GLP-1s and the ‘Wild West’ of Wellness
The Ezra Klein Show
New York Times Opinion
4.3 • 14.5K Ratings
🗓️ 8 May 2026
⏱️ 74 minutes
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| 0:00.0 | The |
| 0:07.0 | The Here's a number that actually shocked me when I learned it. |
| 0:35.2 | This from a new Kaiser Family Foundation poll. One out of eight Americans |
| 0:40.0 | is taking a GLP1. One out of eight. Maybe I shouldn't have been so shocked because the number |
| 0:47.0 | is higher in my social circles. I have tried these. For reasons, I'll explain. But they're a strange medication, right? |
| 0:55.9 | They don't make you lose weight. |
| 0:57.5 | They make you not want to eat food. |
| 1:00.3 | But then they do all these other things. |
| 1:02.6 | They seem to protect people's heart health, independent of losing weight. |
| 1:08.2 | They're protective of kidneys, of livers. There is ongoing research about |
| 1:13.9 | dementia, Alzheimer's. They have all these strange effects on addiction and desire. But should |
| 1:19.7 | everyone be on these? Like, what does it mean for society to have access to drugs that regulate |
| 1:25.8 | desire in this way? What do they mean for the sick? |
| 1:30.3 | What do they mean for the well? I want to do an episode on this for a while, but haven't known |
| 1:35.3 | quite how to approach it. And then Julia Ballouz, who's a contributing writer at New York Times |
| 1:39.8 | opinion, and co-author of the book Food Intelligence, and also was a health and science reporter with me back at Vox. |
| 1:46.5 | She is one of the best health and science reporters I have ever known, incredibly deep on the science, |
| 1:51.9 | but really compassionate and detailed and relentless about talking to actual people about their |
| 1:58.0 | experiences inside the health system. She's reported extensively on nutrition and medicine, but she's been doing a lot of work on |
| 2:04.5 | GLP ones, including survey work, talking to doctors, scientists, patients, and I wanted to have |
| 2:10.3 | her on to hear what she's been learning. As always, my email as for Client Show at n.yatimes.com. |
| 2:25.6 | Julie Blues, welcome to the show. |
... |
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