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Bryan Johnson
American entrepreneur and venture capitalist, Don't Die

Don’t Die: Humanity’s Future With Bryan Johnson

📅 Jun 04, 2026 ARK Invest 60 MIN 81 SEGMENTS · 4 SPEAKERS
In this episode of FYI, Brett Winton, Cathie Wood, and Charlie Roberts sit down with Bryan Johnson, founder of Blueprint and ...

What Bryan Johnson said

Written from the verified transcript and checked against it. Every figure links to the moment it was said.

Bryan Johnson, founder of Braintree and the Don't Die movement, argues that humanity is at a pivotal moment where we can choose to end death, framing it as a new ideology centered on existence as the highest virtue. He explains his journey from entrepreneurship to longevity, driven by a desire to do something useful for humanity. Johnson discusses the right to exist as a fundamental human right, the computational irreducibility of the future, and the need for good judgment in the age of AI. He provides practical sleep advice, emphasizing resting heart rate as a key metric, and details his Blueprint project, which has collected 1.5 billion data points on his body. He predicts that by 2039, he will age only 40-50% per year, and discusses the market value of extending life to 120 years at $1.2 quadrillion.

Key takeaways

  1. Johnson predicts that by 2039, his body will age only 40-50% per year, with therapies reversing aging damage.
  2. He has collected 1.5 billion data points on his body, the most dynamic dataset ever collected on a human.
  3. Johnson argues that the right to exist is the next fundamental human right, following the right to vote.
  4. He states that extending the US population to full health up to age 120 is worth $1.2 quadrillion.
  5. Johnson recommends focusing on resting heart rate before bed as the single most important health marker.

Numbers and commitments

FigureWhat it refers toTypeAt
1.5 billion data points collected on his body over 5 years metric 46:11
2039 year when he will age only 40-50% per year timeline 46:11
$1.2 quadrillion value of extending US population to full health up to age 120 metric 57:43
26-30% more order than average 48-year-old, less entropy metric 46:11
41-43 resting heart rate when he finishes eating by noon and goes to bed at 8:30 metric 28:16
4 hours minimum time between final meal and bedtime guidance 28:16
30-60 minutes screens off before bed guidance 33:05
6 hours half-life of caffeine metric 33:22
17 hours half-life of modafinil metric 37:30
2 hours deep, 2 hours REM ideal sleep architecture for early 20s guidance 30:52

Chapters

  1. 0:00Why live forever
  2. 2:55Origin story and motivation
  3. 6:51New ideology and values
  4. 13:32Right to exist
  5. 19:47AI and the future
  6. 23:58Sleep and heart rate
  7. 28:16Five pre-sleep routines
  8. 46:11Entropy and Blueprint
  9. 50:03Exercise and spirituality
  10. 57:05Market value of longevity

Questions asked in this interview

12
  1. 1:00And when did it occur to you that it was a good thing to do?
  2. 2:28I should spend money on indefinitely prolonging my life, or was there something else that kind of spurred you, or was it a fundamental, I think this is possible now, therefore I'm gonna do it?
  3. 7:27Or is there some kernel or have you seen evidence so far?
  4. 17:51And the second thing I would say is in this AI controversy, is this going to throw everyone out of work?
  5. 22:47But I think you make a really good point that it's maybe a bit more like the arms race that occurs with powerful AI in say cybersecurity, right?
  6. 32:11So by the time you get to bed, you're like, is that my interpretation correct?
  7. 36:00And it's actually a big part of why you get jet lag, right?
  8. 40:06What did you say that was embarrassing that we need to cut?
  9. 45:38What do you think about things like epigenetic reprogramming as well and senolytics? Any of these?
  10. 49:07I actually like the way you think about it with entropy is it sounds like entropy is your global enemy and then you think about the different levels and layers of the onion, right?
  11. 52:19And do you think about it?
  12. 54:02Does that not run counter to that worldview as in it comes back into the more scarcity-minded religions where you know by everyone living that's more of a Malthusian you know there's more of an issue right?
Brett Winton 0:08 ↗
Welcome to FYI, the 4-year innovation podcast. This show offers an intellectual discussion on technologically enabled disruption because investing in innovation starts with understanding it. To learn more, visit ark-invest.com.
Ark Invest is a registered investment adviser focused on investing in disruptive innovation. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions. It does not constitute either explicitly or implicitly any provision of services or products by ARK. All statements made regarding companies or securities are strictly beliefs and points of view held by ARK or podcast guests and are not endorsements or recommendations by ARK to buy, sell, or hold any security. Clients of Ark Investment Management may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast.
From Ark Invest, this is FYI, the For Your Innovation podcast. I'm Brett Winton. We've got a great show for you today. We have our fearless founder Cathie Wood. We have Charlie Roberts, you know, multiple co-founder of unicorns and chief investment strategist for private assets. And we have Bryan Johnson. Welcome, Bryan. Bryan is going to live forever. He founded Braintree. He also founded Braintree and sold it to Venmo. Bryan, why do you want to live forever? And when did it occur to you that it was a good thing to do?
Bryan Johnson 1:35 ↗
You know, it's such a funny question. It's like, why do I want to live? It's funny because I think it shines a spotlight on this idea that we do live in a world where everyone assumes that you will die and therefore you basically budget out your life and you make your life plans according to your stage of life, but you assume it's coming to an end. And this is the first moment in the history of our species where that may no longer be true. And so I know that creates a lot of consternation for a lot of people because one of the most intense things people deal with is what to do with time. You know, like you wake up and you find yourself conscious and it's like, what do you do with yourself? And so I understand. So basically I'm doing this because I think we are at a pivotal moment as a species. We are evolving into something new and we are the first generation who won't die.
Brett Winton 2:28 ↗
Well, was there like a moment where you were like, 'Oh, now I'm going to try to prolong my life indefinitely.' Was there some catalyst? Was it kind of like, you know, getting money out of the sale of Braintree? Was that like, okay, well, now what else do I have to spend money on? I should spend money on indefinitely prolonging my life, or was there something else that kind of spurred you, or was it a fundamental, I think this is possible now, therefore I'm gonna do it?
Bryan Johnson 2:55 ↗
It was. Yeah. So when I was 21, I felt motivated. I wanted to do something that would be useful to the human race. I had read a lot of biographies. I was familiar with history. I loved reading about people who in their time and place were able to do something that impacted, you know, future generations potentially for hundreds of years. And so I wanted to do something, but the problem was I wasn't good at anything, nor did I have any good ideas. And I was from a small rural community. So like what do you do when you don't have money or connections or you're not good or you're not like a standout in anything? So I said, you know what, I'll just become an entrepreneur. I'll hustle. I'll make a whole bunch of money by age 30. And then with that money, I'll do something useful. And I fortunately worked out. So I sold Braintree to Venmo. I made a few hundred million. I sold it for just under a billion. I made a few hundred million. And then at that moment it was like, okay, we just achieved the 21-year-old imaginative dream. But I was also burnt to a crisp. 14 years of entrepreneurship. I had three babies. I'd just gotten divorced. I'd left my board and religion. I was just kind of scrambled in life. And I, you know, off a decade of depression. And so it was this question, what do you do with life? Like what do you do with time? And so I basically took a couple years and I did two things. One is I organized my friends and we had dinners and I would get like 10 of them together and I would say, all right, here's a thought experiment for you. We are living in the year 2050 and we are amazed at how remarkable existence is. Like it exceeds our imagination on every aspect. What did we do in 2016 to make that world possible? And then I would just listen and people would like talk about the things that they were working on if they heard about in the zeitgeist. And by dinner three I was like, wait a second, I see a pattern. Everybody is saying the same things. You know, like, and that's what happens when in any given moment we all kind of exchange ideas, we all kind of see similar things and similar patterns, which becomes an echo chamber. So I then gave myself a challenge: if I'm going to do something, I'm going to take all the ideas I heard, I'm going to put them inside of a box. My job is to do something outside that box. I can't do anything anybody's talking about. And so that was the goal, that was the constraint. And then I did a second thing where I did this thought experiment where I imagined myself in the year 2500. So I imagined myself like reading the biographies of people who existed in the early 21st century and there they are capturing existence. And there was one frame that really got me. I thought, there they are talking amongst themselves and they say, 'We are so grateful to homo sapiens that lived in the 21st century that they did blank and blank that allowed intelligent existence to thrive in this part of the galaxy.' And then my job was to figure out what blank and blank was. Because you know, over time history compresses. Like we look back to the third century, we say four things happened in the third century. Like really, like a whole bunch of things happened in the third century, but time just compresses it to the essence. Our century, as rich as it is and as many things that are happening, will be compressed. And so I think the answer is they say, that's when homo sapiens figured out, when they gave birth to super intelligence, and that's when they figured they would no longer die. Those two things define our century.
Brett Winton 6:17 ↗
And so instead of buying a bunch of GPUs, you instead decided to live forever. Seems like buying a bunch of GPUs could have been useful too, though.
Bryan Johnson 6:26 ↗
For sure. I mean, so the idea was that we have not had a discussion about life and death for about 2,000 years.
Brett Winton 6:38 ↗
That's where I was gonna go. Yeah. This is the first time in 2,000 years where we are legitimately discussing life and death and so it is this monumental moment.
Bryan Johnson 6:51 ↗
So really the observation was we need to birth a new ideology. It's not, you know, science is a part of it, but like there needs to be a new thing, a new philosophy, ideology, religion, culture, community, whatever you want to call it. There needs to be something that is the defining epicenter of our existence. And that's what I wanted, that's what I started out to build. It's like I started doing it in a very practical way through the terms people understand, through like the language of sleep and exercise and, you know, measuring bios. That was the origin.
Cathie Wood 7:27 ↗
Just listening to you, and not to bring everything to ARK, but it strikes me when we founded ARK, I remember someone not in our business asked me, why are you doing that? Why are you starting ARK? There are thousands of funds out there. And I tried to explain to him why I was starting ARK. And he has a spiritual bias and is very tuned in that way. And he said, 'Oh, so you mean this is all about the new creation.' And I thought about that, you know, because I also have my spiritual side. And I thought about that and I said, 'That's right. That is right.' You know, now this is in our business's terms, but you know, one of the reasons I founded ARK was the traditional financial world I thought had lost the plot and, you know, was investing by looking backwards, investing in benchmarks, you know, benchmarks being their guide. And ARK's philosophy is our research is our screen for investing and our research is all about the future. So it's very interesting the way you're framing this. And I remember listening to Peter Diamandis, you know, he's, I think you and he are friends if I'm not mistaken, or you're certainly focused on longevity, both of you. And Peter apparently went to the Vatican and he talked about this concept of not dying and they had kind of a joke about it, but they weren't laughing. And so he didn't get it. And I said to him, 'Okay, well, you're dealing with a very interesting topic. You were at the Vatican for goodness sakes.' So this is a touchy subject, but I do believe, you know, all of the inventions that human beings have been responsible for are part of the new creation. This is, you know, this is our sense of purpose. This is why we were put here. So very interesting, Brett. So, to turn it into a question, is not dying simply an article of faith? As in, do you approach this like, hey, this should be possible because humanity deserves it and then you're trying to put together kind of like the pieces of the puzzle to figure out how to measure and demonstrate it and hoping to essentially punch through the wall? Or is there some kernel or have you seen evidence so far? It's like, oh yes, this is possible. And one last question to tag on to that. You mentioned something about religion in your youth if I'm not mistaken. And so I think you said, I didn't hear it very well. I think you said that you basically gave it up or something like that.
Bryan Johnson 10:34 ↗
Yeah, that's right. Yeah, I was born into a deeply religious community and formally left that faith in my late 20s, early 30s. And so I guess the topic I think is worth introspection is we have a grand question right now as a species of what do we value. And right now our actions demonstrate that we value power, status, and wealth above all end points. We are willing to trade life, willing to trade our existence for the accumulation of power, wealth, and status. And that's the case because we all know that death is inevitable. And so when death is inevitable, you're going to YOLO your way to those end points. And what this transition means or what it raises is it raises the question if existence itself is the highest virtue. That the only thing profitable is existence. Anything that weakens existence or calls existence into question is not profitable. And that's the whole discussion I'm trying to have is immortality not for the sake of individual immortality, for the sake of selfish pursuit. It is of being a warrior and caretaker of existence, that we are defenders of the flame of consciousness. And so the thing that I think will be the most significant discovery in the 21st century is not going to be AGI. It won't be solving aging. It will be discovering how precious our existence is and how we are willing and eager to do anything to preserve our collective existence to be again the warriors and caretakers of it in this part of the galaxy.
Brett Winton 12:34 ↗
Is it on us to make sure that that's within individuals rather than the way that's always been done through a cycle of rebirth and things? Or, you know, one pushback that I've heard from people when I've talked about certainly increasing health span is, oh, you know, won't we all be bored? Or, you know, obviously this stuff without making it mundane. I think one of the answers I give, and we think about this a lot at ARK as well, is the power and the excitement of convergence. And wouldn't it be amazing to have five or 10 professional careers and you could do 10 PhDs, right? Not everyone's probably going to do that, but wouldn't that be amazing? And wouldn't we, the convergences you would then see with that level of knowledge potentially then, you know, with a Neuralink or something in one's brain, then that even helps further. But yeah, like how have you thought about that journey about what one then does as you become that kind of, that sharper and that, you know, carrying the torch for civilization and existence? How does actual day-to-day life change? How do you think about you in 500?
Bryan Johnson 13:32 ↗
I mean, I think what's going to surface inevitably is a rights issue where we establish there's human rights, there's a right to vote, you know, we have basic rights. What we haven't discussed is a right to exist. If the technology exists for me to extend my life and for you to extend your life, does one have the right to exist for as long as they choose? And that's where I think it's coming is I don't think that this is a rich versus poor argument. If that, that's like a secondary consideration. I think it's a basic fundamental human question of what are our rights? Do I have the right to vote? Do I have the right to influence my government? Do I have the right to exist? And if you say that's outlandish, that that is so far into the future, I think you're underestimating the speed at which AI is going to change this conversation even in 10 years from now. And if you're trying to measure that, if you simply look throughout history and you measure when a technological disruption happens or when a political disruption happens, it causes holes in society. It creates problems society does not have answers for and then an ideology or philosophy or religion needs to emerge and patch those holes and say here's how we can make sense of this. Like here's how we can smooth this out so things are okay so that, you know, people are treated in an equitable manner so that society is functioning in an orderly fashion. And so if you say look at the amount of change that's happening right now in society with AI, we're building up ideological debt. And right now when you survey the world and you say what ideology in the world is going to, in political, economic, social, moral, whatever your source is, what ideology is actually robust enough to patch the holes created by AI and that will be created by AI? And my hypothesis is none. There's not a single ideological framework that is even close to patching the holes. And so I wrote an immortalism manifesto on the spring equinox with an attempt of articulating what the new ideology is that patches the holes the AI is creating. And these components are, you know, existence is the highest virtue, that which fortifies existence is profitable, that which removes it is not profitable, etc. But I think it's a tsunami of change coming and we're just, we have not properly sized it up on what will be necessary to actually stabilize society in a new equilibrium.
Brett Winton 16:23 ↗
I agree with that and I am more pragmatic about it, call it, as in kind of maybe I can't even as a futurist can't cast myself far enough forward. But the way one, I think there is a distinction between rich and poor and one way you could interpret longevity and kind of the potential in the market is, you know, once you have accrued enough resources that you can be at the top of the social competition pyramid with people, so you're no longer just like trying to position yourself with a better yacht and stuff. Then, you know, the ultimate scarcity is time and so then you dump your incremental resources into trying to live forever. And assuming that it's possible to kind of like molecularly figure out how to extend life, then you have this mechanism by which capital flows into that sector. It's basically like, you know, once in an age of abundance people are going to spend all their resources trying to live forever and so then if the technological breakthrough exists then we'll get there. And I think you can interpret some of the actions of the AI labs that recognize the set of political risks that they are facing here as acknowledging that actually this is a useful, an actual appreciated use of the technology in health specifically, both in health and developing new cures and in providing people with tools that are in their life very, very important and helpful within a health services ecosystem that's not actually that helpful.
Cathie Wood 17:51 ↗
Just thinking about our listener base here, I'm thinking, you know, a lot of people are again with AI, as you say, Bryan, they're scared. And I'm trying, because out of technology can come lots of benefits. I mean, transformational, curing disease being one of them which is already starting to happen. And so one of the things I have two comments about what you've said. I think living a very long life or living forever, if that is where this is going, I think those who will achieve that will need a sense of purpose. Don't you think a sense of purpose? And the second thing I would say is in this AI controversy, is this going to throw everyone out of work? You know, you can flip it around and you could say we're looking at the potential for the greatest entrepreneurial explosion in history where people actually can start their own businesses, you know, with AI's help. And most businesses fail, but you know, fail fast, move on. And I actually have a lot more hope about technologies, consider the source, we invested in it. But I do see this sense of doom. And I think I'm trying to encourage young people if they can't find a job now, start your own business with AI. That means as you continue to interview, you'll be a much more interesting employee if you choose to go into a corporation because you've started a business and because you are so proficient at AI. So, you know, I think there's huge opportunity here too.
Bryan Johnson 19:47 ↗
For people who are scared of AI, I would say to them, there's no legitimate reason to either be optimistic or pessimistic. And that is because the future of our existence is computationally irreducible. It is an unknown state. You cannot say anything intelligent about the future. Now you can say in classical science, you can say I know where Jupiter is going to be in orbit 100 years from now. You can do the math and you know exactly where it's going to be. That is like through classical science you can make predictions of the future. And before, like if you were a farmer in the 1400s you would know your child will be a farmer in 1450 and their child will be a farmer in 1500. But now we don't even know what's going to happen a year from now, let alone five or 10 or 15. And so the starting point here is humans try to soothe their own anxiety by trying to imagine they can say things about the future. And this is the moment in time where we, homo sapiens, need to confess we have absolutely nothing intelligent to say about the future because it's computationally irreducible. It is impossible to say. And so that's starting point number two is in this case when you can't say anything about the future at all that's intelligent, the only thing you know literally is you don't want to die right now. Outside of that, that's it, you have nothing to say. And so if you were to take this conversation and map it back to Homo erectus a million years ago and say, Homo erectus, you're in a situation, imagine you're going to evolve the equivalent of a million years in a month so everything you understand now is going to change in a month. What are you going to be doing? And Homo erectus would say, well, you're going to forage over here. You're going to fight over here. You're going to like, you know, it would take its own models of the world and map it. That's what we do. And so Homo erectus would not imagine that you're going to discover microscopic objects or invisible waves in the air or magic boxes in your hand that travel at the speed of light. We are Homo erectus in this moment. We are going to evolve at that same kind of speed over some duration of time. So for us to imagine that we're not Homo erectus in this moment is absurd. We are trying to take our ancient models and trying to superimpose it upon a world where we just don't even understand what's coming. And so this is why I'm really neutral about the situation. We don't know. All I know is as a species, the thing we lock in on is we don't want to die right now. Which means we don't want to kill each other. We don't want to kill the planet. We don't want to kill ourselves. We don't want to cause harm to existence. We just want to hold on for dear life and hopefully we can make it to the other side. Now with that, like if there's other cool things to do, amazing. But like yes, we have a need for meaning. Yes, we need to find meaning. But I think we're getting ahead of ourselves of thinking that somehow the world is going to be the same when like we just have no idea what's going to happen.
Brett Winton 22:47 ↗
Yeah, you make an interesting point where I know many people who think that AGI or ASI becomes so good at making predictions that essentially the world becomes like an efficient market, right? And everything is predictable. But I think you make a really good point that it's maybe a bit more like the arms race that occurs with powerful AI in say cybersecurity, right? Where AI may make predictions better, but it also makes the number of possible futures massively blow up in computational, you know, combinatorial space. So actually maybe it makes at best flatline predictability or maybe even less predictable to your point and at least we're in a steeper part of the curve which is pretty interesting. Just to switch gears a little bit as you think about, well it would be great to double click more on how you think about the con-, you know, you're obviously a very scientific mind, you're a business mind and obviously a spiritual mind and just any additional thoughts on how you think about reconciling those and the science of spirituality or vice versa would be interesting. And then I was going to move on to also then, well maybe we'll come back to that, but also just first day advice for anyone wanting to get into looking after themselves better and onto a longevity glide path who does not have a $2 million a year to spend on it.
Bryan Johnson 23:58 ↗
Yeah. So, I mean, if you say like what are the ten commandments of religion, we know that. What are the ten commandments of capitalism? We know that. What are the ten commandments of social status? We know that. You know, like we have playbooks on like what to do in life. And what I'm saying right now is there's a new ten commandments that are dropping. And when you give birth to super intelligence, your only enemy is entropy. Entropy is the final boss. Entropy gets the stars. Entropy gets right. Entropy gets all things. The only enemy we have. It's not each other. It's not nation states. It is entropy. So this is not just about bodily trying to get your body to live and be healthy. It's about trying to solve planetary sustainability. It's about trying to solve existential threats, asteroids and trying to solve like not nuking ourselves. So when I talk about existence, I mean the full-on project of the human race is we say we are going to secure our existence against all threats, aging, planetary collapse, you know, anything exogenous that may hurt our planet, anything that is a full-scale multi-thousand-year endeavor to figure out how do you actually secure existence. It's an endless stream of work. So when you say like, what am I going to do? Like we have more to do than we've ever had in our entire existence if we're going to actually try to secure our own existence. And it's a humanitarian project, everybody's involved. Everybody can contribute. And then in terms of like so how do you make this actionable? I mean it's kind of like the problem with like climate change, like you hear like this terrible thing and it's like what do I recycle my Amazon boxes? But you actually in this thing with existence you can actually do a lot of things. You can actually be the philosophy. So, for example, that's what I've been trying to do with my project is I've tried to say I am a collection of 70 trillion cells, Bryan Johnson is, and every day my cells die a little bit and they die and they have an expiration date roughly around 79 years in California. And so, it's a pretty predictable clock of decay, you know, every single day. It's a little less robust. And so we're basically trying to say scientifically, can you make the aging process slow down and can you increase the repair process? Because aging is just simply a function of the breakdown is more than repair. So how do you slow breakdown and boost repair? And you can start with really basic things like what I tell everybody is health is overwhelming. Like if you say I'm gonna want to be healthy, you say I'm gonna eat a healthy meal, but then you think are the seed oils good for me or bad for me? And you think should I drink this or that drink? And it just gets overwhelming. So I try to simplify it and say the best thing anybody can do is by focusing on their resting heart rate before bed. That is the one marker in their life to pay attention to. And then the whole game becomes how do you lower the heart rate. Now the reason why this matters is the lower your heart rate, the better you sleep. The better you sleep, the more willpower you have and the better mood you have. Sleep is the number one longevity drug in the entire world. There's nothing more powerful than sleep. And then I'll walk you through in a minute like the five things you can do to lower it. But those are the anchor solutions that everybody can do and they're free. So there's no money required and they're also like the power laws of longevity.
Brett Winton 27:27 ↗
Just to interject for a second before you go into those five. It's funny as I've said this to a few people and it's strange to me that their eyes light up but I think some people haven't thought of this but as I try to think of it as an evolutionary thing right and just ground it all in why did we end up here. But when people cut sleep right and it feels like the ultimate kind of false economy I always think I always come back to if there were any way for a mammal like a human to have done without sleep given the evolutionary cost of being eaten by a lion while asleep there is zero doubt that we would have evolved to not need it. And the fact that we still so consistently need five to eight hours is so telling about that it's absolutely required to do all of the things and both neurochemistry and thoughts and all the other great things. So yeah, it'd be great to hear more.
Bryan Johnson 28:16 ↗
So these work because if I can see someone's heart rate on their wearable device, I will see their soul. I will see their relationship with stress and food and work and scrolling. It just reveals all things. And so, for example, the first thing is if your bedtime is 10 p.m. every night, you want to have your final meal at least 4 hours before bed. So, finish eating around 6 p.m. And that gives your body time to digest the food. And your body needs that space to complete its process. And then it has time and space to then lower your body temperature before bed and express melatonin. So now you're ready. If you eat adjacent to bed, it raises your core body temperature. It suppresses melatonin. It raises your heart rate. Then when you go to sleep, the body is doing two things. Digesting food and trying to sleep and then it wrecks your sleep. So by pushing your food earlier in the day, it gives your body space to do the digestion so you can free it up. I did a few hundred, probably more like a thousand experiments on when to eat, what to eat, etc. I found my optimal time is to finish eating around noon each day. I go to bed at 8:30, so I have eight and a half hours of digestion. If I do that, my heart rate's going to be around 41, 42, 43. If it's there, I'm going to have a perfect night's sleep. I'll fall asleep within two minutes. I'll have, you know, I'll get through in a minute like what a good night's sleep it is. So, second thing is...
Brett Winton 29:45 ↗
Wait, wait, can I just ask a question on sleep? Deep versus REM versus core. Any observations there?
Bryan Johnson 29:54 ↗
Yep. So your body, so if you go to bed at 10 p.m. the first thing that's going to happen is you're going to drop into deep sleep.
Brett Winton 30:03 ↗
It's always that first big trough.
Bryan Johnson 30:05 ↗
The key thing about this is your body is a clock. Because if your bedtime is 10 p.m. and you've got a work project or a social outing and you get to bed at 1 a.m. and you think, 'That's okay. I'm going to sleep until 9 to make up for it.' It doesn't work that way. The body has a clock. And so at 10, you start your deep cycle and then you come back up and then within like the first 60 to 90 minutes or so, you come up and you get your first REM cycle. So deep is where you do like deep brain cleaning. REM kind of comes up and does like memory consolidation, emotional cleansing, but your body goes these cycles each night in a clock-like fashion. And that's why it's so important to be on time and be consistent every day because your body wants to run the same processes. So, think of it like this. At 10 p.m...
There's a trash collector outside waiting for you to go to sleep. If you're asleep at 10 p.m., the trash collector rolls through your body and picks up your trash. If you're not asleep or your sleep is disrupted, the trash collector stayed outside and your trash stays out in the curb. It's not picked up. So, the body cleans itself through these systematic rhythmic processes. And that's why you want to pick a bedtime, be consistent with your bedtime as much as you can to let the body clock run. So the ideal night of sleep is roughly 2 hours of deep, 2 hours of REM, awake less than 30 minutes per night, and then asleep within like roughly five or so minutes. That's the sleep architecture of like an early 20-year-old or like late late teens. That's ideal. And as you age, it becomes increasingly harder to get good sleep. You wake up more often. You can't get back to sleep more often. You sleep more lightly. You can't get these big windows of restorative sleep. That's especially true for women. So, that's why these sleep habits are so important. They are the foundational building blocks for all of health to master sleep. But you can't master sleep until you master the pre-sleep routines, which is what we're talking about here.
Brett Winton 32:11 ↗
Yeah. And so, the first pre-sleep routine sounds like you basically like starve yourself to death. So by the time you get to bed, you're like, is that my interpretation correct?
Bryan Johnson 32:23 ↗
I mean, so some people do complain about feeling hungry, you know? And like the first thing is like it's okay. You're not going to starve to death. Like if you feel a little bit hungry, it's okay. If you need to start with two hours before bed and then go to two and a half and then three, like work your way up. But you and some people will say, 'I can't sleep if I'm a little hungry.' Like that's okay. Like have a little snack, but just what you want to do is you want to measure your heart rate. And so you can either use a wearable to measure your heart rate or you can just put your fingers on the side of your neck and check your pulse. But that's your north star. You'll see if your heart rate is up, your sleep quality is down. If your heart rate's down, your sleep quality is up.
Brett Winton 33:04 ↗
What's step two?
Bryan Johnson 33:05 ↗
Yeah. Okay. So screens off 30 to 60 minutes before bed. So being on your phone or on your computer is not a soothing experience. Like you're not doing that to wind down. You're not going to...
Brett Winton 33:20 ↗
But I'm monitoring the situation, Brian.
Bryan Johnson 33:22 ↗
I know. I know this. Yeah, I know this. There's like nothing you're doing on your phone, you're getting blasted with blue light. And whether you're texting or working or scrolling, it's arousing your nervous system. So screens need to be off 30 to 60 minutes before bed. And so in that time frame, you can do a number of things. You can go for a walk, talk to a friend, hang out with family. Reading a book is by far the best thing. Meditation, you know, a hobby, like literally anything but not be on your phone. And you'll see that when you do that, it just helps you have because your body needs your nervous system needs 30 to 60 minutes to wind down. You can't just be on the phone and be like, 'Now I'm going to bed.' The body needs space to do it. So that's torture for most people. If you take away the phone, it's like I don't think there's anything in existence I can do at this moment, right? Like I don't know.
Brett Winton 34:20 ↗
Your horror out just...
Bryan Johnson 34:22 ↗
It's I mean it's like kind of a modern day comedy. It's like a tragedy like you take someone's phone away and it's like they don't know existence.
Brett Winton 34:30 ↗
What about actively increasing your vagal tone by sort of doing vagal meditation or a vagal stimulator or something like that which should push your heart rate down and blood pressure down. Right.
Bryan Johnson 34:40 ↗
Exactly. So I've tried all those devices, you know, it's all good practices. Something very simple. It's just a very simple breath work. Four seconds in, six seconds out. And when your exhale exceeds your inhale, it calms you down by activating the nervous system. And even if you want to add a hum when you come out of the six seconds, it does some vagal activation. So yeah, just something very simple like that can give some really soothing vibes to the body. Again, lower the heart rate.
Brett Winton 35:09 ↗
What's step three?
Bryan Johnson 35:10 ↗
Third. Yeah. Be mindful of light. So blue light is very damaging to sleep. And so two things. One, you're going to have screens off. Two, you're going to have blue light blocking glasses on. And so you want to be blocking from roughly 280 nanometers to around 510 nanometers thereabouts. So find like a good pair of blue light blocking glasses. In my house, we come up with the sun and we go down with the sun. So we just don't use any lights in my house. If we have any lights on, it's a red light. It's a lamp with a red bulb in there with a low flicker light or we have an amber light. But we just don't do any blue lights ever. And I've done so many experiments with blue light, it reliably crashes my sleep. So just be very mindful of light.
Brett Winton 36:00 ↗
And it's actually a big part of why you get jet lag, right? Is actually the differences in blue spectrum like when you land like if you land in California from Europe or something like that is exactly in the optic...
Bryan Johnson 36:10 ↗
I mean so the thing is like the airlines are built to kill you, right? So when you take an international flight, you step on the plane, the first thing they offer you is alcohol. It's going to wreck your sleep. Then they give you a big meal. It's going to wreck your sleep. They sit you in front of a screen that's blasting with blue light. They have in the cabin they pulse blue light, right? And so like they have like four things that destroy your sleep. And so the best thing if you're taking an international flight, the best thing to do is go there fasting, don't drink the alcohol, don't eat that meal, have blue light blocking glasses on, and then go to sleep as soon as you can when the flight takes off. Otherwise, everything in that cabin is just there to destroy your sleep.
Brett Winton 36:55 ↗
You miss the announcement that happens right when you do finally fall asleep.
Bryan Johnson 36:59 ↗
Yeah, exactly.

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APA

Johnson, B. (2026, June 4). Don’t Die: Humanity’s Future With Bryan Johnson [Interview transcript]. ARK Invest. CEOInterviews.AI. https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/961785/

MLA

Bryan Johnson. "Don’t Die: Humanity’s Future With Bryan Johnson." ARK Invest, 4 Jun. 2026. Transcript, CEOInterviews.AI, https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/961785/.

BibTeX
@misc{johnson2026_961785,
  author       = {Bryan Johnson},
  title        = {Don’t Die: Humanity’s Future With Bryan Johnson},
  howpublished = {Interview transcript, ARK Invest. CEOInterviews.AI},
  year         = {2026},
  month        = {jun},
  url          = {https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/961785/},
  note         = {Speaker-attributed transcript with timestamps}
}