Navigating The 'Wellness' Epidemic

Summary

Navigating The 'Wellness' Epidemic: A Deep Dive into Amy LaRocca's Insights

In the May 15, 2025 episode of NPR's Fresh Air, host Tonya Moseley engages in a compelling conversation with award-winning journalist and author Amy LaRocca. LaRocca discusses her latest book, How to Be: Navigating Our Self Care Epidemic One Dubious Cure at a Time, which scrutinizes the expansive and often perplexing wellness industry.

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Defining Wellness and Its Vast Market

LaRocca begins by characterizing the wellness industry as an "enormous" luxury market predominantly targeted toward women. She draws parallels between wellness and the luxury goods market, emphasizing how wellness products are marketed with the same sophistication and allure traditionally reserved for high-end fashion.

“Wellness is beauty standards, it’s, you know, feeling bad about your neck. It’s also the very, very, very real health concerns about ourselves and about our families that we’re forced to deal with.”
— Amy LaRocca [04:15]

This trillion-dollar industry promises to enhance every aspect of life, from diet and sleep to aging and mental health, creating a pervasive treadmill of constant self-improvement.

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The Archetype of the "Well Woman"

LaRocca introduces the concept of the "well woman," a quintessential figure in the wellness narrative. She describes this archetype as someone who embodies both physical beauty and inner tranquility, often engaging in various wellness practices while managing professional and personal responsibilities.

“She is beautiful, tranquil, fertile, productive. She is pure of intention, heavy metals, food, dyes and dread.”
— Amy LaRocca [05:35]

This portrayal serves as both an aspirational model and, for some, an insufferable standard that many strive to attain despite its often unattainable nature.

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Wellness as a Self-Improvement Epidemic

The discussion shifts to the notion of wellness as an epidemic of self-care, where individuals are incessantly driven to improve themselves financially, physically, and mentally. LaRocca critiques the exhausting cycle of perpetual dissatisfaction inherent in the wellness industry's promises.

“Being perpetually dissatisfied with our natural state is something that I think is an exhausting and dangerous idea.”
— Amy LaRocca [06:08]

She highlights the societal pressure, especially on women, to continuously enhance their well-being, often at significant financial and emotional costs.

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Historical Context of Wellness Trends

LaRocca traces the wellness trend back to the 1800s, referencing Joan Brumberg’s examination of young girls' diary entries. This historical perspective reveals a long-standing cultural expectation for women to constantly strive for self-improvement and societal approval.

“Girls are always thinking, how am I going to be a better woman? How am I going to be more attractive, more appealing?”
— Amy LaRocca [08:59]

This enduring obsession underscores the deep-rooted nature of wellness as a facet of womanhood.

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Modern Urgency and the Impact of COVID-19

The conversation delves into how contemporary factors, particularly the COVID-19 pandemic, have intensified the wellness trend. LaRocca notes a significant loss of faith in traditional institutions and experts, leading individuals to seek guidance from wellness influencers.

“When the pandemic happened... you had to rely on yourself and you were looking for people to tell you with some degree of authority and certainty.”
— Amy LaRocca [10:03]

The pandemic not only accelerated the shift towards self-reliance in health matters but also heightened the prominence of wellness figures like Gwyneth Paltrow and Dr. Oz.

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Celebrity Influence: Gwyneth Paltrow and Goop

A substantial portion of the episode critiques the role of celebrities in shaping wellness trends. LaRocca focuses on Gwyneth Paltrow and her lifestyle brand Goop, highlighting how it combines wellness advice with product sales, often blurring the lines between genuine health recommendations and marketing strategies.

“Goop presents this as female empowerment. It’s bad feminism and it’s bad science.”
— Amy LaRocca [17:11]

LaRocca discusses how Goop’s promotion of questionable wellness practices, such as vaginal steaming, can perpetuate harmful stereotypes and misinformation under the guise of empowerment.

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Oprah's Pioneering yet Controversial Role

The influence of Oprah Winfrey is examined as both a positive and negative force in the wellness movement. While Oprah has been lauded for bringing mental health into mainstream conversations, LaRocca points out instances where her endorsements have propelled unfounded health claims into the public eye.

“Oprah really was willing to push the envelope, and it came with really mixed results.”
— Amy LaRocca [24:57]

Notably, Oprah's platform amplified Jenny McCarthy's anti-vaccine stance, demonstrating the profound impact and potential dangers of celebrity endorsements in health matters.

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Language and Marketing: The Convergence of Beauty and Wellness

LaRocca explores the nuanced language used in the wellness industry, noting how terms like "glow" serve as euphemisms for youthfulness, thereby intertwining beauty standards with wellness aspirations.

“I think body positivity... was knocked back to where it started pretty quickly.”
— Amy LaRocca [32:54]

This linguistic strategy masks underlying ageist and unrealistic beauty expectations, making wellness marketing both subtle and pervasive.

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Body Positivity vs. Pharmaceutical Interventions

The episode addresses the tension between the body positivity movement and the rise of weight-loss medications like semaglutide and GLP1 therapies. LaRocca argues that while body positivity aims to embrace diverse body types, the popularity of these drugs undermines these efforts by reverting focus to weight loss and conformity.

“The emphasis on youth is just so powerful.”
— Amy LaRocca [32:54]

This dynamic illustrates the complex interplay between social movements and the wellness industry's commercial interests.

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Men's Role in the Wellness Industry: HIMSS and Biohacking

Turning to gender dynamics, LaRocca examines how wellness is marketed to men through brands like HIMSS, which initially focused on products like Viagra but has expanded into broader wellness territories. She critiques the infantilizing language used in marketing and the extreme practices associated with biohacking.

“Men will only log onto these sites at 3 o’clock in the morning or in the privacy of their own home.”
— Amy LaRocca [34:35]

The biohacking trend, with its emphasis on optimizing every facet of human biology, exemplifies the lengths to which some individuals go in pursuit of an enhanced self.

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Personal Reflections and Changes in Consumption

LaRocca shares her personal journey through the wellness industry, highlighting how her research led her to adopt a more skeptical and pared-down approach to wellness products.

“I’ve got a pretty bare shelf in the bathroom and I don’t feel tempted to try products, supplements, things like that.”
— Amy LaRocca [38:04]

This transformation underscores the book's theme of navigating and critically assessing the myriad of wellness options available.

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Advice for Future Generations

Concluding the episode, LaRocca offers heartfelt advice aimed at empowering younger generations, particularly her daughters, to navigate the wellness landscape with awareness and resilience.

“I want them to feel like they have a little bit of control and, you know, that they’re not just sitting ducks for all these marketers.”
— Amy LaRocca [39:17]

She emphasizes the importance of fostering satisfaction with one’s natural state over succumbing to relentless self-improvement pressures.

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Final Thoughts

Amy LaRocca’s insightful exploration of the wellness industry sheds light on its complexities, historical roots, and the significant influence of marketing and celebrity endorsements. Through Fresh Air, listeners gain a nuanced understanding of how wellness has become a pervasive, often problematic force shaping modern society, particularly in its impact on women's self-perception and societal expectations.

Transcript

[Tonya Moseley]

This message comes from Capital One. Banking with Capital One helps you keep more money in your wallet with no fees or minimums on checking accounts.

[Amy LaRocca]

What's in your wallet?

[Tonya Moseley]

Terms apply. See capitalone.combank for details. Capital One NA Member FDIC before we start the show, you may have heard that President Trump has issued an executive order seeking to block all federal funding to npr. This is the latest in a series of threats to media organizations across the country. Millions of people, people like you, depend on the NPR network as a vital source for news, entertainment, information and connection. We are proud to be here for you. And now more than ever, we need you to be here for us. It's time to join the movement to defend public media. Visit donate.NPR.org and if you are already a supporter via NPR or other means, thank you. Your support means so much to us. Now more than ever, you help make NPR shows freely available to everyone. We are proud to do this work for you and with you. This is FRESH air. I'm Tonya Moseley. Today we are diving into the trillion dollar machine that is the wellness industry. From what we eat and how we sleep to how we age, move and think, wellness promises to optimize every corner of our lives. Writer Amy LaRocca asks what's really behind all the promises of this industry in her new book, how to Be Navigating Our Self Care One Dubious Cure at a Time. In it, she dives into detoxes, colonics, infrared wraps, sweat lodges, wellness apps and supplements to figure out what is real and what's really just good marketing. What she uncovers isn't just a collection of trends, but a vast and revealing system shaped by our beliefs about health status, gender and worth. She's asking who does this culture of wellness really serve? Who does it leave behind and why? Even when we see through the sales pitch, we still buy in. Amy LaRocca is an award winning journalist serving as a fashion director and editor at large for New York Magazine. Her writing has also appeared in the New York Times, Vogue, Town and Country and the London Review of Books. Amy LaRocco, welcome to FRESH AIR.

[Amy LaRocca]

Hi, Tanya. Thank you so much.

[Tonya Moseley]

Well, you know, Amy, I went into this book thinking I knew what the wellness industry was comprised of. But then I realized that there is so much under this umbrella of wellness that has made its way into the mainstream. So before we actually dive in, I want you to briefly define wellness and how big of an industry this actually is that we're talking about.

[Amy LaRocca]

Well, it's enormous. And one way that it's sometimes helpful to think about wellness is to think wellness is a luxury good. I covered the fashion industry for 20 years and one of the reasons I wanted to write this book was I started to get intrigued by the many ways in which wellness was being sold using the same language and techniques that I'd watched luxury products be sold to women for 20 years. It was almost like women were being sold their own bodies back to themselves. And the wellness industry is something that women are confronted with and asked to navigate on some level every single day. Of course, the degree of urgency varies wildly, but it's hard to imagine a scenario in which a woman is untouched on almost a daily basis by wellness. And it's such a complicated and such a vast web, but we're all in this like sort of metaphorical and literal treadmill of self improvement all the time. And that's how I think about wellness. It's beauty standards, it's, you know, feeling bad about your neck. It's also the very, very, very real health concerns about ourselves and about our families that we're forced to deal with.

[Tonya Moseley]

And you make the point to say it's a luxury good that is really market it towards women. I actually want you to read the first page of this book which defines the ultimate female customer.

[Amy LaRocca]

Do you know a well woman? Odds are you do. She is everywhere with her clean, clear skin, sipping from a non toxic container full of an expensive, mysterious broth. She is the friend who is not religious, but is spiritual. She swears by her transcendental meditation practice. She swears by a lot of things, like a very specific whisk for her matcha that she sourced from a very specific ethical artisanal website. She is educated, but not rigid in thought. She is a seeker and she is unashamed of her frailties because she is so actively engaged in finding unique solutions and cures. You might know her only virtually, but she shares enough about herself for you to understand that she is simultaneously ambitious and content. She has so much advice on how you might be more like her with her working definition of tincture and her pretty pill case full of pretty pills. She is beautiful, tranquil, fertile, productive. She is pure of intention, heavy metals, food, dyes and dread.

[Tonya Moseley]

You have a sense of humor and yet this, this speaks truth. I mean, depending on where you sit, the well woman, she sounds aspirational or, you know, on the other side of that, she sounds insufferable. Many of us know her. I mean, many of us also want to be her. Maybe we are her. What is it Though, about her pursuit of wellness that is part of a larger epidemic, because you use that term in the subtitle of the book, that we are in the midst of a self care epidemic. That is a very strong word.

[Amy LaRocca]

Yeah. I think when you look at the fact that we're being asked to spend or being told really that we are on this cycle of self improvement that requires that in order to be this, well, woman, in order to be the ideal woman, we need to be spending a lot of money. And being perpetually dissatisfied with our natural state is something that I think is an exhausting and dangerous idea.

[Tonya Moseley]

You know, the thing about it, and you actually lay this out in the book, is that through time, there has always been an element of that that, you know, you could date all the way back to. I think you were reading a book that looked diary entries of young girls.

[Amy LaRocca]

Oh, that book is fascinating.

[Tonya Moseley]

The 1800s all the way to today. Whatever the trend is of the moment on how to be as a woman, we were in it. We were trying to.

[Amy LaRocca]

And the trend is always to improve ourselves. Right. You're always trying to be something more. You're always trying to be a better version. And this book is fascinating. The writer is named Joan Brumberg, and she goes through journal entries of young girls. And it's like, you know, always girls are thinking, how am I going to be a better woman? How am I going to be more attractive, more appealing? How am I going to make people like me more? How am I going to be a better version of myself? And so much of wellness is about that. I became very interested in this notion that there is this kind of self that's the ideal self. And one of the ideas I became very fixated on. I started listening to a lot of wellness podcasts as I was doing my research. And so many of them were focused on this idea that you could get back to yourself. And they were often pitched to women at really crucial pivot points in women's lives. You've just had a baby, get back to yourself. You're approaching menopause, get back to yourself. And as if there was some fixed idea of what the idealized self should be. And rather than saying, these are really important transitions in a woman's life, you should roll forward, you should roll into and embrace the new identity. It was always like, no, no, no, no. There's this fixed point that you should strive to return to. This sense of loss, this sense that you are always lacking and always chasing is really just common language that I think we as women have just taken as what we are always. It's a major part of womanhood. Right. Is that we're always striving.

[Tonya Moseley]

Is there something, though, about modern life right now that has made wellness feel urgent? It's almost like a modern day faith or religion to focus on yourself and improving yourself.

[Amy LaRocca]

Absolutely. So I think something about right now is that there's a real sense of loss of faith in the institutions that we expect to guide us and the leaders that we expect to guide us when it comes to things like health. And I think you see that, like.

[Tonya Moseley]

Traditional medicine, like a loss in faith.

[Amy LaRocca]

A loss of faith in traditional medicine. And something that really intrigues me is that you get that on both sides of the political spectrum. So everyone is trying to prepare you for the end of the world. It's just different ideas about why the end of the world is coming and different ideas about why there are no experts.

[Tonya Moseley]

Well, I think that also was something that happened. I mean, we actually know what happened around 2020 when the COVID pandemic hit, that it sort of supercharged this trend towards wellness, but also like this lack of faith in traditional medicine.

[Amy LaRocca]

Yeah. So I think when the pandemic happened, I think a couple of different really crucial things happened. Number one is you lost the notion that anyone had any idea what was going on, that we lost the, you know, in the beginning, particularly when we were getting all sorts of information, when we had a president who was telling us to drink bleach. You lost the idea that there were.

[Tonya Moseley]

Experts and also a questioning of the experts with, like, the questioning of Dr. Fauci.

[Amy LaRocca]

The questioning of Dr. Fauci. The idea that the advice would change on a daily basis. Wear your mask. Don't wear your mask. It can be on, you know, the virus is on packages. Do you not need to wipe down your packages? You know, you can get the virus once. No, you can't. You can get it twice. You know, the advice kept changing and people were very unsure. Was the advice politically motivated? Was it not politically motivated? And very quickly you sort of had to rely on yourself and you were looking for people to tell you with some degree of authority and certainty. So I think that was one example of losing faith in institutions.

[Tonya Moseley]

Well, also, the thing that happened during that period, that time period was these people, these. These influencers that you said had been in this world for a really long time then had our undivided attention.

[Amy LaRocca]

Yeah, they really did. Right. And so we were, you know, we were like, oh, yeah, I'll do whatever you tell me. I'LL take this, I'll eat that. Yeah. So I think. But I think in general, one of the things about the way healthcare works in America is that people aren't getting a lot of time with their doctors. People often don't know their doctors. People get switched around a lot. You don't have what was a traditional sort of relationship with your family gp, Right. Who might have known your grandparents. That's just not how doctors are working right now. So these relationships that people form to Dr. Oz, Gwyneth Paltrow, people they see dispensing advice on television, on the Internet, take on a lot of significance. And that advice, however compromised it may be by profit motives or having their own supplement lines to sell or protein powders or whatever it is, that sort of, you know, gets a little obscured in the idea that that might be someone's most consistent medical relationship. Bizarrely.

[Tonya Moseley]

Well, you actually became a version of the well woman for your research.

[Amy LaRocca]

Oh, I tried, yeah.

[Tonya Moseley]

You underwent colonics.

[Amy LaRocca]

Oh, I did, yes.

[Tonya Moseley]

Drank green juices, all types of things. You brought your skeptical journalist self to this process, but you also brought a little bit of belief in it too. Right?

[Amy LaRocca]

Yeah. I mean, look, don't we all want to feel better? And as long as something's really not going to hurt you, as long as you really haven't stretched yourself financially, you know, why not try it? And definitely all the cold therapy is something that I think, why not give it a try?

[Tonya Moseley]

What is that? What do you mean?

[Amy LaRocca]

You can. There's a great belief in wellness about making yourself very, very, very cold, which you can accomplish in sort of large walk in refrigerators or in very, very icy bathtubs, all of which you pay for. You can also go home and turn your shower on. Very, very cold.

[Tonya Moseley]

And what is that supposed to do for us?

[Amy LaRocca]

It gives you a kind of restart. Right. It gets your heart pumping, it gets your blood pumping, and you do feel quite alive and awake afterwards. And that's a thing. Although there was one time when I went and went and I became convinced that I was so cold that my shin bone had just snapped spontaneously from the cold. And I was like, I don't know if I can stand up. I think my bone has just popped. But it hadn't. I was just that cold. But afterwards you do feel kind of great. And I don't think you've done any lasting harm to yourself.

[Tonya Moseley]

Many of these things that you talk about in the book and you're talking about right now are kind of like these old practices that stem from Something.

[Amy LaRocca]

Very ancient practices.

[Tonya Moseley]

Yeah, very ancient practices. But now they're a marketing tool to sell back to us. Because when I think about cold therapy, you know, polar plunge.

[Amy LaRocca]

That's right. And the hot and the cold and the, you know, the different baths and different cultures, it's very common, right? Like the schwitzes in Eastern Europe and the Japanese baths and the Korean baths. I mean, all of these things have been around for a very long time, and it's really often a question of packaging and marketing.

[Tonya Moseley]

I want to ask you about the influence of celebrity on this, because it's very clear how celebrities can be used to sell all sorts of things. There's one particular celebrity, though, in this moment who holds an outsized portion of this market. Can you quantify Gwyneth Paltrow's power and popularity in the wellness space?

[Amy LaRocca]

I mean, it's enormous. It's tremendous. You can talk about the dollars with Goop, although it can be hard, too, because it's, you know, a private company. But she. Her name is really synonymous with wellness. The first question, as I've been writing this book, I can't tell you how many people say to me, if I say, oh, I'm writing this book about wellness, the next words out of their mouth are some version of Gwyneth Paltrow. Are you writing about Gwyneth Paltrow? And she, for better or for worse, is the face of the industry.

[Tonya Moseley]

You'Ve written about, though this cottage industry that has sprung up because of Gwyneth Paltrow that is debunking many of the claims that come from Paltrow's company, Goop. I mean, Goop, just to set the stage for those out there who might not know, it's a lifestyle brand, it's a beauty brand, it's a publication, it's a podcast. It is all of these things. And you can kind of tap into it based on wherever you are. And I want you to read a section from one alternative healing method that grabbed a lot of attention and has been a big part of this cottage industry that has been debunking many of the claims that she has made through Goop.

[Amy LaRocca]

Goop has a history of promoting alternative healers using the popular platform to amplify their techniques. Goop answers with an innocent just asking questions stance, but it presents a danger far more real than the shameless attention grabs. Jennifer Gunter, a San Francisco gynecologist, has become famous. Famous for dissembling the myths. Goop pushed via her blog, wielding the lasso of truth, and later On a substack called the Vagenda. It started with a response she published in 2015 to Paltrow's recommending vaginal steaming to balance female hormone levels. It's one of the core beliefs of patriarchy that women are dirty inside, gunter wrote. And yet GOOP presents this as female empowerment. It's bad feminism and it's bad science. She took GOOP on for a number of disproven theories about underwire bras causing breast cancer, about the benefits of coffee enemas. Dear God, no. Gunter wrote in her book the Vagina Bible. I just can't even. Caulfield, for his part, argues that Paltrow is perhaps not the best messenger for ideas about beauty and health. The fact that individuals who have won the beauty gene lottery are setting universal beauty standards is a bit like using NBA power forwards to inspire people to endeavor to.

[Tonya Moseley]

This particular section of the book, I mean, you really lay out the power of celebrity in every sense of the word. You saw it in fashion. They're the perfect vessel, as we said, for an aspirational self. But what makes what Gwyneth Paltrow and elements of what she does and many others who are in this influencer space potentially dangerous?

[Amy LaRocca]

I think what makes Gwyneth Paltrow dangerous is that people really listen to her. And as we talked about earlier, is that in the absence of advice from experts, she becomes an expert. And I think that's where it gets dangerous. I think people also forget that she's selling beauty products and that's her motive. Because a lot of the early positioning of GOOP was we're just here to ask questions. It obfuscates the we're here to sell things, which is actually what they're there to do. So, for example, I remember reading something in GOOP in the early days of the GOOP blog, and it was about cancer causing chemicals in your shower. Basically, if you read this piece, you would just think your shower was like a cancer box. Like you were just going into your shower to get cancer. You were not going in there to wash your hair, you were not going in there to wash your face. You were going in there to give yourself cancer. It was in the water, it was in the shower curtain, it was in your.

[Tonya Moseley]

In your shampoo.

[Amy LaRocca]

Oh, my God. It was in the shampoo, it was in the shampoo bottle. I mean, it was terrifying. You'd never shower again if you read this article. And at the bottom of the article, you could click to buy a water filter, you could click to buy shampoo that was safe, that was in glass bottles that cost $120. And the link to buy it was right there. It was a GOOP product. And it was the most terrifying thing I'd ever read. And you would just finish this and think, God, I must really hate myself and I must really not care about my family if I'm not gonna buy this water filter, if I'm not gonna buy this shampoo and this beautiful glass bottle. What kind of person wouldn't?

[Tonya Moseley]

What has Gwyneth Paltrow said about this? Has she responded to this? Because now, I mean, the groundswell, of course, is really big, is such a successful venture. GOOP is hugely successful at the same time.

[Amy LaRocca]

Yeah, I mean, she really deflects. She really says she uses a lot of like, you know, don't shoot the messenger kind of stuff. And I'm just asking questions and I'm just here to point these things out. And she really never takes responsibility.

[Tonya Moseley]

If you're just joining us, our guest today is journalist and author Amy La Rocca. We'll be right back after a short break. I'm Tonya Mosley, and this is FRESH air.

[Amy LaRocca]

Know that fizzy feeling you get when you read something really good? Watch the movie everyone's been talking about or catch the show that the Internet can't get over. At the Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast, we chase that feeling four times a week. We'll serve you recommendations and commentary on the buzziest movies, TV music and more, from lowbrow to highbrow to the stuff in between. Catch the Pop Culture Happy Hour Podcast from npr.

[Tonya Moseley]

On the Indicator from Planet Money podcast, we're here to help you make sense of the economic news from Trump's tariffs.

[C]

It's called in game theory a trigger strategy, or sometimes called grim trigger, which.

[Amy LaRocca]

Sort of has a cowboy esque ring.

[Tonya Moseley]

To it to what exactly a sovereign wealth fund is. For insight every weekday, listen to NPR's the Indicator from Planet Money.

[C]

When Malcolm Gladwell presented NPR's Throughline podcast with a Peabody Award, he praised it for its historical and moral clarity.

[Tonya Moseley]

On Throughline, we take you back in time to the origins of what's in the news, like presidential power, aging and evangelicalism. Time travel with us every week on the Throughline podcast from npr. I have to talk with you about another celebrity that you reference many times in the book, and it's really important because of her scope and influence over time in our society, and that is Oprah. Full disclosure, I'm the generation that grew up on Oprah. I'm the latchkey kid who came home and watched her until my mom got home from work. And so many of the references you make in this book, I remember watching them in real time as a child. She really is the original health influencer of our time. How would you describe her influence and maybe even her contribution to what we know as wellness, which kind of started around 94 when she changed the format of her show.

[Amy LaRocca]

Yeah. I mean, it's enormous, right? To start with the positives, her openness, her willingness to talk about it. I think a lot of her biggest contributions around mental health and her willingness to really bring things that had been previously off limits for, you know, into the conversation. When it comes to physical health, it's a little bit more complicated because she has been willing to go off the mainstream and promote some kind of out there things that have been disproven.

[Tonya Moseley]

Well, one moment that you highlight. So Jenny McCarthy appeared on Oprah in 2007. She claimed that vaccines caused her son's autism, even with the overwhelming scientific evidence disproving that link. But the fact that it happened on Oprah's platform at a time when anti vaccine beliefs were still considered fringe, it kind of put it on the mainstream stage.

[Amy LaRocca]

And it's so interesting, right, because Jenny McCarthy says, well, @ first I thought this couldn't be real because if it was real, it would be on Oprah. And of course, in saying that, well, now it's on Oprah, therefore now it's real.

[Tonya Moseley]

That was a very meta.

[Amy LaRocca]

It was. Right. So that happens again and again with Oprah. I talk in the book about her going to see John the healer in Brazil who's someone who's in prison now.

[Tonya Moseley]

Can you remind us who that is? He was known as John of God.

[Amy LaRocca]

Yes, John of God, who is a healer in Brazil who would rape patients claiming he was putting his healing energy inside of them. And Oprah really was willing to push the envelope, and it came with really mixed results. So her openness sometimes led to, you know, some pretty complicated stuff that I personally wish had been better vetted. Because her influence is so tremendous.

[Tonya Moseley]

Yes. I mean, she introduced us to many folks who then went on to have their own platforms, like Dr. Oz, who is a very polarizing figure and controversial figure in this moment. But when you look back, I mean, even to what's happening today with wellness influencers, celebrity health evangelists, do you think that they have a duty to understand the weight of their influence? Is there a responsibility there? Especially in a space where people are often vulnerable and looking for help?

[Amy LaRocca]

You know, more and more I do because the state of healthcare is so jagged in America that if you're someone with the influence of Oprah Winfrey, you've got to know that people are really listening and that it's very likely that people are not getting adequate health care through traditional channels.

[Tonya Moseley]

Have there been any major lawsuits or anything based on promises or fads or anything that's been touted by influencers, celebrities that are of note that, like, really stuck out to you? I remember many, many years ago. Yes. With Dr. Oz.

[Amy LaRocca]

Yes. Dr. Oz. Yeah, he was. And he was brought in front of Congress for doing he went on his television show and talked about a miraculous green coffee pill that could make anyone lose weight. And he described his guest as a naturopathic doctor. He wasn't a doctor. He was a marketing executive representing a company that sold green coffee extract. And Dr. Oz stood to benefit from the sale of this green coffee extract. And of course, there was no proven medical benefit and it wasn't going to help people lose weight will do things like that. And there was actually a British medical journal that ran a review and it found that at least 50% of the advice given on his show was not backed by scientific evidence or was, in fact, contradicted by publicly available evidence. And that a lot of the advice he gave that was solid was like really basic, like smoking is bad for you. So he wasn't giving great advice on his show and it wasn't particularly deep that it was bad advice. And so his colleagues at Columbia University co signed a letter asking that. And he did ultimately lose his affiliation with Columbia. It just was too much. I mean, his mentor at Columbia described him as one of the most talented surgeons he'd ever worked with. But profiting so baldly off of information that was so demonstrably incorrect just wasn't. It was too much, no matter how talented a surgeon he was.

[Tonya Moseley]

If you're just joining us, my guest is journalist and author Amy La Rocca. We're talking about her new book, how to Be Navigating Our Self Care Epidemic One Dubious Cure at a time. We'll continue our conversation after a short break. This is FRESH air. A lot of short daily news podcasts focus on just one story. But right now you probably need more on. Up first from NPR, we bring you three of the world's top headlines every day in under 15 minutes because no one story can capture all that's happening in this big crazy world of ours on any given morning. Listen now to the UPVERSE podcast from npr. Imagine if you will, a show from NPR that's not like npr, a show that focuses not on the important, but.

[Amy LaRocca]

The stupid, which features stories about people.

[Tonya Moseley]

Smuggling animals in their pants and competent coffee criminals and ridiculous science studies. And call it Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me, because the good names were taken. Listen to NPR's Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me. Yes, that is what it is called. Wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, Amy, let's talk a little bit about the use of language. You have a fascinating few chapters or a few sections where you. You really break down language in the wellness industry. And you write that wellness is just as much about looking better as it is about feeling. And that line between the beauty industry and the wellness industry has all but disappeared.

[Amy LaRocca]

Yeah, I always think about this salon that used to be in the Waldorf Astoria hotel called the Kenneth Salon, and everything sort of smelled of hairspray, and you wanted your hair to not move, and your lipstick was waxy, and women wore all this foundation and makeup, and the beautiful woman was assembled and how far that is from the beauty ideal of today. And this wellness ideal. Everything is supposed to be natural. Your hair is these long, beachy waves, and your skin is supposed to glow from within. I think a lot about the corset and how women don't wear corsets now, but you have this internalized corset that's made of your ab muscles, which is really hard to get. And it'd be one thing to be, like, laced up and, you know, tied into it, but, like, you've gotta get it through doing a lot of core work. And so it's not that you aren't shellacked, but the shellacking is interior.

[Tonya Moseley]

Yes. So you break down how certain trendy wellness and beauty buzzwords are really just new packaging of old ideas. And I just heard you use one of those words, and that's glow. Glow is everywhere. It's on my vitamin labels, on my makeup, my cleansers, my serums. But what we're really talking about when we say glow is another word that we don't really use because it's ageist, and that's youthfulness.

[Amy LaRocca]

It's all youth. And I remember when I used to go to the gym, they would talk about, you know, getting thin or your bikini body. They won't say that anymore. Right. They'll say strong or healthy fit. But we know what they mean, and we know what they mean when they say glow, not old.

[Tonya Moseley]

Do you think consumers are fully aware of what we're being sold because, you know, now we're in the moment of body positivity and we're also talking so much about ageism. And so are we really understanding that when we use those terms we're really saying the same things?

[Amy LaRocca]

I think we do. And I also think body positivity, which I was sort of excited to see on the rise, took a deep dive with the introduction of semaglutide and GLP1 therapies. We were seeing, you hesitate to say a lot, but a scooch more body positivity on the runways and in fashion advertising, even sort of on retail sites, you would see more diversity in models that's been scaled back. The Ozempic and its imitators and competitors have really just knocked that right back to where it started pretty quickly. Right.

[Tonya Moseley]

Because those drugs were developed for diabetes, but now they're being used.

[Amy LaRocca]

Now they're being used for weight loss by plenty of people who have. No. Not even pre diabetes. So I think that to say we're in a moment of body positivity, I think we were approaching one and we just reared right back. And I think, you know, yeah, we talk about ageism, but I think that the emphasis on youth is just so powerful.

[Tonya Moseley]

Let's talk a little bit about men, though, and the roles that they play in all of this, especially as consumers. I thought it was very interesting. You wrote about the story of himss. That's a brand, a wellness company that seems to market any man who spends any time online. A HIMS ad has come up before you. Yes. Can you talk about how HIMSS fits into this landscape and what its rise maybe says about the way wellness is being packaged and sold to men?

[Amy LaRocca]

Yeah. And when HIMSS first came on the scene, it was so fascinating because it was being sold as the first men's wellness company. That was kind of the pitch. And so of course I was like, hmm, what is the first men's wellness company? And it's first product was generic Viagra. Women are getting wellness and it's like, it's going to make you young and you've got to take care of your family and you're poisoning them and you've got to protect your children and you've got to. And men were like, wellness, here's some virus virality, baby. Yeah. And I was like, wow, that's a totally different marketing angle.

[Tonya Moseley]

You write about the CEO of the company, though, and he talked about his own relationship with this.

[Amy LaRocca]

One of the other things that immediately when I started to look at men and their relationship to wellness was that men use this totally weird tone when they talked about wellness, like baby talk. And I was like, this is bizarre. Like the marketing of the men's erectile dysfunction drug on hims in the beginning it was like, ain't no one have time for bad sexy time, I think was the tagline. And I was like, what? Why can't men use adult words to talk about erectile dysfunction? And it just blew my mind because it was like, women are dealing with this all the time, all day, all night. And it was like, men will only log onto these sites at 3 o' clock in the morning or in the privacy of their own home. It was like they had to be treated like little children and that they would only do it under the COVID of darkness kind of thing. And even when I spoke to the founder of himss, it was like, oh yeah, my sister said, you need these products. And I said, okay, well you've got to order them for me. And it was like all deflection. So that was like a very interesting beginning to that. And then the other angle that men sort of started entering this was this biohacking angle where you had men, largely based in Silicon Valley, taking on this approach that like, well, we can hack these very complicated systems. How hard could the human body be?

[Tonya Moseley]

Can you describe a little more what biohacking actually is?

[Amy LaRocca]

Yeah, for sure. So it's a very basic idea, right, which is that if you can treat any system as something that can be perfected, why should the human body be different? So if you think of the example of a cup of coffee, I drink this coffee, I get more energy, my output improves. And you just take that and you extrapolate out from there and you're able to take data. So I weigh myself, I get a certain number, I eat 10 cookies the next day, I weigh myself and the number is larger, I eat no cookies, the number is smaller. So it's very basic data tracking and.

[Tonya Moseley]

To a certain extent we all do that. But then what is the extreme version that you're starting to see?

[Amy LaRocca]

You're starting to see very extreme versions of it. A lot of us are taking part in tinier ways. Like you get an aura ring or a Fitbit and you get your sleep stats in the morning and you think, oh, if I have a glass of wine with dinner, my readiness score, my sleep score goes down, that kind of thing. But then you have people taking it to really big extremes, like taking drugs for conditions they don't have, like pre diabetes or a heart disease, or people Wearing hearing aids when they're not hard of hearing because they think it increases their alertness, all sorts of things. And then you have people, these men. Brian Johnson is someone who is getting blood infusions from his 18 year old son.

[Tonya Moseley]

Right. He's that entrepreneur that has that special on Netflix about trying to stay alive forever.

[Amy LaRocca]

That's exactly right. So it's taken to extremes.

[Tonya Moseley]

Did your wellness journey for this book change anything with you? Did it make you happier? Did it feel like you transcended something?

[Amy LaRocca]

Did it make me feel like I transcended? Oh, God.

[Tonya Moseley]

Because really, that is what is at the core of this, is us transcending into some version, better version of ourselves.

[Amy LaRocca]

I definitely will not buy stuff in the same way that I maybe would before. I've got a really pared down routine.

[Tonya Moseley]

More pared down than when you started writing this book?

[Amy LaRocca]

Oh, yeah. I've got a pretty bare shelf in the bathroom and I don't feel tempted to try products, supplements, things like that. I know what I like and I'm not as easily seducible as maybe I was before. I've given up that hope, I guess.

[Tonya Moseley]

You said at the end of the book that this was a love letter to your daughter. And I'm thinking back to what we were talking about, about those adolescent girl diary entries that go as far back as 1892, where each generation is dealing with some version of whatever the thing is that we need to, you know, the ideal that we're trying to attain. Do you feel like there's any real way to fight it? Like, what did you come away with in thinking about what you want to impart on younger generations and your daughter?

[Amy LaRocca]

Yes, it really is for my daughters. And I think that was something I realized in the writing of this book because they are coming into their adolescence now and facing all these pressures. And, you know, on some levels it's really fun, right? And on some levels it's scary. Like, I don't want them to waste time or energy on things that I think aren't worth their time or energy. But I know they will because that's part of modern womanhood. Not even modern womanhood, as that brilliant book that we've talked about has shown us. But I want them to be a little bit smarter about it and understand where these things come from and be a little savvy. And I want them to feel like they have a little bit of control and, you know, that they're not just sitting ducks for all these marketers. I guess that's what I would hope for for them. I don't expect them to be able to withstand these forces. They're just sort of too big and too powerful. But yeah, I guess I would like for this generation to have some awareness that they don't have to just improve themselves. Every day. They can be a little bit more satisfied with what they've already got.

[Tonya Moseley]

Amy La Rocca, I really appreciate this conversation and thank you for this book.

[Amy LaRocca]

Thank you so much for having me. It's wonderful to be here.

[Tonya Moseley]

Writer Amy La Rocca her new book is called how to Be well. Coming up, film critic Justin Chang reviews the documentary drama hybrid Caught by the Tides. This is FRESH air. Does the idea of listening to political news freak you out? Well, don't sweat it. The NPR Politics podcast makes politics a breeze. Every episode will break down the day's headlines into totally normal language and make sure that you walk away understanding what the day's news might mean for you. Take a deep breath and give politics another chance with the NPR Politics Podcast, available wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Tonya Moseley, co host of Fresh air. At a time of sound bites and short attention spans, our show is all about the deep dive. We do long form interviews with people behind the best in film, books, tv, music and journalism. Here, our guests open up about their process and their lives in ways you've never heard before. Listen to the Fresh Air podcast from NPR and whyy. Our film critic Justin Chang says the documentary drama hybrid Caught by the Tides is one of the best and most unusual new movies he's seen this year. It's the latest from the acclaimed Chinese filmmaker Zhao Zhanke, and it draws from footage that he began shooting in 2001 to tell a story of two lovers who separate and reunite over roughly two decades. The film is now in select theaters, and here is Justin's review.

[C]

During the pandemic, the Chinese director Jia Zhengke, like many of us, had a lot of time on his hands. He began sifting through a personal archive consisting of footage that he had shot since 2001. He ended up weaving much of this footage, some of which we've seen before, into a gorgeous and lyrical feature called Caught by the Tides. We're used to seeing archival material in documentaries, but this film is something far rarer and stranger. It's an archival drama, an entire narrative composed from two decades worth of discarded scraps. The movie uses this unfamiliar method to tell a familiar jaw story about a passionate and tough minded woman played by the great Zhao Tao. The director's frequent collaborator and off screen wife. Over several years, this character, whose name is Chow Chow, experiences romance and heartbreak and winds up adrift traveling a 21st century Chinese landscape that is forever in flux. This flux has become the great subject of Jia's career. He's deeply attuned to the winds of social, economic, political, technological and even geographical change sweeping through his country. Caught by the Tides unfolds in three acts. The first takes place in Datong, a city in northern China. Jia's fans will recognize scenes from Unknown Pleasures, his 2002 drama about aimless youth in a town where the local coal mining industry is on the decline and capitalism is on the rise. Qiaoqiao is a young dancer who entertains in bars and clubs and also at promotional events for a liquor brand. Every time she dances, Jia unleashes a torrent of music, most infectiously with the 1998 hit Butterfly by the Swedish pop group Smile. DK Jaa has always used music vividly in his films, and in Caught by the Tides he strings together so many freeform scenes of people singing and dancing that the movie almost plays like a full blown musical. It's ragged and disorienting, but that's the point. The future and even the present seem almost bursting with possibility. It's around this time that Xiao Cao falls in love with a local gangster named Bin, played by the actor Li Zhu Bin. But their romance swiftly goes sour and the two separate, which sets the stage for the movie's more melancholy second act. Qiao Cao heads south, sailing down the Yangtze river and searching for Bin. He resurfaces at one point, but what they once had is now lost forever. Meanwhile, we witness the staggering human toll of the Three Gorges Dam project, which has led to mass displacement and demolition of homes in the region. Jia has an uncanny ability to capture the big picture along with the small, to move from an intimate, character focused drama to a more expansive panoramic one. With each shift in perspective, we're reminded that every person uprooted here has a story to tell. Much of the second act footage comes from Jaa's 2008 film Still Life and his 2019 drama Ash's Purest White. More than a decade separates those two movies, and Ja doesn't bother to hide the seams as he toggles between them. One of the most captivating things about Caught by the Tides is that the images and formats change over time, from grainy film stock and low grade digital video early on to smoother HD video and even some virtual reality. Footage. In the later sections, Jia has showed us before how China and the larger world are being transformed. Here he shows us that the motion picture medium itself is continually evolving. In the third act, Cao Cao briefly reunites in Datong with Bean, who's now visibly aged. This section was shot in 2022 under tight COVID protocols, and Ja uses it to capture a mood of present day alienation. He shows us influencers shooting their tiktoks and friendly robots roaming the aisles of grocery stores. But Ja never loses sight of our heroine or the extraordinary actor playing her. Through the entire film, Zhao Tao never says a word, a bold choice that perhaps made it easier for the director to shape a narrative out of the raw material. Zhao doesn't need the dialogue. She has the radiance and emotional eloquence of a silent film star. By the close of Caught by the Tides, Chow Chow isn't dancing anymore. She's jogging at night with several other women and men. The scene plays like a tribute from Jia Zhanke to his fellow Chinese citizens, a deeply moving culmination of all that they've endured that holds out hope as they run bravely into the future.

[Tonya Moseley]

Justin Chang is a film critic for the New Yorker. To find out what's happening behind the scenes of our show and get our producers recommendations on what to watch, read and listen to. Subscribe to our free [e-mail] Fresh Air Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our managing producer is Sam Brigger. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Roberta Shorrock, Ann Marie Baldonado, Lauren Krenzel, Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Susan Yakundi and Anna Bauman. Our digital media producer is Molly CV Nesper. Thea Chaloner directed Today show with Terry Gross. I'm Tanya Mosley. Support for this podcast and the following message come from Made in Cookware President and Co founder Jake Kalik shares a.

[Amy LaRocca]

Tool that's useful for both master and newbie griller. The craftsmanship of the carbon steel griddle enhances your grilling experience because it allows you a totally different type of grill surface that opens up the amounts of food you're able to cook. So the griddle is the perfect accessory to add to your grill and kind of widen your grilling game.

[Tonya Moseley]

Learn more about Made in Cookware at M a d e I-n cookware.com this.

[C]

Message comes from Saatva Sleeping well can boost your mood and improve focus. A Saatva luxury mattress can help you experience that kind of sleep. Save $600 on $1,000 or more at saatva.com NPR you're listening to the NPR.

[Amy LaRocca]

Network, live from NPR News.

[Tonya Moseley]

I'm Lakshmi. A living, breathing record of your neighborhood.

[Amy LaRocca]

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[Tonya Moseley]

Of local journalists who live in the places where stories unfold, backed by a national newsroom that puts it all in perspective. Hear the whole country's story. Hear ways of thinking that challenge your own. Hear the bigger picture with NPR.