Magic Pill The Extraordinary Benefits and Disturbing Risks of the New Weight-Loss Drugs

His latest book, "The Magic Pill," investigates the new generation of weight loss drugs and their impact on individuals and society.

The book is called Magic Pill because there are three ways these drugs could be magic.

The second way in which it could be magic is it could be like a magic trick, an illusion.

The third way, I actually think is the most likely. If you think about the classic stories about magic that we grew up with, think about Aladdin, right? You find the lamp, you rub it, the genie appears and you get to make your wishes and your wishes come true but never quite in the way that you expected, right?

These drugs are an interesting and important tool. The way I think of it is, for a lot of us we're in a trap, and this is the rusty risky trap door we're being offered.

I go through how we can do it. I've been to places that have done it but for now we're facing a pretty shitty decision and we've got to think it through in detail.

I've had a number of conversations Johan Hari's new book magic pill. He came on Scott Galloway came on he spoke about it Dr. Mike Israel tell who you just had on your show. He came on he spoke about it The internet really especially maybe my corner of the internet the personal development, bro high agency sovereign individual thing Very concerned about it and I'm Cautiously optimistic but it seems to me based on all of the smart people that I know who would not typically Fall for the he says as he recommends something that's about to destroy the entire world Would not typically fall for something that wasn't robust and that they hadn't done the research on they are Basically saying that this is going to be as big of a revolution as the smartphone was But for health care that you know, we've been promised and I understand why Fen-fen and all of these previous iterations of drugs that had wild crazy side effects super toxic or dangerous or you know Had long-term Risks, I understand why people are not too confident about this one but it does seem like a difference in kind not just a difference in degree and Yeah Flight companies the airlines predicting lower fuel costs because of a lighter populace to transport around Confectionery companies trying to drill their margins because they're expecting to do less sales volume the hip and knee replacement companies Expecting to do lower sales volume and the most interesting one jewelers Because they've had to spend money people's fingers have got fattest They've had to spend money to get their wedding rings changed and increased in size so there's going to be an initial increase boon to get the Jewelry changed again and then after that a little bit of a nosedive because there will be less gold that will be need to fit ever thinner fingers

Yohan Harry's written this new book "Magic Pill" about Ozempic and the most interesting stuff that I found are all the economic impacts downstream.

So uh airline companies predicting lower fuel costs because of a lighter populace all of the confectionary companies Ben and Jerry's are trying to dial in their margins because they know that the sales volume is going to go through the floor.

Hip and knee replacement companies way fewer of those because people are less and this was this was the wildest one jewelers using less gold for fat fingers.

And I've heard Johan Hari on your show talk about this. And he had a beautiful book that he wrote, his magic pill book. He talks about that. He found himself about five or six months in and he was still just eating the same crap. He was just eating less of it.

And Johan actually talks about this in his book and he does a nice job of breaking down the science there on it. They looked at rats and they thought, okay, well if this is just crushing the reward system, then it would crush all the reward systems. But it's not crushing libido for people and it's not crushing some of the other reward seeking behaviors. It just seems to be crushing many of the ones that are pathologic or not so great for our health in the long run. And he actually talks about a study that I've read as well where they took rats and they gave them sort of that like yummy emulsion of that sweet, sugar, salty deliciousness. And then they gave them rat chow and when they put them on some acclutide, they stopped seeking out the yummy devastation. I mean, that emulsion is what makes you become very metabolically compromised. And they still ate the rat chow. They still went for... They went for the healthy food. I don't know how healthy rat chow is. That's debatable. But they went for the more nutritionally dense food and they actually stopped seeking out the pleasure food.

I went on a big journey all over the world. I went from Reykjavik in Iceland to Minneapolis, to Tokyo. I interviewed over 100 of the leading experts on the new weight loss drugs and these wider debates and people have been affected by them in all sorts of different ways. I took the drug myself for a year.

So I could immediately see the case for it. I realized I was about to turn older than my grandfather ever got to be because he died at the age of 44 of a heart attack. Loads of the men in my family have serious heart problems.

But I also immediately thought, come on now, I've seen this story before, right? About every 20 years going right back to the first world war, a new diet drug is announced.

I think of all the moments I had in writing the book, I had some bad moments, some pretty bad moments, a few I'm sure we'll get to them. But the absolute worst was a moment I had, must have been, I don't know, five months into taking Ozempyx.

She said to me, look Johan something is really wrong in our environment that's causing breast cancer one in seven british women get breast cancer one in eight american women get breast cancer that wasn't true in the recent past.

I really related to your story at the beginning of the book, which is you go to a party right post pandemic and you're like, oh I'm the fat guy at the party and I myself got quite fat during the pandemic.

This book has been a bit different to my other books for me in that the minute I learned about the existence of these drugs I felt really conflicted and it comes from that moment at this party, right? So I remember it so vividly.

So to get to the bottom of this as you allude to for a year I took this drug and I went on this big journey all over the world from Iceland to Minneapolis to Okinawa in the south of Japan to interview the leading experts in the world on this question, the biggest critics, the biggest defenders, scientists who made the breakthroughs that led to these drugs, the people who've been thinking about how is it going to affect our culture and our economy?

This is why actually some doctors are now prescribing alongside the drugs a diet plan not at the time typical diet plan to cut down but a diet plan to make sure you eat enough right?

I'm gonna tell a little bit about my own experience in relations, that's not the abuse component but something else, and then talk about the beasting, the evidence about abuse.