By Michele Yeo
“As a species we accept our inevitable decay, decline, and death. I want to argue that the opposite should be true.”
So says Bryan Johnson, the eccentric tech multimillionaire and subject of a new Netflix documentary, who has gone viral for employing extraordinary measures and spending millions of dollars to extend his life expectancy as long as humanly possible.
Don’t Die: The Man Who Wants to Live Forever, now streaming, takes us inside Johnson’s extreme regimen, what he calls Blueprint, designed to not only ensure his longevity, or “neutralize aging” but also turn back the hands of time. Cameras follow the 47-year-old as he takes us through his multi-step, four-hour morning routine that would make Patrick Bateman from American Psycho look like a lethargic, apathetic bum – a routine that begins at 4:30 in the morning and includes taking his temperature, getting sunlight-like exposure, HRV (heart rate variability) therapy, redlight therapy, wearing a special cap to stimulate hair growth, working out for an hour, and 30 minutes of electromagnetic stimulation on his abdomen area designed to be the equivalent of 20,000 sit ups. Johnson also ingests between 50-100 vitamins, supplements, and pills daily as part of his anti-aging quest including Rapamycin, a drug typically given to organ transplant recipients to lessen the chances of rejection. It’s believed to aid in longevity by reducing instances of chronic diseases.
Johnson employs other controversial methods like follistatin gene therapy for which he had to travel to Prospera off the coast of Honduras as it’s not legal in the United States, as well as plasma injections donated by his teenage son, Talmage. In fact, it was the blood transfusions that made Johnson’s crusade for eternal youth initially go viral when a journalist first profiled his mission back in 2023. Since then, more than 1.3 million people have subscribed to his YouTube channel where Johnson chronicles all of his efforts including his two million dollar anti-aging skincare routine, his nighttime routine, and how he’s “de-aging” his penis. Yes, you read that correctly.
What Johnson is doing is definitely strange and it all seems like a monumental amount of work, effort, time, resources, and of course, money to spend on this elaborate experiment, but Johnson says the numbers and the data speak for themselves, claiming that his regular, excessive biological testing shows that for every year, his body only ages around seven months and that he’s reversed his biological age by five years since undertaking this experiment. As weird as it all may seem, supporters of Johnson say there’s no harm in what he’s doing – after all, he’s spending his own money, time, and resources and if he does unlock some of the keys to eternal health, isn’t that a good thing? Johnson is, to his credit, at least, aware and cognizant that his methods are extremely unattainable for the vast majority of people but if he encourages the average person to pay more attention to their health and to make small, accessible changes, isn’t that positive? His detractors, meanwhile, accuse him of being a narcissistic snake oil salesman, a grifter looking to separate average, even vulnerable people from their hard-earned money. Indeed, there are a lot of products for sale on Johnson’s website, everything from a $58 bottle of extra virgin olive oil that claims to promote longevity through combatting free radicals, and supporting healthy weight management, to $142 “longevity protein,” a $222 microplastics test, and a $616 blood and urine test kit.
Whether you are for, against Johnson’s extremely intricate and extensive experiment or you fall somewhere in the middle, it’s difficult to deny his efforts make for fascinating, if sometimes unsettling content. Although one could argue that given Johnson devotes the better part of his life, more than 100 activities daily, in his obsessive pursuit to avoid dying, if Johnson is really living at all? Additionally, while it’s perfectly fine, even understandable, to want to extend one’s life for as long as scientifically possible, when you consider the current state of well, everything around the world, including the events of the first week of 2025 alone, one has to wonder – why would you even want to?
Don’t Die: The Man Who Wants to Live Forever is currently streaming on Netflix.
