- 4 minutes ago
Bryan Johnson, a tech entrepreneur and longevity influencer, shared his thoughts on aging, optimizing for work-life balance, and how founders in "monk mode" risk getting in their own way.
He sat down with Zak Jason, the executive editor of the Discourse team, during Business Insider's The Long Play event in San Francisco, California.
He sat down with Zak Jason, the executive editor of the Discourse team, during Business Insider's The Long Play event in San Francisco, California.
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00:03fantastic thanks so much I know you have a very prompt bedtime in about 84 minutes yeah yeah that's
00:09right you have to be back in LA for this and I don't want to spike your or anyone else's
00:14cortisol
00:15so we're going to close the night and keep it super light and just talk about sex and death
00:21and war and addiction yeah and profit and everlasting life for the next 20. sound good
00:28sounds good okay first I want to talk about how we first met it was last fall at the end
00:34of a long
00:35Thanksgiving weekend a lot of family time for me and screaming children so on Sunday as a reprieve
00:42I tuned into x.com to watch Brian Johnson trip balls on magic mushrooms on a live stream for five
00:49and a half hours yeah and while you were on another planet you were joined by among many others your
00:55son your father Mark Benioff Grimes did a DJ set what was the purpose of this experiment what did
01:04you learn yeah first my partner Kate told those here hi Kate Kate was there helping me do the whole
01:10thing we um when we started the project we were asking this question if you look at all the scientific
01:15evidence what actually works to make someone more healthy and if you go down the list it's actually a
01:22pretty small number of things like you can do sauna you can do exercise you can eat well you can
01:26sleep
01:26well like those things are known um nowhere on that list with psychedelics like you know it's an
01:32ancient medicine or it's been in a trial to treat MDMA or treat a depression or anxiety and there's
01:36different versions but there was a study that came out in animal models that said psilocybin extends
01:42lifespan and we said huh maybe and so we looked into it and we saw there were some mechanisms that
01:49were
01:49interesting we thought what if we do an experiment where we test this molecule for longevity so we
01:55did the world's most quantified psychedelic experiment to see is this psychedelic a longevity therapy and
02:03what'd you learn it is surprisingly so it's actually we've tested so many things the performance of this
02:12molecule was incredibly impressive just the what you want to find it you want to find a therapy that when
02:17you do it impacts the body like you don't want just like a narrow you want like a broad band
02:23and so it
02:24was really useful for the brain the microbiome for there was a metabolic reset we found first in human
02:29observation of like blood glucose so it really was like a systematic improvement are we doing it wrong
02:34should there not have been a signature cocktail yeah well so like i think because then people take
02:39that we did it like these were 25 milligram doses of psilocybin and then people then assume that
02:44micro dosing must like if a lot is good a little good must be good as well but we haven't
02:48tested
02:48out my micro dosing i think there's some evidence saying that micro dosing may actually not be good
02:52so tbd on that one but so yes so the answer is we should have served 25 milligram doses and
03:00then we'd be
03:00having a fun time for the next excellent for october we'll get our mushrooms ready
03:04um let's quickly move from one otherworldly if you guys did that yeah count me in okay okay
03:13jamie barbara you heard that yeah all right let's quickly move from one otherworldly experience to
03:19another i want to talk about what no one in san francisco is having sex
03:26kate your business partner who's also your romantic partners here tonight and you two are having a lot of
03:32sex very publicly um let's read from a sample tweet uh more years recently my lips press against hers
03:41and i softly bite her lower lip kate's blood vessels dilate from the acetylcholine and nitric acid
03:49oxide release flushing her lips skin and body the cascade is nearing a waterfall this is very 50 shades
03:58of gray meets yeah three more why stop i'm into it
04:06first why are you so public about your sex life what's the message you want to convey with yeah um
04:13kate and i were talking to my son he is uh 20 now and we were talking about sex and
04:19he had these
04:19questions and i was like i've never educated my son on sex you know like we of course like have
04:26the
04:26basics covered but his only source of education has been important and so we have this entire
04:32generation of people who have not been educated how do you make love and like what does that happen
04:37so for example like this very simple thing like when when you're with your partner and you put your
04:42hand on their skin if you move fast the body processes that touch as like just a normal touch
04:48if you possible if you if you move at a certain speed below i think it's like something like um
04:56what is it like like three centimeters per second something very slow and very specific
05:00the nerve fibers say i feel intimate and so it's like the speed of touch communicates the nerve fibers
05:09of am i are we connected are you calculating that speed when you're touching kate yeah i mean
05:13absolutely i mean so and i mean so kate is very good she she is a scientific experiment
05:19but like you know if you do it then you inevitably you get goosebumps because the body registers like
05:24i'm now in an aroused state and so what i wrote was basically an instruction manual on how to have
05:30sex
05:31and so people they read it and they're like this is like you know 50 shades of gray like longevity
05:36version but if you actually decoded it you'd be like it's actually like 10 lessons i was trying to
05:41explain like for example women uh in their arousal period it takes them like 15 minutes to tent
05:47if a woman does not uh you know for like 15 minutes to foreplay then sex is painful for them
05:53and so men you know they get aroused within a minute or two and so there's a disconnect and so
05:58like basic stuff like that so it was like trying to educate people on how do you create good
06:03relationships and loving matter makes good sense it's not every day that a founder is public about
06:09their sex life and mark zuckerberg has posted a lot about smoking meats i've not seen about
06:15him getting his meat smoked um what what what what do your employees make of this
06:23um my son is so cool he just like he belly laughs and he's yes and
06:30your son and also your employees you know um so yeah we i mean we're very clear when people come
06:35to
06:35the office uh or come to work with us we're like look we're pretty rowdy um they know what
06:41they're getting into yeah like yeah so if you like this environment cool this is the kind of
06:44environment if you think it's fun if not then like we're probably not the right fit for you so we
06:47try
06:48to be extremely up front with like who is who we are and what we do yeah makes sense we're
06:53in a city
06:53as i said known for its celibacy right now the founders are going monk mode no dating until series b
07:00is
07:00a mantra yeah yeah engineers have so much time to build and so little time to bone
07:07are they missing out like what is your advice to to those in tech who'd say like a sex life
07:12is
07:12a distraction yeah i mean um like we all know this intuitively that you know a a well-maintained car
07:21drives better than a poorly maintained car that you know a well-rested child performs better than a
07:27poorly arrested child like basically whether it's a mechanical object mechanical object a physical
07:32object or a biological object those things run better when they're healthy like no one wants to
07:37write a shitty code base you want healthy code and so what what founders don't realize is when you're
07:44not taking care of your health you are shitty code like you are not beautiful code and so sometimes it
07:50takes a bit for them to realize that but you know like a a good partnership is really beneficial for
07:56mental health and physical health and really for like most founders have mental health issues
08:02most people in this room have mental health issues like can we be honest and like you know
08:08it's true and like we don't talk about it but like a substantial portion of american citizens have
08:14mental health issues so like yeah i get that it's like a clean uh prescription of like you know
08:20but really i think we're missing we have not created a culture of health and it's hurting everybody
08:25that's fair all right one more quick question about sex we're going there so we'll go there
08:30you measure your nocturnal erections you average about three hours a night yeah is it more different
08:36it's more okay yeah more than your sons more than you well actually we he'd beat him by two minutes
08:41yeah yeah very very discouraging yeah yeah do um post-coital there are those numbers lower
08:49yeah yeah actually yes okay let's quickly move on let's keep addressing the audience um well those
08:56i mean on the nighttime erection stuff this is um men when you don't have nighttime erections you're
09:03five you're like uh 72 percent more likely to have a cardiac event it predicts so the reason why
09:11that predicts yeah there we go uh uh i had never i never caught that before but it does um
09:16but like
09:17the reason why is because it's blood flow and so you look at the capillary size the penis is the
09:22smallest on the capillary size you go to the heart and the brain so it makes sense it would first
09:26show
09:26up and so women too have nighttime erections that are like you probably don't realize this but it's not
09:32it's not a sexual thing it's a natural thing the body does it's like but the body like using it
09:37as
09:37like uh keeping it alive and so women's clitoris and gorges and they wake up at the morning bean
09:42men have a morning wood but it's the same process in men and women every night and so if that's
09:46if
09:46that function is not going well it is an indicator of cardiovascular physiological and psychological
09:51uh problems all right well we're learning so much so quickly
10:01you've you've been very open about how um when you were building brain tree that that is part of
10:07what set you on this this longevity journey when you know going in founder mode and working
10:12endless hours uh you broke down your body and your mental health you're eating poorly um
10:20for the people in the audience who are building right now who don't have the freedom of time that
10:26you have after your exit to have it in a really extensive morning routine um who can't go to bed
10:32at
10:338 30 like how do you optimize while while working yeah endless hours you're basically screwed
10:40i mean that's why i focused on the core things right like the the answer is not go do a
10:47hyperbaric
10:47oxygen therapy and then sauna and then like do you know pilates and plus swimming it's like
10:52turn your screen off stop eating food talk to your stress turn the lights down right like
10:59really basic stuff and it's really more about control that i think the problem a lot of us feel
11:05is we feel out of control because every moment like society is trying to get you addicted to eat their
11:09food to scroll their algorithms so like everyone wants your time attention and your life and so this
11:15is really about i'm gonna take control i'm gonna set a bedtime i'm gonna go to bed i'm gonna turn
11:20off
11:20my fucking phone right like i'm serious like it's it's like we're being crushed and so really is it's
11:26more than it's more it's not really about the longevity stuff it's just like i am an autonomous
11:31and sovereign person and i am not gonna be run over by the world and that's like the the thing
11:37i
11:37think that is most powerful for us is like we have all been run over and it's just really bad
11:40for all
11:41of our mental health makes sense longevity science is evolving you're targeting 2039 as the year we
11:48arrest aging and you say for a second what what that means yeah i mean by by 2039 uh we
11:54think that
11:56one year of time will pass and you will stay the same age so that means your body will never
12:02beat entropy like the body is always going to age but the key is you want to slow your aging
12:07rate down
12:07and then you want to repair what did age and so by 2039 we'll be able to slow our bodies
12:12down to a
12:12certain degree let's just say by 50 with therapies and then we'll have age reversing therapies to get
12:18back so time will pass you will stay the same age that's how being on that timeline at the
12:25same time there's this rising concern that ai is upending the job market it's going to displace
12:31a world historic amount of workers radically accelerate income inequality there's a sense
12:37in silken valley you know you have two to five years to escape the permanent underclass however real
12:42that may be the pursuit of longevity often requires time and money immortals your new startup
12:50um is a million dollars a year per person are we headed is is there a risk that we're headed
12:59to
12:59a society where there are masses of sick poor people and and immortal more or less immortal rich people how
13:10to avoid yeah that yeah we we in conjunction with this what we're doing is we we just uh published
13:16a manifesto called immortalism and it's about uh this time and place where what we're saying is right now
13:23our objective for society is you acquire wealth power and status and you will do that at any cost even
13:30if it costs you your life you'll do it to martyr yourself for that objective and what we're proposing is
13:35that as a species our best interest is in optimizing for existence that above all things we are just
13:44thrilled that we're alive on this earth and this part of the galaxy and there's nothing that would
13:50warrant us compromising that preciousness and so it's a bit it's a big shift but also like if you want
13:56to predict what size of revolutionary ideology is coming you only need to measure the size of the
14:04technological disruption because technology disruption comes it makes it like punches a bunch
14:10of holes in the world and they need to be patched up and so when you look out in the
14:14world you say
14:15right now you say what ideology what philosophy like what framework is going to be strong enough to patch
14:21the world of the wounds that are coming our way there's nothing there's nothing strong enough that is
14:28practically applicable so we're trying to build immortalism because we think there's a a new
14:33ideology is needed for this moment to answer that question it just reframes like what are we as a
14:38species and how does society work makes sense i don't want to get to two more leave some time for
14:42questions you said existence needs to be society's highest priority you say that defeating death will
14:49be humanity's greatest achievement what do you make of silicon valley's growing embrace of defense tech
14:57and war and investing in technology that is both branded as um and built to be maximally lethal
15:04um and some some of your investors john lonsdale logan paul are invested in defense tech what do you
15:09make of yeah i mean humans are a violent species we always have been we still are i can i
15:15don't imagine
15:16that we're just gonna like snap and we're not violent anymore so i would imagine that the existing
15:20tensions the world that keep things somewhat stable will carry on and so it's just a natural uh it's a
15:27natural like strategy for people to maintain security and so i would imagine we'll evolve
15:36somewhat but like right now it's just part of the game is game theory yeah you talk about all the
15:42ways
15:42one should optimize their buyer markers um you tweeted yesterday that we all need to stop drinking and
15:48again i think maybe the long play as the signature cocktail is that self-defeating yeah um you you say
15:55drinking increases your cortisol it elevates your heart rate it shrinks your hippocampus
15:59critics have pointed out that there are plenty of things in life that increase biomarker distress
16:05that make life worth living my daughters are five and two they're shrinking my hippocampus every day
16:12yeah yeah and yet my life is more meaningful and full of purpose and love and awe because of them
16:19it's it's a gift that they're breaking my brain you have children too what's your calculus for you for
16:26us all for optimizing for biomarkers and optimizing for richness of life yeah i think that um the idea
16:34for example that alcohol is a relaxant that makes your life better is a myth i think having children
16:39is a positive right so some things we say are true some things we say are rationalizations and a lot
16:45of
16:45what people say that i want to stay up late and do this and that like i it's rarely a
16:49virtue you know
16:50like we all know this intuitively like rarely do you eat an entire pizza you're like god damn i feel
16:54great about myself like you know i'm living life like it's so much of is like we just built into
17:00our
17:00rationalization that we can't control ourselves but um so i think just being honest about what we're
17:04saying thank you so much we have a quick minute for a couple questions in the audience you jumped out
17:12first
17:15uh testing okay hey brian i was at don't die last year at new york great to see you um
17:19you have
17:20recently done five meo uh meo dmt uh my question is uh has your definition of longevity changed because
17:28of dmt uh it was the most profound experience of my life without question and the omnipresent
17:34of thing i just cannot shake is we humans cannot understand the preciousness of existence we just
17:43can't compute we can't understand if we try you can't understand it and only in that state was i
17:49feel like i really understood how insanely amazing and precious this moment is we have
17:54so that just like i cannot state with words yep
18:05brian thanks anthony to my business insider thanks for being here two questions um we often talk about
18:11how movement is medicine do you agree disagree and second can you talk to us a little about your diet
18:18yeah so 10 10 squats every 40 minutes um is one of the very best things anybody can do for
18:26your health
18:26so just throughout the day like if you're stationary at a desk just stand up do 10 air squats that
18:32is uh
18:32if you do it throughout the day that is equal to a 30 minute walk so it's really efficacious the
18:37muscles suck up the blood glucose so it's a really easy way to be healthy get your body to a
18:42good spot
18:42and then uh for the diet yeah we have this philosophy that every calorie fights for its life
18:47so in in our world we measure every air molecule every water molecule every food molecule like we
18:53are meticulous like right now i'm out in the world this is like terrifying but you know like no for
18:58sure there's room there's toxins and like all kinds of stuff but but like we are extremely meticulous
19:02we're trying to basically follow like if you say what makes a human die our list is like 250 things
19:07long
19:08and then we say what makes a human live and so we just like we really have gone to the
19:11edge of the
19:11earth like how do you quantify life and death it's like such a fun science experiment deep in the back
19:25i'll meet you halfway hi brian thanks so much uh lydia from invisible technologies and i'm a statistician
19:31by trade so when i hear you saying you've run thousands of experiments on yourself i think that's
19:37amazing but i'm curious about the results of those experiments how you think they should be interpreted
19:42and distributed and how do you ensure construct validity when you have an inherent sample size of
19:48one and then the time frame that those of experiments have been run in inherently have a multivariant vibe to
19:53them yep exactly and so it's even more complicated than what you said i've actually i built an ai model
19:58myself and uh we're probably approximating like a billion data points over the past five years
20:04so it's the most quantified human data set in history and so obviously with that you've got very
20:08noisy data but also it's interesting you can distill some pretty large trends and so i think the value
20:14of this experiment is even if you were to say that nothing that i've done has any scientific value
20:21the mimetic and cultural value is worth the project right the fact that i can be in this room and
20:26say go to
20:26bed on time right like if that's the the the contribution or something else but we also like for
20:32example in the psychedelic experiment we found several first in human observations now will they
20:37stay in long-term studies tbd will researchers now pursue it yes have people written you know um to
20:42the government say asking for money for these experiments yes so like there's a ton of spawning
20:46of what we do where people see the experiment they say interesting should we test ourselves so i've been
20:51very surprised at how efficacious n equals one has been to like enliven the world to say should we do
20:56blank
20:58all right i know you have 65 minutes until bedtime so we'll do one more question
21:08hey brian elliot co-founder of ghost team here um we are all going to be living longer and that
21:15might
21:15have implications uh what do you think are going to be some of the biggest impacts of the fact that
21:19we
21:19are all going to be on this planet longer more people on the planet and yeah what what happens then
21:25if you read history humans have never been good at predicting the future in fact they've been awful
21:31and so i think that right now uh like if in in the 1400s you could say i'm a farmer
21:38and my child is
21:40likely to be a farmer and their child is likely to be a farmer but you could probably model the
21:43world out
21:43in a few generations in this moment our ability to model that there to you know the world in a
21:49year
21:49from now is almost absent so our ability to predict through these rough heuristics is now creating a
21:56situation where our ability to predict the future is zero and not only zero our intuitions are working
22:02against us because there's this new emerging technology so my personal opinion is nobody has
22:08anything intelligent to say about the future nobody like in fact when they say when they try to say things
22:15they're revealing their ignorance not their knowledge it's just it's very counterintuitive
22:20you it's you cannot say intelligent things outside of basic things like it's likely the sun's going to
22:25continue around the the earth around the sun sure but like as to human affairs and emergent properties
22:30i think it's zero
22:33oh all my all everything i have i put the battle like the it's just like it's a it's a
22:38random sort of sort
22:39like there's just no way the best futurist in the world has been ray kurzweil you know when he got
22:44that exponential curve he is the best future the best uh futurist that humanity's ever produced and
22:50that was like a stunning observation like in the late 80s outside of him i don't think anyone has
22:55anything interesting to say about the future
22:57the future thank you brian johnson thank you everyone
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