The "priest of AI" & tech's pursuit of eternal life
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Who is Bryan Johnson and what is his quest for longevity?
Hello, hello. I'm Brittany Luce, and you're listening to It's Been a Minute from NPR, a show about what's going on in culture and why it doesn't happen by accident. Have you heard of this guy named Brian Johnson? Tech sent a millionaire turned health guru? Maybe you know him from when he started getting infusions of his own son's blood.
Thanks for the plasma. No worries.
Or for saying that he wants to live forever.
To put it simply, you don't want to die. Yeah, that's right.
Or how he turned that idea into a movement he's calling Don't Die.
Don't Die is a religion. Don't Die is an economic system. Don't Die is a political system. Don't Die is an ethical, moral, social system.
If this seems bombastic, it's because it is. I think he's smart about how to make things go viral, to share his ideas about how to live and therefore how not to die, which includes some pretty basic stuff. Here's journalist Michelle Santiago-Cortez.
What are the scientific and unconventional methods Bryan Johnson uses to extend life?
He's doing a lot of common sense things like prioritizing sleep. I think he's the most bullish on sleep. He's minimizing his sun exposure. He's exercising.
And he also does some stuff that isn't so basic. like a kind of gene editing that hasn't been approved by the FDA, or not eating past 11 a.m., or wearing a hat that shoots red lights into his scalp. And for a while, he was taking the same medication that keeps people from rejecting their donated organs. This one guy is pretty extreme about longevity, but he's not the only one. The longevity industry is worth over $25 billion, and other tech magnates are bought in too. But it's all left me wondering, in the words of Freddie Mercury, just who wants to live forever and why? And what does that mean for the rest of us? To get into what might be a new religion of longevity and what it has to do with a prediction of total AI takeover, I'm joined by Michelle, who you heard earlier. Thanks for having me. And journalist Tara Isabella Burton. Thank you so much for having us. Let's get into it. So to start off, all the stuff Brian Johnson is doing to try to not die, do we know anything about the efficacy of all of it?
Why is the longevity movement gaining traction among tech billionaires?
I mean, I guess that's kind of like the million-dollar question because he claims his protocol, which he calls Blueprint, is science-based, evidence-backed. He often refers to it as an algorithm. Some of these things are... proven some are not and that kind of is what makes his let's say his influencing because so far that's really mostly what it is compelling he's trying all kinds of interventions there's no way of knowing what interventions are successful because he's doing a
So though Brian is particularly intense about this stuff, he's not the only one who's into longevity. There's a whole community of people, most of whom are kind of rich tech bros like him or adjacent to that world. Sam Altman and Peter Thiel are also investing in longevity. And stay with me while I'm explaining this. There is an island off the coast of Honduras that has much more relaxed regulations. So companies doing longevity science like Minicircle, which does gene editing, these companies can bypass the FDA while on the island. And there's demand for that. I think it's normal for people to be interested in living a longer life. But Tara, why to this extreme within this group of people? And why now? Yeah.
So I see the current interest in longevity research as having, in part, a religious character. I think we can look at it as part of a whole bunch of things happening, particularly in the tech world, but in the culture more broadly now. that have a kind of spiritual sensibility around the idea of developing the post-human. This is associated with the transhumanist movement, with biohacking, with other forms of life optimization. But the idea behind it in many cases is that what it means to be human is to transcend our own humanity, to defeat death in the case of longevity research, or in the case of building AI, to build the thing that comes next. What if we build God rather than worship God?
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Chapters
7 chapters
1
Who is Bryan Johnson and what is his quest for longevity?
0:26–1:33
2
What are the scientific and unconventional methods Bryan Johnson uses to extend life?
1:33–2:55
3
Why is the longevity movement gaining traction among tech billionaires?
2:55–6:50
4
How is longevity linked to the concept of a new religion or spirituality?
6:50–10:42
5
What ethical and socioeconomic issues arise from longevity as a luxury for the wealthy?
10:42
6
How does the attention economy relate to Bryan Johnson's longevity efforts?
10:00–14:21
7
What is the connection between longevity and the fear of an AI takeover?
14:21–23:54