In this life-enhancing episode, Matt and Chris venture into the futuristic world of tech entrepreneur and biohacker Bryan Johnson, clarifying along the way that he’s not the ACDC frontman. They examine Johnson's Project Blueprint and 'Don't Die' movement—a quest for indefinite lifespan extension through supplements and lifestyle changes—and consider whether their apprehension means they are actually death lovers gorging themselves each day on death burgers and life-draining whiskey.The decoders analyze his carefully crafted appearance and branding, considering how he presents himself as a revolutionary figure but in reality seems to be peddling some familiar tropes, along with a supplement line and some expensive blueberries. As usual, they consider the rhetorical moves, parasocial manipulations, and the likelihood for the lofty claims to become a reality.One thing that is clear by the end: Bryan Johnson is certainly not a modern-day vampire.LinksTracing Woodgrains thread on Bryan JohnsonBlocked and Reported: Episode 199: Was The Naked Man In The Woods Vindicated, Or Is The Naked Man In The Woods Douchey As Charged, Or BOTH??Blueprint by Bryan JohnsonFortune article on Bryan Johnson's Dont Die Dinner with Huberman and the KardashiansBryan Johnson YouTube: I'm Starting A RevolutionIf you want to support the show, join us at: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingTheGurus
Hello and welcome to Decoding the Gurus, the podcast where an anthropologist and a psychologist listen to the greatest minds the world has to offer, and we try to understand what they're talking about.
I'm Matt Brown.
Chris Kavanagh is my erstwhile co-host.
I'm the psychologist.
He is the anthropologist, and we have got a decoding for you guys today, haven't we, Chris?
We do.
We have a condensed, succinct piece of content, at least, to look at.
Succinct is a different question.
But we are looking at someone that many people have suggested in recent years and we just haven't got round to him yet.
But no, he's here and he's not Dr. K. It's important to mention.
No, he's an unusual guru because, you know, most of our gurus are not the lead singer of a famous Australian rock band.
You know, not the creator.
Of amazing hit albums like Back in Black.
That's right.
We're covering Brian Johnson from ACDC.
Oh, I see.
They've got the same name.
That's a very...
I'm glad that you clarified the band.
I didn't know the lead singer was Brian Johnson.
But yes, so, just to mention, we are looking at Brian Johnson, the American entrepreneur, venture capitalist, biohacker.
Different guy, Matt.
You've made a mistake.
He's not ACDC.
That's a silly mistake.
See, an Australian couldn't be a guru.
Where to?
Down to earth.
Is he Australian?
I thought he was American, the ACDC guy.
Well, it's an Australian band.
Isn't Brian Johnson an Australian?
Yes.
Is this going to destroy himself?
No.
What the hell?
He's neither.
He's English.
Puh!
Puh!
Ah!
See?
Yeah.
Yeah, I knew something was wrong with them.
That explains it.
Why do you think ACDC is connected to Australia?
I've never heard that.
I just thought it was.
Isn't ACDC an Australian band?
Yeah, he became the third lead singer of the Australian rock band ACDC.
Don't try to steal my...
Cultural heritage, Chris.
I'm gaslighting you.
Are you sure, Matt?
Do you live in Australia?
What's that?
It's a city of non-Australian.
Yeah.
Yes, they are.
Just a somewhat international cast.
That's okay.
That's okay.
We're not talking about them.
We're talking about this other Brian Johnson, more well-known for wanting to live forever.
Is that a fair point?
Yeah, that's it.
It's been branded in different ways.
Well, not I think.
I know it was called Project Blueprint until recently when it's been rebranded as Don't Die.
That's his movement.
So it is not exactly subtle what the message is.
But Project Blueprint was him identifying supposedly scientifically all of the various...
Practices and supplements and exercise activities that would enable him to reverse the aging process and extend his life, ideally to the point when technology enables lifespans to be extended further and he can end up living for as long as possible.
Right, ideally.
Holy crap.
I just read that he underwent a series of six-monthly one-liter plasma transfusions with his son as the donor.
For at least one of the transfusions.
That's concerningly close to the conspiracy theory about what's the thing Democrats are meant to do.
Adrenochrome and all that kind of thing.
Yes.
Well, it is.
It's also similar to the Dracula story.
But I think in part, this is something that we'll look at because Brian Johnson enjoys playing up those kind of tropes he leans into.
The presentation that he is, you know, living that stereotype of the rich millionaire biohacker who wants to break taboos in order to live forever.
So, yeah, he does seem to knowingly lean into various motifs that would lead to accusations normally.
And they do.
They still do.
I do think he's...
Seen as a, you know, a villainous figure by somebody like Alex Jones.
Yeah, but by you playing along with it, you know, releasing videos of you, like edited CGI videos of you taking blood from your son and putting them into your arm and all this, which he has done as well.
You're poking fun at it at the same time as engaging in it.
So it's a little bit of irony or I don't know, like using the attack, judo flipping it.
Well, it certainly helps that he has this otherworldly, almost preternatural manner about him because he serves as the guinea pig and as the role model for the anti-aging philosophy.
So the way he looks, how good his skin is, all of this stuff is quite important.
But, you know, it also has to be said, I think, that he does look a little bit like he could be a lizard wearing human skin.
That's just the vibe that I and other people have gotten.
So the video that we're going to look at is one from just six days ago.
Well, whatever time you're listening to this, it's recent at the time that we're covering it.
And it's called I'm Starting a Revolution.
It's on YouTube and the thumbnail is his eyes over a burning McDonald's emblem, which we'll get to why he uses that.
But one of the consistent issues raised about Brian Johnson.
Is that he doesn't look particularly healthy.
He looks fit.
And he looks like he has low body fat.
But he looks, you know, I'm a pale white Irishman.
But he looks paler than me and doesn't look incredibly healthy.
And the nearest comparison I can make or the closest analogy is that description by Bilbo.
Where he says, you know, I feel like butter that's been scraped too thinly over toast, right?
Yeah, over too much bread.
Too much bread, I got it the wrong way around.
So that image of skin being stretched taut.
He's lost a lot of weight and he's working out a lot and he's doing all these skin rejuvenation treatments and what that.
In this video in particular, so he has a kind of unnatural scene about him in general, but whatever.
But in this video in particular, I have to say, and this is relevant, especially, you know, normally I probably wouldn't focus on this so much, but it seems like he's had some treatment done on his lips or teeth or something to do with his mouth.
Because the way that he's talking...
It's as if he's talking through his nude teeth.
Yeah.
It's sort of around his teeth.
He's sort of showing his teeth in a kind of grimace.
So it doesn't help.
Like normally, look, far be it from us.
We are the last people who would talk about somebody's physical appearance in a negative way.
But with him, of course, this is fundamental to the brand.
It's very important.
It's cultivated.
And it's just an interesting look in that, as you said.
He's very pale.
He does have that feeling, like a bit taunt.
Like you said, butter stretched over too much bread.
And it also looks like he might bite you.
Well, it's like the bit that gets me is unless this is how he now talks in general, because I did look at other videos and he doesn't.
Seem to be talking like this, but I haven't seen, you know, all the recent ones.
It seems like he recorded it, you know, relatively soon after some treatment or something like, or, you know, I don't know.
Maybe he had some treatment done on his teeth and he's just getting used to it or whatever the case might be.
But it does seem an old time to record a video.
And the other thing that he's done is, I've seen him explain this in another video, that he's got into fashion.
And so he likes to present these pictures of how he's transformed his body and how he now looks younger than he did when he was actually younger.
He's in his mid-40s now.
And he's physically fitter than he was in his 20s, right?
And he was a little bit chubby at some point.
So now he's got a much more athletic frame and all that kind of thing.
But he also is dressing more...
Fashionable.
So in the video, he's wearing like a black sweater with don't dye, right?
White across it.
And then like some necklace thing, right?
And blue jeans.
So like quite simple presentation, but it's clearly, it looks like somebody trying to be fashionable.
This is the way that he often looks in video.
It's a bit like, you know, that meme of the guy with the skateboard.
Hello.
That's the feeling you get.
It would be like if me and Matt showed up sporting some, you know, like teenage fashion style.
It just doesn't look exactly right.
But that's the whole sensation that you get with him about everything about him.
It's like the physical appearance seems just not quite right.
Cloving is a little bit off.
It all feels very much on brand.
Forced youth, I think, is the theme of all of that.
I've just got to mention one more thing before we get into the material, Chris.
We talked about his preternatural appearance and manner.
And for somebody who does look like that, they should think twice before posting a photo of themselves nude in a gloomy forest, looking extremely pale.
And writing things like, giving thanks today that I now feel an insatiable thirst for life.
Is he a vampire?
I mean...
I'm just asking questions.
I'm just asking questions.
Yeah, he leans into all of this.
So, you know, that's the question about how much of it is intentional versus a lack of self-awareness.
Whatever the case might be.
I think we'll keep this short and sweet.
I think the most interesting thing about this is just taking a close look at this short video of his, which is announcing his new program, his new app, his new nation of some kind, distributed nation.
And it's an interesting case of persuasive messaging.
Oh, yeah, it is.
Yeah.
But before we do, Chris, is there anything else you wanted to say about his background?
Like, I saw that he made his money like so many strange people seem to have during the early 2000s with the dot-com boom selling company to PayPal.
I get you, Mike.
You don't want me to focus on the...
Odd red irritation in his hair follicles, which is distracting looking at the video.
Don't you want me to talk about your facts?
Okay, fine.
I'll leave it there.
So he was a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, whatever, founded a company, Briantree, specialized in mobile and web payment systems, which acquired Venmo.
And then that was acquired by PayPal.
And I think...
That was for 800 million or something like that.
So he obviously got a big payout and has funded various venture capital funds.
So he's an extremely rich guy that can now pursue whatever he wants and is interested in.
Don't you think it's interesting how so many of the people we've covered from the Sensemakers and Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, so many of them have come out of this.
Flurry of money that was being thrown around in California in the 2000s and 2010s, and then just move on to very odd things with all of their free time, I suppose.
It's just amazing to imagine.
Yeah, and there is a general focus around, like, I think this is a common thing in Silicon Valley, a slightly common thing for humans, but also supercharged amongst Silicon Valley types.
That they don't want to die.
And they're searching for solutions.
Like Peter Thiel, famously, is also very much in on this, trying to look for life extension technology systems and so on.
And, you know, you can get that because they can have lots of money.
They can have lots of goods and nice houses and stuff.
But the problem is the Grim Reaper.
He lurks and he doesn't seem to care how much money you're going to offer him.
They're not like you and me living in the dirt.
We welcome the end.
No, I reach against the coming eclipse of life as well, but I'm just lacking in their confidence that they're going to be able to defeat the biological onslaught.
But in any case...
He started this thing called Project Blueprint and got attention because, you know, a tech millionaire engaging in these rejuvenation things looks a bit strange, doing strict dietary regimes, intense exercise,
and basically claiming that he's been able to reverse biohack his body back to as it was in its 20s, according to biomarkers.
He was quite good at making claims, quite outlandish.
You know, claims saying his biomarkers mean that he's better than 99% of 21-year-olds or whatever.
To give you an indication of one of the examples of him leaning into this slightly trolling thing, he also includes in his list of his red blood cells or his V2 max level or whatever, his...
Number of erections when sleeping.
I see.
Yep.
Oh, is that measured too?
Yeah, apparently.
I guess he has a device.
Yeah, yeah.
So, you know, but that's the kind of thing, right?
So it's like he is obviously slightly leaning into the freedom of, like, you know, I don't know.
Yeah, I get it, Chris.
I get it.
It's about being larger than life, right?
I mean, Donald Trump's the obvious go-to, but, you know, a lot of it is.
Kind of ironic.
It's shitposting.
It's trollish or whatever.
And it's sort of leaning into a caricature of yourself because, yeah, you know, it attracts attention like this.
Yeah, like here you go, Matt.
Just for example, there's a tweet where he said, my nighttime erections are not better than the average 18-year-old.
Last night was 179 minutes.
Here's the data.
Nighttime erections are a biomarker for cardiovascular, physiological, and sexual health, right?
And he posted this on Twitter in February.
So this is him trying to say he doesn't operate by the mores of normal society.
He's just interested in the, you know, the biomechanical functioning and showing that he's perfectly, like, can't be embarrassed, right?
He's just being completely transparent.
Speaking of not obeying the moors of conventional society, is there anything we want to mention about his ex-wife and the episode there?
Yeah, so just to say that Tracing Woodgrains, there's an online account on Twitter, now has a sub stack.
Actually, it did reveal the real name, but I forget what it was.
But Brian Johnson, if you go to his YouTube channel, one of the most popular videos.
Is him talking about my ex-fiancee sued me for nine million.
And he basically released a 16 minute video explaining that he was vindicated by the court.
You know, all her accusations were false and she lost the court case.
And Tracy Woodgrains went through all the court documents and essentially documents that although he won the legal case, a lot of the exact accusations of his ex-fiancee.
We're true and basically present fairly horrific treatment.
Somebody who was cast to the curb whenever they were going for cancer treatments and all this kind of thing and fairly abusive seeming behavior anyway.
But if you want to see the details, it is good to look at Tracy Woodgreens reporting on that.
And I think it just speaks to there's quite a tendency amongst guru type people to present Things as vindicating them that have not actually vindicated them.
So yes, winning a court case means that you won a court case, but it doesn't mean that you were proven to be in the right about everything, right?
It just means that you were proven not to be legally liable.
But that's not how he presents it.
And this is similar.
Recently, Dr. K got officially...
Reprimanded by the licensing body for psychiatrists that he is under.
And he presented that as a vindication of his approach because they didn't revoke his license or impose harsher penalties.
So yeah, there just is a tendency and there's a lot of distasteful interpersonal stuff.
Yeah.
Yeah.
From what I saw of that, it did not do him much credit.
But we are going to focus on this little 10-minute video that he put out.
His new revolution.
Let's have a look.
So even if you think all of that ad hominem is unwarranted, you know, all of that details about assorted personal affairs and his vampiric appearance and whatnot, forget all that.
You can regard that as, you know, well-poisoning.
Imagine that he's the nicest person in the world, treats everyone in his life.
Extremely well.
There's nothing concerning about his physical appearance.
He looks robust.
A picture of health.
Now, let's take a look at his framing and rhetoric and see how he does, right?
Because it wouldn't matter.
So this is the framing for the video, the kind of overall framing that it's given.
If you lived in the year 1870 and the future could whisper into your ear...
It might say something like this.
There are these things called germs.
They're microscopic objects.
The eyes can't see them and they cause infection and can lead to death.
Now if you're like most people in the 1870s, you're not going to believe that craziness.
You're telling me that things beyond the resolution of my eyes are the cause of disease, infection, and potentially death.
That is how the future always works.
It presents ideas that we find to be bizarre and unintelligible.
That's been the case throughout history.
Yeah, so that's a nice setup.
A good sort of futurist type setup.
It could work very well for like a Silicon Valley product launch for pretty much anything.
You know, imagine the future.
Ideas you've never had before.
It did remind me of one of the classic guru techniques, Chris Steck, which is the...
It's a version of the Galileo Gambit, right?
Because I'm going to tell you something that's going to sound crazy, but remember, they thought that Galileo was crazy too.
Yeah, and it's essentially a riff a little bit on the Arthur C. Clarke famous quote about, you know, any sufficiently advanced technology would look like magic to...
Previous people, right?
Or people in earlier eras.
And that's what he's suggesting.
Like trying to explain germ theory to somebody a couple of hundred years ago and they'll call you crazy.
So now there will be stuff like that.
And we don't recognize it because we're in the current period.
So is he crazy or is he just way ahead of his time?
And he uses clips from Back to the Future 3, which I think is telling of his...
Reference point, the kind of growing up in the 80s and stuff, you know, similar to us, Matt, right?
That's just the cultural motifs that come up here.
So that's the framing.
Now, what about this don't die thing?
That's what don't die is.
It's an observation that the singular insight that will dominate our time and place as the future looks back at us, they will say, that is the moment.
When humans acquired the technological ability to dramatically extend their lifespans.
So Don't Die is really about the most basic things in life, and it's also the most expansive philosophical contemplations we can have as intelligent beings.
The most advanced philosophical conversations we can have as human beings.
Contemplations.
Contemplations.
Yeah, okay, but again, more sort of preamble, more positioning.
We stand at a juncture in human history.
There's ideas coming that will seem to you, like germ theory must have
Yeah, and also wants to focus on the point where humans...
Acquired the ability to extend their life, right?
This is the point where everything changes.
If you were the last generation to die, you'd be pretty pissed.
You know, actually, this is bringing back to me, you know, that Star Trek movie where they go back in time and they visit the guy that's building the rocket and it's going to be remembered as a time when, you know...
The aliens...
Who were the aliens called?
Not Klingons.
Vulcans?
Vulcans.
The Vulcans noticed it and dropped by.
So it's a historic point.
At the time, nobody realized it was just bumpkins playing around with rockets, but it actually was a term called Human History.
Good movie.
I enjoyed that one.
Not bad.
Not bad.
I agree.
I'm not going to dwell on it, but I'm just going to say, in these last two clips, I can hear the teeth in.
I'm just suggesting, you know, if you can hear it in the audio, that is a bad sign, right?
So anyway, what more pragmatically, Matt, what about this don't die approach?
What does it come down to?
Practically speaking, we can say smoking two cigarettes shortens your life by 30 minutes.
So we can assign cigarettes a die score.
Let's apply that same principle to something else.
Let's take a look at a typical American school lunch.
A piece of pizza, some chocolate milk, and some canned vegetables.
What would we assign for a die score?
Should we say just seven minutes for sake of contemplation?
So we're feeding our kids die.
And the reason why this example is useful because when adults speak to themselves about these ideas of die, adults have A infinitely long list of reasons why they should justify their vices.
It's like, I want to live well, not long.
YOLO.
Live fast, die young.
Death is a positive thing.
But when you frame it as us feeding die to kids, it shows how pernicious this thing is.
Don't die calls attention to the embedding in our society that we have built a society around die.
Think of it fast food algorithms that make us do bad stuff.
We are surrounded by things that accelerate aging and increase the probability of death.
And then we justify these things as living our best lives.
Well, gentle listener, did you find that persuasive?
I thought it was quite good.
It was quite polished as a way to...
Bring people around to your way of thinking.
It was an interesting model that he puts forward.
I think it's worthwhile to rewind to the beginning where he says basically everything in the world and your own behaviors can potentially increase your die score.
So this is the sort of mental model he's encouraging people to think of.
A model of life and death where you start off presumably with a die score of zero and then when you make poor decisions you eat a hamburger.
Smoke a cigarette or whatever.
You add points to your dive score and when this dive score gets high enough, then you die.
Or the kind of inverse of that is that each negative choice comes with a minus to your lifespan.
So you lose 7 minutes or you lose 30 minutes or whatever the case might be.
So you're taking away from what your potential lifespan could be.
He does both versions.
Of framing.
But there's something, well, there's quite a lot I don't like about that.
But one thing is, so he talks about, you know, eating pizza and this decreasing your lifespan and like fast food and this kind of thing.
But of course, not eating would be the fastest way to decrease your lifespan, right?
Like actually, people are taking in Nutrients, and that's a lot to live.
So he's kind of doing this thing where he's recasting the consuming of food as a thing which detracts from lifespan.
But without food, you die.
So it's kind of a very slippery rhetorical technique because you can be correct that certain kinds of food will lead to buildup of cholesterol or might have negative impacts on you in the long term.
It is also fundamental that we need to take in nutrients in order to act.
So, yeah.
Well, I think you'd just say that you need to eat, you know, algae and special vitamins and who knows, right?
But presumably there are things you can eat which give you a die score of zero.
I mean, the thing that strikes me that what makes it an effective rhetorical framing is, first of all, it's easy to understand and on the surface it feels compelling.
You know, you smoke a cigarette, you know, it decreases on average your lifespan by this much.
Seven minutes?
A single cigarette?
Whatever.
I'm sure you can crunch the numbers and figure out.
People have done so, I'm sure.
But what it does is if you accept that framing, then you accept the conclusion, which he's about to introduce, which is that if you don't do those things, if you do things that give you a dive score of zero,
that don't incrementally increase your dive score, then what happens, Chris?
You don't die.
So this is, I think, where rhetorical framings are interesting to sort of break down.
Obviously wrong.
One thing that this reminds me of, which people may or may not know, there's a very horrific guru person, online cult leader, and far-right ethno-nationalist called Stefan Molnou.
Right.
And he was previously an anarcho-capitalist or whatever.
It doesn't matter.
But he did this thing where he would engage in very strong rhetoric with his often teenage listeners.
And he was saying to one of them, your parents, right?
They don't want you to live.
And the listener was like, well, no, you know, my parents, you know, they don't.
I agree with my politics and stuff, but they don't want me to.
And it was like, no, no, no, no.
But look, if you don't believe in the state and it's like legitimacy, right?
And you don't think taxes are legitimate.
Eventually, what's going to happen if you don't pay them?
The state is going to come and like try to collect them, right?
And what if you resist the officers of the state, right?
They're going to be armed.
And eventually, if you refuse to go to their prison, if you refuse to give them the money, they will physically...
And if you fight back, they may kill you.
So your parents, by not respecting and agreeing with your anarcho-capitalist view, what they're saying is they want you to die.
They're fine with you dying.
And do you respect someone that wants you to die?
And here, I feel this is a very similar framing, which is you're feeding your kids death.
Giving them a pizza?
It's shoveling death.
Into their mouth.
And like, no, it isn't.
No, it's not.
Not unless you do really heavy lifting rhetorically to redefine things around this very bespoke approach.
So I just don't like it for that reason.
Of course, I don't like it either.
It's terrible.
It's a fundamentally incorrect view of how life and death works, right?
Death isn't a score that you accumulate and then either deterministically or probabilistically, when it gets high enough, boom, you die.
And then if you keep it low, near zero, then you don't...
You don't ever die.
That is just not how it works.
The other thing too, of course, I'm sure you noticed at the end there, Chris, is he referred to the slings and arrows.
The haters.
The haters.
So common.
So common this.
Because he's speaking the truth.
He's looking to help people.
But the world is basically corrupt and has bought into this death philosophy, hasn't it?
Yeah, yeah.
So here's him talking a little bit about Project Blueprint, which was the precursor to this Don't Die reframing.
And here's how he explains that.
Three years ago, I posed the question, what is our proximity to being able to slow down and even neutralize the aging process?
Three years in, we now have the answer.
It's pretty compelling.
And the way I did that, I measured every organ in my body, getting a biological age of each organ.
And then we used the best science to try to slow down my speed of aging and reverse that aging damage.
You can take this same process and apply it to almost anything.
It's the same thing, whether it's my body or planet Earth or school lunch.
They're all the same.
You're looking at baseline measurements.
You look at what the healthy parameters would be.
You look at the science and you implement a protocol.
Impressive.
So he's done something that no other scientist has managed to do.
He's discovered some things, doing experiments just with himself, just on his own body there, Chris.
Yeah, and if you go to blueprint.brianjohnson.com, right, so you might anticipate that you would go to that website and you'll get a load of scientific breakdowns of, you know, the various things that he's been tracking and studies and whatnot that are indicating the improvements.
The front page is a big bright blue advertisement for various supplements, and it says, most nutritious program in history.
Start blueprint, 74 interventions based on 1000 plus clinical trials.
Then you get starter pack, supplement pack, blueprint pack with 74 health actives.
Scrolling down, you just then get to, you can order cocoa powder, extra virgin olive oil, longevity mix, nutty pudding.
So kind of suggests that the emphasis here is A little self-serving, you know?
It doesn't seem to be entirely about the science and providing a low-cost system that just is for people to implement.
It does seem a little bit of a marketing and branding exercise for a supplement line.
I don't know.
Call me cynical, Matt.
Yep, could be, could be, could be.
Okay, but where are we now?
He's figured it out.
He's done so many experiments on his own body using the best science, and that's led him to figure out how to slow down and even stop the aging process, neutralize death, and you can tap into this by buying all these wonderful supplements and food products.
What else?
And just to say that, again, it probably goes without...
But to make it clear, if you start to eat healthier, exercise, sleep well, and you previously didn't have a great diet and you weren't exercising much and you weren't paying attention to how much fat or whatever you were consuming,
I would imagine that you will improve most of your biomarkers according to blood tests and scans and whatnot.
It is not that everything that Brian Johnson is saying is going to be false or not going to be supported by the biomarker claims or whatever.
But as ever, there's going to be a lot of heavy lifting done from things like exercising regularly and having a good diet, right?
The kind of stuff which actually is not the contentious thing.
It's all the other esoteric pills and treatments.
Yeah, I mean, like I'm sure the blueberry nut mix and the cocoa powder that he sells on that website is a perfectly fine blueberry nut mix, a perfectly fine cocoa powder, but that's $57 American for the nut mix and $64 for the cocoa powder.
Yeah, I mean, you know, the fact that they sell it on their website doesn't mean there's anything wrong with blueberries.
It's just that it may not have the magical health benefits and may not be worth the money.
That they want to challenge you for it.
And one thing that Brian Johnson will do is he will, you know, he'll release videos saying, oh, people are saying that this is good, but actually it's just a fad and the evidence doesn't support it.
I tried it.
It did improve my biomarkers, right?
So he markets himself as being more science-based than kind of Joe Rogan type people because he's not just endorsing anything.
He's actually looking at the markers and seeing what works and that kind of thing.
But just to say that...
It does not make him unique because that is very, very common amongst people promoting any kind of bioharking or rejuvenating therapy or whatever.
They often say, these things don't work.
You know, this one does and this one doesn't.
It's a very easy way to illustrate that you're not just a credulous moron, but you don't believe in everything and you think some things are bad.
So anyway.
Just saying that it doesn't mean everything that he's going to promote is bogus or that there aren't pills that he takes that actually do things like reduce his blood pressure or whatever the case might be.
I'm sure many of the things that he does are entirely sensible and are backed by science.
But there's also a lot which is more debatable.
Okay.
So...
Next, Matt, the Don't Die movement.
Don't Die is a brand new concept.
I said the words for the first time in late 2023, since I've done a few gatherings.
And now there are hundreds of gatherings in over 58 countries.
People organically getting together around this concept of Don't Die.
I never would have guessed it would catch fire this fast and be this strong.
I think it's a contender.
For the strongest movement of this early 21st century.
That this is something that we can all rally upon.
If you think about it, Don't Die is already the most played game by every human.
On this planet, every second of every day.
Don't Die is played more than capitalism.
It's played more than any religion.
It is the most played game in existence.
You're playing it right now.
I'm playing it right now.
It is the single thing that every human on this planet can agree upon.
So when we talk about goal alignment or trying to get our priorities synced as a species, this is the one thing that we can agree upon.
Right.
So, nice music there in the background.
Inspiring.
Yeah.
So, when he says Don't Die is the most played game on planet Earth, we're all playing it.
He's not referring to the app that he's going to talk about later.
He's talking about our shared goal and not dying.
Avoiding cars when we cross the road.
Right.
Not, I don't know, eating cyanide pills.
This is really transparent.
Because if you define breathing as endorsing my philosophy, don't we all already endorse my philosophy?
Yes, if we redefine breathing as endorsing what you're arguing, that would be true.
But that is during the heavy lifting.
So this notion that there's a big wellspring of interest because there's been a couple of galleries in countries or whatever, like Mr. Beast is a much...
Bigger movement in the early 21st century than Brian Johnson.
Trump is obviously a much huger movement, right?
But it's hyperbole and it's intended to be.
But this is bog standard cult shit, actually, or religious standard rhetoric.
Active.
We are growing.
We're inspiring change around the world.
It's also things that charities and whatnot use as well, but it's just combined with his other stuff, it comes across more in the cultish VN than the charity VN.
It does, yeah.
And it's also got a heavy dose of that sort of Silicon Valley pitch type thing.
It could almost be a techno gadget that he's unveiling wearing a black turtleneck.
But okay, so that's good.
So let's recap.
Nobody wants to die.
Yeah, you've got to recap when you say that.
Nobody wants to die.
Death is everywhere, but you can avoid it by just not eating poisonous stuff and not doing poisonous things, not increasing your die score.
He's done the experiments on himself.
He's in the best science.
He's figured out the secret.
A blueprint.
He's building a world movement.
Lots of people all over the world have realized that they really don't want to buy two and presumably they want to download his app.
They want to join the movement.
They want to buy his products.
And what am I missing?
That's it.
Well, now Matt, you know, some objections have come up as we've been listening to it.
You've heard us be negative Nancys about it, right?
But if the listener also has some reservations, is that not a sign?
That he's on the right track.
If you're feeling overwhelmed with these ideas or if you're fighting me really hard right now and you want to tell me why I'm wrong and why you're right, I would say I understand.
I've been having this conversation at my house.
In dinners for three years now.
I know with 99% predictability what people say, when they say it, and how they say it.
To understand this, you have to dig pretty deep into the assumptions.
If death has always been inevitable.
We build our existence around justifying our behaviors around that inevitability.
If death is no longer inevitable, you are invited to reconstruct your entire reality.
And this is why I don't call it live long or live well or some other positive statement that a lot of people encourage me to say because if you say those positive things, literally everybody is going to say, "Yep, I'm doing it," no matter what their circumstances in life.
If you say, don't die, it forces the person to reconcile with everything they understand in existence.
So if you want to die, you need to justify why die is a virtue for you and for everyone else.
Say you don't want to die, you need to confront that death has always been inevitable.
How are we possibly going to overcome this unimaginable challenge?
That logic is worth breaking down.
That's wonderful stuff.
That's torturous.
Okay, so you could be hearing this messaging and you could be being skeptical, like us.
I don't know if that sounds right.
But that's death speaking.
That's your acceptance and basically preference for death, believe it or not, because the idea of eternal life is actually going to break down your entire world and that is what is going to lead you to resisting these ideas.
Do you think that's air you're breathing now, Matt?
That's what the machines want you to believe, right?
Like, yeah, this for you, I mean, it's so transparent.
Like, and I've heard this particular technique of...
So many times.
If you are objecting, like I've heard Teal Swan say it, I've heard Dr. K say it, I've heard Scott Adams say it, I've heard Eric Weinstein, Brett.
They all say, Your feeling that I'm wrong indicates that there's something wrong.
I'm pushing against something you hold dear, and that's why you're objecting.
So you think it's because there's some problem, but actually it's because I'm revealing your limitations.
It's like Andrew Tate, right, saying they are vilifying me because I'm pushing back at the matrix.
I'm showing them.
You know, what the reality is.
And that's why everybody is, you know, objecting to it.
And it's the exact same here.
It's such a common technique.
It shouldn't work.
It shouldn't work anymore.
Because cult leaders, religious figures have been doing this since time immemorial.
And yet, it always seems to...
It keeps working.
It always works.
Yeah.
It always works.
And then also...
Because he has branded his particular system as denial of death, like fighting against death, that if you disagree with his system, you want death.
You love death.
You're a death eater, right?
You're a man that just is so happy to embrace death.
Like, what's wrong with you?
And no, no, I don't want to die.
I would be very happy to live forever.
If some new technology develops or bioengineering gets to the state where it can extend lifespans, great.
I'll be happy to jump in the rejuvenation pod or whatever the case might be.
But I just don't buy your shtick, Brian Johnson.
Chris, Chris, maybe you just haven't heard his shtick laid out well enough.
Have you seen the don'tdie.brianjohnson.com website?
It's so good.
Step one, you've got to identify the source of death.
State two, state your goal.
And your goal is something like personally achieve age escape velocity where one year passes and I remain the same biological age.
Great.
You create a plan.
And look, the thing is, Chris, don't die means something different to everyone.
It's also complicated, nuanced, and sometimes hard to quantify.
There are thousands more great questions on what don't die means practically, politically, economically, philosophically.
That's okay.
We work on these gnarly problems all the time.
In society.
And then he starts talking about how before we had kings and queens and stuff, and then we replaced it with democracy.
But I mean, what I like here, and you see it with the epic music that was playing in the background there, and this idea of building a global movement, you know, at this critical juncture, like achieving space flight or something, is you have, I think,
in any good cult, this reference to the highest goals.
Like the highest and the best goals that you could possibly have.
They all want to save the world and save humanity in some way, shape or form.
But then when it comes down to brass tacks, it always involves paying $60 for some blueberries.
I enjoy that contrast.
Yeah, yeah.
So I have a clip that speaks to that.
But I'm just going to highlight, Matt, a little bit more of the streaming about, you know, If you are not part of the Don't Die Coalition, what are you justifying?
And on that website you just linked to, by the way, Matt, at the bottom.
I know this is tongue-in-cheek, but at the same time, it's not, right?
There's a little thing to subscribe saying join or die.
It's so on the nose.
Anyway, so here's him talking about, you know, the various life advice.
Health that adopting this point of view comes with.
It's don't die right now because somebody can look both ways before they cross the street while be smoking a cigarette.
But I would encourage you join this movement.
Be part of the cause.
Be don't die in your life.
Go to bed on time.
Eat well.
Exercise.
Try to overcome your vices and bad habits.
Be the embodiment of this thing.
Teach your children or other children and your parents and your siblings.
Try to shift their mindset from death being inevitable and therefore justifying debauchery
Chris, I feel like this sits within a broader trend, which is that, and I think it's very much suitable for our secular...
Guru-type topic, because you had the traditional religions, you had the traditional cults and so on, and they also promised eternal life, but it came from magic and the afterlife and things like that.
And then you had with Scientology and various other odd movements in the 20th century, this sort of hybrid-type cult where similar promises, a similar grand mission, but it had these science...
Sciencey sort of ingredients.
And you also see it, of course, with the sort of UFO mythologies and stuff.
There's a lot of psychological elements that are religious and magical in essence, but it has the scientific trappings.
And now this is like a purely secular cult where, yeah, like it's got the full, like it is entirely about tangible ways in which to accomplish those same things that the religions promised.
Or is it, Matt?
Because that last line about debauchery and vices, like, so Brian Johnson has a background in the Mormon Church, right?
The Church of Latter-day Saints, if you want.
And he, in his narrative, talks about how he escaped, you know, all that framing of his earlier life.
But that struck me as a very heavy dose of moralizing because, you know, Even if you take the case, if you accept his framing, that certain things come with a cost to your potential lifespan, right?
That whiskey that you want to drink, maybe it's just three minutes of your lifespan.
But for some people, that's an acceptable tradeoff, right?
Even if they want to reach escape velocity, they still want to...
Enjoy their life in the potential that like, what if they don't reach it?
And they just deny themselves any pleasure throughout their life.
And his presentation there is not shades of gray, do your best.
It is do it all or do nothing.
Are you saying that it's not purely about, okay, this is functional health advice, but there's a moral aspect to it too.
Like when you're talking about wallowing in debauchery, that...
Sounds like a religious thing, doesn't it?
Well, and also, he's like, you know, why is the person looking both ways when they're smoking a cigarette?
There's something fundamentally incompatible with that.
And you're like, no, there isn't.
Right?
Because somebody's smoking a cigarette.
Doesn't want to get hit by a car.
I jog and drink whiskey, and in my cosmology, they bounce each other out.
That's because you've got the wrong thinking.
But it's just that thing where it's like, well, that's completely nonsensical.
And you're like, no, that's entirely coherent because being run over by a car for not looking when you cross the road is not the same as...
Over the long term, that you increase your risk of cancer.
And yes, he's right.
If you frame it in this way, that it's all about things that can decrease your lifespan, they are on the same spectrum.
Yes, true, but they're not on the same immediate life-destructing spectrum.
If you don't look both ways when crossing the road, you are more likely to reach a gruesome end very soon than you are if you...
Smoke their cigarette while crossing the road, right?
It's not like the cancer will immediately strike you dead when you cross the road.
Well, yeah.
I think cults and millennial movements do tend to have an absolutist black and white binary.
And, you know, we all know only a Sith deals in...
George Lucas wrote one line that was very good.
He wrote a couple to his credit.
But, yeah.
So, now, Matt, you were talking about what...
Is the brass tacks of this?
Like, what does it come down to?
And often it does come down to buy my supplements, download my app, do this.
And it does get to that.
We're going to get to that.
But there is one bit where you get a little bit more of the Silicon Valley framing before you get to that hard pivot.
And I think this is worth noting because he talks about building a network state.
I'm also building a network state that is very similar to a nation state.
It has different characteristics where it's not bound by geography necessarily.
But bound by network characteristics that you're getting a group of people together with a common objective.
And so in this case, we would band together and we would work on individual don't die initiatives.
So some may do this with personal health.
Some may do it on planetary health.
Some may apply to school lunch, others to politics, relationships, auto emissions.
Like you take any domain in society, you can apply the same concepts.
I'm going to gather people together and we will work on these ideas together.
So take your given idea and then walk through the process.
How do you define death?
How do you measure it?
How do you actually minimize it and or eliminate it?
And repeat that process continually.
*music*
You know, it's very similar to a nation state where he's talking about building, except that it lacks almost all the characteristics that we associate.
Balanji Srinivasan has a similar thing talking about transnational networks and, you know, the kind of modern era is that nation states are 19th century tech, right?
This is the 21st century.
It's a futurist trope and it's featured in a few good science fiction books I've read too.
So yeah, it's a cool Silicon Valley sort of terminology and it sounds much better than...
A cult.
Stodgy old nation states with nationalism.
Yeah, no, it's a network of people with a common purpose.
Yeah, I mean, but, you know, the objectives he listed there are all fine, right?
Reducing car emissions, like cleaning up the environment, school lunches.
Are you against healthy school lunches, Chris?
Yeah, it's not clear what benefit you get from framing those outcomes all around decreasing.
Overall death, right?
I don't know, but that's what his gimmick is.
So it has to all be around that.
But just, like, this already exists within nation states.
What's the difference between this and a, like, gentleman's club, right, where they share an interest in world affairs or whatever, and they sit around and come up with plans and projects together.
Like, this already exists.
Reddit exists.
For this purpose, right?
People can come together for little communities.
He wants to set up a Reddit community, is what he's talking about.
And this is something that gurus constantly do.
Remember Eric had a Discord where they were going to all come up with plans for how to redefine...
Education and technology.
Jordan Peterson is creating this new account.
They always want to frame it that they're creating these new ecosystems and alternatives to the nation state, to the university, to whatever.
It fundamentally always comes down to they're creating a subscription model or an app or a little gated community that is branded around whatever their particular thing is.
In this case, Brian Johnson's Don't die branding.
And then they're going to do the same thing that is done in every other kind of community like this.
And it will go the same way.
I will make my prediction down now, Matt.
There will not be don't die networks replacing nation states in, you know, 100 or 50 years.
This will be a flash in the pan movement around a particular secular guru.
And it will follow, you know, maybe he'll gather enough people to have like little communities and centers or whatnot.
But that would be the best case scenario.
The best case scenario is Scientology.
Yeah, even that seems unlikely.
I'd be quite surprised if they organize even like one program of healthy school lunches in one school that lasts for more than a year.
I'd probably bet money on that, right?
This worldwide movement.
But like you said, part of the pitch of any movement, like a religious one or cult or whatever, is about those really high-minded goals, right?
And you had them there, right?
We're going to change the world.
We're going to make the world a better place in every conceivable way.
Like you can define don't die as just like good stuff across the board for all humanity, right?
So it's very nebulous.
It's very unclear about how we're getting from A to B, but it's unequivocally...
Very, very good.
But I think the point of it is to build affiliation, like to get people in that whatever, that discussion group or whatever, to get them affiliated, get them committed.
And then once you have them, then you can...
Monetize.
Yeah, monetize or do whatever it is you want, basically.
And, you know, I think in some sense, like Brian Johnson already is a millionaire, right?
He has lots of money and all that.
And I'm sure millionaires constantly want more money, usually.
But I think a lot of it is around the attention and being a figure that gets articles written about you and hanging around with celebrities and that kind of thing, right?
I feel that too.
I don't feel like this is like a simple scam.
I mean, there is that aspect to it.
There's a reason why those supplements and the blueberries are priced exorbitantly.
But the other aspect of it, too, is that it's the same with Derek Weinstein, for instance.
I don't think he's motivated primarily to gather wealth.
I think he's motivated primarily to be at the center of something big, you know?
Yeah.
But there's also a parallel that I thought about, which is...
Indicating that it doesn't really matter in terms of what philosophy or political system or whatever you want to apply this kind of thinking to.
The rhetoric is the same.
You remember Kendi framed it that every action that anybody takes or anything that a government instigates can be framed as either contributing or...
Fighting against racism.
Everything is either pro-racism or anti-racism.
There is no other category.
There's nothing that cannot be free of that way.
And this is the same.
Everything will either increase the likelihood of dying and your die score, or it will contribute to the don't die movement.
That's it.
So there's an absolutism to it, and there's a way to connect their key idea to everything in the world, right?
Good and bad, right?
So, yeah, I find that very interesting.
And also on that topic, since Kendi is sort of famously left woke or whatever, people have often said on the internet, it was a popular trope for a while, that sort of wokeness was like a religion, right?
Some of our gurus were really big on that idea.
It's true in a sense, in the sense that it's about finding those sort of like a mission and a purpose and an affiliatory group.
But it may be well true of certain woke groupings, but it can equally be said of this thing and almost every one of these sort of social movements which has these properties.
So, yeah, I kind of buy it, but I don't think there's anything special about...
Like Kendi or left-wing stuff.
I don't think there's anything special about this guy.
Scientology is another one.
They also have the highest mission, right?
To save humanity.
They all do, right?
I generally agree.
You can draw parallels with a whole lot of things because there's a lot of...
Things in religions.
And there's a lot of things that you can draw parallels with.
You know, famously, I've done it with a school bus, if you remember.
Famously.
But the...
Famous in London.
A couple of dozen of extremely dedicated...
Nobody remembers.
Maybe a couple of people who listen to this podcast will remember that analogy.
But I'm not going to do it again.
But the bit that I think is often lacking in those analogies, and it's part of the definition of religion that I...
To me, this is an important omission, is supernatural beings.
This is the thing that makes religion different from other things, right?
And this is what is often missing in any parallels.
But the thing which people often insert as the parallel is that, well, but they do often the mission of salvation and transcendence.
And that is true.
So this has a You know, transcend death.
It's a very obvious parallel to eternal life in a religious sense.
But the whole social justice thing can also be seen as giving transcendental value to life and whatnot.
But I still think you don't have supernatural beings.
Your parallel with religion is, you know, there's a limitation there.
Yeah.
But, you know, as you well know, there are many aspects to religions that are not about.
Metaphysical beliefs.
Yeah, there are those other components.
So just draw a Venn diagram.
Yeah, but those parts are not the defining characteristics of religion for me.
That's what the distinguishing characteristic of religion from other kinds of institutions and organizations and movements is the presence of supernatural beliefs and metaphysics.
That's right.
So you shouldn't call this Don't Die movement or some hardcore work group or anything like that.
You shouldn't call them a religion.
Well, you can.
Well, I think what you should say is that they share some common properties, right?
Yes, yes, that's it.
So there are certain aspects that you can draw parallels, and I think there are legitimate parallels that can be drawn.
But just there's a crucial component that is often missing.
That's all.
That's all I want to say.
But you know what?
We're in the airy metaphysics and definitions of religion and debating these kind of things.
Let's get down in the gutter.
What do we do?
What are the steps?
Not down in the gutter.
That's the wrong way to put it.
The call to action, Chris.
What is it?
What should we do?
Yeah, well, no.
No, this isn't the call to action.
That's coming right.
But this is the clip just before the call to action, which is talking about the pragmatic steps that we can take.
I'm also going to launch a Don't Die app where we will gather together as a community.
It will be social first and we will encourage each other.
There's good evidence to show that we are like Matt,
an objection here.
So the algorithm, which presumably took various people...
to this video on YouTube that they're watching Brian Johnson that is to be fought and by using avoiding the toxic elements of modern apps and algorithmic stuff like Gamifying things and streaks.
It's speaking out of both sides of your mouth.
We've got to get out of the algorithms telling us what to do and all these influencers trying to tell us how we should be and whatnot.
We've got to aim up by downloading my app, following my channel on YouTube and getting your...
Life score streak up to 100.
Like, God damn.
Yeah, and that social network.
I mean, this is the thing we study with Gamify, like gambling, which is that the social aspect of it too is really important.
You know, share your score with friends, that kind of thing.
Yeah, well, you're saying that he's, speaking out of both sides of the world, maybe he's using the master's tools against...
You know, it's like the Matrix, you know, they're using the network, they're piggybacking on the fiber mainframe.
I know that is how he intends to free him, but that is how they all free him.
So it's just that thing and the notion that, you know, people get together and they encourage each other and yes, they do, but this is true.
There's a flip side of that where people...
That are parts of communities that have insular perspectives, don't tolerate dissent very well, and don't like people that are interfering with their mission.
Does that ever produce negative network effects?
Are there any examples of people getting into, you know, communities which don't like people disagreeing with the leader and that kind of thing?
No, no, that never happened.
So fortunately, this will only be the positive aspects of engineering.
Social network systems.
So that's good.
That's good.
That's good.
Okay.
So, all right.
Call to action.
Call to action.
We're going to get the app.
Anything else?
Well, he's developing the app, so that's not there yet, but it's coming.
All these good things will be coming.
And what can you do right now?
So there's three things for you.
First is become familiar with the sources of dye around you.
Number two is join the app when it's live to be part of the community to both benefit and contribute to everybody's well-being.
And third, if you're interested in pursuing a Don't Die endeavor and being part of our initial group, I'll have a link in the description below.
Include your name.
and your project and other details so that we can try to expand our working groups to help everybody work on their Don't Die initiatives.
Just like Democracy, Don't Die will invite hundreds and even thousands of follow-on questions that will pertain to ethics and morals and what-ifs and all kinds of problems and most likely problems that we haven't anticipated which will probably be the most dominant ones.
The ones we imagine Probably won't be.
So this is not to say that this solves all things.
It's meant to say that if the future could whisper into our ears, and if we wanted to hear it and be part of the future, that this would be the starting point.
I want to hear it.
I want to hear the future whispering into my ear, Chris.
Don't you?
Do you want to die?
So what's the future whispering to me?
Let me just scale it back so I can put it into things that I can operationalize in my daily life.
I should look around me and be like, don't smoke, don't drink, do exercise, eat vegetables, take whatever supplements that have been proven to be effective.
Second, download the app.
This is crucial.
Download the app when it comes out.
Get on there.
And third, there's a mailing list.
Where I should supply my details and if I'm working on initiatives that can be co-opted for this thing, I should let them know about that.
It's so fucking self-serving.
Even if he has the most highest ideas, even if everything he said was true, doesn't he notice that his steps are the exact same as every other guru and cult Join my mailing list,
download my app, follow my program, right?
Yeah.
Look, we could pull up the Scientology website right now, and I'm sure the first steps there will be get in touch, come along to your local book groups, take a personality test or whatever, see what steps you need to take in order to participate.
I mean, it's just recruitment.
It's proselytization.
That's what every group like this does.
Yeah, yeah.
There's nothing new under the sun.
There's nothing wrong with wanting to improve your life, with becoming interested in health and ways to avoid...
You know, it's perfectly reasonable to be concerned about mortality and things that might hurt you and to look for communities where you can find people who share similar kinds of values and interests.
That's all unobjectionable.
But why is it always packaged in this, you know, we're going to save the world and this is the first step towards the brave new future where nobody will die and I've got a supplement line,
but that's not the thing that I'm going to focus on whenever I'm doing this.
It's just like it feels very transparent, even though it's buried in all these layers of rhetoric.
This video is like 10 minutes long.
It's really familiar rhetoric, but it's in a new bow with a new, somewhat unique guru type.
But there's been so many hucksters promising eternal life and the secrets of science and technology for the future before.
Yeah, look, there are some obvious parallels with someone like Huberman, for instance, who plays in the same area, very focused on optimizing health, also selling lines of overpriced supplements and so on.
But this guy is really quite different in terms of those cultish dynamics and that call to something.
Greater.
And I think pretty much all of the facets of a religion, except for the explicit metaphysical beliefs, right?
It's got the moral condemnation of the excessive indulgent behavior.
There's a moral angle to it.
There's the idea that you're going to be part of a community of spirit with the same sorts of goals.
And there is, even though there isn't like an idea of the afterlife, there is the idea of transcending death.
And it has, in terms of the recruitment drive and the sort of hard sell to join up, it has those characteristics in common with Scientology.
Well, Matt, you mentioned Huberman.
So just to note that like a couple of months back, there was posted up on Instagram, Huberman.
And the Kardashians and a couple of other random people at Brian Johnson's Don't Die dinner.
So it's that thing of creating these viral moments with celebrities and biohackers and significant political figures or whatever the case might be.
But of course, Huberman being there.
Would be not at all surprising because they are swimming in the same waters.
This is where they belong.
It sounds sad to say and it sounds cynical, but I do think it's true.
Unfortunately, you do have to mistrust people a little bit who do state such lofty but vague goals, which aren't directly...
They're not directly achieving them right now.
That's going to come.
But what you need to do right now is sign up to their thing and buy their thing.
You know, most of our gurus profess to have these very lofty goals.
But, you know, when it comes down to the brass tacks, those lofty goals are kind of, no real effort is put into accomplishing them.
So when somebody's talking about school dinners and providing healthy school dinners to kids, then that's a good thing, right?
And there are people out there who actually do that shit.
Jimmy Oliver.
Even Jimmy Oliver did, right?
He's probably not the best example.
But he literally devoted years.
No, I know he did, but it was sort of connected to his brand, I suppose, right?
But there are no...
I mean, I'm not dissing Jimmy Oliver.
I think it was a good thing.
I didn't realize he was such a Jimmy Oliver fan there, Chris.
I'm just saying, like, the fact that he's associated with that, that became, like, one of his million things was just...
Yeah, yeah.
And even then...
And even then he wasn't...
He did try, but it was...
He wasn't particularly successful.
There's a famous video, I don't know if you've ever seen it, where he gets all the kids together and he tries to show them what is...
You know, meat for a chicken nugget, and he grinds up all the pieces of chickens or whatever, and he cooks it for them.
And it's supposed to be, you know, how horrifying, like, what a chicken nugget is.
And at the end, he's like, no, who wants to eat it?
And they're all like, yay!
It's kind of a funny video.
It is funny.
I do remember those.
I remember the kids resistant to the salads and stuff.
Poor Jamie.
I mean, he didn't realise what little monsters children are.
I know.
I've got three of them.
Now, yeah, but there are real people out there doing good things, like arranging for healthy, even free school lunches and things like that.
But, you know, so don't be suspicious of them.
But these people like this.
When they speak to these really lofty goals, whether it's like saving the country like Eric Weinstein would have or saving humanity or whatever, you just have to be extremely suspicious.
You know, the lower that somebody presents their overall goals, the less need to be suspicious because they're probably being honest.
If they're like, well, this probably isn't going to have much impact and ultimately I just want to get a couple of people together to do exercise at the park.
That's probably true.
That's probably what their goal is.
If you hear a guy on YouTube and say, look, I'm campaigning for them to put in a couple of pedestrian crossings between the park and the school, he's probably on the level there.
That's probably all he wants.
It's a small goal.
He may well achieve it.
This, not so much.
That's true.
Right.
So there we go.
That's Brian Johnson.
Fair to say we're not big fans of his, and I anticipate him becoming just a kind of figure.
That you'll see doing these promotional activities, trying to get attention for his movement from time to time.
He'll probably rebrand in a couple of years to something else if Don't Die doesn't catch on.
Who cares?
Who cares, right?
But it's just, from our point of view, we care because it's just another secular guru type.
And it's interesting to look at.
But if you are interested in the kind of things that Brian Johnson is, I think you can do better than Brian Johnson.
That would be my advice.
Peter Adia, I'm not endorsing him.
I'm just saying it seemed a little bit...
Yep.
Look, I enjoyed this, Chris.
I particularly enjoyed just a little study of persuasive rhetoric, which you did there in this little prepared speech.
I thought it was quite effectively put together.
But like all rhetoric like that, if you actually stop and think about it and break it down, you realise that you can drive a bus through the big gaping holes in it.
And the final thought, and the final point I really want to make clear is that despite all appearances to the contrary, and despite my tongue-in-cheek comments, He's definitely not a vampire that feasts on human blood.
That's not what he's about.
Just wanted to make that clear.
That's true.
Got the wrong impression.
Yeah, that's good.
Good to clarify that at the end.
Not a vampire.
So, Matt, it's the end of the episode.
And you know what we have to do at the end of the episode?
You know it's a secret duty.
We have to tell people to download the app, call the action.
If you want to care about the world, Join the Patreon, blah, blah.
No, no.
We just have to give thanks to the kind people who chuck a couple of dollars our way to try and encourage us to do more podcasts.
And I'm going to shout out, got a whole bunch of conspiracy hypothesizers.
We've got a bunch of them.
So I'm going to try to clear some of them off, okay?
It's never going to work because we're simply too popular to clear them off.
But I'll make a try of getting rid of some of them, okay?
Okay.
Here we go.
Thank you to Craig Brown, Gipra, LLM, Nicola Kessler, Julia Fata, William Legrand, Finn Roberts, Snake Pube Tube, Dustin,
Christian Fjelderhassen Kripne, The Missing Weinstein, Kathleen M. Sedgwick, Niels M., Alison Ross, Ram Bam,
Thank you, ma 'am.
Chris Black, Deep Dick Chopra, Frederick Kunerson, Jay Sokol, Carrie Williamson, Sebastian Sanguravassi, and Mark Penner and Lenny Krabitz.
Lenny Krabitz.
Yeah, Lenny Krabitz.
These are good.
Conspiracy hypothesizes all.
Thank you.
Yeah.
How do they come up with these names?
They're just thoughtful people, ma 'am.
Creative people.
I always get stuck with creative kind of inertia when I try to think of a good handle when I'm registering for something.
I think it's something funny and I never can.
I just freeze.
Too many options.
Too many choices.
How do they do it?
It doesn't surprise me.
It doesn't surprise me.
But you know what they all wanted to hear, Matt?
This.
I feel like there was a conference.
That none of us were invited to.
That came to some very strong conclusions.
And they've all circulated this list of correct answers.
I wasn't at this conference.
This kind of shit makes me think, man.
It's almost like someone is being paid.
Like, when you hear these George Soros stories, he's trying to destroy the country from within.
We are not going to advance conspiracy theories.
We will advance conspiracy hypotheses.
That's it for this week, Matt.
The names because there's a little bit of a...
It's an organizational mess, isn't it?
This was your department.
You were taking care of it.
We need a better system.
You've dropped them all.
We need a better system.
You're playing the system.
Well, the problem is we became too successful.
We're too successful and the system is not working.
Well, we've got to revolutionize it or we will revolutionize it.
We'll work out how to do this.
You created a system which was...
Probably an envelope and a pen to deal with the expected dozens.
Yes, exactly.
Exactly.
There's a slight issue with our system, but we're in the process of upgrading it.
Stay with us.
So that's that.
That's that.
Thank you all for being here this week and join us soon.
For the fabled third part decoding of Dr. K, which might become the longest running non-decoded episode in history, but we'll see.
Yeah, it's vitally important that you listen to that third part.
You know, this is how we...
This is how we change the world, Chris.
I was thinking this is the, what do you call that, the hook that we keep people coming back?
Like, is this the third part?
Not this week, sorry.
Maybe next week.
That's right.
It's like, yeah, maybe this year the aliens are going to, you know, beam us up onto their spaceship.
No, no, not this year.
Maybe next year.
Maybe next year.
I think you'll all see you next time.
Good decoding.
Well done.
Good job, Chris.
Yeah, very important.
Great decoding.
Good job, Matt.
You've earned your monthly stipend.
I'll send it over to you.
And don't spend it on anything that will cut down your life expectancy because Jesus Christ.
That's one of my favorite things.
No more.
No more.
You don't want to engage in debauchery, Matt.
Wait, wait.
Just let me check.
I'm making smash burgers on the grill.
Not anymore.
Kale burgers.
No, they're both good for you.
They're good for you.
I think they're life enhancing, both those things.
Science is still working that stuff out.
Don't worry.
Kale burgers, Matt.
That's what you've got to switch to.
Sorry.
That's the don't die philosophy.
Yeah, well, I'll just get a blood transfusion from one of the kids.
Anyway.
That's the way to do it.
That's the way to do it.
Nice.
Well, that was good to go to Matt, so thanks for that.
