The Ozempic Obsession with Jia Tolentino (ARCHIVE EPISODE)

Happy New Year! To get the year started off right, we’re re-publishing one of our favorite episodes from 2024. Trevor and Christiana chatted with Jia Tolentino in May of last year; 8 months later, and Ozempic is still a hot topic. Ozempic. It started with a lizard, and then transformed into a drug that, depending on who you ask, is either a miracle or the downfall of society. New Yorker writer and cultural critic Jia Tolentino joins Trevor and Christiana to give context on the media circus surrounding weight loss drugs, and how Ozempic is changing the conversation around fatness in America.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Trevor Noah?

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• 0:35Trevor Noah?

  This segment is brought to you by Google Pixel. You know what's really frustrating? Knowing the exact information you need is somewhere on your phone, but still ending up wasting your time digging through five different apps just to actually find it. Thankfully, Google Pixel 11 is designed with Gemini intelligence, so it can proactively find the information I need right when I need it. Like my flight info on travel days or my calendar when Eugene texts me to hang out. Oh, sorry Eugene, I'm booked. Learn more about what Google Pixel 11 can do at googlestore.com. These AI features are available in select countries and languages for users 18 and over, and make sure to check responses.

• 1:20Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, booked forever, forever. Hey, what's going on What Now listeners? Happy New Year to you and yours from everyone here at the What Now team. I hope the new year is already looking up for you. We've got so many great episodes planned for you in 2025. But today, because the team is taking some time off, some much deserved time off, we decided to bring you an episode that we loved, probably one of our favorite episodes from this season. The episode about Ozempic. You know, weight loss, our culture's obsession with diet and physical appearance. I mean, we got as much feedback about this episode as any episode we've done so far. So for now, take a listen and once again, Happy New Year.

• 2:02Trevor Noah?

  I'm not a scientist and none of this is actual advice. Please take everything. Imagine I am an idiot who has stumbled into your village. Now you can listen to me.

• 2:15Trevor Noah?

  This is What Now with Trevor Noah.

• 2:27Trevor Noah?

  Cristiano, nice to see you in person.

• 2:29Speaker 01

  Good to see you.

• 2:29Trevor Noah?

  This is so much fun, friend. I haven't seen you in so, like, this.

• 2:33Speaker 01

  I know.

• 2:33Trevor Noah?

  In the flesh.

• 2:34Speaker 01

  We used to do this every day.

• 2:35Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 2:36Speaker 01

  Remember?

• 2:36Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 2:37Speaker 01

  We used to make a show every day.

• 2:38Trevor Noah?

  Every single day of our lives. That was, I was like, I loved it.

• 2:41Speaker 01

  You liked it so much, you quit and left us.

• 2:47Trevor Noah?

  Oh, man. I'm excited to have this conversation today because, I mean, I'm excited for all conversations, but like, this conversation is, is one that I don't even think we'll be able to complete today, which I think all good conversations are, strangely enough. And this one in particular intrigues me because everybody's talking about Ozempic, right? And we're not talking about Ozempic, the product today. I think that's, that's going to be important for everyone to understand. We're just going to use that as a name for, you know, these weight loss drugs. Because Ozempic, Monjaro, Zepbound, Wegovy, you name it, you know? The, the point is, we're talking about inject, lose weight, apparently feel great.

• 3:32Trevor Noah?

  This is the, that's my catchphrase, by the way, if they want to buy it from me. I'm, I'm available, Eli Lilly. I'm available at Novodotstv. I never know how to say their name.

• 3:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, I can't say it either.

• 3:43Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, it's, I feel like we were at an interesting inflection point in society where there was a point when this would have just been, would have been shunned completely. Do you know what I mean? People would be like, this is trash.

• 3:55Speaker 01

  You're cheating.

• 3:55Trevor Noah?

  Yeah. And then now it's slowly, we're like, you know?

• 3:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:59Trevor Noah?

  It's like Republican, Democrat, it's like 50/50 now.

• 4:05Speaker 01

  Basically, I was like, hmm.

• 4:06Trevor Noah?

  Yeah. Where do you, where do you stand on this?

• 4:08Speaker 01

  Oh, my God, Trevor, you can't ask me that at the beginning of the thing.

• 4:11Trevor Noah?

  That's exactly where, that's exactly where you start, at the beginning.

• 4:14Speaker 01

  I am pro-choice when it comes to Ozempic.

• 4:17Trevor Noah?

  Oh, I like this.

• 4:18Speaker 01

  I am pro-choice. I'm pro-choice. That's, that's who I am, yeah.

• 4:22Trevor Noah?

  So you have no moral judgment or opinion on it?

• 4:27Speaker 01

  No, I I have I've seen friends and family members on the drug and see how it's seen how it's changed their life.

• 4:35Trevor Noah?

  Okay, and so this is what I'd love to know, changed their lives in what way?

• 4:39Speaker 01

  Um, beyond the weight, they seem more comfortable in their bodies. Some of them had like back and knee issues. You know, some of some people it was just like they were struggling. Some people was like, it's kind of regulated their appetite. They're drinking less. So when you see it from that perspective, it's been like, oh, wow. So I'm pro the choice, but I'm not pro the societal pressure that I think some people feel to take.

• 5:03Trevor Noah?

  Okay, okay, okay. Well, let's let's bring in our special guest today. I wanted to bring in a writer, a cultural critic, and somebody who I think has some of the most informed and then fantastic personal opinions on this topic because she has written about it. You know her work probably from The New Yorker if you read. If you don't read, then maybe you don't know her. And this will be your introduction to her. Jia Tolentino, welcome, welcome to the podcast.

• 5:28Speaker 02

  Thank you for having me.

• 5:29Trevor Noah?

  Are you kidding me? Thank you for joining us. I'm gonna apologize in advance for all the ignorance I'm gonna bring to this conversation, but I feel like it's my purpose. As my mother used to say when I was young, be of service, be of service. So if I'm surrounded by two brilliant, smart people, I have to now balance the conversation the other way around. I think you you you heard the question I asked Christiana. So let's let's start from your personal, just like purely personal, no scientific, no nothing point of view. Where where do you stand when it comes to these Ozempic type drugs?

• 6:02Speaker 02

  I think I think about Ozempic the way I think about a lot of cultural phenomena, which is I have a lot of thoughts about it at a sort of macro level and then in terms of anyone's individual use or not use of it, other than I have a group chat where my friends sometimes send pictures of celebrities and like to make fun of the fact that I never know who it is because everyone looks so different. But yeah, I mean, I'm I'm I'm pro choice too, you know, like it's it's none of my damn business what what anyone's doing with their own body.

• 6:32Trevor Noah?

  It's interesting you bring up the thing about celebrities because like I've noticed now there's a there's a you know, we talk about the shame game.

• 6:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:38Trevor Noah?

  And the blame. There's like this, there's this game now where people see someone and they're like, oh, that's Ozempic. Oh, that's Ozempic. I've noticed with me, depending on like how someone takes a picture of me, someone be like, you are Ozempic. I'm like, I've never lost weight, but then sometimes I go like, it it seems like it's become um. In in a way, it's almost become a bit of a like a slur or like an insult. It's like, oh, I see you're on Ozempic. Ah, you're one of them.

• 7:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:03Trevor Noah?

  Trump is the only one that you really need to, because the Republican Party doesn't have an opinion.

• 7:06Speaker 01

  Everyone calling him Ozempic. They're saying Ozempic Trump. They're calling him Ozempic Trump.

• 7:10Trevor Noah?

  Donald Trump on Ozempic?

• 7:12Speaker 01

  Allegedly. Please, MAGA, don't come for me, please. Allegedly.

• 7:16Trevor Noah?

  Wow.

• 7:16Speaker 01

  He looks different. I I believe it.

• 7:19Trevor Noah?

  Damn, I can see him now. Oh, oh, oh, oh, Ozempic.

• 7:26Speaker 02

  Well, I, you know, this I do have thoughts on, you know, I think that. One of the things that our whole fascination with Ozempic is based on is, and it's interesting, you know, Christian, I wonder if you have thoughts with little kids, right? Part of beauty is thinness, as it's taught to you from a really early age, like fatness, queerness, darkness, all of these things are like. Coded as signs of deviance. Like you, you learn as a really young child in Disney movies, in anything. Like, beauty is really coded as morality, and there's this Protestant work ethic thing, right? It's something that you should achieve through hard and punitive work and discipline, right?

• 8:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:05Speaker 02

  And when people use Ozempic, it's like, hmm, you cheated. You skipped the hard work part, you know?

• 8:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:09Speaker 02

  And so you, you got the thing we demanded of you, but now we find this a vaguely immoral thinness.

• 8:14Trevor Noah?

  Like you worked hard to achieve the right thing. Okay, I I hear what you're saying. It's funny because I I don't know how it was for you growing up, but so. I have, I've had an interesting journey with um weight and how I perceive it and fatness, etc. Because I grew up in South Africa, genuinely, growing up. This is such a weird thing to try and explain to people. In South Africa. You did not get made as much fun of if you were fat. Like, so like a fat person, you just. Be like, I mean, I don't even remember if we had that many names. But I remember all the ones for skinny people was Sticks Manzanza. It was.

• 8:51Trevor Noah?

  That was my favorite ones. Sticks Manzanza, Skinny Manili. It was like there were all these names where it was just like you, you, you're a twig, you're thin. And it was a sign there of, of a lack of having.

• 9:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:04Trevor Noah?

  If you got married and you didn't gain weight, people would say that your marriage is not going well. Literally, they'd be like, is your wife not treating you well? Aye, man, ah, ah, no, man, look at you. If I would come home from the States and like many times I would, I'd come back from America and I gain weight. And so whenever I go home, people will be like, ah, you're looking good, man. You're looking good, America's treating you well, you're looking, Trevor, no, man, you're looking good, look at your cheeks. You're looking good. And then, and, and, and so where I grew up, fatness was considered like sort of a choice. And then being skinny was like, ugh, your life is not going well and you're not making the right choices.

• 9:40Speaker 01

  For sure.

• 9:41Trevor Noah?

  So it's interesting how it flips, you know, and I'm sure it's time as well.

• 9:45Speaker 02

  But in both cases, it's about wealth, right? I mean.

• 9:48Trevor Noah?

  Oh, yeah.

• 9:48Speaker 02

  Both cases.

• 9:49Speaker 01

  For sure.

• 9:49Speaker 02

  Like the, the thing that is valued is always the thing that's correlated with wealth. And it's, I feel like that's been the case. You look through art history, right? The, the fuller figures are valued at a time when it's, you know.

• 10:01Trevor Noah?

  Right, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 10:02Speaker 02

  Signifying plenty. And now it's signifying, you know, I got a trainer, I got a cook, I got a, you know.

• 10:09Speaker 01

  I mean, it's funny that you mentioned the childhood stuff that it brings up because recently it was approved for children.

• 10:16Trevor Noah?

  Oh, it was?

• 10:16Speaker 01

  Yeah. And, and there are parents who are making the decision to give.

• 10:20Trevor Noah?

  I don't know about that.

• 10:21Speaker 01

  I mean, Trevor, that's your instant, it's like very visceral, you're like giving it to kids, but like.

• 10:26Trevor Noah?

  I'll tell you why, I'll tell you why. I do not think that these types of drugs should be approved for children. I personally believe that there are still a whole host of things that you can do to get that child. Like if, if you're giving them this drug, I'm assuming it's because their weight is really detrimental to their health. Otherwise, it's, it's weird, like you're just trying to make like a sexy kid or something, that's weird.

• 10:47Speaker 01

  It's so crazy, but I meet mothers, a lot of older. Who are like preteens and teenagers and they'll show you pictures of their daughter and be like, oh, but this one needs to lose weight, you know, like mothers. It it's so encoded in our culture that there are mothers out there and fathers out there. Damn. You need to lose weight. I mean, most people's relationship with food don't come from themselves. They often come from their parents and their families.

• 11:12Speaker 02

  It's it's so interesting that all of this concern about what creates health for kids always comes down to food and weight, right? And it's like, there's so much other stuff. It's like, it's housing policy. It's like, it's it's food stamp policy, right? It's all of these things. And it's like funding for recess and, you know, and for like physical activities and for and for all these things. Because, you know, there are, there are levers you can pull to change your body, certainly during childhood and that, you know, like it's it's not to say that lifestyle and the what you eat doesn't affect it, but you know, there, I talked to doctors that are, you know, they're, the patients are, their kids are in food deserts. And they have nobody that can take them outside and they, it's not safe to be outside where they are.

• 11:56Speaker 02

  So they are just kind of sitting in a room, you know, all day because of, you know, this myriad of structural factors. And so the the only lever to pull for these complicating conditions is a drug like this.

• 12:07Trevor Noah?

  And this is everywhere in the world, but America in particular is very, very good at treating the symptoms and not the cause.

• 12:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:13Trevor Noah?

  Like very, very, very, very good.

• 12:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:16Trevor Noah?

  You know what I mean? Like, like, America will find.

• 12:17Speaker 02

  Make more money that way.

• 12:18Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, America will find a lot of money to like imprison homeless people, but then won't find ways to stop people from becoming homeless.

• 12:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure.

• 12:26Trevor Noah?

  You know what I mean? America will find.

• 12:27Speaker 02

  You enrich the private prison.

• 12:28Trevor Noah?

  Exactly, exactly.

• 12:29Speaker 02

  I mean, how else would we?

• 12:31Trevor Noah?

  So this feels like one of those situations again, where it's like, we are going to now approve a drug for children, but not ask ourselves why these children would need that drug in the first place. Because I don't know, was Nigeria the same? How, what was, what was weight like in Nigeria?

• 12:47Speaker 01

  It's really interesting. There is this cultural. The body that's idealized is quite hard to get. So it's like

• 12:53Trevor Noah?

  Yes.

• 12:54Speaker 01

  big hips, tiny waist and big boobs and a big bum, which is pretty impossible to get, right? Most people don't have it naturally and you're not probably gonna have that after you have kids. Um, I was always considered a bit too skinny. Like my grandma was like, I remember she saying to me once, she was crying. And my mom was like, why are you crying? She was just like, like she calls me by my name, Amma. She was just like, who's gonna marry Amma? She's got bones.

• 13:18Speaker 01

  You know, you know, if you actually go to West Africa in particular, you see a lot of body diversity.

• 13:22Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 13:23Speaker 01

  So you see like really tall women, really muscular women. And like in Nigeria, I think the most, the biggest indicator about how bodies naturally are is that does your tribe have a fattening room, which is like before a woman gets married, she has to go to a room.

• 13:37Trevor Noah?

  You said a fattening room?

• 13:38Speaker 01

  They call it a fattening room, where you have to become fat. Because the girls are just naturally quite muscular, especially in like in the southeast, quite muscular and live.

• 13:46Trevor Noah?

  Okay.

• 13:46Speaker 01

  You know what I mean? So you know what that means? Fatness is supposed to be good, a sign of fertility, but then again.

• 13:52Trevor Noah?

  How long do you stay in the room?

• 13:54Speaker 01

  Till you get fat.

• 13:55Trevor Noah?

  I love this.

• 13:56Speaker 01

  Yeah. Oh, I don't know. I don't know about that.

• 13:58Trevor Noah?

  Oh, wait. Okay. Depends on how they're making you fat. Is it like, is it like, is it like fagora?

• 14:01Speaker 01

  They're giving you yams and thick, thick food, carbohydrates, basically, and lots of meat to make you bigger.

• 14:07Trevor Noah?

  They're not like force feeding you, you're just eating.

• 14:09Speaker 01

  I mean, the girls didn't wanna get fat or get married, so it's kind of crazy.

• 14:12Trevor Noah?

  All right. Like, once again, a fun Christiana story.

• 14:16Speaker 01

  I'm sorry, guys. It always gets dark. It always gets dark.

• 14:19Trevor Noah?

  Well, I wanna know, Gia, like, when did you, when and why did you start writing about Ozempic? Cause you were one of the first people writing about this, you know, before it became the wave, before it became the trend. I remember there was a moment pre-Ozempic, it just wasn't a thing.

• 14:35Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 14:36Trevor Noah?

  And then there were whispers.

• 14:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:37Trevor Noah?

  And then all of a sudden you heard Elon Musk was on it. And you're like, wait, what's happening here?

• 14:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:42Speaker 02

  Well, I think of, I kind of think of the Kardashians as, you know, the sort of weather vane for what the winds of sort of capital.

• 14:50Trevor Noah?

  Hilarious.

• 14:51Speaker 02

  And, you know, like deeply punitive, technologically based beauty standards. You know, like you can literally see written upon their bodies what women all across the country are going to then do. You know, in this really kind of amazing, terrifying way. And so, you know, I, I think I, it was, it was like that. No one had ever heard of it. And then, you know, I started to hear about, there was this shot that was intended for treating. Um.

• 15:17Trevor Noah?

  Diabetes.

• 15:18Speaker 02

  Chronic conditions caused by type two diabetes that women in Hollywood, like, you know, some women in Hollywood were taking and their bodies were suddenly visibly changing. And it was interesting to me to begin with because, you know, like I, I grew up in, you know, the nineties, the early two thousands in, in sort of very conservative Houston, Texas, like, deep within this hegemonic, like, white dominated, the age of sort of the only people that are beautiful are like Paris Hilton, you know, and Britney Spears. And that was the body prescribed. And then we had this sort of Obama era, you know, grand democratization of culture, which included, you know, people started to have open dialogue about how you could be healthy at every size, which you can, right?

• 16:02Speaker 02

  And that all sorts of bodies are beautiful. And I always felt a little skeptical of the sort of dove ad body positivity thing for reasons we can get into later. But I thought, okay, finally, like, we have reached a new era. Maybe it will unlock the sort of hold that white diet culture has had on America since the twenties, basically. And then this happens and it was like, oh, oh, no. Oh, no, we're swinging. I mean, that was my initial interest. It was like, I thought we had already changed, that we were going to stay on this train of, of, you know, openness and, I don't know. And, and, and the sharp swing back and what that meant for the way people talked and thought about beauty, I thought was extremely interesting.

• 16:46Speaker 02

  And then so I just started tracking it.

• 16:48Trevor Noah?

  So here's the thing I, I wonder though, do you, do you think that utopia can ever exist? And, you know, because I, I mean, like, I don't know, sometimes I'm a little simple in this thinking in that I go, we're still animals and animals also judge each other based on some physical aspect and, and we're no different. I just think what happens to us that's particularly different is there are tastemakers that exist in different spheres who sort of like pull the levers to decide like how we define where the, you know, the Overton window of beauty actually exists.

• 17:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:19Trevor Noah?

  And where the one of health is. Do you think that our conversations these days lie in beauty or do they lie in health? Or is it people using health to masquerade their views on what they think beautiful is?

• 17:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think it's like the latter, right? And I think even if we were in this utopia where we accepted everyone's bodies, like, I think The Economist did a piece about talking about the fact that like women's salaries are pegged to what they weigh.

• 17:47Trevor Noah?

  Yes.

• 17:47Speaker 01

  And if you learn, if you lose a certain amount of weight, your salary goes up.

• 17:51Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 17:52Speaker 01

  So it's just like the market forces, for whatever reason, we know the reasons, reward being skinny.

• 17:58Trevor Noah?

  And by the way, did you see the opposite is true for men?

• 18:01Speaker 01

  Interesting.

• 18:02Trevor Noah?

  The more a woman gains in weight, the more her salary goes down. And with men, the bigger they get, like the rounder, I guess it's like because you look like King Richard or those vibes.

• 18:13Speaker 01

  Henry VIII.

• 18:14Trevor Noah?

  Henry, yeah, it's like those vibes, like, to all my subjects. The more like bulbous you become, the, your money actually, like, people don't penalize you at all. They're just like, yeah, this dude knows what he's talking about. He ate a pig that had an apple in his mouth.

• 18:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I think for women, it's always gonna be, you are judged, that connection between morality.

• 18:33Trevor Noah?

  Yes.

• 18:34Speaker 01

  And beauty and health, I think people just collapse it into one. They don't see them as different things, even if they use a language like, don't you wanna be healthy?

• 18:41Trevor Noah?

  Right.

• 18:41Speaker 01

  You know, when that, but they're saying to someone, don't you wanna lose weight? And I think it's gonna be harder for women to escape that, unfortunately.

• 18:48Trevor Noah?

  So, okay, let, let me ask this question now. Is there a moral way for people to engage in conversations about weight, weight loss, health, and how it pertains to people? Like, Gia, you know, you've done a lot of research in this, Christiana, I know you've talked about this for, for years. But like, where do you think we find the, the? Where do you think we find the sweet spots?

• 19:12Speaker 02

  I think it exists, and I think probably the people that are the best at it are fat people. You know, I think that there are a lot of people that have been, that have spent, you know, that it's been like this cultural discursive work in the last 15 years to establish a whole vocabulary for how we could be talking about these things, right? And it's incredibly difficult in reporting this piece even and in talking to people. Like, I think that the fear of fat and the bias against it is it would come out quite casually. I'm sure it's built into me in some way, you know, in the way that I think about it. But I think that there is a way to get some basic facts on the table, right? That BMI is based on, you know, like BMI is like a racist, you kind of eugenicist

• 19:54Speaker 02

  standard and, and like, and, and there can be serious conditions that correlate with obesity, but that doesn't mean that, you know, obesity or, or excess weight is in itself harmful, you know? And so much of this is really arguably down to physician bias as well, right? Like, there, there are OB GYNs that won't treat women over a certain BMI. There's so many, so many, like statistically, doctors self-report, you know, beliefs about patients that are quote unquote overweight or obese. And, you know, they, they, they treat them differently. They underdiagnose, they undertreat, they attribute all health problems to you need to lose weight in ways that are never sort of suspected about people of different sizes.

• 20:39Speaker 02

  And, you know, there's like,

• 20:40Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, I think there was a story I read, it might have been one of your stories, actually, where there was a woman who was struggling to breathe.

• 20:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:48Trevor Noah?

  And,

• 20:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was blood.

• 20:49Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, yeah, that was,

• 20:51Speaker 02

  You're like, oh, you're like, your lungs are simply fat, you know, and she was dying.

• 20:54Trevor Noah?

  Yeah. Yeah, and she actually had, what, did she have lung cancer?

• 20:57Speaker 02

  Blood clots.

• 20:58Trevor Noah?

  Oh, she had blood clots? Yeah, yeah.

• 21:00Speaker 02

  But I think, you know, you mostly find the healthy way of talking about it in people who have had to like advocate for themselves against all of these things for a long time. I also think fundamentally, probably the healthiest way to talk about health is to kind of set weight aside altogether, right? And talk about other metrics like,

• 21:18Trevor Noah?

  VO, VO2 max and,

• 21:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't know what that means.

• 21:23Trevor Noah?

  No, no, no, really. No, I hear VO2 max is the gold standard. That's actually, they say VO2.

• 21:28Speaker 02

  What is that?

• 21:28Trevor Noah?

  So VO2 max is your body's ability to withdraw or to extract oxygen from every breath.

• 21:35Speaker 02

  There you go.

• 21:35Speaker 01

  I love that.

• 21:36Trevor Noah?

  Apparently that's it.

• 21:37Speaker 02

  There are so many other metrics to talk about health that have nothing to do with weight. And probably that would be the healthiest way of talking about weight is having it be just sort of an incidental byproduct of all these other lifestyle factors.

• 21:49Trevor Noah?

  Mm hmm, mm hmm, mm hmm. We're going to continue this conversation right after this short break.

• 21:56Trevor Noah?

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• 22:41Trevor Noah?

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• 23:24Trevor Noah?

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• 24:06Trevor Noah?

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• 24:56Trevor Noah?

  Let's, let's talk a little bit about the drugs themselves, like the actual way that the drugs work. I, I was lucky, I had a conversation with the CEO of Eli Lilly and some of the scientists who work there. Cause I wanted to understand. Yeah. What is this thing? So I'll, I'll break it down and G I know you're the expert, so please jump in. A few decades ago, there was a scientist who discovered that there was a essentially a hormone that was released into your body that told your body you were full, right? And they wanted to study what this, this, this thing was GLP one, they called it. Cause they never call it easy things like Patrick, which they should, cause then it would help us. If scientists were just like, we're gonna call this Patrick, then we all know what Patrick is. But anyway, scientists found GLP one.

• 25:37Trevor Noah?

  This is something that makes your body feel full, makes you feel satisfied, I think is a, is a more important word. And they wanted to study it, but they couldn't. They're like, all right, how do we figure it out? They found a lizard, they always find a lizard and they're like, we can reproduce this. You fast forward, they realize that this drug can help people who have diabetes. Then they're like, okay, this is for diabetes, this is for diabetes. But then someone goes, wait a minute.

• 25:59Trevor Noah?

  It's not just diabetes. People are losing weight.

• 26:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:03Trevor Noah?

  And they're like, huh. And then like all drug companies, the same way they did with Viagra. They were like, we're trying to help people with their blood pressure. And they're like, have you noticed that all these people are getting erections? And they're like, everyone stop. We don't give a shit about blood pressure. We've just struck gold. But what I found most fascinating about this is to what you said, Christiana, when we started the conversation. If we have the conversation about weight loss, I feel like we're missing something bigger that we're discovering right now. And these drugs are helping us understand something about self-control.

• 26:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:36Trevor Noah?

  And how it has been robbed from us. Because people take Ozempic, Zepa, whatever, right? The first thing they do is they don't eat as much. We knew that would happen. Okay, fine, it's working. But then people go, oh, I don't drink alcohol the same way anymore.

• 26:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:52Trevor Noah?

  I don't watch as much TV. I don't use social media. I'm not even on my phone as much. I don't gamble as much. And you're just like, wait, wait, wait.

• 27:03Speaker 01

  Compulsive shopping?

• 27:04Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 27:04Speaker 01

  I read about that. Someone stopped them compulsive shopping.

• 27:06Trevor Noah?

  And so, you know, I almost wonder if in discovering this solution, have we now exposed all of the poisonous problems that society has unleashed upon itself? Does this make sense?

• 27:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, we don't judge gambling or drinking or online shopping in the same way that we do weight. So that was what the person was fixated on. I got on Ozempic to lose weight. But they discovered all these other parts of themselves. All that they were awakened to like, I actually spend too much money. Like a woman said she was going through Target and she wasn't putting things in her car.

• 27:40Trevor Noah?

  Yes, this is what I mean.

• 27:41Speaker 01

  In the same way. And I found that so interesting. We don't see like excessive shopping.

• 27:45Trevor Noah?

  Yes.

• 27:45Speaker 01

  The same way we see excessive eating. And I think that's the most interesting part of the drug.

• 27:51Speaker 02

  Well, this is, this is taking it in a slightly different direction. But what, what this part of the conversation makes me think of and what I think this thing that was in the back of my head when I was writing and thinking about it was that. Like, one of the reasons that I, I, you know, on a macro level, find it really sad when people who are extremely thin take it to be, take this to become much thinner, right? Is that, like, what it is to be human, like, we're made up of our appetites, right? Like, that, that's one of the defining

• 28:18Trevor Noah?

  I like that.

• 28:19Speaker 02

  Things of what we seek and what we literally physically hunger for and, you know, like, our, our desire for pleasure and relief and, and excitement, right? These things are important and they, they make us human. And back to the conversation about kids, it's like so much of the rise of obesity in children seems directly related to the fact that people are so afraid of fat children in the first place, right? Like, that, that children are taught to fear their appetites and fear the snack drawer. Like, the idea of just kind of natural pleasure in our appetites seems to be the thing that might possibly lead to the healthiest relationship with them in all cases, right?

• 29:01Speaker 02

  To not need to, to like indulge and have guilty pleasures and sort of secret little things, right? That, that if, that if these appetites, if we could sort of have a, treat them normally in all respects and, like, it seems like American consumer's culture just blows all of these kind of compulsions sky high because of this fear we have of appetite, right?

• 29:23Speaker 01

  Well, I, I think my slight pushback to that is like, being a Brit in America is that

• 29:28Trevor Noah?

  Yes.

• 29:29Speaker 01

  It's actually very hard to have a regulated relationship with the pleasure of food

• 29:34Trevor Noah?

  Yes.

• 29:34Speaker 01

  when there are very few pleasures. So, food is like a very

• 29:38Trevor Noah?

  Oh, this is interesting.

• 29:39Speaker 01

  cheap pleasure. Like, it, I think that's okay if you're like, in a country where it's like, there's a park down the road, I can play tennis for free, like, it's just like, you get pleasure and that

• 29:48Trevor Noah?

  It is one of, it is like one of the dopamine hits.

• 29:50Speaker 01

  But in this country, I feel like food and alcohol are the only cheap, accessible pleasures.

• 29:56Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 29:56Speaker 01

  But like, if, if we were in a more balanced, I guess, culture, then I'd be like, sure, enjoy the pleasure of food because then you can regulate that pleasure because you're getting pleasure everywhere. But people don't get touched.

• 30:06Trevor Noah?

  That's a really interesting idea.

• 30:07Speaker 01

  They don't have community, they don't have any other pleasures.

• 30:09Speaker 02

  But that's what I mean, right? If we could, if We could like honor our need, like, like what we were saying, out outside time and safety.

• 30:15Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 30:16Speaker 02

  And like the whole labor market being organized differently so that it's not like you have to squeeze all your pleasure into like two-minute micro installments like, you know, six times a day, right? Like, I think we would have a very different relationship to compulsion and appetite and pleasure and relief. If, you know, if American society were set up in such a way that would like honor people as like beings that need these things, right?

• 30:37Speaker 01

  Also, this isn't unique to America. I don't want to, because like, England, like, is pretty tough right now.

• 30:42Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 30:43Speaker 01

  We have seen similar things there, too.

• 30:44Trevor Noah?

  I think, I think something we, we, we also have to consider is this. One of my biggest beefs is, is that corporations have found ways to create messaging that tricks people into making the corporation's problem their problem.

• 31:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:02Trevor Noah?

  In the same way, oil companies scammed us into thinking that recycling was our job. Right? And they make it about individuals.

• 31:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:13Trevor Noah?

  You need to recycle.

• 31:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:15Trevor Noah?

  No, no, no, no. Let me tell you something. Recycling is not our job. The job is to not make the thing in the first place. We take for granted how many times, and we ignore how many times we get tricked into believing that it's us. And I think the same thing has happened with food and indulgence in America and in the rest of the world.

• 31:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:32Trevor Noah?

  Is where, you know, to your point, Gia, is like, people have been made to feel guilty about their appetites and about their indulgence and about their, and then we create this world where we now fight with each other. Why are you letting your kid eat so much? Well, I can't, it's my child, it's their appetite.

• 31:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:46Trevor Noah?

  I don't want to stop, I don't want to make them guilty. And no one seems to be asked, not no one, but like, I think sometimes we forget to ask the question. Like, wait, why is it impossible for your child, your child to stop eating those chips? If we live in a society where we blame people for the addiction catching them, but don't ask who's imposing the addiction upon them, then I feel like we're playing a game of whack-a-mole, telling everybody in society that they need to be better, when in fact, we're ignoring the fact that, you know?

• 32:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure.

• 32:13Trevor Noah?

  These Ozempic-type drugs.

• 32:16Trevor Noah?

  As much as we're focusing on them as the conversation, I feel like they've exposed this underbelly of addiction that we've all allowed.

• 32:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think, Trevor, what you're getting at is that we've always thought all of these things are just a question of willpower.

• 32:30Trevor Noah?

  Yes.

• 32:30Speaker 01

  And it's not about.

• 32:31Trevor Noah?

  And responsibility.

• 32:32Speaker 01

  I think your piece touches on that as well.

• 32:34Trevor Noah?

  And responsibility.

• 32:35Speaker 01

  It's not about, no, it's not willpower. Like, the system is basically working against all of us, and some of us are able to resist better than others.

• 32:43Trevor Noah?

  And resist some of it, by the way.

• 32:44Speaker 01

  And some of it, but I think it's caught all of us, in a way.

• 32:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, I feel like that's the whole story of the entire conversation around weight, right? Like, it's who is making the money off of them and who's making the money off of the cure also.

• 32:56Trevor Noah?

  Follow the money. Always follow the money.

• 32:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:59Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, yeah. So let's talk a little bit about, you know, if we move beyond appetites, per se, and we come back to the world of these drugs, what they're doing and how people are using them. Have we now entered a new world? You know, Gia, to what you're saying, where this will become another instance of the haves being able to escape another ill in society? There's a, it's almost like we've put a price on people being able to evade this thing, this net of addiction that has been cast upon everybody.

• 33:37Speaker 01

  Also, I think, Gia, just to hop in, it's like, we're talking about Ozempic so much because people lose weight and we think losing weight is the better thing to do. And now it means that there'll be a class of people that can do that and not have to go through the cruelty of phobia. And it's going to be the people with money that can perhaps escape that everyday cruelty. And then the people that don't can't do that.

• 33:58Speaker 02

  Well, yeah, I think one of the things that does seem maybe meaningfully new about this is that the beauty standards of the last decade seem to me to be this really kind of insidious arms race between digital enhancement and then technological alteration to match digital enhancement. And then you digitally enhance more and then use technology to further sort of shape, inject, discipline, whatever. Like, the thing that really scares me is... The idea that an unaltered body or face is aberrant or deviant and sort of unacceptable, that like that's the thing that I find really like existentially terrifying.

• 34:40Trevor Noah?

  Damn. Yeah, it's almost like in those, you know, when you watch those cyberpunk future movies where like people are judged because they don't have cybernetics now, you know? So everyone has, yeah, and that's, that's an interesting way you've just put it now. It becomes judgment because like, well, why aren't you making yourself better?

• 34:56Speaker 02

  Yeah. And I think plenty of people who are fat and healthy and perfectly happy in their lives are now hit with this sort of unbearable wave of like, well, why don't you just get the little jab, you know?

• 35:06Trevor Noah?

  Because now it seems like you're actively making a choice to not be healthy.

• 35:12Speaker 02

  Why wouldn't you conform, right?

• 35:15Trevor Noah?

  Like it's So here's a question I do have. I'm going to throw a few things at you and everybody.

• 35:19Speaker 02

  Go for it.

• 35:19Trevor Noah?

  Trigger warnings, everybody. Trigger warning, Jia, trigger warning. And feel free to plead the fifth. No one needs to speak. I don't wish to bring anybody down with me. All right. I'm the pilot who'll tell you to jump out of the plane before I take it on this dive. So let's, let's, let's get, let's get messy with a few of these, of these moments and these conversations. Sometimes it feels, and I'm speaking for people, and because I generally don't think I struggle with this as much myself, but I do know that there's a little inconsistency or, or what people perceive as a, as a flipping of a narrative. When a celebrity, let's just deal with celebrities. Celebrities will come out, they go, I love my body. My body's great. They build fans based on that body and that body being great. Fans are like, we love your body. Your body's great. We're all with you. And then the celebrity

• 36:02Trevor Noah?

  pops out, like after six months, they've just disappeared and they come back and they've got a completely new body. And then they're like, hey, I've got a new body.

• 36:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:12Trevor Noah?

  And then people are like, yo, what the, wait, what, what just happened here? And they're like, no, I love this body because actually I wasn't healthy and I wasn't happy and my knees were hurting me, whatever it might be. And then they get a level of backlash from the people that were body positive, who are now sort of anti-body positive because now their body's gone a different way. Does this make sense? It almost feels like, in the same way everything else in society has become like a cult. It's like, it sometimes feels like we are not working towards a place where people can be the way they wish to be. We're working to a place where people can be the way we wish them to be.

• 36:55Trevor Noah?

  And then if they deviate from that, we kick them out. You get what I'm saying? Like, look at how many people were angry at Adele for losing weight. Angry at her. Jennifer Hudson, angry at her.

• 37:05Speaker 01

  For sure.

• 37:06Trevor Noah?

  Do you know what I mean?

• 37:06Speaker 01

  I, you know, not to speak on behalf of fat people or fat women at all, but I think there's so little imagery of women that had perhaps Adele's old body or Jennifer Hudson's old body. There was something very comforting for people to see a fat woman who's thriving and have this incredible career.

• 37:25Trevor Noah?

  Right.

• 37:26Speaker 01

  And there's like this disappointment or resentment when that celebrity then changes their body. I speculate some of that.

• 37:35Speaker 02

  Well, I, I mean, I mentioned earlier, like the little dove, every, you know, everyone is beautiful, like the beginning of the sort of corporatized body positivity movement. It seemed dangerous to me immediately because it seemed like, no, like actually beauty is this sort of arbitrary assignation based on people's conformity to market forces. It's not like, it's not like a spiritual moral good. Like, it was this whole thing that was really important to say that everyone was beautiful, as just to say everyone is good. And it was like, no, no, no, everyone is good and worthy. But perhaps that has nothing to do with beauty.

• 38:09Trevor Noah?

  Oh, wow, that's fascinating.

• 38:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:11Speaker 02

  And it seemed to me like perhaps it is just much more important to say like everyone is worthy and beauty is not as important as we ever thought it was at all. Like, it's just this thing, right?

• 38:20Trevor Noah?

  To dumb that down, in a way, it's almost like what you're saying is

• 38:24Speaker 02

  It's body neutrality, yeah.

• 38:26Trevor Noah?

  I like that as a, that's, I never, I never thought of that, actually.

• 38:29Speaker 02

  And it just seemed like, oh, this is a thing that people are gonna make a lot of money off of.

• 38:32Trevor Noah?

  Now we're trying to get to, we're still trying to get to beauty.

• 38:35Speaker 02

  Okay, hold on, there's this Clickhole article from 2016 that the headline is, "This plus-size model was inspiring, but then she lost 100 pounds, which was also inspiring, even though she was already perfect before, but she's also perfect now."

• 38:51Speaker 02

  Like, it's, it's like this very like, ah, like, and, and it's, this is the sort of circular hamster

• 38:56Trevor Noah?

  Yes.

• 38:56Speaker 02

  wheel that you get into, when it's like, everyone's beautiful, but also health is good, but also, we love you no matter what you do, but also some choices are socially weighted, and it's just so convoluted.

• 39:06Speaker 01

  I just wanted to throw Tracy in, Tracy McMillan-Cotum, brilliant sociologist. She talks about structural ugliness, right? This, the thing about like, how beauty is like this structural concept, and like, even though you can feel beautiful on an individual level, structurally, if you are dark-skinned, fat, and your body's, you're seen as ugly. And I think what Ozempic is getting at is just like, it's this cure to that structural ugliness of weight.

• 39:31Trevor Noah?

  That's interesting.

• 39:32Speaker 01

  And that's what a lot of thinkers are trying to resist, that like, why have we made being bigger structurally ugly?

• 39:39Trevor Noah?

  So, you know, I, so there's two things, okay? First of all, I think we shouldn't forget, and this is why it's hard to have these conversations in society, I believe, because people weaponize certain parts of conversations, and use it as a cudgel against others. Let's take it to like athletes. LeBron James had to lose a lot of weight, or he decided, rather. LeBron James decided to lose a lot of weight. LeBron said, "If I want my knees to take the pounding that they're gonna take me jumping, it is easier if I carry less weight. It is easier for me to run across a court if I carry less weight." I think the thing we shouldn't take for granted is, is like, I almost wish there was a world where we could all go into good faith conversation land.

• 40:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:23Trevor Noah?

  You know, where we can talk about health, but it not be used against somebody else in like a shitty way.

• 40:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:27Trevor Noah?

  A doctor can say, hey, you do want to try and work out as much as possible because it's good for your heart. But then someone's not going to point to someone go like, you see, you piece of trash.

• 40:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:35Trevor Noah?

  But it is important for people to know, like, the lifting of weights, just like resistance training has been shown to be one of the most important factors in longevity. And I'm not saying living long, I'm saying living as a functional person for as long as possible. So that's like the one side.

• 40:51Speaker 01

  Okay, so I agree with you, but I think, um, Gia, you probably understand what I say here. As a woman in those spaces, sometimes it is so hard to disconnect the pursuit of longevity and health for the pursuit of a body, that especially in a city like LA, New York or London.

• 41:07Trevor Noah?

  I'm with you completely.

• 41:08Speaker 01

  That people won't disapprove of.

• 41:09Trevor Noah?

  Trust me, with men, it's not exactly the same.

• 41:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:12Trevor Noah?

  But we also, and I'm not saying it's exactly the same because we don't get judged the same, but I know as guys, there's also a difficulty. You're standing in the gym and you're going, I'm here to look healthy, but also, man, I'm so far from.

• 41:26Speaker 01

  Marvel body.

• 41:26Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, I'm so far from that.

• 41:28Speaker 01

  I don't know like Chris Evans in Captain America.

• 41:31Speaker 02

  I think back to the LeBron thing, though, it's like, you know, he has very specific needs for physical performance for his body. But that many of, that all of us do not. But I think it's an interesting thing to bring up because the question is, how does he need to live in and or change his body to do the things that he wants to do with it, right? Even that as a way that people would talk, even that would be just a really nice way for people to talk about. Like, for people, like, if weight was incidental to that, it was like, can you do the things in your life that you want to do? You know, do you feel good?

• 42:06Trevor Noah?

  I love that. I actually love that.

• 42:07Speaker 02

  And it's like, that is probably the foundation that, you know, that could be the start of whatever healthier conversation, right?

• 42:14Trevor Noah?

  Somewhere.

• 42:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:15Trevor Noah?

  Because I feel like that could make a meaningful difference. It's like, hey, can you do? Can you lift your overhead luggage in the plane comfortably? Can you lift your child comfortably? Can you move a couch? But it's only the things you do. Can you live your life the way you would like to?

• 42:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, and like, do you feel good? Do you feel good in your body, right? I think that's what I was thinking about the like appetite and pleasure thing, right? Like, if that was valued, right? Like, people just feeling good in the way.

• 42:40Trevor Noah?

  Oh, man, I really love that idea.

• 42:43Speaker 02

  Like, it seems extremely health conducive, right?

• 42:45Trevor Noah?

  Yes. We need to get, we need to get D'Angelo to come back and do a remix. And this one will be like, how do you feel? That's what it will be. Don't go anywhere, because we got more What Now after this. Some of the most interesting things you learn happen while you're doing something completely ordinary. Maybe you're cooking dinner or watching a history video. Maybe you're on a flight catching up on a long-form interview. Or maybe you're trying to figure out how to fix something in your house because apparently owning a screwdriver means you're an electrician now. But you see, that's one of the things I love about YouTube Premium. I travel a lot, so I download videos before a flight. That way, I'm not leaving my entertainment in the hands of airplane Wi-Fi.

• 43:30Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, I've made that mistake before. You think you're gonna watch something in 4K, and suddenly, everyone's face is pixels. But one of my favorite features is smart downloads. You see, YouTube Premium can automatically download recommended videos for you based on what you already watched. So sometimes I'll get on a plane, I look at my phone, I'm like, ah, I didn't download anything. And it's like, no, YouTube already thought about this. They packed entertainment for me in my little lunchbox. And with background play, I can lock my phone, switch apps, and whatever I'm watching just keeps on going. So, if you like YouTube, you will love YouTube Premium. Sign up now for your free trial at youtube.com/premium. Terms apply. Cancel anytime.

• 44:16Speaker 03

  Oh, look. You just got added to a meeting about coordinating another meeting to prepare for the pre-meeting ahead of the follow-up meeting, which will, of course, require a recap meeting. And then, another meeting. Hit your booking point? Book with Southwest and enter airplane mode.

• 44:43Speaker 04

  Hi, it's me, Your Gutters. I want to start by saying I'm fine. Everything is totally fine. There's just, there's a lot of debris up here and I've been managing it mostly on my own for about eight months now. And I just thought, maybe, you could find someone on Angie to clean me up? You don't have to make it a whole thing. It doesn't need to be a whole thing. I just, I could really use your help.

• 45:08Speaker 05

  Your Gutters have waited long enough. Find a pro at Angie.com.

• 45:22Trevor Noah?

  You know what I also realize as we're speaking about this? Whether we like to admit it or not, humans are generally judgmental, right? We hold and cast judgments upon other people because it either makes us feel like we are doing well, or it makes us, whatever it is, there's reasons we do it, right? I think we shouldn't ever take for granted the fact that fatness is one of the few things that somebody can see on you that tells them something about you in some way, shape, or form. You don't know what it's telling you, but you can see it. Yeah. But like, think of it this way. If somebody has a gambling problem, or likes gambling, or whichever way you want to put it.

• 46:07Trevor Noah?

  That person, you can't tell.

• 46:09Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 46:10Trevor Noah?

  If somebody drinks a lot of alcohol, is addicted to alcohol, or likes alcohol, drinks it occasionally, you can't tell. Do you get what I'm saying?

• 46:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:16Trevor Noah?

  And I think what's what's strange about fatness is it is one of the few things where people from far can just assume many things about you because they can like sort of see it from the outside.

• 46:25Speaker 01

  And not just make judgments, but express those judgments.

• 46:28Trevor Noah?

  Yes.

• 46:29Speaker 01

  But I think with fat people, we're very prescriptive.

• 46:32Trevor Noah?

  We are.

• 46:33Speaker 01

  Like, and sometimes it's the.

• 46:34Speaker 02

  Well, and we see that body as like, this is a sign of a problem.

• 46:37Speaker 01

  Are you sure you want to eat that is a thing said to people who are fat or like, I saw a TikTok, a woman was like, being fat and exercising is people on the street going, go you, I'm so proud of you. And she's like, I'm just on a ride.

• 46:51Speaker 01

  Like, why do you feel this need to like encourage me? The people are trying to be nice, but like what's under that is like, you're someone that should be pitied and needs my encouragement in a way that's kind of infantilizing you. And I think that's the thing about fatphobia, we just feel like we can say anything to people who are fat.

• 47:07Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 47:08Speaker 01

  And it's often really cruel.

• 47:10Trevor Noah?

  That's actually a really good point.

• 47:11Speaker 02

  Well, there was a, there was a thing, there's like Harvard does this implicit bias study, and I think I mentioned it in that piece, that I think it was, I'm gonna get the dates wildly wrong, but it was maybe sort of from a point in the mid 2000s to a point in recent years, they analyzed sort of 10 vectors of bias about age, about skin color, about like gender, about, you know, like these various things. Every single implicit and explicit expression of bias went down in that sort of like Obama era period, except for bias against weight. And that went up, I believe, both implicit and explicit.

• 47:49Trevor Noah?

  So everything went down except that.

• 47:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, everything, everything went down of the 10 things tested in this particular Harvard study.

• 47:57Speaker 01

  Yeah. Interesting.

• 47:58Trevor Noah?

  Well, that's, that's, that's really fascinating. Yeah.

• 48:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:01Trevor Noah?

  Look, I, I think, I think, you know, as, as we said in the beginning of this conversation. This feels like a, an inflection point and a moment where the conversations we have going forward are going to continuously evolve because now there's been a new agent that's been introduced.

• 48:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 48:20Trevor Noah?

  I feel like we're, we're at that point now with these Ozempic type drugs is they're now making us ask questions that go far beyond the questions that we've sort of been comfortable living in for a while. And those questions are, what is health? Are we trying to promote health or are we trying to promote our moral superiority upon other human beings?

• 48:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 48:42Trevor Noah?

  Are we trying to, you know, run around shaming people because it makes us feel better? Why do we even feel, as you said, Christiana, that we have the right to do these things? And then with children, what does it mean for the future? Cause again, the big thing I think we also have to include in this is we don't know what the very long-term effects of these drugs are.

• 49:03Speaker 02

  No.

• 49:04Trevor Noah?

  Because they're so new. I mean, if you think about mass adoption for a long period of time, for people who haven't had insulin issues, for people who don't have diabetes, we don't know. And I think that's something people always have to be careful of is realizing that we don't know. What we do know is how we can treat people today. And so, um, Gia, what now from your perspective? I'll break it down in two parts. What, what do you think we're going to see now? And then what would you hope we would see now that, that, that maybe we wouldn't and maybe we will?

• 49:38Speaker 02

  What I thought originally about the best case sort of

• 49:43Speaker 02

  cultural effect of this, you know, the fact that this technology exists could be is that we could kind of remove the moral valences from every part of this conversation possible, right? That we could understand that. Metabolism and the hormonal preset that leads your body to be a certain weight and that all of it is much more sort of arbitrary and kind of morally neutral. And like you said, Christiana, like a sign of just all of the other things environmentally that you're swimming in. Like, I think that is the best thing that something like Ozempic can do is just is lead people to the understanding that if you can radically change people's relationship to fullness by one injection, then maybe it wasn't something that everyone should have

• 50:28Speaker 02

  been judging. You know, then very clearly, it's not something that deserved decades of moral, a century, like a full century of moral condemnation by like the entire beauty industry, right? Of course, it doesn't seem to have led there at all. And I think, I mean, I have no real predictions, other than the fact that, you know, one thing about GLP-1 drugs is you, in the vast majority of cases, as soon as you stop taking them, your body reverts to how it was before. So the weight loss lasts as long as you take them, basically.

• 51:01Trevor Noah?

  And you gain more fat.

• 51:04Speaker 02

  You gain it back, yeah.

• 51:05Trevor Noah?

  So this is because it's something we've learned about bodies, I think, from the starvation experiments back in the day, the only ones we really have on like weight is...

• 51:12Speaker 02

  Right, dieting slows your metabolism, and that's one of the reasons that fat phobia leads to obesity very directly. And so, you know, I think, I think we have yet to see the wave of what happens when people come off of this and reckon with the sort of exit plan, if there is one, or the sort of lifetime use for the, for the, for the sort of like beauty use case, you know? And I don't know what that'll look like. I don't know how people will talk about it or how open it'll be. It still doesn't seem like this is something that people talk about frankly when it comes to their own use of it. And I don't know, it'll be interesting to see if and when and how people ever do.

• 51:51Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, that's, that's, that's a really, I think, a very honest way to look at like all the potential outcomes for what it could or might or should be as we move forward. I will throw in like a random prediction.

• 52:06Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 52:07Trevor Noah?

  I think, and this is a crazy thing to say, I think at some point, the American government is going to shut these drugs down. Because these drugs, if they get to like a point where they are extremely effective, because right now they don't work for some people.

• 52:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:24Trevor Noah?

  But when they get to the point where like, these drugs are just nailing it, and I mean just nailing it, I think they might get shut down.

• 52:31Speaker 01

  Interesting.

• 52:31Trevor Noah?

  Because what is America if people are not addicted to social media? People are not addicted to fast food? People are not addicted to junk food? A lot of America has been built on corporations getting people addicted, not giving them something, but getting them addicted to things. And I wonder if, and I know it's like almost conspiracy theory level, but I go like, I wonder if at some point, these corporations and these CEOs are gonna phone people in Congress and go like, hey, this one drug

• 53:02Speaker 01

  Interesting.

• 53:03Trevor Noah?

  is shutting down a lot of how American companies make their money? You need to shut it down. And I don't think that that's impossible, to be honest with you.

• 53:12Speaker 01

  I agree with you. I have a working theory. I think that like, as there is this kind of like anti-wokeness thing happening and people are swinging to the right, I think the obsession with thinness is also an expression of that.

• 53:29Trevor Noah?

  Mm hmm.

• 53:30Speaker 01

  And as long as we're kind of in this kind of right-wingish populist conservative era, people are gonna long to be thin. Because I think that when people talk about, when people like use woke as a slur, they'll mention people, they'll mention movements.

• 53:45Trevor Noah?

  Interesting.

• 53:46Speaker 01

  Mention D E I, they'll mention body positivity, they'll mention transness. All of these things that for a brief moment, for about two to seven years, were coming into mainstream almost acceptance. They weren't quite acceptance, they were coming into it. And I think that this thin, white, blonde ideal Barbie movie, guys, it's not a coincidence. It's no coincidence that like, Mattel made an ad and we were like, oh, we should get an Oscar. But it's just like. All of that being ascendant and like the Kardashians, if you say rejecting like the curvy body, as long as that's the case, people are gonna wanna be thin.

• 54:23Trevor Noah?

  Damn.

• 54:24Speaker 01

  And I think-

• 54:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, the Kardashians remembering their white.

• 54:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, and being white and even dating white men, something's happening. And then like, until it swings and people are like, we don't mind curvy bodies, we don't mind brown skin and full lips and people, the politics feel different, I think the thinness and the zympic is here to stay.

• 54:41Trevor Noah?

  Well, as they say at the end of every great epic movie that's about to begin, really, end of part one. Gia, thank you very much for taking the time. Thank you for joining us and I hope we see you again.

• 54:54Speaker 01

  Thank you, Gia. Thank you so much.

• 55:02Trevor Noah?

  What Now with Trevor Noah is produced by Spotify Studios in partnership with Day Zero Productions. The show is executive produced by Trevor Noah, Sanaz Yamin and Jodi Avigan. Our senior producer is Jess Hackel, Marina Henke and Claire Slaughter are our producers. Music, mixing and mastering by Hannes Brown. Thank you so much for listening. Join me next Thursday for another episode of What Now.

• 55:44Speaker 03

  Oh, look. You just got added to a meeting about coordinating another meeting to prepare for the pre-meeting ahead of the follow-up meeting, which will, of course, require a recap meeting and then another meeting. Hit your booking point, book with Southwest and enter airplane mode.

• 56:11Speaker 06

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