I went to a private longevity night hosted by Bryan Johnson in San Francisco. I needed a cookie afterward.

Bryan Johnson cheers on participants as they try to do as many push-ups as possible during a longevity test. Ben Bergman/Business Insider The only topic these days that gets people in San Francisco to stop talking about AI is living forever.When Baseten, an AI startup (what else?), announced a few weeks ago, it was hosting a "private evening" with tech entrepreneur and longevity evangelist Bryan Johnson and VC Sarah Guo at its SF office, over 3,000 people applied to get in for just 100 slots.For the uninitiated, Johnson made hundreds of millions selling his payment startup to PayPal and now spends millions a year on a wellness regime that he shares with his 2.7 million Instagram followers. Johnson has been in the news a lot this summer, after he revealed he has autoimmune gastritis, an incurable chronic condition of the stomach. Then, last month, he said, "he might have taken 'this whole longevity thing too far."When I arrived, the registration table was swarmed by people condemned to the waitlist trying to angle their way in."Don't bother," said the person at the desk. "It's full."Once I squeezed past the crowds, I was handed a color-coded schedule with three stations: Breathwork, Bioage tests, and a Q&A with Dr. Carl Seger, Johnson's lead doctor."Nothing you measure tonight is a verdict," I was told. "It's a baseline, and every one of these markers can be moved." The Tumeric Elixir Ben Bergman/Business Insider But first, it was time for happy hour! No hors d'oeuvres or wine here. Instead, can I interest you in raw vegetables and mocktails to take the edge off? I opted for a refreshing "Tumeric Elixir" with orange juice, carrot juice, ginger, and tumeric.As soon as I walked in, I noticed everyone seemed overwhelmingly youthful. One tech founder in his fifties told me he felt ancient. So either Johnson's routine is working wonders or this crowd was emblematic of Silicon Valley's "youthquake." I asked an enthusiastic young machine learning engineer who works at Uber why he was there."Bryan Johnson is just so cool!" he said.But enough chitchat. It was time to get my face scanned to learn my "face age." After a few minutes, a reading popped up. I was in the 80th percentile for wrinkles (which is apparently very good), but my "face age" was older than my real age. The author getting a "face age" scan Ben Bergman/Business Insider Feeling a little dejected, I walked over to the bioage stations, where participants underwent a series of tests, such as grip strength, push-ups, and a one-leg stand, to measure their biological age. Johnson, accompanied by his new guard dog, Katara, strode by, playfully encouraging people to do a few more push-ups.A few feet away, engineers were coding on giant screens. We were in an office after all, not a gym, and the work must go on.Before Johnson's interview, it was time for a dinner "guided" by his personal chef, Tara Amanya. There were box meals with chicken and vegetables, but I opted for the salmon, which was tasty but left me a bit hungry. A salmon dinner "guided" by Bryan Johnson's personal chef Ben Bergman/Business Insider Anything that gets people to exercise more or eat healthier should be commended. Still, I was struck by how many questions throughout the night came down to people wanting easy shortcuts to essentially hack life, as if it were an algorithm to be exploited.Again and again, people kept asking: "What is the one thing I can do to live longer?"I kept thinking about my grandparents, who never heard of peptides or biohacking. They drank wine with dinner every night and mostly ate whatever they wanted. They all lived well into their nineties. Sarah Guo from Conviction Capital interviews Bryan Johnson Ben Bergman/Business Insider Johnson is far more self-aware than he can seem on Instagram, and when he was interviewed by Guo to end the evening, he said: "We all know I'm going to die, but it's going to be being hit by a bus or choking on broccoli.""I give you permission to revel in the joy of it," he continued. "That is irony, and my ultimate foe is irony."After the talk ended, I walked back to my hotel and ordered a chocolate chip cookie.Do you have a tip about life in Silicon Valley? Contact reporter Ben Bergman securely on Signal at @BenBergman.11 Read next I'm a senior correspondent at Business Insider, where I cover the tech industry with a focus on venture capital and startups.I can frequently be seen on CNN and other channels providing analysis on a range of business and economic topics. I also appear often at dozens of the biggest events around the world, including the World Economic Forum, HumanX, and Web Summit.Please get in touch if you have a story to tell. For tips (not pitches), you can message me securely on Signal @BenBergman.11Here are some examples of stories I've written:VCs are flooding Anthropic with offers to invest at up to an $800 billion valuationI was in the room for Trump's Davos speech. The crowd was eerily silent — until he mentioned Greenland.The FBI is investigating a startup founder accused of using VC money to pay for her house and a Caribbean weddingAnthropic, seeing voracious demand for shares, is clamping down on a certain kind of investmentAdam Neumann created a secretive billion-dollar startup to turn apartment living into a utopian fantasy. I was the first reporter to set foot inside.'Where ambition goes to die': These tech workers flocked to Austin during the pandemic. Now they're desperate to get out.Mira Murati doubled the fundraising target for her new AI startup to $2 billion. It could be the largest seed round in history.Half of Sequoia Capital's VC funds since 2018 have posted losses for the University of California's endowmentHow Whitney Wolfe Herd's fateful deal with a Russian mogul deprived early Bumble employees of a stock windfall when she became a billionaireMailchimp employees are furious after the company's founders promised to never sell, withheld equity, and then sold it for $12 billion'My job is not to be the best friend of the CEO': Upfront's Mark Suster prides himself on being hard on founders, but some say his tough-love approach has gone too farHere is a little more about me: Previously, I was a senior reporter at LAist/Southern California Public Radio, where I covered business and economics. I have also written for The New York Times and Columbia Journalism Review and was a reporting intern at The Times. I started my career as a producer for NPR's Morning Edition and also produced award-winning documentaries for public television.I spent the 2017-2018 academic year at Columbia Business School as a Knight-Bagehot fellow. After that, I oversaw the development of The Journal, a daily podcast produced by The Wall Street Journal and Gimlet Media.Originally from Seattle, I graduated cum laude from Occidental College in Los Angeles with a degree in politics.In my free time, I love skiing, tennis, and poker. I competed in the 2024 World Series of Poker Main Event but sadly did not win. Tech Longevity San Francisco More Health