Magdalena Wosinska
A new documentary has arrived on Netflix, just in time for New Year's resolution season. It follows Bryan Johnson, or "that guy" in longevity, the tech founder who's tried pretty much everything — from fasting to infusing his son's blood plasma — all to reverse-age his body.
The doc, "Don't Die: The Man Who Wants to Live Forever," streaming now, attempts to peel back the curtain on Johnson, who's become a cult leader in longevity biohacking.
As a reporter covering longevity, I've met Johnson several times over the past couple of years. We first met in September 2023 at the RAADfest — a "Revolution Against Aging and Death" — near Disneyland in California. I interviewed him in a hotel room to avoid crowds of his adoring fans.
In October 2024, I visited him at home — the same one depicted in "Don't Die." While the 90-minute doc travels back in time to Johnson's Utah roots in the Mormon church (along the way, we meet his parents, his eldest son Talmage, and his longtime business partner, Kate Tolo, who's largely responsible for Johnson's internet success), in real life, Johnson's home is a bit less picture-perfect than what viewers saw onscreen.
Netflix
As the documentary shows, Johnson's home is a private, shrubbed-in concrete mansion on an unassuming Los Angeles street. It's a big, empty space perfect for filming everything from YouTube shorts to naked photo spreads.
It's giving influencer; less of a home than a well-equipped stage with studio lights, sandbags, and social media staffers.
Still, the house displays some small but humanizing details of his everyday life, ones we don't see as much of in the film.
In addition to being a decent stage, this home is Johnson's safe house, seemingly shielding him from a world of potential pollutants in food, water, and air. The big windows all have UV filters. The water is purified. The fridge is full of nutty pudding prepared by his chef, and the garage has been transformed into a home gym.
When I was there, I saw a few subtle signs that Johnson actually lived in the house: a half-empty bottle of rosé left in the refrigerator door, some Xbox controllers on the couch, and family photos taped up above the kitchen range.
Johnson is always tweaking his longevity "protocols," but his ethos is consistent.
He warns that corporate forces of fast food and institutionalized healthcare are making us sick. He told me he'd started his Blueprint corporation to offer people an alternative, to take control of their health and longevity.
In many ways, he echoes Robert F. Kennedy' Jr's call to "Make America Healthy Again," extolling the health virtues of preventive care, clean eating, and hitting the gym.
Johnson started his "Don't Die" brand with a specially-labeled olive oil. It now extends to a blood plasma microplastic test, a "Don't Die" app, and a line of powders, supplements, drinks, and prepared meals you can order online.
The documentary highlights the deep disconnect between the influencing Johnson is doing online, and actual geroscience and human longevity research going on professionally.
The film includes interviews with some of the world's most esteemed longevity scientists, including Dr. Andrea Maier, Brian Kennedy, Matt Kaeberlein, and Steve Horvath, the guy who pioneered the scientific idea of a "biological age."
Perhaps the most apt scientific commentary in the film comes from Havard aging researcher, Vadim Gladyshev. "What Bryan does, I guess, brings attention to our field — this will be positive," Gladyshev says. "But it has almost no contribution to science, right? It's not science. It's just attention."
It's attention that many longevity clinics and elite longevity doctors are seeing drive new business. More than 70% of the 72 longevity clinicians who participated in an ongoing online survey by the website Longevity.Technology, said that they feel Johnson "contributes to" instead of "hinders" the progress of longevity medicine. Some say he helps grow awareness for what longevity scientists hope, but can't be sure, will be some real human longevity science advances someday.
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"We are experimenting, and we are trialing out, and I think we will have a revolution in the next coming 10 years of very specific interventions we can apply to humans," Maier says in the film.
Whatever real-deal longevity interventions may exist for humans in the future will likely be tightly tailored to each individual, not one-size-fits-all protocols. Leading longevity scientists and doctors already agree on this. So far, not one supplement or drug has been proven to slow down human aging. Instead, longevity experts have said regular exercise and good nutrition can help.
As I've covered longevity, I've met Johnson's followers, ranging from curious onlookers to devout copycats of his evolving formula.
Onscreen, we watch an eye-popping transformation of a once devout Mormon kid, becoming a new dad in his 20s, then a stressed tech founder operating on minimal sleep, losing his faith and sinking into a deep depression.
Johnson now has his own growing cult of followers worldwide. They throw dance parties and organize hikes from California to Singapore.
Since filming wrapped, Johnson has traveled to China and India to promote the "Don't Die" movement in new countries. He's also created a new "Don't Die" app for his followers to connect with one another wherever they live.
Netflix
Once the cameras were turned off and the show was over, I left the documentary feeling much like I did when I left his house.
Johnson seems to be eagerly wrestling with how to live his healthiest, most fulfilled life. He's a dad of three who cried in the aisles of Target when his firstborn son went off to college. He's a dutiful son — according to the documentary, he's the only person who visited his dad in jail.
It seems what he's endlessly searching for — along with peace and well-being — is clicks, follows, and sales. It's a logical next business move for the guy who once ran Venmo: turning the longevity movement into one more thing we can shop for on the internet.
