“It’s automaton,” Flicka says, correcting me, placing the accent on the second syllable of the word.
Apparently, I’ve never said the noun aloud—only read it—and assumed the first two syllables sound like the thing we drive.
The word surges through my mind as if it’s the only one out there to describe tech billionaire Bryan Johnson, who some call the most measured human on the planet.
I discovered Bryan in December of 2023 and can’t move past his videos demonstrating the daily routines he developed along with his thirty closest scientific professionals. Daily, he eats a vegan diet, ingests 111 supplements, exercises an hour (at times running on a treadmill, wearing what looks like an oxygen mask with a hose trailing from it), adheres to rigid bedtime practices, and sleeps with monitors and electrodes affixed to his body. The machines measure seventy of his organs, and through his intense regimens, he seeks to reverse the quantified biological age of each. He performs daily health tests and spends two million a year on his experiments, offering his body as both guinea pig and gift to us. And now we onlookers can follow his ways through a membership that costs only $333/month.
Bryan’s ultimate goal? Don’t die. And he wears the T-shirt—those two words in all caps—to remind himself and others.
I’m glued to the comment sections of his YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels.
“He somehow looks incredibly healthy and terminally ill at the same time.” “What an inconvenience to prolong the inevitable.” “He’s a super advanced AI bot. They’re here, ladies and gents.” “Imagine if bro does all that and slips on a banana or something.” “Bryan is top-notch for sharing all of his research and findings with the world.” “He lives his life as an experiment so the rest of us can learn from him.”
Another guy, A.J. Jacobs, American journalist and author, is also known for writing about lifestyle experiments. After a bout of tropical pneumonia and feeling ashamed by his middle-aged body he thought resembled “a python that swallowed a goat,” he set out to become the healthiest man in the world. His 2012 book, Drop Dead Healthy: One Man’s Humble Quest for Bodily Perfection, takes the reader along on a hilarious romp where A.J. tries all the workouts, diets, and gadgets.
I consider these two men and think of my own goals for good health and possible longevity: Eat 80% well 70% of the time. Exercise. Love God and people. And since I can't not die, I embrace the following truths: My body is a temple, a living sacrifice, a tent of flesh. Life is a vapor that appears a short while; I came from dust and will return to it; my days are numbered.
While Bryan Johnson gets another blood transfusion from his seventeen-year-old son and A.J. Jacobs plays with the practice of extreme chewing, I'm bundling up to collect my steps outside on this winter day.
They did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death.
No fear in life—or death. That's my ultimate goal.
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