'It's not about lifespan': meet the man who believes biohacking is a holy duty

Bryan Johnson, Ben Greenfield is not. Sure, both are ripped beyond their years and pushing the human body beyond their natural limits – via strict diets, early nights and the occasional blood infusion. But both are doing this for very different reasons. Johnson, this paper revealed last week, believes longevity is a necessary pursuit if we are to survive as a species – in the face of a kind of superintelligence (read: AI) we have never experienced before. Greenfield, by contrast, is perfectly happy with the idea of death: but when that happens is entirely in God's hands. His duty, he believes, is to ensure that he makes good of the life that has been ordained for him.

"For your soul to be able to bless other people, and for you to be able to live with maximum impact doing whatever it is that God put you on this planet to do, you gotta make yourself strong, hard-to-kill, resilient, and with a well-functioning body and mind," he tells this paper's proprietor, Evgeny Lebedev, on the Brave New World podcast. "That's why I do this sh*t."

What is this sh*t? Also known as DIY biology, biohacking involves manipulating one’s body to perform beyond its natural abilities. Not very Christian, I hear you saying: whatever happened to God willing and leaving things are they are? The Gospel according to Greenfield is different. "It's all about equipping myself to have whatever lifespan or healthspan I was put on this Earth to have," he says. When he turned 40 three years ago, Greenfield reportedly had a biological age of nine and a near-record-length roster of anti-ageing experiments to his name, with ice baths, infrared light therapy, LSD microdosing and penis gyms (involving resistance bands and flexing exercises) all features of his daily life.

I have met the man twice now: once at a conference at Chelsea's HUM2N clinic (a futuristic place that's half-alien spaceship, half-nuclear bunker) and once over a call which he took while jogging through the countryside near his home in Spokane, Washington. He is a machine gun of one-liners and, let's face it, astounding and bizarre. As he rips off his shirt to lift weights while talking Bible, I cannot help but wonder: have I just entered the mind of a horny Presbyterian teenager?

I also wonder how Greenfield's twin sons, River and Terran – now 15, still the loves of his life – feel about it all. Their father sits at an odd junction between science and religion, as a biohacker, believer, and sex symbol. A cursory glance at Greenfield's Instagram shows a man who is nearly always topless, proudly displaying his 43-year-old nipples for his 424k followers. It's a strange kind of masculinity; Greenfield has often been called the alpha male's alpha male, yet his latest venture with his entrepreneurial kids is a card game called Fart Wars, which I believe follows the premise that whoever collects the smelliest card combo, wins. In short, he has softened.

Greenfield today is a gentle soul, even a tad woowoo. “I tell my sons that waking up in the morning and doing meditation and breathwork and prioritising the body and the spirit first thing is a noble way to be a better human," he says. Last year he wrote a book about his experience raising twins, and those of progressive parents across America using leftfield techniques to try and turn out well-rounded, resilient children. Boundless Parenting is a mammoth-sized manual (I feel weak just looking at it) but the ethos is bright and uplifting: raising kids "through love" rather than "through discipline".

“We don’t set hard and fast rules,” Greenfield tells me. “We educate our sons on the consequences of the decisions they might make.” Being too prescriptive, he believes, creates “a whole host of forbidden fruit”. “If I tell my sons, ‘Hey, never look at porn,’ they’re gonna really want to check out what this porn stuff is about,” he says. “If I sit them down and talk to them about the impact porn has — the degradation of their view of the opposite sex, or the impact of dopamine reception in their brain, or the creation of an entire industry that often results in the abuse and misuse of women — they’re gonna look at it a lot differently.”

That's enough about naked ladies, I tell him: where does that leave biohacking? The closest River and Terran have come to that is experimenting with different foods – note, not diets – on their Instagram page, still marked as being devoted to "Cooking" despite the Fart Wars takeover. Greenfield turns the conversation to longevity – the ultimate goal of biohacking and what he believes he was put on this earth to pursue. He returns to an example he's given journalists time and time again: “the gin-chugging, cigarette-smoking great grandma in Sardinia who lives to 117”. What is it that keeps her going?

Not just the Mediterranean diet, it turns out. “It’s a deep connection to the entire community, and being part of a close-knit family,” Greenfield says. Nonnas are driven by purpose rather than ambition, unlike typical biohacking enthusiasts — who, to use Greenfield’s terms, are often “sad unfulfilled billionaires or super athletes”. Beyond fasting, fitness, and penile workouts, it is community that ultimately gives us the strength to carry on. Greenfield’s argument isn’t just a happy clappy love thy neighbour trope, but a scientific fact backed by studies from Harvard which show loneliness and isolation from friends can shorten lifespans by eight years. “It’s my prerogative to leave people with teachings about the stuff that’s gonna bring them lasting happiness and meaning,” Greenfield says.

The biohacker is done advocating the use of cryotherapy chambers or hours running on the treadmill under headphones in our own little world. In fact, he hates that, which is why he's speaking to me while jogging (yes, he's still jogging). “People need to spend a greater amount of time engaged in their local community,” he says. “We need to think of ourselves as a soul with a body, rather than a body with a soul.” And with that he ends his sermon, well-rehearsed and robustly structured, with a twinkle in his eye and a flash of his perfect teeth. I guess that’s it for the solitary ice bath: if you need me I'll be at Hampstead Ponds with my good friend Harry Styles.

To hear Ben Greenfield speaking to Evgeny Lebedev on the Standard’s Brave New World podcast visit here