The Longevity Bros Are Fighting

Influencer tantrums. Back-stabbing biohackers. Epstein files. The meticulously monitored shit hit the fan over the last week as social media’s loudest longevity nerds threw their quantified selves into a battle royale that has ruptured the bro optimization internet and likely caused a collective cortisol spike that is surely not optimal.

Bryan Johnson vs. AG1

It all started last week, when longevity influencer Bryan Johnson got his hands on a 2024 study involving AG1—the nutritional supplement that sponsors popular podcasts that Johnson has not yet been on as a guest—and railed on the product’s ineffectiveness. “I’d cancel your AG1 subscription,” he began. “They just completed a clinical trial and the results show no clinical benefit.”

Obviously, AG1 had not just done anything. The study is over a year old. But it is worth noting, just for the record, that the study in question was not a wholesale discreditation of AG1’s value, as Johnson’s tweet implies. The clinical trial was focused primarily on gut health and safety, and set out to observe how well the body tolerated the supplement. AG1 actually improved levels of two gut probiotic strains in the clinical trial. And the product was found to cause no gastrointestinal distress or other adverse effects on digestive quality. In fact, it may have potentially improved it, albeit marginally.

It’s possible Johnson’s beef wasn’t simply with just the product itself. His tweet, which labeled the company as “an influencer heist,” came across as more of a subtweet against the likes of fellow longevity podcasting peers Andrew Huberman and Peter Attia, who have benefitted from the brand’s global success. And after AG1 schooled the influencer with a firm but fair “Bryan, this year-old study doesn’t say what you’re claiming,” he just came out and said it: “Let’s be real. You pay influencers $$$$ to promote. Not because it’s worth $79, but bc you all get rich.”

Little did Johnson know he would soon be pulled into his own online scandal. On Friday the US Department of Justice released a new batch of Epstein files, in which his name appeared several dozen times. The release revealed communications between Johnson and Epstein’s team, though the exchange appears to be mostly limited to the scheduling of a video call in October 2017, while Johnson was building his brain tech company Kernel.

That said, Johnson pushed for an in-person meeting, and this was well after Epstein’s 2008 conviction as a sex offender—something that Johnson said in a tweet that he was unaware of at the time. It’s possible that the man who meticulously tracks every fiber of his biology didn’t do a quick Google search before meeting with someone with as much influence as Epstein. But the internet is not convinced. We reached out for comment from Johnson, but as of publication have not received a response.

If Johnson’s hurried response to the news is anything to go by, the man is doing his best to point our attention back to his regularly scheduled programming, placing the release of the files in a garbled scientific context: “The images, videos and emails activated our mirror neurons to physically experience the trauma. The brain registered these malefactors as threats but offered no reprisal other than wailing into the digital void.”

Johnson provided further comment the next day, tweeting that his Zoom meeting with Epstein was their final interaction. “Epstein seemed like a very dark person. I felt sick to my stomach,” he wrote. “I remember this so clearly because I knew nothing about him but weirdly, intuitively, something was deeply wrong. Being in his proximity felt dangerous.” He didn’t reference the fact that Johnson reached out to Epstein’s office again in 2018 in an apparent attempt to raise funds.

Peter Attia in the Epstein Files

Either way, Johnson might not have to spend much more time worrying about how much AG1 is paying Peter Attia. The podcast host was also named in the latest batch of Epstein files (over 1,700 times, to be precise), with hundreds of emails painting the picture of his personal relationship with Epstein.