44 minutes 2 seconds
🇬🇧 English
Speaker 1
00:05
Well, Brian Johnson, welcome to Tomorrow Talk. I am so, so excited to have you on the show today. And thank you for welcoming me into your home where all things Blueprint take place. Today I'm so excited to dive into your motivations and philosophies behind Blueprint, but I think first it's important to set some context.
Speaker 1
00:27
You've done a lot before this. You built and sold Braintree Venmo to PayPal in 2013 for $800 million. You built Kernel, you started OS Fund. At that point, you had hundreds of millions of dollars.
Speaker 1
00:40
You were working on some of the coolest technology companies. Things should have been Amazing. What was your life actually like at that time?
Speaker 2
00:52
Complicated.
Speaker 1
00:54
What were some of those events that made it complicated?
Speaker 2
00:58
I was born into a deeply religious community And I think I underestimated how deeply it really was ingrained in me. When you grow up in a fishbowl, you don't realize you're in a fishbowl, and then you learn there's a whole bunch of other fishbowls in the world, and you're just continually discovering other realities. I think I was on this journey of trying to figure out how big is reality that I can experience and Slowly moving my way out of that singular reality where I'd grown up and that included my relationships the community All the exposure I had to every source of intelligence I had, I was trying to pull out from underneath that.
Speaker 1
01:35
It's like it requires a complete recreation of self, basically.
Speaker 2
01:39
Yeah, you don't. The hard thing is I didn't know how to orient myself. I couldn't pull out a compass and identify where I was at and where I needed to go or even a map that showed me the possible territory terrain I could travel.
Speaker 2
01:53
It was this, yeah, this unknown. It's how to kind of just like walk out step by step and try to find out how big is the space, where could I potentially play, what am I missing with my self-awareness, how could I increase my self-awareness to understand what I'm not seeing. So really trying to rebuild my mind in every functional way to try to create a map of existence.
Speaker 1
02:18
In that moment, because I think so many people have moments like that in life, like what were those types of things that you turned to to try to like redefine what you actually wanted your life to look like?
Speaker 2
02:29
I mean, it was first a collapse of confidence in authority figures, where I'd grown up with everyone telling me about this singular reality that was going on, a certain thing is true, without any voice to say, you know, you may also want to consider the following point of views, and here are some other ways to understand reality. But no 1 gave me those toolkits in my in my thinking. And so after I emerged from that I thought, how do I trust any authority figure ever to give me proper advice?
Speaker 2
02:56
And that really was the first layer when it came crashing down. And The second 1 was when I studied cognitive behavioral therapy and I learned that my own mind was a disaster. And my biases, and my own hypocritical thinking, my irrationality, that in any given moment, my mind was spinning up some story of some variety. And I really couldn't trust the thoughts that came in default, hadn't trained my brain yet.
Speaker 2
03:21
And then it just kind of succession after succession came where I arrived at this observation that I really could not trust what my mind, the observations my mind were making, nor could I trust authority figures around me, nor could I trust, and so it was kind of like this collapse of all things around me, of what firm ground can I stand upon, and how long will it be firm before it collapses? Because I don't think there's any permanent firmness. It's all going to collapse at some point.
Speaker 1
03:54
Similarly, within the wellness and longevity community, there are so many unknowns. There are so many debates. Like, How did you even go about creating this protocol?
Speaker 1
04:03
Where did you find truth from?
Speaker 2
04:05
Yeah, great question. That's exactly what we were trying to do is health and wellness mirrors that of religion, where it's typically centered around a guru that has some kind of community based upon something, their life change or some story. And the community typically isn't persuaded by facts so much as by story and narrative.
Speaker 2
04:31
And so it causes a lot of confusion. And then the scientific community wasn't helping itself in that there was this idea that eggs were good for you, then they're bad for you. And then people say, we can't trust science either because they don't know what's going on and everything's just going to change all the time. And it created this problem in the community generally where people are like, well, what do we do?
Speaker 2
04:49
And no 1 knows. And I'd say that what we tried to do is we said, okay, if we tried to eliminate all human opinion from the situation and we took a different approach and we said, we're going to measure every organ of the body. We're going to legitimately say, hey, liver, how are you doing? And can you speak to us via data with MRI and blood draws and a bunch of stuff?
Speaker 2
05:11
We take that data and then we match it up with scientific evidence. We say, what are optimal clinical outcome ranges for liver health? Like what do you wanna see in a liver and what state can you get the liver in? And because there's like a liver looks and acts like a 10 year old and a 20 year old and a 30 year old, you're not gonna mistake an 80 year old liver with a 10 year old liver.
Speaker 2
05:31
And so there's a biological characteristics you can map. And so we just measured the organs, matched it with scientific evidence, and then said, okay, we're just going to look at this from a measurement and evidence perspective, and we're going to repeat it again and again. We don't care about opinion anywhere, We just want the evidence. And in doing that, we've produced in me the best health of my life.
Speaker 2
05:51
And then on, well, I guess like the most impressive things, we've reduced my speed of aging by the equivalent of 31 years. So I now accumulate aging damage at the speed slower than the average 10 year old.
Speaker 1
06:03
Wow.
Speaker 2
06:03
As a result of all these endeavors, I also have 50 perfect biomarkers. So if you look at my cholesterol, triglycerides, testosterone, they're all in the optimal clinical reference range, not just reference range. It's a tighter range.
Speaker 2
06:17
And then other things that are interesting, like my body's 3 degrees Fahrenheit cooler and other things. So yeah, we basically figured out a protocol where we achieved remarkably impressive biomarkers. And so I tongue in cheek say, blueprint is the best protocol ever created in human history. Prove me wrong with your data.
Speaker 1
06:40
When you are measuring so many different things at once, how do you create like causal links between things? And also looking at the blue zones and things like that, like relationships, your optimism, all these other things have associations with your overall health. So how do you measure those types of inputs, I guess?
Speaker 2
07:00
We, I guess, 2 ways. 1 is some things have very specific targets. So a specific supplement or exercise or something, whether we're looking like, whether is my tendon, my tendons and ligaments in my knees getting better or worse?
Speaker 2
07:16
We can look at the ultrasound and we can map it back to certain things. Or is my liver enzymes, are they improved or not? So you can sometimes do very targeted interventions, which isolate some variables. Others are more system-wide effects like rapamycin.
Speaker 2
07:32
And so it's, in short, it's hard. We can sometimes target, sometimes look at systematic. And we are doing many things at once. But we do try to isolate as much as possible, however imperfect it is.
Speaker 2
07:46
But yeah, your point is correct. It's hard. It's complicated. It's nuanced.
Speaker 2
07:50
We try to be precise where we can. It's not perfect. But I mean, we have chosen to do more things rather than less and try to make up for in measurement as a way to try to make sense of what is doing what.
Speaker 1
08:06
Could you walk me through, in a short version, what is your average day like? What is that blueprint, regimen, or schedule?
Speaker 2
08:16
It starts at roughly 5 in the morning and then I complete a 4 hour morning routine and that includes taking 50 pills, a certain drink, exercising for an hour, doing a half hour or so of therapies and then getting ready for the day. So it's just-
Speaker 1
08:33
So we're at like your afternoon already.
Speaker 2
08:36
Yeah, exactly. I've got a full day of working already, yeah.
Speaker 1
08:40
You say that you are feeling better than you've ever felt before. What do those hard moments during this protocol look like? Is it when you're really hungry or you're really tired?
Speaker 2
08:51
Yeah. I mean, I don't know about you, but the things I most value in my life have been achieved on the other side of pain. So when I encounter discomfort in anything, whether it be in hunger or in working out where I'm too tired or in a relationship or in something else, and I somehow figure out how to negotiate with that pain and when either in a completion of a great workout, or I'm pushing through to get homework done, or that extra little bit to do your work just that much better, I feel great. I think a lot of us feel great when we negotiate and push through pain.
Speaker 2
09:30
And so I'd say Blueprint has been, the primary objective for me is negotiating with pain. Is it's very painful and it requires enormous discipline. And there's so many jumping off points where you say, oh, I'm too hungry and you eat. Or I don't feel like working out today, you bail, or like, I just want to go out with friends and drink instead of going to bed on time.
Speaker 2
09:53
And really it's a negotiation with pain, is can you, because I mentally know these things are good for me. And so the question is, can I actually do what's in my best interest? Or am I going to jump off and be like, can't take it anymore. So to me, it really is comes down to my, that's my primary focus.
Speaker 1
10:17
That's such an interesting way to frame it. It makes a lot of sense. I also think it's very tied to this concept of temptation.
Speaker 1
10:23
I feel like temptation is like this core fundamental of the human experience. It's part of our like earliest religious texts, you know, like Adam and Eve. There's this narrative that like what makes us feel good can be bad for us and I'm just curious like how have you reframed temptation like in the early days of blueprint when you're like oh I'm starving I want to eat that I would love a drink right now or like you know I do a wanna I have FOMO and I want to go hang out with those people and it's 12 a.m. Or whatever it is.
Speaker 2
10:48
Yeah, so it's funny on your Adam and Eve comment, it's funny that you went there. We just chose a Blueprint female. So we're doing Blueprint XX.
Speaker 2
10:57
It's been the most commonly requested thing. Yeah. And I want to do an Adam and Eve photo shoot for the launch of this, of if we're going to rebirth humanity, what is it? And as part of the photo shoot, I want to include a snake.
Speaker 2
11:14
And I want to make the observation that we are the snake. The story of course is the devil's the snake and there's this outside person trying to get us to be evil and we're the righteous ones and we're the good ones and we have this epic battle against evil. I want to make the argument that we are the serpent. We've just been deflecting it the whole time.
Speaker 2
11:35
And I know that through this process of blueprint, I've had to go through and identify all of these versions of myself, most of which don't do things that are in my best interest. They're the ones that want to not do exercise, eat too much, bail out with friends. But to answer your question, I've had to remap my pleasure centers so that if I'm looking at a a pint of ice cream, I can model out my brain, if I eat this, I know what I'm going to feel like, it's not good. Yeah.
Speaker 2
12:04
Like you may get that pleasure for 15 seconds or 2 minutes or 3 minutes or whatever the number is. And then there's, I don't know, 3 days of pain as you're working off that feeling in your body as you're cycling through, why did I do that? That is not in my best interest. I've deviated.
Speaker 2
12:19
So to me, I can look at it now. I can model out the entire experience and be like, no, really not worth it.
Speaker 1
12:25
It's so interesting because we have probably all been through that experience thousands of times in our life and we still do it. And it's like, it's really wild that even as like super, you know, intellectual evolved beings, we still consistently fall into these things. Looking at you today, how old are you chronologically versus biologically?
Speaker 2
12:45
Chronologically, I'm 45 years old. And then biologically, I'm hundreds of different ages. My diaphragm is 18.
Speaker 2
12:53
My left ear is 64. My heart is
Speaker 1
12:55
37. Which biomarker or body part has proven to be the most difficult to reverse aging on?
Speaker 2
13:05
We've yet to regenerate my hearing. I've hearing damage from shooting guns as a kid, so we have not had any success with my left ear. Yeah, I'd say the hearing is probably 1 of the hardest.
Speaker 1
13:16
This concept of entropy, that there's a gradual decline into disorder and sort of a law of the universe everything follows this including ourselves. You can and you've managed to slow it down. Do you see a world where you can ever just pause it?
Speaker 2
13:31
I mean that's the dream. If I try to start at the basic premise of we exist, we are currently, we're all existing, we think. I would like to continue to exist.
Speaker 2
13:44
Like I don't want to die. I don't have the plans to die. And I think most of us in life don't have plans to die.
Speaker 1
13:51
If you could live forever, would you? Or what's the ideal number of years to live in a healthy way?
Speaker 2
13:55
Yeah. I would invite asking that question differently. The living forever breaks human brains. We don't have the capacity for that.
Speaker 2
14:10
So to me, the question that's relevant is, do you wanna live tomorrow? That's it, That's all we have to answer. And you probably have things going on tomorrow you want to do. I think most people do.
Speaker 2
14:22
So if we feel healthy and we're feeling physically healthy, mentally healthy, I think most people would say, Yes, I'll sign up for tomorrow. Yeah. And that's the only thing we care about as a species is do we want to exist tomorrow? That to me is tangible.
Speaker 2
14:39
It's practical. It's immediate. It plays to our, our sensibilities of how we try to solve the thing right in front of our faces all the time.
Speaker 1
14:47
That's fair. Forever is built off of endless tomorrows. It's really just a compounding of tomorrows.
Speaker 2
14:52
And we as a species, thinking long term is not our best sweet, not our best strength. Modern day humans are trying to get their next dopamine hit. So it's like, where in the next 15 seconds am I gonna get my stimulation from?
Speaker 2
15:06
Am I gonna check my phone? Right, it's like we're living on these timescales that are kind of insane.
Speaker 1
15:13
Looking at sort of the longevity space as a whole, there's a lot of interesting innovations going on in the gene therapy space. Have you tried gene therapy?
Speaker 2
15:21
We haven't. We want to.
Speaker 1
15:22
Would you try experimental gene therapy?
Speaker 2
15:24
Yes.
Speaker 1
15:25
What's the limit of what you would and wouldn't try just in general? Like How far are you willing to go? Where is that?
Speaker 2
15:32
We are extremely rigorous in safety and efficacy. So I would say we're potentially more safe than anyone else right now in terms of we are measuring everything. So yes, we're doing a lot of therapies.
Speaker 2
15:46
We're doing them at the same time. We also have a more robust measurement protocol than nearly anyone. And so we take risks but they're calculated risks based upon evidence and based upon measurement. So we're not being reckless in any way.
Speaker 2
16:03
And it's highly systematic. And if we did a gene therapy, be the same thing it would be because we've done all of our homework, we have all the safety and efficacy protocols in place.
Speaker 1
16:12
Yeah. Are there any current projects and research going on at other labs that you find super interesting?
Speaker 2
16:19
We keep tabs on a few dozen.
Speaker 1
16:21
Got it.
Speaker 2
16:21
Yeah. They're all so close and they're all just 1 or 2 years away, which means they're probably 3 to 5 years away. But there's so many things.
Speaker 1
16:29
We're at such an interesting point in this field where it's at the tip of our fingers and I think everyone feels that way. And it's like all generations wanna maximize their ability and access to it. 1 anti-longevity stance that people like Elon Musk, 1 reason he's sort of cited as not investing in a space, not putting his own time or resources into it is that he believes people don't change their minds, they just die.
Speaker 1
16:56
So this idea that for society to adopt new ideas and for new generations to come to power, you need the old guard essentially to die out. No 1 grows up, gets more power and wants to give it up. And a lot of people don't change their minds. How do you think about that?
Speaker 2
17:14
What do you think about that?
Speaker 1
17:15
What do you think about that?
Speaker 2
17:18
I mean, okay, so the observation is we have this insurmountable engineering problem that people can't change their opinions. We have an insurmountable problem of wealth transfer, like, okay, of all the hard engineering problems in the world, I wouldn't put those at number 1 and number 2. I mean, yeah, we have other harder problems.
Speaker 2
17:42
I wouldn't even raise those as even humorous suggestions that would justify that course of action.
Speaker 1
17:50
OK, that's that's fair. That's not a reason to sort of not work on the side
Speaker 2
17:55
at all. And it's so 20th century.
Speaker 1
17:58
OK, 1 other 1 other thing I sometimes think about is just like, what are the secondary consequences of life extension? I think about things like, people might have multiple jobs, right? They might get to have like multiple careers in their lifetime.
Speaker 1
18:13
You know, family dynamics might change because you're going to know a lot more generations of your family, retirements later. Is there anything you've thought about just like obvious or non-obvious sort of consequences of life extension?
Speaker 2
18:25
I do think about this a little, but not a lot, because I equate this with the horse manure problem of New York City. Where the horses were the dominant mode of transportation hauling around these different things. And there was so much horse manure in Chicago, it was in New York, it was very problematic.
Speaker 2
18:41
It was polluting the Hudson. People couldn't clear it fast enough. It was just a really bad situation. And so people were trying to solve the horse manure problem.
Speaker 2
18:48
And when the Model T came along, Henry Ford built that and horses went away. And so oftentimes the problems that you're identifying as needing to be solved, just get solved by virtue of the technology being developed. And then other problems emerge that you never expected. And so the car introduced all kinds of new problems in society that we're still trying to solve.
Speaker 2
19:12
And so I think it's interesting to identify what we think the problems are, but it's likely more important to have the self-awareness that we don't, we probably have not identified the correct problems.
Speaker 1
19:24
You have always sort of been at the center of your own research and development in a way that like, I can't really think of Any other CEO that has done this, like for ketamine, for kernel, you took ketamine to measure your brain and for blueprint, you're obviously like patient number 1. I guess just like, why do you do this? Is it to move faster?
Speaker 1
19:43
Is it to show commitment or what's your philosophy around it?
Speaker 2
19:51
It's the best way to understand your subject matter. To be in the trenches doing it, building it, using it, trying it. There's just no better way of building a product than being the product.
Speaker 1
20:03
But if someone were to read sort of just like 1 article with a headline that read something like, you know, tech founder spends millions of dollars to achieve like biological age of 18. That might seem like a vain conquest sort of for eternal youth. What is your reason in doing this?
Speaker 1
20:22
Why are you spending your time on this?
Speaker 2
20:27
Okay, so I love reading biographies. And when you read historical biographies, you learn about people in a certain time and place that discovered something that was cool. And then they start doing it or using it, and then society slowly learns.
Speaker 2
20:45
And so then sometimes you find out in a situation where it's like 20 or 30 or 40 or 50 years later, some people in the world find out of this really cool thing that happened, that they would have learned about this thing sooner, they would have made big life changes. And what I'm trying to communicate is a lot, we currently have this assumption that we are inevitably going to decay on our way to death. And what I'm trying to communicate is that may not be true. We may be here right now in a new era of being human, where we could imagine continued lifespan and health span.
Speaker 2
21:28
Of how long? I don't know. But it's possible that it's here right now. And so what I'm trying to communicate to everyone is, hey, we currently have these cultural norms that support this idea that we're all gonna die.
Speaker 2
21:43
So therefore we go out and we drink and we smoke and we stay a plate and we grind and we try to do all these things because we assume this short lifespan. And I'm saying those things are not a good idea because they accelerate your aging and they're gonna put you on a path of disease and death. So what would be the more interesting thing for everyone is to say, you know what, a brand new era is here. We don't know yet what's possible, but you don't want to be caught on the tail end of life when these things become possible.
Speaker 1
22:15
I guess like the rebuttal on that would be do you do you believe this sort of narrative? 1 is that, you know, age is beautiful, and death is a part of life and this natural cycle and don't fight it. The other thing is value comes from finite things.
Speaker 1
22:29
Just like How do you think about those 2 ideas?
Speaker 2
22:32
Those all sound like really pretty justifications for death. Great stories. And this is the thing, humans are really good at storytelling.
Speaker 2
22:42
And you take any given behavior a human does, it doesn't matter what it is. You can create dozens of pretty stories to support that behavior. So never be convinced by a pretty story, because your brain has an endless number of things to justify that given thing. But there's no bearing to reality on it.
Speaker 2
23:01
It's just a pretty story.
Speaker 1
23:03
And stories have led to a lot of destruction in human history.
Speaker 2
23:08
Yeah, I mean, that's the thing is, and you, like, if... It's really hard to imagine a new reality you haven't experienced. So if we were to try to break our brains and imagine a reality where we say our shared collective interests, the only thing we cared about was continually existing.
Speaker 2
23:33
That's it. We just want to be alive. We just want to be here together with each other. Now, of course, there's thousands of questions that spin up like, who's alive and who gets priority?
Speaker 2
23:43
Like, yes, of course, of course, of course. But instead of this race towards wealth accumulation and status and power and all the games we play right now, and towards all of our biochemical reactions of how we make ourselves, soothe ourselves with the challenges, what if we just as a species said, this is so precious and so remarkable that we exist. Let's protect it with everything we have. Be as careful as we can.
Speaker 2
24:10
Can we imagine an existence like that?
Speaker 1
24:12
I know you've written books in the past. I think that you should write a sci-fi book about this because I think sci-fi has often been what has allowed people to even imagine future scenarios that they can't otherwise like really accept being possible.
Speaker 2
24:26
Yes.
Speaker 1
24:26
I'd say the most common narrative against what you're doing I've seen is that like are you living if so much of your life is spent preserving life?
Speaker 2
24:37
So again, that's a self-protective story. They're trying to superimpose what they value onto me in doing that. I would say the rational thing here is if you look at the progression of science and how the speed at which anti-aging science is moving, if you can preserve being alive for some duration of time, your return on effort, your return on investment may be 10X or 100X or 1000X or more.
Speaker 2
25:13
You may be able to get that much more lifespan and healthspan if you can be around for these scientific discoveries. And so to me, that thought process would be relevant in the 20th century. So someone who lived in the 1900s, 1800s, like sure, live fast, die young, because there's no chance you're gonna break through. In the year 2023, you're now living in the past.
Speaker 2
25:38
You're not living according to the scientific data that would say, burn your life points down. And yeah, it's just, it's really a, an opinion of the past.
Speaker 1
25:52
Yeah, but sort of looking forward and confronting like how much is changing on the technology side of things. You've spoken about building this autopilot for yourself, right? And sort of building this like almost AI for human lifestyle, like this autonomous self.
Speaker 1
26:06
Do you see it any world in which there is sort of an AI element incorporated into blueprint down the line, whether that's like a brain chip in our minds that are telling us what to do based off of our body's real time data or just like customized protocols that AI could help sort of map out our biology and then create. Do you have any thoughts around that?
Speaker 2
26:26
I do. It's all I think about. Literally all I think about.
Speaker 2
26:30
So the acceleration of AI development is the biggest thing on planet Earth. It's the biggest thing to happen to the human race. It is, the level of importance is, even if we acknowledge it as the most important thing, it's still more important than that. And then if you say, okay, what can we do about this thing?
Speaker 2
26:52
I've been trying to figure out how to poke at this problem in a productive way. So 1 is there's a way, there's this conversation of how do you build safe AI? And then there's another thing of humans using AI to do bad stuff. And that's been the problem throughout history is we humans, we've always done bad stuff with new technology.
Speaker 2
27:12
We're reliably practitioners of that thing. And so what Blueprint is, I was trying to basically take me as a person and say, what are all the bad things I'm doing as an individual? And how do I get rid of these bad things for myself? I'm doing things that basically are war-like, violent-like actions on my own self, accelerating my aging.
Speaker 2
27:33
Now, like we've normalized this to be like, oh, it's just life and it's just fine. But it's actually, if you look at it, it really is violence on my own biological being, accelerating my death. And so I said, can I basically eliminate the violence as much as scientifically possible so I can have this harmonious environment? And that's when I started measuring all the organs of the body, blueprint base was born, organ measurement data speaks.
Speaker 2
27:57
And so now my mind is pushed aside. And so I've tried to make myself an N equals 1 example of, can you do goal alignment within humans and try to remove the worst parts of us that are prone to this violence and destruction, things we do to ourselves, to each other, to the whole world. And that to me is, I think, the highest value of Blueprint would be trying to achieve civilization scale goal alignment.
Speaker 1
28:29
It's interesting that you start out by seeing like, our initial machine that we're working with is actually pretty flawed.
Speaker 2
28:36
Exactly, I mean, so this is the thing. So a common theme in our conversation is, we humans, we really dislike confronting the unpleasant things about ourselves. So if we have certain behaviors that are truly corrosive, we'll make up a pretty story about why they should exist, or we'll ignore the topic, or it's all about AI, solving the AI alignment problem, but nothing about us humans, like our violence is just fine.
Speaker 2
29:05
The way we go to war with each other is just fine. So I've written a draft version of this, I call it zeroism, where I'm trying, and I'm really struggling with this. I'm making the argument in this current version, it's going to change this afternoon, I know, like it just changes every day. I'm trying to make the argument that we need a, a, like a, a COVID like response in moving towards non-violence as a species.
Speaker 1
29:36
Brian, I want to ask you about this concept of paradox of choice. I think humans want ultimate free will, ultimate options and autonomy over our life. But in reality, there's like psychological studies that show too many choices lead us to be less happy with our decisions, right?
Speaker 1
29:54
And in so many ways, modern society has only amplified the number of options we have. Essentially, what you're doing is like taking a lot of choices away from us.
Speaker 2
30:05
Okay, yeah, so there's a good historical analogy I think to capture the philosophy that I like. So in the early American colonies, 13 American colonies, there was a big debate whether the 30 colonies should try to have a democratic path of governance, or whether they should stay with the British as the monarch. And Thomas Paine wrote a pamphlet, Common Sense.
Speaker 2
30:26
And it was a time where the opinions were pretty strong on both sides. It wasn't clear. There were many people looking at this democratic process being like, you're, you're telling me we're going to run society, like trusting each other doing these things. And the other saying like, we really are better off being with a strong monarch.
Speaker 2
30:42
And Thomas Paine made the argument. He said, look, The monarch is ignorant. It does not know what's going on here. It has its own agenda on what it wants to do.
Speaker 2
30:51
It's corrupt. Like we cannot trust the monarch with our own best interests. He doesn't have the information that we need. Like we've got information on the ground.
Speaker 2
30:59
He's blinded to the realities he needs to make these decisions, like it is a bad system for everyone. And I would make the same argument right now that if we had the equivalent pamphlet right now, I would write, which was my first draft, I would write a common sense for a 0 century. And I would make the argument and say, our conscious minds are the is the corrupt monarch. We don't know what makes us happy.
Speaker 2
31:27
We like our we we turn to our mind or a K mind, tell me what's going to make us happy. And that leads us to all these bad behaviors. And what I want to propose as a an experiment, a blueprint was, if I got rid of my corrupt monarch, and I said, Okay, mind, you're out, you're not going to decide anymore what to do, I'm just going to ask the organs. So in the same situation where Thomas Paine said, power to the people in the democratic process, I said, power to my organs.
Speaker 2
31:55
I created a new power structure for me. Who wants what's best for me? And who knows what's best for me. Ironically, my liver is better than my mind on making life decisions.
Speaker 2
32:08
And so this is the thing is what most people, they see a blueprint and they say, I can't imagine being happy doing this because they're processing this through their mind. But as you said, the mind is so frequently wrong in what's going to give us happiness. We can't model it out. And then changing the power structure to my body, that to me has been the most liberating experience of my entire life.
Speaker 2
32:30
And now being on the other side of it, my mind is so much more happier. So my mind couldn't get me here. It had to get my body to get me here. And now my mind's like, okay, cool.
Speaker 2
32:39
You're right. Actually, I am more happy than I was before.
Speaker 1
32:42
Yeah. It's kind of a wild concept to like, lose faith in your mind, especially when you're someone that like you're running companies, right? So it's like, that's all, all of those choices are from your mind.
Speaker 2
32:53
It's the most counterintuitive thing a human can do. Because when we encounter an issue in life, the thing we turn to, our mind, inevitably. And we just are unfamiliar.
Speaker 2
33:03
There's another power source within you. We just haven't been able to tap it. Like some people call it intuition, but that's a different level than getting precise measurement from all these medical instruments of exactly what the body needs. So, I mean, yeah, I mean, it's- Do
Speaker 1
33:18
you try to get more in touch with your intuition? Is that, do you think about that level of mind?
Speaker 2
33:24
I mean, I guess there's 2 ways to say this. 1 is that because we measure so much, I've developed intuitions of awareness I didn't have before. So oftentimes I can feel my body temperature.
Speaker 2
33:36
I can feel when I'm like 95.9 versus 98 something. I know my heart rate almost at all times. I can feel things with greater sensitivity. I can wake up in the morning and I know what my sleep data is.
Speaker 2
33:49
Like I can feel how much deep I got and how much REM I got. So higher sensitivity because I've had all these iterations of improvements. Also, I've seen where my intuition goes wrong. So for the other day, I take 125 MCGs of liquid iodine every day.
Speaker 2
34:05
So just 1 drop on my tongue and it tasted really good. And I thought, does this mean I should do more? Like, is my body asking me for more? So I started doing it And then I had a blood work done and my levels came in high and my team's like, wait a second, that does not make any sense.
Speaker 2
34:21
And I was like, okay, I have a confession. I was doing 2 drops instead of 1. Like, oh, that makes sense. And so, intuition really is a delicate dance.
Speaker 1
34:32
So for health and what you're looking at, you can look at these quantified outputs of data and then adjust your decision making based off of that. What about all these other decisions in life that are also really important, like professional choices, relationships, how to seek happiness, how to build a fulfilling life, where there aren't these necessarily like quantifiable outputs. Is the idea that if you sort of automate that, you can show up to those better?
Speaker 1
34:56
Or like, how do you trust yourself in 1 domain and not the other?
Speaker 2
34:59
Yeah, I wouldn't trust myself in the other domains. And I would be the first to eagerly acknowledge that. And so I really, Blueprint, a lot of people ask about mental health and about meditation.
Speaker 2
35:11
And I've only focused on speaking about things I can reference data. Because the whole objective of the blueprint is trying to punch through the noise and try to find some stable ground everybody can stand on. Where if you're a person with good intentions for your health and wellness, you can do blueprint and be confident that you're roughly in the right spot. The moment I jump into these other spaces that don't have good data, my opinion is of neutral value.
Speaker 2
35:39
Because where does my authority come from, if not from data? And so as we get data, we try to extend out those things. But I'd say I would defer to others on, you know, people who are more, yeah, who have a better scientific grounding on how to speak about those topics.
Speaker 1
35:59
Okay, interesting. So you accept sort of your domain of expertise.
Speaker 2
36:02
I embrace it. Leaning into not knowing is a greater form of intellect than posturing knowledge.
Speaker 1
36:10
I couldn't agree more. I'm the first person to accept what I don't know, And I hope to never be in environments where I feel like I have to sort of like pretend I have opinions on things that I haven't really spent the time to be informed on if you were to Quit your regimen now or take a long pause on it Yeah, what would what would you see happen to your body or these biomarkers? Do they just instantly go back?
Speaker 2
36:33
I guess I know what happens to my behavior when it falls apart. So when 1 slip leads to another slip and leads to another, I personally am not of a kind of person that hangs out right in the middle. I typically swing to 1 side or the other.
Speaker 2
36:51
So for me, it's it's much easier to be all in than it is to be partially in. And so I think I would probably not do well outside of the protocol.
Speaker 1
37:02
So you have no plans to ever give it up or to relive back?
Speaker 2
37:07
I don't. In fact, that existence now seems miserable to me.
Speaker 1
37:12
Okay, I feel that when most people probably look at it from a third party perspective, they feel like you are sacrificing a lot to do this.
Speaker 2
37:20
That's right.
Speaker 1
37:23
I think the first 1 is, how does your social life exist in a fulfilling, positive way when you have these sort of strict guidelines, you can't really eat out, ideally, you would be sleeping in a bed alone, all these things.
Speaker 2
37:33
Yeah. I would say that when people look at Blueprint, they instantaneously make 10 assumptions about me and my life. And I would say they're probably all exactly wrong, exactly opposite of reality. So I personally have never been happier.
Speaker 2
37:52
I've never been more stable. I've never had better mental health. I've never had better physical health. I've never had more expansive mindset.
Speaker 2
38:01
Like I've never ever been better in my entire life. Before I was on this crazy roller coaster ride of emotions. I was not sleeping well. I felt foggy.
Speaker 2
38:11
I felt bad. I felt a little depressed. All those things are really negative. And I never want to experience those again.
Speaker 2
38:18
On the social life, I've never had a more vibrant social life in terms of people. I now because I signal so strongly what I do in life, I bring people to me that are like we have similar goals and objectives in life. And I've never had more connection in my social life ever. So ironically it's better than ever.
Speaker 2
38:38
And whether I sleep with someone in my bed or not, I mean, I don't think it's a big deal. I don't think I'm missing out on love or relationships because of that. So it's just, I think people do the knee jerk reaction they see different. They assume bad in part because they want to protect their own vices.
Speaker 2
38:55
But I think it's probably natural but it's Yeah, I don't feel like I'm missing out on anything and I would not trade it for anything.
Speaker 1
39:02
I think a lot of people that are, you know, have high intensity careers, they're founding and running a company, they look at this and it feels so unrealistic to them. Do you think you could have kept this up in the early days of starting and running Braintree Venmo?
Speaker 2
39:15
I'd say it's a very typical response to take what you know is your current reality and imagine anything else being impossible. So if you just take like a recent extreme like can you imagine the world shutting down 1 day everyone just staying in their house like globally? No.
Speaker 2
39:32
We would have said impossible, like that's never gonna happen. And then it happens and we're like, wow, it happened. And then can we imagine people actually functioning where everyone's remote? Not to say it's ideal, but can we function as a society somewhat?
Speaker 2
39:45
And so these things just, it's easy to remember, we oftentimes observe impossibilities just because they're not familiar with us, not because it's possible. And so, yes, I could have built brain tree Venmo in prioritizing my health. Now, could I do the entirety of blueprint while doing this? Probably not.
Speaker 2
40:01
Blueprint takes a lot of time. Could I make health my number 1 priority? Yes. It's just making practical life decisions on what to say yes to, what to say no to, doing planning.
Speaker 2
40:13
So yes, I mean, it's just We humans do impossibly hard things. And if we're making these hypothesis that it's impossibly hard to take care of our health, it's not true. Yeah. Just by design.
Speaker 1
40:28
It seems like, At least from our conversation right now, the positive outcome of you having to go through that experience in the past, where you completely recreate your worldview, is that you have this concept that worldviews can be flipped upside down. You're like, well, why not? It actually could exist.
Speaker 2
40:44
It's all a construct.
Speaker 1
40:46
My last question for you, Brian, is what are you most optimistic and excited for?
Speaker 2
40:56
I have loved the global conversation that has happened from Blueprint. All the hate and the vitriol and all the love, it feels like it hit a bullseye of the things we would benefit from talking about the most. And I'm energized by trying to take on this conversation.
Speaker 2
41:19
And I wonder if there's an opportunity here for us to rally as a species and say, you know what? This really is a special moment in time. We are going to remove the worst parts of humanity, of ourselves individually and of us collectively. And we are going to step into this next era of being human.
Speaker 2
41:42
We're not gonna be so silly to trade our future for a cheap thrill of a bag of chips and a pint of ice cream. We're not going to give in to these silly addictions and do them again and again. We're going to take this thing. And I love this thought experiment of what if we could time travel and we could put our 2050 selves in charge of us right now.
Speaker 2
42:05
So we weren't in charge. It was us in
Speaker 1
42:07
2050
Speaker 2
42:09
that were calling the shots. Like basically, if we made it over this horizon of this new world where we weren't doing these insane things as humans, You know, what would what would our future selves be doing? But I don't know, it feels to me like something really, really big needs to happen right now, in proportion to the development of AI, it needs to it cannot be too small of a reaction.
Speaker 2
42:33
It can't be an overreaction. It's gotta be just perfectly in proportion to. And I think that in proportion to probably exceeds what each of us initially says we're willing to do for change. We have such a low tolerance for discomfort before we cave, that we may need to recalibrate ourselves.
Speaker 2
42:51
And you know what? We're gonna toughen up and we're gonna do it together. I mean, I think that's it. That's to me, the move for the human race to make.
Speaker 2
43:01
And for everyone to come together, for us to stop doing these tribal warfare stuff and to figure out how we move together forward. And yeah, I guess I obsessively think about this and that's what I'm most excited about.
Speaker 1
43:12
Well, that's a very, very exciting prospect And I'm very excited for everything you're working on. And also admire that you've devoted all of your time and life and so many of your resources to doing this. There's a lot of people in technology that have made a lot of money that are chilling in Hawaii right now.
Speaker 1
43:30
Thank you so much. I'm going to link all of your channels. You have such a cool content team around you that's creating such a transparent view into your journey on Blueprint. And so it's been super fun for me to watch, and I'm sure everyone will love to watch it as well.
Speaker 2
43:44
Thank you very much. Appreciate that. I really enjoyed talking to you.
Speaker 1
44:01
Thank you. You
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