Bryan Johnson Wants You To Live Forever
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Who wants to live forever? It's a song that's been playing in my head over the past week, knowing that I'll be speaking to our guest for this episode of the podcast, Brian Johnson. Now, you may not know his name, but you've probably heard the stories about him. He's the man who is aiming to not just prolong his life, but reverse aging in his body.

Which sounds like science fiction, but by all accounts, by the measurements, by the doctors, by, I mean, everyone, it looks like he's succeeding somehow. The question is, though, who wants to live forever? Do you? It's a really interesting conversation to have with somebody. What does it mean to try and live longer? What does it mean to try and live forever? And why do people hate you for trying to do it? These are all the things that Brian Johnson is going through.

So here we are, this week's guest, Brian Johnson, Mr. Don't Die. This is What Now? with Trevor Noah. This episode is presented by Lululemon. Everyone has those moments where they say, not today, when it comes to fitness. I mean, I know I do. Well, Lululemon restorative gear is made for those days. Days where you want to max out your rest and not your reps.

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Mr. Brian Johnson, welcome to What Now? Thank you for having me. You know, every time I speak to a guest on the podcast, it's interesting how they affect how I see the days leading up to the conversation with them. So if I'm speaking to a comedian, I think about everything that's funny and everything that could be funny. If I'm speaking to a filmmaker, I see the world through a different lens. And knowing that I was speaking to you...

Made me so self-conscious about how I was sleeping, what I was doing before bed, how I was eating, how I was living. What was your experience in thinking about those things and in making those observations? I mean, mine were stressful, to be honest with you. Do you find it stressful?

I find it liberating because without a schedule, you need to make decisions every minute of every day of do you do this or do you do that? And you're subject to how you're feeling in that moment. You're subject to how you slept the night before. And so I found before in my life that I was on a roller coaster of emotions. I've never been more stable in my entire life. I think that what's interesting is

is people make observations about me based upon what they see and they hear. And I would say their intuitions are exactly wrong. That every observation they have, you know, for example, the first thing they do is they want to put me on trial and say, you know, this man is not really living. He's trapped himself in a cage of misery. And I've never felt happier in my entire life, never felt more stable, happier, joyful, happier.

less stress. And so it's really funny. It's just like such a different reality, which I have and which people assume. Well, you know, it's funny. It's funny you say that because I've definitely been one of those people. When I first read about your journey and I read about you trying to reverse your aging and

I would read your schedule and I'd go, and you'll correct me at any point where I'm wrong. So you wake up at 4.30 a.m., yes? That's right. Okay, wake up at 4.30 a.m. And then the day just becomes a series of, I mean, controlled isn't even the right word. It's so precise.

Waking up, taking supplements at a certain time, taking the right amount of food, taking time to stretch, to work out. It's a specific type of workout. One thing leads to the... And I read through this and I was like, yeah, I was like, man, this guy, what's the point of living if this is how you're going to live? I thought to myself, he's having a terrible time. Did you find that you were surprised?

at how liberating your quote-unquote rigid structure would become. Very surprised. Yeah, I think I had a similar bias that if it were that strict and that superimposed by a scientific process that I would feel burdened. I did not expect to feel liberated. You know, I think to me it boils down to change is hard. Being miserable is harder.

If you look at what I'm doing through the frame of the 20th century, where death was inevitable, you could say live fast and die young. And that's a reasonable thing to do that so far as we can see, death has always been inevitable.

And what I'm suggesting is a thought experiment that if you could, for example, travel in time and go to the 1870s and whisper something into their ears and say, hey, everybody, this is going to sound crazy. But there are new ideas right now about these microscopic objects that cause infection. They're called germs. And so when doctors don't wash their hands between surgeries or they don't, you know, sanitize their instruments, it causes infection, which leads to death.

And if you lived in the 1870s, you may say, that's nuts. You're telling me something I can't see is the source of death. Which is what they said, right? Most everyone. And so if you look at that and say, throughout the history of the human race, it has always

always been the case that the future is present. It's just extraordinarily hard to see it in your time and place, and you're much more likely to defend the status quo. And so my thought experiment led me to say, if the 25th century could whisper into our ears, what would they say?

And to me, after thinking about this for a decade, it was, don't die. That's it. That after 4.5 billion years on this earth, we're baby steps away from super intelligence. And when you're that close, what do you do? And so if you put it in that context and see what I do, there's a different way of understanding it.

That's an interesting idea. You know, I've read through some of these ideas. You know, I know you've spoken about it. And then obviously on a philosophical level, everyone argues like the back and forth of should we live forever? Why do we want to live forever? What does living forever even mean? If you could wave your magic wand,

Would you live forever? Would you just go on until infinity? Or would you cap it off somewhere? What is your end goal? Obviously not scientifically. I'm saying this is purely magic. Forget the science for now. I know that I want tomorrow. I think the question on living forever breaks the human brain. I don't think the human brain can understand that concept. I think what we can understand is do we want to live tomorrow? Wanting to live tomorrow is the same as wanting to live forever.

because there's no difference in our minds. Damn, you really have to sleep to think like this. You have to sleep to think like this or you have to stay up all night to think like this. So, okay, let's take a little step back to help people understand how you got to this place. For those who don't know your story,

You weren't always this guy. Brian Johnson wasn't always Mr. 4.30 a.m., Mr. Stop eating at 11 a.m., Mr. Count every calorie and make sure everything is precise. You were just living the way everybody lives, right? You were working in tech.

You were going from one day to the next. Seems like you've always been pretty smart and really analytical, but something changed in your life where you decided, I'm going to try and fix how I feel and how I exist in the world. And that's something that I haven't been able to find in all of my research is what actually prompted the change on your side? Was it a physical thing? Was it an emotional thing? Or was it a mental thing? What made you decide you want to change how you live? Exactly.

It goes back to when I was 21 years old. I just came home from Ecuador. I had lived among extreme poverty for two years, dirt floors, mud huts.

And I came back to the U.S. And even though my upbringing in the U.S. was fairly poor, my mom made my clothes. Like we were fine as a family. Like we still had food to eat. But I came back and it was such a stark reality to what I had been in in Ecuador. And for some reason, this fire lit with inside of me that I wanted to spend my life trying to improve the human race. I didn't know what that meant. I didn't have any special skills. I wasn't really good at anything. I just wanted to see if I could do some good.

And so this is what I've been trying to work for for 25 years. At the age of 21, in my naive mind, I said, I'm going to make a whole bunch of money by the age of 30. And then age 30, I'm going to figure out how to do something useful for the human race.

And so I really have been thinking about this and working towards this for 25 years. I sold Braintree Venmo 10 years ago. I made a couple hundred million dollars and then it was real. And it was like, okay, now what? What do you do? This was the company that dealt with credit card processing, right? That's right. If you've ever paid somebody with Venmo, yeah, that's what it was. That's you. That's me. Yep. And so the question is, if you're flush with cash, you're without obligation and you can do one thing in the world, what do you do?

And how do you decide what to do? So I thought about that for 10 years. And I was building my brain interface company. We built basically a wearable fMRI, the most scalable brain interface in the world. And I started measuring myself extensively and really as a hobby. And then I started getting deeper and deeper into this. And I started piecing together

what is really happening in this moment? And I thought, you know, what are the existential risks we face as a species? We have climate change as a risk, the earth not being, you know, habitable for us. We've got nuclear, you know, bio, like weapons of mass destruction risk. We have AI risk. How do we actually think about these problems?

Because most of the time when we confront those problems, we say, we're helpless. Like, what do you do? Recycle your Amazon boxes? You know, like, what do you do about the situation? Right, right. And I wanted to become the existential problems myself. And if you collapse all of them, they collapse in an elegant fashion to don't die. And so this takes a little bit of time to unpack, but basically what I'm trying to do is...

continued existence is the only thing we care about. And to do that, we have to solve the things that create existential threat, the risk for us, including personal death, planet death, weapons of mass destruction, death and AI death. Okay, so you decide that you're going to do this. You think to yourself, I can do this. But where's the first inkling that made you think this might be possible? I proposed a question.

If you take all of the human race's best science and you put it into one person, can you get an answer? Where are we today with a fountain of youth? Is it totally hopeless or is there a glimpse of hope? Hmm.

And that's what we did. And so we have a team of 30 medical professionals, and we scoured through the scientific literature. We did power rankings on all the best performing lifespan and health span studies. We ranked the evidence, and then we put all the power laws we could safely into me. And then I became the most measured person in human history. And so we basically said, this is a scientific exploration of where are we at with aging and death?

And we have the results. We have like a pretty decent idea. And the answer is you can do a lot to slow one's speed of aging and even address some aging damage, more so than most people think is possible. When you're searching for doctors who are going to join you on this journey,

there are two things that spring to my mind. One, how do you get them to take you seriously? And then two, how do you know that you can take them seriously? Because most doctors, and this is just anecdotally, most doctors want to work in a field where they're working at a research laboratory or they're working at a university or they're working in a space that is defined and comes with a certain level of esteem and prestige. Some guy comes out of tech and says, hey,

I basically helped empower Venmo. And now I want you to be a doctor who helps me not die. How did, how do they take you seriously? And then how do you know that these doctors and not the current ones, obviously, but I'm saying at, at the beginning, how do you know that they're not just taking you for a ride? I mean, you're just a guy who rocks up with a few hundred million dollars. How do you know they're not just giving you the information that you want at that stage? Yeah. Most of these medical professionals we work with are overly enthusiastic to work with me.

because they have this ambition that they want to be on the frontiers of anti-aging and medicine and health and wellness. But oftentimes, their current roles are very limited to standard of care and what insurance companies want and what big hospital systems want. And so they feel very stifled in what they can do in life. And so this is just a breath of fresh air where they can just play. And then I think they like it because they see that we are scientific in nature, that we

approach things with the scientific method. We use gold standard measurement. We do everything based upon scientific evidence. It's not like we're spinning up some kind of like, you know, celery juice is good for you and it's a fad. Everything is, you know, is like, is rigorously quantified. We have scientific evidence as a basis. And so, and then, yeah, I think they find it's really fun to play because we do things according to the training they learn in science.

Essentially, you're a guinea pig who is willing and also financially able to play. So you're a rich guinea pig, which is really rare to find. Thank you. I think. Yeah.

Oh, no, definitely. I think, I think, so he, no, it is, it is, it's neither a compliment nor, nor is it, you know, a diss in any way. It's, it's just, I guess, to your point, what medicine and science is desperate for, you know, is, is a willing participant who also is able to circumvent all of the limitations that have been put into place, as you say, by the medical industry and big pharma, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Okay, let's step into the space. I've wondered two things that I haven't been able to find anywhere when reading up about you. What is the easiest, and I mean the simplest thing that you changed in your life

that dramatically changed your health? And then on the opposite side, what is the hardest thing that you had to change? And not difficult because you had to figure it out, but because it was actually quite difficult to do that actually yields amazing benefits. What would you say those two are? Yeah. The most powerful thing I did was I fired Evening Brian. So

So evening Brian is a version of me. His duty is starts around 5 p.m. and ends around 10 p.m. And he's handed the baton at the end of the day when Brian is stressed out and he's dealing with all kinds of burning fires at work and, you know, dealing with conflict of life.

And all he wants is to be soothed of the pain because it's hurt so much. And in that time of my life, you know, I was chronically depressed. I had three little babies. I was building a full-time startup. I was trying to leave my religion. I had some challenges with my partner. Life was just on fire.

And he would go into the kitchen and he would overeat to soothe himself. And this led to me being over 60 pounds heavier than I am now and miserable because I couldn't sleep. It was just an awful time of life. So I tried everything to stop myself from my bad behavior. I was helpless. And so one day I just said tongue in cheek, evening Brian, you're fired. You make my life miserable. And so I made a rule that if

when he comes on the ship between 5 p.m. and 10 p.m., he cannot eat food no matter what. It does not matter if it's a special occasion. It doesn't matter if he's hungry. He just is unauthorized. And so then I created this list. I

I listed out who Evening Brian is, the arguments he makes, you know, like today's the last day, you've had a really tough day, you deserve it, like all the, you know, you'll exercise a lot tomorrow morning to burn it off. And I'd list out all the arguments and then have a dialogue and say, Evening Brian, hi, I, you know, welcome, I see you. I understand what you're saying, but tonight we're not going to do it. And so it was basically understanding that I am not my behavior.

I don't need to be the shame. I don't need to be the guilt that I can actually treat myself like various persons because I am. We all are. That was the biggest breakthrough for me in all of this. It was the hardest. I'm both grateful for this insight. And then at the same time, I am extremely depressed because I live as nighttime Trevor. I think many people listening to this would probably relate as well. I mean, like, let's say when I'm doing standup, I'm on stage.

Oftentimes, I only get off stage at 10 p.m., 11 p.m., depending on the show. Flying overnight, you're moving from one place to the next. There's many people who work jobs that are late. I mean, have you found anything with your team of 30 doctors that can translate for people who are unable to fire late themselves? Yeah.

Yeah, it's really trying to find the behavior that is the domino effect. So if you eat late or you drink or you do something else, it's going to deteriorate your sleep value. And then it's going to cause the same experience the next day. So my brain interface company kernel, I measured my brain looking at my willpower. You can measure it in the brain and you could see based upon my REM and my deep sleep, how much willpower I had.

And so if you create a cycle where you do something that lowers the quality of your sleep, next day is going to be a little bit worse and a little bit worse. And you just grind yourself down. And this is why sleep is my number one life priority. Life is not my priority. Sleep is my priority because when sleep is well-

life as well. And it's, we're in a cultural moment where sleep is a thing that can always be pushed around. You can always get less sleep and be just fine. Culture tells you, but it's not true. Sleep is the elixir of life.

And this is why, again, going back to the first thing we talked about, people think I'm nuts. And I conversely look at them and think, are you kidding me? You're insane. Like the misery you're inflicting upon yourself day to day is just unbearable for me to watch. Meanwhile, I just recorded what is potentially the best sleep score in human history. Eight months of perfect sleep. I

I wanted to demonstrate that you can eight months, every single night. No ways. Wait, no, no, no. Wait, wait, wait. Let's, let's, let's pause on this. Hold on. Okay. I'll tell you, I'll tell you why we need to pause on this. I'll tell you why, because so I've, I've, I've played this game with one of my best friends where we, um, we used every type of sleep tracker you can imagine. So I had the, um, I had the, what was it? The eight pod, you know, the bed with

that would measure your movements. And then I had like a little, this weird little infrared device that would aim a camera at me while I was sleeping to see how much I'm moving, my temperature, my sound, et cetera. And then I would wear the aura ring on a finger and then I would have the whoop and then I would have the Apple watch. So, I mean, basically I go to bed like Robocop. Okay. So strapped, strapped up, you name it. Everything is, everything is calculating everything. Yeah. And I would go to bed and,

And we would compare scores every day. And we were trying to, on a very amateur level, figure out what you seem to have figured out, which is what are the biggest factors that determine how well you sleep? So your heart rate, your breathing, your deep sleep, your REM, your wake-ups during the night, all these things. What are the things that can affect your sleep? And then inversely, what then affects, how much of that sleep actually affects the next day? And

No matter how good we were, Brian, I'm talking like I would fast from 5 p.m. I would eat nothing like sugary, nothing. The best score I think I've ever achieved is 98%. And you're telling me you've achieved perfect scores for eight months. Yeah, I got 100% every single night for eight months, excluding, I think, three nights. That is wild.

So do you just wake up every day feeling amazing? I do. Yeah. I am no longer on the roller coaster that just swings me wildly. I've never been happier in my entire life. When was the last time you had a craving for something terrible? Like ice cream or, I don't know, a bagel with cream cheese or... Keep on going. Actually.

I could name them. Or a candy bar or a hamburger or fries. I mean, I'm just killing myself right now. I could list the ores forever. I'm just listing what's in my brain right now. I look at a situation where, let's just say, friends are all having ice cream or a burger, whatever the case may be. I can imagine doing that thing

I can fully imagine what I'm going to feel like doing it. And then after, and then I can imagine what my sleep is going to be like. And I can imagine what I'm going to feel like in the morning. And I can see that sequence of events. And I think absolutely unquestionably not worth it. Like it is the worst thing ever. So the pain of what I experienced from those now is so severe. I do not want to do it. So it's not even a craving. I'm just kind of repulsed by it.

In a way, you know, I always think of this with hangovers. When people drink, if they have a really bad hangover, they will have a level of fortitude that is unmatched about not drinking again. It usually lasts like a week or two weeks, but everyone goes, I don't even want to see alcohol. People are like, I don't even want to touch that stuff. I'm never drinking again. And then people go back in. What you're saying is you're able to maintain that state constantly whenever you come across temptation. Yeah.

Exactly. And this is why when you say, hey, human, do you want to live to blank? This is why I don't trust any of us at all. We can't make up our minds minute to minute on whether we want to eat a donut or not, or whether we want to drink alcohol. Like we, right? Like you're acknowledging, like we all see this in ourselves. Our ability to maintain consistency with what we want minute to minute is like really hard.

So your son, how much of this does he participate in with you? Because I remember there was a time when you were testing, I think you were testing something to do with his blood, right? I mean, there were stories online of you like being a vampire, obviously. But I can say that I've seen you during the day, so we can squash that. But...

But there was definitely a period where you were testing, was it plasma or was it plasma, right? And you were trying to see if the plasma from a younger person actually has an effect. And then once you found out it didn't, you stopped doing that. Is that correct? Or how did that come about? Yeah, I mean, so to set the record straight, there's been a lot of confusion about this. I do keep my son in a dungeon, but his room is not 10 by 10, it's eight by eight. Just to put that out there.

Misinformation is a bad thing. I mean, what happened is my father is 71 years old. He did a calculation of his life expectancy. So he included in the, and these are good models, very accurate. Insurance companies use them. He included the time in life that he's been obese. He had heavy drug usage.

And his number is 68, which was alarming to him because he's now past due. And so he called me one day and he said, I was working on a legal brief. He's in a legal profession. And he said, I came back to my work and it was a jumbled mess. Words were all over the place. It wasn't coherent. And he said, I couldn't see it. And I became terrified. I'm losing my mind and I can't see it.

Now, in that moment, my team and I were looking at these plasma infusions. And some of the studies being done were around Alzheimer's. And I said, Dad, you know, if you want, I'd be willing to give you a liter of my plasma to see if it helps out with your cognitive decline. And he said, I'm in. And my son overheard the conversation. He's like, I'm in too. So we're like, great. We'll make it a multi-generational plasma exchange. How fun that for a family, you know, is fun for a family activity. And so we did it.

And so my son gave me a liter of plasma. I gave my father a liter of plasma. And so it did not work in me. My biomarkers, I think the reason why is because my biomarkers are pretty close to an 18 year old already. But my father is a different story. And so the difference between his markers and mine are very significant.

So he experienced with one liter of my plasma, taking one liter of his plasma out and putting one of mine in, his speed of aging, looking at his DNA methylation, lowered by the equivalent of 25 years. So he went from aging at the speed of a 71-year-old to a 46-year-old with one infusion. And that has stayed at that level for six months now. So the results were dramatic for him. And actually- Just from the plasma? Just from the plasma. Wow. Wow.

We're going to continue this conversation right after this short break.

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Is there ever a part of you that acknowledges how random life can be? Like, so for instance, do you walk in the street? Do you drive? Do you go for runs outside? Do you fly? Like, what, if anything, do you restrict yourself to in the physical aspect of living outside of your home? Yeah, I do...

most things that most humans do right now. So I mean, my son and I went to New Zealand, we biked around the country for two weeks. I drive, I do have a ritual though when I get into my car, I will say out loud, driving is the most dangerous thing I do to remind myself, don't pick up the phone, don't be distracted by messages,

Pay attention. Can I just say that is amazing for you, but for passengers who are getting into a car with you for the first time, that must be one of the most terrifying experiences anyone can have. You get into a car with somebody and they look up for a second and say, driving is the most dangerous thing I do. And then you put the car into drive and you head off. You know, it's like I was with a few friends. We were going to this event in the desert and we had a driver and we're on the road. The driver's phone rings.

And I'm horrified. You know, I'm like, what's going to happen? Now everyone else in the car, like you're talking and they're hanging out. He reaches down, he grabs his phone and I see this in slow motion and like picks it up. And there he has one hand on the wheel and one hand on the phone, like assessing the situation. And I said, sir, can you please pull over the car right now if you insist on taking that phone call?

and it stunned the entire car. Everyone knew that was a bad idea. Everyone knows you shouldn't be on your phone. And his sole objective was to drive us safely in that car. And my friends have told me that that was a moment that changed their lives, where it snapped them into the sobriety of how tough

tolerant. We, I mean, like we're weirdly, like we all know what's dangerous, but we don't say anything because the social norms are so significant. Like, is it rude? Are you going to make a scene? It's really, it's really complicated to, to be human on all these circumstances, but no, I do all these fun things, but I have to say, Trevor, like,

it's guaranteed I'm going to die in the most ironic way imaginable. Like I'm probably going to be hit by a bus, right? Like it's guaranteed. I'm going to like die on, I'm choking on pills. Like there's, there's no way out of this. I, I'm for sure going to die and it's going to be,

the biggest gift in the world to the internet. Everyone's going to love it. And it's going to be like, it's going to be the favorite. So yes, like that's just inevitable. Knock on wood, that doesn't happen. Knock on wood, that doesn't happen. You know, it's funny you say the thing about social norms and how powerful they are, because the longest I went without eating sugar, like processed sugar was, I'd say six months.

And I was really proud of myself. I was on this journey. I didn't need anything. I mean, I avoided every restaurant with dessert, every nibble, every cookie in a hotel, you name it, I avoided it. And I'll never forget the day when it broke. I was at work. I was in the office and someone came with a slice of cake and they said, hey, would you like some cake? And I said, no, thank you. I don't eat sugar. And they went, oh, but it's Mary's birthday.

And I was like, yeah, but I don't eat sugar. And then a group of people looked at me like I had killed everybody's family member with one sentence. And they were like, it's just a piece of cake, Trevor. And I was like, yeah, but I don't eat sugar. And they're like, just taste the cake. Why are you being like this? And I'm not going to lie to you. I caved. I caved.

I had some of the cake. It wasn't bad. And then I was like, I may as well finish it because I've done. And then that was it. And then I was back on the sugar train because then like a few weeks later was somebody else's birthday. And then I didn't want to be the person who had cake for their birthday, not the other birthday. Yeah. Yeah. Turns out a lot of people have birthdays. And then I had a lot of cake and then yeah, I was on a flight and I was like, yeah, I mean, I might as well celebrate flying. Yeah.

And then I was back. I was, I was back eating sugar. You're not wrong. I'll tell you now you're not wrong. Going back to what you said about going to New Zealand with your son though, I want to know, what do you do when you travel? So you fly all of these hours. Sleep is the most important thing. How does Brian Johnson overcome the jet lag slash the time difference? How do you get your sleep back? What do you, what do you do there?

Yeah, we put that to the test. My son and I went to Singapore over this holiday break. And so going to New Zealand is pretty easy from Los Angeles. The time zone difference, I think, is three hours, where Singapore is like 12 hours, I think. And so, yeah, we did this thing a few days before the flight. I started pushing my bedtime forward an hour each night to start the adjustment. What is your current bedtime? Help us paint this picture. 8.30. 8.30 p.m. Damn, okay.

So I won't ask you if you watch the Super Bowl. So yeah, I push my bedtime back for an hour each night. So 830, so 930 and then 1030. And then we caught a, I think the flight was around midnight. And then when we arrived in Singapore, I basically just tell my body, okay, body, we are on a new schedule. So get used to it. So the first thing I do when I wake up in the morning, it's 5am in Singapore, I work out.

And so I say, hey, body, we're now on this new schedule. I eat just like I would normally. So I just get everything back in rhythm. Okay, but you don't eat the food in Singapore, though. You eat your prepackaged food because you have specially designed food. So what are you eating? Yeah, I brought some food with me. But then otherwise, I just went to the grocery store and bought a few things. And so, yeah, I learned this when I went to New Zealand last year with my son. I went through LAX and

I got cornered by airport security. They called out the bomb squad. They call up the executive bomb squad. They called out dogs. I had all this powder in my bag and they're like, sir, what is this? And I'm like, well, actually it's creatine and it's amino acids. It's, you know, it's like, sir, this looks highly suspicious. It looks like it was just a bunch of powder meant to

do other things. It looks like you've emptied out a stick of dynamite into a Ziploc, essentially. Yes. And now my son has this on video. Either I'm explaining like the molecular components of what he's asking me what it is. And the guy's just like,

What's going on? I don't understand the situation. But it was kind of funny. But yeah, I've learned how to travel now and it's much easier. So if I can go to a supermarket, then I'm good. But yeah, I mean, it's like, it's almost impossible to eat well in the world. It's really, really hard anywhere, like any restaurant to eat well. Everything is just, the food system is just not great.

And so now that I've been eating as clean as I have in the past three years, when I taste food from a restaurant, even one that's trying really hard, it's so obvious that the food system just cannot generate the quality. So yeah, I've really learned a lot about food and food quality and food systems and how, why we're probably not all doing well in our health because what we're being fed is really not great. Well, I mean, fundamentally, it's because it goes back to the incentives, right? The incentive of a restaurant isn't

to make you healthier. The incentive of a restaurant is to make you want to come back to that restaurant. And so the easiest way to achieve that, unfortunately, is by packing the meal with as much sugar and salt as possible so that your body craves it, so your body feels like it got everything that it wanted. So in effect, we're always hacking ourselves as people because whether it's a snack

or whether it's a meal at a restaurant, you're tricking your body into thinking it is getting what it in fact isn't or it's getting too much of it. So you are working against all of this. Your incentive is yourself fundamentally. So I guess it makes a lot of sense speaking to you, to be honest, because on the one hand, I'm still resistant.

you know, in that, like, I agree with you about nighttime. Like I'm the same. Nighttime Trevor is the most destructive version of me. There is, I've consumed more ice cream than I think at nighttime, you know, I've stayed up later. I've, I will also say the best stories come at night. You have to admit that that is one concession you're going to have to make. Brian is like, there's no crazy story that

That happens at 7 a.m. where people go, man, I woke up early and let me tell you the craziest thing. It always happens at night. Okay, I do have one for you. Okay, go, go. Let's see. Okay, so I woke up on Sunday morning. Today is Tuesday. And I had achieved a new nighttime erection record. Wow.

So nighttime erections are a significant biomarker for physiological, cardiovascular, and sexual health. If you remember as a young boy, you probably had a lot of erections all the time. And as you age, erections go down. So it is a biomarker for age. So I've been measuring my nighttime erections as any good measured human would do. And there's age ranges. So for example, in the age category between 20 and 25, the average erection time is 145 minutes.

So my new record was 179 minutes of erection during nighttime. So yes, Trevor, you're never going to believe it. 7 a.m., the wildest thing happened to me. I woke up and I had a new nighttime erection record of 179 minutes. Okay, I'm going to need to take a moment here because we're going to have to process a lot of information because I can't just accept everything you've said without going back on this. So...

Number one, am I hearing you clearly when you say one of the best ways to measure your health is through your erections? That is correct. Okay, okay. And what you are saying is this is through a combination of, I'm assuming, the firmness of the erection and then also the duration of the erection. Exactly right. There's a little cube. It's about a centimeter by centimeter. You put it on the shaft. You put it at the base.

And as you put it on, you'll forget about it. It's very innocuous. And then as you sleep... Okay, forgive me, Brian. Forgive me. I hate cutting in, but forgive me. You just said there's a little cube as if we all have one. I don't know that there is just a little cube. Where...

I'm sorry, what is the thing? Where do you get it? And what is this penis cube that you use? Yeah, it's a company in the UK, Atom Health. Okay. And it's like 150 bucks or something like that. Okay. Yeah, you just put it on the shaft of the penis. And as you sleep, and as you have an erection,

The penis engorges and measures the strength and the duration of your erection. So you get scored on how long it was and you get scored on the quality of the erection. Huh.

I've been scored on that before, but never through an app. This is interesting. So the app tells you how long you had an erection for and you've achieved. So now I have to go back to the information. Did you say 170 minutes? 179 minutes. Yeah. So this was my baseline. I did this six months ago to see where I was at. This is, wait, wait, wait. Am I doing the math? This is three hours you're saying? That's right. Yep.

Three hours in one go or three hours during the night? That night was four different erection episodes. Okay, okay. Because I know they say if it's four hours and above, you see a doctor. So okay, this is good to know. So three hours during the night of erections. That's right.

nighttime erections is a provocative concept because it's taboo, it's funny, it's a good joke. - It's definitely funny. - It's definitely funny. But it's the same process we went through when we measured my heart

or my lungs. It's the exact same thing. It's what I'm trying to do is show people that the way you actually approach health and wellness is you can do this scientific process where you say, we're going to measure a given thing, and then we're going to do therapies to change the given thing, and then we're going to measure the outcome. And so we started with this conversation with my team. I said, okay, sexual health is a really important function of being human. What would it take for me to have the most measured penis size?

on earth? What would we do? And then we went about and we did every measurement we could find in the literature on the penis. And then we had all these baseline measurements. And then we said, okay, now what can you actually do to improve the function of the penis? And if we do those things, and then if you do those things, go back and measure again, what you measured in the first place, did those markers change at all? And so trying to show through this very simple process, you can measure and you can demonstrate through a scientific method, does a given thing work or not?

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You know, when you have all of this data, you've definitely put all of the information out there for free. Recently, you know, you took a little flack from some people, and I'll never, you know, I don't mean to blow it out of proportion, but there were some people who maybe didn't even like you before who said, oh, there it is. There's the scam revealing itself. Brian Johnson has just put out a supplement program, and he's now selling you olive oil, and he's now selling you, you know, water.

all different types of supplements. And it's like, oh, here it goes. It really is an interesting paradox because on the one hand, anyone who discovers something is expected to share that something with society. But on the other hand, the issue of conflicting interests and incentives is bound to come up.

How do you protect yourself from the incentives warping? When you are selling supplements, when you are selling food products, how do you protect yourself from falling victim to the thing that restaurants have fallen victim to, food companies, pharmaceutical companies, you name it? What is your plan? Yeah. I mean, first I'll say I love my haters.

I love them. I love when they talk trash. I love how much time they spend to come up with the most piercing insults. I'm grateful they spend their time to do it. I love it. In terms of, you know, when I did this, I did Blueprint for two years. I put it all online. Everything was exactly the same. No one cared. No one paid attention. And then it blew up.

And then all of a sudden everyone said, I want this. And they said, but I want this, but it's way too complex. Yeah, it is. Like the food prep is too much. The supplements are too much. You have too many rules. Like I want it, but you need to make it accessible. I said, okay, I'll do it.

So I spent the past year making it easy and cost competitive with fast food. And so inevitably, when I do this, you're going to hear people squawk and say, ah, he's a sellout. Now he's been grifting the whole time, you know, so fine. It doesn't bother me. So I don't care. Sincerely do not care what anyone right now thinks of me.

I care what the 25th century thinks of me. I want their respect. I want their admiration. If you go back in time, any given time and place, you're going to be tackled and mobbed with the status quo. It's noise. The people we admire who broke through, they saw something others didn't. We are in no different circumstance. If I cared what other people think of me right now, I would be listening to dead people.

It's just not a game you can play. It burdens your ability, limits your ability to be courageous and bold. And so when you incorporate those frames, I really don't care at all what anyone thinks. I'm trying to build a global infrastructure for the species to not die. It begins with food. It begins with going to bed on time and these other basic things. It expands out into all other stuff. But if you're a person of life and you say, I'm in, I want tomorrow too.

then who's going to help you do the measurement? Who's going to help you know what to eat? Who's going to know how to track these things? Who's going to look at your nighttime erections? You know, like you need these basic things in place. Who's going to look at your nighttime erections? Yep. Data. Who's going to look at your nighttime erection data? Be like, this is serious. Like who is actually going to step up

and help the species not die when we are all so maniacally bent right now on dying and doing everything we can to justify our death cult incentives.

Look, I think it's amazing because there are many fads out there that are all about, I mean, everything you can imagine. But it's fun to see people getting excited about being healthier. Whether it's don't die or not, it's just being healthier is something I think we should all be able to appreciate. I'm going to have to let you go soon, but I do have a few quickfire questions for you. These are really just yes, no questions.

and sometimes, just to give people an idea of where your body is and how it is. So question number one, do you wake up in the middle of the night? - Almost no. - Okay, almost no. Do you have cravings? - No. - Okay. Do you find yourself grumpy or listless in the morning? - No. - Huh. Do you have nightmares? - No. - Wow, this is really fascinating.

Do you regret not starting the program sooner? Yes. Huh. I'm going to dig deeper on that one. How much of a difference do you think it would have made in your life? I told Kate this when she did Blueprint, my coworker. I said, your conscious experience of reality is going to be entirely original. You never will have felt this conscious in your entire life.

You don't know what I'm talking about because you haven't felt it. And that was true. You experience reality differently. Huh. Truly, truly fascinating.

Well, you know, Brian, it's really wonderful speaking to you. What you're doing is fascinating. The way you see the world is definitely fascinating. And as you say, you're definitely going to have haters for doing it. As somebody who loves science and discovery, I can only wish you the best. You know, I wish that you do not get hit by a bus or, you know, trip on a curb. I hope that you live this experiment out as long as you can. My final question for you.

It's the same question I ask every guest on the podcast. What now?

Brian Johnson has been in this program. It has been three years, if my time serves me correctly. You have been living this way. You have been thriving this way. You've now embarked on a new journey, which is giving people easy access to your program, which, by the way, because of your information, they can follow without purchasing anything from you. So what now? What's the next step in what you're trying to achieve in your life and in your purpose?

I've engaged in operation to help dad don't die. So I did my plasma infusions with dad. I just took him to an island off the coast of Honduras and I gave him a longevity gene therapy. It's one of the first in the world. I did it in September. It's the seventh best performing longevity therapy ever done.

And he got it last weekend. And I'm taking him to the Bahamas in March to get 100 million mesenchymal stem cells from young Swedish bone marrow. So I'm giving him access to all the advanced therapies that I've done over the past three years that we've considered to be safe.

And I'm trying to help my father get one more day until the next thing comes. So that's really where most of my attention's at right now. Well, Brian, thank you so much for the time. Thank you for not taking yourself too seriously. Best of luck for the next walk, for the next sleep, and for the next erection that you measure. Yeah. Thank you, Trevor. Thank you.

What Now With Trevor Noah is produced by Spotify Studios in partnership with Day Zero Productions, Fullwell 73, and Odyssey's Pineapple Street Studios. The show is executive produced by Trevor Noah, Ben Winston, Jenna Weiss-Berman, and Barry Finkel. Produced by Emmanuel Hapsis, Marina Henke, Jess Hackle, Natalie Pert, and Chelsea Williamson. Music, mixing, and mastering by Hannes Braun.

Thank you so much for listening. Join me next Thursday for another episode of What Now? What Now?