My Son Answers Your Questions | Netflix FAQ

What's the biggest misconception people have about you?

That's a hard one. Hi, everyone. I'm Thomas Johnson. You may know me as Brian Johnson's son or blood boy. But guess what? There may be a little more than meets the eye. Let's talk.

You said you wish you could go back and redo the talk. What do you mean by that?

I saw myself, how I acted, how I behaved, how I talked. And it feels like I've improved so much since then, I wish I could redo it. But at the same time, I acknowledge that that's just a point in time in one's arc. It shouldn't be looked at with disgust, but rather as an inevitable part of going through the whole arc. So I think the healthiest relationship to have with myself is say I love myself in that moment. I also love myself now, and I love my future self.

What's it really like growing up with Brian Johnson as you're doing?

I think the most memorable thing about him was always how playful he was. He was never too serious. He. We never got into arguments with him. He always made it fun to be around him. And so we'd always have little games. He'd always wrestle with us, we'd go on trips together. But he wanted to be someone of safety in our lives. And he didn't take a very strict approach. He was more laissez faire. So hands off and letting us kids do our own thing and learn along the way.

Do you follow the blueprint protocol yourself?

I do follow the blueprint protocol. I've been following it for about three years now. And I do the basics of diet, sleep and exercise because Those account for 90% of the benefits. And most of the things that my dad does is to reverse aging damage, which I don't have much of because I'm 19.

Have you ever secretly rebelled against your dad's health rules?

When first starting Blueprint, he told me that this was something he was doing and he didn't tell me I had to do it. And he was also laissez faire. Let me do my own thing. I think the hands off approach of letting me discover on my own allowed me to adopt it. Not because he's done it, but because I experienced the benefits of what it was like to be healthy. I got a positive feedback loop of me being healthy not getting his approval, which allowed me to continue doing it for so long.

Do you ever miss anything from your old diet?

No, I never missed anything from my old diet. When you're transitioning from being unhealthy to healthy. It is difficult because you have an adjustment period where you aren't experiencing as many intense highs. But at the same time, once you're healthy, you aren't experiencing as many intense lows. And so after a certain point, you hit a baseline and you don't go extremely high, you don't go extremely low. You're just constant. And so now I've hit that point, and the thought of having a piece of pizza or binge eating now is painful to me because I know how I feel when I do it. I would much rather prefer continuing at this baseline.

What's the last thing you disagree with Sir Dao?

I don't think there have been any prolific things that I've so thoroughly disagree with him on. A lot of times throughout life. I put so much trust in him and view him as a role model because typically the advice he gives, it's not just because he's my dad that I take it, but because he has a good track record. So if ever I'm in a tricky situation or I need some advice about something that I haven't encountered before, he gives me a rundown of how I should think about it, and I typically use it and it works. That's true with most of what he's taught me. Most of it has worked well. If there are ever parts that I'm not sure about, I obviously push back to see how robust the model is, and then he typically counteracts with a good point. In short, there hasn't been anything that we've really disagreed on. But that could also be a result of me trusting him so much that it's an internal bias that I don't want to see anything that he says as false. But at the same time, I try to have an objective view of it. And most of the times, if not every time, his model has been pretty accurate.

What's the weirdest health thing we've seen your dad do?

The weird part is that I don't see any of it as weird. I look at him and I view whatever he's doing in the world as cool for whatever reason, because he's my dad. Because typically what he is doing is cool. I'm also around him so much, and so when you're in something, it's very difficult to see the absurdity of it. And so when I step outside of it and I hear other people talk about it, I'm like, oh, this is weird. But I just can't see it because I'm around It. So from my vantage point, nothing is weird that he does. But I guess from other people who aren't around as much, the weirdest thing is probably nighttime erections, which I look at as normal.

Do you measure your nighttime erections?

So for a long time I've been focusing on the basics of diet, sleep and exercise. I've finally nailed it. And so now I'm thinking, okay, what's the next step? I'm doing small things like blood work, microplastics tests, pace of aging, trying to optimize those. Like he posted his world's best biomarkers, like 40 of them. And I have a goal to beat those 40 on the nighttime erections. That's been the next step. And so we just got back from China and we had an erection device on the house. So I haven't unboxed it yet, but I'm going to be using it soon. So I'm going to try to get a length longer than the Titanic.

Are you dating?

I'm not dating right now.

Are you willing to date?

Yes. Yeah, it seems like a fun thing. Like you basically you're put with someone else and the goal is how quickly can I figure out if we're compatible or not. From a purely game perspective, it seems very fun and it also seems like good practice because the world is run by relationships and relationships can be the most fulfilling things in people's lives. So it does seem like a productive use of time.

Do you know what you would be looking for in a potential partner?

Yeah, there has to be some level of connection and some people can do that through ethnicity, religion, hobbies. I would like someone who prioritizes health.

What is your relationship to money like?

So I grew up with without much money. And after my dad made a whole bunch of money, I continued living frugal and I experienced what it was like to basically not have to think about how much money one has in their bank account. It's like a safety net of sorts. I experienced what that was like and I've also experienced what it's like to really, really care about it. I've through some exploration on my own and trying to build models about how to think about money. I now view it as something that I treat with frugality. And so any money I spend is my own money and I don't ask for money. And it seems like it can be easy to fall into a trap where if your family has wealth, it's very easy to say, I'm just going to take advantage of it. And sure, there may be some value in that, but at the same time I think it's also helpful to have the self awareness to know that it's an important skill to be frugal and to be self sufficient. So I am trying to almost counteract the external environment and force myself to be frugal without depending on those resources.

Do you have a job?

I do have a job. I'm currently interning at Blueprint. I just finished my first year of school at the University of Chicago and I decided I wanted to take a gap year to see how I could spend my life because with school I know what the next three years will look like. It's predictable what classes I'll take, what organizations I'll join, the friends I'll make. There's some unpredictability to it, but it's largely predictable. And so I was interested in the idea of if I had basically took a break from 13 years of continuous education, what could I do with my life? And so the first thing that came to my mind is work with my dad. I've always admired him, what he's done, his ambitions, his companies. And so it made perfect sense to intern at Blueprint. And so I've continued to do so and I absolutely love it.

What do you think your life is going to be about?

It? It's incredibly difficult to know what my life is going to be like. I mean, if I just take stock of the past three years. I ended up leaving the Mormon Church, which I didn't know was going to happen, and then I ended up going to UChicago, which I didn't know was going to happen. I ended up living with my dad, which I didn't know was going to happen. I ended up taking a gap year, which I didn't know was going to happen, and then I ended up moving to Malaysia for two months, which I didn't know was going to happen. And so there are so many things that have happened that there's no way I could have predicted. And given that things are only happening faster now, I don't think that I can predict what's going to happen. It's important to me that I don't bank whatever choices I make or whoever I are on a certain set of outcomes because that is dependent on circumstances which are inherently unpredictable. So I'd rather build robust internal systems of how to think about the world and how to go about certain things and then apply those to any situation that I'm in.

Why did you leave the Mormon Church?

When my parents divorced, when I was eight. There were two paths to take. Either one was stay with mom, be in the church, or two, go with dad, the wayward father. And when you are born into something that is your only reality, it becomes the default to stay within the church because that's where all your friends, communities, beliefs, standards are. And so I stayed in the church, not by my own choice. A lot of people think it's your choice when you're young to do it, but you have very little free will in that sense. You just don't know what you're in. You don't know the system you're in. And so over the years, I began building a rapport with my dad even when he was outside the church. And I started to trust him more and more. And eventually he began talking about the church because it was a bit of a taboo topic at first. Wanted his kids to see the reason he left so he wasn't portrayed as a bad guy. But he also didn't want to step on the relationships. And so he prioritized the relationships over explaining to us why he left the church. And so at a certain point he began venturing into those topics with me. And after some time there's a point where we were talking about it and it finally hit me that, oh shit, it may not be true. And so after that moment, a cascade of events happened and I eventually knew that I no longer wanted to be in the church. And that it wasn't the truth they were offering, wasn't necessarily what reality was. And so after some time I left and moved with him. And now I'm in the process of rebuilding reality.

What's the biggest misconception people have about.

Yeah, that's a hard one. I feel like I'm somewhat blinded by that question because I have a self perception of myself. I'm not quite sure how it rubs up against how other people perceive me. If I could pinpoint, one would be probably those in my religious community, how they feel about me now that I've left the church. So similar to the misconception that everyone had about my dad when he left the church, about how he was wrong, how he was misguided, how he left the straight and narrow path. I would not be surprised if people, my community, in the religious community, felt the same way about me. If we're taking stock of here and now, it's difficult, difficult to pinpoint.

Are you still friends with any members.

Of the church on your youth? A lot of my friends in the church are now on missions and it's almost like an official, maybe not parting path, but it's a declaration of, okay, we're on completely separate paths now. And so when you're not in the same physical location and they're on a mission and they're starting school and we live in two completely different worlds, it's much more difficult to maintain those relationships. But with family that I have, who's still in the church, the familial bond is what keeps us close. So friends wise, I am not in many. I don't have many close contacts to friends who are in my church now.

Or family members are still out of the church.

Yeah, literally all my family is still in the church. So siblings, mom, extended family. Only my dad and myself are the ones who left. So, yeah, on my dad's side of the family, more have left, but on the other side, no one's left besides us.

Does that make things difficult?

Yeah, I've been to family reunions and gatherings where like, I understand. We don't care if you're in the church or not. We still love you. I can sense there's this silence, silent tension where they aren't quite sure where I stand. They don't know if I'm a drug addict or if I've all of a sudden started doing things that would be go against the church's standards. So I'm not sure how they see it, but there's definitely some level of ostracization. It's not evident on the surface level, but I can feel it. And the, the difficult part is that no one says anything. People act like there isn't anything going on. And so sometimes I may do it. But I just want to say, hey, guys, like, I clearly understand that there's some tension right now, so I'm just going to lay it out clearly. Just say what's on your mind. It's all good. You don't have to hide it. It's cool. But having that transparency is important to me.

You are 19?

Yes, I'm 19.

So you would be probably on your mission right now.

Yep. There's another reality where I didn't leave the church and I'd be on a mission spreading the gospel.

You think about that?

It's scary. I think the most important decision I've ever made in my life is to leave and move to LA to live with my dad. And it's one of the scariest thoughts of what would have happened if I didn't do that. But fortunately it didn't happen.

So Brian talks about Evening Brian. Is there an evening Talmage. If so, what is he like?

Yes, his name is Rascal Talmadge. I didn't do Evening Brian because Rascal Talmage is not just present during the evening, he's always present. So Rascal Talmage is as cunning and as full of tricks as Evening Brian. And I did have a phase similar to Evening Brian where in this transition over to health, Rascal Talmage did everything in his power to prevent that change. And so it took a similar with my dad, it took him like 50 to 100 iterations of experiencing what it was like to have the cookie or to stay up late and then realizing that it's never ever worth it. And I went through literally the exact same thing and came to the exact same conclusion. And so now Rascal Talmage bears much less, much less of an influence in my life than he used to.

Rachel Talmadge, what are, what are his vices?

His vices are food. The, the junk food, the overeating that my dad experienced, it was the exact same for me. And maybe it's genetic. I just had this ravenous appetite to just. Maybe it's because I'm younger. My metabolism is crazy. But it was definitely a food thing. And the difficult part about food is that it's not a drug where you can cut a cold turkey. It's almost like a drug that you have to microdose and then not exceed. So it took me a while to figure it out. But I feel fortunate that I was able to have him as a. Almost a future version of me because he went through the exact same thing that I did. He didn't shame me for it, he didn't fault me for it because he experienced the exact same thing and realized how powerless he can make you feel. But rather he played a supporting role and it allowed me to eventually overcome it.

What's one thing you wish more people knew about you?

For whatever reason, I always have a play to keep my cards closer to my chest. And it probably stems from some experiences I had in my childhood where showing cards was not optimal. I have a hesitation in answering with certainty because there's some part of me that enjoys the mysteriousness. Once I hit a certain point, then I'll reveal. But at the same time, similar to the documentary question, it's not once you get there that you want to showcase, its the process you take to get there. So this is a, a demon that I haven't fully wrangled.

What's your relationship to Kate like?

Kate is one of the most amazing people that I've ever met. She's incredibly thoughtful. She cares about others. She oftentimes she thinks about others before she thinks about herself and she's just someone that you want in your life as a, a friend, a co worker, someone to talk to. So Kate is definitely a, a good model about how someone can be in life and I look up to her. My dad, he has certain models about reality and Kate also being the co founder of Blueprint is almost a different perspective on it. She sees the vision and she's able to offer a different perspective about models. And her models are pretty robust as well. I almost view her as a complementary way on how to structure how one looks at life in addition to how my dad looks at life.

How does your dad show you that he loves you?

Our love language is much different than most. We don't give each other gifts, we don't put high expectations on each other other. I think it's as simple as just being physically present with one another. Our relationship is so amazing because we have an ability to both be there and not be there at the same time. I know that he can be extremely busy and have so many things on his mind. So one way that he shows love for me is us just talking together because his mind is typically incredibly occupied. He doesn't talk much. He typically maniacally obsessed with something at work or trying to achieve one of his ambitions. And so for him to pause from that and to converse with me for even hours at a time definitely says a lot.

What If a fellow 19 year old came up to you and said, I'm just trying to figure out what to do with my life. I don't even know where to begin. What would you say?

I would say I feel the exact same way, man. Especially with the current time we're in with AI, it's very difficult to know what to do. I'd like to not act like I have the answers and give some high minded advice, but rather be honest and say I'm just as lost as you are. But the one thing that I'm not lost on is health. It seems like one of the only things I can bank on as a worthy investment to do right now. And so in terms of health advice, I would say baby, step into it and surround yourself with friends and an environment that will promote healthy habits. Because typically the transition phase is difficult, but if you have a support system that enables it, it makes it infinitely easier.