Bryan Johnson, the centimillionaire biohacker, is pivoting in his live-forever strategy. This week, he claimed to have “cloned” himself — reprogramming stem cells to create newborn versions of his cells in a petri dish, which, he hopes, might one day be used to grow replacement organs. Having begun by trying to make his body 18 again, he is now attempting to manufacture youth outside it.
Johnson first beamed into my life in Miami in November 2023, when he gave a keynote address remotely at a psychedelics and longevity conference after going viral earlier that year. “Travel is really disruptive to sleep and to diet,” he said, wearing a t-shirt bearing the words “DON’T DIE.” He hadn’t attended in person because the algorithm tasked with continuously analysing his biometric data and reducing his biological age (yes, he had subjugated his health to the cold, hard logic of a machine) had apparently vetoed a three-hour disruption to his circadian rhythm with the coast-to-coast trip.
In the video call, Johnson — who made $300m (£225m) from the 2013 sale of his payment services company, Braintree, which owned Venmo — recounted some of his outlandish experiments as part of his $2m (£1.5m) a year quest for everlasting life. “I did, in fact, receive one litre of plasma from my 17-year-old son,” he said, joking about holding him captive in a tiny basement room by way of rebuking headlines about him that are “disconnected from reality”.
