The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett - The Anti-Ageing Expert: "I Have The Erection Of An 18 Year Old!", "This Food Reverses Your Age!", "This Oil Reduces Inflammation by 85%!"

Episode Date: November 9, 2023

Can we slow down ageing? Could we even reverse it? And, is death potentially optional? In this new episode Steven sits down again with entrepreneur, anti-aging and longevity pioneer Bryan Johnson. In 2007, Bryan founded the payment processing company ‘Braintree’, and was soon 47th on Inc. magazine’s list of the fastest growing companies in America. Bryan sold Braintree in 2013 for $800 million. Since then he founded ‘Project Blueprint’ in 2021. ‘Blueprint’ is an algorithmic approach to optimal health and ageing reversal, Bryan is their first test subject. In this conversation Bryan and Steven discuss topics, such as: Fighting against depression for a decade in his early 20’s Wondering whether life was worth living Struggling to balance religion, marriage, and depression. Trying to find ways to overcome depression How he was able to find freedom Breaking free from a toxic relationship The algorithm that controls human behaviour The impact of negative self-talk Understanding his self-destructive tendencies His daily battles against harmful actions Confronting death How humans are self-sabotaging Recognising society's illness and self-harm. Why there is a collective existential crisis Why driving is the most dangerous act The impact of sleep Why it is possible for humans to live forever How he will live to 125 years old Why olive oil reverses ageing How he is tricking his DNA to reverse ageing Why he is measuring his night time erections You can follow all the work and progress of Bryan and Blueprint here: https://bit.ly/3QP8VF2 Follow Bryan: Instagram: https://bit.ly/3rTLMaF Twitter: https://bit.ly/47hUDDi If you enjoyed this episode, I recommend you check out my first conversation with Bryan Johnson, which you can find here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yfoonW1InE Follow me: https://beacons.ai/diaryofaceo

Quick one. Just wanted to say a big thank you to three people very quickly. First people I want to say thank you to is all of you that listen to the show. Never in my wildest dreams is all I can say. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I'd start a podcast in my kitchen and that it would expand all over the world as it has done. And we've now opened our first studio in America, thanks to my very helpful team led by Jack on the production side of things. So thank you to Jack and the team for building out the new American studio. And thirdly to to Amazon Music, who when they heard that we were expanding to the United States, and I'd be recording a lot more over in the States, they put a massive billboard in Times Square for the show. So thank you so much, Amazon Music. Thank you to our team. And

thank you to all of you that listened to this show. Let's continue. What on earth have you given me? That is how you can measure your nighttime erections. It's unbelievable in ways it improves health and wellness. Brian Johnson is back. The billionaire who's spending $2 million a year to stay young forever. Through algorithmic precision. This is the most impactful humanitarian project ever. Trying to find the very best science in the world

for how you can extend your life. And how's it been going? Honestly, I'm in the absolute peak performance of my entire life. I've extended my lifespan over 30%, reduced my age by 12 years, increased muscle and strength, and now six months of perfect sleep. I've accomplished the best sleep score in history. A demonstration of human ability. Because if I can do it, everyone else can do it too. Every second of every day, we're all trying not to die. That's what we're doing as a society right now.

It's not working very well. But if an algorithm could manage your health and wellness for you and achieve near perfect health, would you opt into that? Because we found it. But what can the average person do? One thing that works is... Really? Yeah, it's like the super of superfoods.

There you go. That is not how you're meant to have that. And what comes next? The best is yet to come. Kate Tolo. Kate, will you come on out? So you're the first woman on Earth to follow Brian's lifestyle. That's right.

What's been the biggest sacrifice? Brian, you're now coming up on almost three years since you started Blueprint, which is your sort of anti-aging, life-extending longevity protocol. Is that accurate? That's accurate. Give me a overview of the benefits you've been able to achieve in those three years.

I legitimately have never been happier in my entire life. Why? It's like when you have a series of bad nights of sleep and you're eating poorly and you sleep poorly, in a week or two, you just normalize to that new norm. You don't realize what you've lost. It just becomes invisible to you. And then when you bounce back after a really great night's sleep and you take care of yourself, you make the observation, this is the most remarkable thing ever. I wish i could exist like this all the time and i've hit that state where i'm in the absolute peak performance of my entire life i've never been as well rested i've never been as clear with uh greater clarity of mind i've never

been more calm emotionally yeah you know i'm not provoked i'm not irritable things that i struggled with before. It's true that you don't know how bad you felt until you feel good. I can relate. Dealing with oneself is the most challenging thing. This is from my experience. The most challenging thing in my existence is understanding my own self.

Trying to map out where I'm self-aware and where I'm unaware, where my self-awareness ends and what I've normalized to and couldn't longer see, what status quo hides from me, what biases I have in my brain, what blind spots I have. I'm blind to so much of reality and I just have no idea. And the brain plays these tricks on us where we believe with confidence that we have we're the master of our reality that we see all things we feel all things that if something's missing we're going to note it but really my life has become trying to find out what's invisible to

me what are some of those psychological biases that you think most people still don't realize oh man it's like my most favorite topic because we are fooled into thinking that we truly understand our situation, our reality. And there's so many easy tricks one can play, even something simple. Like if you prime somebody with words like grandmother or grandfather or things that trigger thoughts of old age or being slow. And then you ask the person to walk down the hallway to do a task. Those who've been primed with old-sounding words, old-associated words, and young, the old-associated walk more slowly,

and the young walk quicker. We incorporate all these things into the way we act and the way we think and what we internally generate and we just it's beyond our awareness so for people that don't know what the word priming means essentially if you just say those words to somebody if you say grandmother or grandfather or old associated elderly associated words to somebody in studies they then walk slower i'm really interested in the behavioral stuff because i think most of us are governed by a set of stories that we've come to believe about ourselves that we've probably learned from false evidence along the way and we're now living our lives in

accordance with that false instruction manual like there's a puppet master pulling the strings telling me that i am a entrepreneur that does a podcast and that I'm unorganized and I'm, you know, whatever. How does one go about understanding that those words are governing our lives, but then also more importantly, getting rid of the power that they're exerting over us? There's a few things I do on a daily basis to help me. One, I read a book by Gary Becker, The Economics of Life, when I was 24 years old. And he would take any given topic like poverty, something that would be non, you wouldn't think that this thing relates

to math and economics, but just like this social phenomena that I would have previously heard someone tell me a story about. And he would break them down using economics. And I thought, that's unreal. A world understood through numbers and graphs and models, not through stories. No one's going to tell me any story. They're just going to lay this out. And I realized that there are limitations, of course, understood, and quantified changed my reality. And so now when I look at a given situation,

I try to identify what is the numerical representation of this thing? What is the mathematical formula? What is the graph that explains this phenomena? Not through a story lens, but what systems are at play? So I try to parse through all the decoys that would otherwise take me down a different path. And secondarily is an example of that what's an example i mean so like

uh what determines whether i have high quality sleep and most of the time in my previously in my life my sleep quality was something like a random i would go to sleep and i would have no idea what was impacting why i would get high quality sleep or not and then i could numerically back out that's what i've done over the past few years it's what elements contribute to and how those biological processes function and then what happens when and you can map out the entirety of that process last time we'd spoken i think you were on four months of perfect sleep. Where are you at now? I completed six months of perfect sleep.

And what does perfect sleep mean for you? 100% sleep score. And that's judged by? My wearable, by Whoop. Okay. And so before I did this, nobody had achieved that series of 100% scores. And many people who have had a device like that for over a year have never once achieved a 100% sleep score.

And what I was trying to do was something akin to like a four-minute mile or Amelia Earhart flying a plane across the Atlantic or someone climbing Everest. It was basically a demonstration of human ability that people didn't think was possible. And then once one person demonstrates it, it opens it up for everyone else, because if I can do it, everyone else knows they can do it too. And so I wanted to show that reliable, high quality sleep is achievable. And that if you do that, it could potentially give you the best cognitive and

emotional performance of your life. Do you think there's a human being, an adult human being on planet earth that's slept better than you for the last six months? There's currently no one that has shared data that has achieved that. So if we're just looking at the data alone which is not an entire representation then yeah i i've accomplished the best sleep score in history impressive and for just to recap so i'm i'm clear because i know we discussed this last time you go to bed at like 8 8 p.m right 8 30 8 30 and your last meal of the day is before midday. That's right. 11am. 8.30. And you're still doing that. You're still going to bed at 8.30 every day. That's right.

People are, I feel like their sleep is getting worse and worse in society with stimulants that we consume, the way we live our lives, devices destroy sleep. Do you think sleep is really the foundation of daily performance? Would you aim at that first if you identity standpoint, people like you and me who work hard at an entrepreneurial endeavor, there's this mythology that if you sleep under your desk or you go days without sleep, you're a hero, that people will tell stories about you. It's like the old, I guess, Viking mythology where you have these stories told about your great deeds. And so it's almost like if you're a great entrepreneur and if you want to be respected by your peers and if you want to achieve mythology-like status, you do that sleep deprivation thing.

And so it's built so far into our cultural identity. So when people, I know when my friends who, I act as a therapist for many people who go through this thing where they don't realize why they actually can't prioritize sleep. And then when we dig deep is that they have these imaginations of the kind of person they want to become and how they want others to view them. And they feel trapped that if they don't complete the mythology lore, that they'll somehow be less than, and they won't achieve their ranking among the social group. And it's all backwards. The shift that's appropriate, and it's happening actually right now, is that the person who prioritizes sleep is going to be higher performing. They'll be lucid they'll be they'll have better ideas

that people who don't sleep are literally half dead they're actually intoxicated they're impaired physiologically physiologically they're impaired explain that when you are sleep deprived uh to a certain degree it is equal to being intoxicated by alcohol. You're inebriated. And so these are the people who are leading organizations. There are groups of a large number of individuals that are expecting them to make high-quality decisions on behalf of the entire group. And it's those very people who are not sleeping well and who are impaired in their judgment. It's backwards. And so it's a very people who are not sleeping well and who are impaired in their judgment. It's backwards. And so, it's a good note to make, and this goes back to the first conversation of, what am I not aware of?

If you're playing the script of social norms, of doing what people say, and you're not questioning them, then you're living in the past of antiquated ideas that are hurtful to you. Here's one more example. I was at a conference the other day, and the gentleman who was interviewing me said, hey, who here thinks that you can live forever? And there were two people who were like, who here thinks you're going to die? And everyone's hand shot up.

And I was commenting to them that when you read history, who in a historical moment actually understood what was happening in that time and place? You know, 99% of people are living in the past. They repeat the things that people in the past had said. The future had already arrived. So if it's like the year 1634, the future already arrived in 1634. It's just the people that are living during that timeframe don't know it.

They hadn't seen it yet. They hadn't been exposed to it, or maybe they exposed to it, but they thought it was crazy or the person was a quack. And so people are always living in the past. And so the same is true right now. We are living in the past. The future is already here. The ideas and technologies are out there.

Maybe you and I have seen it. Maybe we can't. Maybe we encounter it. Maybe we believe it. Maybe we don't. But it's definitely here right now. And sleep is one of those things where the future is already here. And people who are playing the mythology of no sleep and another desk and everything else they're living in the past i think a lot of

people listening who do struggle with sleep do believe in the importance of sleep at least if you ask them they'd say they did but for whatever reason you know they might have sleep related difficulties they might have insomnia they might lay in bed all night and just feel anxious or whatever else and it's those people that i i want to offer some advice to the people that um yeah they work hard and stuff but they just struggle with sleep yeah there's a difference between the acknowledgement that sleep may be good for you and like you say like yeah i'm on board a good sleep it's an entirely different situation when you prioritize your life around that, which means if somebody is like, hey, let's grab a drink. Sorry, can't. My bedtime's at blank. Or if you find that you sleep better

by having earlier meals and then you're in a social event, you're like, well, I'm going to eat anyways. So it forces you to make really hard decisions on your actual lifestyle, which it does. It pits you against social norms, which are uncomfortable. We want to fit in. We want to have friends. We want to be part of the tribe. So it does really invite. But every person who makes the gesture, who does it, makes the tribe stronger.

So when one person is brave enough to say, actually, I'm going to hit the sack guys and like, oh man, you're such a wuss. Why are you doing that? Hang out, man. Like, what's wrong with you? They jokingly try to belittle and it's kind of serious and kind of not. But every time somebody does that and has the courage, there's several others in that group who are like, damn, I now feel empowered that i can say something and that's the norm that's shifting but this is the same social dynamics in whatever time you're in it's just understanding that and not being owned by it and then i guess the other the other exception potentially is parents that don't have yeah um child care because yes i mean i've when i

speak to parents they always tell me, they're like, Steve, listen, when you have a kid, you can forget your no meetings before 11 a.m. rule and your whoop HRV competition. Yeah. Because when that baby cries at 3 a.m., you know, and then at 4 a.m. and at 5 a.m., you're just going to be dragged through the mud with them.

Yeah. That's true. And having raised three kids, I can attest that that's true. Also, you can definitely establish a sleep culture in your family where you can make it understandable that once the child goes to sleep at whatever age, the expectation is they're in their bedroom for that entire duration of time, absent something, a fire or them feeling threatened for their life, if it's because they lost their toy car under their bed or it's because they can't find their blankie, none of

that justifies leaving the room and entering the parents' bedroom. So there's definitely things that can be done. You're not entirely powerless and you can make meaningful improvements by setting the standard for the entire family. That starts with the parents. What hygiene do they maintain and what do they pass on to the children but it's not entirely hopeless based on the way you live your life now you must look at people and see a whole lot of excuses and a whole lack of responsibility everywhere you go every tweet you get every comment you see it must just to you reek of low responsibility because you're someone that as you said last time has kind of given up control of yourself to this blueprint which really is the essence of um discipline is completely surrendering to that do you think people are lacking in responsibility and full of excuses

about their lives i mean who of us are not that and like any of us who would dare say otherwise are deceiving ourselves. And this is again, a self-awareness is we all are self-deception machines. And anyone who doesn't believe that is self-deceiving. Do you still self-deceive? Absolutely. What are you still self-deceiving yourself? I wouldn't trust myself in my own pantry with a bunch of junk food. That's why in my house, I can, I, I've eliminated all self-harm. There's just nothing I can do because I don't trust myself. That's not like I, you know, I feel like I've created so much discipline and confidence that like put it in front of me and I won't do it.

Even though I do on a daily basis where I'm in social situations i don't put myself in that environment but yeah i mean i my goal is to find where i'm in error in thought and action constantly that's it that's the gem that's the treasure chest is finding out where you've missed but you can know you've missed it somewhere i think about areas in my life where i go right i know what the right thing to do is but for whatever reason i keep not doing the right thing and i keep getting the feedback yeah okay you you messed that up steve and then you know week passes and i might do the same thing again the The one game we all humans play, every human on the planet is playing, is don't die.

Every second of every day, we're all trying not to die. So we look both ways before we cross the street. We have carbon monoxide detectors. We don't seek out, we don't drink poison on purpose. We do all these things to not die. Now, the weird thing though,

is I can look both ways before i cross the street and also be smoking a cigarette and that's just the nuances of the human mind but what i wanted to do with blueprint is i wanted to say okay if you really take do don't die to the absolute extreme i'm going to measure every biological process in my body and find out where every cell is aging, like where basically where dying is happening. And then I'm going to identify all those behaviors and I'm going to try to eliminate every behavior that contributes to don't dying. So what is possible in 2023 for the ultimate effort of don't die on every front? And that means no excuses ever for anything so a six-month sleep score like you

basically have to say this is in stone it's not going to be changed under any circumstance because i'm trying to prove a point of what could be done with the science in this moment so when you said about the cigarette example you'll cross the road you'll look both ways to make sure you don't get hit by a truck but you'll be smoking the way that i interpreted that is okay we don't want to die and we all want to sign up to don't die but none of us want to sign up to don't live yeah with with living you're mapping that to like some sensorial pleasure like you just some kind of yeah some kind of pleasure whether it's having a couple of cocktails or staying up late and watching netflix or whatever it might be yeah and you're trying to find

the things that create the stimuli that you you care about yeah i think most people want to extend their life but i i think they only want to extend it as long as they can live within that extension and obviously what you've chosen to do is to extend your life and make bigger sacrifices than the average joe would be prepared to make yeah the the argument i'm making is in any other time as a homo sapien i completely understand that thought process do Do your thing. The difference right now is we're baby steps away from superintelligence, which means for the first time in the history of homo sapiens, we may not die. And so I'm arguing that only in this moment does it make sense to take these extreme measures. Because before, you can easily say, look, I'm willing to trade 10 years

of end life for this version of life now. Reasonable, understandable. Sure. But in this moment, you may miss out on the most spectacular existence in all of history. So why, why do that for some cheap thrill? What's that spectacular existence I might miss on um it's complicated definitely complicated to be human uh when you look at the capabilities of ai as it's emerging there's reason to believe that we are acquiring the ability to engineer reality We can physically engineer atoms, molecules, organisms. We can create experiences with certain chemicals. We can program physical,

we can program visual realities. We have our fingers on the ability to engineer and program the entirety of our reality increasingly. That opens up an expanse of opportunity that is so far beyond our imagination, we can't even begin to pretend like we understand. Okay, this is something I've never mentioned before. In 2023, I launched my very own private equity fund called Flight Fund. And since then, we've invested in some of the most promising companies in the world. My objective is to make this the best performing fund in Europe

with a focus on high growth companies that I believe will be the next European unicorns. The current investors in the fund who have joined me on this journey are some of Europe's most successful and innovative entrepreneurs. And I'm excited to announce that today, as a founder of a company, you can pitch your company to us. Or if you are an investor, you can also now apply to invest with us. Head to flightfund.com to gain an understanding of the fund's mission, the remarkable companies we proudly support and to get in touch with me and my team. Legal disclaimer, Flight Fund is regulated by the FCA so please remember that investing in the fund is for sophisticated investors only. Don't invest unless you're prepared to lose all of the money you invest.

This is a high risk investment and you are unlikely to be protected if something goes wrong. There is no guarantee that the investment objectives will be achieved. And as with all private and equity investments, all of the investment capital is at risk. This communication is for information purposes only and should not be taken as investment advice or a financial promotion. What are the concerns though? If everybody gets older, isn't there going to be like huge disparities in like wealth and stuff? Because I read some stats that the global share of wealth held by people over the age of 65 is increasing. In 2020, people aged 65 and older held 35% of global wealth. By 2050, they're projected to hold almost 50% of global wealth. Isn't it going to be the case that if

we're all living longer, you'd imagine, like think about some of the richest people in the world now they would just accrue more and more wealth older generations would have more wealth and younger generations would would have very little there'd be this kind of disparity within society the 250 year olds will all be like billionaires yeah that's just an engineering problem it's society it's public policy so do you believe in like a universal basic income where we'd hand money to people i mean i don't think it's not a reason to not want the future it's not a reason to not want longevity it's not a reason why we shouldn't extend lives it's not a reason why somebody should be deprived it's not like if you're wealthy and you're old you should die

you know it's like it's everyone's got this opportunity for life and if there's a very large disparity it's getting worse it's a public policy problem. Do you not think from a philosophical standpoint that death is part of life? If you look at any sort of animal kingdom, death is part of the sort of natural attrition that creates new offspring, new mutations, new energy, new ideas, I guess. It has been the system of intelligence that produced us. We have now taken the reins and we are now the new system of intelligence that's creating life going forward. When did we take the reins? When we started learning how to engineer biology.

When we, this is what I spent the past 10 years doing is, my observation was after selling Braintree Venmo, it's amazing that we have been able to create the capability set in the digital world. You take a problem that can be solved by people sitting down at a computer and coding software. We can, as a species, we're extraordinarily good at it. Millions and millions of people that can do it and solve problems very quickly. If you take a problem in the physical world, like we say the coral reef is dying around the world, which is creating a major problem in oceans,

how do you make a coral reef that is more robust to heat or to big variations? You need to have the same programmability of programming, of building a new coral reef that can do that sort of thing. If that's an approach to the problem we need to have those abilities and so the goal i had was we need this foundational technology so that any problem in the physical world whether it be our health the health of the oceans anything you know building a global biological immune system we need to have these

physical abilities and so once you have that you can program physical reality including uh conscious states including earth health including our health and wellness all things become possibilities are you talking about kernel uh no my i had a venture fund okay yeah what is kernel what are you doing with kernel kernel is a way for us to use science and data to build our best cognitive existence. So like, for example, it's easy for each of us to get on a scale and see our weight. And when we see weight is climbing very quickly,

we think that's not a good situation because that leads to bad health outcomes that I don't feel great. And so there's like a, it's a good feedback mechanism for how well am I doing with my health, with my weight. We don't have the same equivalent for our brains. You can get an MRI or you can get a PET scan. They're great, but they're hard to get. They are expensive. It's very laborious to actually do it. We need to be able to acquire information about our brains

as easy as it is to step on a scale and get our weight. And that's what we built at Kernel is to buy Kelman, you put it on your head and you find out important information about your brain. I had my brain scanned last week. Have you seen your brain? I have. Of course you've seen your brain. Yeah. Did you find out anything about your brain?

I did. Well, I wanted to demonstrate that you could ask a question, what happens when, and then take a given thing about the brain. Like what happens when I do a psychedelic? What happens when I play a game? What happens when I don't sleep well? What happens when, and all the things we do that affects our brain. And in this case, I was a pilot participant for ketamine. So we run a 15 person ketamine study. Ketamine is a anesthetic also used to tranquilize horses, also a party drug. And so I received a dose of ketamine in my arm.

And then I was in that experience for 45 minutes. And what we saw was interesting in that I had my brain measured for 10 minutes a day for five days before during the ketamine experience, and then 14 days afterwards. And I think the most interesting thing is my brain patterns. Like if you think about the patterns, like imagine you're looking at planet earth and there's airports all over the earth and you're seeing traffic patterns between each airport. So between Tokyo and New York, there's a lot of traffic, London, New York, a lot of traffic, but between, you know, smaller cities, you have just a few planes here and there. There's big traffic patterns in our brains of where activity is happening. And those patterns

tell you things about yourself. Like it sounds like you had some analysis done. And when I did, when I did the five days of measurement, my patterns on my brain were stable. Every single day, they were the same. The same traffic from the same place to and from. And then when I did ketamine, it scrambled all of my patterns. It's like you took the globe

and you just like remapped where all the airports were and like, okay, planes start flying. And then over on day three, four, my pattern started forming again, back in a similar way. And so there was that two to like one to three day therapeutic window where I was very open to new pattern creation. And it was, there's this joke among my colleagues where we were walking from one meeting to another and there was a wall that was in front of us.

And it was day two after I took ketamine. And I thought, I'm going to jump over the wall. Like, that seems like a fun idea. Why not? So I just spontaneously jumped over the wall. And then all my colleagues were like, what are you doing? We're in a work environment.

We don't jump over walls. And I hadn't thought about it in that frame but i wonder if in that moment i was open to doing something different and unique that i normally wouldn't have done because i had this opening but it was cool to see my patterns where they were how they changed and how they reformed and some kind of window that opened up as how i could remap my own experience i mean that's probably a pretty compelling case for psychedelics as it relates to mental health. And, you know, if we think of some mental health disorders as being stuck in patterns, patterns of thinking, patterns of belief, patterns of behavior, there's been quite incredible clinical studies done to show the

impact that something like psilocybin or ibogaine can have on addiction or depression what's your view on psychedelics they're powerful yeah and i hope that kernel accelerates their progress because most of the the measurements are done through questionnaires you're asking the person how they felt how their perspective, but we know that our subjective experiences are not terribly reliable. Like after I had ketamine, if I were to use words to explain what I experienced, I don't know. If I'm asked on day three how I felt on day one, it's hard to remember. Now you can journal and try to make more detailed notes, but it's really hard to subjectively account for your brain and so having a a system that tracks the data

removes some of that challenge and it could help usher in psychedelics for a much broader adoption much faster because you've got data to support what you're trying to demonstrate have you tried psychedelics um ayahuasca i've had some experiences mushrooms i've done mushrooms what'd you think really interesting experience did it did it change your your opinion or your perspective of your own mind yes yes um i was overseas i think i was in peru or something and i was at a mushroom ceremony whatever and i'd taken the treatment that the shaman or whatever had given me and i didn't think it was working. So I went over and sat down on my laptop. Yeah, really fucking bad idea. And for whatever reason, and this is so on me, I clicked on like Netflix because everyone was over there

and they were all having their experience. I thought, I'll just watch something on Netflix. And I don't watch, I didn't even watch Netflix. I clicked something on Netflix. And as I'm watching it, it's like some, I don't know, some reality TV thing. And it just becomes really apparent to me that these people's values that I'm watching are like really bad.

They're all like bitching about each other and they're all being mean to each other. And at that very moment, the world started to just spin and shake. And I put the laptop away and went and joined the gang. Wrote about 35 notes of, of handwriting. Again,

I never write with my hands about connection. And in that moment, I learned that my perception of reality is so fragile. And so what do I believe? If this experience that I'm having with you now, this perception of reality is that fragile, that one little capsule that I can just shake it all, then Jesus, I can't trust much, can I?

I love that so much. That's so beautiful. Like, what do we really know about anything? And like you said, like this one little plant and you eat it, you ingest it, and then somehow your reality is absolutely transformed into something that you never imagined was possible. But then you come right back.

You do. And this is the frame around, like, don't die. So I understand before our time and place right now, like in the 19th century, sure, do your thing because you're going to die and that's fine. But right now, I guess 19th century sure do your thing because you're gonna die and that's fine but right now i guess with your your mushroom experience do you feel open to the idea that we may acquire new capabilities of conscious experience creation that could make your reality more interesting and more worthwhile like like whatever, than anything you could ever imagine? Yes, but it also could not. Sure. Because I just don't know. So again,

it goes back to like, it's hard for people to bet on uncertainty in their lives. Yes. People don't, who wants to bet on, I don't know. Interesting. Are you basically impartial? I'm kind of good with what life's like now. I think life's quite cool now. I think, I think I still feel like I'm bending reality by the way that I like live my life and the things I've achieved. And I still feel like I've got more mountains to climb in my life and higher peaks to see. So you see what I'm saying'm saying yeah so it's not really about a dissatisfaction so much now as the driver it's that the possibilities are a motivator that you if you say um it's just the possibility some something you've not experienced a new reality you could experience.

We're walking into the cradle of superintelligence. Okay, so let's define superintelligence just in case someone's lost us along the way. When you say superintelligence, you're talking about artificial intelligence and computers that are infinitely more intelligent than we are and how we can interface with that intelligence to make our lives and our decisions and our capabilities better that's right like the computational intelligence on near future timelines are going to be far superior to our

form of intelligence like how and when and what forms no knows. But if you look at the trajectory of the speed, it's fast. It's faster than our minds can comprehend. And so whatever comparison you want to make, like whether an ant relative to us or whatever the version is, or a homo erectus to us, we don't know those details

and what their experience is. But if you just try to think about the scale of intelligence and what that experience may be like, even though we don't know those details on what their experience is. But if you just try to think about the scale of intelligence and what that experience may be like, even though we don't know. But your response is informative for me. I have a bias, and this goes back to my blindness. of artificial superintelligence and the ability to engineer all of reality is the coolest opportunity maybe in the known galaxy. What's the most compelling argument you've heard

against your do-not-die position? The one that troubles you the most? I'm entirely unconvinced by any argument that I've ever heard about it are you entirely convinced by the do not die argument i'm convinced uh through the thought experiment i did if i if i try to transport myself to the 25th century and of course they have a sober a detached cold soberness objective soberness looking back at the 21st century that we don't just like we look back in history and we can see with clarity what we're

so caught up in this moment we're blinded by so many of these realities and they would look i'm convinced by my thought experiment that they look back and be like, of course, in the early 21st century, Homo sapiens figured out that they had developed the technology to continually expand their life. And that Homo sapien culture shifted to the preservation of life. Whereas right now we're all on the death track and then we play all the fun games along the death track,

but we just have to shift the entire zeitgeist where we we do the exact opposite of what we're doing today instead of embracing and celebrating death rituals we move entirely to life extension rituals do you think like living forever is possible or even reverse reversing age yeah i mean i so like basically with all the arguments i come down to this idea uh this is akin to us to us interviewing homo erectus a million years ago and asking homo erectus to make observations on what it's going to be like to be homo sapiens a million years later have our kind of cognition have our technology homo erectus would have nothing like almost nothing useful to say do we care what they want or don't want what they're scared of do we value it in any way like it's interesting from just an observational perspective but do we really think that Homo erectus has wisdom of some sort that would allow us to step into this existence?

That's what I think we're at now. We're basically sufficiently primitive in our thought. I don't believe in anything we say as it relates to the future, because the intelligence we're walking into is so far superior to ours. Why would we even begin to imagine that we can express an opinion that is meaningful? Do you see it almost like we're walking into a different species of human? Entirely. I mean, unquestionably that's happening. One of the really interesting things that's going on is this thing called CRISPR.

Genetic engineering. What is that? CRISPR, genetic engineering. I know you did some kind of DNA therapy, didn't you? I did. I did my first gene therapy. Gene therapy, yeah. Yeah. What is all of that and what's the promise that it holds for us?

CRISPR, genetic engineering, and what was your gene therapy? Yeah yeah currently there's a ceiling on human lifespan like 120 or so that if you if you uh live a life a certain way and you're given a genetic lottery then you can do that but to punch through 120 is very difficult through lifestyle and diet and exercise and so to to really punch through this ceiling you need to start working at the genetic level and so whether you're doing there's gene therapy whether you're doing crisper there's a variety of ways you can start modifying uh your genetic code and this has the power of potential to punch through the ceiling so explain that to an idiot gene therapy is injecting genes into you someone else's genes genes that have been made in a laboratory or yeah so this

one is i just got two injections on either side in my obliques here and what it does is it expresses the protein uh full of statin and so I, before I have a certain level, I'm like eight or nine. And once you get the therapy, you're higher, like 20, 30s, 40s. And so it's just increasing, it's increasing the amount of full of statin in my body. And so like one way to understand this is when you work out mild statin lessens the amount of muscle growth that can happen. Fulostatin suppresses myostatin, so you have more muscle mass.

But it has a whole bunch of other effects as well. This gene therapy didn't change my actual genes. It just increases the expression of fulostatin in my body. And how do you know if it works? Measure them. So yeah, I do routine. Well, so there's a few things we're doing uh we're measuring this via my blood what are my full stat levels before and

after and then we're also measuring my body with mri and so because i'm the most measured person in history we have this interesting vantage point where we can see across my entire body from my muscle and my um my fat and bone and speed and dna methylation patterns from my speed of aging to my brain health like working at hundreds and hundreds of data points to see what effect it has and have you found an effect yet our first results are coming back next week someone like me who is you know on the high street per se what are the supplements that are on the high street that that do actually work for anti-aging because people talk about nad plus and stuff and they yeah there's

all these clinics now popping up all over london where you can sit in the chair for two hours and have the little drip in your arm and stuff and i did it once yeah um because my friend had opened a place and i had a very hot chest yeah like a burning feeling in my chest i don't know if it's done anything for me so i've just got it goes back to what i said earlier you're just going to kind of believe in it or not like a religion yeah yeah i mean it's best to measure it so you're trying to change your intracellular nad i'm sure other people have measured it though so does it work uh the the drips don't the drips don't work you you want sustained levels of nad and so we yeah so i mean we extensively measure my entity levels and we've tested nmn we've tested nr we've

looked at all the different modalities you want sustained levels so my levels when i first started i think they were equivalent of something like 47 years of age. And now they're reliably age 18. Like I have that much I have age 18 levels of NAD, interestingly NAD. And we dialed that dosage in because I was able to measure it. And the challenge, of course, is when you do these things haphazardly, get a drip or whatever, it's what you're saying. It's a story. It's a market, it's clever marketing, it's happy faces. It's what your friends are doing, but it's not based're saying it's a story it's a market it's clever marketing it's happy faces it's what your friends are doing but it's not based on any reality you need to see it working in your body otherwise you know be careful when you're when you're doing it so

the only reason it doesn't work is because it's not sustained but it would work if it was sustained so if i did that every week then it would work you have to consider the half-life okay so i don't know all the data on the drips i know the data much better on nmn and nr but those things then you take them orally yeah orally every day twice a day yeah twice a day and those things work yeah yeah they reliably maintain my energy my icy nadAD levels at an 18 year old level. What are some of those big anti-aging therapies or businesses or supplements that most people have just thrown themselves into or habits in terms of longevity habits that are just a load of BS? I mean, most everything. Really? Yeah. Give me some examples.

I mean, everything listed on the Blueprint website is three years of our effort to try to figure out what has scientific evidence. What can we do in me and measure it and then communicate that out? Yeah, because I want to make sure I avoid false advertising. That's right. I got suckered down to do that bloody NAD drip thinking i was going to be an 18 year old that's right so i don't want to do that again yeah what do i need to avoid i mean for example one thing that works

is extra virgin olive oil well here's one i brought with me yeah so you sent me this i did i sent you that in the post yeah i mean so we we tried to for anybody that can't see i've got a black bottle of extra virgin olive oil that brian had sent me about a month ago it says on the front blueprint brian johnson ultra premium extra virgin olive oil completely all black bottle it looks like a wine bottle oh on the back of it it says with the goal of slowing his speed of aging brian johnson allocates 15 of his precise daily calorific budget to this extra virgin olive oil it is rich in polyphenols which studies show can potentially safeguard against various cancers

cardiovascular diseases diabetes and neurodegenerative conditions by providing better reduction of oxidized ldl than regular evo extra virgin olive oil interesting so that's the question you know if you what things can i do in my life that are easy and actionable and have a high impact extra virgin olive oil is very close to number one really why because all the things it says on the back yeah when you there you go that's not how you're meant to have that it's spicy yeah you put some pepper in there it that's what premium olive oil tastes like it's it's it's good oil it's good virgin olive oil but nobody should it's not nice to drink extra oh it feels quick it's very um it's quite thick and smooth interesting yeah peppery

and smooth if you look at the evidence we we just shared about what this does it's unbelievable uh in the ways it improves health and wellness it's better than ozempic really it is okay so explaining what exam exam pack is that's the diabetes drug that people are using to lose weight yeah so it's like ozempic is like the fire alarm and so for example there's a study where people lost 5.2 pounds uh taking evo consuming evo for nine weeks in addition to what they're currently eating yeah yep and when you say taking what do you mean just sprinkling on top of my food or yeah the i think the quantity for that study was, I think, 45 ml daily or something like that. It's between 30 and 60 ml daily. But there's things, for example, like it reduces by over 60% invasive breast cancer.

It reduces your blood sugar levels by 60% post a mil. And your oxidized LDL levels. These are the, this is the bad thing in your body that's causing damage by 80% post a mil. So I have a tablespoon with every single mil and it's, yeah, it's like the super of super foods. And the problem is most of the olive oil in the world does not meet the quality thresholds to make it useful. So you think you're consuming olive oil that the world does not meet the quality thresholds to make it useful. So you think you're consuming olive oil that's actually having the health benefits.

If it doesn't meet very specific criteria, it won't do it for you. So where do we get it? This is why I solved it. Because basically trying to find an olive oil that you can verify meets the specs is very challenging. So we built a supply chain across both hemispheres to acquire the best olive oil in the world to make it just easy. You can trust it, the data is shared, and the health benefits are supported by evidence. And this is available online?

Yeah. Everyone can buy this? Yeah. That's exciting. But that's an easy one to do. Go to bed on time and drink your olive oil. You've got something down there on the floor, but you wouldn't tell me what it was. What is it?

Yeah. I brought you two things today. Okay. One, I brought you a test. Okay. What is it? This test. Okay.

That's the test. It's your speed of aging test. Oh shit. So you should, everybody should know three know three things you know how much you weigh how fast you're aging and the duration of your nighttime erections is that what the other thing that's the other device oh shit so we're basically yeah so both these are going to give you a good baseline with where you're at in life. So how do I do this?

I can administer that test for you if you want. So what it requires is we'll prick your finger, get a little blood, put it on the card, and then we'll send it to the processing to the to the um the center where they're going to process it you'll get your results back and it will tell you how fast your aging clock is internally how does it know that from a prick of blood uh because your body leaves chemical signatures that reveal the data okay and then i can reverse that presumably yes you yes exactly so if you let's say you get a result back and let's just say it's one so you're aging like a normal person would average person you could potentially slow your speed of aging to 0.6 which means while all of your friends are aging at a normal rate you would get september october

november and december for free i'd love that yeah how olive oil goes sleep exercise a good diet don't smoke basic stuff basic stuff and what is this other contraption that you that is how you can measure your nighttime erections i mean where am i going to put that yeah so you you put it on your shaft and just gently yeah there you go gently pull that and so you put there you go put on the mic yeah mine's a little bit bigger i need to have you got a bigger one yep and then you put it on the on the base and you put it on and you you think you presume that it's going to be an irritation it's going to bother you you're going to feel it once you put it on and you go to sleep you can't feel it you don't know what does it do like vibrate in the

night or something so yeah there's no vibration. But you have erections throughout the night. Yeah. And when you come erect, the expansion of your penis will be captured by that device and it will show how many erections you had and for what duration and what strength. I've got you. So you go to sleep, you put your you go to sleep you

put your penis inside it like like that and then when you have an erection during the night it'll expand and log it yes and it'll keep logging every time you have an erection in the night that's right and then we'll tell you you had four erections tonight that during that duration of sleep they were 47 minutes 31 31 minutes, 55 minutes, and whatever, and of this quality of erection type. And then this data, it's really important because it represents psychological health, sexual health, cardiovascular health. It's basically, people are not familiar. You go to the gym and build big biceps or whatever, but people are not familiar that nighttime erections are actually a meaningful health indicator.

And so you've been measuring your nighttime erections. I have. And what have you found out and how have you been able to improve it? Yeah, my average right now is two hours and 12 minutes. So you're erect at night for two hours and 12 minutes? Yes. What are you dreaming about?

So the thing is, we're not aware of our erections most of the time. And so my current erection amount is equal to roughly my chronological age. For me to be equal to an 18-year-old, I would need three hours and 30 minutes of nighttime erections. So that's the goal we're trying to achieve. We're basically, I mean, no one's ever done this before. We're trying to figure out, can you improve nighttime erection do you put this on your penis every night no just in i'll do it three to five days in a row so most most nights

of the week you'll put this on your penis i'm sorry so i'll do for example in like oh okay like in a one month yeah in like a month or two months, I'll do like three to five. And it depends on what therapies we're doing. And so what I coupled up with that is we're trying to... Come on, Brian, grow up. I'm just playing with it. It's just interesting. Yeah, I coupled this up with focused shockwave therapy.

And so there's this technology, you have a wand, and you sit in a chair, and then the technician uses the wand and basically shocks your penis through the acoustic technology. And it's like it does the same thing as workouts doing where you're creating micro injuries so then it rebuilds and so this technology is used for all over the entire body if you're trying to heal an acl or you're trying to rejuvenate the knees the joints shoulders so it's a technology that has a broad range of applications it's also used for erectile dysfunction so So while my scores are,

I have no sexual dysfunction, I score perfect in every category, we're wondering if you take this therapy, this focus-acquif therapy, and if it will just basically rejuvenate the penis and increase nighttime erections. Is there any early evidence that that's working? Yes yes i've been shocked by the results i'm now two months in it's my subjective experience is it's as if my penis has gotten like 15 years younger so we're still in the early stages we still need to measure we need data before we're going to believe anything subjectively i'm in when you say when you say a shock do you mean a painful shock or is it like a you know like a the kind of shock you'd you'd pay for like a tell me more is it like a nice feeling is it like a vibration or is it like a uh is it painful painful. Yeah. You need to be focused.

Like you need to do pain management. Yeah. It's interesting. It's like maybe a seven out of 10, but then once you get to the tip, it's like, Oh no, they've got to suck the whole thing.

Yeah. It's like a nine out of 10 because you, the tip, you have improved sensitivity. So it generates, in addition to what we're trying to do with the nighttime erections, it also improves erection strength

and orgasm pleasurability. So it has all kinds of benefits. I'm trying to figure out physiologically what's going on there. So you shock the penis, you give a big electric shock to the penis, and then it rebuilds like a muscle would. Yes.

And that causes it to be more effective going forward yeah yeah it's it's a acoustic technology so it's not like an electrical shock i this kind of brings i guess this brings me in part to the thing you use on your abs the 20k setup machine thing i i when i was younger in my house i think my mum bought it in a catalogue. She had one of those machines that she put on her abdomen and it gave her an electric shock, like, and it like kind of vibrated. And I just always thought it was BS. I thought the whole industry was just BS. People feel like it's doing something. So they think they're going to get abs, but you've got like a really extensive, impressive machine that does a similar thing. Yeah. Using electromagnetic frequency.

And it works. It does. How'd you know? we've looked at it with mri and the muscles are being like broken down and regenerated from the electric shock yeah yeah we've been cheating um so you've got have you got a six-pack i suppose it's defined to some extent. You're going to have to show us with your permission, of course, because we don't force people to undress on the show. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, I don't know. Like, yeah, you've got, yeah. Yeah.

I won't show mine. Not right now. I've been in. I showed you mine. Yeah, but it's, it's, you've been doing this for three years.

It's fine. fine yeah i'm new i'm gonna work my way up with the penis shock thing and then i'll think can you imagine being in a conversation and everyone else knows their erection the nighttime erections and you don't like can you imagine the embarrassment you'd feel no i can't imagine no one i know knows how long they're i'm playing i'm playing because it's like it's of course it's a novel idea nobody measures their erections it's not part of a social norm but you can imagine the humor of you finding someone having a casual conversation like yeah i had a really great night sleep last night new peak record on erection duration and and

direction like no it's going to become a thing i know it is because sexual health and sexlessness and relationships and libido are actually a really big topic at the moment for a lot of people i i've been in relationships where there's been libido issues and things like that and i've got friends that have got libido issues and sexual health issues and things like that so it we joke about it but they're it's not a joke for a lot of people and it can lead to relationships breaking down and families breaking down and yeah so i don't i do think it's a serious topic and if this therapy can help people get their erections back and bring their sex life back then that's an amazing thing

yeah the yeah the testimonials of the technology are pretty compelling uh people with ed that it's may it's causing a significant problem of their own self confidence of their partners it's a big deal like when when you can't get erect it's a very big problem your penis is 15 years younger you believe i mean this is a a subjective assessment it's just like you know as you age your body becomes less firm and more saggy right across muscle skin penis like you just lose structure across your entire body and it's improved the structure of my penis your hair looks like it's changed as well since we last spoke you look like you've got a fuller head of hair what's what's been going on there the the protocol i have is i do uh platelet rich plasma every 30 to 60 days so that that is the process where you draw

blood from a vein you spin it up and you separate the blood from the plasma. You take the plasma and then we add A-cell and dutasteride. So it's a concoction of plasma, A-cell, dutasteride, and it's a total volume of between 13, 15 milliliters. And then it's injected across the entire head or in the areas that would be balding and then i also do red light therapy daily which we spoke about uh wear that cap for six minutes and then i have a nightly concoction that includes a few things like minoxidil and a few others this is all on my website so the the recipe the protocol it's all there for everybody but yeah i mean i i started losing my hair in my early 30s and it's it's really hard to as i mean with my

genetics it's very very hard for me to maintain hair so i've had to work very hard at it what is hair loss anyway why does our hair recede what on? And it doesn't happen in women. Yeah, I know. Typically. Yeah, it's really quite annoying that it's such a big problem. I wish I didn't have to pay attention to it as much as I do.

Why? It just requires constant attention. It's a... Why? It just requires constant attention. The technology is not that great yet. You're basically trying to slow the process. You're trying to improve follicle strength. You're trying to prevent future damage. But it's not like something like a gene therapy where i with two injections i your levels go up three or four x my the production of that critical uh biochemical my body uh it's not the case there's now there's technology people

are working on for cloning so you take a few of your follicles you clone that and you re-employ you put them in so basically like doing a a hair transplant but you're cloning you're doing your own your own hair so there's other technologies that are emergent that are promising, they're just not on market yet. So it's hard and it's like being, as a man, being bald is a meaningful thing, right? It's a significant psychological situation. So if you look, if you take through the issues of,

like a man would really struggle with psychologically, you know, being bald, not being able to have erections. Like those are two of your top five things. And so I hope that the things I talk about publicly help break the stigma around it so that people feel hope they can do something about it. They don't have to hide it. It's challenging and it's heavy to deal with it.

What do you think about air quality? I've been thinking a lot about this. I had James Nestor on this podcast. He was talking to me about the harm of like in room CO2 and stuff like that. Yeah, I agree. My house is, I have devices around the entire house measuring those things every moment of every day.

And I have air filters in every room. And so the air quality in my house is pristine. In Los Angeles, the air quality is not great. And so I typically will avoid significant outdoor activities on days where the air quality is particularly bad. But I'm always aware of it. So I have monitors in my house that tell me the outdoor air quality and the indoor air quality in every room. What's the harm that you're trying to avoid? It's damaging.

There's like the P2.5. There's a few things that are very damaging and they can get lodged, for example, in your lungs and it's very hard to get it out. So there's a lot of sustained damage that's just hard to undo. Eight. Yes. Kate. Yes.

Kate Tolo. Is that her name, Tolo? Kate Tolo. Kate, will you come on out? Kate is a 27-year-old former fashion strategist and is Brian's chief marketing officer. But she's also the first woman to ever sign up and follow the blueprint way of living and kate is here okay so brian who is kate to you kate had the pioneering spirit that helped give birth to Blueprint. We began working together at Kernel.

We were focused on measuring the brain and how humans could co-evolve with AI. And we started talking about the possibilities of what Blueprint could be. The project was underway and we were trying to figure out how we could communicate this. And Kate saw the potential immediately and has been building this with me for several years. Why did you decide to work with Brian and why did you decide to develop Blueprint? I grew up in a very small town with a very small field of view. And as I got more experience in the world, that view opened farther and further. And I was in New York and I was working in fashion at the time. And I was sitting in a cafe and I'd spent the year learning about AI coming to mainstream and how is the human species

going to deal with this? And I felt very strongly the only way to proceed forward as a species would be to latch ourselves onto AI and to merge with AI in some way. And so I was in this position where I had all of this energy and I was like, I want to throw it out there into the world. I don't want to do anything on my own. And there weren't many people talking about this as a problem. And one day I was sitting in a cafe and I got an email in my inbox from Singularity University, and it included a quote from this man, Brian Johnson, back in 2016. And it referenced merging with AI. And I thought, that's the person that I want to work with and throw my energy toward. And so I reached out to him across every medium.

So literally his medium articles, email, social media, and I never heard back. And then year after year, I just kept pinging him and pinging him. And then eventually I moved out to LA to work with Brian. And what do you do for Brian? You say you work with Brian. I intentionally keep it very vague because we do everything together. We are two peas in a pod. And from the very beginning, know both at kernel and at

blueprint we've just done anything and everything that needs to be done my background is creative so i lean more toward that side of things so the marketing and and just general brand design that kind of stuff but yeah and you've become the first woman to follow the blueprint protocol that's right yes i remember hearing about the blueprint protocol um last time we had this conversation and one of the things that stood out to me is the amount of sacrifice that goes into living in line with it things like getting up at a certain time and then going to sleep at a certain time and things that you eat are you following all of that yes I'm definitely not as extensive as Brian is because

I've just started the protocol. But that was a big decision factor for both of us when we're considering this. One is it is incredibly laborious on our team to bring up another person. But not only that, it means completely changing my lifestyle. And so when we were contemplating doing this decision, I really gave it a lot of serious thought because I know that the public are going to follow along. You know, it's a really big decision for my life. It's a big decision for our team and for the resources that get put behind it. And so early on, we decided that I was going to do a 30 day trial before we made any of this public to make sure that am I capable? Am I willing? Is this something I actually want to take on? And so, yeah yeah I meant completely uh redefining

what my life like and lifestyle is and where are we at now with that 30-day trial yes so I've done my 30-day trial and I'm on about day 90 of blueprint so I successfully did my first 30 days which was yeah really really difficult and you're day 90 now yes how long are you gonna do it for that's the thing it's an algorithm so that was definitely something i was conscious of this is maybe one of the last decisions i really made because i was deciding to walk into the unknown like i didn't know exactly how many pills i'd be taking what my protocol would be how many blood draws would i be going into it was really am i okay revoking my conscious mind from making this decision making and stepping into the unknown so what does your life look like now on a day-to-day basis so i so this is this was establishing you

know the first 30 days was really just the trial and so um i'm we're still in the process of figuring out you know what i'm we're still in the process of personalizing essentially to to my data but what i do is i try and get a hundred percent sleep every single night. I do perfect nutrition. So I eat the same thing as Brian every single day. So it's 1,700 calories, perfectly, you know, uh, mapped out. And then I take over 60 supplements every single day. And I, I, I aim to get a certain amount of, um, cardio and strength training and exercise in every week. And how has it been going? It was really difficult. It was much more difficult than I expected it to be.

Why? The process of doing Blueprint is really about measurement, intervention, and measurement again. So when we did my baseline measurements, there were a couple things that became apparent. One is that people observe me from the outside, and this is how I observe myself as well. So it's not a comment on other people, but that if things look okay from the outside, things must be okay on the inside too. And so I had a lot of people like saying to me, oh, you surely must be healthy because you

know, you look healthy, so you must be fine. My baseline fitness testing, for example, put me on like an average of like age 60 or age 70, based on my flexibility my strength my you know cardiovascular health all those kinds of things and then my blood work for example you know a few things came back off which is to be expected like my vitamin d my zinc which is easy to fix but then my oxidized ldl came back high which is extremely concerning because i'm only 27 years old. And these are the kinds of flags that you see early on that can lead to things like stroke or a buildup in your arteries that can lead to really serious health consequences. So there were a couple of things in those baseline tests, for example, that had a red flag. Then throughout the process, I would say that it's because all of a sudden you're given

this huge task of looking after yourself to perfection you come face to face with the things that are in the way of your better of living a better life so your self-destructive tendencies and so for me like day one I had like three different existential crisis like moments you know where my whole life crumbled down because you come face to face with things that are in your way that you had never had to deal with before like one so you know Brian talks about evening Brian the Brian that you know over eight between five and seven p.m or ten p.m every night for me it was priority Kate I didn't realize before I did Blueprint that my whole life has been

structured around helping other people and never focusing on myself. It was like, I was completely blind to the fact that any opportunity I get, I would deflect from myself and be like, how are you doing? What can I do for you? You know, because I realized that I didn't have a relationship with self where if other people couldn't see it, I just neglected it. So in like little things, it meant that I would schedule meetings back to back and I wouldn't make time to, you know, use the restroom or eat or have proper sleep. And then 10 p.m. would roll around and finish work. And the only thing that was left open was McDonald's.

And so that's what I would eat for dinner. Or, you know, if a friend, if I committed to hang out with him on a weekend there was no way I was going to you know say that I can't do that anymore just to get enough sleep because you know ultimately I cared more about the other people's perceptions and my my own actual well-being people pleaser yes people pleaser big time and to do blueprint it's sounds like it's the antithesis of people pleasing. Yeah, I would say so. And it's kind of like that, you know, Brian references this, but the airplane example where you want to put your own mask on before you can help others. So, you know, in this process, I've slowly learned that I am functioning better and I

can actually do more of that people pleasing in a weird way anyway, by looking after myself first. What I have been the, although it's just been 90 days, what have you noticed? do more of that people pleasing in a weird way anyway by looking after myself first what what i have been the although it's just been 90 days what have you noticed changes so as far as actual like results and data it was it was very um straightforward everything improved pretty much across the board um so my my restorative sleep increased by 19 in in 30 days. My flexibility improved, my strength improved, like my leg press one rep max went from 220 pounds to 360 pounds in 30 days. I did VO2 max testing, so my body's ability to use oxygen. When I first did it at the start of 30 days,

I was put at the 51st percentile. So if you look at like an age graph, you'd be able to predict exactly what age I am. That was spot on average. And then after 30 days, I had put at the 51st percentile. So if you look at like an age graph, you'd be able to predict exactly what age I am. That was spot on average. And then after 30 days, I had increased into the top 7% of fitness for my age and gender, which is huge for me because I'm someone who has never exercised a day in my life before this.

I'd never gone on runs. I hated the gym. I'd never been trained in the gym. It was just something that was like the antithesis of anti-kate, you know? So yeah, huge, huge changes on my end and my blood work improved we're still waiting on my oxidized ldl to come back but generally everything everything looks really good what's your take on that and things that have improved and the changes you've seen in her i think the most interesting and uh entertaining was the existential crises where they be, they became

so frequent. I would send her messages just like in a joking fashion, like, Hey, like hope your existential crisis is going well today. How can, how can I help? But she really was, I, I applaud her because she jumped in with both feet and she was willing to share the entirety of her internal experience. So she didn't try to camouflage any of her pain. She didn't try to be tougher than she was. She was just open and transparent about the entire process. And I think that people around us,

the entire team and those observing drew a lot of inspiration because she was open about everything and about what she was struggling with internally. And she was willing to step into the problem. She didn't miss a single day and that's hard like there's a lot of motivation to quit or to take a day off and so i am really pleased that um she gave it a go and she prevailed it would have been very easy for her to quit hit your 27 yes um sacrifice yeah people think of 20 your 20s

sacrifice they think going out partying did you do that stuff before did you like day you know all that kind of stuff yeah yeah no it definitely was a big consideration for me and like the other thing to add is blueprint especially at the level we're trying to do this at is a full-time endeavor. And so you have to fit this into your existing lifestyle. And so it's really difficult. Even things like, you know, during that 30-day trial, we traveled for work. And I remember we got back one day and it was like 6pm or something like that. And everyone was like zonked after being on the road for three days or something like that. And I was like, I got to go exercise now, guys. And everyone was like, what? But that's the thing. Like, you know, my data, it demanded it. My body demanded it. And so I was going to do it. It wasn't about, you know,

what I wanted in that moment or not. So it is a very intense thing to commit to. As far as like the socializing and all that kind of stuff. Yeah. I was someone who, you know, I mean, I would say up working a lot of the time. Like I'm a grind culture child. Like I, I really did throw myself into it. So I would say that's probably the thing that changed the most on the socializing thing. Like my friends have been so accommodating, you know, I, we'd go out for brunch still and I would bring my blueprint tin and just sit at the table while, you know, other people were having their, you know, maybe their mimosas with orange juice in it.

But yeah, I think there have been easy ways to make it fit into my life and the people around me have been really accommodating, which is lovely. What's been the biggest and the hardest sacrifice? The thing that you, you know, maybe on the difficult days you miss a little bit. You know, it's just so sad, but my, the first thing that comes to my mind is oat milk lattes like I'm such a typical you know uh yeah young person now but yeah I you know there's like little you realize you come face to face the fact that a lot of life's small joys are baked into the things that you do on a routine basis and so it took me a while to remap those things um but now before no i mean i was i was like a normal normal person

yeah so drinks on the weekend with friends when you feel a little bit guilty if you quit doing this after everything the team have invested in you brian's faith in you. Does that not feel like a bit of a pressure? Yes, it does. However, this was also, you can't let those things drive you when you're on Blueprint. So for example, I, halfway through my 30-day period, I started to really not feel great. And I would watch my heart rate, you know, as you get better exercises, exercise, your fitness improves, it's harder to get your heart rate up. And I was going against this metric of, I need to get my heart rate over 173 beats per minute to hit this vigorous heart rate zone to get my markers up. And I was pushing myself and pushing myself. I was, you know, I documented all this all, you know, for our YouTube channel and whatnot. But I was at this point where i was crying on the

weekend i was like i don't know if i can do this like i think i have to give up because i just couldn't get my heart rate up and it took me a second to realize that priority kate had snuck in again but in this really subtle you know backdoor kind of way where i was holding myself to this expectation of i needed to do these very intense things so I could prove to the public that I can do this. I'm going to be, you know, this blueprint XX. When in reality, the blueprint way is actually stop, look at the data. And if I had done that, I really would have seen that my HIV was down, my recovery was down, like my body was asking for a break, but my conscious mind was stepping in and saying, you need to prioritize the viewpoint of others and how they're going to think

of you and make sure you just hit these goals regardless of what the data says. So I think that to answer your question, if I'm people pleasing in that way, I just get in my own way. But if you stop and look at the data, that's where actually the insight comes from. Why did, Brian, why did you want Kate to do this? Did you want her to do it? And if so, why? We talked about this extensively and I told Kate that there was no pressure,

no expectation that it was entirely her decision that she could think through it. There were other people that could certainly fulfill the role. So it was Kate's call to do it. And even when she was doing it, it was entirely her decision whether she wanted to continue. And so I made it very,

very clear. There's no pressure, no, uh, overriding assumption that was not being, uh, communicated. So this is why I think the,

the, the shift in transition from grind culture to taking care of one's health is there's so many layers. People are very fast to come up with excuses and reasons why they don't want to do it. And I think by Kate doing this, it was a transparent reveal of everything she had stacked up that was stopping her from doing that. And I thought it would be interesting because she understood the intricacies of the endeavor so thoroughly. And she also was aware of how we were communicating to this. And she had this vantage point that was really unique. So thought it'd be she'd be a perfect candidate to do it

but again no obligation entirely her call if she thought this would be a good move for her okay blink once if you're being held hostage do you want to die i want to have the opportunity to live you want you want to have the opportunity to live that's very intentional because he said he doesn't want to die yeah you might have seen on the shirt yeah you want what's the nuance there i don't mind the idea of death you know if it happens it happens but i would love to be able to spend each minute living as much as possible. And so that's what this is for me.

I think I'm on the same page with you. Yeah. I'm not scared of dying. I don't think you're scared of dying, are you, Brian? You're not scared of dying. But would I like the opportunity to live on? I would like the opportunity to live on. But I do also think that what makes life

enjoyable is the scarcity the fact that i'm me sitting here now is me choosing not to do everything else is why this is so special yep totally agree so also you know i find this like idea of the fear of death and people kind of like balking at that it's interesting to me because i think if anything is more rational to feel fear i would say it's death like out of all the fears i could have in life fear of death is probably one that i would choose to have you know that makes sense to me i'd love to to to really want to live every single second of the day yeah same what would you how do you think about what we just said that the fact that we are going to die creates the specialness in the life that we have i don't think we know what we're talking about okay fair enough i i do understand i think i lose everybody like you know kate is a much more

relatable person like she you know she says things that people are like that's sensible and i understand that and i say something people are like that's really weird i'm not quite sure what to do with that but i really and so i really am trying very hard to be more understandable to be more relatable and have these viewpoints but i i can't seem to land this idea that it's possible we are so primitive in our current way of being that we wouldn't even dare ask ourselves our own opinions about anything when you talk about this playing it forward into the future and asking future civilizations about us and then playing it backwards that does help me understand it because if you'd gone a million years backwards and asked them about us they never would have been able to predict this incredible world. And we're probably living like four times longer than they did anyway. Since we've,

since we last spoke, is there anything that's been on your mind that you, uh, you think is important as an update for the listeners who listened to the last episode? Yeah, I mean, we, we, it was a fun couple months. We, uh, gene therapy, uh therapy i published a book and we kate completed her 90 days of first female on blueprint uh doing the full program we made available for free the entirety of the recipes of blueprint so we basically we've made for free uh the dietary protocol all the exercises all the supplements a book like we basically what I hope is we've given a blueprint for the future evolution of being human and we've made everything available for free

for everyone all over the world. Wow. And what comes next? The best is yet to come. Yeah, we've got a couple fun projects. Just give me one. Let's see. It's another gene therapy. Okay to do what to extend life i mean if we really are trying to punch through the ceiling then we you can only do so much with diet sleep and exercise and we've

kind of mastered those things so now we're trying to level up on more powerful therapies exciting look forward to hearing the question that's been left for you in the diary is dear next guest as you look back on the interview right now what's one thing you wish you said or did differently yeah okay i i don't know if i did this justice so I want to I want to communicate with more clarity that regardless of the data and how I feel and all these kinds of things the thing that I always come back to on whether or not this is the right decision for me as in blueprint is is who's doing a better job of looking after Kate? Is it current Kate or past Kate?

And I would argue that even if it's only a marginal improvement, it's worth taking this step toward looking after oneself just a little bit better. And so that's how I feel about this whole process. I know based on the data, I know based on my subjective experience, based on any other metric that I'm doing a better job now than I was previously so which Kate's happier I think Kate has no control over her own happiness and so I almost never try to optimize her happiness when Brian sat down he said I'm the happiest I've ever

been yeah is this the happiest you've ever been yes yeah purely go ahead this Kate's happier than old Kate yes but I would say that Kate always is biased to saying that Kate is always the happiest in any given moment Kate is generally a very optimistic and happy person and is the blueprint different for women than it is for men because there's different sort of hormonal and physiological elements to men and women and happy person. And is the blueprint different for women than it is for men? Because there's different sort of hormonal and physiological elements to men and women. Yeah, that's what we're currently in the process of figuring out. So it took Brian like two, three years and millions of dollars to get his protocol stabilized. So we're currently in that process of figuring out how are we tuning it to my hormones and levels and tracking my data. So we're in a very

exciting period have you kept account of how many millions of dollars it's cost you to do this uh yeah at the county it's um probably three to four at this point yeah the majority of that has been on the measurement protocols it's the scientific research it's like uh yeah trying to get your head around everything that's ever been published get that structured in a way that's actionable than doing the measurement but the actual implementation is very cheap like this is the thing is we um someone made a comment the other day that this is the the most impactful humanitarian project ever in that the more values being delivered to more people and um i love the frame frame that it's a species-wide evolutionary plan. And we're launching a product.

So one of the biggest questions we've received, like this is one of the more exciting things we have going on, is when we did Blueprint, started Blueprint, it was never to make money. We never had a commercial plan. We never had like some sneaky idea.

It was just like we wanted to pursue the boundaries of science. Then it became a thing and people were like, make this easy because I want to do it, but I don't want to spend the time. Over the past few months, we've created a blueprint product stack. I think that we'll be ready to launch in

90 days or so. I think it will be competitive with the most nutritious product in history. Interesting. And it's a supplement. It's a powders and pills, food supplement, extra virgin olive oil. It's a whole bunch of stuff.

It's basically, I think we'll be able to deliver to people at a lower cost. Whether we succeed in this or not, whether we succeed at the number one spot, I like the idea that we're competing with the best, the best, most nutritious food product ever built in human history. And I like that we are at least competing for that slot. And so I think it would make sense for the UN to be putting Blueprint into the hands of people

and than anything else out there. And so that's exciting that we're just rounding the corner from this novel idea to this full-scale humanity-wide conversation on what can we become and basically trying to purge from our society the self-destruction that we've embedded within it. Hey, I've got one more question for you before Brian answers the book question. Yeah. Just thought of one. Go ahead, you want to take it?

Can you tell me something that you disagree with Brian on? That's actually really, really hard because I think we agree on most things. We typically see the world from pretty different perspectives. Definitely. We reconcile them ultimately, but we definitely view the world

meaningfully different. Yeah. Yeah, I really see myself as an operations manager for humanity. Not because like, I just find that that's a role that we have not really tackled as a species yet.

You know, being able to see the systems that underlie humanity at this huge scale. And so nutrition is one of these things. Like we, you know, this blueprint stack that we're working on, it's almost like your mom has packed you a lunchbox and said, here's the basics of what your body has requested for today like go

out have a great day you know you've got a budget to go and have fun in this specific kind of way but just like here's what you need at a basic level i think it's only a small you can you can change the world with a small a couple of small changes like that that we just haven't thought about on that efficient level if you're the operations manager of humanity, what is Brian? Brian is the visionary behind pushing this. I mean, when I met... It was such a good opportunity to roast me. What?

It was like teed up, you could have just dunked on me. What would it have been? It was like a moment for you to dunk on me. I don't know. Yeah. Okay. So brian your question then so i will see where can i speak to camera which one okay great i'd say uh last time i was on the podcast hi everyone nice to see you you were all so kind to me in the comments on our last video together. And I've become accustomed to get pretty beat up about pretty much everything all the time. And there were so many of you who were so generous and kind and charitable and compassionate.

And I just really appreciate you. I read all the comments. I find it to be a really informative source about what I'm doing well to communicate what I'm struggling on. And I appreciate your generosity with me as I stumble through how to communicate ideas that make sense in my mind, but then, you know, they don't land as clearly with others, but I appreciate that you're willing to entertain the discussion. And yeah, just a really, I was really touched by your kindness. So you've developed a powerful community

that of highly intelligent, compassionate, engaging people. And I appreciate being a member of that because these topics are hard and it's easy to lob insults and make derogatory comments. It's just so easy to try to pick that off as the form of communication. And this community did not. They took a different path and it was really encouraging to read. You read every comment?

I read most of them. Does any of it ever hurt you? And maybe you should answer this just collected a whole bunch of mean tweets for a youtube video we have coming out soon brian reading mean tweets and honestly i don't think i've ever seen brian more happy than reading mean tweets he absolutely loves it i did notice that on twitter i like, he really loves engaging with this stuff. How have you got yourself to that place mentally where you can read someone saying just the worst thing about you

and seemingly spin it into a joke and apparently really genuinely not care? Yeah. Not only do I not care, I love it. Why? I mean, why do I love it i mean it's really beyond my comprehension i don't know i mean and maybe you know like in other times in my life maybe i would have been more sensitive to it but i mean i people work so hard at making the absolute

most cutting insult they can generate i know they spend a lot of time doing these things and i appreciate the effort i mean you know like it's great i'm not sure why but it does it brings me genuine happiness i i would wager that brian brian a lot of people don't realize how thoughtful he is every second behind the scenes he's constantly thinking about other people and what they're going to think so i feel like you've actually explored all these roasts in your own head and so to witness them come to life it's just like oh fun people are having fun with me like it's great interesting gosh gosh I do I do I do think that Brian I do think that you're very very thoughtful I even notice it in the way you

answer questions you take a pause often and people don't typically do that they just give the answer and then for you to even say to some questions, I don't know, is again, a sign of that thoughtfulness. But I always also think people that are that sort of neurotic and thoughtful and always thinking in their head, I think they must be a little bit tortured in some way. Like it can't be a pleasant experience to be that intelligent and thinking about that many things that often, because you're going to end up thinking about some things that aren't so great. Yeah. You know what I mean? If you have that ability to think,

I think that about Elon a little bit as well. He speaks about being a young man that had an existential crisis and made him depressed and then he watched Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and that kind of got him out of his depression. But being that intelligent and thoughtful comes with a cost now yeah i mean i i certainly am familiar with torturing myself i've been in time

times in my life like the majority of my life i actually vigorously tortured myself and it's only been in the past few years in conjunction with Blueprint where I have been rid of that torture. And I think also when people make these biting, you know, so I know how to make the most biting comment to myself. And so I'd say after experiencing that, anyone else trying to tear me down, just like it's totally insignificant. It doesn't mean anything to me. How lucky are we to exist in this moment? And if we're really trying to figure out how we have the most fulfilling existence, prioritizing our health and wellness of getting good sleep and eating well and avoiding bad things changes your existence. You want different things. You think about different things. You respond differently to people's comments. You think about different things. You respond differently to people's comments. You're a different human. And this is, in some ways,

why I don't trust—so, first, I don't trust any of my own responses, but I trust even less other people's responses who are half-dead. When they're not sleeping well, when they have bad habits, they aren't thinking clearly. We know this from science that you become inebriated. And so, that's why when I think about humanity, are we actually of the right mind of clarity to say anything about our wants and desires? And I think we're all just drunk on addiction and we just can't see our way through this thing. And so when we say, I want this, I want that or whatever, I don't believe it. We're not in our best minds day right now and we don't trust our own judgment. and take a step back and be like, could I be wrong about basically everything? Takes so much courage to even contemplate. And it's offensive to most people's minds,

but really I think it's where we are best to be there to question all these things. And this is how I stumble in these conversations. Like I know even in talking with you today, I know when I say certain things to you, they don't resonate, right? You're like, kind of see your point, but like really this path makes much more sense to me.

And yes, I'm really trying to improve at this game. It's a hard one. It's like, there's one story here I'll share. It's my favorite one. So there's a captain navigating the ocean and receives a communication, change course 30 degrees north. The captain radios back,

you change your course 20 degrees south. Gets a radio back, no, immediately change 30 degrees north. Now at this point, the captain is irritated. Their authority has been challenged. So the captain radios back, this is fleet commander so-and-so of the battalion so-and-so, whatever, change 30 north.

And of course, this has always worked for that person. Always use force and authority and bullying to get whatever their objective is. And the communication comes back, I'm a lighthouse, change course 20 south. In this conversation as a species, we are the fleet commander. Our minds are the fleet commander. We believe we can bully our way through any conversation.

Is the future worth living? I'll tell you right now. Do I want this living? I'll tell you right now. Do I want this cigarette? I'll tell you right now. Do I want to sleep versus something else? I'll tell you. Our mind has an infinite depth of answers and it knows all things.

I think the future could potentially be a lighthouse. When we offer up a response about something we want, feel, think, imagine, whatever, our tactic that has always worked for us in the past that we can just bully our way through all things is somehow not going to work anymore because it's a lighthouse. And that's what the future feels like to me

is we cannot use the tactics that have worked for us in the past. That the circumstances have changed so radically, the old rules don't apply, a new game is coming. And like, sure, we don't know what's going to happen. And sure, we don't know if it's even positive or negative. We don't even know if we'll have a conception of positive or negative.

Like maybe those ideas will even go away. Like we have no clue whatsoever what our existence would be like. And this is like why purging society of this stuff is interesting to me. Like, why would we not wage war right now? Like wage war on this.

It's, it's ruining our chances of the future. Even something like, like the Halloween holiday traditions. Why are we contributing to the dying of our children by giving them sugar as they walk around from house to house? Like, how are we this foolish?

Got our Halloween sponsor. No, it's true though, but that's the way we've designed society. But I'm hopeful about that because conversations like this and all the podcasts out there that are having these conversations are changing the dial. I've seen an evolution in myself over the last 12 months of doing this the types of subjects we're talking about and sugar and ultra processed foods and sleep and all of these things so if it's gently nudging me i'm convinced it's gently nudging my listeners and there's more shows like this all around the world and we're all kind of becoming awakened to it because we're feeling the symptoms the symptoms of that discontent the depression the inflammation is killing everybody and

cardiovascular diseases so i think it feels like there's a slow but certain uprising in society i agree i i feel that i perceive the same thing thank you so much brian thank you so much kate really appreciate you sharing that with me um so interesting and i really hope we can have this conversation again when you hit more milestones everybody needs to go and get the extra virgin olive oil because as i said everybody's been raving about this extra virgin olive oil but as i said a second ago i really really trust yours so that'll be the one that i'm stocking in my house thank you brian thanks for having us thank you do you need a podcast

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