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- [00:02]
A
Ready to soundtrack your summer with Red Bull Summer All Day Play. You choose a playlist that fits your summer vibe the best. Are you a festival fanatic, a deep end dj, a road dog, or a trail mixer? Just add a song to your chosen playlist and put your summer on track. Red Bull Summer All Day Play. Red Bull gives you wings. Visit Red Bull.com BrightSummerAhead to learn more. See you this summer. Your next chapter in healthcare starts at Carrington College's School of Nursing in Portland. Join us for our open house on Tuesday, January 13th from 4 to 7pm you'll tour our campus, see live demos, meet instructors, and learn about our Associate Degree in Nursing program that prepares you to become a registered nurse. Take the first step toward your nursing career. Save your spot now at Carrington Edu Events. For information on program outcomes, visit carrington.edu sci.
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B
Foreign. This is a gray area. I am Sean Elling. My guest today is Anna North. She's a colleague of mine here at Vox who covers American culture and family life. She's also the author of the excellent newsletter Kids Today. I invited Anna on the show to talk about Maha that is Make America Healthy Again. For the uninitiated, we talk about what this thing is, how it's evolving, and who it's appealing to. This is one of those trends that on the surface might not seem important, but this conversation with Anna is about why it is. Hope you enjoy it. Anna north, welcome back.
- [01:41]
A
Hey, how's it going? Thanks for having me.
- [01:43]
B
Good to have you back. You were very popular with the audience and I guess, I guess you have friend of the show status now. So big congrats.
- [01:51]
A
Thank you.
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B
Your latest piece is sort of adjacent to some of the issues we were talking about before. It's the Maha movement, the Make America Healthy movement. Let's just start with the basics here. For people who don't know what is
- [02:09]
A
Maha, that is a great question. I think even people who like our leaders in the Maha movement might have a hard time defining it, and it's not their fault. It's a complicated sort of clarity, collection of interests, coalition of people that don't always agree and don't always get along. Not unlike MAGA, which it sort of takes its name from. So MAHA stands for Make America Healthy Again. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Is sort of the de facto leader. A number of people have started kind of referring to him as the country's top health influencer, which feels very apt in terms of what is his actual role in government and culture. But Maha is bigger than RFK Jr. I would say it's a collection of people who believe that America, the United States, has a lot of health problems, and crucially, that those health problems are caused by diet ultra processed foods. Many people, though not all people in MAHA believe that American health problems are caused, at least in part by vaccines. That's where things get pretty controversial. And there's a strand too, of sort of anti establishment thinking within maha. Sort of an idea that you should be taking your health into your own hands. You should be managing things yourself. You should be a little bit distrustful of doctors and hospitals and researchers and scientists and sort of the quote unquote, medical establishment. I think that's a piece for a lot of people too.
- [03:45]
B
You know, not everything associated with MAHA is necessarily bad. It certainly doesn't seem that way. Right. Like ultra processed food sucks and it's good if we eat less of it. You know, caring about what you put in your body is good. Right. I don't. There's nothing ostensibly wrong with that. Right. So, like, at what point does this stop being just fairly banal health messaging about, you know, watch what you eat, you know, and sort of become something more weird and ideological and just maybe even pathological.
- [04:23]
A
Sure. So, yeah, there's a lot of real stuff here. I think one of the biggest things. So I did a story a while back, kind of looking at some claims that Kennedy and others have made around, like, are American children sicker than ever? Are Americans, like, doing really terribly in our health? Do we need all these MAHA prescriptions? And what I found was like, complex. I asked a bunch of researchers and scientists about the MAHA report, which is a big report that the US government put out. RFK Jr spearheaded a lot of it. And what, you know, really top sort of epidemiologists and people that I think are very trustworthy and very scientifically sound. What they said was like, look, you know, this report identifies certain things that are really bad for people. Pesticides and water, you know, a lot of industrial chemicals. It is true that American industry is allowed to pollute the environment in ways that probably are quite harmful for us and probably quite harmful for the food supply. It would be great if we had tighter regulation to keep certain chemicals out of the food we eat and out of the water we drink. That would be amazing. Around ultra processed food, it gets kind of complicated because people don't totally agree on what an ultra processed food is. And then sometimes, like, things fall into that bucket that like, might not make sense to you or me. Like sliced bread for Example, like, you know, if I, if I think of like, I'm gonna make like, you know, a nice simple meal for my child, I'm not thinking like, oh man, I gotta avoid that, like sliced whole wheat bread. That seems, seems odd. I think that Maha, a lot of the people who've become affiliated with it became affiliated with it because they were really concerned about, like, what kids are eating and what they, you know, could feed their families and how to be healthy in a society that can make that really difficult. And then I think where some Maha advocates go with that becomes this direction of a lot of suspicion around, you know, not just say, the agencies of the federal government that are refusing to regulate some of these chemicals which exist. Like, the EPA is not currently keeping the food and water in the United States as safe as it probably could. That's real. But going from that concern to like, now, I don't trust doctors anymore. If my doctor says you should vaccinate your child, I no longer trust that. And instead I might choose to trust these alternative sources who are telling me, for example, things that are not backed up by science at all. Like that vaccines cause autism. Vaccines just don't cause autism. There's not evidence of that. The evidence that existed at one time has been thoroughly, thoroughly debunked. So I think we start from this premise that's actually like a really shared premise. And then Maha goes in a direction that is not shared with a lot of people.
- [07:25]
B
The word conspiracy probably gets tossed around a little too loosely these days, but this world, the Maha world online, does seem to be like a uniquely reliable path to conspiracism. Is that your read of it?
- [07:47]
A
Yes. So a lot of misinformation experts will identify. I've heard it like even before Maha was a thing, right? Because that is a phrase that sort of was coined when RFK Jr was coming up into his current public role. Maha doesn't exist without maga. But even before that term, people would talk about like the Wellness to QAnon pipeline. So there's long been this sort of funnel where people can get interested in sort of wellness content on social media. And some of that wellness content is going to be just about yoga and just about like green juice or now just about the all meat diet. And it's not going to go beyond that, but some of it is going to also say things that are more conspiracist. So like, not only you should eat all meat, but this is something your government doesn't want you to know. Like they want to keep you sick, like a sort of. Often a shadowy. Them, like a cabal. They don't want you to have this information. This is like secret information that I'm giving to you. And then that can shade from there into sort of more intense conspiracist thinking where maybe you do believe in QAnon or maybe you just believe that everybody who's trying to get you to vaccinate your child is part of a sort of a shadowy group that's trying to harm you. But it is sort of this documented phenomenon that can happen.
- [09:06]
B
You know, whatever Maha is, it's definitely not a coherent ideology. I think of it like a almost like a bucket of ideas and half baked instincts. Some good, some bad. Like what for you are the most relevant subcultures that make up that bucket? Like if you were separating the movement into its various factions or whatever, what would be the central ones that people might know or should know?
- [09:31]
A
Yeah, I think there's a couple buckets to think about. So there's definitely sort of the mo. Like, I think for a lot of people, if you think about Maha, you would think about Maha moms. You would think about, you know, these influencers and activists who became allied with RFK Jr. Around 2024, but they had their own existing constituencies before that. An influencer who goes by the food babe, Vani Hari is like a really good example of this. She's a very successful influencer. Millions of followers. She expresses a lot of these sort of core Maha beliefs. But then there are others with fewer followers who might be a little bit more. They might call themselves Crunchy, they might be homesteaders. Some might identify as Tradwise, certainly not all. But there's sort of this collection of people where like being a mom is like a big part of their appeal, a big part of their identity. That's one bucket. Increasingly. Like there's also Maha guys. I mean, obviously RFK Jr. Like plays into this right when he does his like workouts where he wears jeans. You know, like there's some constituency out there that he's trying to appeal to. I think it's men. It's like maybe the same constituency as like, you'll hear people say, like Huberman husbands. And so Andrew Huberman, like, I don't know that that guy counts as Maha, but he has some ideas around like protein and workouts and ways to be healthy. And a lot of these are actually fine. It's fine to lift weights. Lift. I lift weights. That bucket is more around some of these lifestyle things that are not that Controversial. Although they can become controversial when you add in stuff like injecting peptides, which are these like, compounds. They're not necessarily very well regulated. You could order them on the Internet. They're injectable. In theory. They could like boost your strength or your energy or whatever, but you don't necessarily know what you're getting. But so all that kind of like performance enhancing and strength and energy and maybe doing some slightly questionable things to achieve that, that's like a sort of Maha adjacent bucket that's like skews really male. And then I think there's up and coming influencers. So the piece that I just wrote was about interviewing young women and interviewing people about the sort of sphere of influence of these young women. And I think we are beginning to see what sort of a new generation of MAHA might look like. And I think there's gonna be a version of MAHA that's gonna exist long after RFK and after Trump, in whatever our new era looks like post2026, post2028. Um, and I think if you look at some of these young influencers, you get a little bit more of a clue around that.
- [12:13]
B
You know, it's strange, I. Unlike a lot of wellness movements, again, I guess I'm using that term loosely, the Maha thing seems to be much less about pleasure or well being and more about vigilance. You know, it seems very fear driven, watching labels, avoiding toxins, obsessing over inputs. I mean, is that something you've noticed? Is that even really all that different as it seems?
- [12:42]
A
Yeah. I was just reading a New Yorker article right before we talked that was about Maja, and it talked about the level of fear that you sort of have to maintain in order to, for example, eat in the way that some Maha influencers would suggest. So not only are you avoiding things that are processed, but you're like, seed oils are like a really big bugbear of the Maha movement. So that's like canola oil, some other vegetable oils. I think there is a level of vigilance that's prescribed to some degree. I think this is like a real hallmark of our era. Like, I did a story, it's like a year and a half ago now about Zyn and young people, you know, popping a Zyn like these, these nicotine pouches. And what struck me then is like, this drug doesn't seem very fun. Like it's about performance. It's about like being really awake and like active and grinding and getting your work done. And like, I do notice this larger Kind of like type A culture. And I think that exists within Maha too.
- [13:44]
B
I try not to judge people too much. I think it's very easy to do that. I'm guilty of it probably more than I'd like to be. But I try to see the world through the eyes of people I'm talking about. And, I mean, I understand the appeal. Right. And I'm curious how you read this, but for me, one way to see Maha is as a way for people to take this vague sense of dread that people feel in this moment about their bodies or the future of the world, and then just turn it into something concrete and actionable. Right? Like, this is the one thing. Everything else feels sort of like out of control or beyond your control. But there's this one domain, your body, that you can take control of that you have sovereignty over. Right. And that impulse might lead to some weird places. It definitely does. But I can understand how people end up on that path. I really can.
- [14:39]
A
Yeah, no, I absolutely can, too. And I think even, like, the sad thing is that, like, we're not completely in control of what goes into our bodies, right? Like, that's such. Such a hard thing. Like, we're not in control of, like, the water. We're not in control. Even, like, you know, something like microplastics, for example. And you'll see Maha content that has this very. It can be a really soothing message. Like, a lot of times people will say, like, look, I'm not asking you to control everything, but, like, control what you can control, do what you can do. And, like, I think that makes a lot of sense, you know, like, as parenting advice, as life advice. Like, I get that. And then I think when it can become really hard is when one. When you're asking people to control to a level that could, like, actually be detrimental to their mental health, which I think can happen, especially with things like, you know, diet recommendations. But I think when I get, you know, as like, a parent and a citizen and reporter, get more concerned about the messaging, is when it takes that sort of, like, real, like, soothing thing of like, I'm giving you some individual control and goes to a place of saying, this is the only kind of control that anyone should ever expect.
- [16:03]
B
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- [17:42]
A
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- [17:50]
B
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- [18:35]
A
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- [18:53]
B
Can we talk about a character that's in the piece? Maybe to make this sort of concrete and give people like a sense of the actual faces behind this movement. And Lexi, Lexi Verzalis, who is she? What kind of content is she doing? Why did she stand out to you as someone to engage with for this story?
- [19:17]
A
Yeah, so Lexi Vercellis is an interesting person. She's someone that's actually gotten a lot of media attention, sort of center left media. So she's not just, she's not just kind of an up and coming Maha influencer, but she's like someone that like the New York Times is like really watching. She's been on cnn. You know, she's like becoming, you know, she's getting a lot of mainstream attention. She's 20 and she, she's very, she's a very self avowed Maha influencer. So her personal account is. Her personal Instagram account is her most successful brand. But then she also has an account called I believe Maha Girls with another young influencer. She's done a video with rfk, she's appeared with him, you know, so she definitely like thinks of herself as Maha or at least publicly presents herself as Maha. But it's interesting because if you look at her content, a lot of it is I think more approachable. Like you would not necessarily go into some of her videos thinking this is particularly ideological. She does not talk about vaccines that much. She is mostly talking about diet and grocery shopping and food and working out and like she'll talk about like what are kind of clean swaps at the grocery store, like what can you buy at the grocery store that in her view is like more healthy or how could you make. This is a very popular, actually this is a very popular just genre of video generally on Instagram. TikTok is like making something from scratch that is also a processed food. So like she made peeps from scratch. You know she has other examples of making stuff from scratch. So it's really like a lot of it is. It feels like just a food account.
- [20:57]
B
There's all these worlds online that I don't really have any contact with and don't understand. But I am continually astonished. They'll have massive followings and I don't know how that happens but how large is her, her following?
- [21:10]
A
Lexi has about 170,000 followers on Instagram. So it's not huge. It's not like as many as someone like Vani Hari or as like you know, celebrities that in the millions but that's big. Like I have 4,000 followers on Instagram. You know, you can get verified with like less than that. So It's. She's reaching a lot of people. Was interesting to talk to her because she. I think she views herself as primarily reaching, like women in their maybe 20s and 30s, but there's a significant number of younger people also who are engaging with her.
- [21:42]
B
And, you know, she. She had this experience with anorexia when she was a kid, and she was told, you know, to eat certain foods to recover, and she rejected that, and then, you know, moved toward this real food heals framework. I mean, is that how central is that personal story to her appeal online? How common is that kind of story online?
- [22:07]
A
Yeah, so what she told me, and she told us to the Times also, is that when she was 13, she had anorexia. She was really uncomfortable with sort of what a dietitian advised her, which was in her telling, like, to eat a lot of junk food. She kind of took a more religiously inflected angle where she read the Bible and sort of took what she understood of her religion to determine what she should eat. And so today, her diet, she walked me through, like, what she eats in a day. It's like a lot of eggs, it's a lot of meat or fish, a lot of fruit. You know, it's whole foods. It's nothing. It's nothing wild. But to her, I think it had this very religious framework. And I think that experience also sort of, I guess I could say, radicalized her a little bit. And it is a really common story. So both the young people that I talked with had a story around sort of like being or feeling failed by doctors. Another young woman I spoke with like, had ibs and she felt like doctors really weren't helping her. I think that's a super, super common pathway just to becoming interested in sort of alternative wellness generally.
- [23:24]
B
That's kind of what I was getting at, you know, the, the emotional logic of that story and the appeal. Right. And if you dig deep, that seems to be what you find. Right. Like some version, maybe not a particular eating disorder, but some version of the system failed me.
- [23:41]
A
Yeah.
- [23:42]
B
Or the system deceived me, and I found another way, another path outside of that system. And here's how I did it, and here's how you can do it. But again, there could be a lot of wisdom in that, but you could see how quickly that turns into, can't trust doctors, can't trust data, can't trust science. You can trust me.
- [23:59]
A
Right.
- [24:00]
B
And you can trust, you know, your, Your, your algos to, you know, point the way. And boy, yeah, that doesn't seem Good.
- [24:07]
A
It's really complicated. I talked to a therapist who specializes in eating disorders and something that she pointed out to me is that it's. There's a lot of diagnoses that you can get that are really frustrating and they are real and doctors might not be able to help you very much. So ibs, irritable bowel syndrome, like a lot of like digestive diagnoses. Like there might not be that much that doctors will recommend for you to do, or the recommendations might be frustrating. Your symptoms might come and go in frustrating ways that it's really hard to predict. Other diagnoses are like that too. Like eczema is like that. A lot of people will talk about getting into wellness and, or getting into Maha because of skin issues. Eczema can flare and go back down for reasons that are like really hard to know. I have eczema, I know this. So there's really a lot of bodily conditions that like we don't fully understand yet. And the treatments are unsatisfying. I think for girls and young women that's especially true. There's a lot of sexism still in medicine. Girls and young women are not necessarily getting, you know, the kind of treatment that would be equitable for them. So it's never surprising to me from when I hear from someone like, you know, I was in pain and my doctor couldn't necessarily help me. I think that's a really common story and it is also becoming increasingly common for that story to go from like, I was in pain, my doctor couldn't help me. These are some things I did that helped. You should also do the things and then don't listen to doctors. Like that's becoming. And I'm not necessarily saying that this is. That this one to one is something that the young influencers that I spoke with really talk about exactly on their channels because again, a lot of times they're a little pulled back and a little more approachable. But it is something you'll hear a lot from Maha influencers.
- [26:00]
B
You mentioned with Lexi, it's becoming like her feeds are becoming increasingly religiously infused. What's the religious dimension of this? It doesn't seem to be that at all. It seems to be a very secular thing. What is the connection there? And is that becoming more of a thing or this is sort of becoming conventionally religious or maybe religious in some, you know, other weird postmodern sense. But yeah, what's the religious part of this?
- [26:29]
A
No, she's interesting because she is very self avowedly Christian and she'll talk about like eating the foods that God designed us to eat and has Bible references that's not as common. Within the larger Maha movement, you'll definitely find people who are religious, but like, it's not something RFK Jr has led with. You know, that like Maha has a lot of people talk about the horseshoe theory of like left and right sort of coming together more and more commonly in sort of today's politics and culture. And Maha is one example of this. And so there's lots of Maha folks that are like California hippies who might subscribe to all kinds of spiritualities that are not Christian and not mainstream, you know, and they have found a home within this movement that's a lot about sort of like alternative medicine, alternative spirituality, alternative everything. So it's not a super Christian movement, but there are Christian strands and you'll see kind of like connections. So people that post trad wife content or sort of trad aligned content, homesteaders and homeschoolers, they often are Christian, will talk about Christianity, talk about religion, and they often are doing sort of Maha style cooking. But it's definitely not like Maha as a whole. I would not describe as like a Christian led movement.
- [27:47]
B
That's partly why I asked. I mean I, you know, you, you report a lot on gender and you know, as a white guy just north of 40 who's interested in fitness, like my, my algorithms are feeding me a lot of like the dude side of, of this online. I mean, I cannot go on. I gotta help me out. You know, I watched a couple of workout accounts on Instagram and now like I'm just getting pummeled with these like vaguely Maha coded, but more like personal optimization, you know, get jacked and you know, conquer the world, that kind of shit. And it's like it's aggressively not religious in any way. And I was just curious if on like the young women's side, if there was just maybe like ideologically in the same sphere, but if it was taking on a more religious tone, which would be very different from what's happening like on the male side of this. And I don't know what I would make of that difference if it was a difference, but it seems instructive somehow. But maybe I'm over reading it.
- [28:51]
A
So yeah, I wouldn't say that there's a ton more religion in stuff aimed at young women. I do think there is a particular brand of content. I mean, first of all, some of these principles that are aligned with Maha are also just totally mainstream now, right? Like protein maxing. Just totally mainstream. Like, everybody's into protein, everybody's into lifting. That is just, like, culturally mainstream. One of the young influencers, I talked to this young woman named Ava. Her. Her Instagram is clean living with Ava, and she's posted a lot of, like, kind of winking tradwife content. It's like a little bit of a joke. Like, she'll be wearing, like, a bonnet and, like, a trad wifey dress and. But then it's like she's cooking for her siblings, you know. But she. I've noticed she has more and more videos where she'll, like, be making jokes about, like, oh, I'm just like a tradwife, but where's my husband? So I do think, like, there's sort of, like, content that is aimed at women. You're just never very, very far from, like, being a good wife and mother when you're watching videos on the Internet as a woman or a girl. Whereas, like, if you're watching videos on the Internet as a man or a boy, like, you're not getting content about how to be a good husband or father, I don't think.
- [30:09]
B
Nope.
- [30:09]
A
But, like, the tradwives are just never far away online. If you're female, I think they'll enact a version of, like, what they see as traditional wifehood, which usually includes, like, saying some stuff about being submissive to your husband, doing a lot of scratch cooking in your house. If you have children, also homeschooling them. They'll be holding a baby while they stir something. And it can be very aspirational, I think, even for people that don't want to submit to their husband, that don't necessarily agree with any of this politically. This got real big leading up to 2024. And what's interesting is that I thought it was a little bit dead. I thought, like, tradwives are over. So it was interesting for me to see this young woman kind of like, cosplaying a tradwife in, like, a winky way. It made me wonder, like, if that ideology is going to have more legs than I thought.
- [31:02]
B
Well, it makes sense that that would be either part of the MAHA coalition or at least adjacent, because, again, it's anti system.
- [31:10]
A
Yes.
- [31:11]
B
It's anti where the culture is and where it's going. And it's like so much of this seems to begin with that, like, fundamental rejection.
- [31:19]
A
Like, tradwife culture and, like, homesteading are also, like, really linked. And people who are really hardcore homesteaders are like, you know, we don't. Like, we don't have municipal water. Like we filter our own water. We have a well. We live completely away from these systems. Like we're completely self sufficient. That's the goal of like you're really hardcore homesteaders. And I think that has a lot of a lot of confluence with Maha as well. So the tradwife homesteader Maha Venn diagram is like a lot of overlap there. This episode is brought to you by Palmolive. Family time isn't just the big moments. It's weeknight dinners, sitting around the table, everyone talking all at once. So when the plates are empty and the sink is full, use Palmolive Ultra. Palmolive's most powerful formula removes up to 99.9% of grease, leaving your dishes sparkling clean. And the new convenient pump makes cleaning even easier so you can spend less time tackling dishes and more time together. Shop now@palmolive.com I'm Maria Sharapova and I'm hosting a new podcast called Pretty Tough. Every week I'm sitting down with trailblazing wins women at the top of their game to discuss ambition, work ethic and the ups and downs that come on the path to achieving greatness. We'll dive into their stories and get valuable insights from top executives, actors, entrepreneurs, and other individuals who have inspired me so much in my own journey. Follow Pretty Tough wherever you get your podcasts.
- [32:59]
B
So we are 250 years into this American experiment, and I'd say it's going okay. I give us like a C. There
- [33:06]
A
is no perfect past, but there is also no exclusively negative past because humans are gonna human. That's what we do. I think the story of America is the struggle of people who have not been included in the promise of America to expand those principles to include more people.
- [33:27]
B
What's gonna determine the next 250 years of America? And how do we write a new social contract that can give us the democracy we deserve?
- [33:35]
A
Okay, so I'm just going to be a jerk here because I'm a historian. So we have to have a prologue explaining, you know, we the people.
- [33:43]
B
Okay. You know, I do still remember from Schoolhouse Rock, we the people, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice. What is it? Ensure domestic tranquility.
- [33:54]
A
So you're talking about a foundational document. So I'm building a document that will protect American democracy.
- [34:01]
B
That's this week on America Acts Relief. I don't want to overstate the youth vote angle because I don't even think young people are like the main MAHA constituency yet. But just, you know, Projecting out a little bit like what do you, what do you see as the political implications of this? Do you think like this, the younger people, particularly younger women who are migrating to this coalition, do you think that has long term political implications? How do you think that'll break down electorally?
- [34:46]
A
Yeah, it's interesting. I spent a lot of time for this story trying to figure out how maha are teens, how much is this content and this culture reaching young people. And it's a little hard to measure. In part, I don't know, like in part there's not a lot of polling of teenagers. For example. What I came up with is there's at least some evidence that teenagers and young people are consuming a fair amount of health content online that has some conspiracy angles to it. There's one survey in which teenagers were saying, yes, like we see a lot of, a lot of sort of conspiracy theories online and health conspiracy theories are one of the top ones. And it's also the case that a lot of the characteristics of Gen Z of people in their 20s and their late teens, like make them potentially a really ready audience for some of this stuff. A lot of Gen Z Americans, not oddly, have really low trust in a lot of institutions, including medical institutions. And again, you know, it's not surprising like Gen Z has been let down by adults in a lot of ways. Gen zers have grown up in this world that's super unstable, like they were kids during the pandemic and the lockdowns. They've seen constant wars. They've seen our sort of state of poly crisis. They don't really remember a time when politics felt, I think, functional to them. What that means is that young people are, are not as trusting even of doctors as older people are. They are not as trusting of mainstream media. They're not trusting of like, you know, the kind. Not that mainstream media is perfect, but they are not trusting of the kinds of news sources that do systematic fact checks of health claims. So for this generation of young people, like anyone who comes and says I'm going to help you do this yourself and take this into your own hands, that person's going to be likely very appealing.
- [36:52]
B
It's just, it's funny, you know, I'm old enough to remember, I know you are too. When Republicans ruthlessly mocked Michelle Obama's anti obesity campaign and just basically treated public health messaging as nanny state paternalism and now parts of the right are obsessed with toxins and food purity and all the rest of it. I mean, what is that? Like, how did we get from don't tell me what to eat to basically a right coded Maha politics.
- [37:28]
A
Yeah, it's so interesting. One thing I would say about that is that you still see that nanny state phobia within the Republican Party. So as much as RFK says don't eat this, don't eat that, you know, eat whole foods, whatever, here's your new food pyramid. Actually, the amount of stuff he's been able to get done within the administration is low. And you see the epa, they haven't done any of the things that Maha would want to do, you know, and actually things like, you know, a big part of Michelle Obama's push involved, you know, funding for schools to have, you know, food from local farms which would be very Maha aligned that has been cut.
- [38:05]
B
Right.
- [38:06]
A
So like the Republican Party still maintains those old line conservative values of like, don't tell people what to eat. You know, we're not going to regulate stuff, don't mess with us. And at the same time, yes, there is a right coded, like there's a right coded way to eat healthy now. You see it all over the Internet. Even if it's not, again, like, even if it's not in Maha spaces, it is really interesting. I think again it gets back to this idea of that this is also an anti establishment way to be healthy. And you know, Trump of course is the ultimate like person who brought anti establishment thinking into the right. So I think that's a piece of this too.
- [38:47]
B
You mentioned it. I should at least ask. So RFK Jr hasn't gotten much done I think is how you put it. Has he gotten anything done? Like have they actually done anything concrete to make America healthy again? Or is this just an online political aesthetic movement, you know, mostly about, you know, engagement farming and clicks and vibes than actually doing anything.
- [39:15]
A
When you talk to epidemiologists and public health experts about Maha and RFK Jr. Sometimes they will say some version of we are happy that RFK Jr has brought attention to the need for Americans to have better access to whole foods. You know, the problems of ultra processed foods. Sometimes they'll say, again, that's a bit of a complicated phrase. But like some public health experts are glad to have more conversation around this. I would add to that, you know, I think the Maha movement talks about sort of toxins and in what can feel like a fear mongery way. But you know, real, very serious public health experts have real concerns about again, pesticides, industrial chemicals and RFK Jr. Has sort of tried to bring attention to that. So those are the things that I have heard people give him credit for, there's some concrete things that he's done that have been quite negative for public health. He has changed vaccine recommendations to eliminate the recommendation to vaccinate newborns against hepatitis B, which a lot of experts are worried could cause babies and children to get hepatitis B. That can be really dangerous for their health. You know, so at the margins, he has had some concrete effect on the vaccine schedule that almost every public health expert would agree is negative. If you look at his work as sort of an influencer and a leader of public health conversation, his impact on measles vaccination rates, I think every public health expert would say, has been negative. You know, we have measles outbreaks in this country that we don't need to have, and it is hard not to lay at least some of that on Kennedy's doorstep.
- [41:01]
B
I haven't done any reporting on Maha, but I've thought a lot about the. Basically that the collapse of trust from the public in government, in science, in journalism, in public institutions, just more generally in so many crises are downstream of that. Is that how this slots for you? Basically just symptomatic of that basic fundamental problem. People do not trust authority of any kind, and so in that vacuum, they turn to this?
- [41:40]
A
Yes, absolutely. I think. I think 100%, sort of the rise of Maha has to do with a loss of trust in government, loss of trust in public health, loss of trust in media, all of it. And we continue to see that snowball. Not to get ahead of myself, but I think for me, the most interesting part of reporting on this story was talking to folks who work on trust and work on information and misinformation about how to teach young people to evaluate information and to place their trust where it ought to be placed. You know, there are lots of people now who work on this, and talking to them was really inspiring.
- [42:19]
B
Well, what's their answer? If it's not, hey, trust government, again, what is their answer to dealing with this?
- [42:25]
A
So I talked with an expert named Melanie Tressett King, and her advice was really interesting. So she teaches classes on sort of misinformation and evaluating information. And one thing that she will do is start with examples that students don't have any emotional investment in. So she'll start with, like, European witch trials. She'll say, you know, in 1605, these women were accused of witchcraft. This was the evidence. This is what happened to them. They were hanged or they were tortured. You know, let's evaluate this evidence. What do you think about this. How did. How did this information permeate out into the society? What effects did it have? Like, what would you say about this information now? And sort of in that way, give students tools for evaluating, like, what was misinformation. These women were not witches, but it's not like they don't personally identify as a witch or feel a kinship with these women in 1605. And so they're able to sort of. Their emotions aren't getting into it, and they're not tricked. Their identities are not being triggered. And so in this way, she's able to give students these intellectual tools that they can use, hopefully in situations that might be a lot more fraught for them. But she's not coming right at them and being like, everything you believe is wrong or being like that influencer that you, like, they're dumb, or being like, these are the things that you have to believe. She's not being didactic, so she's not inspiring that kind of pushback. And I found that really inspiring because it's sort of a framework rather than trying to beat kids over the head with, like, no, I'm a reporter. You should trust me. Like, it's a framework for, like, teaching, you know, teaching young people how to evaluate. Evaluate things in a smart way.
- [44:20]
B
Part of the problem here. And I think someone you quote in the piece says this science is just not about 100% certainty. It just isn't. But unfortunately, people love people who sound certain because we like certainty, and so do the algorithms. And so I think we're just stuck with a whole lot of bullshit in our society. And this is just another example of that.
- [44:45]
A
I watched a lot of videos for this story, and you can see the kinds of videos that, you know, do well on social media. And it's videos that have really bold claims that are, like, really scary that grab your eyeballs. And real science just has a much harder time doing that. I talked to a bunch of science communicators for the story, and I was really inspired by them, too, and sort of how they try to get around this problem. A lot of it is just by they talk about being where people are. Somebody pointed out to me, like, you know, young people, like, they like to look somebody in the eye. Like, they like to see a video where someone's looking at them and talking to them. And I was like, oh, yeah, sure, of course. I also enjoy having a conversation with someone and looking them in the eye. Like, I get why that is a format that encourages trust. And so I very much get why science communicators in a lot of cases are making videos and trying to distill their insights into something that can be this more conversational form because that's how they can reach young people right now.
- [45:50]
B
I don't know how successful it'll be, but I'm glad there are people doing it.
- [45:54]
A
Yeah.
- [45:56]
B
Anna, is there anything else in this reporting more generally that you just you think people are missing or that you think is worth highlighting?
- [46:03]
A
Before we go, I'm glad that we talked about having empathy for a lot of the feelings that push people towards Maha, because I think those feelings are just really common. And I think a lot of people involved with this are, like, very sincere in their beliefs. And, you know, there's also cases where those beliefs end up in dangerous directions.
- [46:29]
B
I think that's a perfect note to end on. Anna, thank you so much for coming back. We love your reporting. People should check out this piece as soon as they're done listening to this episode. And I'm sure we'll have you back again. So thanks.
- [46:44]
A
Thanks so much. This was great.
- [46:51]
B
All right. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Anna is a terrific reporter. I am glad she's on our team here at vox, because that means we get to talk to her whenever we want. As always, we want to know what you think. So drop us a line at the gray area@vox.com or you can leave us a message on our new voicemail line at 1-800-214-5749. Please also rate Review subscribe to the podcast if you haven't already. That is how we grow this show. This episode was produced by Thor Neuerider and Beth Morrissey, who also runs the show, engineered by Shannon Mahoney and Christian Ayala. Fact Checked by Melissa Hirsch and Emma Munger wrote our theme music. Our executive producer is Miranda Kennedy. The Gray Area comes out on Mondays and Fridays. Find it wherever you listen to podcasts. If you watch podcasts while you listen, you can do that too. Go to YouTube.com Vox for video versions of the Gray Area. The show is part of vox. Support Vox's journalism by joining our membership program today. Go to Vox.com members to sign up and if you decide to sign up because of this show, let us know. Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. I don't know if you knew this, but anyone can get the same Premium Wireless for $15 a month plan that I've been enjoying. It's not just for celebrities. So do like I did and have one of your assistant's assistants switch you to Mint Mobile today. I'm told it's super easy to do@mintmobile.com
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A
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