The guest
Bryan Johnson: Founder of Kernel, which builds non-invasive brain-measuring devices (Flow and Flux). Previously founded the payments company Braintree, which acquired Venmo and was itself acquired by PayPal/eBay.
What this episode covers
Lex Fridman wears Kernel's Flow brain interface to open the episode while Bryan Johnson explains how spectroscopy-based devices can measure cortical activity comfortably and at scale. Johnson argues that human cognition is the largest unquantified input into society and that populating an ecosystem with brain-measuring devices (a 'Drake equation' strategy) will surface valuable applications. The conversation ranges across his data-driven diet that 'fires' his conscious mind, sleep optimization, depression and his religious upbringing, psychedelics, privacy, and how Kernel differs from Elon Musk's invasive Neuralink. Johnson recounts building Braintree from door-to-door credit-card sales and a transformational near-death summit of Kilimanjaro. He closes by framing the meaning of life as goal alignment and the chance to play infinite games as intelligence costs fall toward zero.
Recommended on this episode
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Waking Up
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“very much uh recommend it”
“i started using started meditating using his app waking up but very much uh recommend it it'd be interesting to get data on that”— Lex Fridman
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Deep Work
Cal Newport
“i'm a big fan of uh cal newport his ideas of deep work”
“i'm a big fan of uh cal newport his ideas of deep work that uh i spend uh with few exceptions i try to spend the first two hours”— Lex Fridman
BookRecommended
Zero: A Biography of a Dangerous Idea
Charles Seife
“i think it's my favorite book i've ever read”
“i read the book zero a biography of a dangerous idea and i i have a really good book by the way it's i think it's my favorite book i've ever read”— guest
The guest's own work
ProductBy the guest
Kernel Flow
Kernel
“so what we'll do is so you're wearing kernel flow which is an interface built uh using technology called spectroscopy”— guest
ProductBy the guest
Kernel Flux
Kernel
“kernel flux our amyg technology is going to give you the full movie in 1080p okay and neuralink is going to give you a circle on the screen of 4k”— guest
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Braintree
Bryan Johnson
“and so then i started braintree and the idea was the online world was broken because paypal had a uh had been acquired by ebay”— guest
Also referenced (named, not recommended)
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Fitbit
Fitbit
“even just like a fitbit that measures i don't know some very basic measurements about your body is really cool but it's the the bandwidth of information”— Lex Fridman
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AlphaGo
DeepMind
“i would argue that if you look at alphago when it played go from another dimension with the the human go players when it saw alphago's moves”— guest
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Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency
Douglas Adams
“whereas dirk gently the holistic detective by douglas adams says i don't like eliminating the impossible”— guest
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GPT-3
OpenAI
“what if we gave gpt3 a bunch of human brains and said hey gpt3 learn some manners when you speak”— guest
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Neuralink
Neuralink
“he has a company in one of the many companies called neuralink that has uh that's also excited about the brain”— Lex Fridman
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Coinbase
Coinbase
“i think we were the first company to integrate coinbase into our i think we were the first payments company to formally incorporate uh crypto”— guest
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Athletic Greens
Athletic Greens
“i only take uh athletic athletic greens.com that's like the multivitamin essentially yeah that's like the lazy man”— Lex Fridman
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Braveheart
Mel Gibson
“i just looked up braveheart speech and william wallace but i know you've seen it fighting you may die run and you'll live”— Lex Fridman
BookReferencedISBN verified
Finite and Infinite Games
James Carse
“james karst wrote the book finite games infinite games the only game to play right now is to keep playing the game”— guest
Big reveals from this episode
- Johnson self-funded the first $53 million of Kernel and pitched 228 investors before one said yes.
- Johnson reveals he and Elon Musk explored working together early on, and Musk considered joining Kernel before founding Neuralink.
- Johnson made a 'bet the company' move, shifting Kernel from invasive to non-invasive brain technology.
- Johnson admits he suffered chronic depression for 10 years and 'desperately wanted lights to be off.'
- He describes his 13-year marriage ending and leaving his religion as the darkest period of his life.
- Bryan tracks over 200 biomarkers every 90 days and lets the data, not his conscious mind, build his shopping list.
- On Kilimanjaro, deathly ill with blood oxygen around 50%, he summited at 5am and credits Eminem for getting him through.
- Kernel internally flags 'human intuition alert' to stop relying on guesses and trust data-driven discovery instead.
Worth remembering
- Kernel Flow has 52 modules, each with one laser and six sensors, yielding over a thousand channels of brain activity.
- Johnson eats once a day around 8:30am, including a 'super veggie' pudding of broccoli, cauliflower, and a 'nutty pudding.'
- He reports a resting heart rate as low as 42 during sleep when his eating is timed correctly.
- His testing regimen includes blood panels, microbiome tests, DNA methylation, and neurotransmitter analysis.
- Kernel has nearly 100 employees, including roughly 36-37 PhDs in specialized fields.
- Johnson became the #1 credit-card salesperson out of 400 nationwide while working part-time on another startup.
- PayPal's margins were about 3% per transaction versus a typical payments company's few cents.
- Johnson calls 'Zero: A Biography of a Dangerous Idea' his favorite book ever, inspiring his 'zeroth principle' thinking.
- He considers sleep a contender for the most powerful health intervention in existence, tied directly to willpower.
- He notes biology may soon let us replace or regenerate every organ except the brain.
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