Pose a simple question to Dave Asprey, the founder of Upgrade Labs and the self-proclaimed father of biohacking, and you may get a complicated answer. Like, how old are you? “I identify as 28 percent old,” declares the smooth-faced and serene Asprey as he perches on a couch in his Santa Monica, California, biohacking studio, puffing on a vape now and then.
Huh? “I’m going to live to be 185. Chronologically I’m 49, but I’m 11 years younger biologically,” he adds to explain, although how that math works out is a mystery. “Our current best is 120. Of course we’re going to do this,” he says about increasing longevity, and he’s not the least bit afraid of living too long in a burning world. “I’m exceptionally excited about it. Let’s just make old people young. We can do it.”
Asprey is well-known in the field of biohacking, a term attributed to him when it was added to the Merriam-Webster dictionary in 2018, he says. His “The Human Upgrade” show is tops on YouTube; he’s the author of four New York Times bestselling books, including “Superhuman.” With Upgrade Labs, the franchise just beginning to roll out, he’s hoping to take the “art and science of improving your biology”—his definition of biohacking—to the masses.