Best of Big Technology: How Ozempic Changes Our Bodies, Minds, and Economy — With Johann Hari

**Alex Kantrowitz** (0:00)
GLP-1 agonists like Ozempic are having a profound impact on our bodies and economy. The weight loss drugs are showing an impact that extends beyond suppressing appetite, lessening in some cases the desire for alcohol, nicotine, among other things. So where does this lead us and our economy? With Big Technology Podcast Friday edition on break this week, let's go back to my 2024 interview with author Johan Hari, who tried the drug for more than a year and went to its inventors to find the truth about its capabilities. It's one of my favorite interviews so far on the feed and it's coming up right after this.
Welcome to Big Technology Podcast, a show for cool headed, nuanced conversation of the tech world and beyond. Today we're diving into health specifically about Ozempic and the other range of weight loss pills, weight loss medicine is starting to make its way into our society and do it fast and change, really change our relationship with food and change our economy effectively. We're gonna talk about how that's gonna happen and then also the pros and cons of these drugs. We're joined today by Johan Hari. He's a New York Times bestselling author and his new book, Magic Pill, The Extraordinary Benefits and Disturbing Risks of the New Weight Loss Drugs is out in any bookstore you could hope for. And I've read it. It's a terrific book. Johan, welcome to the show.

**Johann Hari** (1:18)
Oh, I'm really excited to be with you. Thanks so much.

**Alex Kantrowitz** (1:21)
We're gonna talk a little bit about the effects of the economy, but I really want people to understand sort of what this drug does and what it's up against. The way that I think we should do that is talking about the Cheesecake Park or the Cheesecake Rats. It's an example that you have in your book about basically the way that the food industry addicts us to food that's not really good for us. And there's this story about the rats that basically find themselves gorging themselves on cheesecake and can't stop that.
My wife and I have now started to take in, we've started to, when we're eating dessert nonstop, just look at each other and we're like, oh no, cheesecake rat. So what is the cheesecake rat in the cheesecake park?

**Johann Hari** (2:02)
Well, we're in this incredible position. 47% of Americans want to take these new weight loss drugs because they produce an incredible amount of weight loss that I'm sure we're going to unpack.
And in a way, when you first hear that, it seems like a kind of mind blowing moment. The first time in human history, that almost half of us would want to take a drug in order to stop ourselves from eating, right? So you think, well, how did we get here? What happened to us? And actually, understanding how we got here is very important to understanding the later question of how these drugs work.
And I guess the way I would get into explaining the experiment you're alluding to is, I would say to everyone, just stop for a moment, pause this podcast and Google something for me.
Google photographs of beaches in the United States in the year I was born, 1979, and just look at them for a minute and then come back. So you will have noticed about those beaches, something that seems really strange to us. Everyone in those pictures pretty much looks to us like what we would call skinny, right? Or jacked. You look at it and go, well, huh, where was everyone else on the beach that day in 1979? But it turns out that's just what Americans look like in 1979, right?
Obesity was extremely low in the year I was born, and it has exploded in my lifetime. Between the year I was born and the year I turned 21, obesity doubled in the United States, and then in the next 20 years, severe obesity doubled again. See, we're in this bizarre situation. You have human beings exist for about 300,000 years, and obesity is very rare. Then from looking at you, I'm guessing you're pretty similar age to me.
In our lifetimes, obesity exploded. Why? What happened? We know the answer, the most important part of the answer. Obesity explodes everywhere that makes one change. It's not where people suddenly lack willpower or become lazy. It's where people move from mostly eating a diet based on whole fresh foods that they prepare on the day they eat them, to mostly eating a diet of processed and ultra-processed foods, which are constructed out of chemicals in factories in a process that isn't even known as cooking. It's called manufacturing food. And it turns out this new kind of food that's built out of chemicals affects us in a completely different way to the whole fresh foods that human beings ate 300,000 years before that.