Bryan Johnson walks out from Nikhil Kamath’s podcast over bad AQI, internet asks ‘why come here in the first place?’

Feb 05, 2025 03:19 PM Earlier this week it came to light that Bryan Johnson walked out mid-session from Nikhil Kamath’s podcast over bad AQI. Yes, this is as dramatic as it sounds Nikhil Kamath’s podcast drops have been making quite some commotion for a while now. The range usually oscillates between Nikhil being hauled up the internet for giving off a “preachy” vibe to genuine appreciation of the rather large portfolio of industry experts, whose brains he’s been picking. Episode 21 of his WTF podcast titled Longevity, has been making the news however, for an entirely separate set of reasons. Nikhil Kamath and Bryan Johnson in stills from the former’s podcast episode ‘Longevity’ (Photos: X) Given the theme of the episode, the panel of guests included American entrepreneur, venture capital and avid biohacker, Bryan Johnson. Bryan periodically makes it to the news owing to the many informed experiments he puts his body through in a bid to reverse age it. For how squeaky clean his internal systems then may be, contending with India’s AQI was clearly a losing battle for him. So much so that he chose to get up and leave in the middle of Nikhil’s podcast shoot. Bryan even addressed it later in a long post, specifying what his core issue was. An excerpt from his post read, “When in India, I did end this podcast early due to the bad air quality. @nikhilkamathcio was a gracious host and we were having a great time. The problem was that the room we were in circulated outside air which made the air purifier I’d brought with me ineffective…This was my third day in India and the air pollution had made my skin break out in rash and my eyes and throat burn.”. He went on to talk about why fixing the AQI was not as big a concern for the government as it should be. Nevertheless, the dramatic walk out has definitely caught the internet’s eye. Some were of the opinion that Bryan, knowing fully well what the state of air quality was in India, definitely overreacted orchestrating a whole walk out, an extreme measure for sure: “this guy didn’t know that in India AQI is bad beforehand? And this is the same guy who transfused his blood with his son’s and father’s so that HE can live longer”, “Kamath must have a air purifier. So, this is just a stupid excuse”, “Bryan got to know about the bad AQI in the middle of the podcast?? That Doesn’t make any sense” and “he was pretty aware with India’s poor quality of air. Why come here at the first place?”. Now while others were somewhat in agreement, there was also widespread cognizance of the dastardly state of the country’s AQI: “We as indians should accept that indeed air quality is fuc**d up. They are not complaining but merely stating the fact. Accept it. Improve it”, “India is truly not for beginners”, “Climate hasn’t changed, our health has gotten worse” and “AQI is pretty bad, it sucks, it’s the worst. We are kinda famous now for bad AQI all around the globe now. We NEED to actively work towards reversing the damage”. Did you think Bryan overreacted or was he well within his rights? Recommended Topics News / HTCity / Bryan Johnson walks out from Nikhil Kamath’s podcast over bad AQI, internet asks ‘why come here in the first place?’ See Less