Are you ready to “live beyond 180? That’s the tagline of the 10th Annual Biohacking Conference, which went down in Dallas two weeks ago. The brainchild of Dave Asprey, the conference focused on numerous “hacks” to help you live not only longer, but better and longer. This has been a decades-long goal of Asprey, who you might know as the founder of Bulletproof Coffee—you know, despite mountains of clinical evidence stating otherwise, this tech entrepreneur is certain that melting a stick of butter in your coffee every morning is the key to longevity.
Was the key, that is. Dave is now behind the supposed “mold-free” coffee company, Danger Coffee, alongside a whole bunch of other sciencey gimmicks, like his “Wasabi Method,” which was launched at the conference. The key to longevity, it seems, is knowing that your sales funnel always depends on there being another key. That’s the vibe our returning correspondent, Mallory DeMille, got when reviewing the many reels and videos that surfaced from the conference rooms at the Fairmont Hotel.
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From attributing a multitude of health benefits to butter and coffee, to claiming he cured his autism symptoms through bulletproof biohacking, to receiving a warning letter from the FTC for unlawfully advertising products as prevention and treatment for COVID-19, Dave has really run the gamut of pseudoscientific grifter.
Listeners, today we're talking about the father of biohacking himself, Dave Asprey.
Hey everyone, welcome to Conspiratuality where we investigate the intersections of conspiracy
theories and spiritual influence to uncover cults, pseudoscience, and authoritarian extremism.
I'm Derek Barris.
I'm Julian Walker.
I'm Mallory DeMille.
Welcome back, Mallory.
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We're going to be doing a lot of work on this.
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Conspiratuality 210, bioquacking bro science.
Are you ready to live beyond 180?
That's the tagline of the 10th annual biohacking conference, which went down in Dallas two weeks ago.
The brainchild of Dave Asprey, the conference focused on numerous hacks to help you live not only longer, but better and longer.
This has been a decades-long goal of Asprey, who you might know as the founder of Bulletproof Coffee.
You know, despite mountains of clinical evidence stating otherwise, this tech entrepreneur is certain that melting a stick of butter in your coffee every morning is the key to longevity.
Was the key, that is.
Dave is now behind the supposed mold-free coffee company Danger Coffee, alongside a whole bunch of other science-y gimmicks like his wasabi method, which was launched at the conference.
The key to longevity, it seems, is knowing that your sales funnel always depends on there being another key.
That's the vibe our returning correspondent Mallory DeMille got when reviewing the many reels and videos that surfaced from the conference rooms at the Fairmont Hotel.
Hello, listeners.
Before we get into today's episode, I'd like to take this opportunity to invite you all to my 180th birthday party.
It won't be for another 148 years, but according to the theme of Dave Asprey's 10th Annual Biohacking Conference, Live Beyond 180, it's totally, definitely going to happen.
All I need are his biohacking secrets.
All right, I'm marking the calendar now.
From attributing a multitude of health benefits to butter and coffee, to claiming he cured his autism symptoms through bulletproof biohacking, to receiving a warning letter from the FTC for unlawfully advertising products as prevention and treatment for COVID-19, Dave has really run the gamut of pseudoscientific grifter.
Listeners, today we're talking about the father of biohacking himself, Dave Asprey.
Where the heck he came from, what exactly is biohacking, and his flagship biohacking conference.
At the 10th Annual Biohacking Conference in Dallas, Texas.
May 30th through June 1st, because it's going to be awesome!
This is the only place in the world where you can experience more than 100 biohacking technologies all under one roof.
Network with world-renowned investors, visionaries, and leaders in the biohacking and longevity spaces.
You'll leave with the tools to reverse your biological age, to feel fitter, stronger, faster, and even smarter.
I have had the best experience.
The technology is phenomenal.
Dave and his team do a great job bringing awesome people together to educate and learn.
This is the best place in the world to connect with the biohacking community, to make friends and meet new people.
If you're in health and wellness, you've got to come next year.
It was my first conference, but it won't be my last.
See you in Texas!
I'm excited to see you there.
Click the link to get your ticket today.
That montage hype style could be advertising anything, right?
Like video games, car show, monster trucks.
But the hook is that you're buying into the promise of going to a hundred more conferences.
I also want to say, we don't record video, but Matthew was dancing higher time.
Yeah, I loved it.
Okay, let's start with the origin myth.
So you have a tech entrepreneur hiking through the epic hills of Tibet when he's offered a local treat, yak butter tea.
It's a blend of pureed tea from China, salt, and yak butter mixed with barley powder and milk curds.
And it's a supposedly therapeutic concoction designed to restore your body and mind in cold weather.
I will say that when I was in Lisbon two years ago, I had it.
It is absolutely delicious.
So I get the appeal.
Yet, despite the narrative this entrepreneur imported into the States, yak butter tea is not the beverage of the people.
Yak butter is quite expensive and hard to procure.
And it has a purpose.
It is made to keep nomadic herders warm.
Otherwise, it's only served to guests and on special occasions.
Never mind, the entrepreneur thought.
I can sell this to Americans.
Now, did it come along with a Tibet fetish?
Does that echo through the rest of his material?
No, it's kind of a one-off.
He just pulls from everywhere, so no, there's no real affiliation.
Here's how Dave Asprey phrased it in 2014, the year he launched Bulletproof Nutrition, Inc.
Along with his signature butter coffee, quote, it's a gateway drug for taking control of your own biology.
Now, Asprey had first posted the recipe on his website in 2009 while he was still working in Silicon Valley, and then five years later, he goes through 200 pounds of Kerrygold butter at one event—delicious butter, by the way—leaving some of the 500 attendees without their caffeinated biohack.
Julian here and I just want to mention that Kerrygold Butter is really fantastic.
How did a fatty tea go from the mountains of Tibet to the valleys of Silicon in such a short time?
Let's begin with the actual origins of this man named Dave Asprey.
Born in the beautiful city of Albuquerque, New Mexico in 1973, Asprey earned a degree in computer science from California State University, Stanislaus, followed by an MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
From the Ivy League, Asprey went and worked in IT for a number of tech companies, being part of a startup that was sold to Citrix Systems.
And during his early days slinging butter coffee, he was working as VP of cloud security for a cybersecurity firm, Trend Micro.
He was also behind one of the earliest e-commerce websites in existence, where he sold t-shirts with caffeine molecules on it back in 1994.
So e-commerce and selling, it's almost like he told us from the very beginning what his ultimate motivation was.
Also, I think he has one tattoo and it's the caffeine molecule on his bicep.
It's almost like he was telling us what his motivation was.
But quit skipping ahead, Mallory.
We're going to get there.
So Asprey was always into getting caffeinated, obviously, and he also always seems to be into getting rich.
He has long been a proponent of longevity, however.
So in 2003, he wrote about his dreams of living longer and better on his personal website.
Yet it wasn't until he published his butter coffee recipe in 2009, which consists of coffee, grass-fed butter or ghee, and MCT oil, that he found an obsession and his track to becoming extremely wealthy.
Asprey's self-mythologizing will sound familiar to many listeners.
In his book Headstrong, he claims to have started biohacking to lose weight.
So in 2017, he told The Guardian... More than improving my health, it was about having control of my own biology.
When I started out, I thought I had a couple of problems.
I had some brain fog, like I try and pay attention or remember things and I couldn't.
I got pretty concerned about it.
Then the doctor told me I had a very high risk of stroke and heart attack before I was 30 and I said, well, fix me.
You don't need therapy when you have butter.
Right.
of that approach that made me decide I had to take control.
It sounds like he was distracted, dissociating, unhappy about something.
He tried therapy, right?
You don't need therapy when you have butter.
Right. Come on, Matthew.
But what he did do was he started working out.
He started going for 90 minutes a day, six days a week for 18 months by his own recollection.
And at the end of those 18 months, he was miserable.
So that's when he started advocating for the low carb, high fat diet
spearheaded with his bulletproof coffee recipe.
He went on a tear around 2013, taking his antidote to the masses.
He founded Bulletproof 360 Inc.
that year.
This is different than Bulletproof Nutrition Inc.
And he did that while he was still working at Trend Micro.
But people really wanted that fatty go-go juice.
So by 2014, he was self-employed.
And this is around the time when I first encountered that trend.
I was living in Los Angeles, and I remember when the Bulletproof Café opened on Main Street in Santa Monica, right on the border of Venice Beach.
I'll be completely honest, I loved their egg and bacon coconut wrap.
And I also drank their buttered coffee, but honestly, it made me so jittery I had to stop.
Others, however, really liked those jitters.
In fact, Def Jam co-founder turned aspiring wellness guru in recent years, Rick Rubin, wrote that Asprey's Marquis products taste like crisp toasted rye bread slathered with lots of butter blended in hot coffee.
That's good, right?
He's trying to make it sound appealing.
Just put all of that in a blender.
You know, the funny thing, Derek, is we're the target market.
Yeah.
Right?
Especially like back then.
Just like guys in our early 40s who are, I mean, you're a little younger than me, but like, you know, really wanting to get into how we can be super healthy and super fit.
And I'll just say that that location of the Bulletproof Cafe walking to switch was like
the exhale at the time.
Yeah, exhale sacred movement was always Yeah, which was sort of the marquee place where
all the big star yoga teachers had ended up walking distance from a Hare Krishna temple
walking different distance from the iconic one life health food store in Venice.
Just right in the middle and and and in between all those things like the Indonesian gift
store that has the amazing you know, carved tables and stuff like that.
I have to confess, I bought into the whole thing.
I blended the butter in my own coffee.
I bought the MCT oil.
It made me fart all day long.
But it was the gateway drug into eventually going keto for some time.
And back in 2014, I was all about Asprey and Tim Ferriss and trying to hack optimum performance and body composition and, you know, stay youthful as long as possible.
I was aware of the Butter Coffee, not really of Dave specifically.
I never really got into it though, probably because I didn't start drinking coffee until later in my 20s, but speaking of going to one of his franchises, I had thought it might be super fun for this episode to visit his Upgrade Labs here in Victoria.
Dave has, or at least has had, property on Vancouver Island, which is where I live.
And the Upgrade Labs actually only opened downtown a few years ago.
And so you can imagine my surprise when I looked it up months ago when we started this,
only to learn that it has since permanently closed down.
I know.
So now I'll have to go to Calgary for my official biohacking fix.
I really just mostly wanted to try and order a note milk latte.
Here's the thing, you are automatically ejected from the store if you say oat milk.
So you've got to be really careful there.
You don't even need to get to the milk cart.
Yeah, peasant food, right?
Oatmeal is peasant food, right?
Yeah.
Yeah, classy guy.
So you were right, Julian, because I was fully in.
That was my gateway into keto as well.
I probably farted a lot as well.
During that time, I did read Asprey's first book, which was called The Bulletproof Diet.
And he told The Times it was written in five overnight sessions, which is how you write books.
It's a good thing.
But it kind of makes sense, given that it's basically a stream-of-consciousness series of blog posts.
But at that time in my life, I was all about the ketones from intermittent fasting.
And the name of his supplement, the MCT oil, which is pulled from coconuts, is Brain Octane.
And working out my brain was also appealing.
Yeah, it's also science-y because this is medium-chain triglyceride oil, which obviously has benefits.
But even then, I will admit, I was skeptical about two of his claims.
First, the notion that most of the world's coffee supply is just filled with mold, except for Danger Coffee, which is where he launched that from.
He wants you to think that there's all these toxic ingredients in coffee, and then he markets his own.
The second one is his just obsession with blue light blocking devices.
He also sells blue light blocking glasses.
And his just obsession with light therapy.
He devoted a chapter of that book to his indoor lighting protocol, which I think cost tens of thousands of dollars.
It reads like any bored, rich guy making micro-adjustments to his life because he has the time and money to do so.
That's exactly it, because it's so fun.
You've got the little dials and the sliders and the faders, and you just, like, tweak them just a tiny little bit, like you're working some huge audio board in a top-notch studio or something like that, but it's all shining on you.
It's magic.
Oh, God.
You can just see it.
That chapter actually talks about the different shades that he goes to during the different times of the day, and I'm like, who the fuck has time for all this?
Yeah, it reminds me of the condos that Deepak Chopra is involved that has all of these high-tech, it has all of these high-tech indoor ways of giving you the benefits of being outdoors in nature, including lighting.
Yeah, that's pretty grim.
Yeah.
So that's all prelude to this episode.
And we are talking about Dave's long-stated goal to live to 180.
He spent over $2 million hacking his own biology.
This includes taking over 100 supplements every day, sitting in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber, injecting his own stem cells back into himself, regularly bathing in infrared light.
And if you believe what he says on Instagram, injecting his own urine into his muscles.
All right.
Oh, I believe him.
It's hard to believe someone would falsely claim to be injecting urine.
I mean, Dave, and speaking of the 180 age goal, Dave mentions this a lot,
and it wasn't hard to find a clip of him talking about it.
But what was hard to find was a clip where he succinctly talks about how he landed on this very round number.
It's incredibly convenient that it's a very round number.
Given that biohacking is the science of longevity and human optimization, you'd expect him to unpack the science of this prediction a little bit.
And yet, this interview with Fast Company is the closest I could find to something explanatory.
Biohacking can often, a lot of people call it the fountain of youth, so to speak.
You yourself say you want to live to 180.
That's the goal, right?
At least 180.
At least 180.
The thought of living that long, it's like, that sounds exhausting, but I've also never had a day in my life where I've felt healthy or energetic.
But then also, living to 180, what does 180 look like for you?
Today, our current best is 120 years old.
Those people were born Before we had airplanes.
Before we had cars.
World War I was going to be fought with horses.
Okay?
They're alive today.
Just barely.
But that's our current best.
Don't you think we can do 50% better than our current best in the next hundred years?
Yeah.
So there you have it.
It's a vague guess based on planes and horses.
I want you to keep running the clip because we're going to get to the part where he talks about mitigating for his carbon footprint if he lives that long with that consumption rate, right?
I mean, like, because he's saying we want to consume 50% more.
Yeah, or sometimes I think about...
There was 3,200 people in attendance at this year's biohacking conference and he's helping all of these people live to 180.
Have they contacted the right people for their pension plans yet?
Yeah, and I know some people in their 90s.
It's rough.
As we get up there, as we get heading towards 100, Well, that's part of the pitch is that you can base your biological age, right, Julian?
They always talk about that.
So the idea is that in your 90s, your biological age will be in your 40s.
That is what they portend without any evidence, basically.
And that's the sort of thing with Asprey though, you never know if he's serious or trolling, that's what it sounded like to me in that clip, except when he posts photos of himself taking his mask off in airplanes when they were acquired because a biohacking guru can't fear little viruses when he has such a supposedly robust immune system.
I mean, Dave loves to troll.
He has recently started coming back with critics in his comments with just your mom.
So there's that.
And then there's speaking of upgrade labs as well, when the vaccine mandates were rolling out a few years ago, there was a vitamin D passport required sticker placed on all of their entrances.
So that's very cheeky, Dave.
So having tracked this man first as a fan, then skeptically, there's no longevity tchotchke that he hasn't either produced or sold via an affiliate link, including bio-resonance distance healing, acid reflux supplements, and all sorts of techniques for better ejaculations.
We'll get to wasabi in a little bit.
And the only thing we can be certain of is that Dave Asprey is certainly a guru of ejaculating all sorts of ideas from his mouth hole Their value is another story.
So while DNA was first identified in the 1860s by Swiss chemist Johann Friedrich Meischer, Crick and Watson built on the work of a century of research to finally nail down both DNA's full structure and its significance in the human body.
Intrepid researchers immediately began wondering what this meant in terms of extending human life through this new scientific application.
As with most science at the time, it was done in private laboratories, with research being shared through articles and studies.
Collaboration meant getting together in person.
By the 80s, though, the internet expedited the scientific process through crowdsourcing.
Open sourcing information became a fringe movement.
So for example, Bitcoin wasn't invented until 2009, but the idea of an open source decentralized currency traces back to the hacker movements of the early 80s.
Genetic engineering and biotechnology were also part of this early movement, and DIY biologists emerged to share secrets for living longer and healthier.
As I mentioned earlier, Dave was part of this movement, and in 2004 he coined the term biohacking.
Today he refers to himself as the godfather of the biohacking movement, or the father, I've heard both, but it's really a portmanteau.
So Ari Gentry, who founded the SV biohacking venue BioCurious, told this to PBS in 2014.
The word hacker comes from MIT.
Where hacks would be cool little tricks that you would play on each other.
So when you're done with your homework, you start staying up all night and you got to have something to do.
So they might coat the ceiling or the roof of a building in tinfoil.
So this was a hack and the hackers came to be known in the 60s and 70s.
As the guys who were making the first computers.
So pranks.
Pranks.
Yeah.
That doesn't sound like inventing things or sort of circumventing something.
Both.
You have online communities emerging even back then who are just sharing the weird shit they do.
But then also, I mean, there's always been earnest crowdsourcing in all biotech and sciences.
Right.
So, which is a positive.
But yeah, pranks as well.
Sure.
Yeah, he's referring to the juvenile etymology of the word, and it makes me think also about how Dave Asprey wants to stay young forever, but maybe he's just still a frat boy.
Yeah.
So the origins of this movement are firmly in tech, and while different people have different interpretations, biohacking generally means conducting strategic biological experimentation on yourself, often through diet, hormones, various applications of technology, and supplements referred to in this space as nootropics.
Some names given to biohacking include garage biology and amateur genetic
engineering, which, while funny, signal that these methods and beliefs are
generally not backed up by clinical evidence. I also want to put longevity
practitioners in this category because people like Peter Etieh very much
practice longevity, yet hate the term biohacking, even though their goals are
often similar.
All of these practitioners tend to extrapolate from clinical evidence and apply thin research as marketing techniques to sell their products and services.
But there's a beef between biohackers and longevity sellers.
Like, are there diss tracks or something?
What's going on?
Oh, Kendrick has dropped some great diss tracks on this.
Basically, what my feeling is, is that people like Atiyah, they look at Dave Asprey, and Atiyah is a very buttoned up, straightforward kind of guy when he presents.
And you have Asprey, who's just a clown in a lot of ways.
And it's like, why would I want to be associated with that?
It also makes me think what you were saying earlier about consumption and population.
I wonder if there's any correlation between longevity and the people who want to have 15 children.
Right.
Because if you have 15 children all living to 180 at that consumption rate, so it'd be very interesting because I think there could be some crossover there and that is just a nightmare.
Yeah, it's also really typical of what we've seen in other charismatic faith-based sort of industries within the marketplace, though.
Like, we're doing the real yoga.
We have the true lineage and the correct alignment based on science, the ancient science of yoga.
Those people across the street, they're just charlatans.
Superficial popularizes at best.
Like, we used to have this attitude about flow yoga when it first became popular.
Like, over at Frost Yoga, like, oh, they're just doing all those sun salutes.
They don't get the real thing.
You're right.
Nasprey actually often uses that.
He'll just shit on all sorts of things.
We joked about oatmeal before, but that actually came from a conference where he said oatmeal is peasant food and why would you ever eat that?
Whereas it's super nutritious, it's super affordable, but he'll do that specifically because he is a multi-millionaire who likes to show that off.
And so he just wants his crowd, the people that can afford what he's selling, he wants them to feel that way in the in-club as well.
So to summate, the goal is to live longer and healthier, often at great expense.
Now as I mentioned, Asprey has reportedly spent over $2 million biohacking his own body, while then you have anti-aging fanatic Brian Johnson who claims to spend $2 million a year doing the same.
Oh man!
And as I said, they often reference biological age, which is the age their biomarkers reveal after they undergo testing to track molecular and cellular degeneration, and which they believe gives them insight into their real risk of mortality.
So, what does biohacking look like?
Here's what Asprey told Vogue in 2021 about his daily regimen, which, as you might imagine, is not exactly accessible for most of us in the proletariat.
On waking, Asprey checks his URA ring, which monitors deep sleep and REM activity.
This is followed by bulletproof coffee, a 15-minute meditation and qigong exercises, and 45 minutes of tech biohacks.
Cryotherapy, true light red light therapy, pulsed magnetics, or 40 years of Zen neurofeedback exercises.
Wait, he's a time traveler?
A proponent of long fasts, Asprey eats selective foods only between noon and 5 p.m.
So I have a very general question about all of these people.
How do we know that any of their self-reported routines are actually what they are?
Like, how do we know that they're actually doing what they say they're doing?
Oh, I think about this all the time with the influencers I follow, and I don't think you ever actually know.
Like, I don't know if there's a way to like actually like a formula for knowing all the time.
And especially with Dave, he screams more commercial than get ready with me because while it seems Dave is distancing himself more and more from Bulletproof Coffee in favor of his Danger Coffee brand now, both the True Light and the 40 Years of Zen brands mentioned are companies that Dave started.
So the man will never pass up a plug.
I would imagine, Matthew, that your study of cult leaders would probably bear out here in terms of we say these things, but we don't live them.
Yeah, and the thing that sticks out about many of the charismatic people that I've studied is that they're actually, and I'm not saying this about Dave, so I just want to be clear about that because I don't know.
In actuality, group leaders who attain that kind of status are often absolute disasters as human beings and are being sort of held together by, you know, like pocket lint and faith by their inner circle.
They're not able to do what they're asking their people to do.
In fact, they need their people to do what they're asking them to do because they can't, because they're such a mess.
Yeah, I think in fitness specifically, a lot of the leaders of those spaces do because their workouts actually show it.
But when you get into this space, where it's more about what you take and what you can afford to do and not have to work in the morning for three hours while you see your protocol, there's a little more wiggle room there.
Yeah, it's also the presentation of I am so incredibly disciplined.
I do this every day and that's why I'm special and that's why I have all of this knowledge that I can share with you and products you should buy.
Yeah.
So biohacking and longevity quests, however new the terminology might be, they are nothing new.
One of the oldest extant texts known to humankind, the Epic of Gilgamesh, is about the King of Uroch's quest for immortality.
In that story, Gilgamesh is eventually humbled and becomes a better ruler because of his own failure to achieve immortality.
I'm not so sure the new crop of biohackers questing after their own fountain of youth under the cover of biology will come to such a conclusion.
Some will, but I have a feeling that many will continue to chase after eternity until they've literally run into the ground.
So it's just a hunch, but when I listen to people like Brian Johnson explain why he's really into biohacking, I don't hear a hint of humility.
So yes, I would do it because my objective is to point the species in a direction of don't die.
I think we really are at this stage of potentially the most extraordinary existence in the galaxy, and that's what I want to be known for, that's what I want to try to accomplish.
So my objective is not life maximization, it's species maximization.
It's trying to get life in this part of the galaxy to flourish.
You know, it's incredible because I think we've established over the last four years that conspirituality takes so many of the moral and existential basics of religious concern and contemplation and really just pushes on every anxious button in that heritage.
And so the question becomes like, how perfect or close to God or how optimized can I be given that's the way the world will improve?
And then we have Brian Johnson come along as some kind of peak expression of that.
And everyone who listens to him has to forget the core dilemma that religious thought has always asked people to reckon with, which is that you're absolutely going to die and you don't know when.
It's like they want to become high priests of some kind of completely unreal world.
It's wild to me.
Yeah, and the grandiosity is just, it's so, it is simultaneously so unselfaware and so
like in your face, right?
Two weeks ago, Dave Asprey took to the stage for his 10th annual biohacking conference
in Dallas, Texas.
It did not take long before his shirt was off and he was flexing to an audience of over 3,000 attendees who very likely did not ask, let alone pay for that, and the speaker on stage, Sarah Gottfried, taking a step back.
It's a stark difference compared to 2013 Dave who started it all.
A video of his first biohacking conference, still on Bulletproof's YouTube channel, shows Dave on a small stage sporting a gray short-sleeve button-up and his signature tinted glasses, talking about his favorite tech and products and where you can purchase them.
So, in 10 years, there are some things that haven't changed.
In a blog post on Dave's website, he describes the first conference, then called the Bulletproof Biohacking Conference, as a conference where you can upgrade yourself with hands-on transformative biohacking using equipment that's unavailable to most people, and an opportunity to do more self-upgrades, experience more biohacking technology, and gain more knowledge from experts in three days than has ever been assembled in one place.
This same blog post kinda outlined the speakers, but without really naming anyone specific, just a world-class powerlifter and professional sports athlete trainer, and guest lectures from experts in other biohacking fields like biofeedback, neurofeedback, heart rate variability, and more.
On the surface, this all makes perfect sense, giving biohacking.
It took place in San Francisco, was $1,950 per person and limited to 50 people.
These are the Biohacking Conference's humble-ish beginnings.
Fast forward 10 conferences and Dave isn't playing small anymore, or even in reality, because we've gone from upgrade yourself to live beyond 180.
Why?
Because we can!
And with that, I'm convinced.
Though I wasn't able to attend because I didn't have an extra $2,000 or a costume for the Space Cowboy DJ Party, I was deep in the creep on social media the weekend it took place.
So first, let's look at our ticket options.
The three-day general admission is $1,999, just say $2,000.
With this ticket, you get general admission seating, entry to all tech areas to experience over 100 of the latest biohacking technologies, a swag bag, daily lunch, unlimited danger coffee, entry to the costume party.
Again, this year's theme was space cowboy.
I think it's really important to highlight that.
And recordings after the conference of the keynote and UpgradeU breakout sessions.
Then there's the upgraded VIP ticket, which cost $4,999.
Again, just say $5,000.
Oh man, it's so much.
Okay, so I have a question.
If you die on the way to the biohacking conference because you got in that car or plane to go, do they issue refunds?
Everything about Dave and his conference screams no refunds, but I don't know.
But I mean, the VIP ticket, again, $5,000, includes everything from the general admission ticket, except you do get VIP seating, which I think is just closer to the stage so you can see shirtless Dave closer maybe, early entry to the tech areas, a VIP swag bag, and possibly from what I can glean on the agenda, some pre-conference sessions.
It's actually incredibly confusing on the website because the ticket says it includes everything in the general admission plus But then it mostly just lists general admission things again.
So general admission says you get unlimited complimentary Danger Coffee, but then with the VIP ticket, you get unlimited access to the VIP Danger Coffee line.
And so like, is this a separate coffee booth or did they just put VIP in front of it to make it seem more exclusive for the ticket sales?
Quite possible.
Maybe.
I have no idea.
But in tracking the conference on social media, I only saw one Danger Coffee booth where the tables had branded tablecloth.
There was marketing banners with Dave's massive face behind that and just a bunch of like paper cups everywhere.
You have a marketing background.
You know what he's doing.
I know.
I know exactly what he's doing.
But with either ticket, it seems that there was two main draws, the people presenting and the products being pushed.
And so, listeners, let's start with the people.
There were nine main stage speakers who were given prominent feature in the promotional material, Dave being first, obviously.
Then there's Joe Dispenza, Gabby Bernstein, Brian Johnson, Daniel Amon, Jim Quick, Paul Saladino, Sarah Gottfried, and Christian Drapeau.
Joe Dispenza, who many attendees online suggested they attended just to see him, gave what I can speculate from the clips I saw a very predictable talk about how you can heal yourself with breathwork and thoughts.
Yeah, that's actually cheap for Joe, so they were probably getting a deal because he has a much bigger name than Asprey too, right?
Definitely.
There was a significant amount of folks who I found who were attending the conference that, when posting about Joe, were like, this is the reason why I came.
So that was really interesting.
I wonder how Dave felt about that.
Gabby Bernstein, another one, apparently five minutes into her speech, she threw her outline on the floor, said, fuck it, and winged her presentation to realign the energy, later saying she pulled mostly from her forthcoming book called Self-Help.
Gabby is one of the stranger invites, in my opinion.
Her work has nothing to do with longevity that I'm aware of, and I briefly knew her in New York after her first book, so I've been at least aware of her work from afar.
It's self-help material, as the book, you know, not only hints at hits you over the head with, but I'm not sure where the longevity crossover really happens there.
Well, she does get her start in self-help discourse with A Course in Miracles, which says that sickness is an illusion and death isn't real and there is no world.
So, if you lean far enough into that and away from the material in the book on forgiveness and oneness, I think you'll eventually wind up on the biohacking stage, but maybe to provide a kind of balance because one thing she's not going to do is she's not going to lean into this Like, very technical and machinist language of, you know, upgrades and, you know, this feeling that the body is a machine that you can sort of, like, tweak and hack.
It's not really going to be about that.
She's going to bring something that sounds a little bit more like mysticism, I think.
Yeah, I feel like both Gabby Bernstein and Joe Dispenza are in that category where they don't really fit that well, but in terms of marketing and hitting the right demographics, it gives enough crossover.
Yeah.
Where Asprey's like, okay, we'll pay you to be here because you'll bring your people.
Yeah, but I'll have the shirt off.
Yeah.
So you mentioned Sarah Gottfried Mallory, and as you mentioned earlier, she was nearly accosted by a shirtless Dave on stage.
I will say that video was a little weird because she literally jumps back when he moves towards her.
She said, I'm going to take a step back.
Yeah, so that's very little creepy there.
But Sarah has long been in the functional medicine space.
There's all sorts of red flags in her book titles.
The hormone cure, the hormone reset diet, and most recently, the autoimmune cure.
So former guest and friend of the pod, Dr. Jen Gunter, pointed this out back in 2017 that Gottfried designed Goop's high school gene supplement And then she pointed out that none of Sarah's supplements or shakes have been clinically proven, obviously.
So jumping on the autoimmune bandwagon by offering diet tips, supplements, and breath work, she even gets into psychedelics, microdosing, all while bashing conventional medicine, of course.
Well, I guess that just makes her a perfect candidate for the biohacking stage.
Heavy on hype and marketing, thin on evidence-based medicine.
Right.
And then, so then the next speaker is Brian Johnson, who we've already mentioned, the billionaire trying not to die, who actually opted to zoom in for his conversation with Dave.
I think he broke or sprained his ankle, and so maybe that impacted his ability to travel.
But he was sporting his Don't Die t-shirt and talked about shifting our perspective from a God created us to we are going to create God.
Wow.
Deep.
Very deep.
Brian is definitely someone who makes a lot of sense being a speaker, even though I definitely sense an intimidation vibe from Dave when he interviews him.
So I'm imagining he's zooming in and it's from like some sort of Malibu castle, like Tony Stark or something like that.
But are you saying that Brian is intimidated by Dave or the other way around?
Like, I think, yeah, who's intimidating who?
Well, my interpretation as someone who tried to get through Dave's interview with Brian for his podcast is that my interpretation is that Dave is somewhat intimidated by Brian.
Oh man, they should bond though.
You can see them sort of creating a co-op RPG couch game and hanging out on their longevity beds, right?
And, you know, I just have to say that Brian is kind of overexposed with his social media.
I mean, did you all see his weird vampire blood transfusion video with his son and his dad?
Yeah, yeah.
So creepy.
And then there's all this stuff about how he's staying eternally young, as we've covered.
But then to preserve that brand image, he really obviously colors the grays out of his hair and looks, you know, kind of fake.
I also remember him sharing that he had long COVID, like just one time months ago, and then we haven't heard about it again.
So that may have been part of why he was Zooming in.
Well, he did say that he had long COVID, but it also reduced his lung function for, this was over a year afterwards when that came out.
So it's like, I'm going to live forever, but then here's me like actually suffering from this virus.
I don't know his stance on vaccines, but it was very strange.
Well, Sarah Gottfried can probably help with that because she's tapping into the exploiting the autoimmune marketplace.
Well, he very specifically said that he had lost lung function by a very specific percentage, which gave me the sense that he's like sort of measuring it with a machine every day.
But I guess that's part of the thing, right?
Well, now he has a boot on his ankle, too.
That's the update.
So then there's also the celebrity doctor Daniel Amen and entrepreneur brain coach Jim Quick, again, from what I can tell, gave somewhat predictable presentations on brain things.
I want to point out that Jim Quick is very big in Silicon Valley, a lot of the Startups I've worked for, he was in those circles as someone to listen to.
So that might be where Dave is, you know, trying to appeal to that market.
Yeah.
And my understanding is that Jim Click has been a presenter at the Biohacking Conference at least one other time, I'm sure many times.
Next on the list, we have Paul Saladino, formerly the Carnivore MD.
He was actually nowhere to be seen on social.
I DMed some of the attendees to ask if he was there because he was the only one I didn't see any videos of, and he didn't share anything about the conference on his own Instagram.
No, no.
I hope the conference didn't conflict with him strolling the produce aisle with the liver king yelling at vegetables, because that's usually what he's doing.
I imagine Paul was invited because he and Dave have a shared hate for kale.
Right.
More food for the peasants.
Totally.
Maybe they had a falling out, though.
You never know.
Finally, we have Christian Drapeau.
He's a scientist and author of Cracking the Stem Cell Code and founder and chief science officer of Stem Regen, which is a stem cell supplement company that doesn't have any stem cells in it.
That just so happens to be the title sponsor of the entire conference.
Plastered on all of their marketing, but more on them later.
Then there were 52 additional speakers listed under the Upgrade You section, which mostly just seemed to take place in smaller breakout rooms.
Almost all of these speakers are founders or affiliated with a company that stands to profit in the name of biohacking or in the name of wellness, longevity.
We obviously aren't going to go through all of them, but a few stood out to me.
So first, though not actually listed on the website anymore, super spreader of COVID misinformation, Dr. Joseph Mercola, gave a main stage talk wearing shorts, a t-shirt and a ball cap.
The clips I could find of him talking about how we as humans can create energy from the sun, specifically that humans have their own photosynthesis equivalent.
And apparently he also started his talk by telling attendees that they should not be drinking coffee at Danger Coffee Dave's conference.
Maybe that's why he's off the site already because you shared the clip of Dave trying to explain... Get him out of there!
There's a clip of Dave trying to explain what Joe really meant and you shared with me, Mallory, it's just fascinating.
But I don't want to overlook Mercola because I really do not like this man.
He's worth a reported $100 million from selling pseudoscience interventions He's been at this for a long time.
I'm on his daily email list.
It is just fear-mongering propaganda day after day.
He's donated at least $4 million to anti-vaccine groups via his Natural Health Research Foundation.
That makes sense because he sells untested supplements to supposedly heal you from the
things that vaccines already do quite a good job of doing.
Mercola has received numerous warning letters from the FDA over the decades, including in
2005 for untested coconut oil products, in 2011 for an infrared camera that he claimed
was a diagnostic test, in 2021 for hawking fake COVID cures.
Unfortunately, FDA letters have basically no teeth, but Mercola was part of an FTC action
against his tanning beds in 2016.
He was forced to refund $2.6 million to customers due to fake claims.
The fact that this man is still in business, to me, is a crime.
Yeah, yikes.
But on a lighter note, we'll continue with the speakers.
There's Dr. Alan Bauman, who you're probably like, oh, a doctor?
What's his specialty that will help me live to 180?
Is it neurology, genetics, ophthalmology?
No, actually, he's a board-certified hair restoration physician, which to be fair, you do want your hair looking as good as possible when you're 180.
Then there's Dr. Gary Richter, who is described as America's favorite veterinarian, founder of Ultimate Pet Nutrition.
Derek, I'm telling you, you're going to have to cover pet pseudoscience here soon.
Oh, I've been wanting to do a dog chiropractor episode for a while, and I've done some social media videos around Jackson Galaxy's homeopathic drops bullshit.
So I think a full Wellness Pets episode could be on the horizon here, because if there's money to be made, there is a grifter sniffing around.
Also very weird things like the Cracking Dogs Necks videos are just wild, where this muscly Cairo yoinks the crap out of the dog and the dog is stunned and looks at the guy like, what the hell did you just do?
And everybody on Instagram is supposed to register that the dog is filled with love and gratitude, but my dudes, there's something called a fawn response and it's not a sign of a health moment, I'm afraid.
It's so incredibly disturbing.
The other thing is we're each kind of referencing things that we see on our social media feeds and I'm unsurprised but also mildly surprised at how much commonality there is.
The random dog chiropractic videos, the Brian Johnson thing with the blood vampire transfusion.
It's like almost as if this is being curated for us.
Well, speaking of things that we see on social media, I was a bit surprised, finally, someone who, again, wasn't listed on the website as a speaker, but did give a talk on the main stage, which is Sheila Kelly, founder and CEO of S-Factor, which I know has been covered on the podcast before.
Yeah, S-Factor is pole dancing towards spiritual enlightenment while the instructor yells at you to unleash the divine feminine and insists that this has nothing to do with dirty old sex work, which is for lower vibe women.
Sheila's own Instagram post right before the conference said she'll be quote,
chatting about the fascinating link between our erotic bodies and our overall well-being,
exploring the profound impact of resurrecting our primal vitality to increase longevity and
quality of life and sharing insights on feminine and masculine full embodiment.
Okay.
What did that actually look like?
In one Instagram story posted by an attendee, you can see a row of men on stage doing push-ups, with women kneeling in front of the stage watching them.
The text on the screen reads, 90 push-ups man won, and then he and the other guy, 80 push-ups, held space for divine feminine.
The next slide was a video of the women on stage now, dancing sensually, with Sheila yelling more into the mic.
The text on screen reads, the feminine energy explosion.
Can you feel it?
Now I'm not sure how any of this alone will get me to 180 years old, and so that brings
us to all the products and services showcased.
I've said it before and I'll say it again, Dave's approach to biohacking is a never-ending commercial for the most expensive stuff you've ever seen, and this conference seems to be the physical manifestation of that.
As I mentioned in the ticket promo, there were over 100 of the latest biohacking technologies at the conference for you to play with and be convinced that you need lots of supplements, lots of lights, cryotherapy, and even an energy reader to check your chakra balance.
One product that had extra special focus, probably because, again, it was the title sponsor of the whole conference, was Stem Regen.
Here's the founder, Christian Drapeau, explaining the product.
We're here with Christian from Stem Regen.
Let's share what these supplements do.
So Stem Regen is a blend of plant extracts that trigger the release of your own stem cells.
So it does not contain stem cells.
You take two capsules, within about two, three hours, you will have about 10 million additional stem cells in your circulation.
So we've had this product for a while, but some people will take the product, and we don't see all the results that we would expect.
So the question is why, and there are two main reasons.
Systemic inflammation is like noise for your stem cells to identify where they need to go in the body.
So we have a product called Signal that sort of reduce all that systemic noise that makes stem cells identify better where to go.
And the other reason why sometimes you have a problem that is chronic and you can't get rid of is that the problem has almost like isolated itself and there's a very poor microvasculature going to that place.
So that area is deprived of stem cells.
So of course it's not FDA approved.
He was going to get to that reason, right?
Oh, sorry.
Yeah, we cut it off a bit early.
Derek, could you fix that?
The main motto on their website is tap into the power of your body's innate repair system.
So they seem to be suggesting that at the same time, your body is innately intelligent enough to heal itself, but stupid enough that it needs their products first.
That's it.
That's always it.
That's always it.
There's the main supplement he alluded to called Release, which is, quote, clinically tested blend of natural ingredients that support stem cell release and migration.
Now you may be asking, clinically tested for what?
And, you know, what were the results?
And quite frankly, you're asking too many questions.
Yeah, they're using the AG1 approach to research.
So on their website, they post a bunch of research and claims about topics they want their product to be associated with, like joint inflammation, heart health, osteoporosis, even erectile function, because why not?
But the dots they never connect is how their products help any of these.
I mean, so take the claim that Stem Regen Protocol is a comprehensive approach to the body's innate repair system, which is another way of saying, we don't have the science to back factual claims, so we're going to go as broad as possible and hope you buy this.
And you heard Christian say it in the clip.
If you're not seeing the result you expect, it's because you have too much inflammation.
But guess what?
We have another product ready for that.
And I read over all of their ingredients and like most supplements manufacturers,
they list the purported effects of each ingredient individually, but they don't tell you anything
about what happens when you take them together in their products.
Well, they probably don't know, right?
No, they absolutely don't know.
So when he says clinically tested, what he actually is saying is each individual ingredient has been tested, but our product has never been tested.
It's not linked to anywhere on their website.
So nothing on dose level in terms of therapeutic efficacy either.
It's almost like these companies are using the same playbook.
Yeah, but not too fast.
Your body is so noisy and so it needs their signal supplement, which is, like you alluded to, designed to enhance stem cell communication and support tissue health.
And then the release one is 60 capsules for $189, which seems absurd to me.
And then the signal is 120 capsules for $134.
which is seems absurd to me. And then the signal is 120 capsules for $134. I DM'd them on Instagram
to ask how often I should take their products and they responded with, people oftentimes start
taking stem regen in order to help some parts of the body heal or repair, which I don't know
if they're actually allowed to make that claim.
Anyway, they continued, after which they stopped taking it.
However, most degenerative health problems develop due to natural age-related decline in the number of circulating stem cells, so taking stem regen every day is one of the best anti-aging strategies.
And so if that's the case, that's over $1,100 a year just for the release supplement.
And if I'm living to 180 years old, that's almost $115,000 total.
But speaking of money-making, I mean regenerating, in proper Dave Asprey fashion, he took to the conference as an opportunity to launch yet another venture, the Wasabi Method.
Described on their Instagram as an American-based shockwave therapy device distributor and education company, Dave pitches it on the main stage as a therapy that changed the size of his equipment.
Oh no.
Maybe eight years ago, I did shockwave on my equipment.
And, wow, it's actually changed the size of things, because it causes new blood vessels and new nerves to grow.
Well, it turns out that that kind of technology works everywhere on your body.
So you can do your ankles, your feet, your legs, and it breaks up calcium in the tissues, it releases stem cells, it releases nitric oxide, it releases a bunch of other things.
So how did Dave Asprey even fit into the room having gotten so big everywhere from this amazing wasabi method?
I've done every part of my body multiple times.
Growing new blood vessels and new nerves and regenerating tissues is really, really important
for living a long time.
So how did Dave Asprey even fit into the room, having gotten so big everywhere from this
amazing wasabi method?
Go get it.
From their bright green box.
The wasabi methods Instagram describes their offering as a whole body tissue upgrade with
one of the longevity biohacking uses being the regeneration of bones, tendons, and soft
tissues including eggplant emoji and cat emoji.
I think it would be so cool if there was like a hacking, biohacking conference for body modification people who like use this thing, but then isolated the effects so they could grow different big parts and then show them off in competition, like really big head, really big ears, really big forearms.
Don't forget the ankles too.
Ankles, yeah, ankles.
Really big ankles, right?
Well, speaking of growing bigger parts, Dave's supplement company, Suppgrade Labs, also launched a new line during the conference because, obviously, so did STEM Regen.
Like, it's a great time to launch something new for people to buy into.
But it's still unclear what combination of presentations and products is needed to live To and beyond 180 years old, that claim is never actually unpacked in a scientific way.
I don't know if I would even expect it to be, but it's not surprising, despite Dave's own website describing biohacking as the science of longevity and human optimization.
So if I couldn't find that information on the conference website, maybe the companies participating in the tech hall would have more info.
So as the Biohacking Conference Instagram shared content about the companies attending, I'd message them saying, Hey, so amazing seeing you at the Biohacking Conference.
I see the theme is living beyond 180.
Can you share how your product supports that?
Uh-oh.
Uh-oh.
I did not get a ton of responses.
I was left on read for a lot of them.
Let's just say that.
But the few responses that I got back Alitura Naturals, which is a skincare company started by a man named Andy who wanted to heal his skin after a traumatic accident, their Instagram responded with, look at our ingredients, smiley face.
Look at our mission.
I suggest watching the founder's story on how he started it.
Heart emoji.
So I did go to their website and on their about page, there's a line of logos, presumably organizations they've worked with on something.
And there you'd find the Bulletproof logo.
Next, we have Eng3Corp, whose Instagram bio reads, Our Nano-V technology generates an airstream of humidified easy water, which helps your cells repair and recover from oxidative stress damage.
When asked how their work supported living to 180 years old, they responded with, it works with protein folding.
It's like laundry.
That's what I'm guessing.
When the proteins in your body can't fold or fold incorrectly, your cells can't function.
This is when your cells die or get damaged, which leads again to chronic diseases.
So you navigate to the website and you see a link to Jim Click's podcast where he talks about this technology.
It's all just one big, they're all just, everything's connected.
Next, Deliverance Antioxidant Elixir.
Their response, quite simply, was, we optimize your liver.
It is the general of the body with 500 vital functions, so it's important it's working at its best.
We're three responses in and I'm still not getting kind of what I'd like.
No citations.
No, unfortunately.
So we'll keep going.
The last company to actually get back to me, Oxfit, which seems to be like an AI multi-exercise, very expensive platform.
They said, while we haven't made any claims about living to 180 years, our XP1 is designed to support your fitness and longevity goals.
And so all of this for me begs the question, Would you as a company participate in a conference that makes such a bold claim if you knew your product wouldn't or couldn't make that claim?
But I guess that's not really what it's about because conferences like this are just a sweet marketing gig to boost your brand and push products.
So Derek, we had been texting the day after the conference ended, and we both kind of came to the same conclusion, which is that it just seemed really boring.
Granted, we're not the target market, like at all.
I just can't imagine paying $2,000 or $5,000 to attend an event where I'm told I need to then buy more things.
You know, the conference was really just giving more disposable income of health than social determinants of health.
Overall, this conference really reminds me of actually the annual conferences that MLMs run, where it seems the main motivation is to re-engage folks in that community, to continue committing to it, and to continue buying into it, which ultimately benefits the folks at the top the most.
Right, so at those ticket prices, if there were 3,200 attendees, that's a lot of cash.
Now, I'm sure some people got in free or at reduced costs.
Companies pay for booths in these environments, and normally that comes with free tickets, and those few hundred people We're probably included in the overall count to inflate the numbers.
I've been behind festivals and conferences or worked with them before.
That's usually what happens.
Then you have Dave, they had to fly in and pay the marquee speakers at least.
I'm sure you listed 52 other speakers.
I'm guessing some of the unknown ones did it for free to boost their credibility in the space.
But at the very top of that pyramid is one man, and I would guess he pulled in at least a million dollars for three days of bio-organizing and talking about his equipment on stage.
And he did it.
I know we're rounding up, but I just want to return to this paradox.
You had this great line, Mallory, that all of this rides on this claim that your body is innately intelligent enough to heal itself, but stupid enough that it needs these products.
And that seems so twisted, such a paradox.
There's so many things going on with that.
I think that's really at the heart of this particular grift.
I think it's at the heart of a lot of the wellness stuff.
I've talked about it before, you know, like your body is innately intelligent enough to heal itself.
And it's kind of like this pocket of wellness products that have convinced folks, well, these don't count.
You know, like these, these are different than other things.
And so give me your money.
But yeah, the grift will continue because before this year's conference was even over, the website refreshed to announce the 2025 date, which is May 28th to 30th in Austin, Texas.
And we will all be there!
I honestly, fly me in.
I'm so, I'd love to.
Live Beyond 180 seems to be the theme that will continue into next year's event, but there was some additional language added into the promo material.
It reads, quote, here's the truth.
You're going to live way longer than you think you are.
And yet, 87% of Americans have FOGO, which is a fear of growing old.
Why settle for dying normally at 85 when living to 180 full of energy is possible.
The only missing step is you need to know how to biohack from reliable sources.
Join us this biohacking conference where every expert is vetted by the best in the industry so you can safely live a longer, healthier life.
I just want to say we're so lucky to be alive in a time where this technology is available.
But even more than that, We're so lucky to be alive in a time where we can watch each of these people gradually getting older and see what happens to them, right?
I'm thinking of like that guy Aubrey DeMarcus, who used to do The Rounds a lot, talking about how he was going to live forever.
And the guy looked like 20 or 30 years older than he actually was already.
Like he looked like some poor guy that you might see on the street who just had a really rough life with the crazy disheveled hair and the beard and the missing teeth.
And he was like, I'm going to live forever.
It's like, really?
So I'm picturing Dave and Brian Johnson and some of these other folks as they get into their 70s and what that's really going to be like.
The end of your quote there, Mallory, was safely live a long and healthier life.
And I think that most people just want to live a healthy, normal life.
And we live in this weird liminal space, which you just hinted at, Joanne, and where we have access to health interventions unlike ever before and increasingly fewer people can afford them.
So in America, 530,000 people will claim medical bankruptcy this year.
That's so bad.
That's incredible.
I haven't heard that number before.
Medical bills are the leading cause of bankruptcy in America.
66.5% of all bankruptcy filings in this country are for medical debts.
So I'm sure it's wonderful to avoid all these untested products and supplements and even buy them if you can afford to do so, but Asprey has always aspired to live in this rarefied world as we've identified, one in which he was able to access, then pretend that it's available to everyone else.
But it's not, and given our current social construction, it never is going to be.
A world filled with 180-year-old privileged grifters is not one I'd be very enthusiastic about living in.
Hey, great work, Mallory.
Thanks so much.
Thank you so much for having me again.
Thanks so much for listening to another episode of Conspiratuality.
We'll see you here on the main feed over the weekend or next Thursday, or we'll see you over on Patreon.
