布莱恩·约翰逊：我服下了全球最强剂量的 DMT，体验是这样的

David Friedberg (00:00:00): Bryan Johnson, thanks for being here. Bryan Johnson (00:00:01): Yeah. It's good to see you. David Friedberg (00:00:02): How are you feeling? Maybe just share with us what you did a few days ago and Bryan Johnson (00:00:05): Yeah. I did 5-MeO-DMT, which is the most powerful psychedelic on the planet, somewhere between five and ten times more powerful than DMT. And so, yeah, it's been 48 hours. I'm still learning how to talk about it. David Friedberg (00:00:29): You know what many of the biggest tech CEOs and VCs have in common? They sleep on the Pod by Eight Sleep. It's become tech's favorite way to sleep and for good reason. A cover that goes on any mattress, cools it down to 55 degrees, and uses AI to adjust your temperature all night. Up to 34% more deep sleep. No wearable needed. Go to 8sleep.com/allin and use code ALLIN for up to $350 off your Pod purchase today. Before we get into your experience, why did you choose to do it? Bryan Johnson (00:00:58): Two things. One, mostly as a longevity experiment. So when I started this project five years ago, the approach we had was to go through all the scientific evidence ever published on health and longevity, try to find the interventions that have the best evidence for effect size, and then we just went down the list from top performing on down. So of course, you start with exercise, nutrition, you know, sleep, and you work your way down to things like hyperbaric oxygen therapy and sauna and then rapamycin and metformin. And so we never actually had on our radar psychedelics. They were always either an ancient medicine, you know, being used in ritualistic practices or being pointed at things like depression and anxiety in certain trials, but it was never understood as a rejuvenation protocol, something that was for anti-aging. As we found preclinical evidence in mice on psilocybin, we thought that's interesting. And so we did the world's most studied, the most quantified experiment doing psilocybin, three doses at 25 milligrams of psilocybin. David Friedberg (00:02:00): Which are pretty high doses. Bryan Johnson (00:02:01): It's yeah. It's a clinical dose at very, very close to a hero dose. And we found that we think it's a longevity therapy. David Friedberg (00:02:08): Let's get to that data in a minute. But then you decided to try 5-MeO this weekend. Yes. Walk me through the experience because you televised the whole thing. It was You looked amazingly calm going into it and going through the process. Walk us through your experience. Bryan Johnson (00:02:26): Yeah. I think those who have done 5-MeO would probably relate with me that it feels like an impossible task to explain what it's like. So that caveat said, I'll give it a go. I'm stunned. Absolutely floored, speechless. You basically experience raw consciousness and raw intelligence. It's this so whatever when I say these words, take these words that I commit to you, take that idea, multiply it by a thousand, and then move out infinite depth, infinite width or width and depth, and then dimensions. And like that gives you kind of like a rough map of the size and space that you deal with. And it was incredibly hard because you get blasted into this space that is so foreign, you don't even know what's happening. It happens very quickly. Like, you inhale it. I did nine milligrams of intramuscular and then seven eighteen of it vaporized, and it hits you within ten seconds. You're just out, you're out. And so but what happens is you get in that space and then the visual changes every very very little visual. Like, you see it on DMT, it's very visual. You'll meet the, you know, like the elves or whatever else. This is not a visual experience. But you get in this world and you lock in to basically you either panic because you feel like the gates of hell are gonna open, that the stream of existence is gonna just tear you to shreds. It's gonna shard you. And if you give up, like, break your brain. Yeah. Like, is it you feel like it's gonna, like, threaten your sanity. Like, is it gonna chop you up into little pieces? And so in that moment, you have to say, do I try to wrestle this and I need to just, like, wait it out until it's over, or you just relent, you say yes. And you have to, in that moment, you have to say yes so thoroughly. You have to release all attachment, all preconditions, all want, all desire. You have to release self, ego, control. You just have to just relent entirely. And then when you do that, it opens up this unimaginable bliss and euphoria. And I again, this is like a version one of trying to explain this, but if I list out the most dynamic experiences I've had as a human, you know, like certain accomplishments or getting married or having a child or overcoming a difficulty or, like, you know, state your list of things. Bryan Johnson (00:05:13): This is without question the most dynamic experience I've ever experienced as a human. David Friedberg (00:05:19): Does the internal chatter, the internal monologue of the ego turn off? So you can't hear yourself speaking. How do you rationalize what's going on if you don't have a dialogue going on? Bryan Johnson (00:05:30): It's this visceral feeling. Like, you're hyper-aware of what's happening. It's not like you black out. When you take a very high dose, you don't really know what's happening the first few minutes, but then you kinda come to and you're hyper-aware of everything. It's not visual, but it's this—you're in the depths of existence like this. It's just the most majestic experience achievable by a human, by intelligent life. I just can't imagine anything more miraculous. You've studied the biology, the biochemistry. What goes on in the brain as this molecule hits your neurons? Yeah. So, I mean, like, it completely dissolves your default mode network. David Friedberg (00:06:25): Describe what that Bryan Johnson (00:06:26): So, like, this is the engine that constructs self and ego. And so as you ruminate, you know, like, you're going through David Friedberg (00:06:35): Thinking through your day, what's next? How am I feeling? Yeah. What should I be doing right now? Constant conversation. Bryan Johnson (00:06:41): Yeah. Do I feel bad about myself? Do I feel, you know, like, am I shy? Am I like, do I feel bad about whatever? Like, you're doing this rumination stuff. Kids don't have this rumination loop. Their default mode network is quiet, and as you age, you basically build up this default mode network into more rigid patterns. And so as you age, your experience of reality becomes increasingly narrow. You have these big ruts that form. And so you can just see people in their patterns, like how open a child is to say, like, very random things, and as adults, you're just very shut in. Like, I did psilocybin, one of the reasons why we did it is because it does have this effect where it dampens the default mode network. You know, we could pick this up with Kernel, the brain interface. You can see how the default mode network weakens. Like, so basically, think of the brain like a globe with airports scattered about. Right. And you have certain traffic patterns like New York to London. You have a certain number of flights every day, that's like a very strong connection. But New York to, you know, some small town in Arkansas has a very low traffic map. And so when you do something like psilocybin, it basically takes the airports, picks them up, and then repositions around the world so it just all scrambles. So that the traffic patterns aren't the same. And then over time, the neurons don't physically move, but the activity shifts around. David Friedberg (00:07:57): Exactly. Right? The neurons are a little bit more random than they normally would be, which arguably drives neuroplasticity, causes those neurons to reach out for new connections. And when new connections are made, new behaviors, new ways of thinking emerge. Bryan Johnson (00:08:11): Exactly right. David Friedberg (00:08:12): Coming out of these therapeutics. Bryan Johnson (00:08:13): Is that David Friedberg (00:08:13): a fair way to describe it? Bryan Johnson (00:08:14): Exactly right. So you look at my brain on psilocybin from Kernel, you see my patterns before, like the New York to London connection. You see my brain afterwards, and it's exactly what you said. New patterns are emergent. The old ones have quieted down. So like a new map of connectivity. And so we saw that happen and that does generate a lot of neuroplasticity. David Friedberg (00:08:33): And obviously, this neuroplasticity rewiring these connections in the brain is what allows trauma victims or folks that have a certain wiring that they keep repeating in their brain, which causes the trauma and the anxiety in their lives to get rewired. And then that trauma and that anxiety feels like it dissolves or melts away. Is that fair? Bryan Johnson (00:08:51): Exactly right. David Friedberg (00:08:52): Yeah. Yeah. And so this has been documented in psilocybin. It's kind of well understood. How did you connect that psilocybin data to an effort in longevity or was this just like a random idea? Let's try it out. Bryan Johnson (00:09:05): Yeah. Well, so we saw some mouse data that it had these effects. It also showed reduced inflammation. So we said like, this is interesting because most longevity therapies do something with inflammation, right? Like inflammation is the killer. So if you can lower inflammation, a very good sign. If you can do something that makes the brain more youthful and takes down those big ruts, that's also useful. What we found in psilocybin though is that it had, we found a first in human observation, it had this metabolic reset in the brain, where my blood glucose before this was in the top 99.5 percentile of all the population, after it went to the top 99.9 percentile. Like to move my blood glucose from that level is very, very hard, but basically like not like metformin where you're doing something on blood glucose, this just had a reset across the body, also changed my microbiome. So we saw a full-on effect. So then we said, okay. If that had that consequence, 5-MeO may have some similar characteristics. So no one had done this David Friedberg (00:10:05): in 5-MeO before. Exactly. Bryan Johnson (00:10:07): So there's like there's there's and so there's some animal evidence, but it's the these the similar dynamics of, like, can you take the brain and can you basically, like, smooth out the barnacles that accumulate? And five MeO DMT compared to psilocybin, like, just absolutely, like, blasted clean my default mode network. It felt like psilocybin dampens it, you know, like, it softens it, but this thing just annihilated my default mode. David Friedberg (00:10:35): It off completely. Yeah. It just it just doesn't run the same way. Bryan Johnson (00:10:38): But, like, for an example, like, this morning I woke up, catching myself laughing in a dream. I have not laughed in a dream. I don't even know that I've ever laughed in a dream, but that is I after I woke up, I was like, that's really weird. Like, I don't remember laughing. I looked it up, and, like, that is a characteristic of a child. Right. And so you are restored to this childlike state. And, I mean, the past couple of days, I have felt childlike. You know? Yesterday morning, I felt that, you know, that emergent excitement, the bubbling of, like, today is so exciting. Yeah. I'm gonna do new things. I'm gonna have new experiences. Yeah. That you're just excited about all things. I haven't felt that. I don't even know when, you know, for so many years. So, like, it really was profound on every layer. And I see it. I'm stumbling too because I don't even know how to talk about it yet. David Friedberg (00:11:27): During the day, you're hanging out. You're walking around. Is your brain having the same normal chatter that it did before, or do you think that there's a persistent change in that default mode network? Bryan Johnson (00:11:38): Yeah. Definitely a change. Like, I was with my partner, Kate, yesterday, and I did something that made her upset. And so, like, in that situation, you know, like, when couples are in that moment, you have, like, this negotiation. How do I sort this? And it all just became so clear to me, like, when children have a fight, you have it out and then it's just like done. Yeah. And you move on. But then adults take that and they, like, package it up and, like, they wanna weaponize it. Be like, I got something on you. Right? I'm like, move it. I'm gonna move the chess pieces and, like, try to leverage this. Or they store it up like a snake in one of those David Friedberg (00:12:16): things that pop out all the Bryan Johnson (00:12:17): things later. You know, it's like David Friedberg (00:12:19): package it all up. Bryan Johnson (00:12:19): Exactly. Yeah. And so, like, we had this, and I just felt absolutely no need to escalate or to defend or to, like, it was just easy. Okay. And it was a breakthrough in our relationship where I was able to communicate with her in a way. And so it's like laughing in my sleep. It's how I deal with my partner. When I walk around, I just feel so much more funny. You know, like my ability to make quips that are just immediate. Uh-huh. You know, like so, yeah, I just feel renewed as a person in a way that I just really didn't imagine. Have you tried hallucinogenics before you started your longevity path a couple David Friedberg (00:13:02): of years ago? Yeah. And did you do that recreationally or therapeutically? Bryan Johnson (00:13:07): It was mostly therapeutic in that Yep. I had sold my company, Braintree. I got a divorce. I left the Mormon Church, and I was trying to remap, like, what is life? Who am I? What do I do? So I was in that rebuilding stage where I just dabbled of, you know, I did ketamine at Kernel. So one of our first studies at Kernel is we said, ketamine was an up-and-coming therapy for depression, and we posed the question, what happens when you do ketamine? And so we did the world's most extensive measurement of ketamine with Kernel before, during, and after. And so that was interesting, like and it had some kind of, you know, transient effect, but that's like a little league relative to 5-MeO. David Friedberg (00:13:47): And so as you've gone through this, maybe share a little bit of the MRI data that you're gathering and the other data mapping neurological effects. Bryan Johnson (00:13:54): Yeah. And tell us a little bit about what you've learned. So far, nothing. I have my subjective experience to share, but we have a structural brain MRI. We have a functional brain MRI. We did Kernel, which is like an optical interface. And then I did real-time EEG capture. David Friedberg (00:14:10): And we should just talk about, I think it's important. Structural, you can see the physical brain. Functional, you can see the activity in the brain, so neurons firing and neurons that are not firing. Bryan Johnson (00:14:22): Yes. David Friedberg (00:14:22): Right? Bryan Johnson (00:14:23): Yeah. David Friedberg (00:14:23): And then electrical actions are measured by an electrical device. Bryan Johnson (00:14:27): Yeah. So we basically wanted because the brain is very—so we've had a lot of success rejuvenating my heart and my lungs and muscle and body fat, but rejuvenating the brain is very hard. Right. And so this is why this is such a promising therapy. So we wanted to look at the brain through every modality possible. We wanted to look at blood flow, structural, molecular, you know, the wave pattern form, so it's a very high-fidelity quantification, and so we'll see when the data comes out. I'm very excited. David Friedberg (00:14:57): You did this on psilocybin as well, right? You mapped the brain over time. What did Bryan Johnson (00:15:00): you learn there? Dramatic restoration of youthful brain patterns. David Friedberg (00:15:06): Yeah. Right. Yeah. And what comes after 5-MeO? You know, I mean, how far do you take this? Bryan Johnson (00:15:14): Yeah. Honestly, I am so encouraged by psychedelics. I, you know, like, in the community where I hang out, psychedelics have always been understood as, you know, it's like a retreat or it's like a ritual or you go to, like, do various explorations, but never in the world of longevity. It's never been understood as that thing. And now after seeing the data, now I and of course, you have to be very careful when talking about psychedelics because they're extremely powerful. It's not like, go out and do them everybody. Right? It's like, it needs to be done properly with a licensed professional. It needs to be done carefully. The person needs to be in the right state. Like, it is not to be taken lightly, but I am more interested than ever in psychedelic compounds. They're just uniquely powerful. There's some arguments to be made that psychedelics can induce permanent psychosis. David Friedberg (00:16:10): Yeah. Cause functional changes and drive some people that might be predisposed into schizophrenic states. Bryan Johnson (00:16:17): That's right. David Friedberg (00:16:17): How did you get over those risks? Because for a lot of people, that would turn them off to trying psychedelics, and it's not a non-zero percentage of people that suffer these consequences. Bryan Johnson (00:16:28): Yep. I agree. And and also people who have really bad trips that leave them scarred. So it's it really is. And I think in part of it is what could be contributing to this is people who, for example, who have tried magic mushrooms. You know, it's in a social situation. Someone's got a bag. You pull out some mushrooms, it's like, yeah, like weighs blank, and they pop it in, but they have no idea what kind of mushroom strain they're eating. They don't know what the dose of psilocybin is. So it's like unquantified, unsupervised, wrong set and setting. And so much of it, I think you can, the risk persists, but I don't think we've approached psychedelics with the appropriate rigor that we should to make it safe. And so it's not to say that we can solve for the safety issue for all people. Some people just may not be the appropriate candidate for it, but I think if we do create a safety structure around it, they could deliver the benefits people want, with less of the risk. But definitely, I agree with you. Like, it's again, it deserves all the caution in the world. David Friedberg (00:17:27): Do you think it's, like, neurogenic, neuroplasticity, trauma resolution? I mean, what is the way that this is gonna be allowed to become, call it a medical therapeutic, that can be more broadly trialed and then eventually figure out how to bring it to people without it carrying all the risks and burdens that it does today? Bryan Johnson (00:17:46): I mean, if I just subjectively compare my experience with 5-MeO to, you know, having a better diet and exercising every day and sleeping well and doing the sauna and doing hyperbaric oxygen therapy, this was more efficacious than all of them in terms of the reset of me as a human. It just is incomparable. And I guess I'm really left pondering, I mean, for this molecule to have such a gigantic impact, now like, how long will it last? What's the decay curve like? You know, will I find I become the former Bryan within 30 days, 60 days? Do I have to repeat this again? I don't know. But it really is, you know, when you sleep well, you feel great. You exercise, great. But, like, nothing like what 5-MeO did in terms of, like, the reset of me as a human. David Friedberg (00:18:35): So let's just talk about the consequences outside of the physiological, which is life. Yeah. There are lots of stories and friends that I have and people that I know that have tried a heavy psychedelic, like an Ayahuasca or something. They were the CEO of a company and then they quit their company and they go off to the jungle, leave their family, divorce their partner, make such dramatic life changes because their perspective has been shifted so much that they reevaluate what matters in life to such a degree that they give up a lot of the things that mattered before. Bryan Johnson (00:19:11): Yeah. David Friedberg (00:19:12): In the wake of that, there are people that feel they're a victim of that behavioral shift, the investors in the company, the employees, the family members, etc. Bryan Johnson (00:19:23): Yeah. David Friedberg (00:19:24): Can you just talk a little bit about those broad risks? Because we've seen it and I don't know if you've seen the same, but friends that have kind of like said, I have this new perspective. I'm giving up my life. Bryan Johnson (00:19:34): I've seen the same thing, and one investor told me that he even put it in the deal docs that, you know, if we invest, you're not gonna do these psychedelics because they wanted to minimize the risk profile, it's a thing. David Friedberg (00:19:47): In your deal, in an investment in you? Bryan Johnson (00:19:49): No, I just spoke because I've been doing this. People bring this up as a topic of conversation. David Friedberg (00:19:54): Right. Bryan Johnson (00:19:55): And so they say like, I see you're doing this for longevity, but you know, like I've seen so many examples where people put money in, then you lose the founder. Like, they're off. They're gone. Everyone's high and dry. And so they were telling me that they put into deal docs that they can't do this for the duration of the company. So it is a thing, and, you know, I have nothing to say about it other than I know it happens. Also, I would say that most people in the tech world that I'm familiar with, again, they've done this in retreat centers or in social environments. It's not quantified. It's not set and setting. So it's a different thing. But I will say like, you know, I guess me as a person, what I'm trying to focus on, I came back even more motivated to do what I'm doing now. I don't have a desire to go off in the woods, you know, and like, and live that kind of life. It emboldened me to work on these things, but no question about it, you do have a dramatic shift in perspective and it's very hard to David Friedberg (00:20:57): get. That's a very important philosophical question. Who am I? Yes. If I'm defined by my experiences, it roughly equates to my neurons are wired in a way. Yes. That's a consequence of my experiences. And if I go in and take a drug and in a few hours rewire all my neurons, am I the same person? Bryan Johnson (00:21:21): Yeah. David Friedberg (00:21:21): What makes Bryan Bryan? You can maybe recall some memories of Bryan prior to taking the psychedelic, but Bryan as a person has been rewired. Yes. Are you a different person now? And what does that say about are we ever a persistent person? Bryan Johnson (00:21:36): Yeah. Right? Yeah. Your question is spot on. Probably the most dramatic reconstruction of your 60-plus trillion cells than anything you can do in life. You know, like it may be like a near-death experience, you know, would maybe be close, but it's a dramatic rewiring of you as a human. David Friedberg (00:21:55): Your values can change too. Bryan Johnson (00:21:56): That's David Friedberg (00:21:56): right. And you could judge the values pre and post, right? You could judge values ascribed to you by a religion or perhaps values ascribed to you by responsibility to family members, children, spouses, partners, what have you, you abandon them after you go through this change. So your values have changed. Is it right or wrong? Bryan Johnson (00:22:16): That's David Friedberg (00:22:16): right. I think it's another important question that comes out of all this. Bryan Johnson (00:22:19): I agree, and like you know, like you now think about that, that's through the frame where the world changes at a certain speed, now you take the world where it's changing faster. So we now know that it's hard to predict what's gonna happen weeks from now, or a month, like things are changing very quickly. And so now you come up with this practical question, can humans change fast enough in the world where AI is the dominant engine of innovation? And so in that case, like, you may want psychedelics as your ally to say, as a human, I'm struggling to, like, move with the change. Yeah. And so there's potentially, like, where it flips from a liability to an asset where now I do want that restructure changing even though you have some tail risk of, like, maybe my priorities will shift. David Friedberg (00:23:06): I think you have profound what I would call psycho flexibility. And I think most people don't. They have either a disinterest in changing who they are overnight or they're fearful of the ramifications or the experience and that they wouldn't go through it. How far would you take it? Would you wire yourself up to a Neuralink or neural enhancement device that would give you the ability to have information on demand and maybe change your personality and capacity as a human through an implant? Would you consider doing something like that? Yes. You would. Would you consider a transgenic system where you basically take a plasmid, which would then express a set of proteins in your body and change gene expression profiles and cells in your body and basically could rewire you as a different person? Bryan Johnson (00:23:51): Yes. David Friedberg (00:23:51): Yes. Is there a limit to what you would try? No. Interesting. Where do you think that comes from? Bryan Johnson (00:23:55): I think I find it to be the most exciting configuration of life, the ability to play on the frontier. Novelty and expedition and challenge, that's really my David Friedberg (00:24:09): Did you always have it, or are you responding to childhood suppression of those? Bryan Johnson (00:24:14): I think it's probably an overcompensation of a trauma response, like most things are. And so, you know, as a child, I lived in a very structured religious environment where things were cemented. Like, here's the story. Here's the plan. Here's what you do and what you don't Yeah. And so, yeah, maybe it's probably just I'm now flipped in the opposite. Yeah. And so, I mean, that's probably true that I really I don't trust my internal generation of reality. David Friedberg (00:24:40): Yeah. Bryan Johnson (00:24:40): You know, I know I'm always making things up. I've got 188 cognitive biases like all humans do. So I'm just generally suspicious of all things all the time, and I don't take myself very seriously. So I just find the frontier play space to be like, right now, I mean, you know, what you're doing in building a company is like, you just open up a toolkit and say, like, what can I build? And how do I modify? And so I agree with you. I do have a strong proclivity towards openness play. David Friedberg (00:25:06): Do you find that you've been challenged in maintaining, I would call it external responsibility as you explore and enhance yourself so much? Do you give up the responsibility to others around you who maybe are dependent on you or in need of you? Bryan Johnson (00:25:19): Yeah. I have three kids, and so, I do think about them a lot. And being a father is a really important thing to me, and it's an important part of my identity, and so that has not changed. So I've never vacillated on that or changed my disposition towards that. For those around me, I guess, fortunately, I have a social group that just says go and play. There's really no one in my life that tries to claw me back. There's no Velcro. Yeah. It's just all encouraging. And so that, I guess, I feel very fortunate that everyone around me and they're willing to take the risks. I mean, this is you can when I sat down for 5-MeO, I mean, my partner, Kate, like, she's got a ton of risk. Like, what if it goes poorly? What if I change my perspectives? What if something bad happens? So well, one could make David Friedberg (00:26:05): an argument that taking that degree of risk where something could have gone wrong, the people around you are enabling versus being supportive. Right? That's right. That's right. I mean Yeah. That's right. That's a consequence. But let's shift topics to other modalities for longevity. Yeah. What else is on the horizon? So you've had this profound set of experiences with psychedelics. You've documented in a very extraordinary and exquisite fashion all of the other things that you've been doing with interventions. Are there other things that are on the horizon that you're either excited about or that you're considering yourself? Bryan Johnson (00:26:39): Yeah. I mean, two of the ones that we've spoken about, cell therapy and gene therapy. Yeah. Yeah. They're all in the pipeline, so they're not ready yet. We've knocked out all the stuff you can do today. Like, we've gone through it all, done it all. The next-gen therapies are just not there yet. So we're looking at mitochondrial rejuvenation. David Friedberg (00:26:58): I think that's incredible. I think mitochondrial augmentation therapy, and there was a paper I saw where, in order to get the mitochondria in the cell, they coated the mitochondria in effectively a red blood cell envelope, which made it more transportable into cells and less attacked by the immune system, which is incredible. And I'm a big, big, big believer in this course of therapy. I think it's gonna be a whole therapeutic modality that no one has even recognized. Bryan Johnson (00:27:22): I agree. We have our first mitochondrial therapy lined up. David Friedberg (00:27:25): How are you gonna do it? You're like 99.9 percent. You need someone who's like 48.7 percent to try the mitochondrial Bryan Johnson (00:27:32): I agree with you. David Friedberg (00:27:33): Particularly like, you know, I think they tried it in Parkinson's patients. Yeah. Alzheimer's patients. That's where you could really see profound shifts in certain metrics. For you, it's like 99.9 to what? Bryan Johnson (00:27:43): Like Yeah. Yeah. I have the mitochondria, you know, of a 48-year-old. Right? So like, what if I That's right. What if I come back? Yes. David Friedberg (00:27:50): You could go to your sibling's child because the mitochondria is passed maternally. Yeah. So it's in the it's in the egg. Yeah. It's the mother's mitochondria. So if you go down in the mother's line maternally, if you have a sister who has a kid, they're gonna have very young mitochondria. You can take a little blood sample and then grow their mitochondria extensively and use that as a biological match to Bryan Johnson (00:28:12): do a perfect extension. I've had a blood boy as a son. Yep. So now I'm just gonna go to the extended family and be like, guys, it's a family project. David Friedberg (00:28:21): Yeah. Family project. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Well, that one's super interesting. Bryan Johnson (00:28:24): Then we also have one that we're doing. I'm now building. Sorry. David Friedberg (00:28:27): Are you gonna do your own mitochondrial transplantation? You're gonna build a bioreactor, or are you working with one of the third parties that Bryan Johnson (00:28:32): are already a third company? Yes. So I'll get I will do a blood draw in the next week or two. They'll spin up and then we'll do it. Yeah. I'll do it. David Friedberg (00:28:38): Okay. Yep. So you're gonna get your mitochondria, which have some you know, the problem with mitochondria, as you know, is mitochondrial DNA degradation over time. Right? It accelerates certain people. But that way, if you go back to a young person, you have young mitochondria. Exactly. But then you're gonna multiply yours out. Yes. And probably select a little bit or Bryan Johnson (00:28:56): Exactly. David Friedberg (00:28:57): For healthier ones? Bryan Johnson (00:28:57): Exactly. David Friedberg (00:28:58): Right. Okay. And then sort of back in. Bryan Johnson (00:28:59): It's very, I mean, exploratory. Like, we don't know. We're one of the first. They're in phase two now. Do you sprint? Yeah. I do. So you could probably score if you David Friedberg (00:29:08): did it intramuscular, like mitochondrial there, you could sprint to your score. Bryan Johnson (00:29:11): That's a great idea. David Friedberg (00:29:12): Yeah. Thank you. Bryan Johnson (00:29:13): Yeah. I'll do David Friedberg (00:29:13): that one here. Yeah. That would be a great way to measure it from a rather than just a basic biomarker perspective. Yeah. Be really interesting to see. Bryan Johnson (00:29:20): Yeah. Sprinting is one of the most underappreciated longevity therapies. David Friedberg (00:29:23): Yeah. I don't do it. Oh, man. I've got the age of a 74-year-old roughly. Definitely not keeping track with you. Would you consider or have you looked at any plasmids where you take a gene as DNA, it in your body, and then that gene makes a protein in your body that that does something? Bryan Johnson (00:29:44): Like the one we were looking at in the FOXO3 expression. Yeah, exactly. So the mesenchymal stem cells, it package up with the FOXO3 delivery. That showed that over 50 percent of tissues getting that rejuvenation. It's unbelievable. Unbelievable. The best demonstration in the entire world. David Friedberg (00:29:57): That's perfect for tissue regeneration. Like, as a particular application set, tissue regeneration using that sort of system seems like a no-brainer. It's like yeah. Bryan Johnson (00:30:05): It's safe. Right? Yeah. It's like so yes. I reached out to that Chinese professor. I'm really interested in seeing it replicating. I would love David Friedberg (00:30:12): You reach out to the Chinese professor? Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah. We sent them paper. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's awesome. Bryan Johnson (00:30:18): So David Friedberg (00:30:19): Can you respond? Bryan Johnson (00:30:19): Yeah. Awesome. Yeah. Good. So we I'd love to do that. I'd love to actually build it ourselves. Yeah. But that's like a two-year project. So AI can help make it faster. That's true. Yeah. Actually, that's true. David Friedberg (00:30:32): AI as a project manager for these sorts of programs is Bryan Johnson (00:30:34): You know, that's true. Yeah. We spoke about this six months ago. David Friedberg (00:30:37): Yeah. Things are so different. Bryan Johnson (00:30:38): So different now, six months later in terms of standing up. So that was cool. So I think that's a good good option. But also I'm doing Brian Johnson organoids. So we took my I p s b I p s c's. We now have David Friedberg (00:30:49): the induced pluripotent stem cells. Exactly. So you took your cells, turned them into stem cells. Yep. Bryan Johnson (00:30:53): Yeah. So now we're doing in dish. So now we have, like, a Bryan Johnson heart, liver, lungs, and now we're trying molecules on me in dish. So let me just David Friedberg (00:31:01): walk the audience through this. So you take cells off of your skin or something. Blood. Blood. And then you put these Yamanaka factor proteins on those cells, causes those cells to become stem cells, which means they can then turn into any other cell. Yeah. And then you put other proteins on them to turn them into a heart cell or an eye cell or what have you. And now you've got a store of these tissue-specific Bryan Johnson cells. Yes. That you then use for Bryan Johnson (00:31:25): Like you can say, okay, what if you give Bryan Johnson blank your drug? What happens? Is it good? Is it bad? What are the side effects? David Friedberg (00:31:33): In the Petri dish, you put the drug in there. Exactly. See what happens. Okay. Bryan Johnson (00:31:36): So you're like, you can simulate all these experiments. So now you get the advantage of time, of acceleration of like what to take, why, what dose. That's awesome. What combinatorial things to consider. Yeah. And so we have the organoids stood up. We haven't done our first takes yet. Yeah. So that's interesting because now I have to do this old-school methodology, like put it in my body, wait to see what happens. Is it good? Is it bad? What, you know, how does it affect everything else? David Friedberg (00:31:58): Yeah. Totally. Bryan Johnson (00:31:59): That's a good one. But, I mean, I don't know. We'll see. It's cool in concept. I mean, TBD if it actually works, so we'll see. David Friedberg (00:32:05): Have you tracked any of the alternatives to Yamanaka factors, the factor discovery work that's going on? And do you think there's anything worth testing at this stage? Bryan Johnson (00:32:13): Yeah. I'm an investor at New Limit, so I've talked to them about where they're at. Blake and Bryan's David Friedberg (00:32:19): company. Bryan Johnson (00:32:19): They've done, I mean, they've made remarkable progress. Yeah. They figured out how to computationally solve the discovery process. Yeah. And so they're much faster than they initially thought, and so that's very encouraging. David Friedberg (00:32:31): the big challenge with the Yamanaka factors is always dosing. If you overdose a cell, that cell can become a cancer cell and take off as a tumor. Yeah. So the sensitivity that you need to have to get the right number of the factors, which is a protein, into the cell needs to be perfectly tuned. So I have a theory that this will end up being solved by cellular switches that will end up putting machinery into the cells that can turn on or off the protein synthesis at the right dosing based on the measurement of gene expression in the cell. That's my theory on where this will end. That makes a Bryan Johnson (00:33:07): lot of sense. Any other control mechanism will be inadequate. David Friedberg (00:33:09): That's Bryan Johnson (00:33:09): right. Feedback loop. Just all David Friedberg (00:33:11): you need is one error and you're in trouble. Bryan Johnson (00:33:13): Yeah. David Friedberg (00:33:13): But it is the most profound, I think, technology that humanity is dealing with today besides AI. We're not quite there with fusion, which I would argue is probably a distant third, but it is very powerful. Bryan Johnson (00:33:22): I agree. David Friedberg (00:33:22): What's possible. Bryan Johnson (00:33:23): And in the future, like, I think we'll look back and we'll see GLP-1s as the first big drop. Yeah. Of like, what? I can just inject myself and like it solves hunger and David Friedberg (00:33:31): Totally. Bryan Johnson (00:33:32): You know? And then the second will probably be something like New Limit or one of these FOXO or one of these plasma-based FOXO3 therapies where it will show real life, like dramatic changes. Totally. And then humanity will shift as like longevity being a vision of sci-fi, you know, rich people pursuit to like something that is truly, I mean, go back to like the conversation on the temptation towards socialism, right? Like, if you can feel robust in your ability to pursue life and be healthy and vibrant and in control, I think these things would have dramatic changes to society, not just in health, but like David Friedberg (00:34:09): Well, any form of abundance, whether it's abundance in food, in energy, in housing, in mobility, in lifespan, the more abundance people get, the happier they are. Yes. And the more you're improving abundance in the world, the better we are going to live as a group of people together on planet Earth. Exactly. Yeah. The happier we will all be with each other. Bryan Johnson (00:34:27): But I think, like, honestly, like, a lot of the David Friedberg (00:34:30): external conflict only comes from internal unhappiness. 100%. Bryan Johnson (00:34:33): Yeah. So if you look at the general malaise of, like, American society, like, no wonder things are shitty. Right? Like, you've got meta eighty-four percent of people have metabolic disorder. Only forty percent of people are obese. Like, we're just in really poor health. Nobody's sleeping. Everyone's on their phone. David Friedberg (00:34:47): Like, we Bryan Johnson (00:34:48): have mental health issues. Like, no wonder you have the proclivity towards these kinds of outcomes. Like, so if you could get the health in check, it changes the psychological decision of you, your community, your country. Like you have much more of a can-do attitude. Like I can take on the world and I can do hard things, but when you're not feeling well, like it's just, everything is just so much harder. David Friedberg (00:35:06): Yeah, one hundred percent. And so in light of all of these new therapeutic modalities and these new opportunities that seem to be biologically proven and have these profound effects, why continue to tinker with psychedelics? Are they as profound or are they a complement or like, how do you think about fitting all of this portfolio of things that you're looking at together? Yeah. Bryan Johnson (00:35:25): I mean, I guess the question is, I forget on the FOXO3 study, I don't know if they saw brain rejuvenation. David Friedberg (00:35:30): Didn't see that. Yeah. I did not see that. And I don't remember. I mean, it is a very complicated organ. Bryan Johnson (00:35:35): Yeah. Exactly. David Friedberg (00:35:36): And it's it's Bryan Johnson (00:35:37): very hard to reach. David Friedberg (00:35:38): You know, you can grow muscle tissue back and you can grow skin tissue back and it's kind of like, okay, grew a little x. Like, if you grow the neurons back maybe in the wrong way, like, we don't know. Bryan Johnson (00:35:49): Yeah. David Friedberg (00:35:50): Because it's never been done before. Yeah. Understanding the consequence of neuroregeneration is like Bryan Johnson (00:35:57): So I'm wondering if the role might play, like, you know, maybe psilocybin and 5-MeO won't be meaningful for basic functions of the body, but maybe it's the outperformer in youthfulness of your disposition towards reality. The thing I'm apprehensive about is, you know, I'm 48. And so, as you start climbing to your 50s, 60s, you do really narrow. Like, your ambition goes from "I can do anything" to start narrowing down further and further, and I worry about losing a youthful disposition of a can-do attitude of anything is possible. Totally. And maybe that's the role of psychedelics, is you just get a wash of the snapback of "can't" and "I can bounce." Yeah. That's definitely been the case for me. So I think they do probably play a really important role. Like, there's probably a set of things that for certain people will basically mean, I felt like it was like thirty, forty years of psychological rejuvenation. You know, it's like to transport me back to a childlike state. Yeah. That is insane. I don't get that from the sauna or from eating well or from sleeping well. I'm still... Right. So it's just unique. David Friedberg (00:37:18): Yeah. Amazing. Well, listen, I'm gonna go drink alcohol and eat carbs and stay out late. I don't know. What are you gonna do? Bryan Johnson (00:37:24): Yeah. I'm gonna go to bed on time. Yeah. Okay. Do my wind-down routine. David Friedberg (00:37:28): Yeah. You do you. Yeah. I'll enjoy my bed like you as well. Enjoy it. I will. Yeah. I appreciate it. This has been great. Yeah. Bryan Johnson. Bryan Johnson (00:37:34): Thank you. Thanks. David Friedberg (00:37:34): Yeah. That was awesome. Bryan Johnson (00:37:35): That was great.