonous right now.

31:01Bryan Johnson:Yeah, I think it's a great way to say it. Yeah, that it's a pollutant, right? And people say, well, just get off your phone. But our society has gotten to the place where it is on our phone. We live in an electronica society in a digital age. So it's, yeah, if you have a neighbor next door who is a company that's just like blowing, like, you know, those smokestacks that they never had any governors on and they were just pouring horrible smoke into the air. those were held liable so it makes sense that these would be two um the case filed in los angeles superior court uh involves over 1600 plaintiffs including families and school districts suing meta youtube um which is tiktok and snap um kgm claims features like infinite scrolling notifications and beauty filters create addiction exacerbating body image depression and suicidal thoughts.

31:50Bryan Johnson:Yeah. Some of the key moments Zuckerberg denied meta aims to addict youth, stating his focus is on a sustainable community where unhappy users won't stay long term. Grilled on underage users and AR beauty filters, despite internal concerns, he emphasized balancing free expression and well-being, saying you don't really build social media apps unless you care about people being able to express themselves. I don't know if that's true anymore. You know?

32:20Theo Von:You know what it feels like is, in physics, there's this idea like a phase transition. So when water is at 99 degrees Celsius, it's a solid. When it's 101, it's a vapor. So just a very small change. It's not gradual. It just snaps. That's a phase transition. It feels to me like social media is heading towards a phase transition where there's like all this built up, all these built up problems that are over, like about to go from 99C to 101C and it just snaps. And society is like, we can't. Right. We can't do it anymore. Like it's too much. Like we're all fucking broken from this thing. Right. It's got to stop.

33:00Theo Von:And like, I don't think these things are cool because they don't happen gradually. It's just suddenly overnight. Yeah. So I would love that if like somehow there was a snap and we could all get back our sanity. Right.

33:12Bryan Johnson:Like with Ugg boots, It's like when people were like, oh, these are great. And Tom Brady was wearing them. Then one day people were like. Done. Yeah. Yeah. The shit's weird. Yeah.

33:19Theo Von:People will be so relieved to not feel like.

33:22Bryan Johnson:Because right now. Oh, dude. If they came out with a rule right now and said on. Your phones won't even work on Saturday and Sunday. I think the entire world would exhale.

33:31Theo Von:Oh, 100%. That's also true. Like on like grind culture where the expectation is you have to work 20 hours a day. Get up and fucking grind. Ron, Ron. It's like in this expectation. Take your eyes open. I know. Keep looking at invoices. It's like we're like driving ourselves insane as a species. It's like we're losing our shit. And like it's right there in front of us. And it's all these expectations. And it would be amazing. I love that. Like the phones don't work. It's like, God damn, let's go celebrate. I think people would.

34:01Bryan Johnson:They don't even work good. Fuck them. I think one day if people take over a business or like people like storm the Capitol. Dude, storm T-Mobile, storm these towers and just bring them down. Free us from what it's digital chains where we're locked, you know?

34:18Theo Von:You know, when people are not with the tribe, they experience it as physical death. Because we are evolved to live in a group of 150 people or less to be seen by the tribe. And when you're on social media, if you're not posting on social media, you're not seen by the tribe. So it feels literally like death. That's why you can't just say like, don't be on your phone. Cause you're like, your body's like, am I dead to the tribe? Right. Do I even exist?

34:47Bryan Johnson:Yeah. You feel like that. If I take a couple months off, will people know, do I exist? What's even going on?

34:51Theo Von:So therefore you're forced into this performative existence of like, hey guys, I exist. Remember me? Like, look me over here. Like, remember, I'm part of the tribe. So it's just, it's such a violent and abusive relationship of this game that no one wants to play. I mean, like it is fun. Like there's value to it. there's good information. Like there's, I don't want to say there's not virtues to it, but the way it's structured now, it's just like a, a loss for society overall.

35:14Bryan Johnson:Yeah, dude. Well, there's just things that you would miss, bro. Sitting there at home, wondering if a chick thought about you or not, bro. And here's the thing. Now you can just find out immediately. She's liking some of the dude. You see that she's already married or whatever, but back in the day you couldn't do that. So you just had to, and you thought that she did. So you were like hopeful and excited and you would just you would take care of yourself till the next time you saw her but now you'll just go see something like oh she's out with rick or whatever so i'm now i'm depressed now i'm at home now i'm not even going to get out of bed you know i think um just those things and then the also like the negative effects of just like if you communicate with all types of people all day then when you finally see like your spouse or your partner at the end of the day you're kind of burnt out sometimes you know you're burnt out because you've had all this odd connection that's not real connection.

36:07Bryan Johnson:Yeah. But it's some artificial connection. It's like if you've been eating Fritos all day. That's right, 100%. And then you get to dinner, you're like, oh. Yeah, yeah, 100%. This looks so good, but I can't even have any right now. I'm already full of shit.

36:23Theo Von:So with this project, we have been – With what project? My project Don't Die. Oh, your project Don't Die. Yeah, so basically the idea is if we are the first generation who won't die, then the goal is like identify things that make you die and then don't do those things right try to eliminate them so what you're talking about at the end of the day when you're like i don't know what it is but i just feel like shit right then it's so it's basically it's the stacking of all these things that make you die for example did you know this that when you walk into a fast food place like mcdonald's you have the smell that you you right when you walk in that is like secondhand smoke.

37:01Theo Von:It's the aerosolized oils. Yeah. So like that's Ronald McDonald's cologne. It is. It's cologne. That's creepy. You know what? That's creepy as fuck. Wow.

37:12Bryan Johnson:Because he's got that play place in the back. Oh my God.

37:15Theo Von:That is dystopic. Holy shit. I didn't think about that. It is, huh? So like that is one example. So we track 250 things in our society that make me die. And so when you go about your day. With this project, don't die.

37:30Bryan Johnson:Exactly. So So you guys track 250 things that make you die.

37:33Theo Von:Yeah. So basically when I started doing this, we said, okay, like, are we the first generation who won't die? Okay. Let's take that as a premise. So then I hired a team of doctors and we got to work. And so we, we went through all the scientific evidence. We said like, what does the scientific evidence say about longevity and things that make you die? And then I measured every organ of my body that I could, like we would go through and say, what is the age? So I, I was 42 years old when we started. So I said, like, what is the biological age of my heart? Because your biological age can be different than your chronological age.

38:04Theo Von:So, for example, like my ear, my left ear is age 64. So I shot a lot of guns as a kid, listened to loud music. So it's impaired. So we measured all of my organs and said, like, here's my baseline. And then we got to work, like doing therapies and measurement. And so I became the most measured person in human history. There's more data on my body than any human that's ever lived. Wow. And so in doing that, we just found out like what kills the body? You know, like do microplastics harm the body? If so, how? You know, does going into fast food, like aerosolized, does that? Like social media. And so when you, it really resonates when you say you go home, like you don't know why you feel like shit.

38:46Theo Von:But after doing this for years, I know why. It's like the stacking of all these things that society has done to make a profit. And then it's just like, you're the collateral damage. But like we've built a society of die and that's what sucks about it. So I never want to approach it to say like, hey, you individual, like you get off your phone or you stop doing these things. It's like the system's broken. Right. And that's what's cool about this moment is if we do see this moment is like, this is like 1870, bacteria is present. Do we believe this crazy idea or not? Like this could be like, it would change everything.

39:20Theo Von:So like we transform ourselves as a society.

39:23Bryan Johnson:I love that idea because yeah, when you put it like that, it gives you more of a hope. It gives it more of like a, um, this, uh, universal type of thing that's going on. And I feel that I feel like there's a lot of people questioning everything right now. Like, is this good for me? Why did I believe all these companies? Why did I believe that the government and the FDA and the EPA that they were looking out for me? They it's obvious now from so many trials and, um, and corporate, uh, interests that they weren't, you know, there's all these, there's, there's all these things that, that none of that was happening.

39:53Bryan Johnson:And so now it's back on us. And what do we really want? Right. Cause we'd put the faith. I think a lot of people would put the faith in the hands of their government and not entirely, but you would just assume that, yeah, the food they're letting come into us, into our lives, where we pay taxes to make sure there's an agency that overlooks this, that it's going to be okay for us. And then I think it's at the point now where people, that, that idea is totally spoiled. So where do we go from here? Are those powers going to try to like imprison us into this space, which also feels like it's going to, they're trying to, um, because you have like companies like bear and Monsanto, they're lobbying, you know, like trying to keep all these things, uh, in our food and, and make sure that people can't sue if they do get sick, or is it going to be that there's some sort of a, of a revolution?

40:40Bryan Johnson:Um, so I saw you just, you just asked Trevor to pour, um, your coffee into, and that was out of a paper cup into to a, yeah,

40:51Theo Von:stainless steel.

40:52Bryan Johnson:Yeah. Okay. What is the cause of that? Because that's one thing a lot of people were thinking of.

40:56Theo Von:So there's a lot of, there's been a lot of discussion around microplastics. Yeah. You know, like they're everywhere. They're our clothes, they're our food. So we did this project where we said, okay, can we measure microplastics in my body? And so we did a few things. One is we measured microplastics in my blood and we measured microplastics in my semen. Okay. And so two distinct biological systems. And we wanted to look at semen because fertility is really important. And we wanted to – because there was a few studies that showed that 100 % of tested males – Of tested men? Men have microplastics in their balls and their semen.

41:38Theo Von:And so we wanted to basically pose this question, could we do anything in life that would lower my microplastic burden in my body, in my blood, and on my semen? And so we did a few things. One is cups they use for hot coffee, they leach microplastics. The heat causes the leaching of microplastics. So when you're drinking that coffee, you're consuming microplastics. And so we did that plus a whole bunch of other things to reduce it. And we dropped my microplastic burden by 87 % in both blood and semen. And so that was a big win for us because no one in the world had ever demonstrated that, that you can look at both those things and look at the remediations.

42:16Theo Von:And the second thing we saw is we think that part of the reduction was from the things we did like removing plastic cups, plastic cutting boards, like trying to remove plastic from the house. Then also dry sauna. We think dry sauna was potentially, we're not sure, potentially the cause of reducing microplastics in the body overall. so it's kind of the example of where if you hear a headline of like toxin, like microplastic is scary we try to lay out a clear path of like you can do these things to reduce your exposure and to bring your levels down. So we do that systematically over like a whole bunch of things but yeah that's why I basically try to avoid any material that would be warmed and leach microplastics whereas stainless steel you don't have that leaching problem

42:59Bryan Johnson:Got it. And what about using just our microwaves and stuff like that Are there microplastics in there? I hear recently that there's microplastics in our air fryers and stuff like that. Is that stuff true or is that just a sales pitch for them to get you to get a new air fryer? Yeah.

43:14Theo Von:I mean, if your air fryer, I was looking at air fryer recently. I think a lot of them are made with plastic. And so you're heating these materials to certain degrees where you're inevitably going to have off-gassing of microplastics. I know this is the thing. Because once you realize that plastic is a target, you realize, you come to learn, it's in everything. Everywhere you look. So even now, after I've tried to purge my life from plastic, I will still, here's an example. I was doing sauna to try to rid my body of toxins, including microplastics. I mistakenly used a towel that was 10 % polyester and 90 % cotton.

43:54Theo Von:So there I am trying to rid myself of toxins and I'm using it on my body, right? With the polyester, right? I'm like wiping my body with toxins. So like, you know, like that was an idiotic mistake. But like an example, like we're always, we're just finding this forever. So we got rid of all the, I thought that was a cotton towel, but it wasn't. But we got rid of that, but it's just forever. It's amazing how omnipresent they are.

44:18Bryan Johnson:Yeah, I've actually been working with this company, American Giant, that they make, they've tried to use just American cotton and make their products just in America. I mean, just a top to bottom America only company that makes textiles or clothing because they don't really even have those anymore. I remember their journey was, how do we even get a shirt made here? And it was seemingly impossible just because we don't have the looms or so many things we don't have. But we've been working on a cotton, like a cotton only underwear that would be just so it's only cotton, right? So you're not dealing with anything else.

44:53Bryan Johnson:That's awesome. Um, what fabrics have you found that are okay to kind of keep on your body, uh, that do not have microplastics in them and which ones are the ones that people need to be weary of?

45:02Theo Von:Yeah, there's a list. So, I mean, one is on the cotton stuff is we were, we've, everything I put into my body, we test like all the food I eat. Uh, so we were testing, um, clothing and actually we tested a diaper, uh, a diaper where the portion of the diaper, the diaper that absorbs the urine for the baby, uh, we tested that and it was like eight times as high in glyphosate. So cotton unexpectedly. That's what's in the pesticides. Exactly. So cotton is better than like a polyester, but cotton is also not like, it's not just pure, right? So there could be residual pesticides in your cotton. Like how fast does it come out?

45:43Theo Von:We don't know. But this is like, this is like dangerous because I think a lot of people listening are kind of like, oh my God, I give up. Like, what do I do? Right. But I want to give you hope Like you just slowly peel back one layer after another, after another, like chip away. It's okay. We'll get on top of this. But just like, you just know that there's always these layers. So yeah, so we tested that. So that's in the diaper. Now there's no evidence that glyphosate can go from a diaper into the skin. No one's tested it. So maybe it is. But if it is, that's terrible. We're bathing our children.

46:17Theo Von:You know, we're bathing their private parts in pesticides in these diapers. And so this is the kind of thing where I'm saying, once you start chasing these paths, you just find out society has built itself for profit. They've not built itself for life. And that's what you see everywhere. And so back to this conversation, the point you made before, of this idea of care. Think of, okay, here's a question for you. Who in your life unquestionably acts in your best interest? like without a doubt they act in your best interest probably my brother like you can probably count on one hand right everyone else like whether it's like a social group or whether it's companies or the government or whatever everybody else shows up with a complicated set of objectives part of it may be like it's not good but a whole bunch of other the rapper behind it may be like they want something from you and so there's this idea of care that I'm trying to pioneer or with the company I'm building around this is, can we legitimately, unquestionably, always act in our customer's best interest?

47:27Theo Von:Even if it means we lose money, we always show up for you. Because that's really like what I've been trying to do in this whole process, but it just shows that as a society, we don't have care as a principle, as our society. Like you're not expected to actually act in someone's best interest. You're expected to have a better exchange to make profit.

47:46Bryan Johnson:Well, sometimes I'll romanticize, well, it probably used to be that way. And I don't know if that's true or not, but the fact that we're at that place now, I think is important. We did this thing this year around the holidays where we've tried to find 10 American companies that were like American made products and and then show those off, like highlight those. It was me and Mike Rowe. And it was just so if you want to buy something that's American, you can get it. You know, this is something that when you buy it, you're supporting a fellow American. And so it's like, screw these big company. Like if I buy from you and you buy from me, then we keep each other alive.

48:24Bryan Johnson:It only, you know, so we're trying to start to create this space where you can do that, where it's like, if I want to buy something, I'd rather, instead of going to look at like these things that are on the same shelves in every single place, why don't I go find this unique thing that's only made by one of my fellow human beings, you know? That's a cool idea. It's one of the things that's kind of made me most excited recently, like in the world. And we're trying to work with like Shopify or something, you know, some company to come along and be like, well, these are the sites, you know, people are going to need these sites to build their products.

48:56Bryan Johnson:Because then it's like, like we even had a woman who sells like these really like great little characters and kind of ornaments and stuff. So we had some artists and creatives in there, but it was great. And a lot of them had great profits. It was like, oh, people want this, right? people want to go down the road where there is like some accountability for themselves and they want to be in a way where they can uh where they the purchase that where they're putting their money it feels like i'm giving this to someone else who i know probably needs it just as much as i do you know they're just a regular person they're not a big entity you know so i think anyway i'm saying i think there's somewhat of a people do care or we to get people to care where they're spending.

49:41Bryan Johnson:Yeah. You know, um, that's kind of stuff is very important. What, what are your thoughts on RFK juniors, his eat real food initiative? Have you seen that?

49:48Theo Von:Yeah, I have. Yeah. Tyson being the spokesperson. What's that? Yeah. Mike Tyson was the, was the spokesperson. He was, he was in the Superbowl ad.

49:55Bryan Johnson:Oh, I didn't even see that. Yeah. Yeah. Because he came on here and he talked about it. He just said, eat real food, you know? Yeah. Yeah.

50:01Theo Von:Yeah. I think it's great. I mean, I think, uh, so RFK is a friend. Um, yeah, same. Yeah. He's like, he's getting after it you know like people like in any situation um people are gonna have various opinions fine but like he's really trying his best so i respect that he's pulling up and he's made some great uh he has some great wins getting rid of uh food dyes and so yeah i mean i'm i'm grateful for him doing it and it was cool you know like mike tyson is probably the person that has been in my consciousness more than any public figure when i was when i was seven years old he had peaked i think he was 21 he just won the belt and he was on the cover of sports illustrated like every week again that's right i would cut those out and i had it on my wall but my tyson was my idol like and the i actually this is like a terrible story um i loved him so much and i saved up all i worked all summer long mowing lawns and like doing all this whole of shit.

50:57Theo Von:I saved up money and I bought the pay-per-view. It was like$44.95. I called my friends over. I'm going to treat them to this amazing experience. And he was fighting Buster Douglas, his first big loss. And oh my God, that was, that was like soul wrenching. Because I wanted to see Tyson, like, you know, knock out of the park. I'd never seen him fight live and you couldn't just like pull him up on clips on YouTube. It was like, it's harder to see, but anyway, somebody like like tangent there, but it was cool to see Tyson go from that to now he's like in my world talking about real food and how it's important.

51:34Theo Von:So I think he's got, he's had a cool life arc.

51:36Bryan Johnson:He has had a great life arc. I mean, he's pretty fascinating. We're supposed to do a podcast with him coming up soon, actually, in LA, actually. So if I do do that, man, I'll have to make sure that you get to come over there.

51:46Theo Von:Would love to. I would love to meet him.

51:48Bryan Johnson:That'd be super, dude. Yeah. Oh yeah. He was like, you know, boxers were such, like, I don't know if, like, they were such gods.

51:59Theo Von:They held that status, right? They did. In the 80s, they were it. Like, you had, like, basketball, you had the Bulls, you've got the Bears, you know, Bo Jackson, like, they were it.

52:12Bryan Johnson:Yeah, 100%. What do you think the government's role should be in our health and diet?

52:19Theo Von:I guess, like, two things. One is there are a lot of things I want to do that I can't do because the government prevents me from doing it. So I can go out and smoke. I can eat fast food. I can eat all the junk food out there. But I can't try a new longevity drug. Companies are forbidden from allowing me to do that. So like in many ways, I dislike, they give me the freedom to kill myself, but I can't have the, I don't have the right to experiment on myself. And I wish I had more experimental power that I could do that.

52:55Bryan Johnson:Have there been certain drugs and stuff that you wanted to go try? A lot of them. Really? Yeah, yeah. Which one that really kind of, you know, tickles your Benjamin butt?

53:03Theo Von:Yeah, that's good. I mean, there's a whole bunch of, there's like probably a dozen. and like the thing I want to do is I want to accept the responsibility of determining if it's safe or not now if I mess up it's on me yeah like I'll take that responsibility but I do well I don't want them to say like only after because in it it creates this gigantic no it makes sense companies go through like a structured process and they say it's gone through this process we give it a stamp of approval it's like it's a good idea like on large-scale vaccines like you don't want to ship a shitty vaccine to society.

53:40Theo Von:Totally get it. Also, right, on like a N equals one, like me scale, I want to do things without their limiting my ability to do it. So it's a really tricky balance because there needs to be some structure in place where as a member of the society, I can say I trust some entity to ensure what I'm doing is safe because we're saying the company itself can't be trusted, right? There needs to be some middleman Yeah, that's the idea. But now the middleman feels like can't be trusted. Exactly. So if we just take this in a wholesale, what we're going back to is care, right? Do I trust that whoever is doing something is legitimately looking after my best interest or not?

54:23Theo Von:This is why I'm saying when you go back to who legitimately is looking after your best interest, it's not like one hand, it's your brother. And so what if we established as a society the principle of care? And now that's hard because you have to do things that are not in your best financial interest. You've got to do things like don't look good. So like it really puts a different mentality, but also man, would it be kick-ass to live in that society? Yeah. Where like, you know, if you're going to tell me to take a drug, like you're not hiding shit. Like you're not like, you know, so that'd be cool.

54:50Theo Von:So,

54:50Bryan Johnson:Oh yeah. It'd be so nice. Cause imagine also the stress that it adds to all of us. Yeah. You know, it's so stressful now. It's like you go eat a hot cake or whatever. And you're like, is this thing going to kill me? Not today. Yeah. But is there something in here that they're strategizing to kill me 30 years from now, you know, to create some new disease in me that then I'll need some new type of medicine. You know, it just kind of, yeah, it's a lot of turmoil. Um, what is your, um, kind of daily dietary strategy? Where do you stand with your diet? Yeah.

55:21Theo Von:And then we'll talk about like supplements that you like. Cool. Yeah. The principle here is that I am a collection of around 70 trillion cells. Like Brian Johnson is 70 trillion cells. Half, like over half of those cells are alien cells. They're not even me, there's bacteria. So I'm like around 30, 35 trillion cells. Is that true? Yeah. Yeah. You, you are a collection of like 70 trillion cells. That makes the Yvonne. Okay. And half of those cells are not, they're not you. They're not natural born citizens. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. They're immigrants. Yeah. So like they're bacteria and others that are hanging out in your ecosystem.

55:54Theo Von:And so the question is like, you know, when it comes to food, food is just a collection of molecules. So you're taking one set of molecules and you put them in your molecules and you say like, what happens? And so we know, for example, when you take fast food, those molecules put in your body, it does bad stuff. And so with diet, we basically just say, if you have to create a list of the very best molecules in existence that help the body thrive, what are those molecules? So every calorie has a five-horse life. And so that's the first principle. And then two is I don't subscribe to any camp. Like I'm not carnivore.

56:32Theo Von:I'm not vegan. I'm not vegetarian. I'm not paleo. I'm not keto. I don't care. I just want to look at the evidence and say, you take a given thing, you put it in the body, what happens? And so I, my diet primarily consists of a whole bunch of vegetables. I do berries, nuts, seeds, extra virgin olive oil. That's primarily what I eat. And so I'm just, I'm extremely meticulous because I'm trying to become the most don't die person in the world. So, but you know, if people enjoy eating meat, eat meat, you know, like do your thing. If you enjoy eggs, do eggs, just measure your body, like measure your body and see if you're happy or not.

57:04Theo Von:If the body is, so there's what your mind can say, like, oh, I love blank, but measuring your body is a different thing. Your body is going to tell, is going to speak the truth, not your mind. So basically like you want to measure out, let your body report out how's inflammation, how's cholesterol, like how's all the different markers. So.

57:21Bryan Johnson:and when it comes to meat and things like that are there just you don't like them or you feel like they don't work for your body was there something that you found that you're like this isn't the best for me

57:30Theo Von:so it's actually I mean one is I think there's two points one is I think you can make an evidence-based argument that a diet that primarily consists of vegetables, berries, nuts, seeds, extra virgin olive oil legumes is one of the best paths to longevity Not the only, but like a good one. And then on the red meat, there's not a ton of evidence that a lot of longevity evidence that says this thing is a longevity producer. But I pull myself out of the argument because I don't care about red meat. I don't care about the argument. I don't care about the disagreement. If somebody wants to eat red meat, I support you in eating red meat.

58:14Theo Von:Like I'm not going to go after red meat. Like I'm not that person. So just like do your - Yeah, I'll pat you on the back while you have a little, you know. Yeah, yeah. While you have some burn-ins or whatever. Yeah, man, do it. Like do your thing and just measure your body. So I tried to do that and I tried to then share my body biomarkers and say, here's what my body looks like. Here's the evidence. If you want to try it out, here you go. But like a lot of, so like a couple things. One is I love extra virgin olive oil. I think it's one of the best foods you can put into your body. Is that a seed oil or not?

58:44Bryan Johnson:No. Okay.

58:45Theo Von:Yeah, there's like this whole seed oils are bad for you. I don't buy it. You don't? No, I think it's fried. It's high temp seed oils. But, you know, like cold pressed seed oils, you know, like they're fine. So like that whole thing, I think, got away.

59:01Bryan Johnson:Oh, so you think the seed oil thing is kind of out there?

59:03Theo Von:Yeah, yeah. You don't want to heat them. That's when they become dangerous. But cold pressed seed oils, the evidence says they're fine. But again, like if somebody wants to do it, great. Like, you know, abstain or take it. Just measure yourself and try to find the markers. Right. Check in with yourself. have some sort of like, okay, how do I really feel after having this? Yeah. And how does your body report out? Not your mind, not your opinion, not what social media says. Ask your body to report out with biomarkers. Get a blood draw, look at your markers and say, is the body happy or sad? Right.

59:35Theo Von:Not each time you eat, but you're saying over time. Over time. Yeah. Because those like your body reflects your diets over a period of time.

59:43Bryan Johnson:Yeah.

59:43Theo Von:Yeah. But like the easy ones, like just avoid, there we go.

59:48Bryan Johnson:Yeah, this was just saying cooking oils. Not all cooking oils are created equal. This chart breaks down the linoleic acid content in different oils, helping you make informed choices for heart health and inflammation control. High linoleic oils like soybeans, sunflower, and corn oil can contribute to inflammation, while healthier options like coconut, olive, and grass-fed butter offer beneficial fats. But you don't buy into this.

1:00:11Theo Von:I mean, so this is cooking.

1:00:13Bryan Johnson:This is actually using it for cooking. Yeah, what does well at higher heats? So this is kind of what you're saying, actually, that some of these may provide less health benefit for you.

1:00:24Theo Von:But on this, though, like this graph, I want to see the toxic compounds that are formed. Otherwise, I don't know how to read this graph. Right.

1:00:35Bryan Johnson:Right, and they'll show stuff like this. I mean, even in Trap Me, they use the red, yellow, green. Yeah, exactly. There's a lot of small strategies that can kind of like just confuse you.

1:00:43Theo Von:I want to see what temperature, what are the toxic compounds I'm evaluating, when do they form, et cetera. So that would be a much more quantified approach where I'd say, all right, now I feel like I have a good basis for decision-making versus like, this is easy to read online. You see red, green, yellow. It's like, okay, good, bad. Because anything more than good, bad, it kind of gets overwhelming for people. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, you say extra virgin olive oil. That's sort of your go-to. Yeah, based upon the evidence my team and I have reviewed, This is what I would suggest if people want quick takeaways.

1:01:16Theo Von:One is I consume more extra virgin olive oil than any food in my diet. It's 15 % of my daily caloric intake. But we source it ourselves. We test it in the lab ourselves. It's high polyphenol. It's the right acids, right constitution. So it's a specific kind of olive oil. Because most olive oil is bullshit. Most of it does nothing. So whatever you buy, make sure it has a third-party lab test result. Now let's...

1:01:46Bryan Johnson:That's a lot. But is there a brand that you tell us? I mean, I know, or do you have this yourself that we could buy? Do you have your own? I do it myself.

1:01:53Theo Von:Because like going back to that discussion of care and trust, after playing this game for five years, I don't trust anybody. Yeah. No one. Like I don't care what they say in marketing. I don't care. I just don't trust anyone. That's how I am. So like, yeah, I want to source it from the farm myself. I want to test it in the third party lab. So I just basically, I did this my whole self. And then my friends were like, I want this too. And I'm like, sure. Yeah, I was about to ask you for something.

1:02:16Bryan Johnson:But this is one you guys have. It's called snake oil?

1:02:18Theo Von:Yeah, it's kind of a troll. Yeah. But yeah, it's basically we source from both hemispheres, southern hemisphere, northern hemisphere. We always have a fresh batch. We do third-party testing. It's high polyphenols. So olive oil. And also, I do a tablespoon with every meal because when you eat food, it causes damage to your body. A lot of people don't know that. They think food is a good thing, which it is. But also, there's damage that's associated. So olive oil lessens that damage, lessens some of the oxidative damage. So that's olive oil is one. Two is I eat a lot of legumes like lentils, edamames, beans, a lot of vegetables, but I steam them.

1:02:56Theo Von:So when you char something, whether it be charring vegetables or meat or something, it builds something called AGEs. AGEs? Yeah, advanced glycated end products, which is basically just thinking about like junk that builds up in your body. you don't want it. So I steam vegetables to lower the AGEs. And then I eat a lot of nuts, macadamia nuts, almonds, walnuts.

1:03:25Bryan Johnson:I like walnuts.

1:03:27Theo Von:Yeah. Those are good ones. I don't eat cashews or peanuts. Those are like the less valuable ones. Those are drunkard's nuts. They are, they? Like, oh, you're drunk here.

1:03:38Bryan Johnson:Yeah. Then I do a lot of... And cashew just looks like it's fucking. Looks like it doesn't even know what it's doing. If you look at a cashew, bring up a cashew. It looks kind of bisexual a little, which is fine. But I'm just saying, it looks like it'll sleep over at anybody's house.

1:03:55Theo Von:To me. Yeah, I think it's a good interpretation. I've never heard someone riff on a cashew's appearance, but you know what? I think you're right.

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1:07:49Theo Von:Yeah, I had a couple thoughts. You know, like, Theo, I wish I could say, I wish I could talk about shit like you do. Like, I have several thoughts I just had. I'd like to express them, but I don't. you know like I still play within a certain box of like what I can and cannot say but

1:08:03Bryan Johnson:do you think it's some of that's for like business purposes or you just think it's just like a social way that you learned I mean it's like

1:08:11Theo Von:as weird as I am and as much elbow room as I've created in doing crazy shit there's still some things that I would say that would alienate certain people and so I do have some parameters but if I wasn't doing this honestly I do stand-up comedy really oh yeah oh yeah it'd be like bro that's cool oh man it would it would be it would be so much fun because you basically you're trying to put your finger on the thing yeah and that's what I try to do my life but you're like and so and when people their response of course is like how good you are putting your finger on the thing they already know right but you're willing to say it and you can string it together so yeah but you're kind of doing that

1:08:53Bryan Johnson:you're kind of like a um I mean it's just not stand-up comedy but you're just doing it for our health, you know? And I'm, I would way rather you're this guy out there who's like, just, who's basically riding around being his own voodoo doll and shit and have you out there like trying jokes, which you may have been very successful at as well. Um, but I'm glad you're doing what you are. Maybe, you know, maybe it'll be a side thing or next life, but also some people might not even take you as seriously. You know, one night I watched John Mayer, he got up and did standup comedy and he's like, man, I love standup comedy.

1:09:25Bryan Johnson:I would have loved to have been a standup comedian he goes but now i'm so known for being what i am that i can't even be this yeah because uh it just people wouldn't accept it or wouldn't give you the same walkway into their lives as as they would knowing i'm already john mayer yeah yeah yeah you know like i would love to take that

1:09:45Theo Von:on that challenge and man i would love you could have so many great jokes i want to make fun of myself. I like, I'm so weird.

1:09:53Bryan Johnson:Right. I, I, of course you are, dude. You probably, you probably might not even have any blood in your body, dude. You could go to a blood draw and they're just keep drawing and drawing that is sitting there. Nurses are coming out like, we don't know. You know, I mean, Oh dude, I bet if you, have you ever been on kill Tony? Have you been on that show? Oh bro. If you, I wonder if we, maybe next time I go in there, you and me could go. He's this have you ever seen it no it's this it's like the tonight show now but they do it out down in austin and it's uh and dude i bet people would write some jokes bro it'd be so great let's do it that'd be so much fun i would love to this is it it's so much fun bro every week they have it

1:10:34Theo Von:you would be the best on there dude i went to a couple roast me um shows and it was pretty good yeah yeah oh i really enjoy people making fun of me it's fun my buddy adam hunter does i used to do

1:10:48Bryan Johnson:a lot of those i know he's one of the best at it um but tony hinchcliffe is really great at it too and that's his show kill tony um okay were there other things you were going to tell us about some so some other health stuff you said that your own and you also have a and i'm not pushing your products here but i was given a gift of one of your products and i haven't taken it before and it's a blueprint protein powder. Yeah. Is it a protein powder? Is it a daily powder? What is it? Yeah. Protein. Okay. It's a protein powder. And a lot of times you hear that supplements and stuff like that. A lot of that stuff just comes out in your urine.

1:11:21Bryan Johnson:Like what makes this thing any different or is it any different?

1:11:25Theo Von:Yeah. So the, the problem I was trying to solve is I need to eat every day somehow. Yeah. And I need a certain amount of protein, a certain amount of fat. And so when I go out in the world, I'm like, where am I going to buy it? I, who do I trust? No one. Okay, so I got to manufacture this. So basically, like we put together, I eat everything my company makes because I trust it. I worked as a, in high school, I worked at a restaurant. I was, and I saw the back kitchen operations and I was like, damn, I'm never eating at this restaurant ever again, right? Once you see it, it's horrifying.

1:12:00Bryan Johnson:Yeah, well, it's crazy when you think you're at a restaurant that you think that the people in the back are doing their best. because a lot of times you're like, you'll go eat and then I'll go work at a restaurant. So it's like, then I'm just the person in the back.

1:12:13Theo Von:Yeah. And like the, the whole idea of like, so there's like competent things going on behind the scenes that like you can trust, like, no, no, like some breaks it. So yeah, it's like blueprint. I see exactly what happens. That's what I want to eat. So yeah, protein, I basically need like 130 grams a day. And so I have to get it from somewhere. So yeah, we, same thing. If we source it, we third party test it. Um, you know, we look at all the, the nutrients and the chemicals and the toxins. So yeah, so the protein is one of the things we've built.

1:12:41Bryan Johnson:And so, um, and what kind of protein powder do you recommend? I take a plant protein right now. That's kind of what I feel like works best with my system. Yeah. But, um, what is there a type of, cause you hear different ones and new ones pop out and then there's like the one you're supposed to take at night. Like, what has your experience been like with protein powder?

1:12:59Theo Von:We've been using pea and hemp. We started using pumpkin. Oh, pumpkin got something with pump. Yeah, yeah.

1:13:07Bryan Johnson:It should be obvious pumpkin has muscles, dude.

1:13:10Theo Von:Exactly. You look at a fucking pumpkin. You look at a fucking flexing in the field, right? You see it up there. Who's this defined? Yes, we did that. Pea doesn't mix very well, though. Yeah, that's why. So that's why we do the hemp combo.

1:13:24Bryan Johnson:Okay. And it helps it? It makes it fluffy and nice. Because pea, sometimes I'll get it in a smoothie or something, and you can't even drink it because it's not the solution isn't liquid enough.

1:13:33Theo Von:Yeah, so we do that. But people, there's like this online thing where people say that plant-based proteins are higher in heavy metals, right? Because you can test it. The issue with that is that the whole heavy metal discussion is so fucked up because we test all my foods. You can go to the store and get a carrot and test that for heavy metals. It's high in heavy metals. And so the only reason why it's been sensational around plant-based proteins with toxins is because it's packaged food, you can easily measure, but it's harder to measure fresh food. People don't do the work. So like we've learned toxins are everywhere in all foods.

1:14:08Theo Von:And so for example, I'll give you one where I was eating these lentils and the test came back high. And so we're like, why are lentils high in heavy metals? Like what's going on there? So we got ahold of the company and we're like, what's your manufacturing process? They said, actually, we use human sludge as our fertilization. So they're taking - like duty or whatever. Yeah. They're taking, they're taking human shit. Cause it's like a, who's selling it. Yeah. So they're using human shit to fertilize and human shit has heavy metals in it. So then recycles back into the, to the food. And so we've, this, this is why I make this shit because I shouldn't say stuff.

1:14:44Theo Von:So we, we want to, we want to source our own food. We want to test it. I want to know what I'm putting in my body. And so, uh, we just, I've learned way too much. I'm like, I'm so jaded now. So the lentils, they were using human shit on their crops. Yeah.

1:14:57Bryan Johnson:And it was getting into the lentils somewhat.

1:14:59Theo Von:That's why. Because otherwise, if you think about it, you're like, what foods naturally have high levels of blank, right? Or like cocoa has high levels of heavy metals. Like it has a lot of high levels of cadmium naturally. But then people test that, they're like, here are the brand rankings, but then glyphosate can also be present. And so we found that the brand had the lowest levels of cadmium, had the highest levels of glyphosate by like 10X. They had an oat filler. So it was in the oats. And so this is the thing, is like you, once you actually take a topic and you actually slice it up to capture the nuance, it's just the conversation online is almost never right.

1:15:37Theo Von:Like when the things that drain, that gain trendy popularity, it's almost always wrong.

1:15:42Bryan Johnson:And when you said that all, some of it almost is negligible then, because at a certain point, just overall, we are in a very tough spot with, um, with what is in our foods, no matter what a hundred percent.

1:15:52Theo Von:Like this, I'm saying, like it is, I don't, people are going to feel stressed about this conversation. So I want to like make sure we close. I want to agree. I want to, I want to give like a few tips where people can regain control of their life. Okay. Cause I don't want to terrify. I know it's terrifying.

1:16:06Bryan Johnson:Well, one of the things that I even, I think you've already done is that's why you're saying like, okay, you may have this diet. Yeah. If you have an olive oil that you take when you're eating, that it will lessen the effects of your diet on your system at the time. So, and those are the types of things that are kind of important. It's like, okay, well, I know that even if some stuff I know is going to be not great for me, how do I at least just mitigate what's going on while our science hopefully gets uncompromised, while our food system hopefully gets uncompromised and we're able to get back into a better place.

1:16:39Bryan Johnson:But you were saying there are some things you want them to take away. Yeah. Okay, cool.

1:16:43Theo Von:So here's like, in short, this list of things will hopefully help people feel empowered and not anxious. So yes, there's like all kinds of shit to be aware of. But if you focus on these things, so one is I've learned out of all the things I've measured out of, I literally have like billions of data points in my body over the past five years. If you distill that and say how many are useful signal, probably a few hundred million, but it's the largest data set in human history. The thing I care about the most is what is my heart rate before bed? it is like the most useful biomarker and it's so easy because it's free so if you have a wearable you can just pull up your phone see what your mark so you go you lay down your bed take a few deep breaths and you calm yourself down and then you see a number let's say it's like 55 beats a minute or 60 your goal in life now is to lower your heart rate so you say you start off at 60 in a month from now be at 55 and so the way you do that one is you have your final meal of the day four hours before bed.

1:17:46Theo Von:Yeah, I know, I know, I hear you. And no snacks? No snacks, no food. So if your bedtime's at 10, at 6 p.m., you're done. There we go, that's a great chart. Got it. So these are the things, so when you increase your heart rate before bed, it wrecks your sleep. Yes. When you don't sleep well, your willpower falls off a cliff. So the next morning, when you're trying to decide do you eat the croissant or the donut for breakfast or not, if you haven't slept well, you're like 90 % more likely to eat the donut or the croissant. If you slept well, you have a little juice in the system. You're like, you know what?

1:18:21Theo Von:No, it's not good for me. And I'm going to exercise, which then also increases your willpower. So you get in this really positive loop. So it all starts with sleep and sleep is determined by your heart rate. So for example, like, so four hours before bed, that is going to lower. So when you have that distance, it allows your body to digest the food. it allows your body to say I'm going to get ready for bed so it lowers your body temperature lowers cortisol increases melatonin so your body's in a much better state to go to sleep and stay in deep sleep the second thing is your phone needs to be off an hour before bed you can't be in bed scrolling working texting you need the separation because your body the phone in hand is going to increase your cortisol increase your sympathetic activation you'll be more anxious and so you need an hour of separation instead of the phone, go for a walk, talk to a friend, hang out, like breath work, meditation, read a book, like anything but be on your phone that will lower your heart rate.

1:19:20Theo Von:And there's other small things. Like I do this nighttime discussion where I go to bed at 8.30 at 7.30 PM evening, or sleep Brian comes on duty. And sleep Brian is a version of me that defends my sleep. And so all the Brian's line up. So ambitious Brian lines up. He's always the first one. He wants to work. And he's like, I got a fucking banger idea, right? A brand new thing we're going to do. And Sleep Brian says, we see you, Ambitious Brian. Like, you're doing a good job in life. Keep at it, man. Also, we're getting ready for bed. So we're going to write down your idea. And then tomorrow, we'll come back to it.

1:19:56Theo Von:And Ambitious Brian's like, are you sure? And Sleep Brian's like, yeah, yeah, we got you. So then he goes away. Then Anxious Brian shows up. And he's like, yo, today when you were with Theo, you said that thing and you were a jackass to him, right? It's like, thank you, Anxious Brian. great self-awareness. Appreciate you. We're going to write that down. We're going to hit Theo up tomorrow. Make sure we're all good. And then like all the Brian's line up. And so, you know, this is...

1:20:18Bryan Johnson:And even Brian ever show up. He's like, hey, let's stay up. All the time. Yeah.

1:20:23Theo Von:Yeah. Dude, this Brian is freaking, leave me alone, Brian. Yeah. So you'll see this, like whether you do this or something else, the way this manifests is if you don't do this, you put your head on the pillow and then you loop, right? Like you have these thoughts They just like go, go and go. And they're the same thoughts. And then you finally fall asleep. You wake up three hours later. There they are again, looping. And so they cause your heart rate to go up, which causes your sleep to go down, which crashes your willpower, which crashes everything else. So by doing this like internal harvesting, like you're trying to clean up, you're lowering your heart rate.

1:21:01Theo Von:You're settling yourself down. You're getting to some point of reconciliation. So now you've not eaten for four hours. You've got off your phone and you've got some kind of internal balance, now you're ready to think, I can put my head on the pillow and have a decent shot at a banger night's sleep. And so basically I built my entire life around sleep. Now, if you focus on that, it's just like so much of life is just not doing bad shit. This is like what we talked about before of like whether you're happy or not in life is how much you're doing, which you actually don't want to do.

1:21:36Bryan Johnson:Yeah.

1:21:38Theo Von:And then like all the other stuff, like all these little things about this and that, like don't worry about it yet. Just get sleep in place. Get these basic habits in place. Your sleep is gonna make you feel great. And then once you get that in a steady place, you can start layering on good habits. But if you take on too many things, you'll feel overwhelmed.

1:21:55Bryan Johnson:Yeah.

1:21:56Theo Von:So like get that in place. That's like the winner. Dude, it's like,

1:22:00Bryan Johnson:there's nothing better than when you like, oh, I'm going to sleep. Man, it almost... How's your sleep? sleep and uh what'd you say how's your sleep my sleep's okay it's not that great a lot of times i stay up editing but yeah but i also have gotten trapped into a late pattern so it's like i could get up earlier it's just like i have to line it up earlier yeah i could get up earlier get get rid of like uh the working out the meditation um you know i'll do like some zoom like recovery meeting stuff and uh and then all that's out of my head yeah and now the rest of my day feels more it feels easier no matter what I'm doing, as opposed to these things being later in the day and that I still have to do them.

1:22:43Bryan Johnson:That's one of the biggest traps I set myself up for is procrastinating like the toughest things right out of the gate. And they even get easier over time. Um, yeah, that's right. But like today I got up, I saw it. I do sauna a lot. That is one thing that I like doing. Um, it just makes me feel activated. Um, and not everybody can have a sauna at home. You know, I don't have like a very fancy one. There's a lot of different affordable ones actually. But that's something that I noticed has helped me a lot. Are you icing your boys in the sauna? Am I icing my body? Your boys. My nuts? Yeah. Nuh-uh.

1:23:17Bryan Johnson:It's a good idea.

1:23:18Theo Von:You ice them in the sauna? Yeah. Whoa, whoa, what do you mean? Yeah, yeah. So we did an experiment. So when the testicles get warm, it has all these negative consequences. Oh, God. it destroys your fertility markers. And so, yep. So what you can do is on Amazon, you can buy like$8 ice packs. They're BPA free, non-toxic. Put them in the freezer and then just slide them underneath your cotton. So wear cotton underwear and cotton shorts. Put them in between the underwear and the shorts and just have them there for the entire session of the sauna session. But we did this. I did the most measured sauna experiment in history.

1:24:00Theo Von:We measured like 250 biomarkers and we did ice on my testicles and we took it off and it annihilated my fertility markers. Now, a lot of people will say like, I don't care about that because I'm not trying to get pregnant or whatever, but it has a whole bunch of negative feedback loop. Like it's a negative feedback loop. You don't want to annihilate them. You want good fertility markers, even if you're trying to have a baby.

1:24:19Bryan Johnson:Yeah, you want your brain to feel like you're just alive. Ready to roll. Yeah, if your brain starts feeling like, oh, these nuts are useless or whatever, your brain's like, then what am I sticking around for? Yeah, yeah, what's my job? Exactly. Dang, dude. Now, what if you just pour a little bit of cold water on your nuts every now and then? Is that, you think that'd be okay?

1:24:34Theo Von:I mean, you could, but you got to keep the water cold. It's got to make sure you keep the temperature. Like, as long as you get the temperature low, like, whatever you do. And then after you do it, you know, just clean it with, like, hydrogen peroxide or something, you know? So, and then put it back in the freezer. But, yeah, I know it's, like, it's uncomfortable to do it socially. Like, you go out to, like, a public place, and it's, like, who's the weird person putting, you know, the ice pack on their balls, you know? but like it legit is it's good science and uh it's a good practice so keeping them cool even

1:25:05Bryan Johnson:if you had to go to the water to go to the ice machine get you a little sack ice and just set

1:25:09Theo Von:them on there while you're in there work anything you can do to keep your your ice yeah testicles

1:25:13Bryan Johnson:cold wow is the sauna is there a certain type of sauna that you really recommend or something that works differently um there's ones now like i actually was thinking about getting like a infrared panel put into my sauna do you find that there's any help with that sort of thing I know that's kind of two different questions. Yeah.

1:25:28Theo Von:The best evidence is with a dry sauna. And so there's wet, dry, and infrared. And wet, the problem is it heats up your skin faster than your core temperature. You try to get your core temperature up. So a dry sauna, an infrared, rarely hits the temperature levels you want. So the best evidence is you want to be between 174 Fahrenheit to 212 Fahrenheit.

1:25:52Bryan Johnson:Oh my God, bro, that's warm. That's your window.

1:25:55Theo Von:and then you want to so what so what we're doing now is one of the primary benefits of the sauna is when you go in there your core body temperature when it gets to about 102 degrees Fahrenheit it triggers the release of heat shock proteins so these are like little machines protein machines that get spun up and they go around and fix shit they fix broken proteins like minions yeah like flooding your body doing good stuff but it only gets triggered when your core body temperature hits a certain level and so if you're not hot enough to sauna but they're very hard to measure so we're currently setting up a lab a wet lab in my house so we can measure this we're going to try to measure my heat shock protein release on various temperatures, various durations so what we've been looking, because I've been doing core temperature out of my ear lately but you can't the gold standard measurement is rectal but you've got to do that you've got to like be inside the ass for like 2-3 minutes with a long probe that's farm work so I'm struggling with that one I do a lot of stuff but man I was like guys can we find an alternative way of doing this so we're going to do blood we're going to measure heat shock protein release because that's like the goody stuff basically dry sauna somewhere between 174 and 212 Fahrenheit for 20 minutes is like a good starting point and then ice on

1:27:20Bryan Johnson:the boys while you're in there and you want to stay in that sauna for you said for 15 to 20 minutes above 170 degrees yeah that's like a good approximation that's where the evidence is it's like if you're in that range you're getting some

1:27:33Theo Von:benefit i'm trying to go for like max max benefit but like if you're in that temperature range for that duration of time you're getting a good benefit wow that's fascinating dude um yeah

1:27:44Bryan Johnson:because and my my step sister just got me a sauna hat to wear in the sauna too so that's good yeah The heat will dry out your scalp. Yeah, it just seems kind of nice, too. It's nice to have a little bit of a fashion accoutrement in there.

1:27:56Theo Von:It's made of hemp material.

1:27:59Bryan Johnson:Yeah, probably something like that. Yeah, one thing, we're trying to make an underwear that's just all cotton, right? And it's American cotton. One of the things I noticed, too, on underwear, the night band, sometimes the waistband, it's too tough, and it makes you go pee all night. Yeah, yeah. So it's like you've got to wake up an extra time, or sometimes two. Like if I wear some of these ones that are really constricting, I'm like, so, I don't know. I've just been trying to think about making a decent pair of britches, bro. Something to hide your cock in or whatever. While you're sleeping, bro.

1:28:27Theo Von:I hear you, man. This is a serious problem.

1:28:29Bryan Johnson:Yeah, dude. It's crazy. I saw that you went viral not long ago for posting. It was like nighttime erection data. Yeah. Take me down that wiener road for a second. Yeah, yeah. Ryan, what did you see here? Nighttime erection data from my 19-year-old son. Yeah, and this is definitely, I mean, that's one way to build. That's bonding. That's bonding, dude. Nighttime erection data for my 19-year-old son, Talmadge Johnson, and me. His duration is two minutes longer than mine. Wow. Raise children to stand tall, be firm, and be upright. That's hilarious. Yeah, I noticed you and your son, he gets involved in a lot of this, right?

1:29:11Theo Von:Yeah, he's so cool. He's such a cool cat. He, he's my second child and he and I are just best friends. We roll and man, like we're like, we're just twins. Like we just like, you know, with Kate, man, I love this kid so much. We have so much fun together.

1:29:31Bryan Johnson:Yeah. What makes him so special to you? I mean, it's your son. So that's one thing. He, there he is. I mean, that's cool. Like he's in shape, huh? Who, who would do this with their dad? That's a good, dude, that's actually the perfect answer. Maybe Voldemort's son or whatever. You know, I'm just joking. I'm just joking, Thomas. No, but no, you're right. Who would be like, yeah, who would do anything with their dad?

1:29:58Theo Von:Look at like the lower left. He's, I have my shirt off. Yeah, he's hugging me. Like we're doing a shirtless skin-to-skin photo shoot. Like what father-son does that? Seems pretty tribal. Yeah, I mean, he's like, And so like we're there, we did a blood transplant. So he gave me his plasma. I gave my dad my plasma. We did like a tri-generational thing. And is that, was there any helpful stuff in that? Yeah. So my, this, the origin behind that is my dad called me in a panic and he said like, I, he's, I just wrote this thing for work. I stepped away from my, my desk, came back to it. It was gibberish.

1:30:34Theo Von:He's like, I'm, I'm freaking out. And so that day my team and I had a call about plasma exchanges. Like the idea of you, like there was a study where a old mouse and a young mouse were sewed together and they shared a circulatory system. The old mouse got younger. They were sewn together? Yeah. Like they shared a system. That's kind of a shitty, shitty mouse, right? Like to be that mouse in that experiment. But the old mouse got younger. And so there was this idea, like what's happening, right? Could you replicate the results there by taking plasma that is youthful and give it to someone that is older?

1:31:08Theo Von:and so my i was like dad if you want to do this i'm happy to give you my plasma like you know because there were some studies being shown if and then you siphon talmage so he he heard he heard me talmage heard us talking about he's like hey like wow if you want me in like i'm i'm happy to be in i'm like you guys this is perfect the tri-generational plasma exchange that's just dope dude yeah so we did it and it's interesting to my dad his speed of aging. It's like there's a clock inside your body of how fast or how slow you're aging. His speed of aging dropped by the equivalent of 25 years. So his body had a dramatic reduction of how fast he was aging from getting my plasma.

1:31:49Theo Von:How were you able to quantify that? Looking at something called DNA methylation. So your body basically has these chemical signatures of like, what does your body look like? A 13-year-old, a 20-year-old, a 45-year-old. It's like an emergent science. So it's like metadata almost. Yeah, exactly. And so like, it's a new area of science. It's still emerging. It's not yet gold standard. So like, you know, it's not like the, like blood work is a gold standard marker, but this is cool. And so, yeah, my dad's metadata changed dramatically. My biomarkers didn't. So when my son Talmadge gave me his plasma, my biomarkers did not change, which like makes sense because my biomarkers are already like his, were already of comparable health, but my dad's are not as good as mine.

1:32:31Theo Von:So, but yeah, that was the, behind that. So like my son, yeah, like he, that's cool. Yeah. But like, he's, he's, um, he's a yes and guy. Oh, nice. So like anything I say or anything I do, he's always like, dad. Yeah. And you know, like when I did the live stream mushrooms, he's like, I'm in and I want to hang out with you. And so he's just like, he's such a cool dude.

1:32:50Bryan Johnson:Um, I want to talk about the mushroom stuff and I'll, but take me back to the erections. Uh, what, and that's the only time I'll ever say that probably.

1:33:01Theo Von:It's like the time you were gay. You never know.

1:33:04Bryan Johnson:Everyone's a little gay. Oh, dude, people's all a little bit gay, bro. You fucking tickle anybody. If you tickle somebody hard enough, they'll admit it. Yeah, yeah. What did you notice about erections? Yeah, what did you guys find out here? Because you and your son both took this. Is it a test? What did you guys do to study it?

1:33:21Theo Von:Yeah, so the idea behind this is how do you tell if somebody's in good health? You can look at them. It's like, what is the skin quality? What are their muscles? Are they aerobically fit? It turns out that nighttime erections for men is a major marker for health. And that if a man is not having erections at night when he's asleep, it's representative of much larger problems in the body. But before we did this, nobody talked about this idea. But every night you go to bed, your body goes to a natural process of erection cycles. So men have between three and five erections every single night. It's not sexual.

1:34:01Theo Von:Your body is just like pulsing the system. Females have the same thing. So females also have these arousal cycles. There are clitoris and gorges. So we can measure a man's erections. So we have this little device you put on the base of the penis, and you go to sleep. You think it's annoying, but it's actually fine. You don't even feel it. And you wake up in the morning, and it gives you a readout. How many erections you had, how long they were, and then the strength, the erections. And what it's basically doing is it's telling you the health of your cardiovascular system, your psychological health, and your physiological health.

1:34:34Theo Von:So if your dick is broken, something else is broken about you. And you can also use it as an age marker because as you age, like a healthy 18-year-old will have something like two and a half hours of nighttime erections. And by the time you get to 70 years old, it's down to like 51 minutes. So it declines with age. Papa's still rocking though. Yeah. So mine are, my best is like three hours and 52 minutes. In one night? Yeah, so I'm at the 99.9 percentile for nighttime erections. And this is a cool marker because like people can look at me and say, bro, you still look 48. I don't think any of your shit's working.

1:35:14Theo Von:And the way to counteract that is when you go to bed, your body just does it. Like I can't change if I have erections at night or not. I can't think about having sex. Like your body just does it. Right. So it basically is a question of like, my body is behaving like an 18 year old, like better than an average 18 year old. Yeah. And so that's like a good marker of like, is my stuff working or not? Yeah. Like, so that's what this whole idea. So actually I was teaching my son, like, I was like, Hey man, how are you doing? Because as a good father would want his son to be healthy. And he's like, I want to measure it.

1:35:46So, so he's a very healthy 18 year

1:35:49Theo Von:old and I was trying to demonstrate that I'm 48 years old. He's, he's a 20. Uh, our bodies basically are behaving the same. So, uh, yeah, people like, you know, I definitely had a lot

1:36:01Bryan Johnson:to say about this post. Yeah. Well, it's, I mean, it's pretty fascinating. You know, when you think about that, you had 34 million views on this.

1:36:08Theo Von:It'd be like, that's not even like it went so much more viral than that.

1:36:12Bryan Johnson:That's insane, bro. Yeah. Yeah. But dang, also it's a great business card for your son in the dating world yeah like you know what yeah yeah or the longevity world i mean just like yeah if that's something that's just like it's your nature that it's going to show up at night because yeah i noticed that i definitely if i wake up with an erection i do feel more like yeah okay i'm virile or virial yeah yeah and i'm rocking you know and i still got it you know what i'm saying and bring on the day yeah like you remember feel like when

1:36:41Theo Von:you were like early teens oh yeah you're always erect like in the middle of the day you have

1:36:48Bryan Johnson:you just become erect yeah i remember walking down the hall and having like lean my body inward like yeah because or like walk with your just book over yes holding your book back or wearing your book back on the front yeah or just um or i'd walk in like just at school i would just point my body towards the wall and just walk sideways and shit just weird shit yeah exactly just cocking around

1:37:08Theo Von:That's like a robust function. But then as you age, right, they just disappear. And so that's why it's so important. So I talk about it because people who don't have, men who do not have robust nighttime erections are 70 % more likely to have a cardiac event. So like you really want to know if it's not working, like other stuff is going on. And so, yeah. Wow.

1:37:30Bryan Johnson:A lot of my, yeah, there was a long time I didn't because a lot of it was psychological too. I think I was just, there was something going on in my head that wasn't healthy. Um, you had mentioned, uh, you had an experience. I have to pee really quick now. We just took a urine break. Dude, I pee long when I pee, dude, because I drink a lot of fluids during the day. Yeah. Is that good or bad? You think, does it matter?

1:37:54Theo Von:Yeah. Yeah.

1:37:54Bryan Johnson:Do you cut off fluids at a certain time at the end of the day? So you don't wake up to pee at night?

1:37:59Theo Von:Yeah. So I, like, I measure what I did is I measured, uh, my fluid. So when I exercise and when I'm in the sauna, I'm able to exercise how much I measure how much I sweat. So Gatorade has a patch. You just put it on the inside of your forearm and then it gives you how much you sweat and also the content of your sodium. So you have like a kind of a baseline. And then you have an idea of like you can back into how much should you consume and should you supplement with the sodium or do you have that? So yeah, I consume about 120 to 130 ounces of water per day, so a lot like you. I front load it in the morning and I stop around four to five.

1:38:36Theo Von:So yeah, so that then helps me lessen the number of times I need to get up. So sometimes if I'm lucky, I'll sleep the entire night. And then other times, like probably half the nights, you know, I'll get up once. But yeah, I try to stop fluid towards the end of the day to stop getting up at night. So you'll stop kind of right after you eat dinner? Yeah, well, actually I eat dinner at like 11 a.m. noon. I have my final meal the day around noon. Oh, you do? Yeah. And when do you have your first meal, then? When I wake up at six. Okay. I wake up like at four or five, like four or five, and then I'll have breakfast before I eat.

1:39:09Bryan Johnson:So you eat breakfast. Yeah. So many things that are like, don't eat breakfast. I feel better when I don't eat breakfast and I eat later in the day and I keep it into a smaller eating window. But you don't, that's not your practice. Yeah.

1:39:20Theo Von:Like do your thing, right?

1:39:21Bryan Johnson:You're saying do your thing. Yeah, exactly.

1:39:22Theo Von:I do your thing. But I like what I, I built my life around sleep, like unquestionably. So the reason I do that is because if I have my last meal around noon, my heart before I go to bed will be around 41, 42, 43 beats per minute, which if I have that, I will have a perfect night's sleep. I'll get like four to four and a half hours of restorative sleep. I'll fall asleep within one minute. I'll, you know, half the nights I will not get up. Other nights I'll wake up, I'll be back to sleep within like a minute or two. And so, yeah. And then once I have that kind of sleep profile, I feel like I can take on life.

1:40:03When I don't sleep well, it just, it's like, oh man, it sucks.

1:40:07Theo Von:I hate how I feel. Everything goes downhill.

1:40:10Bryan Johnson:Everything does. The way I treat other people, the way I treat myself, like you're saying. Last night's sleep was bad. Might as well wreck the rest of the day. You know, there's this, there's this like regenerative thing that sort of continues to happen. Yeah. Do you take any supplements for sleeping?

1:40:26Theo Von:Um, I take 300 MCGs of melatonin. So that's not to be confused with a milligram. It is like a third of a milligram. Okay. So very, very light dose. That's all I take. In a powder or chewable or what? Just, uh, I take a plant-based melatonin. Yeah. Um, instead of synthetic, but otherwise, like, you know, people have their sleep stacks. They have like the magnesiums and like, cool, but I just don't need it. Um, yeah, what I've learned is that the body is a clock. it loves consistency. And so we've measured this where your body wants to run. It runs certain biochemical processes on certain timeframes.

1:41:04Theo Von:So for example, if your bedtime is 10 p.m. and you miss it, you say like, I'm going to go to bed at 2 a.m. today, but I'll make up for it. I'll sleep in until 10. I get my full eight hours. It doesn't work like that. So at 10 p.m., your body has a trash collector that rolls to the body and it picks up the trash. If you're not in bed at 10 p.m. and asleep, the trash collector doesn't come and the trash accumulates in the body. And so it's more important to be on time and consistent. Otherwise, like the body's processes can't do its thing. So that's what I've learned is like, you have to treat the body like a system.

1:41:41Theo Von:You can't just be like, fuck it. I'm going to like power over it or like run. You can't. Like the body runs on certain principles of biology. You can't overrule it. Wow. Wow.

1:41:52Bryan Johnson:And it kind of makes sense because even your brain, like your brain's main job is just to keep things organized. Your body just wants to, yeah, a system just wants to run in an organized fashion. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

1:42:03Theo Von:Like you were saying, like when we first started talking, it's like you have a plan, you have a routine, like it feels good. You like, mentally it feels good. The body feels good. It's just better to have that.

1:42:12Bryan Johnson:I read somewhere that you spend like a couple million dollars a year to take care of yourself and to learn data. What does that financially look like for you, really? Is that the truth?

1:42:23Theo Von:That was true, I think, initially. Okay. I think it's a bit less now because we have all these systems built out, but the cost primarily came from hiring the doctors, hiring the scientists. So we had to comb through all the scientific evidence. Like, for example, if you do sauna, how do you do sauna? What temperature? What kind of sauna? How long? Do you ice your testicles or not? How do you measure your heat shock proteins, like the little minions going out and doing the good shit. You have to go to this degree, which is extensive. And then I bought a bunch of equipment. I have a couple, I don't know, a million or two of equipment at the house, all the various things.

1:43:00Theo Von:And then just all the money for the experimentation and measurement. But the actual things we've learned are low cost. I can take everything I've learned and give it to somebody and they can put it into their life at a very, very low cost. So it's been really just about, there's actually very few therapies that cost a lot of money that are worth it. Most things don't work. Most things are bullshit. And so that's been the process of spending the money to figure out what does work and then how those things work.

1:43:29Bryan Johnson:What about red light therapy? Do you think that's helpful?

1:43:31Theo Von:See, this is the thing is yes, but you have to make sure that you're getting the right amount of red light therapy for the right duration of time. And so if it's like a face mask, whether it's a panel, and so we do things like we'll take a panel, and we'll measure the irradiance, like how much exposure you're getting, at what distance, what duration, if you're looking for like deep healing or longevity. So again, I don't want to make this overly complicated, but it matters. And so we try to be very precise. Like if you're doing red light therapy, get this dose. And now you can just go to an AI model and be like, I have this device.

1:44:05Theo Von:It has these specs. If I want a longevity protocol, how long should I have this? And that gives you the data. But you want to be precise because a lot of people think like red light's good. I'll just do it and it's great. Like it's more nuanced.

1:44:15Bryan Johnson:I was talking about a naturopath ophthalmologist, and she was saying that some exposure to red light therapy can be helpful.

1:44:23Theo Von:Yeah, I do it every day. I do red light. I have three panels that surround me. It's red and near light. I do it for six minutes a day. So I do it every day. It's a good therapy.

1:44:33Bryan Johnson:Got it. What about barometric chambers? You see a lot of those at wellness centers. I'll go to a place where I get NAD every week, and I'll do NAD injections every day. is the barometric thing something you recommend?

1:44:50Theo Von:Yeah, so I have a hyperbaric oxygen therapy chamber. That's what I mean, hyperbaric. Yeah. So it's potentially, it's right there at the very, very top. So I'd say sauna, hyperbaric oxygen therapy, and like interestingly, mushrooms, magic mushrooms is up there. But yeah, hyperbaric is one of the best therapies. like we all do with our experiments. I did a 250-biome marker measurement. And what we saw after 60 sessions, yeah, there we go, there's the system.

1:45:25Theo Von:We saw changes in my brain, in my microbiome, my skin, my blood, inflammation, like telomeres. It just had more whole body effects. If you pull up, find the one I did on X, Brian Johnson HBOT summary. It's the best skin rejuvenation protocol in the world. It rebuilds collagen, elastin fibers. It gets rid of senescent cells, which are zombie cells. How long do you need to be in there for? That's the thing. That's the problem. 90 minutes. Per day? Per session. And you need to do 60. Yeah, there we go. That's a good summary. So it does 60 sessions each 90 minutes in 90 days. So it's a gigantic amount of time.

1:46:12Theo Von:Yeah, and you can't have electronics in there. It's too dangerous. So yeah, this is the thing. It's really inaccessible, which is sad, because it's so good.

1:46:21Bryan Johnson:300 % increase in formation of new blood vessels, telomerase activity of a 12-year-old associated with biological age, 250 to 290 % increase in short-chain fatty acids. But you'd have to do this and then keep it up for every year, right?

1:46:36Theo Von:Yeah, so people don't really know we're experimenting. but right now I'm doing 60 sessions per year in like a big burst. And then I'll do like a 20 session burst once per quarter. And so I'll do this around, for example, like a certain treatment. It's like Thursday I had a bunch of stuff done to my face. So can you see how I'm beat up? I've got like stuff all over the place. Yes. Like under, I have like bruised. Yeah. You're a damn lab rat, homie. Yeah. You're a damn white mouse. Yes. Yeah. It's like we, as you age, you, you lose collagen. And so your skin like gets saggy and less plump. And so I did a bunch of injectables to rebuild my collagen.

1:47:17Theo Von:Okay. And so that's why I'm bruised and stuff like that. But then you pair that with a hyperbaric oxygen therapy and like boost the therapy. Got it. So, yeah.

1:47:26Bryan Johnson:So that's the thing. So say if I'm gonna go get an NAD injection or an IV every week and it's gonna take two hours anyway while I sit in there, I might as well sit in the hyperbaric while I do it. if there's one there? Or do you think if I only go 50 times in a year, is it even worth it?

1:47:39Theo Von:I mean, you can do like one session is good for you. Got it. And you can do five also good for you. There's like protocols that on healing, like diabetics will do like 10 to 20 sessions to close open wounds. It's really great for healing. This is just like the longevity protocol. So you can do fewer sessions and still do it, but you want to have it. It's a compounded therapy. So do them in a close proximity, but no more than five per week. Your body needs to have a break. Got it. Yeah.

1:48:09Bryan Johnson:Yeah. I saw you do the mushroom therapy and that's one of the things that kind of brought me like, made me think like, okay, this guy, it's not like, you know, this guy's really, he's still out there experimenting and wanting to learn more. Right. What was that therapy like for you? And were you surprised by it? And was it psilocybin, I guess, and the effects? Yeah.

1:48:27Theo Von:Yeah, this is one of the coolest discoveries we've made is psilocybin like sits in the world of psychedelics, but it's never been bridged over to longevity. That's a different way of thinking about psilocybin and talking about it. And so we said, can we do an experiment to see is our magic mushrooms a longevity therapy? So same thing, we measured 250 biomarkers and the data was insane, surprisingly. So like we found this new thing where there were studies in mice that showed that the blood glucose improved. In me, my blood glucose went from 98.2 percentile in the population, good, to 99.8 percentile, I think, something like that.

1:49:16Theo Von:Like it almost hit like a metabolic reset in the brain, resetting your blood glucose regulation, which is gigantic. It took my inflammation levels down to undetectable. It had changes in my microbiome. It, I list them all out here. Yeah. Like it legit is a longevity therapy.

1:49:36Bryan Johnson:It reduced inflammation and below detectable, calmed my body and mind, lower cortisol, inhibited HPA access in the days following the dose. Made neuroplasticity in the brain, like takes your brain to a more youthful state. Wow. So you guys did a lot of like treatment while you were under this. And did you then put this into your protocol after that? Yeah. Yep.

1:49:57Theo Von:So it's really early days. Nobody knows the ideal protocol. But right now it's like once every 30 days seems to be about right.

1:50:05Bryan Johnson:And how much mushrooms have you taken?

1:50:08Theo Von:25 milligrams of psilocybin. Okay. So then it depends upon the strain. So I did the B positive mushroom strain. So it's like four and a half grams of dried mushroom powder, which then was the 25 milligrams of psilocybin. So that's a real trip kind of. Yeah, it's clinical grade. It's like, it's just below a ego dissolution.

1:50:29Bryan Johnson:Wow. So you have to be like NSA, you got to chill out somewhere. Yeah, you got to, yeah. You don't want to beat the club. Right. And what about, but you, but you, but that was so helpful that you now, it's part of the protocol.

1:50:43Theo Von:Yeah.

1:50:43Bryan Johnson:Wow.

1:50:44Theo Von:Yeah. Yeah. And we're doing our next psychedelic live stream in three weeks. we're doing a new psychedelic. Oh yeah, this is cool. So yeah, Kate did it with me.

1:50:53Bryan Johnson:Oh, your girl did it. And your son did the first one.

1:50:56Theo Von:I know. So he just showed up. So at the end of, uh, when I was coming down, he showed up with my dad. Oh, that's crazy. Oh, we had such a good family bonding moment, you know, cause like you're in that state and I was just giddy and euphoric and I was able to express things to my dad. Yeah. Yeah. Oh man. That's huge. And so then, yeah, so we did this, we see the temperature. Um, when you take psilocybin, your body changes in its thermal regulation. So the extremities get a lot colder. You have a lot of heat going inside. So we did that as a measurement. But yeah, so we're looking at our next psychedelic because there's like a few things.

1:51:33Like we did psilocybin,

1:51:36Theo Von:but other contenders are ayahuasca, 5-MeO.

1:51:45Theo Von:What else did we look at? Yeah, so we're doing one. live streaming in three weeks.

1:51:50Bryan Johnson:Wow, that's amazing. Yeah, ayahuasca has been one that's...

1:51:53Theo Von:You should...

1:51:54Bryan Johnson:I've done it before. It's been amazing.

1:51:56Theo Von:You should come on. So last time we did this, we had people who came on. So I was tripping. And we had a bunch of people who were commentators. They were like, almost like fight show stuff. Yeah. You should come on and be a commentator.

1:52:10Bryan Johnson:Dang, bro. That would be so wild to commentate somebody who's going through an ayahuasca experience. I'm not opposed to that. Where are you based out of?

1:52:19Theo Von:We'll do it internationally. Oh, you have to, I guess. Yes, but it would just be online. We just bring you in. Actually, it'd be fun to get a few comedians come in and give their two cents on what's going on.

1:52:36Bryan Johnson:Are there any psychedelics that you would say are definitively bad for your brain? I don't know.

1:52:44Theo Von:I don't know the answer to that.

1:52:46Bryan Johnson:Is there any like therapy that you went and tried and you were like, oh, this is definitely not it. Or like, was there ever a place where you got scared? Like you went to like, um, you know, Romania or someplace, you know, I'm just hypostasizing.

1:52:58Theo Von:But yeah, I mean, like if you pull up that image of my face that blew up, you had it up there before. I, yeah. So that's you. That's me. Yeah. So I got really skinny in the early days of this project. Really, really skinny. And I lost a bunch of volume in my face. And so when you lose volume in your face, it's very hard to get back volume. So most people just do filler, but I didn't want to do filler. And so we did this Renuva, which is this fat. So someone else's fat. So I injected it into my face and I had a severe reaction. So that didn't work.

1:53:33Bryan Johnson:Bro, that's crazy, dude. I saw this earlier and I was thinking like, who is this lady that they're bringing up? I thought this was like a Native American woman. I totally thought this was a Native American woman

1:53:46Theo Von:on the far right there that was me 45 minutes after the injection I was like oh shit this is not a good situation it took me like 6 days to calm down it was bad

1:53:59Bryan Johnson:that's pretty scary dude spending all this time working on yourself how do you stay out of ego with it because it's such a self in the end there's some ego because it's you you're your own experiment you know? Um, and then what are some of the side, like, what does it cost you? Like, what have been some of the things like, have there been relationships you haven't been able to have? Like, has it been tough to like, um, spend time with family? Like, what are some things, what are the side effects of being like, you know, one of the biggest experiments in, in, uh, in history?

1:54:32Theo Von:Yeah. I mean, that's, that's like one of the primary criticisms I get is people say, uh, you know, bro, so busy trying to not die, forgot how to live. And, um, I understand what what they're saying. I definitely understand the perspective. And I view myself as a modern day explorer. You know, like somebody who is out there on the frontier trying to discover something new and like, man, I fucking love this so much. I love this game so much. I'm into it. Like it, when I wake up in the morning, it's the first thing I think about all day long. Like what is the experiment? What is the data? What is the science?

1:55:09Theo Von:I love it. And so I think people just don't understand that it's a game I'm in love with. And so, you know, is there a cost? Yes. Like, are my friends going out and doing things sometimes that I'm doing? Yes. But do I feel a loss? No. Like, I'm very happy with the situation. And so, like, in some ways, like, I'm a new kind of athlete. I'm a professional rejuvenation athlete. Like, LeBron goes to bed on time, he eats well, and we're like, go, man, like, you play well on the court. People just don't understand I'm a new archetype. They haven't ever seen it before. So, it's just like a disconnect between that.

1:55:42Theo Von:It is cool. I love the hate. It's great energy. It's just a lot of discussion.

1:55:47Bryan Johnson:There's just a lot of confusion around it. I think. You just don't know. Especially at a time when there's these tech lords who it seems like they want to siphon everybody's androchronom or whatever. Have you had anybody hit you up about getting some adrenochrome or whatever? Yeah.

1:56:05Theo Von:Everybody has reached out to me. Everybody. Top to bottom. You name it. And like, it's just like, what, you know, what gives you a feeling of power? You know, like money, status, or immortality? Like immortality, right? The other thing.

1:56:25Bryan Johnson:It's hook everlasting. They just don't care.

1:56:27Theo Von:It's like, they just don't pale. This is what I'm saying. Like this transition is happening. What good is money if you're dead? What good is status if you're dead?

1:56:35Bryan Johnson:Any world leaders reached out?

1:56:37Theo Von:Yes. Yeah.

1:56:39Bryan Johnson:What world do you think they're from?

1:56:41Theo Von:I mean, they all want it. They all want to be healthy.

1:56:46Bryan Johnson:Any world leader just hits you up straight up, call you right up?

1:56:49Theo Von:Yeah. Wow. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's like from every...

1:56:53Bryan Johnson:Are you at liberty to say it or no? I can't, yeah. That's okay.

1:56:56Theo Von:I had to ask. Yeah, I mean, there was like this moment where Xi Jinping and Putin, they had this hot mic issue a couple months ago where they're both like, yeah, it looks like we should be able to live to 150 years old. I remember that yeah so it's like it's on their minds it's clearly in the zeitgeist and if you're in that circle as I've watched this like it's funny in the world of status and power the new status marker is health like that's what gives people power and like now like having a big bank account sure it's cool whatever but like it doesn't matter as much so it really is like this big zeitgeist change on what it means to be powerful in society and have status so I love seeing it like the more that happens, the better off.

1:57:40Bryan Johnson:Do you have competitors out there? Are there other yous out there that you start to run across from different realms or different countries or whatever?

1:57:47Theo Von:I mean, like anyone who's trying, I love it. Like I'm a very much a yes and kind of guy. Like anyone's out there experimenting. Great. You know, like do your thing, be beautiful. So yeah, I really tried to encourage everybody. People will call me and they'll be like, I'm going to beat you at your markers. I'm like, great. I will help you. I will make you better you have to make the same mistakes I have so when you think about it we are the whole situation is so fucked up we're on planet earth in the middle of space what is even going on this is so crazy and the fact that we're conscious is so cool the fact that we're live is so amazing why wouldn't we do absolutely everything in our power to keep this game going like I don't want it to stop

1:58:34Bryan Johnson:and so like

1:58:35Theo Von:to me it's the coolest game and so yeah it's like celebrate everybody who's trying to embrace life and like honestly get fucking rid of everybody who's trying to kill us like stop it stop the fucking killing it's so crazy and stupid have you had to separate some relationships because your journey went in this direction kind of my friends are more like me than I ever would have guessed now like they go to bed on time they see it so I'd say my friend group, we now do things together. And so no, I don't miss out much. Like there's, there's some things like, for example, Grimes did a, she did a DJ set.

1:59:15Theo Von:And she started at one. So I went to bed at 7 p.m. I woke up like at 9.30 p.m. And then I went out, did her set with her, then went back to bed. I did it with Aoki as well. So like, I've been trying to like be balanced of like, be rigid. also the rest of the world parties at one o 'clock in the morning so and i still have like a great sleep score i still got my restorative sleep so like i have tried my best to go after this goal of don't die but also like try to find some compromise and doing things that are currently

1:59:45Bryan Johnson:normal in today's society do you feel addicted to wanting to to not die i mean probably right

1:59:52Theo Von:like the same way like uh are are people addicted to making money yeah you know are people addicted through social media, yeah, like the human condition is kind of addiction. And so like, yeah, I'm lost in this. I don't think I've ever felt as satisfied and fulfilled as I do now. I've got a fantastic family. I have a fantastic partner. I love the game I'm playing. I just, you know, like, I went through like 10 years of chronic depression. Like, legit wanted to kill myself. And I would have done it had it not been for my kids. So like, I know what shitty feels like. Like, when you're just like, you're so buried deep, and it's like, I don't know how many days out of this.

2:00:31Theo Von:Like, it's just bad.

2:00:33Bryan Johnson:What started the cause of that, do you think?

2:00:36Theo Von:Well, a couple of things. One, I just had my first baby and he was colicky. And so we weren't sleeping. It was like six months of total sleep deprivation. I was building a startup. So I had no money. I was stressed out of my mind. My partner wasn't working. So I was the sole provider. And so it's just like no sleep and startup and no money. And like, I think it just got me. and then once it got me uh like it's very hard to wrestle your way out of it when my circumstances didn't change i still had no money i still had to make my my startup work and so then i just got deeper and deeper and then like it just kind of cascaded into like really bad shit so um i'm i'm

2:01:12Bryan Johnson:so grateful i didn't commit suicide you know so how much does the uh you take care of yourself so much physically you have so much information about that how much uh how much are you able to attach your mental to that as well? Or what do you notice about the physical-mental relationship?

2:01:29Theo Von:Yeah, that if when people... So right now, if somebody is suffering from anxiety or depression or something else, the first move mostly is to take a pill, right? Like get on some kind of...

2:01:43Bryan Johnson:Yeah.

2:01:43Theo Von:And so the first move is really to fix your sleep. And the way to fix your sleep is to lower your heart rate, lower the heart rate, you have your last meal of the day, like do all these different steps. Now that's not going to fix everybody's issues. But having good sleep in place is the most powerful thing anybody can do in their life on any condition. And then once you have that in place, like if you need to look at other options, cool. But most of the time, people don't look at the very basic things like, are you going to bed on time? Like when are you eating that last meal? What's your heart rate?

2:02:16Theo Von:So I have found that when my body is operating well, my mind operates well. It's a very symbiotic relationship that you literally are what you consume. You know, social media, food, all the above. And so I don't talk about mental health as directly. I talk about get the basics right and you see the boost in your mental health. Like if I talk to entrepreneurs, I'll say in the room, like over half of you are in a current mental health crisis and the room always goes dead quiet. They know I'm right. I see it in their eyes, right? Like they had a happy face on, they're like smiling, like, yeah, I've got this going on, but inside they're dying.

2:03:01Theo Von:And you know, you can feel it. And so when I say that and I puncture it and it's like, that's true. Like you guys, like it's not good to build a company when you're suicidal right right like no one's winning here so like get your shit together um you can build a great company you can be ambitious you can be epic like sleep and like so that's really i mean i wish somebody would have been in my life to tell me that like hey man i see you're ambitious like you have big plans for life but like let me just

2:03:28Bryan Johnson:kind of help you get some basics right yeah having somebody mitigate having somebody help you set some parameters it's just so hard and it's hard to believe it's like you know i remember grinding so hard for a few years and I had like a mental breakdown kind of like this is about four or five years ago I almost literally felt something snap in my brain me too you remember the day that moment uh yeah I remember um yeah I do remember I had some shows that were in they were up in California they weren't yeah and I literally had to cancel them the day of yeah never I do that in my life I said if I have to walk out there I I physically cannot do it anymore yeah and the whole time before that I thought that I just wasn't trying hard enough.

2:04:07Theo Von:Yeah. A hundred percent. You know, I, I would mirror your experience. I had the same thing.

2:04:11Bryan Johnson:Yeah. What'd you do? Do you have to go to therapy or something?

2:04:14Theo Von:No, I was in the parking lot in Orem, Utah with my brother in a red Saturn. And I said, he was my business partner at the time. And I said, Jason, um, I was talking to him about like, I'm feeling depressed. I just like, can't quite do things. and in that conversation, something like snapped. Like I almost like physically heard a snap and I'm like, something just broke in my brain. And my brother was like, just try harder, right? Like he wasn't, I don't think he understood. If you haven't been depressed, you don't know. But like, I will never, ever forget that moment. It was like 5.30 in the evening.

2:04:51Theo Von:It was just sun setting. And that put me on a 10 year long hole. And so like, you know, I'm so empathetic to people. Like I think it is so much more common than we talk, than like people talk about.

2:05:07Bryan Johnson:I do think that like you said earlier, that when you said a lot, like you were in that meeting and you said a lot of people here are struggling or barely holding on. I do think that that kind of thing is the truth, that like we're all just in this space where we're pretty close to - Exactly. We're just holding on. Yeah, that's a much better way of saying it. But then we're so used to surviving at that space too. You start to think that that's supposed to be the norm and it's not. Exactly right. Yeah.

2:05:34Theo Von:Yeah, it's very real. And like it hurts and it sucks. There's no safe place to go. Like, who do you tell us about? Is it safe? Is it not? Will you be penalized? Yeah. So it's tough. And then like the world is so brutal on you. You can't trust anyone. Everyone's after you. Tough space.

2:05:49Bryan Johnson:Yeah. And the truth is probably just say what is going on. Yeah. You know, but it's so hard. Um, last question with, with, with AI, you know, AI and things are happening so fast and differently. Now, do you think that that will have a large effect on, um, on, on don't die on how we can live on the possibility to live forever or to have a longer life expectancy? And do you use AI with your own data to help, um, create any, uh, sort of real information? Yeah.

2:06:23Theo Von:This, well, what a lot of people don't know is this entire project i'm doing is about ai it's not about health and so like what do you mean yeah so i did this um when i was 21 years old i had this ambition that i wanted to do something that would be useful to the human race like that was my i don't know why but i just like i really cared about being useful to humanity i didn't know what to do i wasn't good at anything i was kind of shitty at most everything and so i said okay i'm going to become an entrepreneur. I'm going to make a whole bunch of money to my age 30 with money. I'm going to do something epic in the world.

2:06:59Theo Von:And so I did that by 34 years old. I, I sold my company for $800 million, but at 34, I was burnt to a crisp. I just smoked. And so I needed to recover. And so, but then I had basically this quite open question, like now I have money, what do you do? And so when you have basically unlimited optionality in the world. So I spent 10 years trying to figure that out. And I did one thought experiment which really helped bring clarity is I imagined traveling in time to the year 2500, so a few hundred years into the future, and there you are sitting among those that exist. Like, are they human or the AI?

2:07:40Theo Von:We don't know, but there they are talking. And they're reflecting on the early 21st century, our time. And they're saying, we appreciate homo sapiens that lived in the early 21st century because they did blank that allowed intelligence to still exist in the universe? What'd they do? They didn't destroy themselves. And I thought about that question for years. I think they say two things. One is they say that's when Homo sapiens gave birth to superintelligence. The second thing they say is they say the second thing that they'd figured out is that they wouldn't die. That they transformed society from a culture of die, of like, I will pillage you for my profit, or I will YOLO my way to death to exchange for this, to existence itself is the highest value.

2:08:32Theo Von:There's nothing more valuable than existence. And we will do anything to fight for our existence. And so, the principles we talked about today of like care, like our society would be better off if we really cared for each other, if you really could trust each other, like genuinely trust. And so what I'm trying to do technically is when you, it's like pretty technical, entropy is the final boss of the universe. So entropy is the disorder of things, the second law of thermodynamics. So eventually like a warm cup of coffee goes cold, suns burn out, bodies die. Like things just naturally decay. And so the number one enemy of the universe is decay and disorder.

2:09:19Theo Von:And life is a rebellion against disorder. Like we somehow survive. And so what I'm trying to build, like my whole goal is to say, as a species, our number one goal is to build a new antientropic system, like a new life system that makes fighting for life the number one goal for all things. And you can measure entropy or death in all things. You can measure it in a physical system. you can measure it in a biological system, but you can basically build it computationally. So that's like a whole bunch of stuff, but the goal is you can measure death, you can build protections against death, you can do it in the body, you can do it in physical systems, you can align yourself with AI.

2:10:03Theo Von:It's like, it's a new ideology that I want it to become the fastest growing ideology in human history, that it helps you understand existence. and it's competitive with any major ideology. So there's like, I need like honestly 60 minutes to explain it because I know it's like, I just jammed it up, but it's basically a new way to exist that like reframes our reality.

2:10:27Bryan Johnson:Well, I do understand what you're saying in the sense that a lot of history, people have lived as if we die, right? Okay, one day we die. There's an afterlife. You can live forever somewhere else. You can live extensively somewhere else. But then to have this concept, and to really live as if don't die. Yes. Then now how do you live? Yes. Right. And that's a whole reframing of things. Exactly right. Right. But I do understand that, that once you reframe it, it's like, oh, wow. Well, a lot more of, yeah, if the afterlife or a lot of it can be here.

2:11:05Theo Von:Yes, exactly.

2:11:06Bryan Johnson:then what rules change for me? What rules change in the world? And how does it affect how I play the game?

2:11:14Theo Von:Exactly right. And like the thing cool is don't die is that you can be Christian and don't die. You can be Muslim and don't die. You can be capitalist and don't die. You can be anything and don't die because don't die just says, nobody wants to die right now. It says nothing about five years from now or 20 years from now. The single thing that every human agrees to in this moment, one thing, nobody wants to die right now. That's it. After that, there's no agreement on anything. And so if you build artificial superintelligence, you're like, what do you do with it? It's like, help me make more money, help me become better at war, like help me acquire more power.

2:11:51Theo Von:What I'm saying is the obvious answer we say to AI, we want to exist. That's our goal. We don't want to destroy ourselves. We don't want to die individually. This is not saying we own immortality. It's saying we don't want to die right now. So you're trying to basically just get a peace accord with all humans and all AI and say, can we just strike a deal where we have the right to exist? It's like the United States said, like, you know, life lived in the pursuit of happiness. The new constitution for our new species is the right to exist. And that's what this whole thing is about. It's just like the very basic primal desire.

2:12:32Theo Von:I want to take one more breath.

2:12:36Bryan Johnson:because we've almost grandfathered ourselves into this that we don't, that we can't.

2:12:40Theo Von:Yeah, that's right. Exactly. It's like, if you don't state that as the objective, then you point it at profit. And if you point it at profit, you inevitably have the temptation of saying, I'm going to take your life for my profit. I'm going to give you food that poisons you, but makes me money.

2:12:57Bryan Johnson:It feels like where we're at now. Yeah. It feels like we're definitely part of a, you go, all right, I'll give you this. Then you go here, then you spend there. And then you You go to this, but, um, Brian Johnson, thanks so much, man.

2:13:08Theo Von:Love it, man. It's great, bro. It's so much fun.

2:13:10Bryan Johnson:Yeah, this is it. Super interesting, man.

2:13:12Theo Von:Can you, can you imagine now a standup act that would just rip me?

2:13:17Bryan Johnson:Yeah, well, I think, I mean, I think I could think of a couple of things. I could think one, you being on a great roast over there. And that's one thing they do at Kill Tony. They roast, everybody roasts everybody. So it's like this thing, you're just part of the universe, you know? and then I could think of yeah of a great if there was like a dope roast and you were one of the people on it people would have the best jokes I bet it just adds a lot of fun so I appreciate you having a sense of humor about it what are the what is a cheat day like do you ever just want to unwind I did see you had a photo of like the fourth like a fourth meal or something you had that was up on social media the other day yeah there you are just geeked out right there yeah I'm trolling oh you're just trolling there Yeah.

2:13:57Bryan Johnson:Okay. Got it. Yes. There's some Taco Bell.

2:13:59Theo Von:I said, decided to live a little because like, you know, like it's funny because people are always like, bro, live a little. But then what they're saying is I want you to die to show me you're alive. And so like, right. It's just like, it's fun.

2:14:13Bryan Johnson:It is kind of true. Live a little in some ways. If we look at it, especially diet, dietitian, dietetically or whatever, we're saying, yeah, man, die, you know? Yeah.

2:14:25Theo Von:Take the, take the, you know, die some. Yeah, they want me to die. So I just, like all things, I really enjoy playing. People have a lot of fun with me as well. Yeah. But yeah, like, you know, the funny thing is the cheat day thing. Man, I don't want to do it. Wow. If you got to the point where you don't want to do it that too, was it always like that or no? Just got there like past couple of years. It took me like a hundred reps. Like you do it, you're like, I'm going to do it and be fun. And then it happens. You're like, God damn it. It's so worse. It's never worth it. So I learned the lesson.

2:14:54Theo Von:it's never ever ever ever ever ever ever ever worth it it just doesn't like i don't know a situation where i did something i'm like yeah you know what now like when i did when i stayed when i went to bed early went to the rave in the middle of the night i got to dance worth it right but like you know fast food meal like so my team right now is where uh they're they're trying to convince me to get drunk on a live stream as an experiment so like what does alcohol do to the body so we do the same thing. We'd measure all the markers. We'd look at my impairment. So like if I were, I would do an experiment like that, but otherwise like just to have fun, like, no, man, it's, it's miserable.

2:15:31Theo Von:I hate it.

2:15:32Bryan Johnson:Has this challenged your faith? Has any of the, uh, has it challenged which you, where, where your faith lies? I knew, cause you grew up in a Mormon community. Is that right? Yeah. And has it challenged, um, which I think is a great community by the way. Yeah. Um, has any of your practices, uh, challenged any of your beliefs or your relationship with that community.

2:15:51Theo Von:Yeah. I mean, I, I joke with my, uh, my Mormon friends, I'm a better Mormon than they are. I'm, I'm like the best Mormon, you know, like, uh, you know, cause, um, like sugar is the currency in the Mormons. Like you can't do, there's not premarital sex. You can't do porn. Like there's a whole bunch of dude, you can't drink coffee.

2:16:08Bryan Johnson:Yeah.

2:16:08Theo Von:Right. So when you have like a whole bunch of nose, like it's gotta go somewhere.

2:16:12Bryan Johnson:Yeah.

2:16:13Theo Von:So sugar is like the escape route. And so, um, yeah, exactly. So I, I didn't mess around with them, but like the thing is like, for me, the hole in the world is that we're in this wacky situation where we're conscious in the universe. Like, what the fuck is going on? It's so bizarre. We don't even talk about it every day. It's so bizarre. And so then, like, given the bizarreness, there's all these ways of people being like, let me explain the situation, right? But like, I don't know, I'm more of the opinion of like, how do we know? What are we talking about? And so like, but then if you say like, who says they don't know, it's a very, very, very small number of people who say they're like atheists and they don't know.

2:16:56Theo Von:But that's kind of like a defeatist mentality. It's like, we don't know, but like, whatever. So like what's missing in the world is an ideology that's like, we don't really know. And we have gusto. Because when you're in a religion, like you've got gusto to serve God and to obey the commandments. But like, where does an ideology that couples up, I don't know, and has gusto? And that's what's missing in the world. That's what I found is like, you can intellectually be like, legit, it's pretty hard to know what's going on. Also, like we can stand up. We can, like we have power right now. Like it wasn't before AI, you're doomed.

2:17:33Theo Von:Like no matter what you said, you're off to death. With AI, this is the first time ever where a human can be like, you know what? I got a strut. Like I'm going to put my chest out and like I feel, I feel confident I can do something. And so like we're at this brand new thing. And that's what I'm saying. Like this moment is so insane.

2:17:50Bryan Johnson:What makes you think about that? Just because the ability that the average person can have now?

2:17:54Theo Von:Yeah. Like, I mean, you look at AI. I mean, like you basically are giving birth to God. Like when we talk about God, we say like God's omnipotent, right? Omnipotent. God is blank, blank, blank. Like we basically assign these powers of like anything. and on some kind of timescale, AI is kind of that. Like when it's that and how it's that, like TBD, but it's like generally that. And so when you actually have like the potential of building like billions of gods or godlike powers of like we've imagined, like why wouldn't you immediately level up your ambition by like a thousand X?

2:18:39Bryan Johnson:Right, because you're taking some of the more practical possibilities of God and making them more usable to the everyday person. Exactly. You're still not able to replicate like a relationship that is like spiritual in nature though, do you think? Why not?

2:18:55Theo Von:I mean, it's just a biochemical reaction, right? I don't know.

2:18:58Bryan Johnson:You think somebody just messaging with like a fictional thing is going to make them feel the same way as if they feel like there's some connection to an actual like molecular existing force in the world? I do.

2:19:10Theo Von:I think that basically... You think it's the same? Basically, so you are 70 trillion cells. When Theovan experiences love or God or like take whatever you think, that is a biochemical pattern. Got it. And you can produce it with prayer, with psychedelics, with meditation, with sex, right? Like there's so many ways to replicate these experiences. So like if AI is able to develop drugs and or experiences and or if we have implants and or like you can basically just map it back. It's very hard to identify an emergent experience we have right now and not be able to pull back the curtain and say, here's what happened biochemically.

2:19:55Theo Von:Now, like I'm open to other ways to explain the world that you can't find a biochemical signature for, totally open to that. But like in my experience, everything I am, I can just see the data. Like it is a very clear reveal. And so, yeah, will humans be able to experience transcendence and, you know, unconditional love and extreme fulfillment of purpose and like locked in engagement? Yes. Like all those things. And so I actually, I'm very friendly towards religions. Like no matter who you are, no matter what you believe in, great. Right? Like don't die is something we can all agree to. And so like if someone says they believe in an afterlife, super.

2:20:36Theo Von:Like you can still have your afterlife. This is not taking away your afterlife. This is just saying like right now we want to cooperate because we love the game of life. If that means you want to procrastinate your afterlife for another 100 years, it's still going to be there for you. Like it's not going away. So it's really about trying to strike. So it's the same thing about food. Like I'm not a carnivore or vegan or paleo or whatever. I'm not anti-religion. I'm not for the, like, I'm just like, we're all good. Like everyone, we're all good. We can be together. We can like play the game together.

2:21:06Theo Von:We don't need to fight each other. no one needs to be right or wrong. We just want to agree that existence is awesome. So that's like, we're just trying to call peace of all intelligence. Let's not fight. No more killing.

2:21:15Bryan Johnson:That should be cool. Amen, man. Because I wonder sometimes if like when kids interact with AI and stuff like that, do they feel like it's like the same as if I feel if I'm interacting with a real person, you know? Because yeah, I just don't know if you could ever get that, you know, that kind of hug feeling of like of your God, whoever your God is or something. I wonder if you could ever get that hug feeling. if like something that was like man-made or synthetic kind of hypothetically synthetic would ever be the same but I mean I think it's all interesting conversation and look man you're out there on the front lines you're like the only one in this war like you're like your own Vietnam dude out there you know so it's really cool and I really appreciate your time man tell Talmadge we said what's up That was cool.

2:22:06Bryan Johnson:And, yeah, and Brian Johnson, thanks so much, dude. I'm going to grab some of that olive oil. I do want to get some of it.

2:22:13Theo Von:I'll send you some.

2:22:15Bryan Johnson:Well, I'll support, man, but thank you. But thank you even for coming, dude, and just sharing a lot of this with us. I think it's not just about milligrams and this, but it's kind of like a life idea, and it's a change of perspective.

2:22:28Theo Von:Yeah.

2:22:29Bryan Johnson:You know? Yeah. So I understand it. Yeah, I loved hanging out, man. It was really fun. Me too, bro. I know you said we saw each other at the UFC. I remember now seeing your face for a second. Yeah. But I'm glad to see it again, dude. We'll have to get to one soon. Yeah, cool. All right. Thank you, brother. All right, man. Now I'm just floating on the breeze And I feel I'm falling like these leaves I must be cornerstone

2:22:53Theo Von:Oh, but when I reach that ground I'll share this peace of mind I found I can feel it in my bones But it's gonna tell you