'Don’t Die: The Man Who Wants to Live Forever’: Who is Bryan Johnson?

Question: would you want to live to 100? Perhaps even 150? What about 200? Well, one millionaire is on a quest to extend his life for as long as possible by “biohacking” his body. His name is Bryan Johnson, and Netflix has just released a documentary detailing just how far the tech evangelist is willing to go to turn back time.

Don’t Die: The Man Who Wants to Live Forever is directed by Chris Smith, who also helmed Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened and Jim & Andy. The question is: who Bryan Johnson and what the hell is Project Blueprint all about?

The backstory

It almost goes without saying that Johnson is incredibly wealthy. He was born in Provo, Utah, and was brought up in the Mormon Church, and after graduating from Brigham Young University, he went on to found Braintree. The company dealt in e-commerce payments and in 2012, Johnson purchased Venmo for $26.2 million. A year later, PayPal acquired Braintree for $800 million. Time magazine reckoned that Johnson came out of that deal with $300 million. In 2016, he founded Kernel, which developed a non-invasive neuroimaging technology, and later shifted its focus to building hardware that measures electrical and hemodynamic signals. It was just after the pandemic when Johnson announced that he would be using this technology and much more for a project that he called Blueprint.

What is the Blueprint project?

It’s essentially a form of life extension: an attempt for people to extend their days for as long as possible, by any means possible. For Johnson, this means an end goal of “don’t die”. On the Blueprint website –which sells a range of expensive supplements and a bottle of extra virgin olive oil literally called Snake Oil – he explains that he decided to start the project “after having poor health habits as a kid, running myself into the ground from 20 years of building companies, and a decade of chronic depression.”

What does he do for project Blueprint?

As per the Guardian: “He rises at 4.30am, eats all his meals before 11am, and goes to bed – alone – at 8.30pm, without exception. In the intervening hours, he ingests more than 100 pills, bathes his body in LED light, and sits on a high-intensity electromagnetic device that he believes will strengthen his pelvic floor.”

He eats an all-vegan diet of 1,977 calories a day, doesn’t drink alcohol and calls himself the “world’s most measured man” as he regularly undergoes weight, body fat, muscle mass, body water, BMI, blood glucose, MRI scans and ultrasounds to screen for any issues. At one point, he organised a transfusion of blood plasma from his 18-year-old son Talmage – and he then gave some of his own to his 70-year-old father – but has since stopped, as it didn’t yield results. He also reportedly took a human growth hormone for a while, but also stopped as it had negative side effects.

All in, he’s spent more than $4 million on his immortal life project, and he claims on his website: “My health biomarkers are in the top 1%. And not just the top 1% of 46 year olds, but on some of my markers, such as my cardiovascular fitness, I’m in the top 1% of 18 year olds” for fields such as speed of aging, muscle mass function and bone mass. He told Time that he had “the bones of a 30-year-old, and the heart of a 37-year-old”.

On the flipside, his own doctor, Oliver Zolman, told Fortune: “We have not achieved any remarkable results… In Bryan, we have achieved small, reasonable results, and it’s to be expected.” Johnson’s critics have also levelled that aging is as much to do with genes as to how you treat your body. “No amount of diet or exercise is gonna get you that magical combination of genes,” Andrew Steele, Ph.D., longevity scientist and author, told Fortune.

Then there’s those who say you could go to all this effort only to be hit by a bus. As he told the Guardian: “Whenever I get in my car, I say to myself: ‘This is the most dangerous thing I’ll do today.’”

Johnson has three children with his ex-wife, but seems to struggle romantically because of the strict regime he’s under. In 2023, he went onto X to put out his list of expectations for potential partners:

He seems keen to pass on some of this anti-aging lifestyle tips to other people. The five most important rules we could all do with implementing in our lives are as follows, according to Blueprint:

• Sleep - consistent, high quality sleep is your #1 life priority

• Diet - eat a Blueprint (Mediterranean) like diet with the Blueprint stack. Example foods include vegetables, fruits, nuts, legumes (beans, chickpeas, lentils), lean proteins, and extra virgin olive oil

• Exercise - 6 hours a week. Incorporate strength, cardio, flexibility and balance

• Family, friendship and community - actively foster meaningful relationships

• Things to avoid - fast food, junk food, smoking, vaping, excessive alcohol and social media - and anything addictive

It might not lead to a 150-year lifespan, but it’s probably worth a shot – and it’ll save you $4 million.

'Don’t Die: The Man Who Wants to Live Forever' is available to watch on Netflix on 1 January

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