Magdalena Wosinska
Bryan Johnson, the 48-year-old centimillionaire and nocturnal-erection-measuring longevity influencer, sits in the lotus position on a white loveseat, his knees grazing the knees of Kate Tolo, his 29-year-old business partner and, today, his spiritual guide through his psychedelic mushroom trip. "My body feels so nimble and supple and loose," he says. "Everything feels youthful."
Like thousands of people watching the livestream on X, YouTube, or Instagram, I spent a portion of my Sunday watching "Bryan Johnson Takes Magic Mushrooms," a new entry into the Thanksgiving family entertainment canon in which Johnson took 5.24 milligrams of mushrooms, a near-heroic dose, "for science." I watched the entire five-and-a-half-hour production, "for journalism," to document a new phase in tech elites' evolving experimentation with psychedelics.
Observing the entrepreneur touch God's flesh in a plant-filled living room, share how he felt like a newborn baby while peeing, and be joined by his son, his father, Grimes, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, and several other business leaders cheering him on and extolling the virtues of longevity science was a surreal, moving, and at times nauseating trip itself — and I fear my grip with reality may now be permanently lost.
Johnson's life's mission is to vanquish death. As he notes on the livestream, he is "targeting 2039 as the date we arrest aging." To do this, he is spending $2 million a year on an elaborate daily anti-aging regimen that includes 5 a.m. light therapy, several dozen supplements, an hour of exercise, and eating a macadamia nut, pomegranate juice, and pea protein mixture he calls "nutty pudding."
He postulates that taking magic mushrooms may also be a key protocol to living forever, or at least past 120; some studies suggest they may help extend the lifespan of mice, reduce inflammation, and increase neuroplasticity. So to begin testing that hypothesis — and to do what Johnson does best, preach the longevity gospel with content — Johnson decided to trip on X.
Lest the viewer switch over to NFL games or venture outside and experience what Johnson would soon call — while baked out of his gourd — "the gorgeous gift of existence," he puts up a slide listing his bona fides: His muscles are in the 98th percentile of all men, his blood pressure is lower than 90% of 18 year olds, his bone mineral density is in the 99th percentile, and he's more fertile than 99 percent of all men. Then he teases a tip for the men who want to join his ranks: You should do sauna daily, but before you do, "you have ice on your boys, otherwise it wrecks your fertility markers."
"We are in a legal environment," says Johnson. Soon after, his business partner asks him to take his shirt off.
He then pivots from frosting balls to tripping balls. "Mushrooms are a really serious molecule," Johnson cautions. "We are in a legal environment." Soon after, his business partner asks him to take his shirt off. He obeys, and Tolo shoots his naked chest with a thermal gun, recording his upper body temperature.
This is one of 249 biomarkers Johnson takes of himself before, which he remeasures after he takes the mushrooms, as part of the "most quantified psychedelic experiment in history." Tolo collects his saliva, tests his reaction time, and measures his brain activity via a snowboard helmet-shaped device that measures the brain's oxygen levels (Johnson founded Kernel, the maker of the helmets, in 2016). While this science experiment unfolds, hundreds of incisive comments stream in, like "my telomeres are so long" from @lasercupcake, "are skidmarks biomarkers" from @bobfreakman and "what is the ideal age to poop" from @jaredafrica.
Johnson and his business partner have a distinctive synergy. "Kate just makes everything better, everything is better with Kate," Johnson says of Tolo. A few minutes later, she gently puts a metal Slinky on his knee, and he closes his eyes in ecstasy. She then gently rubs his back in silence. Later, while lying in bed during the peak of his trip, Johnson holds his business partner's hand in silence for 20 minutes.
Before ingesting, Johnson sets an intention for his trip. With rapid advancements in AI, he says, "this is a sobering moment to be a human." This trip is an opportunity to help put humanity on a path where "existence itself is the highest virtue, it's not wealth, it's not power, it's not status."
Because it's illegal for Johnson to show on screen the thing everyone tuning in has come to see him do — take the shrooms — when he does, a red cartoon Alice in Wonderland-like mushroom appears over his face as he downs them.
Minutes later, Talmage Johnson, 20, one of Johnson's three children, joins the livestream from a separate video feed.
"What's it like seeing your dad do a psychedelic like this?" Johnson asks.
"For some reason, I don't really bat an eye. It's kind of expected at this point," Talmage says. Johnson has also infused himself with his son's plasma, and has publicly compared the force of his nighttime erections, which he ritually measures, with his son's on X. (The younger Johnson's johnson just edged out the elder's, with 184 minutes of hardness to dad's 182 minutes.)
"I have to say, Talmage really is a phenomenal son," Johnson says. "I love you very much. I think you're amazing."
"Mmm. I could not have said it better," Talmage says.
Just when I start to think, "Am I tripping?" I'm reminded of something Bryan Johnson said in an interview with Wired earlier this year: "Bryan Johnson in 2025 is a normal dude in 2030."
Some 30 minutes after he takes the shrooms, they hit him, and he says the sorts of things teenage YouTubers say in videos of their drug trips. "I feel a lot more love, a lot more compassion immediately," he says. "Everything's alive." He plays with a Slinky for five minutes.
For the next 20 minutes, the livestream is in a quad screen. In the upper left is the journalist Ashlee Vance, sitting in his kitchen in front of a framed poster of a quote from the comedian Bill Hicks: "Don't worry, don't be afraid ever, because this is just a ride." Below him is the entrepreneur and investor Naval Ravikant, who tells Vance "I don't want to die either," and calls Johnson "a one-man FDA."
And beside him, huddled close in a living room, are the entrepreneur and "All-In" podcaster David Friedberg and Benioff, who tells Vance they're beaming in from a "super secret location" before expounding on his bible study that morning, which was about the Genesis story of Jacob's Ladder. Vance interviews them as the entrepreneurs explain the science of stem cells. All four men take heaping sips of what appears to be coffee — Friedberg and Benioff with matching venti Starbucks holiday cups — but Johnson, who does not drink caffeine because it "creates too much of a metabolic roller coaster," is not present to chastise them. He's in the bottom right screen, lying under the covers of a twin bed, wearing a sleep mask and wriggling like a worm.
Johnson, the star of the show, remains supine and masked for more than two hours.
In 1653, a 15-year-old Louis XIV starred in a 12-hour-long ballet at the Louvre, performing before the royal court and ambassadors of every European nation to display his mastery over mind and body and the prowess of French culture. The lifespan in France at the time was about 30. Johnson's marathon livestream is something of the 2025 equivalent, a prince of tech displaying his mastery over mind and body and the prowess of technology — and its promise to expand our lifespans, so that we enjoy ever more years of consuming marathon livestreams.
At some point during Grimes' DJ set — a thing that also happened — the stomach bug that'd been going around my 5-year-old's kindergarten class hit her, and she threw up. I'd never been more relieved to have to clean up vomit.
When I return 20 minutes later, Johnson is doing post-trip analysis with his son and his father. "We like you even more on shrooms," Johnson's father says.
Johnson asks Talmage to write down and then share a favorite memory with his father. His son recounts a time Johnson brought a calzone to his school.
"Parents: It's worth it. Kids suck on so many levels," Johnson says, tears in his eyes. "They're also like the most majestic creations within our reach."
Just before the livestream ends, Talmage reflects on what he and some very online corners of the world just witnessed over the past 334 minutes — just half an hour shy of his and his father's combined duration of their nighttime erections. "When people see this," he says, "they'll see he's just like one of us. He's human."
Zak Jason is the executive editor of Business Insider's Discourse team.