Brian Johnson, thanks for being here.
Yeah, it's good to see you.
How are you feeling?
Maybe just share with us what you did a few days ago.
Yeah, I did five MEO DMT, which is the most powerful psychedelic on the planet.
It's somewhere between five and 10 times more powerful than DMT.
And so, yeah, so it's been 48 hours.
I'm still learning how to talk about it.
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 eight sleep.com slash all in and use code all in for up to $350 off your pod purchase today.
Before we get into your experience, why did you choose to do it?
Two things one mostly as a longevity experiment.
So when we, when I started this project five years ago, The approach we had was go through all the scientific evidence ever published on health and longevity.
Try to find the interventions that have the best evidence.
And for effect size, and we just went down the list from top performing on down.
So of course, you start with exercise, nutrition, sleep, and you work your way down to things like hyperbaric oxygen therapy and sauna and then rapamycin, metformin.
And so we never actually had on our radar psychedelics.
They were always either an ancient medicine 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.
And so we found a 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.
Which are pretty high doses.
Yeah, it's a clinical dose, very, very close to a hero dose.
And we found that we think it's a longevity therapy.
Let's get to that data in a minute.
But then you decided to try 5MEO this weekend.
Yes.
Walk me through the experience because you televised the whole thing.
It was live streamed.
You looked amazingly calm going into it and going through the process.
Walk us through your experience.
Yeah, I think those who have done 5MEO 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 committed to you, take that idea, multiply it by a thousand and then move out infinite depth, infinite width, width and depth and then dimensions.
And like that gives you kind of like a rough map of like the size and space that you deal with.
And uh, it was incredibly hard because you, you get blasted into this space that is so foreign, you don't even know what's happening.
It happens very quickly, like you, you inhale it.
I did uh nine milligrams of intramuscular and then seven, uh 18 of it of vaporized, and it hits you within 10 seconds.
You're just out, you're out And so, but what happens is you get in that space.
And then visual changes very, very little visual.
Like you see the on DMT.
It's a very visual.
You'll meet the, you know, like the elves or whatever else, this is not a visual experience.
But you, you get in this world and You lock in to basically, you either panic, because you feel like the gates of hell are going to open, that the stream of existence is going to just tear you to shreds.
It's going to shard, you give up, like break your brain.
Yeah, 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 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 opened up this unimaginable bliss and euphoria.
And again this is like a V1 of trying to explain this, but if I list out the most dynamic experiences I've had of a human, you know like certain accomplishments, or getting married, or having a child, or overcoming a difficulty, or you know, state your list of things.
This is without question, the most dynamic experience I've ever experienced as a human.
Does the internal chatter the internal monologue of the ego turn off?
Does so you can't hear yourself speaking?
How do you rationalize what's going on if you don't have a dialogue going on?
It's this visceral feeling, like you're hyper aware of what's happening.
It's not like you block out in the first like, we think, a very high dose.
You don't really know what's happening the first few minutes, but then you kind of come to your hyper, aware of everything.
It's not visual.
But it's this, um, You're in the depths of existence.
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.
I mean, one, it completely dissolves your default mode network.
Describe what that is.
It's, this is the engine that constructs self and ego.
And so as you ruminate, you know, like you're going through.
Thinking through your day, what's next?
Exactly.
How am I feeling?
Yeah.
What should I be doing right now?
Constant conversation.
Yeah.
Do I feel bad about myself?
Do I feel, you know, like I, 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 stiffer 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, you're shut in.
Like when 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.
And we could pick this up with kernel, the brain interface.
You can see how the default mode network weakens.
So basically I think of the brain like a globe with airports scattered about 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 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's just all scrambled.
So the traffic patterns aren't the same.
And then over time- The neurons don't physically move, but the activity- shifts around, 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 coming out of these therapeutics.
Is that a fair way to describe it?
Exactly right.
So when 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.
It's like a new map of connectivity.
And so we saw that happen and that does generate a lot of neuroplasticity.
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 a fair?
Exactly right.
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.
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.
Uh, if you can do something that makes the brain more youthful and takes down those, those big ruts, that's also useful.
What we found in psilocybin though, is it had, we found a first in human observation.
It had this, this uh, metabolic reset in the brain where my blood glucose before this was in the top 995 percentile of all the population.
Okay after it went to the top 999 percentile.
Like to move my blood glucose from that level is very, very hard.
But basically like uh not like metformin, where you're doing something on blood glucose this just had a reset across the body.
Also changed my microbiome uh, so we saw full-on effects.
So then we said okay, if that had that consequence, 5-MeO may have some similar characteristics.
And so- But no one had done this in 5-MeO before.
Exactly.
So there's like there's animal evidence, but it's the similar dynamics of like can you take the brain and can you basically like smooth out the barnacles that accumulate?
And 5-MeO-DMT compared to psilocybin, like just absolutely like blasted clean my default mode network.
It felt like psilocybin dampens it, like it softens it, but this thing just annihilated my default mode network.
Turned it off completely.
Yeah.
It just doesn't run the same way.
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 when I've ever laughed in a dream, but that is 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.
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.
I'm going to do new things.
I'm going to have new experiences 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 that I'm stumbling too, because I didn't even know how to talk about it yet.
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?
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, and you move on.
But then adults take that and they like, package it up and like they want to weaponize it and be like I got something on you.
And I'm like move it.
I'm gonna move the chess pieces and like try to leverage this and- Or they stored up like a snake in one of those things that pops out all the snakes later.
You know, it's like package it all up.
Exactly.
And so, like we had this and I just felt absolutely like no need to escalate or to defend or to like it was just easy and um, 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.
I uh, i feel so much more funny, You know like my ability to make quips that are just immediate, 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 of years ago?
Yeah.
And did you do that recreationally or therapeutically?
It was mostly therapeutic, in that I had sold my company branch of MO, 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?
I was in that rebuilding stage where I just dabbled.
I did ketamine at Kernel.
One of our first studies at Kernel is we said ketamine was an up-and-coming therapy for depression.
We posed the question, what happens when you do ketamine?
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, a like a little league relative to, 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.
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.
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, right?
And then electrical actions that are measured by an electrical device.
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.
And so this is why this is such a promising therapy.
So we wanted to look at the brain through every modality possible.
We want to look at blood flow, structural molecular, you know, the wave pattern form.
So we it's a it's a very high fidelity quantification.
And so we'll see what the data comes out.
I'm very excited.
Yeah, you did this on psilocybin as well, right?
You map the brain over time.
What did you learn there? dramatic restoration of youthful brain patterns.
Yeah, right.
Yeah.
And what comes after five MEO?
You know, I mean, how far do you take this?
Yeah.
Honestly, I am so encouraged by psychedelics.
I you know again, 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 you go to like, do various explorations, but never in the world of longevity has never been understood as that thing.
And now, after seeing the data, now I am.
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, cause functional changes and drive some people that might be predisposed into schizophrenic states.
That's right.
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.
Yep.
I agree.
And also people who have really bad trips that leave them star scarred.
So it's it really is.
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 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.
Uh, without you know, with less of the risk, but definitely I agree with you.
Like it's again, it deserves all the caution in the world.
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?
I mean, if I just subjectively compare my experience with 5-MeO to 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 for this molecule to have such a gigantic impact.
Now, how long will it last?
What's the decay curve like?
Will I find...
I become the former Brian 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 5MEO did in terms of like the reset of me as a human.
So let's just talk about the consequences outside of the physiological, which is life.
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.
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, et cetera.
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.
I've seen the same thing.
And I.
One investor told me that he even put it in the deal docs that if we invest, you're not gonna do these psychedelics.
They wanted to minimize the risk profile.
It's a thing.
In your deal, in an investment in you?
No, I just spoke because I've been doing this. people bring this up as a topic of conversation.
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.
Everyone's high and dry.
And so they were telling me that they put into Dildocs, that they can't do this for the duration of the company.
And so it is a thing.
And, you know, I have nothing to say about it other than I know what 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 in setting.
So it's a different thing.
But I will say, like you know, I 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.
Uh, I don't have a desire to go off in the woods, you know, and like, and live that kind of life.
It, it, it emboldened me to work on these things, but no question about it.
You, you do have a dramatic shift in perspective and it's, it's very hard.
It begs 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 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?
What makes Brian, Brian?
You can maybe recall some memories of Brian prior to taking the psychedelic, but Brian as a person has been rewired.
Are you a different person now?
And what does that say about, are we ever a persistent person?
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.
Maybe like a near-death experience, would maybe be close, but it's a dramatic rewiring of you as a human.
Your values can change too.
That's 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?
That's right.
I think it's another important question that comes out of all this.
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 going to happen two weeks from now or a month right?
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, you may want psychedelics as your ally to say as a human, I'm struggling to move with the change.
And so there's potentially where it flips from a liability to an asset where, like now, I do want that restructure changing, even though you have some tail risk of like maybe my priorities will shift.
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 neural link 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?
Yes.
Yes.
Is there a limit to what you would try?
No.
Interesting.
Where do you think that comes from?
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, did you always have it or are you responding to childhood suppression of those?
It's probably, it's probably an overcompensation of, of trauma response.
Like most things are.
And so you know, as a child I lived in a uh, 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 do.
Yeah.
And so, yeah, maybe it's probably just, I'm now flipped in the opposite.
And so I mean that's like probably true that I really I don't trust my internal generation of reality.
You know, I know I'm always making things up.
I've got 188 chronical biases, like all humans do.
So I'm just, I'm generally suspicious of, all things, all 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.
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?
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.
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, when I sat down for 5MEO, my partner, Kate, she's got a ton of risk.
Like, what if it goes poorly?
What if I change my perspective?
What if something bad happens?
Well, one could make an argument that taking that degree of risk where something could have gone wrong, the people around you are enabling versus being supportive, right?
I mean, that's a consequence.
But let's shift topics to other modalities for longevity.
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?
I mean two of the ones that we've spoken about cell therapy and gene therapy.
They're all in the pipeline so they're not ready yet.
We've knocked out all the stuff you can do today.
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.
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.
Yeah, exactly. 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.
I agree.
We have our first mitochondrial therapy lined up.
How are you going to do it?
You're like 99.9%.
You need someone who's like 48.7% to try the mitochondrial.
I agree with you.
Particularly, I think they tried it in Parkinson's patients, Alzheimer's patients.
That's where you could really see profound shifts in in certain metrics.
For you it's like 999 to what.
Like yeah yeah, i have the mitochondria, you know, of a 48 year old, right?
So like what, what if you could go to your sibling's child?
Because the mitochondria is passed maternally?
Yeah, because it's in the, it's in the egg cell.
Yeah, so 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 going to 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 you.
This is a perfect extension.
I've had a blood boy as a son.
So now I'm just going to go to the extended family and be like, guys, It's a family project.
Yeah, family project.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah.
Well, that one's super interesting.
We also have one that we're doing.
I'm now building.
Sorry, are you going to do your own mitochondrial transplantation?
You're going to build a bioreactor or are you working with one of the third parties?
Yeah, a third company.
Yeah.
So I'll do a blood draw in the next week or two.
They'll spin up.
They'll do it.
Yeah, I'll do it.
Okay.
Yep.
So you're going to get your mitochondria, which have some, you know.
The problem with mitochondria, as you know, is mitochondrial DNA degradation over time, right?
It accelerates for certain people.
But that way, if you go back to a young person, you have young mitochondria.
Then you're going to multiply yours out.
Yes.
And probably select a little bit for healthier ones.
Exactly.
Right.
Okay.
And then put it back in.
It's very, I mean, exploratively, 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 did it intramuscular, like mitochondrial therapy, you could sprint to see your score.
That's a great idea.
Yeah, thank you.
That would be a great way to measure it rather than just a basic biomarker perspective.
It'd be really interesting to see.
Yeah, sprinting is one of the most underappreciated longevity therapies.
Yeah, I don't do it.
Oh, I've got the the age of a 74 year old.
Roughly.
I am.
I'm definitely not keeping track with you.
Would you consider or have you looked at any plasmids where you take a gene as DNA put in your body and then that gene makes a protein in your body that does something?
Like the one we were looking at in the FOXO3 expression.
Yeah, exactly.
So the mesenchymal stem cells, it packaged up with the FOXO3 delivery.
That showed that over 50% of tissues getting that rejuvenation.
It's unbelievable.
Unbelievable.
It's the best demonstration in the entire world.
Perfect for tissue regeneration.
Like as a particular application set.
Tissue regeneration using that sort of system seems like a no-brainer.
It's safe, right?
Yeah.
Yeah, so I reached out to that Chinese professor.
I'm really interested in seeing it replicating.
I would love... You reached out to the Chinese professor?
Yeah.
That's awesome.
We sent that paper.
Yeah, that's awesome.
So I respond.
Yeah.
Awesome.
Yeah.
Good.
So we, I'd love to do that.
I'd love to actually build it ourselves.
Yeah, that's like a two year project.
So I can help make it fast.
That's true.
Yeah, that's true.
AI as a project manager for these sorts of programs is You know, that's true.
We spoke about this six months ago.
Yeah.
Things are so different.
So different now, six months later, in terms of setting that up.
So that was cool.
So I think that's a good option.
But also, I'm doing Brian Johnson organoids.
So we took my IPSCs.
We now have- Induced pluripotent stem cells.
Exactly.
So you took your cells, turn them into stem cells.
Yep.
Yeah.
So now we're doing in dish.
So now we have, like a Brian Johnson heart liver lungs, and now we're going to try molecules on me, and So let me just 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.
And then you put other proteins on them to turn them into a heart cell or a eye cell or what have you.
And now you've got a store of these tissue-specific Brian Johnson cells that you then use for- Like you can say okay, what if you get Brian Johnson blank drug?
What happens?
Is it good?
Is it bad?
What are the side effects?
What are the complications?
In the petri dish, you put the drug in there.
Exactly.
See what happens.
Yeah.
Okay, got it.
So 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.
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?
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.
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?
Yeah, I'm an investor in New Limit.
So I've talked to them about where they're at.
Blake and Brian's company.
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, they're much faster than they initially thought.
And so that's very encouraging.
You know, the big challenge with Yamanaka factors is always dosing.
If you overdose, a cell, a one cell, that cell can become a cancer cell and take off as a tumor.
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 up.
That makes a lot of sense.
Any other control mechanism will be inadequate.
That's right.
That feedback loop just...
All you need is one error and you're in trouble.
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 in what's possible.
In the future, I think we'll look back and we'll see GLP-1s as the first big drop.
I'm like, what?
I can just inject myself and like it solves hunger.
And then the second will probably be something like New Limit or one of these plasma-based FOXO3 therapies, where it will show real life like dramatic changes.
And then humanity will shift as like uh, longevity being a vision of sci-fi you know rich people pursuit to like something that is truly jamming.
Go back to like the conversation on on the temptation towards socialism.
Right like if if, you can feel robust in your ability to pursue life and be healthy and vibrant and in control.
I think these things that have dramatic changes in society, not just in health, but like- 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.
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.
The happier we will all be with each other.
But I think, like honestly, like a lot of the- External conflict only comes from internal unhappiness.
100%.
So if you look at the general malaise of like American society, like no wonder things are shitty right.
Like you've got, 84% of people have metabolic disorder.
Over 40% of people are obese.
Like we're just in really poor health.
Nobody's sleeping.
Everyone's on their phone.
We 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 disposition 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, everything is just so much harder.
Yeah, 100%.
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?
Like, are they as profound or are they a compliment?
Or like how do you think about fitting all of this portfolio of things that you're looking at together?
Yeah.
I mean, I guess the question is I forget on the FOXL3 study?
I don't know if they saw brain rejuvenation.
Didn't see that.
I did not see that.
And I don't, I don't remember.
I mean, it is a very complicated organ.
Yeah, exactly.
And it's insane.
It's very hard to reach.
You can grow muscle tissue back.
And you can grow skin tissue back.
And it's kind of like OK, I grew a little x.
If you grow the neurons back, maybe in the wrong way, we don't know, because it's never been done before.
So understanding the consequence of neuro regeneration is like.
So i wonder, like if the role might play.
Like you know, maybe psilocybin and 5-meo won't be, um you know, meaningful for like basic functions of the body, but maybe it's the uh, the outperformer in youthfulness of your disposition towards reality.
Like one thing I'm apprehensive about is 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.
And maybe that's the role of psychedelics is you just get a wash of like, the snapback of like i can't and i can bounce?
Yeah, that definitely been the case for me.
So i think they do probably play a really important role of like.
They're probably a set of things that for certain people, that will um, basically like.
I mean, i felt like it was like 30, 40 years of psychological rejuvenation.
It's like to transport me back to a childlike state, that is insane.
I don't get that from the sauna or from eating well or from sleeping well.
I'm still, so it's just unique.
Yeah, amazing.
Well, listen, I'm gonna go drink alcohol and eat carbs and stay up late.
I don't know.
What are you going to do?
I'm going to go to bed on time and do my wind-up routine.
Yeah, you do you.
You as well.
Enjoy it.
I appreciate it.
This has been great.
Brian Johnson, thank you.
Thanks.
Yeah, that was awesome.
That was great.
