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Electra Transforming Travel With Hybrid-electric Aircraft; Biohacker Bryan Johnson on Living a Healthier Life, Sleep is the Most Powerful Daily Medicine. Aired 1:30-2p ET

Aired December 25, 2025 - 13:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[13:30:00]

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN CO-ANCHOR OF "CNN NEWS CENTRAL": Having quality time with your kids and keeping them off screens? Good luck with that. A holiday break might feel like anything but relaxing for parents trying to regulate their child's time scrolling on devices. Study after study shows how detrimental screen time can be for our kids.

A recent study of more than 10,000 12-year-olds found that kids who got phones at younger ages were more likely to face obesity, be depressed, and not get enough sleep. Just two weeks ago, Australia started banning kids under the age of 16 from social media. Psychotherapist Tom Kersting wrote the book "Disconnected: How to Protect Your Kids from the Harmful Effects of Device Dependency," and he joins us now live.

Tom, how do parents navigate this downtime?

TOM KERSTING, PSYCHOTHERAPIST: Yeah, I think what we need to do is really recognize what we're dealing with here at the time of year, right? So it's the holiday season, it's Christmas, it's the season of joy. And what is really -- what brings more joy than being with family? So what I want parents to do is to make a commitment that while they're off and while their kids are home, that they're really going to focus on the importance of quality time with their children.

And that's going to mean that us adults, us parents, need to put down our devices, lead by example, and start doing things that are interactive, like playing board games with the kids, helping our kids make cookies for the holidays, prepare dinner. The whole idea is getting all hands on deck and reclaiming that family unit, particularly during this joyful time of year.

SANCHEZ: I imagine if you try to do that with a child that has come to rely on their smart devices as part of their routine, you might face some resistance. What would be your advice to try to perhaps wean them off or to potentially confront them?

KERSTING: Yeah, you're absolutely right about that. That's the problem that we're marinating in right here, is a lot of parents are afraid to take the device away because they know what the reaction is going to be. You're going to have a potential little kid or middle school kid or high school kid freaking out. But nobody said parenting was easy. So we're going to have to just we're going to have to confront that. We're going to have to take those things head on.

And you may get that initial reaction. But once you get to start getting the kids involved, doing things that are outdoors maybe, doing some of the things I just mentioned earlier, the kids will come around. And I'm telling you right now, they're going to find more purpose and more joy in doing those activities and connecting with their family.

SANCHEZ: You also recommend thinking inside the box. What does that mean?

KERSTING: Yes, I call it thinking inside the box. What I want people to think about is like go up into the closet, go get the box of Monopoly out, go get the box of Scrabble, gather everybody around the kitchen table. If one of your kids is in the bedroom, the other one's in the basement playing a video game, parent up, collect them, get them around the table, open up that box and you're going to see magic start to happen. It will happen.

SANCHEZ: What about your advice to practice gratitude during the holiday season? Walk us through how we do that.

KERSTING: Yeah, so it's something called attitude of gratitude, and it's something we should be doing every day, which is reflecting, which is taking a breath of air and taking in all that we have, instead of letting our mind wander and think about what we lack. And the holiday season is representative of that. It's a season of giving. It's the season of gratitude.

So what I would like parents and everybody else to do is to sort of dial into themselves, take it all in, look around, look at your Christmas tree, look at your kids, look at the presents and experience what gratitude brings, because gratitude is a powerful force within. And when we're carrying that with us in our household, it's magnetic, and our children are going to experience that magnetic feel. And I believe it's going to create just a natural connection between parents and children, just by virtue of what I'm doing at this moment and how I'm feeling.

SANCHEZ: I love that. I wonder, on a final note, whether you think the United States should adopt the same policy that Australia is enacting when it comes to keeping kids under 16 off social media.

KERSTING: So I've been -- I'm one of the first in this territory. I started giving lectures on this 17 years ago, about screen time, then I wrote books about it, and I had mentioned once before on the program, I'm not an advocate of too much government intervention. But in this context, I'm all on board for that. I would love to see legislation come forward that bans this stuff. I mean, kids can't get a lot of by nicotine and a lot not a lot of drink alcohol by 21.

This is arguably -- the screen time is arguably, maybe one of the most dangerous things we've experienced in our history when you look at the toll that it is taking on our children across the board.

SANCHEZ: Tom Kersting, appreciate your perspective. Thanks so much for joining us.

KERSTING: Yeah, thank you.

SANCHEZ: Of course. Stay with us. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:39:18]

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN CO-ANCHOR OF "CNN NEWS CENTRAL": They're not quite out of the Jetsons, but they're getting closer. I'm talking about hybrid planes. Aerospace company, Electra is hoping they're the future of flight. The startup says its aircraft can get you to your destination twice as fast as a commercial plane. CNN's Jim Sciutto goes for a ride.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST AND ANCHOR (voice- over): What if you had a plane that could take off and land in a space not much bigger than your backyard? I got to see for myself.

SCIUTTO: Wow, that was quick.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's pretty fast.

SCIUTTO (voice-over): This is Electra's Ultra Short, meant to compete in the new flying car craze. That is a relatively cheap-to-operate aircraft that can get you from pretty much anywhere on the map to pretty much anywhere else.

[13:40:00]

MARC ALLEN, CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, ELECTRA: And we can save them half the time, right? I mean, half the time you spend in a commercial airplane or on the road or in a train, this will get you there twice as fast.

SCIUTTO (voice-over): How does it work? The science is pretty crazy. Its eight electric motors don't just move the plane forward, they generate their own airflow over the wings, which in the physics of flight then generates their own lift for the aircraft.

ALLEN: You experienced something that very few people have experienced. The airplane is going super slow. The wing thinks it's going super fast because we're just accelerating all of this air over it. And then some really unique design structures, just rises right up. So the wing just lifts the airplane up at about 150 feet of ground roll.

SCIUTTO: You create your own lift?

ALLEN: You create your own lift, and then you just fly on that lift like an airplane.

SCIUTTO (voice-over): Because the plane creates its own lift, we took off at just about 30 miles an hour, about the speed of a racing bicycle. Something of a nod to the bicycle building, Wright Brothers, who invented the world's very first flying machine. From the air, you get the feeling of floating, sort of like taking a ride on a drone. (Inaudible).

Plus, it's a hybrid with turbo generator charging batteries that run the prop, sort of like a flying Prius. And less fuel means lower cost per mile than helicopters and many flying cars. The idea of the Ultra Short is to solve another problem with many flying cars. While they can take a passenger or two, the ultra short can take multiple passengers and cargo, and go as much as 10 times as far, about 250 miles.

Electra already has more than 2,000 planes ordered, mostly from airlines and the U.S. Military, with even the ambition to replace the military's workhorse transport helicopter, the Black Hawk.

ALLEN: A lot of military applications because the military has the same problem we all have. They need to go from where they are to where they want to go. And imagine a bombed out runway. How do you get an airplane in with fuel, with munitions, supplies, food, spares? You can't. And if you're in the ocean, you can't take a helicopter hundreds of miles. This airplane flies like an airplane, arrives like a helicopter. That bombed out runway, no problem.

SCIUTTO (voice-over): The $10 million price tag for the larger commercial model means most of us can never dream of owning one. But for the military, airlines and other transport companies, perhaps a new taxi for the skies.

ALLEN: That's the idea of direct aviation.

Sciutto: Nice.

ALLEN: That's the new era of air travel.

Sciutto (voice-over): Jim Sciutto, CNN, somewhere over Manassas, Virginia.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KEILAR: Jim Sciutto with the very fun assignment there, and we'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:47:17]

SANCHEZ: Don't die. It's a mission and a mantra promoted by a millionaire biohacker willing to try just about anything to defy aging. Bryan Johnson, an entrepreneur and CEO, has divided the internet with the extreme lengths he's willing to go to live forever. A few weeks ago, he livestreamed himself taking a high dose of psychedelic mushrooms and more than a million people tuned in to see him test it out. Agree with his tactics or not, he's getting people's attention. So, when he was in Washington, D.C. this year, I was curious about the man behind all of these stunts. Here's part of our conversation.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SANCHEZ: I do want to ask you about some of your processes, some of your regimens. I read that you consume upwards of 50 pills a day. You've spent millions on research and experimentation. You've ingested experimental compounds. I saw that you were open about an experiment with facial injections that kind of backfired. I read that you've shocked your genitals.

BRYAN JOHNSON, ANTI-AGING & HEALTH ADVOCATE: Yeah.

SANCHEZ: Is there a line that you won't cross with these experiments?

(LAUGH)

JOHNSON: No, there's no line. I mean, this is all in the name of science. And so, over the past couple of years, I've become the most measured human in history. There's more data on my body than any humans ever lived. I have the best biomarkers of anybody on Planet Earth. And so, I've tried to take health, which is more of an esoteric, storytelling-based way of approaching life, to a quantitative, scientific methodology approach.

And so, there's a richest person in the world, there's a fastest, now there's a healthiest. So, I've tried to make this into a sport, something people can signal, like, this is what I'm trying to do. So, I've tried to change the narrative on what it means to be healthy. And so, we've gone to the edge of all possibilities. And so, we really want to demonstrate you can achieve high-quality health through a scientific rigorous process.

SANCHEZ: How do you know -- how do you measure I have the health of a certain age versus the calendar age?

JOHNSON: Yeah, exactly. So, you're chronologically, someone can be 50-years-old, but have the heart health of a 35-year-old or a 60-year- old. So, your biological age is different than your chronological age. And you have, you know, over 70 organs in your body. Each one has an age. Same with your biological processes. So, we've measured the biological age of all the organs of my body and the biological systems to have a baseline. Then we go to work and say, can we slow down the aging process or reverse the aging damage?

SANCHEZ: Do with a change that you made in your life, and it was on your website describing that before you started making these changes, you were chronically depressed.

JOHNSON: Yes.

SANCHEZ: Tell us about what led you to the conclusion that you needed to sort of alter the direction of your life. JOHNSON: Yeah, I mean, I think if you were to poll people in the United States right now, I think you'd find a substantial portion of people are suffering from some meaningful mood disorder, you know, anxiety, depression.

[13:50:00]

It's really a challenging time. Although we keep these things secret. So, I've been very open. I've said I, for 10 years, had this deep chronic depression. I tried everything to fix it. And so, I'm very sympathetic to people who are suffering from some kind of disorder. And I want to try to help them understand how they can make baby steps in trying to address it. And again, like, resting hour right before bed. This is a good practice. Sleep is the most powerful medicine anybody can take every single day. But yet, we are a sleep-deprived culture.

So, I really try to connect my personal experience with depression to what people can do on a daily basis to address their own challenges.

SANCHEZ: I'm not sure how much you read internet comments, but I first came across you from a series of memes.

JOHNSON: Yeah.

SANCHEZ: I wonder what you say to folks in the internet comments section who argue that this is sort of a stunt that you're becoming a guinea pig to attract attention in order to profit from it.

JOHNSON: Yeah. I mean, I love the comments.

(LAUGH)

JOHNSON: They're, like, my favorite. I love the comments. They're colorful. They're creative. They're funny.

SANCHEZ: Even the mean ones?

JOHNSON: Yes, of course. It's just internet culture, right? And, like, you have to see it for what it is. People are just, like, getting along in their life. I take none of it personally. It's all fine. So, I mean, it's very hard to be human, right? And so, like, I think when people see this, it's frustrating. They feel beat down by life. Every company in the world is trying to addict them to their thing. Food, porn, right? Scrolling. It's really tough.

So, I'm deeply empathetic. I know where they're at, and it's fine. Like, I'm on their side. I'm here for them.

SANCHEZ: Are you afraid of dying?

JOHNSON: No, I'm not.

SANCHEZ: So then, what is it that guides this quest toward immortality? JOHNSON: This is the most spectacular moment in the history of the human race to exist. We are giving birth to superintelligence, to a possibility that we can't even fathom. This is so special, and if we can sober up and pay attention to this moment, like, this really could be an unbelievably cool existence, and that's what I want to say is, like, we are so stuck on these pleasures that we seek every moment, but if we can zoom out just a bit, it really is a phenomenal moment to be alive.

SANCHEZ: If you're not fully enjoying the things that you enjoy in life, an alcoholic drink, bacon, I can think of a million things.

JOHNSON: Yeah, yeah.

SANCHEZ: You're not truly living.

JOHNSON: Yeah.

SANCHEZ: So, is following too much of a protocol, is keeping track of too many metrics possibly taking away from your enjoyment?

JOHNSON: Yeah. You know, I have so many friends who are fully living, and they're depressed, and so the ideas that people have about fully living, which is not sleeping well, drinking, smoking, you know, staying up late, that is not fully living. That is depression, anxiety. That is cognitive decline. We have a misconstrued idea of what it means to be fully living. For me, it means feeling great. I love feeling great. I don't want to drink. I don't want to have pizza. I don't want to eat doughnuts. It's terrible. It makes me feel terrible.

So, we just have -- we have it wrong in the U.S. This is not -- our idea of fully living is just not on point.

SANCHEZ: No disrespect, Bryan, but I feel great after having a doughnut.

(LAUGH)

SANCHEZ: -- before and after having a doughnut. Bryan Johnson, thanks so much for joining us.

JOHNSON: But you know, I wonder if you would test otherwise.

SANCHEZ: I'll give it a shot, maybe. We'll see how long it lasts.

JOHNSON: Yeah.

SANCHEZ: Thank you so much.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:57:30] SANCHEZ: There are the videos that spread like wildfire, making their way onto screens around the world -- funny, serious, shocking, captivating. Whatever the reason, 2025 had no shortage of viral videos that captured our attention. Here are the top-10.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SANCHEZ (voice-over): Number 10, Trump targets Iran. Hours after the United States began its precision airstrikes on three nuclear facilities in an unprecedented aerial bombardment of Iran, the president spoke to the nation.

DONALD TRUMP, (R) PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: Tonight I can report to the world that the strikes were a spectacular military success.

SANCHEZ (voice-over): In the aftermath, some members of Congress openly questioned the constitutionality of the strikes while others, especially MAGA lawmakers, supported the administration.

Number nine, L.A. devastated. Satellite images showing the breadth and depth of the runaway Eaton wildfire. The fast-moving flames this past January, forcing thousands to flee their homes in search of higher and safer ground. Devastation like this will take years to rebuild.

Number eight, a shocking midair collision caught on tape. On January 29th of this year, an American Airlines flight operated by American Eagle and a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter collided over the freezing Potomac River at night. The tragedy caught on tape. The jet was on final approach to Reagan National while the helicopter had been performing a required flying evaluation. All 67 people aboard both aircrafts died.

Number seven, an American is Pope. In May, shortly after the death of Pope Francis, the College of Cardinals elected their next leader. And to the surprise of many, the choice was this man, Chicago's very own Cardinal, Robert Francis Prevost, the first Augustinian Pope.

POPE LEO XIV, HEAD OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH: I invite you to recognize the marvels that the Lord has done.

SANCHEZ: Even more surprising, he briefly spoke in English during his first mass.

Number six, hot mic. Justin Trudeau, who at the time was Canada's Prime Minister, overheard making a jaw-dropping admission to business leaders back in February, essentially telling them that President Trump's talk of making Canada a 51st U.S. state was no joke. So far, Canada remains Canada.

Number five, Kramer speaks out --