Under the Influence (with Jo Piazza) - Infamous! A Chat About Ozempic

00:00:00.000 Hello. Happy weekend. I'm actually sitting outside in nature right now, hiding from my

00:00:07.780 children, so you might hear a bird. Or two. Or three. Maybe a bear, if we're lucky.

00:00:15.020 I have been thinking a lot this week about Ozembic, the drug that is not meant for weight

00:00:20.980 loss, but that a lot of people are currently using for weight loss, including a lot of

00:00:25.780 celebrities. I got to talk about this on the podcast Infamous with the reporter and podcast

00:00:32.300 creator Vanessa Gregoriadis. And we just had such a fun, juicy talk that I wanted to share it with

00:00:39.160 you here. I wanted to drop it in the feed. I really like the show Infamous. It's become one

00:00:43.640 of my must listens. I'm only going to share shows with you that I actually like. You know that

00:00:49.180 sometimes podcast creators share shows that they have to because their big media conglomerate

00:00:54.300 makes them. I'm not doing that. I like Infamous. It's something I actually listen to. And I want

00:00:59.080 to bring you more shows created by really kick-ass women like Vanessa. So I hope you enjoy this 1.00

00:01:06.360 episode about Ozempic and why is everyone all of a sudden so thin and what the hell has social

00:01:13.120 media had to do with any of this? I think it's something that's going to tickle your ears.

00:01:24.300 Just a quick warning, this episode contains discussions of weight loss and may not be

00:01:30.200 appropriate for listeners with a history of disordered eating. Also, the participants in

00:01:35.880 this episode are not medical professionals. Please consult a medical professional before

00:01:40.360 adopting any of the ideas discussed. Picture this. You're in downtown Manhattan and everyone

00:01:48.880 is walking around with a sense of purpose, the way they do in movies when you see a shot of work

00:01:53.360 life in the city. But there's a bit of a difference because this is the year 2040 and soon you notice

00:02:01.620 that all the calves peeking out under skirts are really skinny. Spindly elbows leading to tiny

00:02:08.900 wrists are clutching iPhone 32s. Everywhere you look there are knobbly knees and not a round ass 0.98

00:02:15.760 in sight. It's the future, and everybody is thin. Demonically, unnaturally thin. The chic 0.93

00:02:23.880 restaurants that used to line Manhattan streets have shuttered, replaced with IV drip bars and

00:02:28.880 by-the-hour injection sites. And then you see some words written in red graffiti. They're

00:02:34.960 spray-painted on one former Michelin-starred wall. And they say, Ozempic equals fascism.

00:02:41.840 this is a world without food bodies that yearn to be bigger to be padded and luxurious and round

00:02:51.080 are left hollow shrunken taut meals have been replaced with a syringe every seven days

00:02:57.340 an anti-nausea medication to counter its effects the result a tedious monotony in human physical

00:03:04.740 form. And it has shifted not just this downtown, but everyone across America. Med spas that began

00:03:12.860 popping up with the Botox and Juvederm injectables craze of the early 2020s are now the fastest

00:03:18.280 growing small business segment in the U.S. These outposts offer weekly ozempic injections,

00:03:24.340 and now insurance even covers it under a prevention of size 10 bodies law passed by Congress.

00:03:29.780 So who do we have to thank for this flavorless, pastry-less, bland paradise?

00:03:38.580 Ozempic, the miracle diabetes drug made by Danish pharmaceutical giant Novo Nordisk.

00:03:45.380 Following its public adoption in 2022, first by the wealthy seeking to lose a few pounds,

00:03:50.580 which caused a shortage among those with actual diabetes, it later became available to almost

00:03:56.240 everyone once insurance companies figured out there was money to be made from thinness

00:04:01.360 and the related anti-nausea drugs and in 2040 it's not just america that's affected

00:04:08.640 listen to this because of novo nordisk's profits denmark is now wealthier than all the big oil

00:04:14.080 producers combined their stock is the most valuable in the world save only for the global

00:04:19.440 privatized water rights conglomerate which controls access to the earth's most limited resource

00:04:24.960 nasdaq ticker symbol water and thanks to ozempic no one needs to eat anymore for pleasure

00:04:32.560 for sustenance or for health there's a drug for that

00:04:41.600 yeah i lost weight i did it um hormonally hormonal yeah it was not ozempically my weight loss was

00:04:50.000 was one trillion percent unintentional so it just happened because i'm a single mom and i

00:04:57.900 chase a toddler all day and i work a lot i don't know i would say nay because i always feel like

00:05:02.140 when something sounds too good to be true it usually is from sony music entertainment and

00:05:08.340 campsite media this is infamous i'm natalie robamed and i'm vanessa gregoriadis and today

00:05:14.260 we're going to be talking about this drug i'm sure you've been hearing about ozempic or a

00:05:19.300 similar substance by the name of Wegovi. They both have the active ingredient semaglutide.

00:05:24.580 It was originally developed as a type 2 diabetes drug, but it had the convenient side effect of

00:05:30.280 appetite and weight loss. Very convenient. So to be clear, there's not a scandal about

00:05:37.060 Ozempic happening right now per se, but there are a lot of opinions. Yeah, absolutely. And while I

00:05:43.160 want to be clear that what you just heard was speculative fiction, none of it was real. Ozempic

00:05:48.360 has already had some very real consequences on our world so far.

00:05:52.480 Yes, Natalie, tell me about the real world consequences of this drug.

00:05:59.220 Yeah, so in this real current present day world,

00:06:03.900 Novo Nordisk's market cap now exceeds the size of the Danish economy.

00:06:08.240 Oh my god.

00:06:09.500 Yeah, Novo Nordisk is now the most valuable public company in Europe.

00:06:14.480 it's worth more than even luxury goods maker lvmh oh my god you mean like louis vuitton

00:06:20.920 sephora that big conglomerate exactly so i always wonder when i hear about this like how does this

00:06:26.920 thing actually work so basically it works by mimicking a naturally occurring hormone that

00:06:32.280 tells you you're full ah okay but you know i mean what's really weird to me and what we're going to

00:06:38.000 get into today is that using ozempic for weight loss is based on the premise that being fat is

00:06:43.860 unhealthy and that fatness leads to heart disease and diabetes which it does well there's a lot of

00:06:50.160 new studies coming out complicating that assumption or at least suggesting that there might be more

00:06:54.840 correlation than causation really because i have always heard you know you want to take the pressure

00:07:00.020 off your heart right like the idea that you know if you're skinnier then your entire body works

00:07:06.220 better i would point people to the work of aubrey gordon who co-hosts a podcast called maintenance

00:07:11.480 phase which is like all about the various myths in health and wellness oh right yeah i've heard

00:07:15.740 that show yeah she's done a lot of work debunking a lot of this stuff and obviously i'm not a doctor

00:07:21.520 but as far as i understand it for all of these measures they go back to the bmi your body mass

00:07:28.340 index yes so the bmi is actually a pretty problematic measure of health to begin with

00:07:35.080 i mean the bmi does seem kind of stupid yeah and i think the truth is that there's a lot of things 0.61

00:07:40.020 we still don't know and don't understand like China and India have the highest rates of diabetes 0.99

00:07:46.540 in the world but aren't anywhere near the fattest okay I see so all right let's let's get into it

00:07:52.260 we've got a special guest today to talk about Ozempic and specifically its implications for

00:07:57.880 culture and celebrity and to be clear in the following conversation we don't know for sure

00:08:03.100 who has taken Ozempic and who has not. This is all conjecture, but it is very, very interesting.

00:08:11.640 So, Jo, I would love if you could introduce yourself.

00:08:14.960 Yeah. So I am Jo Piazza. I'm an author, a journalist, and the host of the podcast

00:08:21.200 Under the Influence. And I've been reporting on influencer and celebrity culture combined

00:08:27.960 for about three years but I was also a celebrity reporter for a really long time yeah that must

00:08:35.180 have been very fun I feel like we all have that in common a little bit it's the best way to become

00:08:40.460 a reporter though the best way to become a reporter like really the only way like I could

00:08:46.000 report on anything after what I've reported on and the people you've dealt with no doubt have

00:08:53.720 no shame you're just like walking up to massive stars breaking into their conversations putting

00:08:58.800 in requests being like did she do this thing at a nightclub and the publicist is like i am sending

00:09:05.800 somebody to kill you at your house and you're like i'm sorry this is my job this is really serious

00:09:10.860 but then they text you back like 10 minutes later they're like yes but kill this other story 1.00

00:09:15.160 because oh my god it's all bullshit and smoke and mirrors yeah but also it's all smoke and mirrors 0.96

00:09:22.080 just like Ozempic just like people's weight loss now I can't go to a supermarket without looking 0.99

00:09:28.440 in the checkout aisle Rebel Wilson how she has so much willpower and lost 80 pounds and you're

00:09:35.060 just like what is going on what is this simulation I'm in well and that simulation is that clearly

00:09:41.680 willpower is a code word for Ozempic clearly how she has so much Ozempic that she lost 80 pounds

00:09:50.780 When did you start noticing this?

00:09:53.980 You know, it's been about the past year that it's become really apparent.

00:10:00.040 And it's so interesting to me because, like I said, I have been reporting on celebrities for so long.

00:10:06.100 And anyone that's been in the business knows that celebrity weight loss headlines sold.

00:10:12.260 They just they clicked.

00:10:13.700 They sold magazines.

00:10:15.440 And people are obsessed with weight loss stories.

00:10:19.000 And it always centers on willpower and hard work.

00:10:24.300 And if you're anyone that knows anything about the industry or have talked to a celebrity when they've had four vodka tonics, you know that it is all drugs and liposuction and starving themselves.

00:10:39.000 themselves but in the past year we've seen drastic crazy celebrity weight loss from people

00:10:46.920 who had never been in that rubric before there's always the celebrities that are going up and down

00:10:53.320 but people that you had never expected to drop 80 pounds all of a sudden were a size two like who

00:10:59.860 run through some of these rebel wilson is one of the one of the big ones mindy kaling became an 0.99

00:11:06.560 entirely new human being she looks amazing and i don't she looks amazing and again i don't know 0.99

00:11:13.160 how she does it and i'm not criticizing anyone for anything they want to do but her transformation

00:11:19.320 was was drastic as was jessica simpson's and the interesting thing about all these women to me

00:11:26.600 is that we're all close ish to the same age you know i'm 40 oh my god i'm turning 43 next week

00:11:34.020 But within the range of late 30s, early 40s, and I know how hard it is to lose three pounds

00:11:42.380 as a 30-ish, 40-ish woman.

00:11:46.400 Yeah.

00:11:46.980 So it's just remarkable.

00:11:49.440 And it makes you think there's absolutely something else going on.

00:11:52.760 And then the stories about Ozempic start popping up.

00:11:56.060 So when did you first start hearing about Ozempic in your own life at all?

00:12:01.000 Or did you?

00:12:02.260 I did.

00:12:02.680 Oh, yeah, please.

00:12:04.020 So the celebrity rumblings about Ozempic have been about a year, but then Ozempic trickling down into my real life has been about the past six months.

00:12:15.700 I would say beginning of summer, spring last year, 2023, when people were just coming out of the winter and thinking about putting on bathing suits again and finally looking at themselves in the mirror, I started hearing about friends who were getting prescriptions for Ozempic.

00:12:34.020 basically by tricking some internet bot or begging their friend that was a doctor.

00:12:40.300 And we all know, like there's like three moms at school who've been doing it secretly for six

00:12:45.400 months and they all look like the crypt. They all look like the cryptkeeper now. They all have

00:12:49.400 Ozempic face. Wait, let's talk really quickly about what Ozempic face is, just in case people

00:12:56.060 haven't heard that term. What is Ozempic face? What is that? Ozempic face is a real thing where

00:13:02.960 when you lose so much weight so fast and especially when you're a certain age and your your face

00:13:09.320 doesn't necessarily have all the collagen and stuff in it anymore you get gaunt looking almost

00:13:15.660 like a skeleton like the crypt keeper or like mick jaggers but your body looks rocking so your body

00:13:23.060 looks rocking your body because your body your body can handle it but our face i just the skin

00:13:29.240 with the elasticity can't take it and as women age you typically look better if you have some 0.98

00:13:37.060 extra pounds and your face is full because your face is your face and your hands are what show 0.95

00:13:41.680 your age right I mean Catherine Deneuve famously once said you know I'm paraphrasing but uh she

00:13:47.400 said like something along the lines of a woman of a certain age has to choose between her face 0.97

00:13:51.080 or her ass but I never really understood what that meant but I think it means like you can go 0.99

00:13:55.700 running all the time and your butt will look really good but your face will look terrible 0.99

00:14:01.280 because you'll be basically you need fat in your face yeah right to get it to keep it looking plump 0.89

00:14:07.400 and youthful like think about how baby's cheeks look and then we naturally lose that over time

00:14:11.920 but hey guess what thanks to the joys of modern medicine or modern plastic surgery you can just

00:14:18.120 get fillers now to counter that which is what the people who are on ozempic are doing so okay let's

00:14:24.900 go back to the to the moms at school who've been secretly using it so it started popping up in your

00:14:29.740 own real life right which is amazing I will say because I'm in Philadelphia it's not like I'm in

00:14:35.520 LA or New York where the normal the quote-unquote normies are doing what the celebrities are doing

00:14:42.040 this has already trickled down to a city like Philly so it's a thing yeah it's absolutely a

00:14:51.200 So I am in L.A., so I definitely think that I probably heard about it maybe a little bit earlier just because of the nature of this kind of image-obsessed city.

00:15:00.120 But my facialist, I think, was the first person to talk to me specifically about where to get it and how much it costs, which the cost runs, I think, if you're not being prescribed it and not being covered by insurance, it's, you know, $900 to $1,000 a month.

00:15:15.840 Oh, my God.

00:15:16.540 But obviously, the types of people who are getting weekly facials, like some of his very, very wealthy clients are, they can afford that, even though it seems absolutely crazy.

00:15:28.120 And by the way, I do want to add, like, Ozempic is not approved for weight loss.

00:15:32.180 Like, it's only approved for type 2 diabetes.

00:15:35.680 I mean, Wagovi is another one of these types of medications, semaglutides, and they are, that is approved for weight loss.

00:15:42.500 But people are just using it in a way that it's not technically approved for.

00:15:47.220 And I do want to add that.

00:15:49.520 Yeah, I think it's worth noting, right?

00:15:52.540 And just to be doubly clear, we don't know if any of the celebrities we're talking about,

00:15:57.100 from Rebel Wilson to Mindy Kaling or the Kardashians, have taken Ozempic.

00:16:01.760 This is all just speculation.

00:16:04.420 Jessica Simpson, meanwhile, has explicitly denied using Ozempic.

00:16:08.520 So keep all that in mind.

00:16:12.500 this is infamous from campsite media so obviously ozempic is is all around me i'm not personally

00:16:26.980 using it nobody in my house is but finesse i think you have a much more personal experience

00:16:31.580 with it than i do yeah i definitely have some like up close and personal experience

00:16:36.280 so first of all I would love to lose 20 pounds like right now I'm the same weight that I was

00:16:47.560 when I was pregnant with my last kid which I find that to be sort of insulting because I'm like I

00:16:52.760 work out and I try to eat sort of right and I have to eat Doritos sometimes and things like that I'm

00:16:58.320 not one of those really regimented clean eaters in any case the real issue became my husband

00:17:04.120 who's 225 pounds and five nine right and he tried everything I mean not that hard right but he did

00:17:14.620 try things he tried eating less he tried like I mean I don't know if he's always like I'm a

00:17:21.360 contractor so I work out you know what I mean that's sort of his excuse for not going running

00:17:25.900 but he tried he definitely tried he definitely went through times where he really tried to lose

00:17:31.400 weight and just could not move any of this weight and so once we started hearing about Ozempic because

00:17:37.180 I started hearing about it in my little groups of friends also and he was like okay well like give

00:17:43.280 me the Ozempic let's give it a shot so he wanted me to buy him for Christmas Ozempic so I went on

00:17:49.660 one of these like telehealth sites this is this is love this is real love this is the new Christmas

00:17:57.100 present like i got you like a syringe of diabetes medication so exactly it's so romantic i got him

00:18:08.400 he shot it in his leg and he has to date he has lost 50 pounds he just sent me a picture of

00:18:17.880 seriously 176 on the on the scale and he feels so good and everybody is so much nicer to him

00:18:25.380 obviously he goes to parties people people are like oh my god craig you look amazing

00:18:31.480 isn't that so depressing but i tried it once because i figured this is in my house i should

00:18:37.300 probably give this a shot haha pun not intended so he shot it in my leg and for a week i was so

00:18:45.580 grumpy i was one of those people who almost had like i needed almost an iv when i was pregnant

00:18:51.700 right i was so sick i would have to pull my car over to the side of the road and throw up out the

00:18:56.600 window because whatever you just have to throw up too much and you have some place to go so you just

00:19:00.300 that's the only thing you can do i felt so nauseous because that's one of the side effects of these

00:19:06.300 drugs so i was like constantly nauseous couldn't eat anything because if i ate something it would

00:19:11.440 make me feel nauseous but the real side effect i had is if i eat something it would fill my entire

00:19:18.080 mouth my taste buds with the taste of like a thousand cigarettes waking up the morning after

00:19:25.540 being in a nightclub drowsed and smoke and i was just like this is not acceptable there is something

00:19:30.540 worse than being overweight yeah it's being nauseous all the time so that's my ozempic story

00:19:37.900 but i have to say like it's really worked for him and i've been asking like when are you going to

00:19:42.840 stop doing this and he's like maybe never but it seems for health reasons he should right right

00:19:49.480 well first off that's amazing because I too it's an inspirational story it really is I I too would

00:19:57.420 love to lose the same 20 pounds that I had while I had a baby in my actual body and nothing exactly

00:20:05.540 seems to work but I am also prone to nausea and I know exactly what that waking up with

00:20:12.480 a thousand cigarettes in your mouth feels like because I was a gossip columnist in my 20s and

00:20:17.600 that was my life so I don't know if I could tolerate that but for the people that can tolerate

00:20:24.040 I say good for them that's the thing I'm like losing weight is hard however you do it you

00:20:31.880 should just be open honest about it like why is one way of losing weight better or worse than

00:20:38.660 another way of losing weight like why are you a more virtuous or a quote-unquote good person

00:20:43.720 because you work out or don't eat Doritos right you wrote about this basically like why do you

00:20:52.380 think celebrities are so insistent that they're not using it you know celebrities love virtue

00:20:59.800 signaling in almost all aspects of their life I mean they're just desperate to seem like they're

00:21:07.660 I wouldn't say better but maybe I would say better like they're just desperate to seem

00:21:14.860 good for their brand too and they a lot of celebrities don't want to seem like they are

00:21:23.640 taking shortcuts or the easy way out or using an off-brand drug to lose weight when they're trying

00:21:32.860 to seek family-friendly endorsements or movie roles or get book deals. And so there is a business

00:21:40.700 reason for this virtue signaling, but also it's because celebrities just innately want people to

00:21:45.400 like them. And so they think that by saying, I work so hard, this is willpower. And the fact

00:21:50.960 that I'm a good person, people will like them more and they're desperate to be liked.

00:21:56.180 Well, and I think there's two other things going on there as well, where one, it's an incredibly 0.72

00:22:00.920 american and puritanical thing to be like this is all hard work yeah and you too could achieve this

00:22:08.240 if you just worked hard you know that's incredibly incredibly american and two the the other thing is

00:22:16.660 that really what they're disguising when they say that it's all hard work and not this drug is

00:22:21.940 they're disguising their money and and the privilege behind it that they can afford to spend

00:22:27.280 a thousand dollars a month on top of all the other stuff they're spending to to look the way that

00:22:32.240 they look they're trying to obfuscate the class difference between them and other people let's be

00:22:37.100 clear though my husband got this from a compounding pharmacy in staten island that only charged him

00:22:42.200 like 150 bucks a month so i think like with some elbow grease you can figure it out for less than 0.98

00:22:47.460 that do you think chloe kardashian is doing elbow grease sorry i'm just saying let's talk about that 1.00

00:22:54.120 offline okay so just yeah yeah we'll get you a paper bag to take it out of there i don't i mean

00:23:04.620 it just i think it's so annoying i really do i find it to be very annoying because these people

00:23:09.620 are already so holier than thou and holding themselves up to be idols so i don't know joe

00:23:16.100 i don't know if you can really just say like good on you lie to the public well here's the thing it 1.00

00:23:21.220 is bullshit. And it's, it's a really crappy thing to do to your fans to pretend that you've 0.99

00:23:28.480 accomplished this, not because when you're rich. So even if you're not using drugs, you have a

00:23:34.340 personal trainer who can show up at your house on demand. You have a personal chef who will cook

00:23:38.820 you whatever weird fad diet helps you lose five pounds, right? Which it changes all the time. You

00:23:45.080 could have a doctor doing constant glucose monitoring for you so it's easier to lose weight

00:23:50.480 when you are a rich person that is hands down a fact so anyone that is saying i did this by

00:23:56.060 willpower or it's because i just i just walk all the time and i'm just like a really healthy eater

00:24:01.260 and i'm moving and move around a lot especially because i'm chasing my toddler you know i'm a

00:24:05.040 good mom they're just rubbing it in all of our faces that they make such an outsized amount of

00:24:12.820 money that we should actually all be rising up against them like I firmly believe that there is

00:24:18.380 no reason that we should live in any society where a celebrity is paid 10 million dollars for a movie

00:24:24.220 like it just it just it is absurd to me and disgusting in every way and when celebrities

00:24:29.600 do this virtue signaling it rubs in our faces just how different they are than the average person

00:24:38.080 so has anyone been open about being on it yeah there have been a few celebrities who've been

00:24:44.260 open amy schumer is is my favorite and she had a story very similar to yours vanessa where she said

00:24:50.800 yeah she's like oh of course i tried it she said she tried one of the drugs i don't know if it was 0.99

00:24:56.020 ozempic or wagovi but she said i felt like shit when i tried it and she said it's bullshit that 0.99

00:25:05.300 she said she was like even too sick to play with her son and she says it's bullshit that other stars 0.98

00:25:09.540 are lying about it she's like just can you just be honest about how you're doing it every everything 0.96

00:25:14.940 that we're saying right now she said everybody lying everyone's like a smaller portion like

00:25:21.200 you're on ozempics when i got lipo i was like i got lipo okay right yeah i also think it's really

00:25:29.340 interesting a couple of real housewives have been open about being on it they've got nothing to lose

00:25:34.580 though that's exactly what i was gonna say like they don't have a veneer to lose like we already

00:25:41.820 think of them as somewhat de classe but what about like kim kardashian don't you feel like

00:25:46.360 she should say it i thought her whole brand is like authenticity no but think about the 0.87

00:25:51.020 butt implants slash you know that whole x-ray she never admitted those butt implants no no no 1.00

00:25:56.920 i mean the bbl yeah exactly that's what i mean like there's always smoke and mirrors and she 0.89

00:26:01.740 she does admit to some things but not to other things so yeah she cherry picks what she wants

00:26:06.740 to admit to exactly like so so many different times i had reported on plastic surgeries 0.94

00:26:11.560 we or procedures we knew that she had because i had the same goddamn dermatologist and he had a 0.89

00:26:18.840 wait really big mouth but wait tell me more she had the same dermatologist as kim kardashian we 0.96

00:26:27.080 did and you know what i looked i looked amazing okay i looked i looked really really great but

00:26:32.440 yeah no she cherry picks what she wants to share with people the real housewives they're among the

00:26:37.920 class of celebrities the ones that will admit that they're using ozempic are the same celebrities

00:26:41.780 who admit they have plastic surgery right the ones whose brand is actually built on doing those things

00:26:46.360 the ones who can make more headlines and who need the headlines who are reality stars so they have

00:26:53.620 to do something to get attention so it behooves them to admit that they've done this i mean tracy

00:26:59.800 morgan admitted the other day that he was using a zepik did elon musk admit it yes yes yes he did

00:27:08.520 yes he did but he's a guy that's a little bit both of them are guys i mean that's a little

00:27:12.560 different right i think i think it is different you're supposed to just come out of the womb like

00:27:17.400 a supermodel right for guys you can say like okay fine i cut this corner what's a big deal

00:27:22.320 What I think is funny is that when you Google celebrities who admit to using ozempic, it's a lot of people I don't even know who they are.

00:27:30.320 They're like Caroline Manzo's daughter, Lauren Manzo.

00:27:33.820 I don't even know who Caroline Manzo is.

00:27:37.600 Much less Lauren.

00:27:39.680 Who is Lauren?

00:27:41.480 Wait, so you've not seen any of your little influencers that you track talking about ozempic or these weight loss drugs, have you?

00:27:50.140 I haven't.

00:27:50.920 I haven't seen any of the influencers that I follow talking about Ozempic and weight loss drugs.

00:27:55.240 But to be honest, I'm mostly following mom influencers or beauty influencers.

00:28:02.440 I have seen influencers talking about Ozempic.

00:28:05.960 I mean, there is much like the celebrity subset.

00:28:09.080 There's a subset of influencers who do nothing but talk about plastic surgery and beauty treatments and who are trying to get free prescriptions or free treatments from doctors in order to talk about Ozempic or just to get more attention.

00:28:28.500 I mean, it's a topic of the day right now and you can get a lot of traffic.

00:28:33.420 but it is very I mean to me a lot of this stuff like the spa treatments and all of it it's all

00:28:40.740 just like about paying somebody to be nice to you and I almost think of the influencer beauty

00:28:45.800 culture sort of the same way it's all about like just trying to get people to like you more and I

00:28:50.660 would say the one thing about Ozempic is that I like myself better when I'm skinny because I can

00:28:56.480 actually fit into my clothes that I bought that I feel so stupid for buying so many clothes that

00:29:00.960 were size six if I had known that life goes on and everything sags I would have bought everything 0.97

00:29:06.440 size 10 you know that was like so stupid you know but to me that's the whole issue of skinniness 0.96

00:29:13.360 is like nothing tastes as good as skinny feels it's like that it's one of my favorite quotes 0.99

00:29:20.000 and not because like anyone can be any size you should be whatever makes you like fucking happy 0.56

00:29:24.920 I just want to fit into my clothes again because I've got real nice clothes exactly like really

00:29:29.220 nice clothes that I bought when I made a lot more money. And I'm not going to make that much money

00:29:34.920 again. So I'm not going to buy all new clothes. But I feel this makes me feel crazy. And I think

00:29:40.720 I'm on a I have a different perspective than both of you, where my feeling is sell those old clothes,

00:29:46.600 just get clothes that fit, like get clothes that are the other size, who cares, let that go. I mean,

00:29:53.340 back in the day, we didn't buy clothes off the rack clothes were custom made for our bodies. So

00:29:57.860 the idea that you have to be fitting into your clothes is absurd. The clothes should be fitting

00:30:02.020 you. Do you know what I mean? And I think part of what you were saying about it's all about

00:30:06.400 wanting people to like you and you wanting to like yourself. To me, part of what's being unsaid there

00:30:12.340 is that society treats fat people badly. We live in a fatphobic society and you get more compliments

00:30:19.560 when you're skinny. You get more attention, you get more jobs, et cetera, et cetera. And people

00:30:24.540 actively discriminate against fat people and i think that that that is something that like

00:30:30.460 drives me absolutely crazy in all of this because we've come out of the body positivity movement

00:30:36.880 back into a super regressive skinny is everything place with ozempic and that just makes me feel

00:30:44.000 insane because i'm like wait what happened to you healthy at any size what happened to accepting the

00:30:50.160 skin that you're in you're totally right and and I go back and forth and I feel this is one of the 0.90

00:30:55.740 reasons that women do feel crazy all of the time because there is this part of me one I've got two 0.81

00:31:00.900 girls two little girls and who I'm never going to talk about weight around I never want them to feel

00:31:08.100 bad about anything on their bodies faces whatever like I just want them to love themselves as they

00:31:13.820 are because they're beautiful and perfect and yet I really don't want people to stare at my belly

00:31:19.360 and think i'm still six months pregnant so like i just can't reconcile these two feelings and seeing

00:31:25.960 all the crazy celebrity weight loss which we've always seen and i i wrote a book a thousand years

00:31:31.120 ago called celebrity inc all about the celebrity endorsements for jenny craig and weight watchers

00:31:36.880 and those things right so like this is nothing new under the sun yes it's just we see so much

00:31:43.300 more of it because celebrities are essentially living in our pockets on our iphones on our

00:31:48.120 Instagram on our social media feeds so like we just I think we have a much more intense intimacy

00:31:53.180 with them absolutely we did when we were getting people magazine once a week absolutely and I want

00:31:58.760 to I guess I just want to talk about the how this is just a continuity this is the latest in an

00:32:04.060 iteration of weight loss obsessions that Hollywood has had that our society has had I mean and it's

00:32:10.760 fully so absurd like the absurdity of injecting yourself once a week like we've all gotten so

00:32:17.900 comfortable with needles thanks to botox and filler and goodness knows what else that everyone's

00:32:24.160 fine with injecting themselves once a week i mean it just makes me think of oprah pushing that like

00:32:29.780 carton of fat the wheel the wheelbarrow of fat yes exactly what is that i don't know that what

00:32:35.740 is that oh my god your mouth you have to google this immediately in 1988 oprah winfrey wheeled

00:32:43.660 out a little red wagon containing 67 pounds of animal fat the amount of weight that she had 0.68

00:32:51.600 lost and so yeah if you see this picture also in this picture Oprah is crazy teeny tiny like this

00:32:58.560 does not even look like anything that I remember Oprah looking like she is a stick figure in this

00:33:06.240 and it's a radio flyer wagon my kids have one of those filled with fat with just glistening

00:33:12.920 animal fat um so yeah and that was 88 right back when i was doing sweating to the oldies with my

00:33:19.760 mom after school this is infamous from campsite media so talking about that absurdity have there

00:33:33.900 been any fun anecdotes that you've heard or rumors that you've heard about this celebrity usage like

00:33:39.560 I'm thinking about these rumored injection parties yes I have heard a lot about these rumored

00:33:46.460 injection parties and from my friends that are in LA and they're in the business that yeah like 0.99

00:33:52.860 women will have movie night slash sleepovers where they'll shoot each other up with those

00:33:59.980 epic and those epic has become the new almost Tupperware party if you will like you'll have 0.63

00:34:07.320 one but in the same way that for a long time you would have celebrities having like botox parties

00:34:12.320 or juvederm parties like you're going to a friend's house but here's the big difference

00:34:18.040 when you have these ozempic parties no one eats and no one drinks because the other side effect

00:34:23.580 of the ozempic is that you can't drink the people that i know that are on it you can't drink more

00:34:28.800 than like one drink or you'll start to get really nauseous so it's not like they're having i sound

00:34:35.140 like there's an asshole alcoholic I'm like it's not like they're having fun but they're just like 0.84

00:34:38.620 going and getting shot up with a bunch of chemicals and not eating or drinking and probably 0.99

00:34:44.220 being kind of ornery around each other I mean it's definitely an absurd strange party it's

00:34:50.380 definitely an absurd strange party but I've also heard anecdotes again from my friends in the

00:34:55.120 business that work dinners have gotten a lot stranger and work cocktails which have always

00:35:02.600 work meetings in los angeles have always been fraught and strange like there's always the

00:35:06.860 i don't eat bread i don't eat gluten but now literally no one's eating and so it's like

00:35:13.520 all right maybe we could change our venue because i mean that's very cost conscious though right i

00:35:21.580 know you can save a lot of money it's like skip the dinner because no one's going to be able to

00:35:24.900 eat any of it anyway exactly so i mean let's talk about one of the you know we've talked about some

00:35:31.440 immediate side effects but one of the longer side effects and something that doctors believe is that

00:35:37.680 if you come off this you will gain the weight back so there was this influencer remi bader

00:35:45.380 who says that she gained double the weight back when she stopped taking ozempic yeah no and the

00:35:51.980 thing is this is still early days for this being used as a weight loss drug and so we don't know

00:36:00.020 if people are immediately going to gain the weight back or not.

00:36:03.320 Some doctors think that's a possibility.

00:36:05.420 And I kind of look at it the same way that we looked at the biggest loser phenomenon,

00:36:09.400 how so many of the contestants on The Biggest Loser,

00:36:11.800 they didn't just gain the weight back after leaving the show,

00:36:15.420 but they gained double the weight back.

00:36:17.420 And some influencers who were taking the ozempic,

00:36:20.000 Remy Bader is one of them, said they took it.

00:36:23.100 And then when they stopped taking it, they gained double the weight back.

00:36:27.760 So because this is such early days, and because everybody is different, we have no idea what it's going to do to a specific metabolism. Are you going to be stuck doing $1,000 a month injections for the rest of time? Or is this a way for some people to kickstart a metabolism that wasn't functioning properly for a whole host of different reasons? And I think every individual is going to be different.

00:36:51.840 But the problem here is that so many people are doing this kind of outside of the traditional

00:36:57.200 health care system that we don't we don't have doctors that are monitoring your blood

00:37:03.160 sugar, checking your hormones as you're doing this.

00:37:06.180 Right. 0.83

00:37:06.360 Because no doctor will give it to you.

00:37:08.400 Exactly. 0.99

00:37:08.980 Everyone's doing it in this black market way.

00:37:11.420 And of course, you don't know what it's going to do to your body.

00:37:14.540 So I don't think there's no surprise for me that there are so many side effects that we

00:37:20.340 have no idea what they're gonna be yet all right so thank you so much joe we really appreciate you

00:37:26.320 coming on and joe's podcast is under the influence which is all about influencers

00:37:30.940 on platforms all over the place with the new season coming out very soon

00:37:36.580 that's it for our conversation with joe piazza next time on infamous we're going to tell a

00:37:45.600 smaller story than usual a story about a small southern city and how one man's bad behavior

00:37:52.400 tore it apart i was like what's going on and he said something i remember he said the phrase like

00:37:59.500 i don't like getting my wires crossed in the horror movie that's like the that's the first

00:38:05.180 thing right yeah it's like the early like sound outside the window and you're like that's probably

00:38:11.080 I love it, yeah.

Under the Influence (with Jo Piazza) - September 23, 2023

Infamous! A Chat About Ozempic

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