The Determined Society with Shawn French
Reversing Aging and Living Longer with Bryan Johnson: The Blueprint for Longevity
Mon, 31 Mar 2025
In this episode of The Determined Society, Shawn French sits down with longevity expert Bryan Johnson, the creator of the Don't Die Summit and founder of Blueprint. They discuss how Bryan has reversed his aging process, optimized his health, and improved his life through evidence-based strategies, plant-based nutrition, and tech-driven wellness. Bryan shares how we can all live longer, healthier lives, and how small, daily changes can have a monumental impact. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: What is the significance of reversing aging?
What's up, everybody? Welcome back to another episode of The Determined Society. I'm your host, Sean French, and before I introduce today's guest, please go ahead and hit follow on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts, and let us know what you loved about today's guest. So today I have with us a longevity expert, a man who has set out to literally say don't die.
He's created the Don't Die Summit and the Blueprint. I have with us Netflix's own Brian Johnson, what's up, brother? Hey, good to see you. It's so good to see you, man. It's so good to see you. I've seen so many things from you. I feel like I already know you. How do I match up in real life? Well, dude, you're as handsome as ever, okay?
And I'm sitting over here, you know, looking at probably the most in shape individual on the face of this earth. Yeah.
I mean, what does this look like from your vantage point when you see what I post and the doc, like what goes through your mind?
I would say initial, to be fair, like, oh my God, that's a lot, right? It's a lot. But then when I peeled back the onion a little bit, I was really starting to see the mission, right? The mission of like, hey, we can reverse the aging process and we can have more time on this earth with the ones that we love.
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Chapter 2: How did Bryan Johnson start his journey in longevity?
And I just, I adore the fact that you've pretty much turned yourself into a guinea pig to help
society get healthier yeah you know i need to find a new word besides guinea pig i would say that that is it's like such a common phrase i think of myself more as an explorer you know i've earned a shackleton style but um i yeah i need to figure out how to bridge from guinea pig to shackleton what do your friends think of what i'm doing
Dude, of you? I mean, everybody's pretty much blown away, man. I mean, they're very excited about this episode being recorded and going out because what I think you've done is create an undercurrent of what everybody really wants, right? Everybody wants more time on this earth and nobody wants to really get sick But I think the big disconnect, Brian, is... There's many things that stuck with me.
But one comment that you made on your show was, I used to eat with my mind and now I eat with my body. I'm like, holy shit. Hold on a second. What does that actually mean? Because when you look at that, it causes for a different action, right? And... In my circle, at least, they're very intrigued and very excited. Now, I know you've caught a lot of hate. I mean, you know that.
You've talked about it openly. And I kind of find it comical, to be quite honest with you.
Yeah, yeah. What's the best burn one of your friends has made of me?
None of my friends have burned anything of you, dude. Not one. Not one. I watched the documentary with my wife and she's like, wow, that's a lot. She goes, but hey, can we just do some of this? Yeah. Because we can't set up a lab in our house. And I'm like, I get it. But for my circle, there's been no burns on you. Everybody's just intrigued.
Yeah, Sean, I'm impressed that you picked up that one line because you correctly identified the essence of this entire thing in that one line. Thank you. I think it zips by most people because it's such an absurd thought and it's like weird and it's not quite understandable. So yeah, you nailed it.
Yeah, I mean, walk the audience through that though, right? Because what does that actually, you know, we can say it, right? But I'm also curious to dive deeper into that because I've made a lot of improvements lately, but there's still a ton I can do because I still, we're emotional beings, right? So for me, if I'm happy, I wanna eat, I wanna celebrate. If I'm sad, I wanna eat because I'm down.
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Chapter 3: What role does AI play in extending human lifespan?
Exactly. So here's the key thing that I don't think people understand, which, which breaks their brains is I'll get a historical example that will help make sense of this. So if you live in the year 1870 and you're about to get surgery, You live in a small town and there's this new idea floating about that says there are these microscopic objects that are called bacteria.
They lead to infection and death. And that you can get rid of these things if you wash your hands and clean your instruments before, you know, between surgeries. Now, half the town's like, that's really crazy. We know that people die because of bad spirits. And you're telling me that something beyond the resolution of my eyes that I can't see, that's the thing that's causing death? I don't buy it.
Now, if you're an observer to this conversation, the single most important thing for you to figure out is, is this new idea correct or incorrect? Because if it's correct... And you go in there because at the time, you know, gentlemen. So if somebody didn't buy the theory, if you're a doctor, you're performing surgery and you don't wash your hands, you know, gentlemen, don't wash your hands.
It was actually stigmatized. It's like, you're an idiot and we don't like you. We're going to ostracize you. And so you want to know, and it turns out the idea was actually correct. That bacteria are real. These microscopic objects do cause infection. They can lead to death. And so doctors who were washing their hands and washing their instruments, they in fact did have lower mortality rates.
And so I want to propose to the world right now that there is a new idea floating about town. And it's this, that we are the first generation who won't die. Now, if you sit in that contemplation for a minute, it's not that we actually know how to not die. It's that we're giving birth to AI and the AI is moving fast, far faster than any one of us can contemplate.
and that the incremental progress AI is going to make is going to slowly extend our lifespans, maybe until we get to a point where we just say, we really don't know if there's an end to this. We can't quite see it. We have all these abilities to regenerate our body. And so what I'm proposing is that that's the moment.
Now, up until this moment, the entire philosophy of the human race could be summarized in YOLO, LOL. If I'm gonna die, You know, like I might as well blank. Like I might as well conquer territory and try to get rich. I might as well sacrifice my health to achieve fame. I might as well pursue debauchery and pleasure because blank.
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Chapter 4: How does Bryan Johnson's approach differ from conventional health advice?
And so most of the world operates on this principle where they say, I'm going to die. What does it matter? And I'm saying to them, like, you don't understand. There's this really new important question. And you really want to know if this is true or false.
It's, I'm like, I'm, my mind's going a lot of different places when you're, when you're speaking about that. But the one particular place that I want to speak about is, you know, to your point, the YOLO, right? We're going to go party and we're going to go do all these things. We're going to work ourself till we're miserable and not have enough space to be present with our families, et cetera.
Right. That's okay. Society accepts that. Society accepts seeing people on social media drinking, talking about porn, all this different stuff, but it's taboo to want to live longer? How is that? I mean, right, Ryan? Like, go on, man. Like, what are your thoughts on that? Like, how do you work through that and how do you educate people on that specific point?
Yeah, I do say that my life is bizarre because I basically spend my time telling people that dying is dumb and I get called a weird motherfucker.
you know, like, well, dude, I mean, like, I mean, but for most people, like, I mean, it was even in your doc, like, you know, the view was bashing you. Like one lady is like, F you Brian. It's like, you're, you're missing it. And I, and I, and I think what it, what it did though, I think what it did, Brian, and I tend to look at things deeply.
That's why I didn't miss that one statement in your, in your documentary is like, You remind people that they aren't doing the right stuff. I know, it's true. And it's a threat. Yeah. Especially to the medical industry. Because we all know there's no gain, there's no profit in healthy people.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I, yeah, yeah, I guess there really could be, there should be, but you're right. I mean, I think I, and I, I do empathize with people because I do remember being obese and I also remember wanting to be healthy and wanting to be fit and then having personal behaviors like overeating that, you know, I couldn't stop and that that's a really bad feeling.
And so this is in part why when people hate on me, um, It doesn't bother me at all. People are in a tough spot and they're trying to be their best selves. And that's really hard. It's very, very hard to be human. And then it's especially hard now because every corporation, 99% of corporations out there are trying to get you to die, right? They're feeding you fast food.
They're giving you addictive algorithms. The number of corporations and influences in your life who are trying to help you not die You can count on one finger. There's just like, there's so few people who are actually like in your corner saying like, you can become a great, you know, you can feel great. You can actually get your mental wellness under control.
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Chapter 5: What is the importance of sleep in improving health?
Right. And then I had some black coffee. And I just didn't want to touch food until later on in the day. And by that point, I'm underfed. And then I'm not making the best decision moving forward.
And I think that's the game that everybody's playing in society is what one decision that you make at night really is going to impact how you feel in the morning and impact your decision making throughout the day. And then when it really hurts and you've been there, is it's like at night when you have the decision fatigue and that's when you fall off the rails. That's when you binge.
And then you start to cycle over.
Exactly. So we actually proved this with evidence where my brain interface company, Kernel, we measured my willpower when I had a good night's sleep with a lot of deep sleep and when I didn't, I had bad deep sleep. And we saw that when I had poor sleep, like low levels of deep sleep, it demolished my willpower.
Was that because there's a high level of cortisol?
It changes all, I mean, yeah, when you don't sleep well, it changes all the chemistry in your body. that you crave junk. And so if you just pay attention to your own patterns, this is why I say that sleep is the number one life. You should basically plan your life around sleep because nothing influences your life more than sleep. It creates this domino effect for all things.
So actually, I'll give you some... Actually, should I lay this out for you? Yeah, please. Okay, so for your listeners, this is what I would tell you to do as your number one most important thing is you want to track your resting heart rate before sleep. So when you lay down to go to bed, put your head on the pillow, take a few deep breaths. and calm yourself down, that's your resting heart rate.
And so if you have a wearable, like an Aura, Whoop, Apple Watch, Garmin, you know, pull it up and look at your heart rate. If you don't, just take a pulse on your neck. So take it for six seconds and then times that by 10. That's your resting heart rate. Now, let's just say you're at 60 beats per minute as your baseline. Your goal for the next month is to reduce that by 10%.
So in one month from now, when you lay down to bed and you look at your resting heart rate, you want it to be, let's say, 54. Now, the reason why that's important is the lower your heart rate, the better your sleep. It's incredible. And so you will then structure your entire life around lowering your resting heart rate.
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Chapter 6: How can one optimize their daily routine for better sleep?
And then you go to sleep, you wake up at one in the morning, you're looping again and again. So there's more strategies I could tell you about, you know, some of the time, I guess. But like that, if you can do one thing in your entire life, lower your resting heart rate for sleep.
And it's so good because it includes what you eat, when you eat, it includes your cardiovascular hip fitness, like exercise, right? And once you get good sleep, you then have substantially more willpower, which means you're more likely to exercise. If you exercise, you're more likely to eat well.
So it's the single most powerful marker because it sits at the epicenter of the domino effect, either for positive or for negative. But it's like, I've not found anything as good as that of like just simplifying all of life into one biomarker.
And you're not giving advice that is, you don't have to be rich to do that. You don't have to be an entrepreneur. You don't have to be anything other than let's just stay present and let's try this. Let's, okay, 8 p.m., now 7 p.m., now 6 p.m. And if I can get away at 5 p.m. and that's my sweet spot, well, then why wouldn't you continue it, right? Right.
Let me ask you this is something I was thinking about when I was, you know, watching your documentary and, and just like other things that I've seen from you, you know, based on body composition, everything like that. You stop eating at 11 and you're vegan by choice, correct? Yeah, plant based. Okay, plant based. How in the world? How do you hold so much muscle?
I'm actually curious because I think there's a, and this is why I asked the question for the audience listening and watching. This is why I ask because everybody tells us that you need to have, you know, right now I'm 198 pounds. Well, if I want to gain all this muscle and shred fat, then I need to have 250 to 300 grams of protein a day.
Well, I can't get that by 11 or even probably 4 or 5 p.m., right? Because that's a lot of protein. What are your thoughts on that? Because when I look at you, you're plant-based. There's no way in God's green earth you're getting over 200 to 250 grams of protein a day.
Yeah, exactly.
And look at you.
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