Kara Swisher Wants to Live Forever (2026) s01e01 Episode Script
Never Say Die
1
[bright music]
[quirky electronic music]
♪
- Oh, I love this place.
I like cemeteries.
I know it sounds kind of
morbid or ghoulish.
Most people don't feel
the way I do about cemeteries,
but I'm not like most people.
I love lying in cemeteries.
I always do that.
I don't think,
is a body underneath me?
But I just like it.
It's very peaceful.
I think about death every day.
♪
This is my dad,
Dr. Louis Bush Swisher Jr.
He died from the complications
of a brain aneurysm
that burst without warning
one sunny Sunday morning
in 1968.
He was 34 years old,
and I was only 5.
So it should come as no surprise
that most of my life has been
and still is about his death
and about how
not to die too soon.
I got close once when
I had a stroke while traveling
to Hong Kong when I was 48.
We'll get to that later.
But like the song goes,
I'm still here.
I'm hoping to be around
for a very long time,
and, right now,
groundbreaking discoveries
using advanced technologies
are being made
that might allow humans
to cheat their own mortality.
[dramatic music]
Many of these advances
are being funded
by tech billionaires
in Silicon Valley.
Are they trying to help
all of humanity,
or are they just, like always,
in it for themselves?
But I get my inspiration
from someone like Steve Jobs,
who understood
the importance of mortality
in creativity and innovation
versus some of these moguls
who just are so
As much as they want
to go to Mars,
they're so earthbound, right?
They're so, like,
desperate and clingy
to hang on to life
without talking about
the quality of life
and what you do for people.
The more you think about death,
the happier you are as a person.
[pensive music]
Who gets to live longer?
What will it cost?
And how will all this
new tech change humanity?
I'm gonna be your guide
to sort it all out.
I've been reporting on these
tech overlords for decades.
Anything they can disrupt,
they have,
except for the one thing
they cannot control
Death.
Because, as Scott Galloway says,
in spite of all their efforts,
biology is undefeated.
I'm gonna be cremated, for sure.
I'm gonna be thrown in the
face of people I don't like.
[laughs]
That was Kara.
[blows raspberry]
[bright electronic music]
[soft dramatic music]
♪
[curious music]
- What are we here for today?
- I'm here for this burger.
No, we're here I think
we're here to talk about me.
Oh, it's one of
these white places.
- Clock it.
- Kara Swisher, take one.
[clapboard clacks]
- My name is Kara Swisher.
And I am a I don't know
Journalist.
- Please welcome
the fabulous Kara Swisher.
- Kara Swisher.
- So from a business point
of view,
creating platforms that
can be easily manipulated
by bad players
is a bad business.
Elon's lost $152 billion today.
There's all kinds of questions
about what happened
and then what are they
gonna do about it.
I'm best known for covering
the technology industry
since the dawn of
the internet age,
as they moved from garages
to owning the world.
What's the greatest
misunderstanding
in your relationship?
This idea of catfight,
this idea of what
Which of the many?
- We've kept our marriage secret
for over a decade now.
[laughter]
[bright music]
♪
- I love San Francisco.
It's my favorite place on Earth.
♪
My office was straight
down here, Market Street,
"The Wall Street Journal."
And I came here
when I was much younger
and started covering
the nascent internet in 1996.
[keyboard clacking]
♪
Nobody really thought
it was that big a deal.
♪
And now, of course,
these people rule the world.
♪
In covering technology,
one of the issues
I kept telling people
is this was
gonna overtake everything.
It wasn't just technology.
It was gonna be social.
It was gonna be political.
It was gonna be cultural.
And one of the areas
that didn't get
as much attention was health.
As these people
have become billionaires
and almost trillionaires,
they've gotten
very interested in longevity.
- What would you want
your legacy to read?
- World's oldest man.
I keep telling
my biotech friends, hurry.
What the hell, guys?
Come on.
- One of the things
that I was really riveted to
was how narcissistic
their efforts were
in terms of keeping
themselves alive forever,
'cause they sort of moved into
this godlike personalities.
- I want to get this right
to make getting older easier.
- Your goals suck.
- It's a bad goal?
- I wanna make I wanna make
getting older easier.
- No, you know what I mean.
Yeah.
- How about, "I want
to stop getting old"?
- That sounds great.
- And I want to stay
how I am now or better
every single year.
- I want to be better.
I want to be better.
- And I think they feel
as if anything
Since they hacked so much
And that is absolutely true
That they can hack this.
- Your programs die.
And so if you change
the program
- Yeah.
- You will live longer.
- And so it began with that,
but then, you know,
there are all these
amazing advances
in medicine
that could help everybody.
- How we implement gene therapy
is gonna help us
understand how we implement
other curative therapies.
[energetic electronic music]
- I wanted to see what was real
and what wasn't.
I don't trust them at all.
I trust us.
I don't trust them at all,
and that's why I'm here.
I trust them to do
what's best for them,
and I'm gonna make them do
what's best for us.
♪
They took our mortality.
All of those?
- About 20
- Vampires.
Now they want immortality.
♪
But I know these guys,
and I know
the same cutting-edge
tech and treatments.
Oh, my fucking God.
You could torture me
with this easily.
All the cool stuff
they have access to,
I do, too.
[laughs]
Yeah, I could see
how you could feel
more confident.
The tech bros are in it
for themselves.
Oh, I'm a brave lady.
But I'm going
this journey for you.
Shh, we're making medicine.
[pensive electronic music]
I'm gonna start with
a controversial treatment
that has quickly moved from
the fringe to the mainstream.
♪
- I'm walking on sunshine ♪
- I just remember kind of
talking in a conversation,
and then, next thing you know,
I go on this ride.
- Everybody is interested
in ketamine and what it is.
And people are
a little scared of it.
- You have a ketamine
prescription.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- What's that for?
- Well, I mean,
that's pretty private to ask
somebody about a medical
prescription, you know?
- It's not just longevity.
It's life improvement.
It's mind improvement.
It's hacking the body.
It's really about that,
and to peak potential.
- Pretty good.
Oh, wow.
This looks like a spa.
Look, poofs.
You got poofs.
Ketamine is
a powerful anesthetic
that rose to public awareness
as a party drug.
Today, it's available
for supervised use
in clinics across America.
It's become
a popular therapy for
treatment-resistant
mental health disorders,
including depression and OCD.
Most people here have
anxiety and trauma, right?
- Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
Proponents of ketamine
claim it shows signs of
promoting cellular rejuvenation
and combating
age-related decline.
But psychiatric use of ketamine
is largely unregulated.
It is more often
dispensed online
without adequate
medical oversight.
That can be dangerous
and even deadly.
- I'm never nervous.
I'm the person you want
in an apocalypse,
just so you know.
- Never.
- Never done any
recreational drugs ever.
I'm like a unicorn, aren't I?
- I know.
- Your intentions for today,
what are you thinking of?
- I hope I cry.
- Yeah.
- I probably won't.
[upbeat electronic music]
- OK.
♪
Whoa.
- Whoa?
[chuckles]
- Ooh, that's a wild thing.
♪
It still feels like
you're out of body.
- Wow.
Dissociating is something else.
I hated it.
[laughs]
I found it very isolating.
It is a dissociative drug.
And I don't like
being disassociated.
It just felt very
It's not lonely.
It's alone.
And I don't want to feel alone.
It's really wild.
Felt like a roller coaster,
absolutely.
The stomach churning,
the anticipation,
the fear, the excitement,
and a floatingness of it,
what I'd imagine being born is,
like when you're in the womb,
right?
You sort of are floating
all the time.
- Makes me understand
the people I cover,
I'll tell you that.
That's for sure.
I see what they're I see.
I see their point.
I think they feel like the mind
is not fully utilized, I guess,
which is untrue,
when you actually
take apart the science of it.
The mind is very much used,
but they have this idea
in their head that
there's more to be done,
and so they feel like
ketamine frees them.
So I thought it was important
to understand it,
at least,
to try it at least once.
And that's as many times
I'll be trying it in my life.
- Over the past decade,
some of the world's
most influential tech barons
have become major backers
of longevity research,
including Peter Thiel,
Mark Zuckerberg, and Jeff Bezos.
But there's only
one who claims that
his biomarkers
show that his body
now runs like an 18-year-old.
[dramatic electronic music]
- Three years ago,
I started a project
asking a pretty wild question.
Can science slow
my speed of aging?
- Bryan Johnson's
quest for eternal youth
began after his tech company
was acquired for $800 million.
It started with a rigorous
regimen of diet,
exercise, and sleep,
constant biometric testing
♪
And dozens of supplements
That he sells, of course.
- I'm trying to make
Don't Die into the world's
most influential ideology.
The question is, in our age,
like, what is salvation?
- As his story spread in
the press and social media,
his quest became
more of a movement.
- Basically we're trying
to build a nation state
and a religion.
My competitor is Jesus.
- And his anti-aging treatments
became more extreme.
- Rich dude doing all this
crazy stuff for his health
now in Honduras,
doing gene therapy.
- Including non-FDA-approved
gene therapy,
injections of Swedish
stem cells into his joints,
and a three-way
blood plasma transfusion
between Bryan, his father,
and his then-18-year-old son.
- A liter in for me,
1 liter out for me,
a liter into Dad.
- Yikes.
Calling Count Dracula.
♪
Bryan Johnson is someone
I met a long time ago.
It was early internet,
and he actually appeared
at one of my conferences.
He came to talk about the brain.
I like people who think
around the corner,
and he was one of those people.
- Unlocking the brain
and learning
how to read and write
our neural code
is the single most consequential
and exciting adventure
in the history
of the human race.
- He was also a troubled person.
You know, he talked about
his depression issues.
- And I had chronic depression
for a decade,
something I would
never wish upon anybody.
- And so I always
found him interesting,
like many bros, but then
he took it to another level,
which was the idea of
perfection of the human body.
So we're watching his emotional
and physical development
in real time.
So we met in 2017,
and you posed
some amazing questions
during that talk.
You were one of the first people
to talk about
artificial intelligence
and its intersection
with human intelligence.
This is exactly what you said.
"You must upgrade
the human operating system."
And you were talking
about the brain.
How did you go from that
to, like,
three-way plasma and measuring
every little thing
about your body?
It's such a shift.
- It's actually the same goal.
- OK.
- And I'm saying
that the primary thing
that we want to do is to say,
like, let's just not die.
- So why do you phrase it
like that?
'Cause it is phrased,
and you market it
And it's quite marketed
I want to live forever.
- Oh, I don't.
So I specifically do not say
- Mm-hmm.
- I want to live forever.
- Mm-hmm.
OK.
But you said
you don't want to die.
- Don't Die is very different.
- OK. Explain that for me.
- OK, Don't Die is not about me.
It's not about a select group.
It's about a species.
This is, like, literally
a Homo sapien-like endeavor.
- So you're in it for humanity,
not for self-aggrandizement.
- Like, what else
is there to play for?
- Knowing that time is finite
has been a great motivator
in my life.
I have to say,
seeing my father die
at a young age
of a brain issue
- Yeah.
- When I was five.
I think having
a deep understanding
of our time is limited
has pushed me to live
a more fulfilling life.
But do you feel that
death does give meaning?
Most people don't want to die.
- It's death cope.
- Death cope. Explain that.
- Humans have been dying
since the dawn of time.
- Yeah.
- And then therefore,
humans have been shipping
products about death
to help people buy
the product that helps them
make sense of it.
Reincarnation, heaven, you know,
immortality through deeds
Like, those are the products
people buy to reconcile with
this inevitable death.
- Mm-hmm.
- When death no longer happens
or somehow
it's extending a long time,
people are not
gonna buy
those products anymore.
They're gonna buy different
moral philosophy products.
- Which you are there
to provide.
- Exactly right.
- Right.
Despite his explanation,
I still think Don't Die
is a confusing slogan.
But Bryan Johnson has built
an empire around it.
- Today, I'm gonna show you
one of my favorite meals
called super veggie.
Eating this can take me
up to 34 minutes.
I know.
I've timed it.
- Johnson's videos
documenting his journey
have earned him over 2 million
subscribers on YouTube,
where he has racked up
over 300 million views.
On his website,
he sells supplements,
lotions, olive oil, nuts,
and, of course, Don't Die merch.
Talk about why
you made it a business,
Blueprint pills,
like, the supplements,
powders for profit.
Why even make it a business?
- Yeah, it was
- I mean, you're certainly
wealthy enough not to.
- It was accidental.
So when I started doing this,
everything I would eat
Packaged foods,
fresh foods, supplements
I would take it to a lab
and test it.
And to my surprise,
I found that our global
food supply chain is very toxic.
- Yes, it is.
- And I didn't know that.
Basically, what's happened
is food and supplements,
air, and water
can't kill you suddenly,
but they can kill you slowly.
- Mm-hmm.
- And so I said,
that's not gonna be
a good idea for
the experiment I'm running.
So I started sourcing
my own foods,
testing my own foods,
and then consuming them.
Friends and family said,
that's cool. I want that.
So I said, sure, here you go.
And it just kind of
naturally became a thing.
- Brian calls his
longevity system Blueprint.
He's constantly refining it,
testing out new techniques
on himself.
- What?
No, I'm just joking.
It's actually very good.
- He's a one-man experiment
unfolding online in real time.
You're an influencer, and you
There's plenty of
bad information.
- What is the alternative?
So what do we do
- Do the standard
gold standard
- Who's gonna fund it?
- Of double blind.
Well, you're rich.
- Yeah, how many studies
could I fund?
- A lot.
- [laughs]
- But so could all of you.
- It's not practical
to get there
and gripe and be like,
don't run experiments
on yourself
and share your data.
Just wait for everybody
to do shit.
Like, how do you get by in life?
- It's possibly irresponsible
to say one thing
that happens to you is the thing
that happens to another.
- Large-scale, double-blind,
placebo-controlled trials
are the gold standard.
- Sure.
- We all want them.
- Yes.
- In the meantime
- In the meantime.
- I say, I'm going to do
this experiment.
So I share it.
Then I can say, hey, everybody,
if you want to repeat
my experiment,
you can do the following thing.
- Are you worried about
the safety of people
who take your advice?
- No.
- Because?
- I'm not talking
about esoteric things
that don't have evidence.
I'm talking about things
like sauna,
a Mediterranean diet,
extra virgin olive oil.
These things have
robust scientific evidence.
And, you know,
the rebuttal is, well,
it's not a placebo-controlled,
double-blind study,
so therefore,
it shouldn't exist.
Meanwhile, what does
the average person do?
- Are you worried about
the extreme divides
between the ultra-wealthy
and everyone else?
Not everyone can spend
what you spend.
I think it's $2 million a year?
Is that correct?
- Yeah.
- What do you say
to those who can't?
If your goal is
to lift everyone up,
why not focus
on those underlying issues
of poverty,
broken health care system,
and the environment?
- Even those in poverty
can go to bed on time.
- Though sometimes they can't.
- A portion of their challenges
is their suffering
from societal addiction systems
that they're trapped in
Phones, porn, gambling,
junk food, fast food.
And they say, how do I get out?
I try to give them the path.
Here are some basic rules
on how you can try to wrestle
a little bit of power
against these systems.
- You know, I had spent time
with Bryan.
So I think he's sort of
a cartoon character
to a lot of people of this
narcissistic asshole tech bro.
He's not that.
You know, he's just trying
to broadcast his journey.
And because these people
never can shut up,
they need to do that,
and he's one of those.
He's very typical of that group.
Some of it's interesting.
Some of it's ridiculous.
And, of course,
he's a study of one,
so it doesn't mean anything
for anybody else.
That's the issue.
And that's lost on him.
I feel like we should be
doing studies for everybody
so everybody benefits.
And so we have a basic,
fundamental disconnect.
[quirky music]
- Bryan Johnson's house
in Venice, California,
is essentially
a laboratory designed
to study one man in the most
minute detail money can buy.
♪
- OK, I'll show you
a few things that
- OK.
- I have in the house.
- So is this right?
You have it set back
from the sun
'cause you don't like sun?
What are you, a vampire?
- The sun is great
but also causes DNA damage.
- Uh-huh, OK.
- If you were to choose
a villain house, this is it.
[eerie music]
- Johnson has turned his life
into a never-ending experiment
running 24/7,
tracking every calorie,
every hour of sleep,
and even logging
his nighttime erections.
- So you put it on
the base of the penis.
- It's a pursuit that costs him
over $2 million a year, he says.
- Do you want to see
the hyperbaric, or
- Sure, let me see
your hyperbaric.
I'm not getting
in your fucking
- [laughs]
- What if you're
a serial killer?
That would be interesting.
- That would
Wouldn't that be a
- That would be
an interesting wrinkle.
- Wouldn't that be a fun twist?
- Yeah.
It would be a good twist,
except I'd be dead.
- And if you could
break that story
- I know.
It'd be great.
Bryan Johnson's
a serial killer, everybody.
Oh, my God.
Wow, you've got, like, a
Cadillac of hyperbaric chamber.
How often do you
go in these things?
- Daily.
- Really?
- Every day.
- Most people think
you shouldn't do that.
You know that, right?
- Yeah.
Well, there's no evidence.
Some of these guys
have oxygen in these,
and that's dangerous.
- Oh, so it blows up.
- Exactly right.
[air whooshing]
Age of your face.
- You're gonna steal my face
for "Face/Off" right now,
aren't you?
- Yes, and I have
- You're gonna switch them.
- And
- And then you're gonna be me,
and then I'm gonna be you.
That's my favorite movie,
"Face/Off."
So I'm gonna come out 72.
- So it's looking at eight
different characterizations
of the face, like
UV damage, browns, reds,
a bunch of other markers,
and it'll give you a
single number
for your biological age.
Good job.
You scored one year younger.
- Well, I actually am 62,
but so good.
- OK, so you're [laughs]
that's amazing.
- Yeah.
- So UV is
- So that's not amazing.
- Your pores are fantastic.
So you're in
the 90th percentile.
- I'm one scary fucker.
- [laughs]
- He gets that he's a circus act
and a freak show,
and I like that about him.
At the same time,
it's vaguely sad.
I find it sad.
I do.
He's taking the moments
of his life
and wasting it
doing the measurements.
It's useless without meaning,
I guess.
I find it meaningless.
And that's why it's sad to me.
When every ounce of your life
is measured, are you living?
- Yeah, this is a very
Again, it's such
a common response
that people have
- They do.
- That I somehow must
not feel joy if I don't drink,
and I don't stay up late
at night, and I don't
- I don't think
that's what it is.
I think it's
the relentless measurement
or looking at your poop.
- Yeah.
- But come on.
There's basics of living well
with, you know,
food and sleep and exercise,
which I think are the
- Yeah.
- Building blocks
of a long life.
- Yeah.
- Being rich helps.
It's probably the number one
- Yeah.
- Indicator of longevity.
But you're doing it on
a quantum level of difference.
- When LeBron James
goes to bed on time
and eats well and exercises
and measures
the metabolic activity,
people are like,
that's amazing, LeBron.
When I do it, they say,
this Prometheus,
Patrick Bateman, Dorian Gray
motherfucker measures
They don't know what to say.
- Yeah, I've heard all those.
- They don't understand
I'm a new archetype
of a rejuvenation athlete.
I'm just like
- A rejuvenation
That's interesting.
- I'm just like LeBron James.
They're trying to be top
of their field in their game.
And when you're doing that,
you have to use
all the scientific powers
you have to, like,
measure everything.
- Except LeBron James
plays basketball then.
I mean, I don't see you
on the court anytime soon.
- No, I'm saying
that I am trying
to solve
a very practical problem
that exists
for billions of humans.
- Mm-hmm.
- I think
the narcissist accusation
is really lazy, actually.
- OK.
- It's like
it doesn't understand
the depth of what
I'm trying to do.
The headlines have painted
this superficial,
narcissistic story
that people grab onto.
I say,
here's what you can do too.
And I've open-sourced
the entire thing to say,
here's what you can do.
And then I sift through
the entire thing and say,
I'm gonna give it
to you for free.
I'm not gonna gate anything.
I'm not gonna hold it back.
Everything is open-source.
- So when you say
narcissism is lazy,
you also play into it
with your photos
of your chest and, you know,
holding this thing
with your son.
You're doing it on purpose,
presumably, correct?
- Uh
- You know it's like catnip
to media to do that.
- Absolutely.
- Right.
- Yes.
- So why are you doing
it that way?
- The world is in a ferocious
match of competition.
And you need your thing
to be understood.
And, like,
when you play out there,
you just play the game.
- So you think being
a very loud work in progress
doesn't invite skepticism
and even ridicule?
- Skepticism is great.
Ridicule is great.
The hate is great.
There's nothing wrong
with those things.
I welcome all of it.
[dramatic electronic music]
♪
- You think you look different
from doing this?
You definitely look different
from when I last
- Yeah.
- I look exactly the same.
- [laughs] Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, I look different.
- Do you like the way you look?
- I do, yeah.
- You do? Because?
- I look more vibrant
than I ever have
in my entire life.
- You think you do.
- I do.
- You do.
♪
When I think of Bryan Johnson,
I think of that
Shakespeare quote,
"Golden lads and girls all must,
as chimney sweepers,
come to dust."
Everybody dies, Bryan.
I think about that quote a lot.
I speak to people
like this 'cause
it's a sort of a desperate grab
for something that
they will never achieve.
It's never enough.
He's wasting his time
measuring himself
when he could be
living his life.
I don't see the point.
- These days, you don't
have to be Bryan Johnson
to obsessively measure and track
your health in minute detail.
There are wearables
like the Oura Ring,
which I wear, and all manner
of home testing kits.
Now there's all these
biological age tests
that you can use to
scan yourself at home.
We're gonna start
with GlycanAge.
This is a blood one.
Yay.
And always wear gloves
when handling.
Well, I don't have gloves.
Oh, well.
And I'm gonna poke myself.
Ow.
Oh, wow, that really did
That one hurt.
I'm not supposed to do anything
until it starts to bleed.
These direct-to-consumer tests
look at the cellular health
and measure damage
to the body
Oh!
Ow, fuck!
That comes from age,
lifestyle, and environment.
Welcome to the future
Oh, thank you
Where age is more
than just a number,
where age is a collection
of well-lived moments.
Oh, no.
I live in San Francisco,
and this is a little much.
This is a buccal test,
which means we want cells
from the inside of your cheek.
Ah.
Both these tests claim to
measure your biological age.
They'll probably say
different things,
is my guess, but we'll see.
Maybe not.
But I can tell you,
uh, that was a lot.
Two months later,
after the samples were tested,
I got my results.
Let's see what it says.
Tally Health said I was 62,
my actual age,
the same thing Bryan Johnson's
facial machine said.
According to GlycanAge,
I have the body
of a 56-year-old.
That information
cost about $750.
If you'd like someone else
to run these tests on you
and if your budget is
significantly higher,
there's the booming business
of concierge medicine.
In America,
it's a $7 billion industry
and growing.
And, as in most things,
the rich live better, right?
Better food, better health care,
better access to health care.
Getting a doctor's
appointment is hard
Doing the scheduling,
getting information
that is coordinated.
- AI retinal scan.
- Our health care system
is incredibly bad
compared to most
similar societies.
And so there are these places
that makes it
like just like everything else,
just like their town cars,
just like their planes,
just like everything else
that smooths life for them.
They have a separate
health care system.
Welcome to Fountain Life,
where they'll take your money
and your blood, lots of blood.
- [chuckles]
- You're taking all of those?
- About 20.
- Membership here runs
$10,000 a year
for the basic package,
over $21,000
for the apex package,
and the epic level?
If you have to ask,
you can't afford it.
They agreed to comp me
a temporary membership
and run a battery of tests.
- So we assess
your electrolytes,
kidney function, liver function,
thyroid function,
your lipid profile,
LDL, HDL,
inflammatory biomarkers,
and certain minerals that
we need for optimization.
- Vampires.
- [chuckles]
One of the perks of joining
the exclusive
concierge medicine club
is a wide range of diagnostic
tests and measurements.
- Anything less than
120 over 80 is ideal.
An electrocardiogram
will get information
such as heart rate,
heart rhythm.
- Am I dead?
- No.
- [chuckles]
The appeal for many customers is
the hope of catching
signs of illness
before it becomes a problem.
- The oral microbiome detects
any kind of pathogenic bacteria
that can cause
cardiovascular diseases.
- [swishing] Mm.
- [chuckles]
- [swishing] Hmm.
Oh, you could give it
some flavor.
I suggest bubble gum.
[curious music]
Preventive care is
critically important.
We live in a society
where we do sick care.
We don't do health care.
We do sick care.
And when you get sick,
everything's brought to bear.
You have cancer,
everything moves
into place, right?
We're real good at sick.
Doing all that testing
is a great thing.
You should have
an annual health care check
with your doctor
that is rigorous.
We should do it because
we want to save time and money
for people not to get stuck
into a sick care system
that eventually
doesn't tend to work for us.
♪
- A whole body scan
It'll give us a general idea
of your overall bone strength,
but it also provides
some information regarding
your muscle-to-fat ratio.
[device whirring, chirping]
OK.
Welcome to the CAT scan.
- You know,
it's nice to have everyone,
like, doing every test
in the book on you, right?
And this and this and do this.
Some of it is ridiculous.
Like, I don't need
to know all that stuff.
- What a rush, huh?
Great job.
- Fountain Life is an example of
a lot of resources going toward
a very small group of people
who share just one trait
Wealth.
But there's another
group of people
who also share a rare trait
A genetic disorder
that's treatable,
but at a price
that's out of reach
for most Americans.
- In the United States,
sickle cell disease
is considered a rare disease.
It affects about
100,000 Americans,
probably more, but mostly
people of African descent.
Our research priorities
are often driven
by the same priorities
that our society is driven by.
- You're essentially
saying the wrong people
are getting the disease,
and it's not prioritizing
the development.
- Yes.
- Let's talk a little bit
about sickle cell anemia
and what it is.
- When you have
sickle cell disease,
you are born with
a single genetic mutation.
Instead of your cell
looking like a jelly donut,
it kind of looks like
a banana or a crescent
or a sickle, which is why
it's called sickle cell.
- The symptoms are brutal
Organ damage, vision problems,
and, most commonly,
constant grinding pain,
requiring frequent trips
to the ER.
Angelique, you have sickle cell.
You have it since birth.
When did it first manifest
itself for you?
And what are the symptoms,
if you could describe them?
- The first time I experienced
sickle cell pain,
I was maybe seven.
I remember being in
the emergency room with my mom
and just, like, not being able
to sit still and, like, crying
and just being in a lot of pain
and kind of, like,
not knowing why.
[soft dramatic music]
- There is hope.
Cutting-edge gene therapies
like CRISPR
show the potential to cure
diseases like sickle cell.
- The FDA is on the verge
of approving
a breakthrough treatment
for sickle cell disease.
- Talk about the cost.
- So we know there are really
two main mechanisms
for gene therapy.
One of them is $2.2 million,
and the other is $3.1 million.
And that's just
- Per patient.
- Per patient,
and that's just the product.
That doesn't include
the hospitalization,
the chemotherapy,
hopefully fertility preservation
and other
supportive care things.
It just includes the drug.
- And that adds on even more.
- Yeah.
- So impossible.
Here's a cure,
but it's too expensive.
- Too expensive right now.
Yeah.
- Right.
So you have something
like a Fountain Life,
which I think it's like anywhere
from $10,000 to $100,000.
Right?
It depends on the level of care.
But then there's these
incredible breakthroughs
like CRISPR that could
solve terrible disease
for people to have,
which is sickle cell anemia.
They have ways
of really curing it,
like curing.
Like, I don't
There's not many cures in life.
Can you imagine changing
people's lives like this?
Well, we can't 'cause
it's so expensive.
And guess who has it?
Largely people of color,
especially African-Americans,
and poor people.
Well, we're not gonna do that.
I mean, if all the tech bros
got sickle cell anemia,
you'd be sure
it was solved yesterday.
The number one thing
to live long,
don't be poor.
Don't be poor.
That's it.
[bright music]
- I don't believe
that the best health care
should only be available
to the rich.
The current crop
of billionaires pushing
the boundaries of life extension
seem to be doing it mostly
to benefit themselves.
But the technologies that
truly change the world
for the better are available
and useful to everyone.
Not just medical tech
All of it.
Nobody understood that
better than Steve Jobs.
- You've gotta start with
the customer experience
and work backwards
to the technology.
What incredible benefits
can we give to the customer?
Where can we take the customer?
- Steve Jobs was not
a perfect person.
Very difficult.
He could be cutting to people.
All manner of ways
you could say he was a,
you know, a narcissistic prick.
You could do it.
You could go there.
That said, I think he is
someone who thought
a lot about the bigger picture.
He had a great mind.
Like he thought
He thought about philosophy.
He thought about history.
He thought about journalism.
He thought about
a lot of things.
And so I really enjoyed
talking to him.
Once he got sick, you know,
he had two periods.
But one of the things that
was important was he was sick,
and then he got better.
Like, he did.
He really had a revival
there for a while.
And he gave a speech at Stanford
that really changed my life,
which was about using death.
Death is the only motivator,
really, for living a life.
It was philosophical.
It was historical.
It was personal.
- No one wants to die.
Even people who want
to go to heaven
don't want to die to get there.
And yet death is
the destination we all share.
No one has ever escaped it.
And that is as it should be,
because death is very likely
the single best invention
of life.
It's life's change agent.
- And I thought it was one of
the most beautiful speeches.
I found it very touching.
I thought it was very personal,
and it was very meaningful.
- Remembering that
you are going to die
is the best way I know
to avoid the trap
of thinking
you have something to lose.
You are already naked.
There is no reason
not to follow your heart.
- Instead of thinking
he could defeat death,
Jobs used it as a lens
to clarify
every choice he made in life.
[soft dramatic music]
Now his son Reed is trying
to continue that legacy.
He founded Yosemite,
a venture capital fund
focused on funding development
of cutting-edge treatments
for cancer.
Reed, I'm so happy to be here.
- Kara, it's a real pleasure.
- You look great.
I've known you a long time.
You don't realize
how long I've known you.
But, of course, I knew your dad
and interviewed him a lot.
I think a lot about the speech
your dad gave at Stanford.
It's a beautiful speech.
And it seemed like,
Silicon Valley,
they didn't read it,
or they didn't hear
what he was saying.
He was talking about
the preciousness of life.
And they seemed to often
refer to it to me
that it's about, well,
we gotta live forever.
- That's not a new idea
- No.
- Is it, Kara?
- No. No.
- We've seen this before.
- Yes.
- Ponce de Leon went here.
We've seen this before in a
lot of cycles in health care.
- I think they think
they can do it this time.
I understand that Ponce de Leon
is sort of the
- I think he thought
he could do it too.
- Yes, but I really think
they think they can do it
in a way that is different.
- I think it's about
as crazy now as it was then.
And I personally think that
that is a ridiculous goal.
- Mm-hmm.
- I don't really see that
as about
reducing human suffering
or burden of disease.
It's deeply selfish at its core.
Most importantly,
there's not a hell of a lot
of good biology behind it.
It's a lot of wishful thinking.
And that might make
for good marketing,
but it makes for
very poor biotechnology.
- Your body is extremely
synchronized in its age.
Nobody has an old left arm
and a young right arm.
- Right.
- Why is that?
- Interestingly,
one of your father's friends,
Larry Ellison,
is quite interested in it.
He's created firms.
He's trying to figure out
healthspan versus lifespan.
- Sure, which is a very, very
important distinction.
- Talk a little bit about that.
- I think that verbiage
is one of the best things
to come out of this movement,
healthspan versus lifespan.
Lifespan
We all know what lifespan is.
- We do.
- But healthspan comes
from the observation
that so much of
the health care spend
happens in the last five years
of someone's life.
It's because complex conditions
manifest then, and usually care
becomes the most expensive.
But if you ask most people,
they don't want that.
If you could live to be 120,
that sounds great.
But what if I told you
40 of those years,
you're gonna be in a wheelchair?
- Yeah.
- That doesn't sound so great.
- Yeah.
- And the notion that you're
gonna spend so much money
and that you're going
to spend so much time
being a sick person,
is very undesirable for people.
Healthspan, I think, is actually
a better idea than lifespan.
- You spent a lot of time with
your father and his doctors.
Did he believe
he could beat cancer?
I feel like he did.
- He felt he could
beat anything.
- Well, that's true.
That's true.
He thought a lot about death.
He did.
It was an influential factor
in his life.
It's an influential factor
in my life too.
It inspires me in a way,
and it gets me going.
My dad died when I was young.
I had a stroke myself
right around the time
your dad died, actually,
same exact time.
And it the idea of
death hanging over you
does inspire you
to do things, presumably.
Is that the way it is with you?
- No, actually, not for me.
I don't think about it
at all, actually.
- Really?
Interesting.
The last time I interviewed
Steve Jobs was in 2010.
At one point,
a man stood up in the audience
and asked him a question about
the Stanford
commencement speech.
It was a powerful moment.
- A few years ago,
you gave a commemoration
speech at Stanford.
Now, a few years later
and a couple of years wiser,
would you add anything else
to that speech
that you gave?
- Oh, I have no idea.
I I have no idea.
Probably I would just
turn up the volume on it,
because the last few years
have reminded me
that life is fragile, so
[curious music]
- So this is an app I love.
It's called We Croak.
There's a frog on it,
right here.
It says, "Five quotes a day.
In Bhutan,
they say contemplating death
five times a day
brings happiness."
It does.
Wallace Stevens,
one of my favorite poets,
"The way through the world
is more difficult to find
than the way beyond it."
Just I like them all.
I read them.
They make me happy.
And "Death takes no bribes"
from, of course,
Benjamin Franklin.
Well, not yet.
They can try.
If you think about death
and accept it,
you're happier
as a person because
you understand your time.
And if you accept it
And study after study shows
that death acceptance
makes you a healthier person.
It's a motivational thing,
and it's ironic that
it's motivational to me
and for a lot of tech guys
They're all guys,
in a lot of ways
Stopping death
is motivational to them.
But they're not
It's not gonna work.
[soft dramatic music]
♪
We're at the Beverly Hills
Memorial Gardens
in Morgantown, West Virginia,
where my dad is buried.
I was five.
I had just turned five years old
when he died,
just past my birthday.
Yeah.
This is where he was born.
The Swishers are all from here.
And this was where
his whole life was.
♪
This is my dad.
Isn't he a handsome devil?
Those are the glasses
I still have.
I think they're Navy-issued.
But that's with
his Navy haircut.
That's my brother Jeff,
my brother David,
and me sitting on his lap,
which is lovely.
I think it's a lovely picture.
Here's a picture of my mom
and my brothers
later without him.
♪
People whose parents
died in early age become
highly functional, which I think
is true of me and my brothers.
We're very
Very little bothers us, right?
And then this is my family,
which is my daughter,
oldest son, Louis
Shoulders
My son, Alex, my wife, Amanda,
and my other son, Saul.
[soft orchestral music]
♪
It gives you the gift,
if it's a gift, of understanding
the time is short.
So you're always aware of that.
You think about someone's life
who had worked so hard
coming from this place
of very modest means,
you know, working himself
up through the Navy,
going to medical school,
and then it's gone.
Just had three kids.
You know, 34 is young.
Like, I'm old.
I'm almost double that age.
But that was
the beginning of a life,
and then it wasn't.
It changed my life.
It changed everything.
Not just, you know,
circumstances,
as often happens,
a whole series of things,
but awareness of it
at a very early age.
Someone who is fully
half your life
when you're that age dies.
Can you imagine if half
your friends suddenly died?
You'd have
a traumatic experience.
And so you either
You meet the challenge of that,
or you crumble, essentially.
I think a lot of people with
early death in their lives
have a much more
fulfilling life in weird ways.
The more you think about death,
the happier you are as a person.
You know?
You really do,
because then it gives you
a lot of perspective of
how small and how short and
How short it is.
And then when you come
to a place like this,
it's so beautiful.
♪
I mean, obviously,
I wish he had lived.
It gives me the reminder
that I have to
That I have to think about
death every day of my life.
Thinking about death is what
sent me on this journey
across the country
and around the world.
My goal?
To find out what
we can all do to have
healthier, happier, and,
yes, more days on Earth.
We'll never be able
to live forever,
but some of us
are gonna die trying.
[bright music]
[quirky electronic music]
♪
- Oh, I love this place.
I like cemeteries.
I know it sounds kind of
morbid or ghoulish.
Most people don't feel
the way I do about cemeteries,
but I'm not like most people.
I love lying in cemeteries.
I always do that.
I don't think,
is a body underneath me?
But I just like it.
It's very peaceful.
I think about death every day.
♪
This is my dad,
Dr. Louis Bush Swisher Jr.
He died from the complications
of a brain aneurysm
that burst without warning
one sunny Sunday morning
in 1968.
He was 34 years old,
and I was only 5.
So it should come as no surprise
that most of my life has been
and still is about his death
and about how
not to die too soon.
I got close once when
I had a stroke while traveling
to Hong Kong when I was 48.
We'll get to that later.
But like the song goes,
I'm still here.
I'm hoping to be around
for a very long time,
and, right now,
groundbreaking discoveries
using advanced technologies
are being made
that might allow humans
to cheat their own mortality.
[dramatic music]
Many of these advances
are being funded
by tech billionaires
in Silicon Valley.
Are they trying to help
all of humanity,
or are they just, like always,
in it for themselves?
But I get my inspiration
from someone like Steve Jobs,
who understood
the importance of mortality
in creativity and innovation
versus some of these moguls
who just are so
As much as they want
to go to Mars,
they're so earthbound, right?
They're so, like,
desperate and clingy
to hang on to life
without talking about
the quality of life
and what you do for people.
The more you think about death,
the happier you are as a person.
[pensive music]
Who gets to live longer?
What will it cost?
And how will all this
new tech change humanity?
I'm gonna be your guide
to sort it all out.
I've been reporting on these
tech overlords for decades.
Anything they can disrupt,
they have,
except for the one thing
they cannot control
Death.
Because, as Scott Galloway says,
in spite of all their efforts,
biology is undefeated.
I'm gonna be cremated, for sure.
I'm gonna be thrown in the
face of people I don't like.
[laughs]
That was Kara.
[blows raspberry]
[bright electronic music]
[soft dramatic music]
♪
[curious music]
- What are we here for today?
- I'm here for this burger.
No, we're here I think
we're here to talk about me.
Oh, it's one of
these white places.
- Clock it.
- Kara Swisher, take one.
[clapboard clacks]
- My name is Kara Swisher.
And I am a I don't know
Journalist.
- Please welcome
the fabulous Kara Swisher.
- Kara Swisher.
- So from a business point
of view,
creating platforms that
can be easily manipulated
by bad players
is a bad business.
Elon's lost $152 billion today.
There's all kinds of questions
about what happened
and then what are they
gonna do about it.
I'm best known for covering
the technology industry
since the dawn of
the internet age,
as they moved from garages
to owning the world.
What's the greatest
misunderstanding
in your relationship?
This idea of catfight,
this idea of what
Which of the many?
- We've kept our marriage secret
for over a decade now.
[laughter]
[bright music]
♪
- I love San Francisco.
It's my favorite place on Earth.
♪
My office was straight
down here, Market Street,
"The Wall Street Journal."
And I came here
when I was much younger
and started covering
the nascent internet in 1996.
[keyboard clacking]
♪
Nobody really thought
it was that big a deal.
♪
And now, of course,
these people rule the world.
♪
In covering technology,
one of the issues
I kept telling people
is this was
gonna overtake everything.
It wasn't just technology.
It was gonna be social.
It was gonna be political.
It was gonna be cultural.
And one of the areas
that didn't get
as much attention was health.
As these people
have become billionaires
and almost trillionaires,
they've gotten
very interested in longevity.
- What would you want
your legacy to read?
- World's oldest man.
I keep telling
my biotech friends, hurry.
What the hell, guys?
Come on.
- One of the things
that I was really riveted to
was how narcissistic
their efforts were
in terms of keeping
themselves alive forever,
'cause they sort of moved into
this godlike personalities.
- I want to get this right
to make getting older easier.
- Your goals suck.
- It's a bad goal?
- I wanna make I wanna make
getting older easier.
- No, you know what I mean.
Yeah.
- How about, "I want
to stop getting old"?
- That sounds great.
- And I want to stay
how I am now or better
every single year.
- I want to be better.
I want to be better.
- And I think they feel
as if anything
Since they hacked so much
And that is absolutely true
That they can hack this.
- Your programs die.
And so if you change
the program
- Yeah.
- You will live longer.
- And so it began with that,
but then, you know,
there are all these
amazing advances
in medicine
that could help everybody.
- How we implement gene therapy
is gonna help us
understand how we implement
other curative therapies.
[energetic electronic music]
- I wanted to see what was real
and what wasn't.
I don't trust them at all.
I trust us.
I don't trust them at all,
and that's why I'm here.
I trust them to do
what's best for them,
and I'm gonna make them do
what's best for us.
♪
They took our mortality.
All of those?
- About 20
- Vampires.
Now they want immortality.
♪
But I know these guys,
and I know
the same cutting-edge
tech and treatments.
Oh, my fucking God.
You could torture me
with this easily.
All the cool stuff
they have access to,
I do, too.
[laughs]
Yeah, I could see
how you could feel
more confident.
The tech bros are in it
for themselves.
Oh, I'm a brave lady.
But I'm going
this journey for you.
Shh, we're making medicine.
[pensive electronic music]
I'm gonna start with
a controversial treatment
that has quickly moved from
the fringe to the mainstream.
♪
- I'm walking on sunshine ♪
- I just remember kind of
talking in a conversation,
and then, next thing you know,
I go on this ride.
- Everybody is interested
in ketamine and what it is.
And people are
a little scared of it.
- You have a ketamine
prescription.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- What's that for?
- Well, I mean,
that's pretty private to ask
somebody about a medical
prescription, you know?
- It's not just longevity.
It's life improvement.
It's mind improvement.
It's hacking the body.
It's really about that,
and to peak potential.
- Pretty good.
Oh, wow.
This looks like a spa.
Look, poofs.
You got poofs.
Ketamine is
a powerful anesthetic
that rose to public awareness
as a party drug.
Today, it's available
for supervised use
in clinics across America.
It's become
a popular therapy for
treatment-resistant
mental health disorders,
including depression and OCD.
Most people here have
anxiety and trauma, right?
- Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
Proponents of ketamine
claim it shows signs of
promoting cellular rejuvenation
and combating
age-related decline.
But psychiatric use of ketamine
is largely unregulated.
It is more often
dispensed online
without adequate
medical oversight.
That can be dangerous
and even deadly.
- I'm never nervous.
I'm the person you want
in an apocalypse,
just so you know.
- Never.
- Never done any
recreational drugs ever.
I'm like a unicorn, aren't I?
- I know.
- Your intentions for today,
what are you thinking of?
- I hope I cry.
- Yeah.
- I probably won't.
[upbeat electronic music]
- OK.
♪
Whoa.
- Whoa?
[chuckles]
- Ooh, that's a wild thing.
♪
It still feels like
you're out of body.
- Wow.
Dissociating is something else.
I hated it.
[laughs]
I found it very isolating.
It is a dissociative drug.
And I don't like
being disassociated.
It just felt very
It's not lonely.
It's alone.
And I don't want to feel alone.
It's really wild.
Felt like a roller coaster,
absolutely.
The stomach churning,
the anticipation,
the fear, the excitement,
and a floatingness of it,
what I'd imagine being born is,
like when you're in the womb,
right?
You sort of are floating
all the time.
- Makes me understand
the people I cover,
I'll tell you that.
That's for sure.
I see what they're I see.
I see their point.
I think they feel like the mind
is not fully utilized, I guess,
which is untrue,
when you actually
take apart the science of it.
The mind is very much used,
but they have this idea
in their head that
there's more to be done,
and so they feel like
ketamine frees them.
So I thought it was important
to understand it,
at least,
to try it at least once.
And that's as many times
I'll be trying it in my life.
- Over the past decade,
some of the world's
most influential tech barons
have become major backers
of longevity research,
including Peter Thiel,
Mark Zuckerberg, and Jeff Bezos.
But there's only
one who claims that
his biomarkers
show that his body
now runs like an 18-year-old.
[dramatic electronic music]
- Three years ago,
I started a project
asking a pretty wild question.
Can science slow
my speed of aging?
- Bryan Johnson's
quest for eternal youth
began after his tech company
was acquired for $800 million.
It started with a rigorous
regimen of diet,
exercise, and sleep,
constant biometric testing
♪
And dozens of supplements
That he sells, of course.
- I'm trying to make
Don't Die into the world's
most influential ideology.
The question is, in our age,
like, what is salvation?
- As his story spread in
the press and social media,
his quest became
more of a movement.
- Basically we're trying
to build a nation state
and a religion.
My competitor is Jesus.
- And his anti-aging treatments
became more extreme.
- Rich dude doing all this
crazy stuff for his health
now in Honduras,
doing gene therapy.
- Including non-FDA-approved
gene therapy,
injections of Swedish
stem cells into his joints,
and a three-way
blood plasma transfusion
between Bryan, his father,
and his then-18-year-old son.
- A liter in for me,
1 liter out for me,
a liter into Dad.
- Yikes.
Calling Count Dracula.
♪
Bryan Johnson is someone
I met a long time ago.
It was early internet,
and he actually appeared
at one of my conferences.
He came to talk about the brain.
I like people who think
around the corner,
and he was one of those people.
- Unlocking the brain
and learning
how to read and write
our neural code
is the single most consequential
and exciting adventure
in the history
of the human race.
- He was also a troubled person.
You know, he talked about
his depression issues.
- And I had chronic depression
for a decade,
something I would
never wish upon anybody.
- And so I always
found him interesting,
like many bros, but then
he took it to another level,
which was the idea of
perfection of the human body.
So we're watching his emotional
and physical development
in real time.
So we met in 2017,
and you posed
some amazing questions
during that talk.
You were one of the first people
to talk about
artificial intelligence
and its intersection
with human intelligence.
This is exactly what you said.
"You must upgrade
the human operating system."
And you were talking
about the brain.
How did you go from that
to, like,
three-way plasma and measuring
every little thing
about your body?
It's such a shift.
- It's actually the same goal.
- OK.
- And I'm saying
that the primary thing
that we want to do is to say,
like, let's just not die.
- So why do you phrase it
like that?
'Cause it is phrased,
and you market it
And it's quite marketed
I want to live forever.
- Oh, I don't.
So I specifically do not say
- Mm-hmm.
- I want to live forever.
- Mm-hmm.
OK.
But you said
you don't want to die.
- Don't Die is very different.
- OK. Explain that for me.
- OK, Don't Die is not about me.
It's not about a select group.
It's about a species.
This is, like, literally
a Homo sapien-like endeavor.
- So you're in it for humanity,
not for self-aggrandizement.
- Like, what else
is there to play for?
- Knowing that time is finite
has been a great motivator
in my life.
I have to say,
seeing my father die
at a young age
of a brain issue
- Yeah.
- When I was five.
I think having
a deep understanding
of our time is limited
has pushed me to live
a more fulfilling life.
But do you feel that
death does give meaning?
Most people don't want to die.
- It's death cope.
- Death cope. Explain that.
- Humans have been dying
since the dawn of time.
- Yeah.
- And then therefore,
humans have been shipping
products about death
to help people buy
the product that helps them
make sense of it.
Reincarnation, heaven, you know,
immortality through deeds
Like, those are the products
people buy to reconcile with
this inevitable death.
- Mm-hmm.
- When death no longer happens
or somehow
it's extending a long time,
people are not
gonna buy
those products anymore.
They're gonna buy different
moral philosophy products.
- Which you are there
to provide.
- Exactly right.
- Right.
Despite his explanation,
I still think Don't Die
is a confusing slogan.
But Bryan Johnson has built
an empire around it.
- Today, I'm gonna show you
one of my favorite meals
called super veggie.
Eating this can take me
up to 34 minutes.
I know.
I've timed it.
- Johnson's videos
documenting his journey
have earned him over 2 million
subscribers on YouTube,
where he has racked up
over 300 million views.
On his website,
he sells supplements,
lotions, olive oil, nuts,
and, of course, Don't Die merch.
Talk about why
you made it a business,
Blueprint pills,
like, the supplements,
powders for profit.
Why even make it a business?
- Yeah, it was
- I mean, you're certainly
wealthy enough not to.
- It was accidental.
So when I started doing this,
everything I would eat
Packaged foods,
fresh foods, supplements
I would take it to a lab
and test it.
And to my surprise,
I found that our global
food supply chain is very toxic.
- Yes, it is.
- And I didn't know that.
Basically, what's happened
is food and supplements,
air, and water
can't kill you suddenly,
but they can kill you slowly.
- Mm-hmm.
- And so I said,
that's not gonna be
a good idea for
the experiment I'm running.
So I started sourcing
my own foods,
testing my own foods,
and then consuming them.
Friends and family said,
that's cool. I want that.
So I said, sure, here you go.
And it just kind of
naturally became a thing.
- Brian calls his
longevity system Blueprint.
He's constantly refining it,
testing out new techniques
on himself.
- What?
No, I'm just joking.
It's actually very good.
- He's a one-man experiment
unfolding online in real time.
You're an influencer, and you
There's plenty of
bad information.
- What is the alternative?
So what do we do
- Do the standard
gold standard
- Who's gonna fund it?
- Of double blind.
Well, you're rich.
- Yeah, how many studies
could I fund?
- A lot.
- [laughs]
- But so could all of you.
- It's not practical
to get there
and gripe and be like,
don't run experiments
on yourself
and share your data.
Just wait for everybody
to do shit.
Like, how do you get by in life?
- It's possibly irresponsible
to say one thing
that happens to you is the thing
that happens to another.
- Large-scale, double-blind,
placebo-controlled trials
are the gold standard.
- Sure.
- We all want them.
- Yes.
- In the meantime
- In the meantime.
- I say, I'm going to do
this experiment.
So I share it.
Then I can say, hey, everybody,
if you want to repeat
my experiment,
you can do the following thing.
- Are you worried about
the safety of people
who take your advice?
- No.
- Because?
- I'm not talking
about esoteric things
that don't have evidence.
I'm talking about things
like sauna,
a Mediterranean diet,
extra virgin olive oil.
These things have
robust scientific evidence.
And, you know,
the rebuttal is, well,
it's not a placebo-controlled,
double-blind study,
so therefore,
it shouldn't exist.
Meanwhile, what does
the average person do?
- Are you worried about
the extreme divides
between the ultra-wealthy
and everyone else?
Not everyone can spend
what you spend.
I think it's $2 million a year?
Is that correct?
- Yeah.
- What do you say
to those who can't?
If your goal is
to lift everyone up,
why not focus
on those underlying issues
of poverty,
broken health care system,
and the environment?
- Even those in poverty
can go to bed on time.
- Though sometimes they can't.
- A portion of their challenges
is their suffering
from societal addiction systems
that they're trapped in
Phones, porn, gambling,
junk food, fast food.
And they say, how do I get out?
I try to give them the path.
Here are some basic rules
on how you can try to wrestle
a little bit of power
against these systems.
- You know, I had spent time
with Bryan.
So I think he's sort of
a cartoon character
to a lot of people of this
narcissistic asshole tech bro.
He's not that.
You know, he's just trying
to broadcast his journey.
And because these people
never can shut up,
they need to do that,
and he's one of those.
He's very typical of that group.
Some of it's interesting.
Some of it's ridiculous.
And, of course,
he's a study of one,
so it doesn't mean anything
for anybody else.
That's the issue.
And that's lost on him.
I feel like we should be
doing studies for everybody
so everybody benefits.
And so we have a basic,
fundamental disconnect.
[quirky music]
- Bryan Johnson's house
in Venice, California,
is essentially
a laboratory designed
to study one man in the most
minute detail money can buy.
♪
- OK, I'll show you
a few things that
- OK.
- I have in the house.
- So is this right?
You have it set back
from the sun
'cause you don't like sun?
What are you, a vampire?
- The sun is great
but also causes DNA damage.
- Uh-huh, OK.
- If you were to choose
a villain house, this is it.
[eerie music]
- Johnson has turned his life
into a never-ending experiment
running 24/7,
tracking every calorie,
every hour of sleep,
and even logging
his nighttime erections.
- So you put it on
the base of the penis.
- It's a pursuit that costs him
over $2 million a year, he says.
- Do you want to see
the hyperbaric, or
- Sure, let me see
your hyperbaric.
I'm not getting
in your fucking
- [laughs]
- What if you're
a serial killer?
That would be interesting.
- That would
Wouldn't that be a
- That would be
an interesting wrinkle.
- Wouldn't that be a fun twist?
- Yeah.
It would be a good twist,
except I'd be dead.
- And if you could
break that story
- I know.
It'd be great.
Bryan Johnson's
a serial killer, everybody.
Oh, my God.
Wow, you've got, like, a
Cadillac of hyperbaric chamber.
How often do you
go in these things?
- Daily.
- Really?
- Every day.
- Most people think
you shouldn't do that.
You know that, right?
- Yeah.
Well, there's no evidence.
Some of these guys
have oxygen in these,
and that's dangerous.
- Oh, so it blows up.
- Exactly right.
[air whooshing]
Age of your face.
- You're gonna steal my face
for "Face/Off" right now,
aren't you?
- Yes, and I have
- You're gonna switch them.
- And
- And then you're gonna be me,
and then I'm gonna be you.
That's my favorite movie,
"Face/Off."
So I'm gonna come out 72.
- So it's looking at eight
different characterizations
of the face, like
UV damage, browns, reds,
a bunch of other markers,
and it'll give you a
single number
for your biological age.
Good job.
You scored one year younger.
- Well, I actually am 62,
but so good.
- OK, so you're [laughs]
that's amazing.
- Yeah.
- So UV is
- So that's not amazing.
- Your pores are fantastic.
So you're in
the 90th percentile.
- I'm one scary fucker.
- [laughs]
- He gets that he's a circus act
and a freak show,
and I like that about him.
At the same time,
it's vaguely sad.
I find it sad.
I do.
He's taking the moments
of his life
and wasting it
doing the measurements.
It's useless without meaning,
I guess.
I find it meaningless.
And that's why it's sad to me.
When every ounce of your life
is measured, are you living?
- Yeah, this is a very
Again, it's such
a common response
that people have
- They do.
- That I somehow must
not feel joy if I don't drink,
and I don't stay up late
at night, and I don't
- I don't think
that's what it is.
I think it's
the relentless measurement
or looking at your poop.
- Yeah.
- But come on.
There's basics of living well
with, you know,
food and sleep and exercise,
which I think are the
- Yeah.
- Building blocks
of a long life.
- Yeah.
- Being rich helps.
It's probably the number one
- Yeah.
- Indicator of longevity.
But you're doing it on
a quantum level of difference.
- When LeBron James
goes to bed on time
and eats well and exercises
and measures
the metabolic activity,
people are like,
that's amazing, LeBron.
When I do it, they say,
this Prometheus,
Patrick Bateman, Dorian Gray
motherfucker measures
They don't know what to say.
- Yeah, I've heard all those.
- They don't understand
I'm a new archetype
of a rejuvenation athlete.
I'm just like
- A rejuvenation
That's interesting.
- I'm just like LeBron James.
They're trying to be top
of their field in their game.
And when you're doing that,
you have to use
all the scientific powers
you have to, like,
measure everything.
- Except LeBron James
plays basketball then.
I mean, I don't see you
on the court anytime soon.
- No, I'm saying
that I am trying
to solve
a very practical problem
that exists
for billions of humans.
- Mm-hmm.
- I think
the narcissist accusation
is really lazy, actually.
- OK.
- It's like
it doesn't understand
the depth of what
I'm trying to do.
The headlines have painted
this superficial,
narcissistic story
that people grab onto.
I say,
here's what you can do too.
And I've open-sourced
the entire thing to say,
here's what you can do.
And then I sift through
the entire thing and say,
I'm gonna give it
to you for free.
I'm not gonna gate anything.
I'm not gonna hold it back.
Everything is open-source.
- So when you say
narcissism is lazy,
you also play into it
with your photos
of your chest and, you know,
holding this thing
with your son.
You're doing it on purpose,
presumably, correct?
- Uh
- You know it's like catnip
to media to do that.
- Absolutely.
- Right.
- Yes.
- So why are you doing
it that way?
- The world is in a ferocious
match of competition.
And you need your thing
to be understood.
And, like,
when you play out there,
you just play the game.
- So you think being
a very loud work in progress
doesn't invite skepticism
and even ridicule?
- Skepticism is great.
Ridicule is great.
The hate is great.
There's nothing wrong
with those things.
I welcome all of it.
[dramatic electronic music]
♪
- You think you look different
from doing this?
You definitely look different
from when I last
- Yeah.
- I look exactly the same.
- [laughs] Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, I look different.
- Do you like the way you look?
- I do, yeah.
- You do? Because?
- I look more vibrant
than I ever have
in my entire life.
- You think you do.
- I do.
- You do.
♪
When I think of Bryan Johnson,
I think of that
Shakespeare quote,
"Golden lads and girls all must,
as chimney sweepers,
come to dust."
Everybody dies, Bryan.
I think about that quote a lot.
I speak to people
like this 'cause
it's a sort of a desperate grab
for something that
they will never achieve.
It's never enough.
He's wasting his time
measuring himself
when he could be
living his life.
I don't see the point.
- These days, you don't
have to be Bryan Johnson
to obsessively measure and track
your health in minute detail.
There are wearables
like the Oura Ring,
which I wear, and all manner
of home testing kits.
Now there's all these
biological age tests
that you can use to
scan yourself at home.
We're gonna start
with GlycanAge.
This is a blood one.
Yay.
And always wear gloves
when handling.
Well, I don't have gloves.
Oh, well.
And I'm gonna poke myself.
Ow.
Oh, wow, that really did
That one hurt.
I'm not supposed to do anything
until it starts to bleed.
These direct-to-consumer tests
look at the cellular health
and measure damage
to the body
Oh!
Ow, fuck!
That comes from age,
lifestyle, and environment.
Welcome to the future
Oh, thank you
Where age is more
than just a number,
where age is a collection
of well-lived moments.
Oh, no.
I live in San Francisco,
and this is a little much.
This is a buccal test,
which means we want cells
from the inside of your cheek.
Ah.
Both these tests claim to
measure your biological age.
They'll probably say
different things,
is my guess, but we'll see.
Maybe not.
But I can tell you,
uh, that was a lot.
Two months later,
after the samples were tested,
I got my results.
Let's see what it says.
Tally Health said I was 62,
my actual age,
the same thing Bryan Johnson's
facial machine said.
According to GlycanAge,
I have the body
of a 56-year-old.
That information
cost about $750.
If you'd like someone else
to run these tests on you
and if your budget is
significantly higher,
there's the booming business
of concierge medicine.
In America,
it's a $7 billion industry
and growing.
And, as in most things,
the rich live better, right?
Better food, better health care,
better access to health care.
Getting a doctor's
appointment is hard
Doing the scheduling,
getting information
that is coordinated.
- AI retinal scan.
- Our health care system
is incredibly bad
compared to most
similar societies.
And so there are these places
that makes it
like just like everything else,
just like their town cars,
just like their planes,
just like everything else
that smooths life for them.
They have a separate
health care system.
Welcome to Fountain Life,
where they'll take your money
and your blood, lots of blood.
- [chuckles]
- You're taking all of those?
- About 20.
- Membership here runs
$10,000 a year
for the basic package,
over $21,000
for the apex package,
and the epic level?
If you have to ask,
you can't afford it.
They agreed to comp me
a temporary membership
and run a battery of tests.
- So we assess
your electrolytes,
kidney function, liver function,
thyroid function,
your lipid profile,
LDL, HDL,
inflammatory biomarkers,
and certain minerals that
we need for optimization.
- Vampires.
- [chuckles]
One of the perks of joining
the exclusive
concierge medicine club
is a wide range of diagnostic
tests and measurements.
- Anything less than
120 over 80 is ideal.
An electrocardiogram
will get information
such as heart rate,
heart rhythm.
- Am I dead?
- No.
- [chuckles]
The appeal for many customers is
the hope of catching
signs of illness
before it becomes a problem.
- The oral microbiome detects
any kind of pathogenic bacteria
that can cause
cardiovascular diseases.
- [swishing] Mm.
- [chuckles]
- [swishing] Hmm.
Oh, you could give it
some flavor.
I suggest bubble gum.
[curious music]
Preventive care is
critically important.
We live in a society
where we do sick care.
We don't do health care.
We do sick care.
And when you get sick,
everything's brought to bear.
You have cancer,
everything moves
into place, right?
We're real good at sick.
Doing all that testing
is a great thing.
You should have
an annual health care check
with your doctor
that is rigorous.
We should do it because
we want to save time and money
for people not to get stuck
into a sick care system
that eventually
doesn't tend to work for us.
♪
- A whole body scan
It'll give us a general idea
of your overall bone strength,
but it also provides
some information regarding
your muscle-to-fat ratio.
[device whirring, chirping]
OK.
Welcome to the CAT scan.
- You know,
it's nice to have everyone,
like, doing every test
in the book on you, right?
And this and this and do this.
Some of it is ridiculous.
Like, I don't need
to know all that stuff.
- What a rush, huh?
Great job.
- Fountain Life is an example of
a lot of resources going toward
a very small group of people
who share just one trait
Wealth.
But there's another
group of people
who also share a rare trait
A genetic disorder
that's treatable,
but at a price
that's out of reach
for most Americans.
- In the United States,
sickle cell disease
is considered a rare disease.
It affects about
100,000 Americans,
probably more, but mostly
people of African descent.
Our research priorities
are often driven
by the same priorities
that our society is driven by.
- You're essentially
saying the wrong people
are getting the disease,
and it's not prioritizing
the development.
- Yes.
- Let's talk a little bit
about sickle cell anemia
and what it is.
- When you have
sickle cell disease,
you are born with
a single genetic mutation.
Instead of your cell
looking like a jelly donut,
it kind of looks like
a banana or a crescent
or a sickle, which is why
it's called sickle cell.
- The symptoms are brutal
Organ damage, vision problems,
and, most commonly,
constant grinding pain,
requiring frequent trips
to the ER.
Angelique, you have sickle cell.
You have it since birth.
When did it first manifest
itself for you?
And what are the symptoms,
if you could describe them?
- The first time I experienced
sickle cell pain,
I was maybe seven.
I remember being in
the emergency room with my mom
and just, like, not being able
to sit still and, like, crying
and just being in a lot of pain
and kind of, like,
not knowing why.
[soft dramatic music]
- There is hope.
Cutting-edge gene therapies
like CRISPR
show the potential to cure
diseases like sickle cell.
- The FDA is on the verge
of approving
a breakthrough treatment
for sickle cell disease.
- Talk about the cost.
- So we know there are really
two main mechanisms
for gene therapy.
One of them is $2.2 million,
and the other is $3.1 million.
And that's just
- Per patient.
- Per patient,
and that's just the product.
That doesn't include
the hospitalization,
the chemotherapy,
hopefully fertility preservation
and other
supportive care things.
It just includes the drug.
- And that adds on even more.
- Yeah.
- So impossible.
Here's a cure,
but it's too expensive.
- Too expensive right now.
Yeah.
- Right.
So you have something
like a Fountain Life,
which I think it's like anywhere
from $10,000 to $100,000.
Right?
It depends on the level of care.
But then there's these
incredible breakthroughs
like CRISPR that could
solve terrible disease
for people to have,
which is sickle cell anemia.
They have ways
of really curing it,
like curing.
Like, I don't
There's not many cures in life.
Can you imagine changing
people's lives like this?
Well, we can't 'cause
it's so expensive.
And guess who has it?
Largely people of color,
especially African-Americans,
and poor people.
Well, we're not gonna do that.
I mean, if all the tech bros
got sickle cell anemia,
you'd be sure
it was solved yesterday.
The number one thing
to live long,
don't be poor.
Don't be poor.
That's it.
[bright music]
- I don't believe
that the best health care
should only be available
to the rich.
The current crop
of billionaires pushing
the boundaries of life extension
seem to be doing it mostly
to benefit themselves.
But the technologies that
truly change the world
for the better are available
and useful to everyone.
Not just medical tech
All of it.
Nobody understood that
better than Steve Jobs.
- You've gotta start with
the customer experience
and work backwards
to the technology.
What incredible benefits
can we give to the customer?
Where can we take the customer?
- Steve Jobs was not
a perfect person.
Very difficult.
He could be cutting to people.
All manner of ways
you could say he was a,
you know, a narcissistic prick.
You could do it.
You could go there.
That said, I think he is
someone who thought
a lot about the bigger picture.
He had a great mind.
Like he thought
He thought about philosophy.
He thought about history.
He thought about journalism.
He thought about
a lot of things.
And so I really enjoyed
talking to him.
Once he got sick, you know,
he had two periods.
But one of the things that
was important was he was sick,
and then he got better.
Like, he did.
He really had a revival
there for a while.
And he gave a speech at Stanford
that really changed my life,
which was about using death.
Death is the only motivator,
really, for living a life.
It was philosophical.
It was historical.
It was personal.
- No one wants to die.
Even people who want
to go to heaven
don't want to die to get there.
And yet death is
the destination we all share.
No one has ever escaped it.
And that is as it should be,
because death is very likely
the single best invention
of life.
It's life's change agent.
- And I thought it was one of
the most beautiful speeches.
I found it very touching.
I thought it was very personal,
and it was very meaningful.
- Remembering that
you are going to die
is the best way I know
to avoid the trap
of thinking
you have something to lose.
You are already naked.
There is no reason
not to follow your heart.
- Instead of thinking
he could defeat death,
Jobs used it as a lens
to clarify
every choice he made in life.
[soft dramatic music]
Now his son Reed is trying
to continue that legacy.
He founded Yosemite,
a venture capital fund
focused on funding development
of cutting-edge treatments
for cancer.
Reed, I'm so happy to be here.
- Kara, it's a real pleasure.
- You look great.
I've known you a long time.
You don't realize
how long I've known you.
But, of course, I knew your dad
and interviewed him a lot.
I think a lot about the speech
your dad gave at Stanford.
It's a beautiful speech.
And it seemed like,
Silicon Valley,
they didn't read it,
or they didn't hear
what he was saying.
He was talking about
the preciousness of life.
And they seemed to often
refer to it to me
that it's about, well,
we gotta live forever.
- That's not a new idea
- No.
- Is it, Kara?
- No. No.
- We've seen this before.
- Yes.
- Ponce de Leon went here.
We've seen this before in a
lot of cycles in health care.
- I think they think
they can do it this time.
I understand that Ponce de Leon
is sort of the
- I think he thought
he could do it too.
- Yes, but I really think
they think they can do it
in a way that is different.
- I think it's about
as crazy now as it was then.
And I personally think that
that is a ridiculous goal.
- Mm-hmm.
- I don't really see that
as about
reducing human suffering
or burden of disease.
It's deeply selfish at its core.
Most importantly,
there's not a hell of a lot
of good biology behind it.
It's a lot of wishful thinking.
And that might make
for good marketing,
but it makes for
very poor biotechnology.
- Your body is extremely
synchronized in its age.
Nobody has an old left arm
and a young right arm.
- Right.
- Why is that?
- Interestingly,
one of your father's friends,
Larry Ellison,
is quite interested in it.
He's created firms.
He's trying to figure out
healthspan versus lifespan.
- Sure, which is a very, very
important distinction.
- Talk a little bit about that.
- I think that verbiage
is one of the best things
to come out of this movement,
healthspan versus lifespan.
Lifespan
We all know what lifespan is.
- We do.
- But healthspan comes
from the observation
that so much of
the health care spend
happens in the last five years
of someone's life.
It's because complex conditions
manifest then, and usually care
becomes the most expensive.
But if you ask most people,
they don't want that.
If you could live to be 120,
that sounds great.
But what if I told you
40 of those years,
you're gonna be in a wheelchair?
- Yeah.
- That doesn't sound so great.
- Yeah.
- And the notion that you're
gonna spend so much money
and that you're going
to spend so much time
being a sick person,
is very undesirable for people.
Healthspan, I think, is actually
a better idea than lifespan.
- You spent a lot of time with
your father and his doctors.
Did he believe
he could beat cancer?
I feel like he did.
- He felt he could
beat anything.
- Well, that's true.
That's true.
He thought a lot about death.
He did.
It was an influential factor
in his life.
It's an influential factor
in my life too.
It inspires me in a way,
and it gets me going.
My dad died when I was young.
I had a stroke myself
right around the time
your dad died, actually,
same exact time.
And it the idea of
death hanging over you
does inspire you
to do things, presumably.
Is that the way it is with you?
- No, actually, not for me.
I don't think about it
at all, actually.
- Really?
Interesting.
The last time I interviewed
Steve Jobs was in 2010.
At one point,
a man stood up in the audience
and asked him a question about
the Stanford
commencement speech.
It was a powerful moment.
- A few years ago,
you gave a commemoration
speech at Stanford.
Now, a few years later
and a couple of years wiser,
would you add anything else
to that speech
that you gave?
- Oh, I have no idea.
I I have no idea.
Probably I would just
turn up the volume on it,
because the last few years
have reminded me
that life is fragile, so
[curious music]
- So this is an app I love.
It's called We Croak.
There's a frog on it,
right here.
It says, "Five quotes a day.
In Bhutan,
they say contemplating death
five times a day
brings happiness."
It does.
Wallace Stevens,
one of my favorite poets,
"The way through the world
is more difficult to find
than the way beyond it."
Just I like them all.
I read them.
They make me happy.
And "Death takes no bribes"
from, of course,
Benjamin Franklin.
Well, not yet.
They can try.
If you think about death
and accept it,
you're happier
as a person because
you understand your time.
And if you accept it
And study after study shows
that death acceptance
makes you a healthier person.
It's a motivational thing,
and it's ironic that
it's motivational to me
and for a lot of tech guys
They're all guys,
in a lot of ways
Stopping death
is motivational to them.
But they're not
It's not gonna work.
[soft dramatic music]
♪
We're at the Beverly Hills
Memorial Gardens
in Morgantown, West Virginia,
where my dad is buried.
I was five.
I had just turned five years old
when he died,
just past my birthday.
Yeah.
This is where he was born.
The Swishers are all from here.
And this was where
his whole life was.
♪
This is my dad.
Isn't he a handsome devil?
Those are the glasses
I still have.
I think they're Navy-issued.
But that's with
his Navy haircut.
That's my brother Jeff,
my brother David,
and me sitting on his lap,
which is lovely.
I think it's a lovely picture.
Here's a picture of my mom
and my brothers
later without him.
♪
People whose parents
died in early age become
highly functional, which I think
is true of me and my brothers.
We're very
Very little bothers us, right?
And then this is my family,
which is my daughter,
oldest son, Louis
Shoulders
My son, Alex, my wife, Amanda,
and my other son, Saul.
[soft orchestral music]
♪
It gives you the gift,
if it's a gift, of understanding
the time is short.
So you're always aware of that.
You think about someone's life
who had worked so hard
coming from this place
of very modest means,
you know, working himself
up through the Navy,
going to medical school,
and then it's gone.
Just had three kids.
You know, 34 is young.
Like, I'm old.
I'm almost double that age.
But that was
the beginning of a life,
and then it wasn't.
It changed my life.
It changed everything.
Not just, you know,
circumstances,
as often happens,
a whole series of things,
but awareness of it
at a very early age.
Someone who is fully
half your life
when you're that age dies.
Can you imagine if half
your friends suddenly died?
You'd have
a traumatic experience.
And so you either
You meet the challenge of that,
or you crumble, essentially.
I think a lot of people with
early death in their lives
have a much more
fulfilling life in weird ways.
The more you think about death,
the happier you are as a person.
You know?
You really do,
because then it gives you
a lot of perspective of
how small and how short and
How short it is.
And then when you come
to a place like this,
it's so beautiful.
♪
I mean, obviously,
I wish he had lived.
It gives me the reminder
that I have to
That I have to think about
death every day of my life.
Thinking about death is what
sent me on this journey
across the country
and around the world.
My goal?
To find out what
we can all do to have
healthier, happier, and,
yes, more days on Earth.
We'll never be able
to live forever,
but some of us
are gonna die trying.