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\u201cI realized I think there's a few things that are in our heads that are so deep in the culture. One of them is the idea that being overweight is a sin. It goes right back to if you look at Pope Gregory I in the 6th century when he first formulates the seven deadly sins, gluttony is there, it's always depicted with some fat person who looks monstrous, overeating. And how do we think about sin? If being overweight is a sin, we think sin requires punishment before you get to redemption. The only forms of weight loss that we admire are\xa0where you suffer horribly, right? You think about The Biggest Loser, that horrid, disgusting game show. If you go through agony, if you starve yourself, if you do extreme forms of exercise that devastate your body, then we'll go, he suffered. We forgive you. Well done. We'll let you be thin now, right?\u201d\nSo says Johann Hari, author of many bestselling books\u2014Stolen Focus, Lost Connections, and Chasing the Scream. Johann is a fellow cultural psychic and his latest book\u2014the subject of today\u2019s conversation\u2014bears this out. He takes on drugs like Ozempic and Mounjaro in Magic Pill: The Extraordinary Benefits and Disturbing Risks of the New Weight-Loss Drugs. He also writes about his own relationship to these drugs, as Johann is taking them. His book is a subtle and sensitive navigation of what is a tightly bound convergence of health and culture\u2014and every page of his book anticipates and precedes the conversation. (As a disclaimer, I\u2019m in it.) We talk about all \xa0of it in today\u2019s conversation, along with what would have happened if a woman had written this book first. \n\nMORE FROM JOHANN HARI:\nMagic Pill: The Extraordinary Benefits and Disturbing Risks of the New Weight-Loss Drugs\nStolen Focus: Why You Can\u2019t Pay Attention\u2014and How to Think Deeply Again\nLost Connections: Why You\u2019re Depressed and How to Find Hope\nChasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs\nJohann\u2019s Website\nFollow Johann on Instagram\n \nTo learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy\n \n Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices