The Booming Business of Chinese Peptides

SPEAKER_2 (0:02)

Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio, news.

Tracy Alloway (0:18)

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast. I'm Tracy Alloway.

Joe Weisenthal (0:22)

And I'm Joe Weisenthal.

Tracy Alloway (0:23)

Joe, I have a present for you.

Joe Weisenthal (0:26)

Okay, I'm excited.

Tracy Alloway (0:27)

It's December 10th.

Joe Weisenthal (0:29)

Yeah.

Tracy Alloway (0:29)

Christmas is coming up.

Joe Weisenthal (0:30)

Christmas present, cool. Monica presents.

Tracy Alloway (0:33)

Here you go.

Joe Weisenthal (0:34)

Let me see, what is this? Okay, quality, it's from qualitysprays.com. And it's, wait, that seems like an illegal drug. It says oxytocin.

Tracy Alloway (0:45)

It's not illegal, it's not illegal. Well, I got it off Amazon for like 60 bucks.

Joe Weisenthal (0:49)

Oxytocin, that sounds illegal.

Tracy Alloway (0:52)

It's not.

Joe Weisenthal (0:53)

Okay.

Tracy Alloway (0:53)

Do you know what oxytocin actually is?

Joe Weisenthal (0:56)

I'm sure it's really bad.

Tracy Alloway (0:57)

It's a peptide.

Joe Weisenthal (0:59)

Okay, I didn't know that.

Tracy Alloway (1:00)

Yeah.

Joe Weisenthal (1:01)

I actually don't even know what a peptide is. I've been hearing this word peptide. I don't know what classification of chemical or molecule chain or anything a peptide is, but I've been hearing about this word peptide more and more.

Tracy Alloway (1:11)

This is important.

Joe Weisenthal (1:12)

Thank you. You're actually gonna give this to me or is this just a prop that I have to give back?

Tracy Alloway (1:15)

It's just a prop.

Joe Weisenthal (1:15)

Okay.

Tracy Alloway (1:16)

And I just said that it's yours, but it's actually mine. Okay, peptides. Peptides are the P in GLP1s that are so popular.

Joe Weisenthal (1:24)

I think I do. Yeah, I think I knew GLP1s was a peptide, but I still don't know. What is it? Anyway.

Tracy Alloway (1:29)

All right. The reason you're hearing about it a lot is because a lot of people seem to be using them in various ways. And there are all these different types of peptides that supposedly do different things for the body. This one apparently makes you better at eye contact and more sociable.

Joe Weisenthal (1:49)

So it's really funny back when I was in, I could have used this like 25 years ago when I was younger, like in college, it didn't happen very often, but I occasionally went on a few dates and very rare, very rare, very rare occurrence. But one of the things I would notice if I was out on a date and like the girl would start like messing with like her hair a little bit.

Tracy Alloway (2:13)

That means she likes you.

Joe Weisenthal (2:14)

No, and she's like, is there something wrong with my hair? Because you keep looking like three inches above my eyes. And I'm like, no, I'm just very awkward. It's very difficult for me. And she's like, oh, I was like, it's just very awkward for me. I'm not very good at eye contact and so forth. And so I just assumed it was something in my hair that I was like trying to get out. And I was like, no, I'm sorry. I'm just like that.

Tracy Alloway (2:33)

This happened to you more than once?

Joe Weisenthal (2:35)

Yes. So I could have really used a chemical that would solve the eye contact problem. Now I've grown up. I've grown out of it. I can look someone in the eye now.

Tracy Alloway (2:43)

I will say I have tested it. I'm not entirely convinced of its effects, but in the name of science for Odd Lots, I have been a guinea pig.

Joe Weisenthal (2:53)

So we know GLP-1s, whatever they're called, Wegovy and all those, those are good for weight loss. And we know it's almost a miracle drug, right? It's incredible. But in theory, there are other peptides out there that could be equivalently miraculous. We just don't really know about them and maybe they're not sort of medicinalized the way that the weight loss ones are.

Tracy Alloway (3:14)

Yeah, and also not distributed the same way as GLP-1s in America. And we're going to get all into that because it's actually a really interesting topic, both culturally and from a supply chain perspective. And we love supply chains.

Joe Weisenthal (3:30)

We love supply chains.

Tracy Alloway (3:31)

All right. So for this particular topic, we're actually going to have two guests.

Joe Weisenthal (3:36)

Great.

Tracy Alloway (3:37)

Because it's so interesting and I got so into the peptide world. Our first guest is Jasmine Sun. She is an independent writer covering AI and San Francisco culture. And this is definitely a San Francisco cultural thing. So Jasmine, you are truly the perfect guest. Thank you so much for coming on Odd Lots.