For a second, I fell underneath the spell of Bryan Johnson.
Bathed in early-morning daylight, the 46-year-old L.A.-based tech centimillionaire and longevity movie star didn’t look a lot youthful than his age, though he claims to have the wrinkles of a 10-year-old and organs which might be a number of years youthful than his lifespan.
We had been standing on the Temescal Canyon trailhead in Pacific Palisades on Jan. 13, forward of a Johnson-sponsored “Don’t Die” hike, one in all many organized the world over that day and the one one hosted by him. Of the 500-plus individuals who had RSVP’d for the L.A. occasion, about 200 confirmed up. Some had slept of their automobiles to make it.
“The world is so stuffed with issues that take us away from what we actually need,” he instructed the group.
Johnson led us in a respiratory train, swaying his pale and sinewy physique to the digital dance music music “Sundream” by Rüfüs Du Sol. Eyes closed, arms draped over neighbors, his followers inhaled and exhaled slowly. Restaurant servers and retail employees embraced company executives and actual property brokers. Of their common lives, many of those Gen Zers, millennials and child boomers had been worlds aside. Right here, they had been related by a want to reside a very long time — perhaps perpetually.
Blueprint, Johnson’s wellness program, has gained a cult-like fan base in L.A. and past. Comply with the routine, he says, and reduce your organic age, though scientists and others criticize his strategy. He’s only one topic, they are saying, and he tries many anti-aging strategies directly, making it onerous to find out trigger and impact.
Johnson is undeterred.
“For the primary time within the historical past of Homo sapiens, it’s doable to say with a straight face that loss of life could not be inevitable,” he instructed me on the hike. It’s a press release he has made many instances.
I had discovered about Johnson at a celebration in L.A. months earlier, after noticing my first pesky eye wrinkles at age 35. Although I aspire to age fearlessly, I used to be feeling anxious about my waning youth in our image-obsessed metropolis.
One of many occasion friends, a dermatologist, regaled me with daring and seductive claims in regards to the tempo of anti-aging analysis. He mentioned a rich man in L.A. was spending thousands and thousands on self-experimentation to uncover the secrets and techniques of everlasting youth in our lifetimes.
After I Googled him, I used to be skeptical. A former Mormon from Utah who created a credit-card processing firm that bought for $800 million, Johnson now brags in regards to the frequency of his erections and posts photographs of himself through which he appears to be like as ghostly because the Roman statues on the Getty. He eats largely seeds, greens and greater than 100 every day dietary supplements. He workouts rigorously and pays for red-light remedy, amongst different issues.
He calls himself a “genetically enhanced human,” having undergone $25,000-a-dose gene remedy in Honduras that’s not accepted by the Meals and Drug Administration. It’s obtainable solely on the island of Roatan, the place Hondurans say they concern displacement by U.S. billionaires who’ve bulldozed their land to create a regulation-free playground for the wealthy. The remedy makes use of follistatin, a morphogenetic hormone that’s believed to spice up muscle mass and struggle irritation. In a single examine, it prolonged the lifespan of mice.
However in particular person, Johnson appears to be like human. Bodily match however mortal. Center-aged.
In California, Johnson is just not distinctive. Psychonauts and seekers right here have lengthy launched into quixotic quests to transcend our widespread actuality, using all the things from pure medication and meditation to man-made chemical compounds and high-tech “transhumanism.” I’m cautious of such developments, which might be escapist. I experimented with them as a teen; they made me self-destructive and dissociated.
However on the hike, Johnson’s followers appeared health-conscious and current. His movies throughout social media, the place he has greater than 1.6 million followers, inspired them to prioritize self-care, they instructed me. They weren’t so positive about Johnson’s immortality claims, however they believed in his wellness goals.
I met a 54-year-old most cancers survivor who mentioned she reversed her Kind 2 diabetes to pre-diabetes utilizing Johnson’s recommendation.
One other hiker, David McGill-Soriano, a 26-year-old Lengthy Seaside resident and gang prevention counselor, had been hit by a automotive. He discovered Johnson on YouTube whereas bedridden with a fractured tibia and different accidents. Johnson’s religion in human perfectibility, he instructed me, impressed him to work to regain his power.
“I’m so grateful for the Blueprint,” he mentioned.
Whereas some see Johnson’s Blueprint as a approach to defy grind tradition, others see it as a way to hustle more durable.
“I’m at all times on the lookout for methods to be an excellent robotic and carry out higher,” mentioned Diego Padilla, a 48-year-old aerospace govt who was carrying his Yorkshire terrier up the path. He trusts Johnson as a result of he’d made himself a guinea pig.
“I don’t like animal testing in any way,” Padilla instructed me, cuddling his canine.
Johnson, who says he’s tried shock remedy on his penis and infusions of his teenage son’s blood plasma to reverse ageing, measures quite a few biomarkers in his physique with a crew of docs and posts the information on his web site.
“I believe he’s attempting to democratize what he’s doing,” Padilla mentioned. The Blueprint web site hyperlinks to gadgets resembling a $150 erection tracker and a $599 epigenetic tracker, in case anybody needs to collect their very own information.
When I discovered Johnson on the path, I requested him how a single mother working three jobs may benefit from his program. He instructed me he was making a wholesome meals service that will be cost-competitive with quick meals.
“We’ve principally addressed the accessibility downside,” he mentioned.
To this point, he’s advertising and marketing $30 bottles of olive oil he could rebrand as Snake Oil, $39 cocoa powder, $25 macadamia bars and different merchandise.
Some specialists warn in opposition to the protocols Johnson promotes. Valter Longo, director of the USC Longevity Institute and professor of organic science, says a few of Johnson’s therapy combos, such because the 100-plus dietary supplements, may very well be dangerous.
“You may trigger short-term advantages, however ultimately that may most likely flip into long-term issues,” he instructed me.
Earlier than pivoting to wellness, Johnson invested in firms that endeavored to make the world programmable into zeros and ones. He spoke of people as reducible to code, arguing that the longer term will probably be much less about human or civil rights than about “evolution rights.” And he advocated for the merging of people and machines.
“The connection between human intelligence and synthetic intelligence (HI + AI) will essentially be one in all symbiosis,” he wrote in 2016.
Johnson’s religion in AI is central to what he’s promoting at Blueprint. On the web site, he describes Blueprint not as a life-style model however as “an algorithm that takes higher care of me than I can myself.”
As we hiked, I instructed him I used to be cautious of his argument that we must always defer to AI for our selections. I needed to know why he would encourage individuals to surrender their free will at a time of rising authoritarianism and the erosion of our autonomy through Large Tech.
“Don’t you see a threat there?” I requested.
He replied that it was regular to be skeptical, as his thought was “on par with the most important concepts that Homo sapiens have ever handled,” resembling the truth that the Earth isn’t the middle of the universe. “This concept that we might not be the most effective middle of decision-making?” I requested. “Precisely proper,” he mentioned.
Johnson argues that people are self-destructive and that we’d like AI to save lots of us from ourselves.
“What I’m suggesting is each human and each system must be in test,” he instructed me, including that know-how can even save the Earth. “We now have the identical downside with the care of the Earth as we do with our physique.”
As we reached the top of the path, with its view of the ocean, Johnson introduced a dance occasion. As Rüfüs Du Sol’s “On My Knees” performed on a speaker, he bobbed up and down. Different hikers joined in.
Finally, the group returned to the trailhead, the place Johnson’s crew had ready “nutty pudding” and olive oil photographs for everybody. Johnson stood on a picnic desk and declared that he was plotting to barter reductions for his followers to get the unproved gene remedy in Honduras and different therapies. “We may turn out to be a bulk shopping for membership for longevity therapies,” he mentioned, to whoops and cheers.
“We’re going from Homo sapiens to Homo evolutis,” Johnson mentioned. “We’re a distinct species.”
It was a brand new type of manifest future, 100% California and oblivious to its potential wreckage.
