Snake Venom, Urine, and a Quest to Live Forever: Inside a Biohacking Conference Emboldened by MAHA

Whatever myriad of elixirs Asprey is using, it does, on a superficial level at least, appear to be working. At 52, he looks great, standing out in a conference awash with obvious botox and plastic surgery. In his slicked-back hair, punk leather outfits, and signature glasses, it’s hard to believe the picture he paints of his former self, resembling “the 300-pound computer hacker from Jurassic Park.” He seems to have even achieved a younger man’s temperament: rapping “I’m a Little Teapot” onstage; dancing shirtless and gawky before the masses during Aoki’s set, surrounded by a coterie of women, one of whom attempted to flash him, unhooking her bra before being whisked offstage.

For a man desperately trying for timelessness, Asprey is certainly a man of the times—a wealthy entrepreneur at the head of a populist movement that vehemently opposes government regulation. He shares his de facto leadership of the biohacking sphere with a few other rich renegades, most notably Bryan Johnson, the venture capitalist whose Blueprint Protocol makes Asprey’s centenarian goals look quaint. Johnson aims for immortality outright—“DON’T DIE” screams his own movement’s slogan—and has even vampirically infused himself with his own son’s blood in the quest for the fountain of youth.

Not everyone at the conference strives for Asprey-Johnsonian extremes. Then again, not everyone at the conference is in their tax bracket. Some simply want to age with grace and vim, not blunted by medication or hobbling through hospice. In a true embodiment of the conference’s “Beyond” theme, some even have plans grander than this carnal plane. Attendee Joni Winston, who runs a wellness center in Costa Rica, tells me she is either 68 or 52, “depending on which calendar you use.” At age 60, she started counting backward, so that when she reaches her intended 120, she can claim the nirvanic age of 0. “I want to make as much progress in this life as I can,” Winston says, “so that when I die I can go to a different dimension and not have to deal with this 3D Matrix shit.” In the meantime, though, she’d still like to look good. “I’m not devoid of vanity. Spiritual evolution is my primary goal, but I’m still human, you know?” Others are simply afraid of the slow, painful crawl through old age and, of course, death itself. Melanie Avalon, 34, host of a biohacking podcast, tells me: “I’ve been haunted by the concept of aging since I was 12 ... And ever since then I’ve been searching for ways to stall the aging timeline ... I don’t know if immortality is possible, but if there is a way to practically move toward that, it’s biohacking.”

If the practice sounds inherently self-interested, that’s because it is. By definition, biohacking requires profound interest—often supplemented by large investments of time, energy, and capital—in the self. A certain Ayn Randian individualism rang through the halls of the Fairmont. But there was also a highly communal, near-revolutionary air here: a fervor to spread the good word, to empower the masses, to enact a grand subversion.