Maintenance Phase - Goop | The Good Janets

00:00:00.000 you hear it you're getting there's that microphone hello boop boop there we go

00:00:15.740 hello radio voice i gotta go down two octaves now

00:00:20.560 you have a challenging task this morning you haven't given me anything to work with

00:00:27.560 i have not told you what we're recording about all my taglines were like the the podcast that's

00:00:33.460 a mystery box inside an enigma that's like all i have like empty uh welcome to maintenance phase

00:00:42.880 the podcast that tells you two weeks ago that you're recording a secret podcast and today

00:00:49.800 you're doing it surprise i'm the podcast in this catchphrase the podcast is me that's just me

00:00:56.300 narrating what's happening right now. That's not really a tagline. I'm Aubrey Gordon. I'm

00:01:00.960 Michael Hobbs. If you would like to support the show, you can do that at patreon.com slash

00:01:04.680 maintenance phase where you'll get bonus episodes every month. And today, Michael Hobbs,

00:01:10.220 we have a surprise topic. I'm so excited. Do you have any guesses? I think this is about a show

00:01:15.300 that you've been wanting to do, but you didn't want to tell me that you were doing it. So maybe

00:01:19.360 this is you finally doing a show about salads maybe this is it i love that your theory is it's

00:01:28.520 the driest topic i have ever pitched to you you're like mike was on the fence about the

00:01:33.220 salads one maybe i'll just do it and tell him it's a surprise no michael this is one that we

00:01:39.040 have discussed okay michael the goopisode is upon us it's finally the goopisode we're doing goop

00:01:47.200 So where are we starting with Gwyneth and the Goop Empire?

00:01:51.740 So this is maybe the highest volume of research I've done for an episode in a while.

00:01:59.220 More words written about Goop than like the history of calories. 0.97

00:02:04.540 That's for fucking sure. 0.91

00:02:06.300 What I wanted to do for this episode is try and take Goop pretty seriously, right? 0.98

00:02:11.280 It's a $430 million company.

00:02:14.120 it has really significant influence over the wellness industry as a whole so we're gonna

00:02:21.440 talk a little bit about like why is that and what draws people to goop in a sea of media coverage

00:02:26.680 that really only seems to be like can you believe it yeah this again i also i love that you're

00:02:32.020 starting with like this is not going to be fun this is gonna be this is gonna be homework look 0.70

00:02:38.220 we're gonna fucking dunk on goop real hard don't worry but also i wanted to like get us grounded 0.74

00:02:45.660 in like no there's stuff here worth exploring part of what made the research on this episode 0.95

00:02:49.820 so hard is that everything was eye rolling yeah yeah yeah so i wanted to be like no no let's like

00:02:55.100 try and take this on its own terms a little bit more right this is also an episode that both of

00:02:59.800 us have resisted doing for a long time like we've been doing the show for two years and this is

00:03:04.180 like a pretty obvious episode for us to do and one of the reasons neither one of us wanted to

00:03:08.560 do it earlier was because there's already so many goop dunk fests yeah absolutely so i'm glad that

00:03:14.320 we're like actually taking this seriously as a phenomenon and not just like going from like

00:03:19.380 dunk to dunk on gwyneth even though she she deserves it in many ways but also like i mean

00:03:26.940 this this company is one of the first kind of like influencer business models really i mean

00:03:31.760 And Gwyneth kind of like as a businesswoman did something like relatively innovative.

00:03:36.540 Yes, absolutely. 0.69

00:03:37.980 Gwyneth Paltrow starts Goop and that actually unleashes a whole wave of sort of celebrity

00:03:42.660 like wellness and lifestyle brands.

00:03:45.020 Right.

00:03:45.560 That's where we get The Honest Company.

00:03:48.220 Blake Lively launches a lifestyle brand like all of these sort of Hollywood it girls.

00:03:54.980 I don't know who any of those people are. 0.85

00:03:56.600 You know who Blake Lively is.

00:03:59.000 I do not. 0.98

00:03:59.700 you absolutely fucking do michael no i know her she's the one that did haters gonna hate hate hate 0.99

00:04:05.420 hate no no no that's taylor swift and you absolutely know that that's taylor swift no i 0.99

00:04:11.280 do know that but i don't know i i genuinely don't know who blake lively is but from context clues

00:04:15.920 she appears to be a famous person um so the other thing i wanted to say context wise for the goop

00:04:21.620 is like the oprah sodes there is just too much to cover in one episode yeah so this is designed as a

00:04:29.260 like mothership episode that we can then come back if we want to tell other goop related stories.

00:04:34.980 But this is sort of the like, how did it come to be? And what are a few key things to sort of

00:04:40.200 know about it? All right, beam me up. So we today are going to explore goop in three acts.

00:04:47.800 Act one, the birth of goop, the advent of goop. Gwyneth Paltrow was born in 1972 in Los Angeles

00:04:55.160 to Blythe Danner and Bruce Paltrow. Blythe Danner is an actor. She works on Broadway. She works in

00:05:01.580 TV. She works in movies. She was in a bunch of Woody Allen movies. Her dad is Bruce Paltrow. 0.54

00:05:07.580 He was a TV director and producer. His biggest sort of project that he's most known for was

00:05:12.600 St. Elsewhere. Also, fascinatingly, her cousins include Gabby Giffords, Catherine Munig, who

00:05:20.480 played shane from the l word oh really and rebecca paltrow newman whose husband adam newman

00:05:29.020 was the founder of we work that explains why his hair is so lustrous

00:05:33.020 earlier this year gwyneth paltrow did an interview with hayley bieber justin bieber's

00:05:39.160 wife and also daughter of stephen baldwin where gwyneth paltrow gave this like wild and terrible

00:05:44.960 quote about how like nepotism kids have to work twice as hard to prove themselves oh no and i was

00:05:52.400 like man no that's not that's not it gwyneth that's we said we weren't gonna roast you gwyneth

00:06:00.520 but you're making it hard it's a bad one yeah i imagine look if you walked onto a set and you got

00:06:06.820 a job you know in part or full because of who you know or whose kid you are and you're surrounded by

00:06:14.060 a bunch of other actors who have been auditioning for years just to get a role like absolutely 0.97

00:06:20.200 they're going to be like who the fuck are you do you even deserve to be here sure so like i see how 0.97

00:06:25.320 she gets there and also please stop no it's like the it's like the economic equivalent of skinny 0.99

00:06:30.560 shaming i feel like is it mean to say to somebody like eat a sandwich when they post a photo of

00:06:37.420 themselves in a bathing suit like yes it's mean but is there like on a structural level

00:06:42.780 oppression against skinny people just objectively there is not i'm sorry i know this is harder for

00:06:49.260 you than most days and i'm real sorry about that but also on average yes the difficulty level of

00:06:55.640 your days is like a five right and you're talking to a group of people whose difficulty level on a

00:07:00.360 given day is like 70 that's a good way to put it so after graduating from these fancy private

00:07:05.080 schools her first films come out in 1991 she's 19 at the time oh wow she's in a movie called

00:07:11.760 shout starring john travolta and she's in hook as wendy she's what she was wendy and hook do you

00:07:19.160 want to know who cast her is it steven spielberg her godfather steven spielberg oh life is hard

00:07:26.640 for life is hard for nepotism kids life is hard out here and you get cast in a steven spielberg

00:07:32.740 movie because he's your godfather when i get just hours of face time with like the most acclaimed

00:07:38.480 american director really tough times i know i'm sorry i don't mean to be mean but it's so hard

00:07:43.600 not to be mean to gwyneth baldro it's okay to be i again i feel like it's fine to dunk on her i'm

00:07:49.220 just looking for nutritious dunking oh man so by 1995 she graduates to some more sort of adult

00:07:55.760 films she's in seven she's in emma she's in great expectations by 1998 she stars in shakespeare in

00:08:03.180 love she wins an oscar for that oh yeah in 2001 she stars in the royal tenenbaums that is the

00:08:08.480 same year that she puts on a fat suit for shallow hal oh right yeah it was the best of times it was

00:08:14.300 the worst of times gwyneth paltrow i'll also say i have always felt weird about her like later

00:08:21.160 wellness turn because i actually think she's like a really good actress shallow hal obviously is a 0.88

00:08:25.880 fucking nightmare which we did a whole episode on but in general she's done like a really diverse 0.71

00:08:31.000 interesting array of movies and like she's good in them yes and i would say a bunch of the early 0.97

00:08:37.020 press coverage of goop bears that out they talk to a bunch of people who've worked with her and

00:08:41.620 they're like she's good at acting and i don't understand why she's doing this it's like a 0.96

00:08:46.220 thing like a number of people say in early coverage they're just like what the fuck is this

00:08:51.080 why yeah yeah i started pulling together a timeline of her film and tv work and she has

00:08:57.160 credits almost every year for over 30 years at this point oh wow and as her acting career

00:09:05.640 takes off so does her sort of commitment to dieting and wellness and all of that kind of stuff

00:09:12.280 she in 1999 she does her first master cleanse and starts talking about it in the press

00:09:18.560 okay in 2002 a terrible thing happens which is her father passes away of throat cancer

00:09:25.700 and she talks about just wanting to make things better for him and seeing him go through the

00:09:32.280 ringer of you know traditional cancer treatments right it's really hard to watch your loved one

00:09:38.540 go through that and she starts looking around she's like there's got to be something else that

00:09:41.800 i can do for him huh she has this story about her dad that she was trying out sort of gluten-free

00:09:47.800 sugar-free vegan recipes she made some muffins okay and she made one for him and she was like

00:09:53.260 he took a bite of it and said it tasted like biting into the new york times and that's like

00:09:59.200 which is like a genuinely good story and she's like you know we've come a long way and like i

00:10:05.600 knew i had my work cut out for me and what it like it's like a good little launch pad right

00:10:09.280 yeah that's pretty good in 2004 she goes to the premiere of anchorman and wears a strappy exposed

00:10:16.120 shoulder exposed back dress that shows that she has big marks from having been in cupping oh is

00:10:22.200 that the thing it's like hot yep they sort of do these little suction heat suction cups to your

00:10:27.360 back so that becomes a big little like sort of news wave about her so she's already long before

00:10:34.680 the start of goop wellness stuff has very much been part of her public image right also i mean

00:10:42.000 i've always had a sort of a complicated relationship with the social construction

00:10:46.160 of gwyneth paltrow because she doesn't strike me as like an evil person yeah totally like i think

00:10:51.560 one of the challenges of talking about this kind of wellness grift space is that you have genuine

00:10:56.840 like bad actors like pete evans right yeah but then you have people like gwyneth palter who i

00:11:01.120 think is genuinely well-meaning right i don't think she like knows that this stuff is fake

00:11:06.300 yeah i think she's doing it because she really believes in it but also i do think that her

00:11:11.240 influence on the culture has arguably been quite malign yeah she strikes me as someone who is

00:11:18.400 deeply and genuinely out of touch like that's not just a character she plays on tv right oh yeah 0.67

00:11:23.640 that's the wild thing about the gaffes and part of what sits weirdly with me about coverage of

00:11:27.940 the gaffes is like can you believe she said it and i'm like i can believe that she believes it

00:11:32.520 yeah oh yeah but there are some things i will say we will get to some stuff where you're like

00:11:36.680 oh no she knows oh she knows we'll get there she knows yeah okay so in 2008 gwyneth paltrow

00:11:44.680 starts a newsletter called goop michael do you know why she calls it goop i don't actually i

00:11:51.320 feel like i should well so the main thing is that her initials are gp oh right goopity goop okay but

00:11:56.680 she adds the double o because a branding expert told her quote that all successful internet

00:12:03.500 companies have double o's in their names what which i was like all right so i get you on google

00:12:10.340 and facebook amazon micro soup she's right scroof yeah

00:12:15.720 so when she launches goop it is just an email newsletter that is the start of goop oh yeah and

00:12:24.960 at the outset the press is really puzzled by like why this is happening one of the early stories

00:12:31.960 about goop is from the new york times and the headline is gwyneth paltrow's offstage roles 0.95

00:12:37.700 dot dot dot but why that's some cold shit she also has interests

00:12:47.240 so she talks to people about sort of like why she starts the website at the beginning and it's

00:12:56.120 really interesting to me because it is so dramatically different than the website that

00:13:00.100 we have now she tells people that she has filmed in a lot of different locations and that each time

00:13:06.140 she goes to a different location she would ask the crew and locals about like where do you get

00:13:11.540 the best cup of coffee what's the meal you can't miss here who gives the best massage in town

00:13:17.460 where's the best juice bar so it's sort of like a little insider guide to travel in generally

00:13:23.940 pretty fancy locations right this is some like genuine innovation in that this was a time before

00:13:30.780 instagram and like the the institution of like the celebrity doing their own celebrities they're

00:13:37.900 just like us shtick yeah like she was pretty early on like forming a relationship a direct

00:13:42.540 relationship with her audience in a way that is like totally taken for granted now yeah absolutely

00:13:48.000 she's like trying to be this sort of insider travel guide right but the press moves really

00:13:54.320 quickly past any level of even like surface puzzlement and gets over it really quickly.

00:14:01.800 So here is a quote from a piece on the late Great Racked.

00:14:06.800 It says, a New York Times columnist lamented, I feel undernourished already.

00:14:11.820 Joy of Cooking editor Beth Wareham mused, does the world really need another banana

00:14:16.860 muffin recipe?

00:14:18.040 I think someone like Gwyneth Paltrow would be better at telling people what not to eat. 0.92

00:14:22.500 Oh, that's kind of like mean-spirited.

00:14:24.820 A lot of this coverage came out after her release of the very first newsletter.

00:14:29.060 Right.

00:14:29.360 Just like, give it a minute.

00:14:30.820 And then, I mean, granted, if you gave it a minute, it would not be better.

00:14:33.900 Right.

00:14:34.340 And I mean, we did give it, we gave it a decade.

00:14:36.780 It's become what it's become.

00:14:37.920 So these people on some level were correct.

00:14:40.460 Maybe it's just we're comparing it to what goop is now and what celebrity culture has

00:14:43.720 become now.

00:14:44.680 But this just seems so harmless to me.

00:14:47.060 Yeah, totally.

00:14:47.700 and i also think people didn't really know how to read that as cynically as we know how to read

00:14:53.220 that now yeah yeah so 2008 she releases the newsletter and in 2009 she creates the first

00:14:59.680 goop detox man that first detox is sort of like a more restrictive version of whole 30 okay it's

00:15:08.640 just a lot of sort of like clean eating shit it's a seven day quote-unquote detox which i'm like

00:15:13.980 hey man if it's seven days where you're restricting what you eat congratulations 0.99

00:15:18.240 that's a fucking diet yeah it's just a diet so there is a writer from gq who does the goop 0.98

00:15:24.340 detox at the time and talks about it being absolutely terrible oh yeah the person writes 0.99

00:15:30.820 about vomiting on the subway platform which i have done but not on a detox so i'm not gonna judge

00:15:40.620 This person keeps like, you know, a couple of short sentences of notes a day about being on

00:15:46.580 the goop detox. Day one, feel incredibly strange, if not a little better, lighter. Someone in the

00:15:52.840 office says I look pinker. Day two, feel hungover. The hunger isn't in my stomach, but in my throat.

00:15:58.900 I'm craving KFC. I never crave KFC. I don't even like KFC. And yet I want it. My tongue feels

00:16:05.640 swollen i have a headache this i am told is part of the natural detoxification process it blows

00:16:11.520 day three the world has lost all its sharp edges my thoughts are sluggish i sat through a story

00:16:21.180 meeting and didn't say a single word i wonder if i'll get fired every time i've been around a

00:16:28.060 person who's on a wild diet in a workplace i'm like oh things seem bad in there but it's also

00:16:33.380 is she selling the detox no she's just coming out in the newsletter she's like here you go do my

00:16:38.340 detox i mean so this is another thing to know about goop is that at this point it really does

00:16:43.000 seem like it's her doing this in her house as a passion project by 2011 she hires a ceo okay

00:16:51.920 his name is seb bishop he ran red the big celebrity aids charity and at that point we

00:16:58.960 don't get a ton of windows into goops finances but by 2014 goop is 1.6 million dollars in debt

00:17:07.180 but today it has bounced back really significantly again like valued at 430 million dollars right

00:17:12.520 so it's hard to get there unintentionally to 430 million dollars and to 82 million dollars in

00:17:20.700 venture capital funding yeah yeah so this profit making part is like not all the way back to the

00:17:28.720 beginning but there is one thing that is really constant and that is the tone and sort of the

00:17:34.080 outlook of goop stuff so when she releases that original goop detox in 2009 she includes this

00:17:43.120 quote about the detox i just zoomed it to you it says my life is good because i'm not passive about

00:17:50.560 it. Oh no. Gwyneth. Oh no. Yeah. Make your life good. Invest in what's real. Cook a meal for

00:17:58.700 someone you love. Pause before reacting. Clean out your space. Read something beautiful. Learn

00:18:04.440 something new. Don't be lazy. Work out and stick with it. Some of that's fine. Some of it's gross.

00:18:10.680 It's like 60% fine. 40% not as great. Yeah. That's about the ratio I expect from Gwyneth.

00:18:16.980 goop as a project seems really dedicated to confusing privilege for enlightenment.

00:18:22.540 Yeah, I know. Right. She's like, my life is good because I work at it. And I'm like,

00:18:27.440 you don't think that the fact that you have literal millions of dollars has anything to do

00:18:31.760 with how good your life is? I want to know how much money you have when you check your bank

00:18:36.200 account online. And it's literally just an infinity symbol. I have friends who are on SSDI

00:18:41.620 and have known people who are on food stamps and so on and so forth they work at their lives 0.99

00:18:47.820 their lives are you know as good as they can make them and there's a fucking ceiling on how good you

00:18:53.820 can make your life when you have such limited resources yeah and that feels like one of the 0.92

00:18:58.960 more insidious parts of goop yeah now i have this kind of life because i've put in this kind of

00:19:04.620 effort not because i have these kinds of resources the old phrase is that rich people were born on

00:19:10.860 third base and go through life thinking they hit a triple yes this is exactly what she's expressing

00:19:16.420 here that it's like yeah it's hard work to run to home base yeah totally it is i get it sure no

00:19:21.860 one's gonna take that away from you but also most people are running four times that far it's funny

00:19:27.240 because i feel like i would be fine with celebrities that just like admitted all this stuff

00:19:32.660 of like i'm crazy rich here's the restaurants i go to in tuscany yeah i don't really mind people

00:19:38.920 being rich it's just like don't ask me to tell you you're a good person for that right and don't

00:19:43.760 sell other people on the idea that like you too can be a good person if you can afford all the 0.77

00:19:50.280 shit that i have i remember there was a series on video gum like 10 000 years ago where they would 0.90

00:19:55.040 go through these like what i eat in a day or like various interviews with gwyneth and kind of laugh 0.94

00:19:58.740 at her and make fun of her and there was there was one interview where she said she was talking

00:20:02.140 about interior decorating and she was talking about how she just likes really clean spaces

00:20:06.340 and clean lines and right angles and minimalistic environments and i remember the writer saying like

00:20:12.740 gwyneth everybody likes that like everybody likes their environment to be clean and nice and to feel

00:20:19.700 comfortable like that's that's not unique to you but it was like she just couldn't see that like

00:20:26.140 she has wealth and privilege that allow her to create spaces like this and basically design a

00:20:32.260 life that is her going from like clean comfortable space to clean comfortable space totally i mean

00:20:38.420 i noticed this happening to myself genuinely like i did a podcast recently where they were like what

00:20:42.780 are you watching and listening to and i was like i just had this moment of thinking that i was much

00:20:47.260 more interesting than i am you were like stranger things i'm the only person watching stranger

00:20:53.300 guys have i got a bombshell for you a great british bake-off okay

00:20:58.760 there is something that happens when people start to ask your opinion on mundane things as if your

00:21:07.200 opinion really matters where you do start to kind of think that you matter more than you do or that

00:21:13.040 your opinion on this thing is more consequential than just an opinion on a thing or whatever

00:21:17.100 aubrey that that interview was the first step in like a process that ends with you launching a

00:21:22.440 perfume line in like two years this is the only place this can go i've launched my own lines of 0.96

00:21:29.880 dust loud dust fat dust gay dust yeah um okay so that's the sort of beginnings of goop between 0.99

00:21:43.680 then and now are all the scandals we all know the jade eggs the vaginal steaming the defective 0.99

00:21:51.180 candles my god i as part of this episode i pulled together a timeline of goop stuff that timeline

00:21:56.760 was 26 pages every year michael there were like a minimum of three big goop scandals usually closer

00:22:07.760 to five or six yeah that everyone listening to this episode would probably remember most of them

00:22:13.180 we could just do a bonus like lightning round on most of these so there are all those scandals we

00:22:18.820 know, there are a couple scandals that we don't really talk about as much. In 2018, two separate

00:22:25.400 sources filed public complaints in the US and UK, alleging false advertising and non-allowable

00:22:33.420 medical claims against Goop. In 2017, Gwyneth Paltrow launched a Goop magazine.

00:22:40.880 Okay. Did you catch wind of any of this? I had

00:22:43.600 next to no recollection of this. Anyone launching a magazine is extremely weird to me.

00:22:48.820 in the last like 10 years it is a conde nast magazine it premieres first issue is the premier

00:22:55.260 issue the second issue is the final issue nice the thing that ended that partnership

00:22:59.840 was that conde nast insisted on fact checking

00:23:03.160 well that's a deal breaker ladies

00:23:08.760 so hang on i'm gonna send you a quote that is outstanding i always love these really play

00:23:16.800 in the hits with this one she argued that they were interviewing experts and didn't need to check

00:23:21.140 whether what they were saying was scientifically accurate we're never making statements she said

00:23:26.180 at least lonan goop's head of content added that goop was just asking questions oh yeah

00:23:32.120 yeah that's a defense people use only when they're doing something good did the holocaust really

00:23:38.620 happen i'm just asking questions it's like a little parachute ripcord that you have you're

00:23:43.340 just like I'm just asking questions and then you just like float away there's also so like after

00:23:47.460 this happens Gwyneth Paltrow does like a series of interviews and she keeps calling Condé Nast

00:23:51.460 like you know we're just really trying to innovate and Condé Nast is just like old school that's 0.97

00:23:55.920 just who they are oh my god it's also worth noting all of this shit all of these little scandals all 0.98

00:24:02.660 of these little firestorms Gwyneth Paltrow calls them cultural firestorms okay are a feature of 0.98

00:24:08.840 goop they are not a bug goop over time has aimed more and more of its marketing around creating

00:24:16.840 controversy to generate press which drives up traffic to their website oh man so the new york

00:24:22.400 times magazine does a piece called how goops haters made gwyneth paltrow's company worth 250

00:24:29.660 million dollars so clearly this is from a few years ago essentially what they advance in that 0.98

00:24:34.580 piece is that the wilder and more expensive Goop's shit gets, the more their readers seem to really 0.99

00:24:41.360 eat it up. So in this piece, they talk about Gwyneth Paltrow speaking to Harvard Business 0.99

00:24:47.920 School students. And this is from that section of that piece. It says every time there was a

00:24:53.840 negative story about her or her company, all that did was bring more people to the site.

00:24:58.340 Among them, those who had similar kinds of questions and couldn't find help in mainstream

00:25:02.260 medicine. At Harvard, Gwyneth Paltrow called these moments cultural firestorms. I can monetize those

00:25:07.960 eyeballs, she told the students. Goop had learned to do a special kind of dark art, to corral the

00:25:13.280 vitriol of the internet and the ever-present, shall we call it, cultural ambivalence about

00:25:17.600 Paltrow herself and turn them into cash. It's never clickbait, she told a class. It's a cultural

00:25:22.880 firestorm when it's about a woman's vagina. The room was silent. She then, what? She then cupped 1.00

00:25:28.600 her hands around her mouth and yelled vagina vagina vagina as if she were yodeling i am not 1.00

00:25:34.720 going to do that no i don't think that you should and i also don't want to do that i'm trying to 0.98

00:25:40.500 imagine it in my brain what that actually sounds like and i can't get there i mean i think it feels

00:25:44.480 very telling to me that she would say to a room full of business students in a public speaking

00:25:49.280 engagement with a reporter from the times in the room we've figured out that this is a way that

00:25:54.980 works to drive up the revenue of our website is to make people kind of hate us right so that same

00:26:02.260 year that goop was accused of so much false advertising 2018 it received more criticism

00:26:08.080 than it ever had before and its revenue doubled oh god right so it's like dark and i will say i

00:26:14.360 feel wary about doing this show for this exact reason yeah is it possible to do this at all

00:26:20.080 without I don't know what we're talking about yeah I don't know but I also know that you know

00:26:25.180 this is such a major force in the industry at this point that it feels difficult not to talk

00:26:29.840 about it yeah as of 2021 last year the wellness industry was worth 4.4 trillion dollars and it's

00:26:38.000 projected to reach 7 trillion by 2025 but then I mean I guess it's similar to like Madonna making

00:26:44.160 videos in the 90s that she knew was going to get banned from MTV which like the only thing better

00:26:48.200 than being on MTV is getting banned from MTV because then it leaks over into all this other

00:26:53.040 media that isn't talking about Madonna, right? It's on news pages. And so I guess what Gwyneth

00:26:57.960 is doing is the same thing where you get earned media. Everybody in the country is talking about

00:27:02.400 you and like your name and your website is on their lips. And then people start going to the

00:27:06.740 website and they're like, ooh, a cream. I can get the cream. Totally. And I think the other thing

00:27:11.280 that that particular little quote shifted for me was it shifted my understanding of the sort of

00:27:19.080 like Gwyneth Paltrow eye roll industrial complex yeah there is a little cottage industry right

00:27:25.780 anytime Gwyneth Paltrow says or does anything you can write about that thing and be like get a load

00:27:30.940 of this lady and you will get pretty good traffic right so like I think it's like a gross realization

00:27:38.320 to go oh no yeah the things that benefit Gwyneth Paltrow's critics are the same things that benefit

00:27:44.780 Gwyneth Paltrow and that feels icky and sticky and gross dude one of my first jobs in journalism

00:27:49.940 was at MSN which was like your home page when you had to check your hotmail and there was like it

00:27:55.740 wasn't an official rule but it was like a informal rule that there had to be at least one story about

00:28:01.980 Paris Hilton on the home page anything if it was like she switched it from coke to diet coke

00:28:07.160 was like write it up yeah we're gonna get a shitload of clicks for it did you have a quota

00:28:12.020 for stories you had to write in a day no because i was editing it was stories that were already

00:28:16.040 uh gotcha i know people though that have to write like three stories a day yeah they're like such

00:28:20.840 smart journalists and they're so great but it's like nobody can produce three good stories a day

00:28:24.400 like literally it is humanly impossible part of the reason that there is this kind of eye roll

00:28:29.540 industrial complex thing happening is because journalists and writers are so under the gun

00:28:35.340 so if you get something that feels like a slam dunk it is certainly in your self-interest to

00:28:40.400 take that story yeah and it does bad things in the long term it is corrosive in the long term

00:28:46.360 yeah which leads us to our next act are you ready for our next act act two yeah give it to me i'm

00:28:52.380 calling act two the food stamp challenge or why we're all so mad okay act two begins with a tweet

00:29:01.440 i'm sending you a tweet michael oh it's a gwyneth paltrow tweet i didn't know gwyneth

00:29:05.400 paltrow was on twitter she's definitely on twitter wait can i go on gwyneth paltrow's

00:29:09.220 timeline right now and see what she's tweeting about sure go for it oh no she's peddling nfts

00:29:15.100 her last tweet is from february 4th and it's an nft she's big on board ape yacht club and then 0.96

00:29:22.380 what the fuck oh no buying crypto has often felt exclusionary in order to democratize you can 0.86

00:29:29.920 participate cash app is now making it easy to gift bitcoin i'm giving out 500k worth of bitcoin for 0.98

00:29:36.640 the holidays that's from december i love i love to hear what is exclusionary from the single most 0.77

00:29:44.360 exclusionary public figure that i can think of man she barely tweets though because that before that 0.86

00:29:49.620 it's like 2019 oh wow so it's like she left twitter for two fucking years and then tweeted 0.82

00:29:56.220 like seven times about crypto and then stopped tweeting okay so i'm sending you a tweet michael 0.86

00:30:04.380 i'm gonna see if you remember this one i do remember this so the tweet is from april 9th

00:30:09.040 2015 and it's a photo of like a bunch of groceries like lettuce rice eggs like normal grocery store

00:30:16.380 groceries it says this is what 29 gets you at the grocery store what families on snap i.e. food

00:30:23.880 stamps have to live on for a week so this is this is one of those tweets that's instant pre-cringe

00:30:31.980 for me yeah because it's like yep it's like Gwyneth Paltrow or anyone is talking about like

00:30:37.880 poverty and welfare in America just like it's not gonna go well yeah exactly exactly the photo that

00:30:45.680 she has includes a dozen eggs a head of romaine lettuce an avocado an onion a bunch of green

00:30:52.080 onions a ear of corn a tomato a head of garlic a bunch of curly kale some cilantro corn tortillas

00:30:59.320 seven limes okay which the washington post describes as a baffling number of limes

00:31:06.040 fair point a bag of frozen peas one chili of some kind a sweet potato a bag of black beans and a bag

00:31:14.860 of brown rice so Gwyneth Paltrow tweets out this picture in 2015 at that time the internet just

00:31:23.180 all at once turns into the Christian Bale temper tantrum on the set of the dark night 0.87

00:31:29.880 oh good good for you people are just like I fucking hate this one of the tweets is don't 0.95

00:31:37.520 worry poor people Gwyneth Paltrow is here to show you how to goop your food stamp benefits 0.95

00:31:43.320 What's so funny about this is that like Gwyneth Paltrow is completely right.

00:31:46.940 Yeah.

00:31:47.180 Right.

00:31:47.400 Like she's absolutely correct to highlight this, but also it's just the worst imaginable

00:31:52.440 messenger.

00:31:53.240 Right. 1.00

00:31:53.540 At this point, she has been a professionally out of touch rich lady for seven years. 1.00

00:31:59.220 So people are totally understandably primed to be like, look at this fucking shit. 1.00

00:32:03.940 She said she was going to live on $29 for a week. 1.00

00:32:07.200 So that's what this tweet is announcing is she goes, here's what you can get.

00:32:10.760 And what that's leading up to is she's doing a thing where she says, I'm going to live

00:32:16.780 on this $29 of groceries and my staff is going to do it too.

00:32:22.080 And we're all going to talk about what we eat and make and all that kind of stuff. 0.99

00:32:26.000 She's making other people do it. 1.00

00:32:27.580 That's so mean.

00:32:28.700 I know. 0.99

00:32:29.080 How fucking pissed off would you be? 0.98

00:32:31.920 Isn't that like a labor rights violation? 0.99

00:32:35.260 Your boss can't just like take away your food money.

00:32:39.380 so the washington post wrote a piece where the headline was a hungry gwyneth paltrow fails the

00:32:46.740 food stamp challenge four days in that's the first big story about this and then there's like

00:32:53.240 the image that they use is a picture of her at a red carpet premiere in like a very fancy dress

00:32:59.060 with very fancy jewelry okay and the lead is quote after four long days living like america's

00:33:06.340 poor Gwyneth Paltrow broke her much mocked attempt at shopping on a food stamp budget

00:33:11.420 in search of some chicken and black licorice. Quote, as I suspected, we only made it through

00:33:18.500 about four days when I personally broke and had some chicken and fresh vegetables. And in full

00:33:23.600 transparency, half a bag of black licorice, she wrote on her blog goop. My perspective has forever

00:33:28.940 been altered by how difficult it was to eat wholesome, nutritious food on that budget,

00:33:32.880 even for just a few days, a challenge that 47 million Americans face every day, week and year.

00:33:38.300 Okay, here's the thing that is fascinating to me that is missing from this entire account.

00:33:44.380 This was the point was to illustrate that it's not possible to survive on $29 of food stamps.

00:33:53.380 Okay, Gwyneth Paltrow was responding to a request that was originally issued by the New York Food

00:34:00.300 bank. Oh, they had initially challenged a number of celebrities sort of ice bucket challenge style

00:34:06.860 to try and eat for a week on $29. That was the average amount of person on snap was receiving

00:34:13.700 at that time. And the point of this exercise was to go, even if you have a personal chef,

00:34:18.960 even if you have all the resources at your disposal, it is not possible for a human being

00:34:26.500 to subsist on $29 worth of groceries. Right. So they issue this challenge and celebrities start

00:34:33.540 doing it and start challenging each other. Gwyneth Paltrow, in a particularly cursed moment,

00:34:39.140 Gwyneth Paltrow is challenged to do this by Mario Batali. Oh yeah. And at the start of the challenge,

00:34:45.320 she also makes a pretty significant contribution to the food bank, which is also part of the

00:34:49.760 challenge. It was like, give to the food bank. Right. So she really is sort of following the

00:34:55.800 assignment, but she is so deeply the worst messenger that the internet explodes at Gwyneth

00:35:03.160 Paltrow and sort of paradoxically obscures the entire effort from the food bank, right?

00:35:10.160 Right. The Guardian did a fantastic piece about how Gwyneth's groceries stack up to what food

00:35:17.740 stamp recipients actually do buy and why they buy those things. 47 million Americans were on snap

00:35:25.120 and 22% had zero gross income. So for 22% of SNAP recipients, that average $29 is what they have,

00:35:34.860 period. And they, in this piece, talk to staffers from food banks who talk about like,

00:35:41.140 yeah, actually like foods that we think of as being sort of less nutrient dense are the foods

00:35:46.540 that you can afford when you're on SNAP. You're just trying to straight up make sure you have

00:35:50.560 enough meals for the week. Right. And they include this really fantastic, illuminating quote, I think

00:35:58.300 though the food stamp challenge shines a light on the tight food budget of snap recipients.

00:36:03.440 It also opens the door to criticism in terms of what they buy. Yeah. Similar to the criticism

00:36:09.480 Paltrow has received for her choice of limes, kale and avocado. Poor Americans are often judged for

00:36:15.920 purchasing unhealthy processed food right so again like by her participation in this thing

00:36:23.620 it has actually ramped up the thing that they're trying to ramp down well it's also interesting

00:36:28.580 because if she had done it that also sends a really bad message yes absolutely if she's like

00:36:35.280 oh it's day eight and i got a buck 23 left then it's like oh well then what are people on food

00:36:40.760 Sam's always complaining about. What is even weirder than that is Gwyneth Paltrow's take-home

00:36:46.980 point that she talks about in her blog post. Oh no. It's worse in context. It's just weird.

00:36:54.060 Half of the blog post is about how she's now madder than ever that women don't receive equal 0.56

00:36:59.840 pay. Wait, what? Right. That she's like, women are the ones who have to take care of our kids 0.90

00:37:04.920 and we're doing that on less pay and blah, blah, blah. And I was like, but Snap is an income 1.00

00:37:09.280 limited program you have to have low income to access what yeah this is confusing right and it

00:37:14.500 felt like a really weird way to like turn this into a classically like white lady class privileged 1.00

00:37:22.020 deeply white feminist argument right which is like women's equal pay rather than being like 1.00

00:37:27.080 hey so food stamps are fucking broken from jump and like people need to be receiving at least 1.00

00:37:32.480 twice this much and we got to remove restrictions from food stamps for things like medication and 0.96

00:37:38.300 tampons and diapers and other shit that people need yeah it should just be cash there shouldn't 0.80

00:37:42.960 be food stamps it should just be fucking cash right she could have gone in deeper on this issue 0.95

00:37:49.160 of like what does it mean for people to be on food stamps what does it mean for this program 0.88

00:37:53.160 to be run this way and instead she takes this weird sharp turn into like and that's why we need

00:37:59.300 equal pay yeah which she's also correct about that would be great it would be good but that's

00:38:04.680 not the conclusion of this particular exercise ma'am it would have been interesting if she had

00:38:09.340 actually like sat down with somebody who lives on food stamps yes the mental toll that it takes on

00:38:14.220 you is so different when it's for a longer term yeah the idea of like i lived on 29 bucks for

00:38:19.780 a week like fine i when if palter has been hungry for her entire adult life so she probably could 1.00

00:38:25.220 have done this and just like not fucking eaten for three days which is like what half the diets 1.00

00:38:28.800 she recommends are right sure but her shit is like you don't eat for three days but somehow 0.98

00:38:33.500 it costs you a thousand dollars yeah i know it's the most expensive way not to eat so i'm not sure 0.99

00:38:40.320 that she could not eat on a budget she would still need like the celery juice or whatever

00:38:43.800 and this would get her two celery juices yeah that's right that's right so as i did the research

00:38:50.480 on sort of goop broadly there were some sort of theories about the appeal of goop there was the

00:38:55.780 one that we talked about earlier that they're sort of like selling a celebrity lifestyle that's going

00:39:00.600 to be expensive it's going to be very woo it's going to be exclusive that's what people want

00:39:05.020 is sort of the thinking there is another theory that goop is reaching and either offering

00:39:11.040 alternatives to or taking advantage of people who have been failed by medical systems right

00:39:17.320 there's another theory that is sort of that goop is selling self-care to women who've been taught

00:39:22.900 to put themselves on the back burner that they're saying no no no no put yourself first right no 0.99

00:39:29.180 oh mike that is my reaction as well i call fucking bullshit yeah that seems to steal manny 0.96

00:39:35.020 so in act three our final act we're going to dig in on the company's signature event 0.98

00:39:42.020 which is called in goop health in goop health okay it is a summit it's an in-person event that

00:39:48.840 they sort of travel around the the country slash world it's one of the few places where actual

00:39:54.560 goop followers physically show up and there's some reporting about who those folks are and

00:39:59.180 why they're in it and all that kind of stuff oh it's the gathering of the juggalos they're like

00:40:04.080 skincare products the gathering of the goopalos it's the goopalos yeah so the first in goop health

00:40:12.240 summit happens in la in 2017 it is very lavish and it's focused on absolutely everything you

00:40:19.120 think it's focused on. Okay. Tickets cost between $500 and $1,500. At a later New York summit,

00:40:26.620 the highest price tier is actually the first one to sell out, which feels telling. Yeah. Wow.

00:40:32.340 Summits that happened later had ticket prices that varied really widely. So the high end at

00:40:37.880 one point goes up to $4,500 for a ticket. Jesus Christ. The other thing to know about the Ingoop

00:40:44.000 health summit is that the crowd is really clear right usa today sends a reporter who describes

00:40:50.760 the crowd as quote predominantly white affluent women dressed in athleisure right it's everything 1.00

00:40:55.200 you think it's gonna be wait why the athleisure though athleisure or wide leg linen pants

00:41:02.040 like gauzy and ethereal or i might work out but i am not going to a whole lot of the press

00:41:10.140 coverage of in goop health is just listing things that are happening okay they're doing aura

00:41:18.100 photography and sound baths and blah blah blah like they just like every piece is like 100 to

00:41:26.400 200 words of just like here's a list of some stuff it just sounds like a huge waste of like

00:41:32.160 more than i spent on my first car would you like to hear a list of some stuff that they have at

00:41:36.280 the goop summit please please oh here's actually let me send you a quote from one of them so one

00:41:41.940 of the things that the goop summit has in addition to aura photography jade eggs all that kind of

00:41:47.040 stuff they have a flavored oxygen bar i remember that like mini trend lit they were like they're

00:41:53.040 gonna have bars they're gonna have oxygen bars we're all gonna be going to oxygen bars no we're

00:41:57.680 not no we're not not now we all just watched 1500 news stories about it but nobody ever actually

00:42:02.860 went to one all right so i sent you that quote wait i'm still on i'm still on gwyneth paltrow's

00:42:06.860 twitter feed i have to click away it's mesmerizing to me uh it says my experience involved waiting

00:42:14.340 45 minutes in line to breathe in flavored oxygen for 10 minutes breathing in highly concentrated

00:42:19.680 oxygen is purported to have a number of health benefits such as detoxifying blood increasing

00:42:24.660 circulation strengthening the immune system heightening concentration improving relaxation

00:42:28.760 and relieving headaches i didn't notice any immediate effects but i did enjoy the smell 0.98

00:42:33.240 yeah i mean yeah that kind of just seems fine it's like yeah it's bullshit but absolutely you 0.69

00:42:40.460 know hilariously they go through in detail what is in the food court okay there is a booth for 0.83

00:42:48.360 bulletproof coffee of course they have a million kinds of sort of branded samples

00:42:54.180 they have probiotic drinks there are fresh fruits and vegetables everywhere but the things that the

00:43:00.220 attendees really gravitate toward are these sort of branded potions and elixirs that are making

00:43:05.480 sort of claims about things right yeah of course hilariously one of the things in the food court

00:43:10.840 is a place called chloe ice cream which has a kale cookies and cream flavor that sounds grassy but

00:43:19.360 then people magazine also covers it and they're like it was good and then they include an affiliate

00:43:23.580 link which is also like that is a big dividing line in the press around goop is like who includes

00:43:29.260 affiliate links to a bunch of goopy shit it's funny to think back on the time when it was like 0.96

00:43:33.860 you just had to put kale and fucking everything people thought kale was this like magical vitamin 0.98

00:43:39.340 absolutely kale and bacon were happening at the same time oh my jesus god the bacon days they have 0.98

00:43:45.560 swag bags as you can imagine that have like a bunch of like you know a specific brand of a collagen

00:43:51.700 supplement a particular kind of fancy hair towel sure these nail polishes this like protein bars

00:43:59.120 made by Gwyneth Paltrow's personal trainer oh my god you know what it is something just clicked 0.70

00:44:04.600 in my brain tell me it's fucking as seen on tv yeah it absolutely is remember like as seen on tv 0.98

00:44:10.660 they would just have these like random fucking products and it's like are you tired of juicing 0.99

00:44:14.840 your lemons with a lemon juicer and they'd have some like dumb thing that you had to plug in it 0.98

00:44:19.640 was like a fancy lemon juicery thing it was like weird little gadgets and things that solved like

00:44:25.440 extremely minor problems yeah like maybe the towel you use to dry your hair is fine yeah i mean the

00:44:33.520 in goop health summit is like the internet comes to life and everything you have imagined about

00:44:38.560 goop is actually happening all around you is really what it sounds like to me they also have

00:44:43.960 panels the early summits are mostly celebrity drew barrymore was there chelsea handler meg ryan

00:44:53.200 laura linney and bryce dallas howard okay and bryce dallas howard moderated a panel set to 0.78

00:45:01.080 address quote the hard problem of consciousness oh my fucking god the real problems with the goop 0.99

00:45:07.540 summit seem to lie with what is happening on stage so like the main the main the main fucking 0.91

00:45:15.840 event right so like most of what is happening is the problem there's an la times reporter who goes 0.54

00:45:23.680 to a goop summit and tweets out like live tweets what she's seeing um she goes to a session on

00:45:30.820 gut health that is led by dr michael gundry okay who gives some truly bananas advice from the stage

00:45:37.240 he says quote don't eat i can't stress that enough we have the ability to store fat finally

00:45:44.020 we've cracked it the secret to weight loss don't eat stop it he says that for six months a year he

00:45:51.380 forgoes both breakfast and lunch and just has one meal a day so he's an omad dude a one meal a day

00:45:58.520 guy then we move into a panel called the tools in that panel there are two psychotherapists

00:46:06.380 according to people magazine who quote provided on demand therapy to audience members what in 0.86

00:46:14.640 front of the crowd oh that's just like carnival shit yeah oh so here is what usa today has to 0.77

00:46:23.460 say about these two psychotherapists we're going to talk about them one is someone whose last name 0.95

00:46:28.040 is michaels it says it's a remarkably raw honest 30 minutes and closes with a talk about positive

00:46:34.040 entitlement. 60 to 80% of the women in my practice don't feel that basic sense of entitlement that 0.80

00:46:40.520 I deserve this, says Michaels. At their prompting, the room of women shout, I'm an animal. The hour 0.99

00:46:47.120 ends with Paltrow opening up about her struggle with perfectionism. The doctors coin our fear,

00:46:53.180 the shadow. It's whatever you wish you weren't, says Michaels, no matter how much success you have.

00:46:59.280 I know what you're going to say about this. What do you think I'm going to say about this?

00:47:02.360 well it's like a bunch of people with like not the biggest problems yeah you have a job that

00:47:08.560 pays well and you've got a family and all this stuff and everything's going well and yet there's

00:47:12.240 still something missing which honestly like on an individual level i know people that are going

00:47:17.880 through this i would never in any way mock this yeah but also it's like gwyneth paltrow has a

00:47:23.880 platform and you can talk about anything at these things and it's like self-help tony robbins

00:47:32.340 stuff ultimately at the end of the day i mean i think here's what i would say well what you're

00:47:37.680 gonna say is smarter than me but that's what i think after reading the paragraph you're right

00:47:41.240 you're totally on the right track with how i feel about this absolutely and also i think context

00:47:47.540 matters a great deal here right yeah in order to understand why this is so troubling you've got to

00:47:54.180 kind of know where self-care comes from so this is all sourced from a fantastic slate piece by

00:47:59.420 Aisha Harris. Harris uses the slate piece to lay out a broad history of self-care in the 20th

00:48:05.620 century, which started as a medical concept designed as a way for patients with pretty

00:48:12.820 profound needs to treat themselves, right? Prior to the 60s, self-care is talked about as a tactic

00:48:21.620 for elders, for people with pretty profound mental illnesses, right? We're talking about

00:48:26.560 people with very specific needs. Their healthcare providers are talking to them about how they can

00:48:31.640 take care of those deep needs, both for themselves and through their medical treatment, right?

00:48:36.800 Then it starts to catch on as a way for people in particularly intense interpersonal jobs to

00:48:41.900 manage their own stress. So it becomes a big point of concern amongst grief counselors and

00:48:47.620 social workers and EMTs and therapists and people who have jobs that are emotionally weighty. 0.88

00:48:53.960 But where it really takes off as a concept is when it is picked up by the Black Panthers.

00:49:01.220 Oh, still processing a great podcast has a great episode about that. There's also some more

00:49:06.620 detailed history on this in a book by Alondra Nelson called Body and Soul. The Black Panther

00:49:13.280 Party established service programs designed to provide for black communities where the government

00:49:19.420 and nonprofits didn't. So here is a quote that I'm going to send you from that slate piece by

00:49:26.600 Aisha Harris. Boop. It says those programs were established both to make up for the dire lack of

00:49:33.360 adequate social service programs after the waning of the war on poverty, as well as to provide a

00:49:37.980 coping mechanism against the harassment and surveillance that black people suffered at the

00:49:41.520 hands of police and the federal government. These nationwide clinics recruited nurses,

00:49:45.240 doctors and students to test for illness and disease rampant within the black community

00:49:49.300 including lead poisoning and sickle cell anemia, as well as to provide basic preventive care.

00:49:54.260 For Black people, and especially Black women, this kind of self-care was brought to fill a

00:49:58.340 desperate need. The survival programs of the Panthers were about just that, survival.

00:50:03.140 So we've got this concept that is used overwhelmingly sort of medically, right,

00:50:08.940 up to this point. From here, second wave feminist movements pick up the concept of self-care and 1.00

00:50:15.340 sort of go, Oh, doctors aren't really looking out for ladies at this point. So we got to look out 1.00

00:50:19.700 for ourselves in the eighties and nineties. It really starts to drift into the mainstream and

00:50:26.920 starts to become sort of monetized, right? That's when we start getting workout videos. That's when

00:50:31.360 people start talking about wellness more broadly. And that's when all of this stuff starts to make

00:50:37.080 money for people. And it drifts from being a practice of people on the margins who've been

00:50:43.160 forced into this practice to a pretty capitalist venture that is seen as being more for wealthy

00:50:50.620 people and frankly, for whiter people. Right. Right. So given that history to then gather 0.88

00:50:57.620 together a room full of very wealthy white women and tell them, you need to put yourself first. 0.98

00:51:05.360 Many of you might be employers. We don't need to talk about how you're treating your employees. 1.00

00:51:09.460 all of you are white women we don't need to talk about race yeah all of you are wealthy we don't

00:51:14.080 need to talk about class the most important thing in your life needs to be you and your own peace 1.00

00:51:20.100 of mind i've always been fascinated by the ways women are kind of the middle managers of like the 0.53

00:51:27.440 american hierarchy of oppression like women do face real oppression like very well documented

00:51:33.460 discrimination no question but also because women comprise such a large percentage of the population

00:51:39.260 There's also these really important stratifications within women.

00:51:45.620 And a lot of this like self-care stuff seems like it wants to highlight the challenges that women face while also ignoring the challenges that other people face. 1.00

00:51:56.660 And also the challenges that like white wealthy women can impose upon other people. 0.99

00:52:03.000 Yeah. And I think when your primary directive is to focus on yourself and put yourself first and you are a person with substantial power and privilege, that can lead to some yikes places. Right. And then when other people come to you and say, hey, I have a need of you. Hey, I need to set this boundary with you. Hey, this thing that you're doing isn't really working for me. You go, ah, my job is to put myself first. 1.00

00:52:29.420 And this is toxic energy, or this is bad news, or this is like, I'm not taking it. It feels both like not necessarily a terrible thing. But when it is depoliticized this way, and when there's no caveats, and no structure around that conversation, it lets people just free associate into like, here's what I think it is to be a toxic person. That feels really icky and challenging and straight up counterproductive.

00:52:55.380 I also, I feel like it's, it's such a dilemma for like people like Gwyneth Paltrow because

00:53:01.580 skincare is nice.

00:53:03.440 Sure.

00:53:03.840 Like a lot of these products are nice. 0.97

00:53:05.840 On some level, it's like, you don't want everything to be like a fucking lecture about 0.97

00:53:10.400 all the structural problems with America. 0.98

00:53:14.700 You're like, man, I just want to go to a conference center and like drink some probiotic 0.99

00:53:19.220 bullshit and like have a smoothie. 0.99

00:53:21.560 Absolutely. 1.00

00:53:21.820 People are allowed to like be into dumb bullshit. 1.00

00:53:24.520 Yes. 1.00

00:53:24.780 you know my main thing i mean absolutely listen on almost every zoom that we have you're like

00:53:31.260 tell me about your eye makeup yeah oh my god thank you this is the palette that i'm using right like 0.77

00:53:36.340 definitely definitely i am into ridiculous shit and definitely definitely people should be able 0.98

00:53:42.440 to be into ridiculous shit but there is also a point at which that tips into encouraging other 0.99

00:53:47.440 bad behavior. And I think it's not terrible to ask goop and to ask wellness influencers writ large 0.99

00:53:55.440 to put up some fucking bumper lanes, right? Like if you're bowling, keep folks from tipping into 0.96

00:54:00.820 the gutter. Right. I mean, to me, I feel like this is the entire duality. And also something

00:54:05.040 that we keep coming up against on this show is that at the most surface layer, like, yeah,

00:54:09.300 it's totally harmless, frivolous stuff. But it never stays at the frivolous stuff. What happens

00:54:15.320 almost immediately is it becomes this ideology, right? It becomes a way of looking at the world,

00:54:20.880 right? Like they're doing panels on like how to achieve the light of consciousness, right? It's

00:54:26.220 not just this health stuff because you can't sell health stuff by leaving it there. You have to take

00:54:35.060 everything to the next level up. This is how marketing works, right? This is how they marketed

00:54:40.460 cigarettes for years. It's not, you know, you don't smoke because it's like a burning stick

00:54:45.440 that you're addicted to. You smoke because the Marlboro Man symbolizes all this like rugged

00:54:50.680 individualism and like masculinity and all this kind of stuff. What they're essentially doing

00:54:55.940 here is they're doing a form of marketing where they're selling you this identity of someone who's

00:55:01.840 like taking control of your life and pushing back against the oppression and you're leaning in or

00:55:07.760 whatever yes but what they're really doing is like they're telling you all of this stuff

00:55:11.780 so that they can sell you skincare michael it's about to get a little darker okay here is a place

00:55:18.640 where goop did not put up bumper lanes and in fact i think carved out another gutter in like

00:55:24.600 the middle of the bowling lane is that they also had a panelist whose name is uh dr kelly brogan

00:55:31.960 is that a name you're familiar with i don't think so dr brogan has famously claimed that 0.99

00:55:38.220 vaccines are ineffective oh god of course and so are hiv medications oh fuck off and that 0.60

00:55:48.840 aids related deaths are actually probably caused by drug toxicity from aids treatments 0.95

00:55:55.180 and not from the virus itself that's really bad she also wrote a blog post in 2014 it's since been

00:56:02.420 deleted saying that sort of these ideas that hiv leads to aids and that cholesterol contributes to

00:56:12.380 heart disease are quote memes we hold on to societally as truths okay so she's like that's

00:56:19.640 not really real that's just like a thing that you heard so now you believe it blah blah which is

00:56:24.880 like technically true but that also doesn't mean that it's untrue yeah first of all i believe all

00:56:30.200 the memes that i see there's nothing wrong with that mike is a big believer in salt bay

00:56:35.060 the thing to know here is that dr brogan is not the only anti-vax speaker at this conference she's

00:56:41.520 the most extreme but she is far from the only one there are sort of repeated reports of like 0.86

00:56:47.300 anti-vax people talking about anti-vax shit at in goop health summits and journalists are asking 0.99

00:56:54.700 Gwyneth Paltrow like do you believe this shit what's going on here why are you giving this a 0.99

00:56:59.040 platform she tells this to USA Today I realize I edit the show but is it too late for me to take 0.99

00:57:06.820 back the nice stuff I said about Gwyneth earlier is that possible okay she says women are not

00:57:15.380 lemmings just because we're raising a question doesn't mean we're expecting somebody to follow

00:57:20.660 our advice we believe women are intuitive enough and intelligent enough to hear both sides of a lot

00:57:27.140 of things and make a decision for themselves that's resonant for them Gwyneth like this is 0.98

00:57:34.440 very classic misinformation and disinformation playbook shit you're giving people information 0.97

00:57:40.640 but like oh we don't expect them to act on it but like if someone tells you vaccines are harming 0.99

00:57:45.860 your children yeah what do you fucking expect people to do people care about the health of 0.94

00:57:51.000 their children so it's like you can't throw bombs into the middle of people's brains like this and 1.00

00:57:57.740 they're like oh it's not really a bomb literally one of the anti-vax speakers is a pediatrician

00:58:02.360 who's like i saw too many patients with these experiences and then i saw it happen in my own

00:58:07.140 son and i'm like this is a bad influence really irresponsible deeply irresponsible and then to

00:58:14.280 say we're just offering people up with options and like women can make up their own minds and

00:58:18.180 we're smart and people don't give us enough credit for being so smart you gotta have a line 0.99

00:58:22.140 the the fuck you gwyneth line and like the anti-vac stuff is just like fuck you gwyneth this 0.99

00:58:27.820 isn't cool i mean i think there is an a through line throughout goop's work that is a deep 0.99

00:58:34.080 resistance to accountability right so yeah that's why it felt so important to me to do this episode

00:58:39.200 in a way that sort of takes goop at face value.

00:58:42.600 Because when you do that,

00:58:44.020 when you strip away eye rolling

00:58:46.460 and all of that kind of stuff,

00:58:47.580 what you see is a pretty cutthroat business model

00:58:50.320 that is kind of gross.

00:58:52.780 Yeah, I think you're right.

00:58:53.700 That it's time to just ask questions

00:58:56.160 about whether Gwyneth is like fully aware

00:59:00.060 what she is doing

00:59:00.940 and whether there's like real cynicism behind this.

00:59:04.500 Yeah, we're just asking questions.

00:59:05.880 Yeah, we're just asking questions.

00:59:07.180 We have some questions.

00:59:09.200 Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.

Maintenance Phase - September 13, 2022

Goop

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