LARRY ELLISON WANTS TO SAVE YOUR LIFE

Will a trip to this Hawaiian wellness resort make you live longer?

By Neal McLennan

IIt was 2017 when I first saw Larry Ellison in person. I was at Lanai’s Manele Bay Hotel on assignment, and Ellison had famously purchased not just that property but 98 percent of the entire island a few years prior. I was there to cover the hotel’s grand reopening. One morning, while I was having breakfast, a large group of tennis-clad guests sat beside me. At the locus of the group was the distinctive, impeccable, Downey Jr-esque groomed beard and mustache combo that was attached to the then-eighth richest person on the planet. I did my best not to stare or eavesdrop, and after breakfast I was trying to square the idea that the dude who created

Oracle in 1977 appeared to be only in his mid50s, which was impossible. I immediately returned to my very well-appointed room, flipped open my laptop and typed “How old is Larry Ellison?”

I am terrible about diarizing things. My calendar still has recurring notices for the soccer practices of a team my daughter was on five years go. But for a while, every six months a notice would pop up that said: “Email re:

Koele.” It was a reference to the other hotel on Lanai that came with Ellison’s purchase. If Manele was the classic luxe beach resort, Koele was the quirky, smaller property tucked away near the island’s centre—and, at almost 2,000 feet above sea level, it felt a world unto itself. I’d call it scrappy, but given that it was a Four Seasons, that seems a bit of a stretch. Like Manele, it closed down after Ellison’s purchase... but unlike its swank sibling, it never re-opened. I’d driven by twice, and it was a fenced-off construction site with prominent NO TRESPASSING signs plastered everywhere. My requests for a hardhat tour (“I’m such a big fan of the property”) were gently rebuffed. I engaged the locals to see if they had heard any scuttlebutt about what Uncle Larry was doing up there and the broad consensus seemed to be “fancy spa,” but years ticked by with no opening. So every six months I’d dutifully send my email to the Four Seasons team to check for updates, and they’d politely thank me for my inquiry and tell me they’d let me know when they had news to share.

It was December 2019 and they had news to share. The former Lodge at Koele was now “Sensei Lanai: A Four Seasons Resort.” It was open in something of a beta phase, and if I agreed to stop sending emails they’d see about letting me come and check it out.

The internet wasn’t giving me much to bone up on before my trip. From what I could glean, Sensei was designed to be an entirely new type of wellness resort, less focused on facials and mimosas and more on helping its guests learn the diet, movement and goal-setting skills that would change their lifestyles permanently. This admirable goal came about through Ellison and Dr. Larry Agus (who I later learned is a bit of a legend in the longevity game), who had been commiserating over the premature death of a mutual friend. Ellison—the original tech bro—was wondering why no one had yet solved the public’s general refusal to embrace behaviours that could enrich and prolong their lives. It sounded vaguely like a cross between The Road to Wellville and Ex Machina and, I’ll admit, my initial interest waned slightly—I hadn’t waited for years only to presumably be served plates of lettuce and refused a glass of albariño on my vacation. But when the email from the Sensei team assured me that there was an onsite