Kara Swisher: Tech Bros, Body Hacking, and the Wellness Industrial Complex | Prof G Conversations

Well, largely you, because I want you to live forever. But no, no, you're not a small part of it. You're one of the type of people that I had been hearing a lot from, and well before you. A lot of the tech guys had been talking constantly about their health and bodies, but not their health in hacking themselves. Like that was one of their big topics after they made money. And they were — whether it was Soylent, if you remember, or it was intermittent fasting or various psychedelic drugs, they were always on to something to sort of optimize. And the word, you know, that's not a new thing, optimization of health, but it sort of got very loud for me. And then you started to see tech guys like Jeff Bezos and others try to alter their bodies, right? Like very significantly from where they were. Mark Zuckerberg was another one. There's a bunch. There's just like one after the other. I see someone, I'm like, who are you? And it was either through getting very thin or getting very fit, like fit to the point of like it was a lot — there was a lot happening. And so, and then they talked about this, and then Larry Ellison invested quite a lot in an institute, an anti-aging institute, and then all the others — Sam Altman, Bezos, Zuckerberg — they all invested in these health things, even more so than it had done before, because Google and Microsoft had been there previously. So it just was interesting to me, and at the same time I was really interested in seeing what really works, right? Because there's so much hype online for whatever blank of the week, right? Essentially, which you love to like talk about. And so I was really like, what's real, what's not? And then lastly, all this stuff around, as you have, you really inspire — GLP-1s, mRNA vaccines, gene editing. There's some real stuff happening here. So there's some reality and then some ridiculous nonsense. And it was perfect for me.

Yeah, because there's very serious efforts happening at the same time, right? But I think they're very — I don't know — cognizant of mortality in a way that's graspy, as opposed to someone like Steve Jobs who actually gave that famous speech about mortality being important, you know, and it was such a shift. And I could see like you get, you know, rich or master of the universe and you master everything else, but you can't master your body, and it takes work to do so. And I think you really inspired me when you say this a lot, but I think it's a really cool thing, is biology is undefeated. And I know it's like three words, but it kind of says it all, right? And at the same time, you know, during COVID, you had Elon talking about meat sacks and how we've got to get rid of meat sacks, which is a reference to your body. It was from a science fiction radio play, which he is very deep into science fiction. And they all are, in a way. And you know, Ellison was really the first to fund those various institutes and everything, and some of them are very good practices, right? Like some of them, the eating, the stuff like that. But it became more an obsession when you got to like — then you add on online nonsense, a lot of it, not all of it, but like all these influencers, just the way they influence everything else, political or whatever, were giving this advice that was okay, but some of it wasn't. And you know, you had a Peter Attia, and I know you like, and Huberman, who's coming out with a book soon. But to me, a lot of the optimization was spending enormous amounts of time not on the real point of life, which was to enjoy friends and family, which I think you've really moved towards and talk about in your book, right? The idea of lack of isolation. And then lastly, the online stuff, especially around chatbots, is so unhealthy. And that's another area I've talked about a lot, and so have you, is the isolation of young men, the deleterious mental effects of a lot of this stuff, which actually have real health implications.

Well, you know, I had him at Code in 2017. You may have been there in 2017. I'm not sure you were there or not, but one of my last Codes I had him in. He had sold whatever his company was — a payment type of company — and he made, I think, $800 million, some enormous amount. And he was in the Mormon church, and he had a break with the church, I believe, and then had some depression problems. And he started studying the brain itself, right? And he was the first person to talk about the uses of AI and the possible good and bad elements of AI. And he was talking about brain cognition. So he came and gave — which I — it was an admirable speech, if you go look at it. He looked fit but normal, I guess, and you know, not overboard. And he was talking about the need for — you know, he had depression, very serious, 10-year depression. He talked about that. And it was a really — I remember thinking this was a wonderful speech and very humble, actually. And then he shows up next as he calls himself like some, you know, crazy Patrick Bateman, right? Like narcissistic. That's his description of what people think of him. And it started to be this — it went from being fit and healthy and having, trying to deal with your depression, to something entirely different. And so he decided he was an experiment of one. And as you — I mean, I'm not — all the doctors tell me that's pointless. It's like we now know what keeps Brian Johnson alive longer, but it will not have much application to the general population. And so it was narcissistic, even though he denies it. And at the same time, I find him very poignant in a way. I mean, he — a lot of — he looks very shiny. He's always like — he does his — he measures his erections. He measures his poop. He measures everything. He takes all manner of — he was into rapamycin until he wasn't, and very dangerous advice he was giving to people. He was injecting stem cells in ways you possibly shouldn't. And then advocating things and became an influencer, which he said he had to do to get people's attention, which I was like, that's incredibly irresponsible. And at the same time, some of his stuff is very like olive oil, great, you know, whole foods, great, broccoli, great. Like, except he takes it to the extreme. He takes like three hours to eat it or whatever. I forget what he was saying in the video, but he took a long time to eat, which is probably healthy. But it seems like the hours are ticking down for this guy. And he's spending a lot of time measuring his erections, which I don't know if you do that, Scott, but —

You know, then he does the stunts of the blood between his father, himself, and his son, which I find — I don't know. It's just sad. I don't know. What do you think?

We did it. Actually, we're going to do some shoulder cutting, especially around hair. You know, there's some evidence. And again, everything that I show needs more testing, but they sell it like it's certainty. We talked to a woman who was losing her hair, and she had tried — she had problems with current — Rogaine is, I think, one of the more effective things. There's a couple of other things that are getting there, and they'll solve this problem eventually, I would guess. But some people have heart palpitations with Rogaine and some of the other stuff, and so she was using PRP in her scalp. There's a lot of clinics, including near your house, that have popped up to do that. Interesting. And then wound healing, right? Like a lot of athletes use it for joints and things like that, but again, needs more real studies and stuff. So I know you thought it was a good thing for you. You felt better, I guess.

The PRP is — we did a whole thing with this young African-American woman who suddenly lost her hair during COVID. It was some aftereffect of having COVID, and she really liked it. And we showed it being done, like the platelet spinning, and we're going to put it out as a shoulder. We just didn't have space to put it in the show. But there's a whole lot of stuff we filmed, like me at a sober rave, which was cringeworthy, that we couldn't fit in. But yes, that was really interesting. PRP was interesting. And again, there's so much stuff going on in terms of like what you would have had to inject — steroids, right? For — I had frozen shoulder a million years ago, and that works, but it doesn't have much efficacy. So yeah, there's a lot of stuff around joints right now, like all these gels, all this like, you know, we're going to solve that problem pretty quickly. But it's just, look, you have PRP, and then they take it for everything, right? Like that's the thing. It's not an everything drug. The hair stuff is mixed with people just the way — but if you can't use Rogaine, okay, let's try it. And it seems relative. They use a lot of cold. Did you — I don't know if they did really cold — put a cold press. What they do is put it on people's hair, a cold press, and then they inject your own blood. And it's sort of — it looks golden. It's quite beautiful in a lot of ways, when they do the platelets. And so a lot of these injections, like right now, peptides, they come from China. They're full of like impurities, and you could hurt yourself, right, in terms of this without any real benefits. I'd be happy if they studied it in a gold standard test, and then let's see, like with GLP-1s, which that was happening right now. But you know, a lot of stuff, it's just that it gets overpromised. This is going to solve everything, like, you know, take you out to dinner and then tuck you into bed kind of stuff.

There's just not enough testing. I mean, I have what I've done, unfortunately, because I think a lot of people say, 'Well, I feel good.' Like I get a lot of — it's interesting because a lot of gay guys were using them, right? Like it was interesting. That's where I get it from. But I was like, 'Okay, but the latest' — and including a big anchor — I was like, like the latest tests are on 14 people. Like, okay. Like I'm willing to be open-minded about a lot of this stuff, but there's no — it's the same thing with red lights. Like it's just the testing has not been sufficient to give — for the money spent. And in the case of peptides, you're actually ingesting it into your body. And that several people have problems with it. And again, it reminds you — it's always these catchalls, Scott, you know, that like, oh, this week we're this or this week — and some of them, like a couple things were like stuck out. GLP-1s, and there's now like — I forget — 12% of Americans are on these things. Well, we're going to have some answers really soon, right? And it's looking like it can help strokes. It looks — and real credible medical doctors are looking at these things, and they're not being rejective of them. Well, except for RFK. And interestingly, he's for peptides and against GLP-1s, which doesn't make any sense. But yeah, I think it — you know, what people tend to do as well, 'It works for me.' I'm like, okay, like that's not science. The same thing with Brian, and when he's doing the more esoteric things, when he's doing his dragging like weights, I don't care. That's fine. I was thinking something you were talking about, like a lot, especially men, they like the data, right? They love the like, 'I slept this long, I did that.' And it seems like you could spend that time with your kid. Like I know it sounds dumb, but there's a lot of obsession with data and, oh, I did this and this many and this is my number, and it has nothing to do with good health, if that makes — or peace of mind, which is linked very closely to good health. When women do sort of extreme body stuff, it's called body dysmorphia. When men do it, it's body hacking. But it's the same thing: is that you're not happy with what happens, which is you age. And I think the collapsing — and that's one thing some of these influencers were good at — the idea of health span versus lifespan. And that's well before I said it. That's an important thing. Like how do we do that — that would be, you know, how you've talked about the amount of time and money that is spent on the last 10 years of someone's life versus, you know, doing something in advance to fix the situation. So you collapse that delta.

Well, I wasn't being, you know, some people are like, 'Oh, Kara's like, oh, I'm feeling bad about being poor.' But poverty is the single clearest indicator of longevity, because stress around housing, lack of universal health care, lack of health care of any good, lack of good food, lack of sleep. You know, at one point Brian's like, 'I'm just telling them, you know, they can at least get some sleep.' I'm like, do you know about people that have two jobs, Brian, and are stressed? Like, they can't get sleep. And so, you know, that usually — and you're also, you know, near a cancer — you often live in a place that is not as healthy from not just a climate point of view but a, you know, pollution point of view. You're often near cancer clusters. You've always noticed that it's always near poor people, right? And so when you're poor, you don't have as many options, including the basics: diet, sleep, and exercise. But you also cannot avail yourself to universal health care as much. And rich people can try. It's really hard even for people with some means to get the right health care in this country. And I went to Korea, which is not a perfect country by any means, but at the same time, its longevity numbers are soaring, especially for women. And you have to kind of look at what they're doing there. One of which is 100% universal health care. You and I talk about this all the time. I mean, it's a crime that we don't have a basic level of — as much as you complained about the NIH or whatever, other countries, our peer countries, are so much further above us in health care outcomes. We're at the bottom, and we spend double, as you noted, $14,000 to $15,000 compared to six or seven.

I keep trying to break sugar, but I can't. I like sugar, but I don't eat as much sugar. Like I definitely understand it. I just don't care. I enjoy —

Well, I like sugar in my coffee. I've been trying to get it out of my coffee. I have just one — I never — I'm not an addictive personality, as you know. I'm not a drug taker or stuff. I think one thing I'm quite aware of is, well, I didn't get enough fiber and protein. But a lot of the men are protein maxing in a ridiculous way. And these advice from Peter Attia, for example, is far too much protein. But I'm eating more fiber, more protein, more vegetables. Trying to get my protein. I happen to like steak and burgers. So I think so do you. But I'm trying to get less of it through animal protein and more like — I've started to really like lentils. I know it sounds crazy, but I figured out ways to cook them that I like. Like an avocado has enormous amounts of fiber in it. You don't realize it. And I like avocados. So I got more educated about where I can get that stuff and when during the day, especially stop eating late at night. I've started running again quite a lot. I run about 12 miles a week now. And I like it, and it's both meditative and healthy. And that was through doing VO2 max, which I don't know if you've done that yet, but just your testing on that and trying to get that number up.

Yeah. And the interval training is something I hadn't really — I used to run till I like collapsed, and that's really bad. It's just bad. Weight training I've already done. Strength training, balance training, stuff like that is not too much, but strength training is probably the number one thing for people who are going to be old at some point. I'm trying to think. Sleep, I still haven't cracked that. I have small children, so it's not happening. But you know, you should get — you don't need to obsessively think about sleep, but it's important to get, you know, seven hours of sleep a night.

Universal health care, one. So three things: universal health care for everybody, and then the rich can buy more — they always do, right? They always get the juicy bits. But universal health care. Probably a $25 minimum wage, so people can start to have choices, as you and I talk about this a lot. Just more money gives you more choices, and it's a healthier population when you have more, you know, when people have a standard of living that's not — the amount of stress of being homeless or near homeless is really quite vast. You know, combined with lack of health care, we're surprised at these mental health outcomes. I would probably say the third thing would be real focus on things like mRNA technology and real funding of that, along with GLP-1s. Like those to me — the only thing we agree with RFK on is the processed food industrial complex, which I call the diabetic industrial complex. I think we have to really push back on that. So probably real funding for those two things and gene editing. And the one story of the woman — and she was there at the premiere — who has sickle cell anemia, and she'll never be cured of it. She'll probably die of it in her 50s after great amounts of pain, when some of these diseases are probably solvable within the next — I mean, right now they kind of are, but the cost is so massive that they don't get that. That's a bigger, longer-term problem. We'll be right back after a quick break.

I know you have that issue. Look, I'm a whatever —

And you should seek therapy. There — I think more importantly, and I think the science really bears this out very clearly, is not so much therapy as much as social interaction, right? It's the number one health — besides not being poor and being rich, slash being rich — the number one thing that came through was social connections and the negative effects of an AI chatbot, etc., isolation. And COVID really did a number on us in that regard. But we know church, whether it's churches, whether it's sports, whether it's whatever it happens to be, friendships, also doing things in office work, talking to people, friction with human beings. I think if I had to say the number one thing — I mean, diet, sleep, and exercise, yes, but without the social interaction, none of it matters really. And in terms of the scientific links between that and health, it's — you know, I interviewed the head of the Harvard happiness study. It's not so much therapy, and again, people should use it if they think that's important for them, but it is social interactions, possibly the most important health intervention we could have. And I went to a thing in Brooklyn, which I really loved, which was a bunch of young people had organized themselves around playing games. So there's friction in games, right? All kinds of games. I think there was mahjong there, there was poker, all manner of games, checkers. And they took this sort of basement area in a Brooklyn food hall, and they played games all night. And I brought a neuroscientist with me to explain what was happening to the people there. And they put away their phones and they socialized. And I'm sure there were a million hookups, you know, but it was great, and everybody was happy. I know it's — you could feel the happiness. Same thing with this group, and I think it's called Little Time or something with time in it. They put you together with six people that you've never met, and you go bowling or just for pizza and bowling or skating or something like that. But it's not a sexual thing. It's people you like. There was an older woman there. There was a young guy who was just, you know, he was at Harvard and he was lonely. And it was, I have to say, wonderful. I was nervous because I'm like, I don't want to — you know, I'm as outgoing as I am. I'm not right. I think you would not like this, but I have to say I enjoyed it. People I didn't know, I'm not going to see again. And it was lovely. And again, I did this the other night. You make fun of me, but I bought these mahjong lessons and I invited 16 people who really didn't know each other. My friends of mine, they know me. And to a person, they were like, 'That was great.' And I was like, 'You have no idea. You were touching the mahjong tiles. There's tactile. There's mind-brain plasticity.' So every single study shows — the Harvard happiness study is the famous one — but shows the people that live longer are people who are socially active and not staring. You can stare at a phone a little bit, but that's a real — what they're doing to us with these AI chatbots is really problematic, as far as I'm concerned.

You just answered the flywheel.

Well, I was — I had a contributor contract with them. I would do it with whoever. What I did is I went around and met production companies, and I was going to raise the money myself and possibly do it on YouTube, possibly do it wherever. And I was, you know, I mentioned it to CNN, and they paid for the whole thing. Um, which one of the things I don't know is how to do video, right? And so I learned, and I feel like I'd kind of figured it out. Like that was one area, like on their dime, to try it out. And by the way, beautifully photographed stuff I couldn't do. Um, and I think worthwhile, beautifully photographed. Actually, I don't think of it as a broadcast property. We've cut it up into pieces. Lots of shoulder content on the CNN app, and it will be on streaming. Um, I'm sure bits of it are going to get on YouTube and social media, and lots of social media around this. And so I don't see it as a TV show. I see it as a video product that will help people, that will sort of push up against the aggressive and often incorrect stuff that's out there about health. And so to me, I saw a real lane, like, okay, there's all these sort of wellness grifters. What if I was the anti-grifter in wellness? Like, and people are like — the reaction's been quite fascinating. People like, 'Oh, finally, like for the rest of us,' kind of stuff. And so I don't see it as a CNN — you know, I could have done it at MSNBC, I could have done it at one of the networks. And obviously the audiences are much smaller over time, but I see it as — I learned how to do this, and now I know. And I think it does, in some way, when you have a whole package of them together, you really can tell a story that you can't tell in a shorter medium. But probably, you know, you could easily do this on YouTube and continue it in a way. Um, but you know, we're doing video now, and it's important to our thing. So, are we not doing a television show with Pivot? Are we not?

We are. And so, I don't — like back in the day there was, the Washington Post put out a new media organization. They put it in Virginia because of union issues, right? But it was always the new media group and the old media group, you know, which was the newspaper. And I was like, why? Like, it's all media, that kind of stuff. And that's how I look at it. I don't think of it like a TV show at all. Although it's fine if it is, you know, and then you get a certain population and then you reach to others. I don't buy into it's over for video, for sure it's not. I just think, what's the difference? And I learned how to do it, and now I know. And if it does well, I also — I'm doing a — probably could do a book on it. I could do an event. Today I did a podcast with Eric Topol, who's not in the thing, and then I did a podcast today with Katie Couric, who was very early to online expressions around cancer, um, around her husband's death, and my brother, who's in the show, and Jen Larcher, who's in the show, who sort of blows up a lot of the wellness grifters. And so I did a podcast on it, so now I've got more content for that. It just — I see it as a flywheel, you know, that's how you look at everything, right? I mean, I think you do.

Well, not as much. You know, I was pretty lucky because my older kids kind of missed the demented part of social media, right? It wasn't quite — it was like Snapchat, and it was pretty harmless, and they didn't get sucked into — a little bit at the end, Instagram, but they definitely didn't like it. Your kids are at the dead middle of that — your kids' age, right? And they also, you know, they were old enough to be able to handle social media during COVID, which I think was bad for younger kids. Um, I suspect — I, you know, my older kids just watch YouTube as TV, so I don't find that to be particularly problematic. I don't find them obsessively online. And I think they use it for music, and Alex loves watching history stuff videos, and that's great. Um, for my young kids, uh, you know, definitely will not allow them to be on social media. I use it to watch, you know, Frozen or K-pop Demon Hunters over and over again, but that's just that. Um, I think probably I would not — I think a lot about their eating habits now, just the way we do with sunscreen. Like if you remember, we never used sunscreen. Well, now everybody uses sunscreen. So I'm thinking the same thing with food. Like if I can get them — like visiting Korean kids, what they eat at lunch is really something. It's mind-blowing how healthy they eat. And they eat snacks in Korea. It's just that they have a base for eating that is very healthy to start with. So they're aware, and they have a nutritionist in the school. So I should probably start more on the vegetables with my kids, because they call them revengeables, which is not good. They have a bad relationship with vegetables, my kids. Um, the other thing is time spent with the kids, and that's like not staring at a phone, right? That's, I think, something that's hard for all adults to deal with, not looking at the phone when we're around our kids. Um, and sort of pattern-mapping that. But it's really — I mean, look, it's really hard, as you know, um, to do so because it's addictive and it's interesting and we like news. And so I try to spend real time with the kids without the phone around a lot more than I was.

Well, I got off Twitter early and urged you to do so, as I recall. Um, I think it's deleterious. I'm still on —

What?

Anyway, I don't like — I don't like social media. You're right. The way I use social media now is to broadcast our stuff, like the different stuff I do and we do, which I think is fine. It's a marketing vehicle. I don't go on Twitter though, because every time I go there I'm a [__]. So I don't like that. Um, and I forget — half of them like you and half of them don't. You're — you have — you're a much more —

Yeah, you understood it pretty quickly. Also, I had that owner attacking me personally, and he attacked you too, and then he liked you. Whatever. Um, he's — whatever. He needs to get offline very clearly. Um, I use Threads now pretty much. I don't — I use Instagram again for marketing. I like to watch food videos and hardware videos, and it's fine. I don't find anything wrong. It's very soothing. Um, I read a lot of news online because I love news, and I always — it looks like I would have had a newspaper on my face before. So it's just the same difference as far as I can see. Um, and I get a wider range of news actually. I think it's better because I hear from people I wasn't going to hear from, especially recommended. You recommend a lot of stuff I end up reading. Um, so friends recommending things is a good thing, but I try to stay off of the — I don't do the dunking thing as less and less every single day.

What you do, I think, is really healthy actually. I think about it. This calmed me. What is the other — this made me —

I love when you do that. I think it's really good for you, and I think it's good for showing people stuff like that. We'll be right back.