Bryan Johnson in Don't Die: The Man Who Wants to Live Forever.Courtesy of Netflix/Netflix
I step on the downward escalator of the Jacob Javits Convention Center in New York City on a mid-February morning and descend into the Don’t Die Summit: a day-long event for age-defying enthusiasts who want to live forever.
It’s 9:00 a.m., so people gather most heavily at the cordyceps mushroom coffee kiosk for their morning brew: there’s a man in a glowing red light therapy mask, another dressed as the grim reaper, and then dozens wearing Patagonia and blue light glasses. It’s comic-con for health nuts.
At 10:00 a.m. sharp, all 1,500 participants, who paid several hundreds of dollars to attend the event, scurry towards the auditorium. On the main stage comes the Captain America of biohacking and host of this summit, Bryan Johnson: a 47-year-old tech entrepreneur and translucent man with an easy smile and chiselled arms who eats and trains in a way to slow Father Time. He’s the reason people are here.
Johnson claims he has the aerobic fitness of an 18-year-old.Courtesy of Netflix/Netflix
Johnson’s monastic lifestyle involves a strict bedtime of 8:30 p.m., ingesting more than 100 supplements per day, and a vigorous exercise regimen. He has also gained notoriety for his extreme, controversial, and questionable anti-aging experiments in his quest to defy death. In 2023, he had a blood plasma exchange with his then 17-year-old son (Johnson later admitted that year he won’t do that again because there were “no benefits detected” from swapping plasma). Last year, he injected another person’s fat into his face to make himself look younger.
Johnson and his doctors claim he has the aerobic fitness of an 18-year-old, the bone mineral density of a fit 30-year-old, and the number of nightly erections of a university freshman. According to most recent readings from his 30-person medical team, he is biologically 37, and is now aging at nearly half the pace of other people.
He’s at the summit to disburse his secrets and sell his Blueprint protocol: a line of longevity-boosting supplements, recipes and meal-prep ideas endorsed by Johnson and epigenetic age-testing kits with a finger prick and blood collection vial so that you, too, can supposedly defy aging and potentially live forever.
The Don’t Die Summit is one of three in the United States this year promoting Johnson’s ideology of living like a health monk, fasting and only eating before a certain time of day and vanquishing evils such as processed foods, alcohol and microplastics to explore the limits of human longevity. More than 11,000 people have taken the “Don’t Die” pledge to fight “for the freedom to exist as long as one chooses.” His goal is to raise that number to one billion.
Ziana Sanchez, a 26-year-old from Mexico, came to the event after learning she was bordering on prediabetes six months ago, despite her slim build and regular exercise regime. In her research, she stumbled onto Blueprint. After three months of following the protocol, her blood glucose measurements dropped deeper into the normal range. “I don’t follow influencers – I’m from a family of doctors – but this worked, so I believe in what he’s doing,” she says.
But Johnson’s protocol and his ideology are not for everyone. Following the Blueprint to a tee, said 28-year-old Noah Miller, is no joke. He tried the full protocol last year, but stopped after a few weeks. Nobody else in his immediate circles was doing it, and the fasting and restrictive eating at times felt isolating. So for now, he does as best as he can, adhering to the Super Veggie breakfast of lentils, broccoli and shiitake mushrooms; the occasional blood test, and wearing a Whoop fitness tracker and an Apple Watch to collect biometric data. “You don’t want to be having dessert and feeling bad about yourself.”
Still, the hundreds at the auditorium hang on his every word. Participants line up to the mic for “confessions”, telling Johnson about their “debaucherous” behaviour. One man confesses to eating a bag of sour cream and onion chips, another admits to having a bad habit of sleeping only five hours per night. A woman tells Johnson that her tongue tingles and her nails are brittle because she lacks calcium. He asks if she has evidence for that claim. She says no, and Johnson politely encourages her to be more quantitative in her investigation. The crowds are less patient and drown her questions in clapping noises, eager to move on to other topics: Johnson’s latest measurement readings, a slide on the benefits of sleep, and another one showing his eating schedule: no meals after 12:00 p.m.
After that first session, I cross the convention floor and enter the biological age testing room. In 30-minute intervals, participants do a bunch of tests: max push-ups, sit and reach, balancing on one leg, grip strength. We put all of our results into the Don’t Die App, which spits out a biological age. I’m 29, and tested like a 19-year-old. Nice, I think!
We then move into lunch – where I choose an adobo tofu salad over a mushroom and lentils bowl – and explore the trade stands set up by about 20 biohacking companies. There is Johnson’s Blueprint Labs’ booth giving out samples of their Snake Oil (extra virgin olive oil filled with antioxidants), a hyberbaric oxygen chamber that looks like a spacecraft escape pod, and a whole booth dedicated to macadamia nuts. Around these booths are others offering products and services including at-home DNA testing kits and personalized peptide therapy.
The afternoon session kicks off with a Roast My Protocol hour where people have the chance to ask questions about Johnson’s biohacking methods. The number of doctors at the summit is shocking: his one-man protocol runs counter to mainstream medicine’s more careful style of clinical research, which typically involves several participants and waves of trials. Dr. Paul Zalzal, an orthopedic surgeon at Oakville General Hospital, likens the Blueprint to a bad science experiment – taking so many supplements makes it nearly impossible to know which one is working well, and can be dangerous. Johnson has already stopped taking human growth hormone because it was increasing his intracranial pressure, and rapamycin because it made him more prone to infections.
The majority of people here, including Johnson, acknowledge the Blueprint’s biggest flaw: medical studies typically require more than one participant, whereas findings reported by Johnson’s team are found in Johnson alone. That may soon change. Mike Mallin, Blueprint’s Chief Medical Officer, tells me he is following the protocol himself and, at 45 years old, has an aging rate of 0.64: not as good as Johnson’s, but good for 19th in the world on the Rejuvenation Olympics Leaderboard.
By 3:00 p.m., after a heady day of biometric conversation, it’s time for a zero-proof dance party with a DJ, strobe lights, and a shirtless Johnson flanked by a suited bodyguard dancing among the masses. And despite the concentric rings of sweaty fans and curious media members around him, he looks like he’s having fun.
Despite the debate over whether Johnson’s Blueprint protocol is healthy or hooey, the summit’s attendees, from their early twenties to well past retirement, left the event more motivated about health and longevity. Mary Kelly, a 70-year-old nurse from New York City, is now a new fan of Johnson’s, and came to the Don’t Die Summit after becoming disenchanted with how little thought the average person puts into their own health. “We only start to think about it once we get sick, and it’s crowding our hospitals,” she says. “If people did what Johnson does, it could change all of health care for the better.”