Have you heard of Bryan Johnson – tech centimillionaire turned longevity evangelist? He made headlines when he started getting infusions of his own son's blood as a part of his quest to live forever. And he turned that quest into "Don't Die," a movement he's calling a religion. Johnson is pretty intent on longevity – but he's not the only one. Other tech magnates are bought in, too. But in the words of Freddie Mercury, who wants to live forever, and why? What does all of this have to do with the prediction of an AI takeover, and what does this mean for how we think about what's "human?" Brittany is joined by journalists Michelle Santiago Cortes and Tara Isabella Burton to get into what might be a new religion of longevity.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
Chapter 1: Who is Bryan Johnson and what is his quest for longevity?
Hello, hello. I'm Brittany Luce, and you're listening to It's Been a Minute from NPR, a show about what's going on in culture and why it doesn't happen by accident. Have you heard of this guy named Brian Johnson? Tech sent a millionaire turned health guru? Maybe you know him from when he started getting infusions of his own son's blood.
Thanks for the plasma. No worries.
Or for saying that he wants to live forever.
To put it simply, you don't want to die. Yeah, that's right.
Or how he turned that idea into a movement he's calling Don't Die.
Don't Die is a religion. Don't Die is an economic system. Don't Die is a political system. Don't Die is an ethical, moral, social system.
If this seems bombastic, it's because it is. I think he's smart about how to make things go viral, to share his ideas about how to live and therefore how not to die, which includes some pretty basic stuff. Here's journalist Michelle Santiago-Cortez.
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Chapter 2: What are the scientific and unconventional methods Bryan Johnson uses to extend life?
He's doing a lot of common sense things like prioritizing sleep. I think he's the most bullish on sleep. He's minimizing his sun exposure. He's exercising.
And he also does some stuff that isn't so basic. like a kind of gene editing that hasn't been approved by the FDA, or not eating past 11 a.m., or wearing a hat that shoots red lights into his scalp. And for a while, he was taking the same medication that keeps people from rejecting their donated organs. This one guy is pretty extreme about longevity, but he's not the only one.
The longevity industry is worth over $25 billion, and other tech magnates are bought in too. But it's all left me wondering, in the words of Freddie Mercury, just who wants to live forever and why? And what does that mean for the rest of us?
To get into what might be a new religion of longevity and what it has to do with a prediction of total AI takeover, I'm joined by Michelle, who you heard earlier. Thanks for having me. And journalist Tara Isabella Burton. Thank you so much for having us. Let's get into it. So to start off, all the stuff Brian Johnson is doing to try to not die, do we know anything about the efficacy of all of it?
Chapter 3: Why is the longevity movement gaining traction among tech billionaires?
I mean, I guess that's kind of like the million-dollar question because he claims his protocol, which he calls Blueprint, is science-based, evidence-backed. He often refers to it as an algorithm. Some of these things are...
proven some are not and that kind of is what makes his let's say his influencing because so far that's really mostly what it is compelling he's trying all kinds of interventions there's no way of knowing what interventions are successful because he's doing a
So though Brian is particularly intense about this stuff, he's not the only one who's into longevity. There's a whole community of people, most of whom are kind of rich tech bros like him or adjacent to that world. Sam Altman and Peter Thiel are also investing in longevity. And stay with me while I'm explaining this.
There is an island off the coast of Honduras that has much more relaxed regulations. So companies doing longevity science like Minicircle, which does gene editing, these companies can bypass the FDA while on the island. And there's demand for that. I think it's normal for people to be interested in living a longer life. But Tara, why to this extreme within this group of people? And why now? Yeah.
So I see the current interest in longevity research as having, in part, a religious character. I think we can look at it as part of a whole bunch of things happening, particularly in the tech world, but in the culture more broadly now. that have a kind of spiritual sensibility around the idea of developing the post-human.
This is associated with the transhumanist movement, with biohacking, with other forms of life optimization. But the idea behind it in many cases is that what it means to be human is to transcend our own humanity, to defeat death in the case of longevity research, or in the case of building AI, to build the thing that comes next. What if we build God rather than worship God?
And Brian Johnson is explicit about this on X. He specifically says, like, level one is you start a company. Level two is that you start a country. Level three is a religion. Level four is don't die. And level five is become God. So he's, you know, not exactly being subtle about it. He's not being coy.
This is not just that he wants to live forever because, you know, he personally wants to live forever and things to be kind of cool. He very much sees this as the frontier of the human experience. He is leading the charge to the post-human age.
you know, science and religion weren't always in opposition to each other, historically speaking. And as they've been separated and competing in terms of who gets the final say of what it means to be alive at what this earth means, I think that the science camp has proven to be a bit more lucrative where someone like Brian Johnson can kind of build the church that sells olive oil and protein bars.
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Chapter 4: How is longevity linked to the concept of a new religion or spirituality?
That is an excellent point. You know, I read one piece in The New Yorker by David Owen that theorized, and to quote him, simple arithmetic shows that if they live a normal lifespan, they won't have time to spend enough of their money. And Johnson himself described the time that he's added to his life as a new kind of wealth creation. You know, the old adage, like people say, time is money.
And these guys already have a lot of money. What do you think about that?
This is all happening in and against the backdrop of the attention economy. Our time is money in a very particular way now because more and more of us, in terms of how we consume media, how we live our lives, so much of it online, our attention is in fact monetizable online. our time makes money for other people.
Something I don't want to overlook about Brian Johnson is that he is also in some ways could be considered a wellness influencer. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. His fame, his public persona is, He is able to do what he's doing in part because we are watching it. We can't look away. He is a fascinating reality show character. We watch the documentary that was made about him. We read his tweets.
And so he simultaneously perhaps is extending his own lifespan, but he's also a kind of very measurably taking from our lifespan in the sense that our time is being dedicated to him.
You know, at the same time, the healthcare system in this country is famously dysfunctional. It can be hard to access. It can be prohibitively expensive. And one survey shows that doctors and their staff spend, I'm sorry, I have to give a dramatic pause here. the equivalent of two full business days every week just dealing with insurance companies.
Good healthcare plans cost more, and so does living a healthy lifestyle that keeps people from a lot of types of sickness and death. Is a long life a kind of luxury?
People today are less and less able to save up for retirement. Imagine the torture of having to save up for an extra 20 years. I don't think most people are in a financial position to finance the last 10 years of their life, much less an additional 30. So I almost feel like... Only someone with money to spare could think of it as like an attainable goal.
Absolutely. In an era where saving for retirement is a kind of a source of stress and impossibility for so many, the idea that infinite time is something to be looked at only with desire rather than fear does mean a long life is for the wealthy.
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Chapter 5: What ethical and socioeconomic issues arise from longevity as a luxury for the wealthy?
Chapter 6: How does the attention economy relate to Bryan Johnson's longevity efforts?
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Going back to Brian Johnson, the other thing I'm really struck by is how heavily edited Johnson's own desires are. Like he says he's trying to eliminate his quote unquote rascal mind. Like the part of him that wants to eat pizza or stay up late, which I'm like, that's my full brain. He's got a team of doctors working with him to try to stop his aging. But he also has, as you said,
and algorithm run his life for him to take the human rascal brain out of control. I'm really interested in that piece. All of this longevity stuff for him is really wrapped up in his beliefs about AI. He says that AI superintelligence is inevitable and that, quote, we are at risk of extinction without a unifying framework to solve human alignment and AI alignment.
It's about making sure we exist long enough to figure out what's next. So these things, they don't logically follow to me. Could you explain what's going on here?
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Chapter 7: What is the connection between longevity and the fear of an AI takeover?
And particularly the X risk, the existential risk that someone might accidentally create an artificial intelligence that is hostile to humans and wipes us out. How do you address that fear? One answer is to stop AI development. One is to ensure that whatever AI you are creating wants to work with humans or is going to be friendly to humans.
Yeah, or in Johnson's case, that he can be around to figure out the answer. Absolutely. This is the thing, though. Okay, so like, I think where I'm at with all this, I'm like surprised that this total belief that AI is going to take over. And it's either going to be a good thing, or it's going to be a bad thing. But either way, we need to be prepared.
And that's what Brian Johnson says is behind his movement or religion, as he has called it, don't die. But where are we seeing that belief about AI shaping our culture in other ways?
This is where it can get a bit nerving. If you were on Twitter in the last two, three years where Elon Musk and Salman Altman and Andrasen and all these other tech people were having discussions about how important AI is, how urgent it is, what should we do with it? Some people kind of cycled through these labels that we would often see on their bios.
For example, some people would say, if we don't accelerate AI, we're all going to die. And so there's accelerationism. Or they would call people that would... say, hey, we need a bit more regulation on AI. We need to pump the brakes. They would call them doomers. So it was very much a part of their public discourse about basically framing AI as an existential milestone.
Basically saying that we are on the cusp of developing a technology so powerful that And this is the part where it's up for discussion. It's so powerful, it will make death become obsolete. Or it's so powerful that it might kill us, so we have to be really nice to it. Or it's going to solve all our problems, so it's our moral imperative that we give it everything we've got.
I think what that did was create an urgency, right? Not coincidentally... AI requires a boatload of water, boatload of power, a boatload of fossil fuel to make it happen. So I do feel like a lot of this was their making appeals to mobilize resources. They'll basically promote their product as the one solution to all of humanity's problems. If only you invest all your money into them.
If only you deregulate... Let them have access to all the water, to all the fossil fuels so they can advance their technologies. It seems convenient that the product you're selling is going to solve the world's problems. And it's urgent, right? And I know it's cynical, but at the end of the day, Brian Johnson is selling oil.
Literally, literally a $35 bottle of olive oil called snake oil. Okay, so I get that part, but another thing I have trouble wrapping my head around is how monastic his life is. As we said, he has no pizza, no late night hangs with friends. He's trying to eliminate the human tendency to want things that may be bad for our bodies, but are, at least for me, good for the soul.
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