The Real Story Behind the Internet's Biggest Wellness Trends

1. 0:00 – 0:58

   Intro

   1. RTRuby Justice Thelot0:00

      Once we've reached the limits of innovation in silicone, we turn the microscope towards ourself and try to optimize and innovate on the body.

   2. EBElena Burger0:06

      11% of US adults are on GLPs. 90% of Americans have heard of GLPs.

   3. RTRuby Justice Thelot0:14

      You wanna believe that you can be Emily Mariko-

   4. EBElena Burger0:16

      Yeah

   5. RTRuby Justice Thelot0:16

      ... and eat salmon and rice and vegetables every day. Then you DoorDash food and you call it a day. [laughs] We live in a time of cultural confusion. We are submerged by paracontent, which is content about content. There was recently a study that did blind tests on people with Oura Rings and gave them the wrong number. They reported having a worse day in spite of the actual true number being correct.

   6. EBElena Burger0:36

      It's not like we're going to be surrounded by, like, super conventionally hot people. Everyone is not going to look like Clavicular. People are just going to do increasingly, like, strange biohack-y things.

   7. RTRuby Justice Thelot0:50

      I've made my mission to cut through the nonsense and answer the question of what actually is happening in culture.

2. 0:58 – 3:21

   What Is Paracontent & Why Culture Feels So Confused

   1. EBElena Burger0:58

      I'm here with Ruby Justice Thelot, an academic and cyber ethnographer. Um, and we're here to kind of continue a conversation that we've been having, I think, for, for a little bit on how, how to actually kind of understand what's, what's going on in the world, and especially on the internet when there is increasingly no real delineation between the internet and the real world. And Ruby, I, I think actually a good place to start is a piece you wrote last year on paracontent, and, um, from there, I think we can kind of take a step back and, and get into a couple topics and things that, that we've both been paying attention to recently.

   2. RTRuby Justice Thelot1:47

      Yeah. We live in a time of cultural confusion.

   3. SPSpeaker1:51

      I'm in a state, state, of confusion. Whoa.

   4. RTRuby Justice Thelot1:56

      Um, so many things are happening. It's so hard to, as you said, disentangle what is real to what is merely amplified by social media or the internet, or merely our small little algorithmic bubbles. I wrote a piece... Well, two pieces are germane to this topic. The first one is called "The Age of Paracontent," and the other one's called "The Post is the Product." In "The Age of Paracontent," I sort of present or reduce this idea of paracontent, which is content about content. And what I noticed taking a look at video game releases, movie trailers, that oftentimes there's more content about content than content itself, meaning we are submerged, um, by paracontent, and we have very, very small sort of pieces of thing that we can sort of glom onto, um, whether that be, once again, music video or a movie, or even a trailer for a video game. I think in the essay, I talk about the GTA VI trailer that came out last year. And what's interesting about paracontent is that it can actually take a life of its own without actually having any material impact on the real world. People can keep on talking about a thing and can grow it out of proportion, and it could be, um, out of measure, and it could feel real in spite of it not actually being grounded in any sort of material reality. And so, um, I've made my mission, [laughs] my life's work, to kind of cut through the nonsense and kind of answer the question of what actually is happening in culture.

3. 3:21 – 6:09

   How Much Is Actually Happening vs Just Talked About?

   1. EBElena Burger3:21

      So, so the question is, how much is any given phenomenon actually happening versus how much are people talking about it on social media? How much are people making a big deal about it on social media or YouTube or whatever? And I, like, I think there, there are so many kind of examples that we can point to, but, but curious if you have, have any favorite examples of, like, some kind of delta between what we're... Like, like, the thing happening and the thing that people are, like, commenting on.

   2. RTRuby Justice Thelot3:59

      Yeah. So, I mean, so many things come to mind, right? Uh, some things actually do have an incident into, into the real world, something like Six7 actually pierces through and actually becomes a behavior that we see in children.

   3. SPSpeaker4:11

      What does it mean? I don't even know. Six Seven. Six Seven.

   4. RTRuby Justice Thelot4:17

      I famously did a piece that got me into a lot of trouble around heteropessimism as well, um, which is this idea that, like, straight relationships are kind of doomed from the woman's perspective. And taking a look at cont- content on Reels and, um, TikTok, trying to analyze the sentiment across, um, you know, about 2,000 videos, people are mostly doing positive dating content, about 40%. Um, and the rest, you know, the rest that completes the half is fairly neutral. Um, and so I'm always trying to think about, is this thing that I'm hearing just [laughs] me kind of going crazy, um, me spending too much time online, or does it actually have any sort of true consumer behaviors behind it?

   5. EBElena Burger4:56

      Yeah.

   6. RTRuby Justice Thelot4:56

      And I think the thing we want to talk about is this whole sort of, like, wellness peptide, um, sort of optimization culture.

   7. EBElena Burger5:05

      Something that I find very funny is that, um, a lot of times you'll see San Francisco, um, taking credit for cultural trends that kind of long predated whatever particular cultural trend is, is being spoken about. And, and, like, this, this happens I think a lot in San Francisco specifically, um, because we justifiably get a lot of credit for, um, exporting kind of technological culture. And I think, like, the way, the way in which technol- technology, like, proliferates across the country and across the world is, like, some interesting new trend will either start in the Valley or the founders will very quickly move to the Valley after they've started their company and kind of scale something first among, you know, the tech insider crowd, and then gradually across the rest of the country and the rest of the world.

4. 6:09 – 14:00

   The Peptide Boom: San Francisco vs the American Heartland

   1. EBElena Burger6:09

      Um, and- Oftentimes cultural trends are, um, attributed to the Valley too. And I think like, like a very, very interesting example of that is actually, um, peptides. Um, and it's something that I, I think we like sort of saw percolating as a conversation last year where people would talk about, you know, peptide parties or peptide events or like peptide influencers in San Francisco, um, or people using Chinese peptides just like in general. But a lot of this culture and a lot of this actually started in like the American Heartland or in, um, you know, like, like bodybuilding communities in the Midwest and... or, or something like that. Like I remember I actually first heard about peptides in Austin, Texas, when I was like visiting friends there and everybody was like, you know, going to some like med spa that was giving them Chinese peptides. So like, and, and th- that's, that's in kind of the like gray market, quasi-legal kind of, kind of use case. And then obviously there's the medical use case of like GLPs. Um, but I, I think, I think it is this like interesting, this interesting thing that we're seeing where, um, there were a lot of articles that were written, especially at the beginning of the year, like even into the summer, where people were sort of talking about how like tech culture or like, like Silicon Valley culture was exporting, um, this trend. But really it was something that kind of like really started elsewhere and then kind of got, um, professionalized or kind of got, you know, accelerated and managed here.

   2. RTRuby Justice Thelot8:08

      No, absolutely. I mean, a lot of this, you know, these sort of novel techniques, whether I think now with creatine, I'm seeing it sort of pop up into my non-tech friends as well. Um, the chains of distribution are so rich and multifaceted now that like you'll have a TikTok influencer who's doing more like classic wellness for women who will take a product that was used for bodybuilders because she's seen on another blog that it can be used for this or that. Um, and so you really have a lot of confusion around, okay, who first came up with it? Which sort of subculture did it first? Um, when I first encountered peptides, I was thinking to myself like the thing from like biology class in high school, like the chain of amino acids, is that the thing that, um, people are talking about? Um, and then, uh, spending a lot of time in New York, and there's a lot of these new sort of longevity clinics that have been popping up, and that's where I sort of started, um, starting to see more. And we have quite a few now, at least I would say in at least Manhattan.

   3. EBElena Burger9:10

      Yeah. And there, there even have been like some fun articles about like people experimenting them. Like, um, Esther Marcus wrote, wrote a good piece on that. Um, but yeah, I think I like, like this kind of goes to this bigger question of like, okay, obviously, um, obviously people are aware of peptides. Either they are aware of peptides when it comes to like GLP-1s and the more kind of like regulated use cases, or they're aware of maybe the gray market, they're aware of Chinese peptides and like, um, you know, less regulated and like not, not sort of like, like FDA approved for a bunch of like other outcomes. You know, people inject some peptides for like, you know, muscle repair. They inject other ones for like looking more youthful. There are other ones that exist to like, for like memory and cognitive function. There are all, all these kinds of like other gray market things that people do. Um, I think like, like it's interesting if you look at the polls, if you look at something like, like a Gallup, uh, like Gallup did a poll, um, a couple months ago, and they found that, uh, 11% of US adults are on GLPs, 90% of Americans have heard of GLPs. Now I, I think that's interesting just because there is... A- as we were talking about at the beginning of this, there is this like huge gulf between the amount of people who are using the thing and the amount of people who are aware of the thing and definitely have opinions about the thing. I also did a little bit of searching, and I, I asked, um, I asked Astra to come up with like other, other things that poll similarly in like public opinion, where it's like X percent is aware and Y percent has used. And Astra said... Astra came up with another Gallup poll for crypto, um, where 95% of Americans are aware of or have heard of crypto, 14% own, and that's compared to 90% of Americans have heard of GLPs, 11%, um, are on GLPs. There were other similar ratios that came up like VR, meal kits. So it's funny 'cause a lot of this, like a lot of these categories and a lot of these things are like tech categories, where it's like the amount of users to the amount of people who know about the thing are like-

   4. RTRuby Justice Thelot11:53

      Mm-hmm

   5. EBElena Burger11:53

      ... this kind of, um, like, like one to 10 ratio. Tech culture is so influential that you can have lower incidences of the thing and then a much larger percent of people who are like, "I definitely have an opinion about this."

   6. RTRuby Justice Thelot12:12

      Well, I mean, that's the sort of the impact, I think, of the marketing machine, right?

   7. EBElena Burger12:16

      Yeah.

   8. RTRuby Justice Thelot12:16

      I live in New York. There's-- Every subway has an ad for every single company of GLP-1, you know, whether it's the pill or the injection. And so the brand presence is really felt strong. I think the average person knows the name Ozempic. They might not know the company who makes it. They might know how to get it. Um, but it always is a conversion from, like, actually knowing about the thing to setting up your crypto wallet or actually getting the subscription service. Um, I think of different sort of bodily things in the same way, like, um, plastic surgery as well. Like, people are very well aware because celebrities have been talking about it for a long time. But my guess is that the actual percentages must, is, is, is a-around that same sort of coefficient. Um, moreover, for a lot of these issues, when we talk about the body in general, people have lots of opinions, which amplifies, uh, a lot of the cultural prevalence and presence of these topics. I mean, right now, you can't really talk about a celebrity without talking about whether or not they have, quote-unquote, "Ozempic face." And I think that pushes the conversation even further into the mainstream because people are having to discuss whichever celebrity they like and whether or not they're on that, uh, on the GLP-1. Um, and so when I think about the drivers, I think of, first and foremost, the sort of, uh, technology being developed itself. I think about the adoption in tech-centric markets like San Francisco. And then, um, when you think about, like, a model for, like, what usually makes these things kind of really stick culturally in terms of brand awareness, if that thing can be, like, picked up by certain celebrities and actually have lots of eyeballs on it, you're gonna get that big disparity between high brand awareness or high awareness in general, positive or negative, and then sort of low adoption. Because you know about it, you've talked about it at the bar with your friends, but you might not actually have tried it.

5. 14:00 – 17:22

   Why People Actually Take Peptides

   1. EBElena Burger14:00

      Why do people take peptides? I know it's an obvious answer maybe, but, but, you know, why, why do people take them?

   2. RTRuby Justice Thelot14:11

      Well, um, let me pull out some data that I spent, uh, the week crunching on, um, what people are saying about peptides online-

   3. EBElena Burger14:19

      Nice

   4. RTRuby Justice Thelot14:19

      ... as, like, a first, um, a first example of, like, what we're seeing across social media. So this is, um, mainly around, uh, TikTok. Taking a look at, um, around 960 videos posted between tw-20-2024 and 2026, um, most of the content was kind of positive. Uh, people talked about their weight loss. People talked about how they felt better about themselves. Um, a lot of it was still related to bodybuilding, so you saw that, that set of-- I would-- As we talked about before, that connection to the original subculture where it originated. And, um, we did see an increase in 2025 and some, some, to some extent in 2026 of these sort of cont- like, contestatory content. Like, people were like, "Oh, it's kind of a scam. It's not really working." A lot of that more negative content sort of creeping up a little bit. And, um, um, one of the most common themes we're seeing in the later years, now that it's more popular, is, uh, whether or not there are safety concerns with that. So people are comparing different products. Uh, we're also seeing a lot of, "Is this okay? Is this not?" So there's these questions being asked. Um, another very interesting cons- kind of fact looking at all the TikTok, well, not all the, uh, a sample of TikTok content posted, is this idea that, um, we're actually seeing a convergence between promotional content and personal experience. At first, there's more promotional content, of course. And as people adopt more, you're, you're getting more of these, like, day in my life as a person on Ozempic.

   5. EBElena Burger15:45

      Mm.

   6. RTRuby Justice Thelot15:45

      And that content sorts of, like, um, flipped or, like, converged with the, uh, pro-pro-promotional content. And so the three main categories of content posted about peptides are promotional, personal exploration, and educational, and with a fourth category at about 19%, which is the skeptical warning. Um, and so we're seeing, I think, a lot of people l-looking for that education, looking for that information so that they potentially they can take that next step. But I think the educational, the warning, do play a big part of what people are posting about it because they've seen the ads, but they don't know, okay, uh, I've-- Serena Williams is using it, but d- should I? And they're going to TikTok, to influencers to get, um, I guess, additional trust or additional information about this new, um, pharmaceutical.

   7. EBElena Burger16:32

      Have you, have you looked at similar, you know, user journeys over other trends? And, and are there breakdowns in, in the kind of content or, or the kinds of sentiment that you see?

   8. RTRuby Justice Thelot16:44

      Yeah. So spent a lot of time looking at, um, a thing I call paratechnology, which is technology that prevents you from using technology. We're talking about, uh, Opal, uh, Brick, uh, Youngly's pouches, like all the different things that you might have around the house that prevent you from using your phone. Um, and because there's such a big sort of, I think, competitive field right now, people are asking like, "Which one do you use, and which one has worked for you?" And so you're seeing, um, everything from like cyber celibacy content, which is like lifestyle content almost about like how to live your life without your phone. You're seeing days in my life with dumb phones being very popular. And I think, once again, the paracontent, there's more content about not using your phone than people truly not

6. 17:22 – 26:48

   The Filter Farm & the Attention Economy of Wellness

   1. RTRuby Justice Thelot17:22

      using their phones at this point in time.

   2. EBElena Burger17:22

      Yeah. Well, I was gonna say, how do they make the videos about them not using their phone?

   3. RTRuby Justice Thelot17:28

      [laughs] They're-

   4. EBElena Burger17:28

      What are they, what are they shooting it on?

   5. RTRuby Justice Thelot17:30

      [laughs] Their iPhone 16s, of course.

   6. EBElena Burger17:33

      Yeah, yeah, exactly.

   7. RTRuby Justice Thelot17:35

      [laughs] Um, and they're posting it on Instagram, of course.

   8. EBElena Burger17:38

      Yeah. Yeah.

   9. RTRuby Justice Thelot17:38

      Uh, [laughs] uh, but that kind of content is very popular because in part, much like with the weight loss, it's aspirational.

   10. EBElena Burger17:46

       Mm-hmm.

   11. RTRuby Justice Thelot17:46

       You wanna, you, you wanna believe that you can stop using your phone. You wanna believe that, um, you can re-reduce your screen time, and there's no better way to feel that way than to, by proxy, watch someone do it. [laughs]

   12. EBElena Burger17:58

       Yeah.

   13. RTRuby Justice Thelot17:59

       Um...

   14. EBElena Burger18:00

       Yeah.

   15. RTRuby Justice Thelot18:00

       And so we're s- we're, we're, we're seeing that across many sort of what I would call, like, positive behavioral change that people wanna do in their lives. So it's like healthy eating is a very classic one of it. Um, a lot of the top influencers we see on TikTok right now that, um, we're taking a look at are ... healthy eating influencers both for like simple but also healthy meals, um, and they get lots and lots of views. To which extent does that actually reproduce as actual consumer behavior? Well, [chuckles] it's, it- th- there's a big coefficient there too. It's aspirational.

   16. EBElena Burger18:30

       Yeah.

   17. RTRuby Justice Thelot18:30

       You wanna believe that you can be Emily Mariko and eat-

   18. EBElena Burger18:33

       Yeah

   19. RTRuby Justice Thelot18:33

       ... salmon and rice and vegetables every day, but then you DoorDash food and you call it a day. [chuckles]

   20. EBElena Burger18:39

       [chuckles] I think it is interesting to, to ask, um, you know, are people actually getting healthier? Um, and I, I, I think there is some evidence that points to yes. On the same poll that I, that I looked at around, um, GLP usage, uh, there was also information about the overall, uh, obesity rate in America, and it actually is on the cl- on the decline. Um, so I think there is sort of a, sort of reason to think, okay, some of it is GLP usage, some of it even might be social media contagion where, where people are getting healthier. Maybe an even more sort of socially interesting question is why, why do people want, wanna be thin? And like, is there a history to that? How does that history even, you know, connect to technology? Like, how can we understand this moment in the continuum of, you know, thinness in general throughout history, or health in general-

   21. RTRuby Justice Thelot19:47

       Yeah

   22. EBElena Burger19:47

       ... throughout hi- history?

   23. RTRuby Justice Thelot19:49

       Well, that's a great question. So we actually have these sort of two parallel histories. The one is thinness in men, and the other one is thinness in women. Um, thinness in men kind of appears in the 17th century, um, after the English really boost the sugar production in their colony of Barbados. Uh, at the time, sugar was kind of reserved for the high class, and so take a look at any medieval image or even any sort of like m- medieval media or novel, you'll kind of know like to be portly was a sign of wealth. But as sugar makes its way into England, into English society, it starts to-- Its price decreases as the supply, of course, um, increases. And then you start to have sugar at your coffee houses. They start to make something called sack, which is a, um, sweetened wine. And people in England get bigger and bigger, and you start to see this, um, illness called gout develop itself even in the middle classes. And so it's Dr. Venner in 1620 who comes up with this word obesus, you know, in the, from the Latin, which means obese, to describe the portly, um, or, or overweight man, which he sees, uh, as being sort of unhealthy. Uh, he comes up with some, one of the first sort of diets to get people to reduce their weights. Um, and through that, there's been this association, um, between unhealthiness, kind of like mental dullness as well, and fatness. Um, there's this famous line in, in, um, Shakespeare in Julius Caesar, uh, where Julius Caesar says, "Let them be fat men around me," because he's like, [chuckles] "They're, they're too dull. They're not gonna sort of fight against me." Um-

   24. EBElena Burger21:25

       Oh, that's funny.

   25. RTRuby Justice Thelot21:26

       And so what's interesting is that at the time, you actually see kind of the fluctuation. You start with sort of the, let's call it, uh, a sort of Renaissance, kind of like if you take a look at the Venus by Raphael, like that's kind of the, the shape. Um, Castiglione talks about this as like the ideal of female beauty. Um, and then as time progresses, as this ideal kind of goes down, as the elites become more ascetic because they del- they believe that the restriction of their urges and passions through, of course, um, ordered eating is a sign of control, a sign of intelligence, right? Everyone from Pope to Descartes talk about control of one's appetites as a way to display of, as, as a, as a display of intelligence. Um, and so thinness becomes related to that specific idea of, "I am good, I am smart." Um, and then that also gets encoded in fashion, like when you think about like a Victorian corset, like that is a, a, a garment that pushes you to be even thinner as an expression of that believed virtue.

   26. EBElena Burger22:27

       Yeah.

   27. RTRuby Justice Thelot22:27

       Um, but what's interesting, of course, is that you have kind of two pendulums at the same time. You have female thinness and then male thinness kind of, um, going about. Um, and of course, at the time, the first person, the first people to adopt that are the elites, right? As the masses were eating sugar, sort of remaining kind of portly.

   28. EBElena Burger22:46

       Yeah.

   29. RTRuby Justice Thelot22:47

       Um, and when you think about the adoption curve of some of these technologies, especially with the price early on, right? The prices decrease for GLP-1s. The first people to adopt it were the celebrities, were the people with, you know, were the elites. Uh, and we're seeing kind of the same shape of sort of trickle-down, trickle-down thinness happening right now with like Ozempic and whatnot.

   30. EBElena Burger23:05

       Yeah. And well, and I think the other thing that's funny is like I, I was reading, I was reading actually about the history of corsets specifically, and the way in which corsets kind of went from an elite fashion item that only like very wealthy people could have to ones that anyone could have. And it was a combination both of like, obviously the invention of the loom and the sewing machine and, and sort of turning, um, sewing machines and like, like orchestrating entire industrial kind of manufacturing around, you know, a bunch of people sewing in the same place and creating lots of corsets. Corsets used to, um, be attached by like, you know, servants or like your, your like lady in waiting who would like do the back for you and do the lattice. And then at a certain point, they started designing them so you could attach them in the front, and you didn't need anybody to like help you do them. Um, and, and so it's like all, all of these kinds of like technological innovations, both like, you know, creating the, the factory to mass manufacture the corsets and like redesigning the corset so it could be, you know, um, put on individually rather than like with somebody's help. And like this is, [chuckles] this is way too much of a stretch, but the analogy is compounding of GLPs and, you know, making injection easier by like making, [chuckles] making like, like giving you, you know, your, your GLP in a pill form or in like-
7. 26:48 – 31:45

   Wearables, Oura Rings & the Rise of the Quantified Self

   1. EBElena Burger26:48

      Did you want to talk about, uh, wearables or, um, kind of where that fits in?

   2. RTRuby Justice Thelot26:54

      So wearables are very interesting. The Fitbit is launched in 2007, that same year Kevin Kelly in Wired says it is the year of the quantified self. And so that idea of the quantified self has been with us for, like, 20 years, and it was a rather futuristic, prescient vision that Kelly had in calling it that, and I feel like it's only ful- being fully realized now, 20 years later. Um, you have the Fitbit, Apple Watch in 2015. So slowly, through proper product development and, of course, like, slow adoption, we're seeing more and more adults adopt wearables as a way to control, understand, and, of course, improve their bodies. An idea that I like a lot around this concept of quantification of the self is the idea of body futurism by Toby Shorin. So Toby, uh, wrote this essay kind of like a few years ago, and I always thought it was wonderful, where he says, "Once we've reached the limits of innovation in silicon, we turn, we turn the microscope towards ourself and try to optimize and innovate on the body," and that's what he calls body futurism. And so when I think about these, like, dashboards that people have on these apps or, um, you know, waking up, going to your longevity clinic, um, even something like Don't Die, this is like body futurism, the, the idea that you can use the same tools we did to, you know, make amazing phones, amazing tech, um, and sort of revolutionize our external world. Well, now we're trying to revolutionize our corporeal world, like our internal world, um, and our organs and whatnot.

   3. EBElena Burger28:22

      Yeah. I, well, I, I think the quantified self thing is, is a really interesting call-out because that's an example of something where Silicon Valley actually did export it to the rest of the world. Uh, like, like, as far, as far as my knowledge is and as far as I'm concerned, like, as, as you pointed out, Kevin Kelly, um, sort of articulated this trend that had been going on among biohackers and maybe a much smaller contingent of people in the Valley and in, you know, in, in the Bay Area. Um, and then it, it, it gradually became a much, much bigger thing, and now anyone, you know, can sign up for something like Function Health or, like, SuperPower. Um, anyone can get a DEXA scan, or anyone can use, like, a CGM. I know a lot of people who just kind of buy CGMs that are intended for people with diabetes and, and just, you know, use them to monitor their, their, like, blood sugar and what spikes their blood sugar throughout the day, and what, what should they be eating, what's, what should they be avoiding. Um, there's also, um... This is, this is maybe one step further than quantified self. Um, but there was the group that I think, I think was majorly funded by, by Nat Friedman and some other, um, like, bigger names in, in tech who took samples from, you know, a bunch of different food products, a bunch of different, like, delivery items from restaurants and, like, tested them all for microplastics. So it was like-

   4. RTRuby Justice Thelot30:00

      Mm-hmm

   5. EBElena Burger30:00

      ... a packaged meal from Whole Foods, boba, a protein bar, you know, all of these things. And they, they partnered with this lab in Austin, Texas, called Light Labs, and they, um, did all of these, like, microplastic tests on them and, and, like, open-sourced all of the results and released all of the results. I think there was, like... And, and it also, like, set off a, a kind of, like, wave, which was, um, they, they found a bunch of microplastics in, like, baby food, and so this, like, one mom went off and she was like, "Okay, now I'm gonna test a bunch more, like, baby food and baby formula." The medical consensus is still out on are microplastics bad for you or not, but a large enough contingent of smart people in, in the Bay Area think that they are bad. And so I think, like, like, paying attention to that is very interesting and also, like, okay, well, what actually would be downstream of a bunch of people in the Bay Area thinking that microplastics are bad? You're probably gonna see, like, way more advancements in consumer testing or lab technology as a result. You're probably going to see, like, more, you know, microplastic-free product, um, as a result. I think similar, similar kind of logic might apply to, like, other, um- Other food groups or other things that, like, people are trying to avoid too. Like, I-- there's, there's an entire, you know, anti-seed oil movement. There are all of these food groups that, that get vilified justifiably or not, and kind of get a, um, g- yeah, just like a movement built

8. 31:45 – 36:37

   How Small Bay Area Communities Reshape the Whole Culture

   1. EBElena Burger31:45

      around them. And you can really kind of see that reverberate culturally and have a real outsize impact when it's maybe a much smaller but very loud and committed group that's advancing these things.

   2. RTRuby Justice Thelot32:00

      And absolutely, and I think this speaks for the need, and I, this is definitely going to emerge, has emerged, yeah, like an aggregator of whatever your specific thing that you don't want to do is, microplastics, seed oils. Like, we're gonna see these aggregators, like goods that are certified, like n- like novel ways of doing like green or organic for these things, and sort of self s- self-run or like group-run aggregators who've done the certification and the test, and are gonna keep on running it on their own, and probably their members are gonna pay a fee to know that the things that they eat are good. I mean, anecdotally, if you go to Whole Foods, the water bottles are glass. Like, you're already seeing that, I think, in, once again, sort of like the yuppie elite, uh, uh, portion. Um, but I, I think that we will see that, that kind of trickle down as people get, become more and more aware of-

   3. EBElena Burger32:49

      I just wanted, I, I just wanted to demo that we, we only have, uh, glass water bottles [chuckles] at the a16z office. Um, [laughs] but yeah, yeah, so I, I, I, I see it. I also, like, I, I make a point to only drink out of glass.

   4. RTRuby Justice Thelot33:04

      Same thing.

   5. EBElena Burger33:05

      Yeah. Yeah.

   6. RTRuby Justice Thelot33:05

      You know, that since, since plastic-free, since 2023 was the, was the goal in our, [laughs] in our household.

   7. EBElena Burger33:11

      Yeah.

   8. RTRuby Justice Thelot33:11

      Um, I mean, we've, we've-- I, I think we're seeing this. And once again, another thing that I think is very interesting is, um, taking a look at social media and how the tide is turning on some of these things. Um, and we can track, for instance, like the Ray Peat diet. We can track sentiment around it in the same format that we've seen for, um, these peptides. The sort of educational content, the lifestyle aspirational content, and based on the distribution of these different kinds, we can kind of see how far, how mature a lot of these, um, trends are. Um, and then usually once it's kind of further onto the adoption curve, you got it, you see the backlash. Like, you see the truthers come out, like, "Oh, no, Ray Peat diet is bad," or like-

   9. EBElena Burger33:52

      Yeah

   10. RTRuby Justice Thelot33:52

       ... "Actually, you should be eating more microplastics."

   11. EBElena Burger33:55

       Yeah.

   12. RTRuby Justice Thelot33:55

       [laughs] That, that's gonna come in like a few years probably, maybe.

   13. EBElena Burger33:56

       Yeah, exa- no, that's l- well, that's the inevitable thing. The, the f- the thing that I find, like, very funny is, like, I think you've already started to see that happen with, like, seed oils, where people are like, "No, actually, like, ultra-processed food is, like, really good for you." And like, you see, like, certain trade groups kind of trying to make the point that, like, seed oils are good for you, and it, it just, like, it kind of looks ridiculous. There are also, to the seed oil point, there are, um, there, there's now, like, seed oil-free, uh, like, packaging on, on, like, different snacks and things that you can, like, buy. So, so that has started to make it into the mainstream. I think, I think with, with seed oil, I think with microplastics, uh, the Ray Peat diet, like those are all way too early still, I think, for the backlash. With these, actually, I think the, the seed oil thing, we have seen backlash to that, but-

   14. RTRuby Justice Thelot34:55

       A, a, a good symbol, s- signal that something has kind of made it to the mainstream is when, um, a characteristic of a food based on one of these trends, right? We talked about peptides, we talked about, uh, uh, uh, sort of wellness and, and quantification. Um, part of the wellness/quantification is like protein maxxing. Certain foods have always had the same amount of protein, but that same number is now prominently feature- featured on, on the, on the yogurt because people are now much more aware of how much protein they're consuming.

   15. EBElena Burger35:24

       Yeah.

   16. RTRuby Justice Thelot35:24

       It has not changed. The product is the same. But from a marketing standpoint, it makes sense to, for the, for the, for the brand, for the company to highlight it because they know people are now looking for it.

   17. EBElena Burger35:33

       Yeah. I think-- Well, I, I think protein is actually such a good example of this because it's also sort of starting to fall victim to what you called out, which is people, p- just like people feeling utter protein fatigue. They're like, "I, like, you know, my water doesn't need 20 grams of protein in it," and like, "My, you know, just like, let me drink normal, normal beverages, please." Um, uh, so, so like I, I think people are, are starting to kind of like resist having protein shoved down their throat a little bit. Um, but, but yeah, that's a great example of like just utter mainstream saturation. Um, it, it-- Like protein also, it's interesting 'cause it's like gone through a lot of cycles. Like it's been introduced in various forms. Like there was the Atkins diet, then there was keto.

   18. RTRuby Justice Thelot36:27

       Mm-hmm.

   19. EBElena Burger36:27

       Now it's just like get a bunch of protein, like, like, you know, 2X your body weight in protein. It is quite funny.

9. 36:37 – 39:43

   Peptides & Looksmaxing: Are We Accelerating or Backlashing?

   1. EBElena Burger36:37

      Um, I, I think, um, maybe, maybe to close out, we, we kind of have been just discussing and dancing around as well, which is when it comes to peptides, when it comes to looksmaxxing, um, when it, when it comes to all of these things, are we just going to accelerate forever, or are we going to see some kind of backlash and some kind of reversal? Um, and if we do see a reversal, why would we see it? Um, and, uh, just, just wanted to, to get your take there.

   2. RTRuby Justice Thelot37:12

      Yeah. So I mean, the interesting thing is from a historical perspective, right? I think we're at a similar point where, um, England was with the increase of, uh, the sugar consumption, where we've been kind of knee-deep in processed foods. We've Even fast food, fast casual, um, I, I think we will see, for the foreseeable future, a big push to revert back and to sort of see health as a form of virtue, as a form of sort of, you know, radical self-care, as a proof of someone that cares about themselves, um, and potentially also this association, as I said, with Descartes, with intelligence itself. Um, and I think that culturally that's not really going to change for the, um, for the foreseeable future. Now, what I'm seeing on the quantification part, which I'm seeing two things kind of break apart. There was recently a study that, uh, did blind tests on people with Oura Rings and gave them the wrong number as to what their sleep score was, and when the number was, was, was low or negative, um, they reported having a worse day in spite of the actual true number being correct. And so a lot of these devices, if they're, if ever their numbers are incorrect, have a noxious effect on your felt health, uh, at least for that day. Um, and I think I'm seeing a lot of people push back, uh, against the quantification, adopting more of these, like, holistic or esoteric ways of, um, of, of knowing the body. I'm seeing a lot of growth in holistic practices from, like, Reiki or acupuncture or, um, or other forms of healing, um, in the same group of people who previously were doing a lot of quantification. And what's interesting when we take a look at trends these days is actually because we're in a, let's call it plurilithic, right, polylithic culture, there's multiple kind of frameworks, um, we're gonna see both, I think, a growth in quantification and more esoteric ways of knowing the self at the same time. Uh, whereas I think previously we were kind of all swinging the same way. We're gonna- I think we're gonna see both at the same time.

   3. EBElena Burger39:14

      Yeah, I, I definitely agree with, with the, like, esotericism point. Um, and I t- I, I think it relates to acceleration, but it's a different kind of acceleration, where it's like it's not, it's not like we're going to be surrounded by, like, super conventionally hot people who all look the same and all have the same, like, plastic surgery or all of the same, you know, like, Botox done or are all injecting the same peptides.

10. 39:43 – 41:54

    The Next Frontier: Sleep, Body Futurism & the Post-AI Body

    1. EBElena Burger39:43

       Like, everyone is not going to look like clavicular. People are just going to do increasingly, like, strange biohacky things. And I think, like, we're just going to see ex- like, increasingly extreme optimizations happen. Um, I kind of do think the next one is going to be in sleep. I think... A- and like, like, I think, and going back to your Oura point, like, um, I, I've been talking with some, like, hardware founders and some founders who are building wearable devices that allow you to get, like, what feels like the equivalent of a full night's rest in four hours or something like that. And I think people who are trying to kind of, like, achieve longevity, not through necessarily living longer, but just having more hours awake in the day, um, I think is, like, something that we're going to see more of. So, so I agree with acceleration, but it's not going to look like people getting hotter or people, you know, even necessarily having, like, healthier outcomes. It's just going to look like people optimizing themselves in the direction that they want to with the increasingly, like, fringe and extreme technology.

    2. RTRuby Justice Thelot40:59

       Toby wrote his essay, Body Futurism, kind of before the big AI boom.

    3. EBElena Burger41:04

       Mm-hmm.

    4. RTRuby Justice Thelot41:04

       Um, and he, uh, his, his idea was more that once we run out of things to do with silicon, we would move towards the body. I think now in the age of, um, AI, what we're seeing is in an age of great abundance, in an age of, like, potential tot- total automation, the only thing we have to actually improve potentially is our body. So I think we're gonna be focused on it for quite a bit of time for the next few years.

    5. EBElena Burger41:30

       Next few years. Hopefully, hopefully we have more than a few years left. [laughs] But I agree. [laughs] Um, well, Ruby, thanks so much. Uh, this was awesome. Uh, we'll do this again very soon.

    6. RTRuby Justice Thelot41:44

       Thank you so much.

    7. SPSpeaker41:45

       [upbeat music] We're gonna work on these legs. That's right. [claps] I call it my funky leg workout. I mean, just feel the groove, all right?

Episode duration: 42:09