🧬🛍 27 - Mirror, Mirror on the wall, who's the YOUNGEST of them all?
About Blueprint, Billionaires, and Bacchanals
Hello 👋 and welcome to Curation for Longevity by Laura Minquini. In this newsletter, I look into what could help make longevity the next big DTC (Direct To Consumer) lifestyle category.
A lot of you sent me the screenshots of this story and my Twitter was flooded with it this week, so let’s talk about Brian Johnson’s Blueprint.
Mirror, Mirror on the wall, who's the YOUNGEST of them all? 🪞
Let me start with two observations from one of my past life. (When my book “ From Mexico to Monaco and Beyond. The nine lives of Laura Minquini” comes out, I will figure out which one I am on right now).
So, in my past life in Monaco, I obviously got to know some wealthy people. Thank the lord for this as I have been permanently inoculated from the fawning and thirst that I see a lot of young men display on Twitter over people with wealth. No offence to my friends, you are special, but putting you on altars for the mere fact of having money, seems absurd to me.
One thing that I learned is that even people with all the money in the world have to deal with status games. In Monaco, it was all about access to the Prince. If you knew the number of foundations and charities that are created so that their presidents can have the Prince as their guest…
I was happy to hear recently that my favourite and only authentic Mexican restaurant “Sexy Tacos” got an amazing spot on the newest development in the principality, simply because the Prince liked the tacos and in all fairness, Jose, the chef and owner, is one of the nicest people ever. The ultimate status is being able to get things because you are talented or nice, not because you threw money at them to make them happen.
So, no matter how much wealth you attain, there’s always going to be another metric to pine for, or status to attain. A fact of human nature.
The second observation is about a party, and now a massive enterprise, called Billionaire Porto Cervo. An ex-manager of the Benetton Formula One team got enough insights about what moves people, (and schemes to move lots of money), that he started a party/club in Porto Cervo called Billionaire. The premise was the person who bought the most champagne would get the badge of the biggest billionaire for that night. They get a procession of the bottles, fireworks, and the 5 minutes of the glory of everyone knowing that person had the most money to plunge without batting an eyelid.
In one Grand Prix party I attended the biggest billionaire for the night - before I left - had spent a quarter of a million euros, as the party progresses the numbers go up. I wonder what the numbers are at these days with inflation.
This brings me to Blueprint and Brian Johnson which in all honesty feels like the extreme opposite but on the same spectrum.
It’s all about insatiable metrics, and a bacchanal of wealth that makes most shake their heads.
And please note, what people do with their wealth is their own business. But if you put yourself in the public realm to ascribe yourself as the pioneer of biohacking, breaking world records, or start a rejuvenation Olympics with you at the top of the leaderboard. It’s a free for all. If anything, Brian Johnson is getting the notoriety he desires. The marketing strategy is top-notch.
I respect and admire discipline, most of us have a hard time with it. It is absolutely true that all good things are attained by perseverance and sacrifice. There is no denying that.
So back to Blueprint; thanks to the clickbait headline Bloomberg ran with about plunging 2 million to look 18 years old again, Johnson made the rounds on social media.
The notion is that he is spending all this money, and sharing his regime so that you too can do it. Something about a new way of life, the opposite of being a slave. To follow the regime to the line, you would still require the money and time he has, but alas, it is out there. Only possibly replicable for the 1% male population, but public.
I can hear the young men on Twitter saying, “this is coping”, “what he is doing it’s revolutionary”, “OMG genius”…
They forget that many have been working on this, or that the #SciComm and health bros like Huberman, and Attia, have been communicating science and protocols for years now. Brian, in their impressionable minds, is the new goat, patient zero.
In addition to your Blueprint, you can also join the Rejuvenation Olympics with Brian as the leader on the scoreboard. The whole thing feels so self-masturbatory, especially when quoting being an Ascetic. Newsflash: when you desire to remain young and do everything to remain this way is the opposite of self-denial. Then come the fans who start to write essays about this new revolution…I can’t tell if they are looking for new jobs, or investments (he was a prolific investor), or to bask in the white skin glow of Brian’s rejuvenated skin, but the whole thing is cringe beyond belief. And my comment here is on the people that would win the Olympics of fawning over tech millionaires that are into longevity, not so much Brian himself. His goal is transparent, like his Twilight skin.
What is annoying in the situation is that these headlines and self-ascribing of labels take away from the true pioneers; the researchers and scientists labouring with limited funds to research how to accomplish new feats in science. Moreover, there are tons of people who have been doing this for a while. I mean, Liz Parrish has gone as far as doing gene therapy on herself.
Most importantly, his routine and the study and algorithm by which he tracks his biological age, are just one way to measure it, there are other people who have shown greater age reduction so his “world record”, is 100% contestable. He touts one way to measure things, but this is not the only one, and certainly NOT THE ONE. And when you consider that what works for one human does not work for the next one, there’s a lot to question on the efficacy. Dr. Morgan Levine, who is an expert in epigenetic clocks had something to say:
I also recommend watching this video by aging biologists Andrew Steele, he goes over the entire “pioneering” routine.
A cultish group with Brian Johnson as their ring leader is perfect for those with a maniacal commitment to staying young/longevity. I am not going to be an “eat pizza, live a little” person. I do think there is something very powerful about being so committed to your health, however, I do wonder if this is also not a way of coping (in group therapy) to try to fight what for now is inevitable. Only time will tell.
In any case, when we figure out if our pets can live longer or if rejuvenation & extension of ovarian life happen, please ring me up. That’s what I will call “pioneering” and “world-changing” advancements in longevity. Everything else feels like something between The Hunger Games and The Picture of Dorian Gray.
P.S.- Can someone figure out what DJ Tiesto is doing? He is 54, still touring around the world, staying up late at night (which is the opposite of what one should do for longevity) and he looks pretty good. More importantly, he seems to have a cool joie de vivre.
Maybe the secret to all longevity is to do what you love.