The story of the tech entrepreneur/ the 46-year-old who thinks he can live forever

2023-09-21 19:45:00, Aktualitet CNA

The story of the tech entrepreneur/ the 46-year-old who thinks he can live

"In a small neighborhood in Venice, California, there is a block of sheltered, similar houses, filled with mortals who spend their days on the planet eating pizza with friends, blowing out candles on birthday cakes, and watching late night television. Halfway, there is a modern black building. Here Bryan Johnson is working on what he calls "the most significant revolution in the history of Homo sapiens."

Johnson, 46, is a multimillionaire tech entrepreneur who has spent most of the past three years pursuing one singular goal: not to die. During that time, he has spent more than $4 million developing a life-extension system called Blueprint, in which every decision involving his body is delegated to a team of doctors who use data to developed a strict health regimen to reduce what Johnson calls his "biological age." This system involves taking 111 pills every day, wearing a hat that emits a red light, collecting samples of his stool and sleeping with a small pack attached to his penis to monitor his erections at night.

The story of the tech entrepreneur/ the 46-year-old who thinks he can live

Johnson isn't the only ultra-wealthy middle-aged man struggling to beat the ravages of time. Jeff Bezos and Peter Thiel were both early investors in Unity Biotechnology, a company dedicated to developing therapies to slow or reverse diseases associated with aging. Elite athletes use therapies to maintain their youthful bodies, from hyperbaric and cryotherapy chambers to "recovery pajamas." But Johnson's research isn't just about posture or maintaining muscle tone. It's about turning his entire body into an anti-aging algorithm. He believes that death is optional. He thinks he will never die.

The story of the tech entrepreneur/ the 46-year-old who thinks he can live

Delegating management of his body means overcoming what Johnson calls his "weird mind"—the part of us that wants to eat ice cream after dinner, or have sex at 1 a.m., or drink beer with friends. The goal is to make his 46-year-old organs look and act like 18-year-old organs. Johnson says data compiled by his doctors suggests Blueprint has so far given him the bones of a 30-year-old and the heart of a 37-year-old. The experiment has "proved that a competent system is better at managing me than a human," says Johnson, a discovery he says is "reshaping what it means to be human." He describes his intense diet and exercise regimen as somewhere between the Italian Renaissance and the invention of calculus in the pantheon of human achievement. Michelangelo had the Sistine Chapel; Johnson has his own special green juice.

The story of the tech entrepreneur/ the 46-year-old who thinks he can live

Kate Tolo, a 27-year-old former model originally from Australia, is Johnson's chief marketing officer and most loyal disciple. Two months ago, she became the first person other than Johnson to commit to Blueprint, making it the first test of how Blueprint works in a female body. Tolo is known as Blueprint XX.

The house is beautiful and uncluttered, with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the pool and lush greenery outside. It reminds me of an Apple Store in a jungle. Tolo offers me a small bowl of specialty chocolate that was "undutched," stripped of heavy metals and sourced only from regions with high polyphenol density. It tastes like a foot. She also makes me a juice-like blend that contains chlorella powder with spermidine, amino complex, creatine, collagen peptides, cocoa flavanols, and ceylon cinnamon. Tolo and Johnson call it the Green Giant, but it looks almost black. She manages to blend it without getting a single stain of the dark sludge on her pristine white suit. "It moves through some people's digestive system faster than others," she says. gesturing to the nearby bathroom. I take a sip. It tastes like Gatorade, but with sand.

The story of the tech entrepreneur/ the 46-year-old who thinks he can live

Johnson walks into the room, wearing a green T-shirt and tiny white shorts. He has the body of an 18-year-old and the face of someone who spent millions trying to look like an 18-year-old. His skin is pale and shiny, which is partly due to the many laser treatments he's had, and partly because he has no hair on his entire body. The hair on his head "is not dyed," Johnson says, but he uses a "gray-reversal mixture" that includes "a plant extract" that dyes the hair a dark brown.

The story of the tech entrepreneur/ the 46-year-old who thinks he can live

The next day, Johnson walks me through his morning routine, step by step. He woke up at 4:53am but delayed most of his routine until I arrived at 7am to watch him. His bedroom has almost nothing in it: no pictures, no books, no TV, no glasses of water, no phone charger, no chair with piled clothes, no towels, no mirror, nothing. "I sleep here alone," he says. "No work, no reading." The only two objects in the room besides his bed are a laser face shield he uses to boost collagen and reduce wrinkles, and the device he wears on his penis while he sleeps to measure his erection at night. "I average two hours and 12 minutes each night of an erection of some quality," he says. "To be 18 years old,

The story of the tech entrepreneur/ the 46-year-old who thinks he can live

There were so many things I wanted to do, even if I knew that any pleasure could bring me closer to death. I wanted to meet a friend for cocktails in Santa Monica. I wanted to curl up in my hotel bed and watch And Just Like That, and I wanted to stay up too late texting my friends about it. I wanted to FaceTime my daughter, the one who had made me gain 30 pounds when I ate nothing but buttery macaroni and pizza cheese for most of my pregnancy. I wanted to catch the first plane home, even if I had to land at 1 in the morning and sleep four hours, so that I could be there when she wakes up and says "Get up!" with the force of a commanding officer. I wanted eggs and bacon for breakfast. I didn't want to stop wanting. Life is too short."/ Time