The Man Who Thinks He Can Live Forever

Bryan Johnson is technically 46 years old, but his biological age is eighteen. The life he leads to maintain this statistic has all the joy of an incarcerated monkey. For the past three years, he has built a life-extension system he calls Blueprint and combines extreme data collection with a mindset that considers eating a cookie or getting less than 8 hours of sleep as an “act of violence” against his body. The “system” for attempting to halt the aging process involves “downing 111 pills every day [and] sleeping with a tiny jet pack attached to his penis to monitor his nighttime erections.” 

If it seems extreme, the story of Blueprint and Johnson’s life itself is meant to be. Most of us wouldn’t accept this trade-off. What’s the point of living longer without indulgences, you might wonder? But human progress has always been fueled by the sacrifices of extreme thinkers like Johnson. 

Unlike other ambitious scientists of the past, at least his experiments are mostly limited to his own body (and one true-believing female assistant). And it is conceivable that his efforts could unlock some tactics to help the rest of us add more healthy years onto our lifespans. So despite the strangeness of his life’s work, I hope he keeps going and maybe finds a piece of the immortality he seeks. His success may one day be good news for the rest of us who would like to add a few more years without giving up those cookies.