On with Kara Swisher - Inside the Wellness Boom: Separating Scams From Science
Episode Date: April 13, 2026On the heels of the weekend premiere of her new CNN series, “Kara Swisher Wants To Live Forever,” Kara brings together a panel of experts to talk more about longevity, anti-aging, and the money th...at’s pouring into the wellness industry. Katie Couric is a journalist. She’s also been a longtime advocate for early cancer screenings since her first husband died of colon cancer and she was diagnosed with breast cancer. Amy Larocca is an award-winning journalist and author of the book, “How To Be Well: Navigating Our Self-Care Epidemic, One Dubious Cure At A Time.” And Kara’s brother, Dr. Jeffrey Swisher, is chairman of the Department of Anesthesiology at California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco. He recently caught a so-called “widowmaker” heart attack before it happened, and his wife has also been diagnosed with stage 3 colon cancer. Kara, Katie, Amy and Jeff talk about the explosion of health misinformation online and why people have become so skeptical of medical experts. They also talk about the promising health care science on the horizon and the real secrets to living a long, happy life. Questions? Comments? Email us at on@voxmedia.com or find us on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Threads, and Bluesky @onwithkaraswisher. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Transcript
Discussion (0)
What about my fish oil?
Yeah, your fish oil's good.
Yeah, except you get fish breath with fish oil.
You burp a lot.
You do.
Hi, everyone, from New York Magazine
in the Box Media Podcast Network.
This is on with Kara Swisher, and I'm Kara Swisher.
As you might know, my new CNN series debuted this past weekend.
It's called Caras Swisher Wants to Live Forever.
It's a big look at longevity, anti-aging,
and the huge industries popping up around all these topics.
I wanted to cut through all the scams and hype and talk about the real science around how to live longer, healthier lives.
I do not want to live forever, by the way.
Longevity is also the subject of today's show, and I've got three experts with me to talk about it.
Katie Couric is a journalist.
She's also been a longtime advocate for people to get cancer screenings after her first husband died of colon cancer,
and she was diagnosed with breast cancer.
Amy LaRaca is an award-winning journalist and author of the book How to Be Well, Navigating, Our Self-Care Epidemic,
one dubious cure at a time. She is in the series. And so is my brother, Dr. Jeffrey Swisher. He's the chairman of
the Department of Anesthesiology at the California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco.
And he recently caught, before it happened, the possibility of a so-called widowmaker heart attack.
His wife has also been diagnosed with stage three colon cancer and is actually doing really well.
It's a really interesting time to talk to these people because all of them have dealt with health in a very
different way. Katie obviously was groundbreaking and bringing really good information to people about
colon cancer in a time where people didn't know about it. And what Katie did was saved a lot of people's
lives by being a great reporter with facts and science on her side. Amy just blows up in this series,
as you'll see, talking about how wellness went from a thing to make you feel better to a luxury
item and how dangerous that could be. And of course, Jeff is my brother and he's really smart about
these issues. And I will tell you, he's the first person that told me that Elizabeth Holmes was
full of shit when she was peddling that blood machine that never really worked. All right,
let's get into my conversation with Katie, Amy, and Jeff. Stick around. Support for this show
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Katie, Amy, and Jeffrey, thank you for coming on on.
I appreciate it.
Thanks for having us.
Glad to be here, Kara.
Thank you.
Good to be here, Karen.
This is going to be fun.
All right.
I'm excited to get the three of you together in conversation because I find that sometimes
these kind of unexpected groupings and people lead to some of the most interesting
conversations.
And each of you in your own way have talked and reported on and discussed and Jeff practices
health care.
And so let's take a minute.
and at each you explain your personal and professional connections to health science and wellness.
Let's start with Katie, then Amy, then Jeff.
Okay, well, I think many people remember my husband Jay was diagnosed with stage four colon cancer in 1997 and died nine months later.
He was just 42 years old when he passed away and our daughters were six and two.
It was really my first experience losing someone close to.
me and my first experience with cancer in a real way. And so I think because of my position at the time,
I was co-anchored the Today Show, I used that as an opportunity to educate the public about colorectal
cancer, which is now the number one cancer killer of people under the age of 50. And we can talk in a
little bit care about early onset cancers, which are on the rise. But subsequently, I lost my sister
Emily to pancreatic cancer just a couple years later when she was 54 and a rising star in the Democratic Party in Virginia.
Anyway, as a result of those two losses, I became a fierce advocate for calling cancer screening and cancer research in general.
I am one of the co-founders of Stand Up to Cancer and really advocating for early detection screening and more research dollars committed to finding better treatments.
and one day, hopefully a cure has really been my most important life's work.
Yeah, and you have also been doing that.
You did a colonoscopy on camera.
You also were diagnosed with breast cancer and talked about it a lot,
which raised the profile in many ways.
I hope, you know, one of the things that I've been able to accomplish
is to destigmatize these diseases.
You know, I think even though Ronald Reagan had polyps
and I guess, did he have early stage colon cancer?
I can't remember.
There's still this shame and discomfort about talking about that part of our bodies.
And like every part of our body, as Amy will tell you, we have to keep that healthy.
And I later was diagnosed with early stage breast cancer just a few years ago.
And so I used that as an opportunity to educate women about dense breasts
and the fact that mammograms alone can't necessarily detect.
breast cancer, especially in the 42% of women over the age of 40 who have dense breasts. So I've really
tried to use my personal experiences, Kara, dealing with these various forms of cancer to first educate
myself and then share what I've learned with the public at large. And it's been really gratifying
work for me. Yeah, it was very groundbreaking when you did that colonoscopy. I think shocking to people,
too, and in a good way. I told them I draw the line at a pap smear.
Okay, well, today you do. All right, Amy. So my background is as a journalist. I was a fashion journalist for many years at New York Magazine, and I switched over when I started realizing that this thing called wellness was really eclipsing fashion in the zeitgeist. And I kept hearing about it and all the fashion people were talking about it. They were switching over their fashion careers to jakeyce.
juicing or cleansing. And I noticed that wellness and our health was kind of occupying the space
that luxury handbags used to. And supplements were the new accessories. And I became really
interested in that. And I originally conceived of the book I wound up writing that came out last
year called How to Be Well as a kind of lighthearted thing. And then halfway through my
reporting, COVID happened. And it made me realize this.
wasn't just a light-hearted thing. The way we treat health in this country is really serious.
And treating health like a luxury product is actually quite dangerous. So I ended up spending
about five years writing and researching a book all about what I call the wellness epidemic
in America, which is both the light stuff about boutique fitness classes and colonics,
and face creams and supplements,
and also the kind of deeper stuff about what happens to a culture that does treat health care
and market health care like a luxury good.
Right.
And you also were looking into a lot of false stuff.
Oh, my God, the false stuff.
We better get to that.
We'll get to that.
Jeff, you go ahead.
Well, as you mentioned, I'm a physician.
I have been a doctor now for, what, more 35 years.
I'm an anesthesiologist, and so.
a lot of my practice more and more because insurance pays for it is doing anesthesia for
colonoscopies and upper endoscopies. So I certainly see tremendous amount of those kind of cases.
And I do also, my specialty is liver transplantation and just general surgery as well. So I'm seeing
a lot of younger and younger patients, you know, with cancer, not just, you know, colon cancer,
but colon cancer that's metastasized to the liver and to other areas where that is now a problem.
Katie, I'm so sorry about your husband.
It's just tragic.
I don't know if you know that Kara and I lost our dad when he was 34 years old.
He had brain aneurysm.
I remember Kara telling me that, and my goodness, so young.
It is.
But, you know, Kara asked how we got involved in health issues.
you know, we're from a health family because, you know, we've had other, my aunt was a physician
as well. And I personally have had issues with, I have muscular dystrophy as well. And I've
been dealing with that since age 40. And very recently, unfortunately, in the last year, my wife
was diagnosed with stage three colon cancer. Oh, my gosh. I'm so sorry. So, and she's doing,
she's doing well, but I mean, certainly, I suppose over the course of this, we can talk about some
of her experiences. I would love to hear about them. And I recently, in the last couple
weeks, I've had a little surprise thing happened to me. I'm 65 years old, you know, Medicare
age, thank you. And I recently discovered that I have a fairly significant coronary artery
disease. And 10 days ago, I had a stent put into my heart. Oh, my goodness. Wow. God, you look great.
Thank you. I know. It looks good. So we can talk about that too. That's so interesting that you just
found that out at this point. At 65, I'm surprised there weren't any indications previously.
Well, that's where we can talk about issues about screening, et cetera. And this is something that I'm sure
this conversation we can discuss about screening and about the values of, you know, predictive testing
and various things like that. Yeah, because a lot of his signs weren't showing that at all, which
was interesting. Wow. And it's very true with colon cancer. Many people, like my wife, for instance,
who had a normal colonoscopy 10 years ago out of the blue developed colon cancer just six months
before her next colonoscopy. But every 10 years, I would say that's a little long to wait, Jeff.
Of course it is. Unfortunately, that's what the guidelines are. Anyway, we'll go into that.
Yeah.
So let's talk about what's happened because one of the things that's been significant is there's been so much misinformation around what it means to live a healthy life.
Because as the explosion of information has happened, the explosion of misinformation has happened really rather significantly.
Katie, as a journalist, you see firsthand how people have lost faith with institutions and experts.
Now we have a vaccine skeptic, I would say more than that, running HHS.
Unfortunately, getting people accurate information isn't enough.
People believe what they want to believe.
So talk about why you think healthcare have been particularly vulnerable.
to misinformation because one of the things you set out to do was give information and do good reporting
on the topic. It is so upsetting. I read a book a while ago called The Death of Expertise.
And I guess I don't know really why it's happened, but this idea that experts shouldn't be trusted
is so counterintuitive and antithetical to everything, I believe. And I mean, I think part of it is
what Amy has investigated, which is this plethora of wellness influencers, right, who purport to
have a background that would allow them to give medical advice, and they don't know shit from
Shinola, basically, while we're on the subject of colonoscopies. And there's just this widespread
effort to basically tell people things that have nothing to do with expertise. And, I mean,
there's a whole psychological thing going on with misinformation.
I was talking to David Auxelrod earlier today.
We were talking as we're going to be doing a panel on truth and facts.
And Andrew Ross Sorkin was there too.
And we're all saying some people, they don't, you know how Jack Nicholson said,
you can't handle the truth?
A lot of people just don't want to know the truth.
You know, it's, I think kind of knowledge has been so inextricably linked to identity now
or a view of the world to who you are and what team you're on,
that people, it seems to me, don't want to know factual information.
And I think they want shortcuts.
They don't necessarily want hard truths about what they need to do.
I don't know.
I'd love to hear what everyone else thinks and why this has happened.
But plus you have leaders.
You have people in positions of authority, you know,
basically giving factually incorrect medical information. So I can understand why the average person
is confused, right? Yeah. So Jeffrey, why do you think people are more inclined to trust a random person
online over a doctor? Was it COVID that was pushing over there? Was it social media? Yeah, I think
the combination of social media and COVID. COVID was a watershed moment for this country. And it's the
first time we actually had a pandemic while we had social media. And of course, everybody becomes
an armchair expert. And, you know, in retrospect, some of the ways that things were rolled out
could have been done better. But let's just, you know, listening. Dr. Fauci is a national hero.
And the fact that he was vilified by the Trumpet administration was literally one of the most
horrific things that happened during that administration. And I think the combination of everybody's
got a platform, everybody has a voice, and not all opinions are valid. You know, like it's the old
adage that, you know, you're welcome to your opinion, but you're not welcome to your own
facts. Well, people felt like their facts were more valid than everything else. And so we have this
problem now that, you know, doctors aren't trusted, priests aren't trusted, you know, et cetera.
What is the medical profession done that has created that? Is it just that people have new facts,
that they can use their disposal, or is there something that happened? Well, I think there's a few
things that are super problematic within the medical profession that have happened. One,
One is the increase in sort of for-profit endeavors inside of the medical community.
Right?
So if you have a doctor who's pushing their own for-profit supplement line, for example,
we all know that supplements, they're not great, right?
No.
They're not going to improve your health.
Very few.
Well, that's not true.
Some are good.
I mean, like, let her finish.
And then I want to hear from you.
If you have a diagnosed deficiency in vitamin D.
if you have a diagnosed iron deficiency, you need to supplement.
But really, the first line of defense should be a healthy diet.
You start with, say, dermatologists.
I think what you're seeing is because of the merger of the beauty and the health industries
in what you call wellness, you get into a position where you don't know, you're like,
am I at the doctor?
I'm at a spa.
Where am I?
What's happening?
Like, is this medicine?
Is this something else?
So the kind of world in which health care and spa world are merging creates a kind of for-profit
industry in which beauty and medicine merge.
I mean, Gwyneth Paltrow's goop was sort of the first avatar.
Yeah.
And so you start getting into a world in which you get the kind of hybrid.
influencer person.
You also get into a world in which a lot of people don't have relationships with their doctors,
right?
So because of the way the health care system is set up, a lot of people go to the emergency
room when they're sick.
They don't have a GP who they have a relationship with.
So if you're feeling sick, you don't call, you don't have your doctor who you're
able to reach easily, right?
So, I mean, the idea that Dr. Oz is so-called America's doctor is more true than, I mean, you're getting a lot of your health information on social media, on television, because you don't have that personal relationship with a doctor who you trust, who's someone you know, you have known for years, who's familiar with your health history.
Right, so you don't have that relationship, so you're having these online.
So you don't have the relationship, so you don't have anyone that you trust.
So you're turning to these other sources.
These parisocial relationship.
That's right.
Katie, what were you going to add?
Well, I mean, I don't think you can say all supplements are bad, Amy.
I think that's accurate.
I think that, yes, food should be the first line of recourse, but there are, I think there are supplements that help.
And there was a cosmos study about multivitamins that showed that it actually had a very positive impact on cognitive decline or slowing cognitive.
decline. So I was just interviewing somebody about longevity actually a couple of days ago,
and she mentioned it. And I started taking a multivitamin. I'm 69 years old. And I thought,
it's not going to hurt me. I'll just pee out what I don't absorb, right? Anyway, so I'm not a big
supplement person, but I don't like blanket statements either. That's totally fair. I think the
supplement market has gone berserk. Yeah. And I think people spend a lot of money on
things without great deliverable outcomes. So Dr. Swisher, why don't you jump in here?
Well, I mean, I'll take a middle of road. Some supplements have shown some benefit like
creatin has some benefit. Vitamins have some benefit if for people who are vitamin-efficient.
If you have a balanced diet, you're getting mostly more than you need for vitamins and minerals.
And as Katie says, you tend to just pee out stuff. Now, the fat-soluble vitamins like vitamin D,
vitamin E, et cetera, it can be problematic if you have an excess.
There is something called hypervitaminosis D where that's a problem.
It's very rare.
I mean, if you want to spend your money on worthless things, go for it.
In the Manosphere, you just did that really excellent thing with Louis Theroux
and about the whole Manusphere and the promotion.
But the one thing is, when you say doctors, I mean, that's a very tiny percentage of
physicians.
Most of us are literally clinicians.
We care about our patients.
we want to do the right thing.
Oh, absolutely.
You're talking about social media.
I'm pro-science.
I'm pro-doctor.
We're looking at a 0.1% of physicians.
Absolutely.
The disbelief of experts, I find terrifying.
I find the anti-vax movement terrifying.
I find the fact that we've gotten ourselves painted in this position where so few Americans have
personal relationships with their doctors that they consider Dr. Oz, the doctor they know best,
so upsetting. Or Gwyneth Paltrow, they get their medical information from Goop.
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So, Katie, you know, a lot of this started with television,
with Oprah and things like that. And you obviously deliver good information about colon cancer, right?
Really, it's solidly reported information. When you watch that develop, what did that seem like
when you saw Oprah sort of platforming? Some people who had questionable situations, how do you look at that?
Listen, whenever I would impart medical information, I would talk to experts. I would talk to doctors,
you know, and of course, everything that I talked about when it came to colorectal cancer was vetted.
you know, was scientifically proven stuff.
You know, I didn't watch a lot of Oprah, to be honest with you.
What I got upset with is I think there was a big piece on Dr. Oz and the fact that he was
financially benefiting from some of these, and I'm sure, Amy, you probably really looked into
this in your book, but was financially benefiting from all these different cures and, you know,
berries and supplements and pills.
And I thought, this is so wrong.
And he was such a well-respected.
I think he was a cardiac surgeon.
He's a cardiac surgeon.
Cardiothoracic surgeon.
And I remember, you know, I know a lot of doctors, I think, just because of my cancer
advocacy work.
And he was so highly thought of.
He's such a complicated figure because he was such a well-respected doctor.
And then he became just such a sellout.
And I just think it was irresponsible, obviously, in case.
when he was giving junk science to have Oprah platform somebody like that.
At the same time, I think it's really interesting because I think it does speak to what you were
asking earlier of Jeff and Amy, like, what has the medical community done wrong?
Why has there been this vacuum?
And I think a lot of it is because not only do people not know their doctors,
as Jeff can tell you, have very little time for their patients.
You know, they have, what, 15 minutes to meet with them.
And I think the other problem that I've always noticed is people in the medical profession
are notoriously bad at explaining stuff in an accessible, understandable way.
You know, I know Alan Alda had this whole organization.
I think he still does where he works with scientists, helping them explain things in simple terms
so people can understand.
I had to learn how cancer and cancer therapies work because I was,
so desperate to find something for my husband. So I had to know like, oh, anti-angiogenesis. That's like
when you cut off a tumor's blood supply. So imagine a grape and the vine being cut and the great
shriveling up and dying. That's apoptosis. That's what happens to a tumor and cancer.
But they're so bad at kind of helping people visualize stuff. I think it's created a lot of confusion.
And I think I would say less, I mean, I would say rather than the medical profession, I would say like the problem of how little time doctors have with their patients has to do with the insurance companies, threats of law, like just the whole way the healthcare industry is set up.
As Jeff said, like, you know, my experience with doctors, my experience with nurses is.
Like, these are people who have chosen a profession of caring, and they're then sort of hamstrung, right?
Like, they have no time.
It's like sort of...
Let me interject.
Into the void comes all this very hand-wavy stuff.
So, you know, and there's also hospital consolidation, a shortage of doctors.
Let me just say.
McKinsey estimates the wellness industry, which is constrained not the way someone like Jeff is,
is estimated it's worth about $2 trillion globally, and it's only growing.
Oh, every time I do an interview, I have to check beforehand because it's bigger.
So, Jeff, when you think about this, like, is it the lack of ability to explain things to people?
Is it into the, you know, you must look at Instagram and lose your mind when you see some of this stuff?
And I was on Google, and I looked these two young women who are huge.
And I looked through all their claims, and they, all of them were wrong, like, very wrong kind of stuff.
And I called them and I said, you know, where did you find this out?
I didn't even say you're very wrong.
And they were like, oh, we Googled it.
And I'm like, oh, my God.
you're very wrong. Like it was really, they were non-constrained, I would say, because they're not
clinicians. And then you have AI, which is giving advice non-constrained in the same way you are.
Talk a little bit about that. All right. So in the area where I know, obviously, a lot about is
anesthesiology. And I'll give you two areas in anesthesia where there is so much misinformation.
And one of those is epidural anesthesia for labor. The amount of nonsense that is on the internet
about epidurals and horrible things, I actually wrote a substack piece called,
you may get groceries in my substack about my personal experience as an anesthesiologist when my wife
went into labor. And it was a hilarious situation where, you know, a doula went up and put up
these crazy things about all these horrible, like, you know, dying of narcotic overdose
when the child is 22, things like that. And so I went up to the board and I wrote, you know,
trip to the grocery store and I wrote, you know, attacked by aliens, anally probed, blah, blah, blah.
and I wrote down the corner, you might get groceries.
I mean, because the reality is it's nonsense what most of people are posting.
The other is spinal anesthesia, for instance.
Nonsense.
There's so much nonsense about this kind of anesthesia in general.
So my area, I can see how easily it is to have misconstrued information on the Internet.
I can't even imagine how complex somebody like an oncologist.
When they're trying to write super complex stuff, how much nonsense there is about.
And again, everybody has an opinion.
not based on anything but opinion with no expertise whatsoever.
It gets very difficult to explain very complex things,
and medicine has gotten very complex.
I mean, when we look at drugs like rapatha,
which is a PCKS9 inhibitor, you know, what does that even mean, right?
When you're throwing all these names around, and we do that.
We tend to use complex language to describe very complex things,
and it's very difficult to make it simple.
Yeah.
And I think that's where we could benefit
from trying to do that.
Yeah, my husband and I had this, like, game that we play called I don't know, but if I had to guess,
which is like, we're intelligent people, and you take like a tiny shred of information,
and then you just sort of spin out a narrative thread.
And I feel like that is kind of what wellness social media does, right?
And I think of it, like collagen is my favorite example.
Like, you will never find anything that tells you collagen,
products work.
Like you can drink it, you can slather it, you can...
You will not find it.
You will not find a single thing that tells you you're going to get that collagen
to grow again in your face.
Like, unless you find a time machine, like, that's just it.
It's not happening.
But you can just picture, like, all these rooms where people are like collagen.
Okay, so it's the thing that makes your skin young again.
So maybe if you push it, like, it's.
this or like, you know, you can find the demos with like these people being like the method is
you make it warm and then you smush it or you drink it and then you gargle it or whatever it is.
Like you just make up the stories.
Look at this Artemis thing.
I mean, right now, look at all the nonsense that's on about flat earth and about, you know, Apollo
hoax.
I mean, what, seriously?
How is this even possible that these things are being propagated on the internet, you know?
Yeah.
So, Katie, I want to ask you a question about getting to the real stuff.
people getting good information. Now, you're a huge advocate for early cancer screenies because of your
first husband. Talk about where we are now in this environment. If you were doing that today,
how would you get people better information? Because you can imagine how. Then everyone was like,
oh, and listen to you, right? Because besides getting the colonists be on screen, they believed you, right? Or they
felt like you did your work. And especially because of the increase in cancer rates and people under 50.
I think they thought I was responsible, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
So what would you do today?
Today, well, I think good old-fashioned media literacy is really important.
I mean, I know some people don't care about it.
I can only operate from like the reality I know because I don't understand Jeff, Amy, and Kara,
how people can perpetrate all this crazy shit out there.
I mean, it leaves me scratching my head.
But I think that I would continue.
doing what I always do, and that is talking about people with deep, deep experience in a certain
area. And also, whenever I follow someone, you know, I follow a woman named Jessica Nurek,
who really disputes a lot of the Maha claims. They believe in evidence-based medicine. And so I really
do trust when they refute something that's being put out there in the ether. And I look at their
credentials. I read their reports. I see what they're talking about. And I make a decision. I can trust
this person. But I'm somebody who has a basic background in science and medicine. I mean, very basic.
Obviously, I'm not a doctor, but I've learned a lot. So how do you get the average person not to
fall for these scams? And I think one thing you hit on, Kara, is this parisocial relationship.
And Amy, you did an interview for our newsletter with Sarah Levine, our editor.
and you talked about, you know, I think people,
there's so much magical thinking.
People want answers.
And honestly, they often don't like the answers that they get.
You know, they want to believe, you know, my joints hurt.
I want to believe that collagen is going to make me less achy when I get up in the morning.
I want to believe that I'm going to be more flexible with collagen, you know.
And so I think that people, you know, are grasping for ways to feel.
better and I think there is a lot of suffering out there, you know?
There's so much and I think that's one of the things I've followed this very with with a lot of
great interest. I'm 50 years old. So fill into that what you will where it comes to
menopause. So the case of menopause fascinates me because you have a situation where there was
some bad information out there, right, which was that hormone replacement therapy was very dangerous.
Don't do it, right? So you have a.
number of years where women are just like, nope, not doing it. I don't want to get breast cancer.
I don't want to get cancer, right? I don't want blood clots. I don't want cancer. They swear it off.
Then you have this kind of perfect storm of a number of factors happening, which is that that
information is revisited. Actually, it's very safe for a great number of women under a great
number of circumstances that collides with the acceleration of women's willingness to be treated
online, which was accelerated greatly during COVID when telemedicine, and also with the accessibility
of drugs online, all of those things that became very available. I'd say COVID probably
accelerated that by, I think, estimates around 10 to 15 years. We're way ahead of where anyone
expected we would be, people's willingness to be treated by a doctor or nurse online. And
tons of EC Capital just gets dumped into this idea of treating women with menopause online.
Now, it was suddenly like we went from HRT, we'll give you cancer, to HRT is going to do your dishes,
wash your car, pay your taxes, throw away. It won't pay your taxes, but go ahead.
But it was like, you know, like throw down your crutches, HRT is here. And what I realized in reporting
on these new menopause treatments is like there's this great news, which is that we're treating
metapause more seriously. There's drug therapies that can benefit a great number of people
with a great number of symptoms. But it is not a cure-all. It is not a miracle. It is not going to
fix everything. And in so much of the marketing of these new menopause treatment brands, what you
you were seeing was basically the erasure of menopause. What you weren't being told was you will still
go through menopause. You will still age. You might still have some difficulties. Right.
What you were being told was menopause, done, fixed, over. Right. Right. And that's what I was
interested in and what came out of that for me is what you were saying, Katie, is that like, nobody wants to
suffer. And there is so much suffering out there. Menopause is difficult. Even
with HRT, it might still be difficult. You might get some relief. You might get relief from this
symptom and not that. It might work for some period of time and then stop. So it's this idea that we
can have this certainty. Jeff, as a doctor, how do you work with patients to acknowledge that
void and uncertainty? Because like Katie and Amy said, patients want to-
Life is complicated. Yeah, but they don't want to hear that. Both of them said that. And I think
it's true, one of the things you used to complain a lot was Dr. Google, besides TV medical shows,
which you'd call and yell at me about, as if I wrote them.
Yeah.
But, but, um, but, but, but, but, but, I love the pit.
The pet.
So how do you, when you deal with the patients who were in a different state of mind who were, like,
addled on the internet, they think everything, like certain things, like, I don't know,
whatever it happens to be that I encountered in the series I did, it was like,
one thing sort of helped something, but now it's sold as helping everything.
So, listen, from my perspective as an anesthesiologist, I am very fortunate that I'm in a medical
profession in which what I do is pretty definitive.
I mean, you know, there's not really an illusion of cure in anesthesiology.
I mean, I kept people through very dangerous circumstances and operations and things that are, you know, routine things as well.
But one of the things that an anesthesiologist has to be very good at is the broad range of medicine.
So I do talk to patients in their preoperative evaluations about their conditions, et cetera, et cetera.
And so I have the ability to discuss, you know, health issues with them.
And it all goes down to the basics, though, Kura.
I mean, the most important things about health are things that we all know already, you know, basically.
diet, exercise, nutrition, don't smoke, don't overdrink, et cetera, et cetera. That's the fundamentals
of good health. Everything else is very bespoke. I mean, everybody comes with individual drug issues.
Are they on? What is the side effects? You know, should I change this? Should I change that?
Again, it is complex. There is no simple solution to most medical problems. But the fundamentals of
health, it is fairly straightforward. And we've talked about that for your show.
Yeah, absolutely. So when each of you think about this longevity industry, now I spent a year talking to various people about it. Katie, why don't you start, when you think about what it is to you and what it's become, how do you look at it? Because it really is quite a trend. The money is like pouring into it from tech moguls, a lot of them who don't want to die or want to look better. And they don't. They don't, sorry. It's a lot of money to spend to look like that.
I mean, listen, I'm interested in it.
I'm 69 in January.
I'm going to be fucking 70 years old, you guys.
You look great.
You look great.
Must be the collagen.
The HRT.
You know, and so I'm interested, but I also, I think because I'm a journalist, Kara,
I'm skeptical and I'm reasonable.
So I look at things and I think, well, this might be able to help me.
And, you know, like lately I've been thinking, and Amy, you can tell me whether this is the waste of money, Kara, you too.
Should I buy a red light mat?
You know, are red light mats helpful to, because honestly, I'm achy.
I'm achy.
You know, my joints are achy.
Take a hot bath.
You probably have a top.
Take a hot bath.
I take Eps and salt baths, but I keep, and the magnesium, I guess, is good.
But I keep reading about this red light therapy.
You know, somebody gave me one of those masks that.
makes you look like Hannibal Lecter and they're so scary. And I was actually thinking, I saw on
Instagram some lady who said, this is my single life. And I watched the whole damn thing.
She came home. She wiped her. What do you call those red, what are those shoes?
She cooked herself like scallops in her air friar. I love that you're believing Randos on IG.
She looked like she's having a great time. And then she stretched on this red light mat. And I was like,
damn, should I stretch on that red-plate mat? No. No? I mean, no. If you want to, I feel like,
you know, a big part of my book is like, no shame. Look, like, Katie, we're not going to judge you.
You want your mat, get your mat. But I don't want to waste money if it's going to do nothing.
Take a bath. I mean, look, like, whatever gets you through the night, you know? But like, is it going
to change anything? I, Jeff is not. So I guess the answer to your question, Kara, is I'm interested
I try to be an educated consumer, but I too, because I want to feel good and I want to age well.
We all get sucked in.
I'm vulnerable and susceptible to scams.
Look, we're all vulnerable.
And to stuff that doesn't work or doesn't do anything, right?
I don't know.
I literally wrote the book.
I actually wrote the book and then I will buy dumb shit all the time.
Yeah, that's exactly.
So one of the things with red lights, no, the science is very thin.
And if you're a plant in space, you'll do great.
Yes, the science is very skinny on it.
And if you have some, it may have some inflammatory help.
It may have some comfort.
Isn't it being anti-inflammatory?
Wouldn't that be helpful to me, Dr. Swisher?
Yes, but you could do it in a lot of different ways that don't cost $3,000.
That would be a very minimal way of being an anti-inflammatory.
There's probably, you know, I mean, unfortunately inflammation is a very, again, a very complex science.
and there's no simple solutions to, you know, anti-inflammatory stuff.
And don't you think, you guys, that so many people, like, they don't want to exercise for 30 minutes,
three times a week.
So they're like, tell me something else I can do.
Give me a pill I can take.
Give me a cream I can use because, honestly, I'm just lazy.
And by the way, I'm speaking for myself, too.
I'm lazy.
And sometimes I'm like, wow, if I didn't have to do that, I don't want, I really don't want to do that.
What else can I do?
Show me.
Fair, but nothing.
Nothing.
I went to a place, it's since closed, but where they would wrap you up like in a burrito
wrapper and then make you so hot that your heart went like you were on the treadmill.
But you were just watching Netflix and your burrito wrapper.
And they were like, but we've got your heart at like the same rate that it would be on the treadmill.
Oh, no.
Yeah, but you're not increasing your cellular oxygenation.
But I thought I was going to die.
I thought I was hitting the like help button.
I was like, ah.
Yes.
No, not good. Not good.
A lot of people, it's fine.
If you exercise, anyway, get it if you want to.
It makes you feel better, just like a lot of things.
No, I'm not going to now.
You kind of yucked to my yam as the kids.
Don't.
It's sorry.
These red light people are going to be after you now, Kara.
I know they are.
Wait, all the peptides people come from it.
Yeah, that's a nice thing.
Oh, God.
The best thing, if I had to take away two things from this series I did is don't be poor and have a lot of friends.
and GLP-1s and AI detection is really interesting, so is CRISPR.
Like, wow, this scientific stuff is really fascinating.
We'll be back in a minute.
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Hi, everyone, it's Kara Swisher.
I'm excited to put something new on your radar
from the Vox Media Podcast Network.
It's called Project Swagger with the one and only Robin Arzon,
and it's all about helping you trust yourself,
level up your mindset, and actually make the changes you've been thinking about.
Robin is Peloton's vice president of fitness programming and head instructor.
She's also a 27-time marathon and ultramarathon runner, founder of Swagger Society Media Company,
and a two-time New York Times best-selling author.
In under 30 minutes, Robin shares the rituals, routines, and mental shifts that fuel her hustle
and show you how to apply them in your own life.
In the very first episode, she opens up about the moment that forced you to transform her inner voice
and the strategies that helped her become what you call is a self-talk ninja.
You can find Project Swagger with Robin Arzon on YouTube or wherever you get your podcast.
New episodes drop every Tuesday.
Hi, I'm Bray Brown.
And I'm Adam Grant.
And we're here to invite you to the Curiosity Shop.
A podcast that's a place for listening, wondering, thinking, feeling, and questioning.
It's going to be fun.
We rarely agree.
But we almost never disagree.
And we're always learning.
That's true. You can subscribe to the Curiosity Shop on YouTube or follow in your favorite podcast app to automatically receive new episodes every Thursday.
So I want to finish up talking about two more things is prevention broadly. One of the things I think I really do say in this series is GLP1s are really interesting. And so is this AI cancer detection and not just cancer detection, drug discovery and things like that. And of course the AI people oversell it, as always, that it's going to solve every problem.
Jeff, first you and then, Katie, and then, Amy, talk about what you're seeing that you think is really promising in whatever area you're in.
Well, okay, so let me just very briefly.
GLP ones and GIP medicines are very promising.
And I think that we're going to find more and more indications for them, aside from diabetes management, weight loss, etc.,
anti-inflammatory effects of these drugs, cardiac beneficial effects, especially now they're going to transition to more oral forms of it that will allow more people to kind of overcome that
resistance to injecting themselves. As far as AI medications go, I had the pleasure this past weekend of
being at a party with Mark Tessier-Levin, who was the president of Stanford for many years.
Until Peter Baker's son got him fired. But go ahead.
I know. I know. Yeah, I know. That was such a really sad. He's a charming, charming man.
And anyway, his company is looking at what he calls the high-hanging fruit of the AI drug market.
There's a lot of low-hanging fruit associated with AI drug discovery, but there is a lot of other medications which will be very specific towards cancer therapies, monoclonal antibodies, etc.
I mean, look at colon cancer.
Recently, there was a large study, I think it's called the CAS study that just finished in January, that benefited my wife because the standard chemotherapy protocol, which was called Fal-Fox, Oxaloplatin, Lori Urosil, 5FU.
That's what my husband had.
Right, and that's what my wife had too.
But the five-year mortality of just that is still pretty high in stage three and stage four.
But now the addition of an antibody called atizalizumab has radically changed that.
And this is due to these drug companies, which are now using novel drugs to develop monoclonal antibodies,
and it's changing everything, is changing malignant melanoma, is changing colon cancer.
It potentially will change pancreatic cancer.
The third area, and you've mentioned it before, is the use of MRI-N-A vaccines and the ability to
potentially develop vaccines against cancer.
There's very promising things with a very fatal cancer called glioblastoma, which is brain cancer.
And some of these potential vaccines may actually cure this once completely fatal, you know,
almost completely fatal type of cancer.
So those are the three areas I'm really interested in.
Katie, what are you when you're looking into this stuff right now?
Well, I'm excited.
I think you're right.
It's probably been overhyped, but there's so much to be frightened about when it comes
to artificial intelligence.
I think people are like, ah, but look what it will do for health care.
And obviously, for my area of interest, early detection, AI is going to be a game changer.
Because I think what it can do is, and Jeff, you can help me explain this.
But the large data sets that they can compare scans to
are going to be really helpful to recognize very, very early stage.
For example, breast cancer.
And there's a woman who I read about.
I want to interview her.
Kara, you should talk to her.
She is both a scientist and a breast cancer patient.
And she worked on AI early detection.
And it will not only be able to detect early,
but it's going to be predictive.
It's going to be able to say you are at high risk for getting breast cancer in the next five years,
and then you can monitor it accordingly.
It's called organ clocks.
I just interviewed Eric Topal.
He's like, that's the real move.
Yeah.
Like detection of individual organs, and that, to me, was his most.
Yeah.
So I'm super excited about that.
The other thing I am really excited about, but I think they're not ready for prime time.
And I get very distraught when I see them advertised.
on these various cable news networks are so-called liquid biopsies,
being able to determine if there is early stage cancer cells kind of floating around your bloodstream
that can kind of indicate early on, oh, this is a problem.
We talked a little bit about colon cancer,
and the screening protocol is now starting at age 45.
Only one in five people between the ages of 45 and 50 get screened.
So we've got to get the word out about that.
But, you know, when Jay got diagnosed, you guys, I was like, oh, are people under 45, or in this case it was 50 back in 1998?
Are these just expendable individuals?
Because there was no screening for them.
And I'm hearing more and more about people in their early 40s, 30s, even 20s being diagnosed with this disease at an advanced stage, often metastatic colorectal cancer.
It is so upsetting to me.
So I'm hoping that there can be some tests that's less invasive and more accessible, not as expensive, not as disruptive for your daily activities like a colonoscopy might be.
And that these blood tests can be used to everyone who's going to get a physical.
I don't know.
I can't even tell you guys how crushing it is.
I had coffee with an oncology fellow about two months ago.
and she said, I had a very rough day.
I just had to tell a 21-year-old college student
with no family history, not Lynch syndrome,
no familial polyposis, no kind of high risk,
that he had stage four colorectal cancer.
And it just crushes me.
And I hear these stories.
I'm interviewing a 31-year-old, I think, next week,
who is dealing with it.
And, of course, I'm excited.
about trying to figure out why this is happening.
You know, epidemiological studies are so hard to conduct.
But there is something going on in our environment.
It's not just obesity or sedentary lifestyle.
You know, it's a confluence of things that include ultra-processed food,
maybe microplastic, forever chemicals over prescription of antibiotics.
I don't know what is happening, but something is going on.
and there are 17 cancers.
17 cancers are increasing among people under 50.
So what the fuck is going on?
Yeah, it would be great to have a government who studies these things.
Amy, what about you?
Well, I was excited to hear you both talk about some of the AI things
because, again, you know, I'm typically around writers
and, you know, it's like AI is the devil.
And then I was at the Aspen conference last summer.
I was speaking at the Aspen conference,
and I sat next to this woman who was talking about digital twinning.
What is digital 20?
Well, Katie, it's when you can replicate your biological self through AI, and then you can kind of run the test.
I have an interview with Reed Jobs talking about this, who's the son of Steve Jobs.
So it's basically like you can test.
There's all these very specific cures for very specific cancers, but to test them is so expensive and so time-consuming.
So you might have lung cancer, but you might have this 1% of lung cancer that they know how to treat.
But to know if you have it is so complicated to know.
Anyway, Jeff, you made a sigh there.
Well, I think it looks.
It's a very simplistic.
I am not a physician.
No, the degrees, unfortunately, it's a very interesting concept.
I mean, especially it's more interesting from a morphologic standpoint than an actual
physiologic biochemical standpoint because the degrees of freedom involved in the human body
it's enormous. You're talking 10 to the trillions, you know, kind of complexity. And so some of these things are in their nascent area. And they are exciting. And I think Rejobs is a perfect example of somebody who really will be the future of what medicine it could be. But just keep in mind, we're very, very, very in the blastocyst stage, if you know, developmental biology.
Well, that idea is so exciting because I used to feel like when it came to cancer therapeutic,
and I don't know, Jeff, if you feel like this,
and I'm sure going through what you're going through with your wife,
but, you know, they would just kind of throw it against the wall
and see what sticks.
And I remember there was one doctor when Jay was sick
who could take a tissue sample and put it in a petri dish
and then, you know, see how it interacted with various therapies.
And, you know, when he was sick, it was 5FU and Leukovor and that was it.
And that had been around since the 50s.
So they hadn't even added the oxyloblatin yet, you know, when Jay was sick.
But this idea that, you know, cancer is like a million different diseases and a million different
biologies, how it interacts with your body.
It just varies from patient to patient.
But the idea, I think, is so exciting that instead of using people as human guinea pigs
and just trying these therapies and testing their, you know, checking their CEA levels.
That you could run all these possibilities.
Yeah.
That to me is thrilling if it could happen.
It is actually.
The problem is when they overpromise,
like, Jeff was the first person who told me
Elizabeth Holmes was full of shit, just so you know.
Oh, my God.
Like, yeah, I wasn't going to cover her anyway,
but she was around the tech sector quite a bit.
She tried to look like Steve Jones.
And you just said no.
No, Jeff is like, you can't do that with a blood sample.
You can't.
Physics.
It's just math.
It's math.
A bile that you'd find in a dollhouse.
I went to see her when I dropped my daughter off at Stanford.
And I was, I called her and I was like, can I just come and say hi?
And this was when she was such the it girl, you know, on the cover of every magazine.
And it was, it was fascinating.
But she seemed so sincere.
Of course she was.
Did you smell her at?
Did you think, you know?
Well, Jeff did.
I'm like so trusting and think the best of people.
And I was like, wow, this is so exciting.
No, he definitely was like, you can't do that.
When she wouldn't do an interview.
and I remember she did an interview at Vanity Fair.
I don't know if you were there at one of these summits.
Yes, I was there.
And do you remember Maria Shriver interviewed her?
And I raised my hand and I said,
can you explain how you can take a minuscule,
a tiny drop of blood
and determine so many different diseases
from such a small sample of blood?
I just don't understand it.
Well, she said a chemistry happens was her,
direct quote. Yes, a chemistry does in fact happen. A chemistry happened. The math is not mathing.
Yeah, Jeff kept yelling math at me. And I'm like, you know what? And this is where statistics and
knowledge of basic science is a fundamental thing in looking at all of these things. Yes, I was sitting at a
table of all people with Bob Eiger. And he goes, huh, you're always looking for women. You should interview her.
I said, I think she's a liar. And he goes, why? And I said, she lied about a couple of small things,
like who she was dating, where she was living, because I knew where she lived. You know what I mean? And she told
all these lies and stories. And I said, then there's too much press. And then my brother says,
there's no math to it. And so I think she's a liar. And he said, you think everyone's a liar.
And I go, I think you're not a liar. And it was a really interesting moment. Then a week
later, it all got out. And he goes, how did you know? And I said, I didn't. She just lied about
her home. Look, it sounds dumb. All right. We're a good yin and yang, Kara. I believe everyone, and you believe
no one. I don't. But you asked the killer question. You didn't believe her. So let me finish
show up. After all we've discussed, what's the number one thing each of you would tell people about
prioritizing about your health? And what's your secret to a longer life? Katie, then Amy, then Jeffrey,
who I hope lives the longest of all because he's my beloved brother. Oh, thanks. Well, I hope we all live
a long time. All right, Katie. I guess for me, I mean, I think it's just like the boring stuff,
Kara, it's like eating well and moving your body, getting plenty of sleep. And I also really believe
in the power of community. You know, I interviewed Vivek Murthy a lot when he was Surgeon General about
the loneliness epidemic and how isolation and loneliness can be so detrimental to your health. So,
and laugh. I try to enjoy my life and be positive. I mean, it's sort of boring and obvious, but
that's what I do. And by the way, there's more science to community much more by far than there is red light. But go ahead, Amy. It's true. I agree with everything Katie said. It is the basics. Everyone is like, oh, come on. You did all this research. Like, come on, you can tell me. And I'm like, God, I wish I'd be doing it. But it's the really boring stuff. It's getting enough sleep. It's drinking enough water. It's not eating junk food. It's being with your
people, it's loving, freely, and all of those things. And as you said, it's also not being poor
because the things that we're calling basics right now are really not available to a lot of people
in this country. That's so true. And I think it's really important to acknowledge that. And I think
when I said I had a really important moment when I was researching this book, when COVID happened,
look who got sick and who died in America. It was not subtle. It was like a flashed,
neon sign. When you look at who got sick and who died in America of COVID, you're 100%
it should have been the wake-up call about how our health care is handled in this country.
The racial and the socioeconomic divide was stark as could be. So the things we're calling
basics are not basic for a lot of people. That is so important. I'm so glad you both
called that out. So when people say to me like yoga or Pilates, I'm like, look, if you're talking yoga versus
Pilates, like, you're fine. You know, I think about this all the time. I helped a friend of mine's dad
who has a rare cancer get into a well-known institution and talk to a really experienced smart doctor
where I think his clinician had no expertise in his specific kind of cancer. And, and
And I was like, this just sucks.
You know, like if you're not educated and informed about a certain situation or you don't
have contacts or connections, even if you aren't necessarily poor, you're kind of screwed.
And I wish we could fix the whole health care system.
And, you know, it shouldn't rely on your zip code whether you can not only eat healthy,
but whether you live or die.
And these social determinants of health, if you want to get really depressed about health care in America,
just look at, you know, who lives and who dies with certain diseases.
It's actually, it's terrible.
Yeah, yeah, exactly right.
Zip code makes a huge difference.
All right, Jeff, finishes up.
So, I mean, quality over quantity.
I mean, I'm a very strong believer that life without quality, you don't need death quantity.
It's just not worth it.
So, I mean, the basics, floss your teeth, you know, hydrate, eat good food.
And most importantly, as Kara is going to point out in her series, have connections,
have social connections with your friends and family, be present and help others.
And I think when you help others, you form a network that expands like ripples on a pond.
And that's where we can do the most good for everybody and, you know, for ourselves.
And that's how we live long and healthy and happy lives.
What about my fish oil?
Yeah, your fish oil is good.
Yeah, except you get fish breath with fish oil.
You burp a lot.
Put that down and go cook yourself a piece of salmon.
I'm having salmon.
My husband's making me salmon right now.
Have that instead of the fish oil down.
You need the fish oil.
It's too much.
Oh, my God.
No, it's fine.
Fish oil is not going to hurt you.
Just don't take the whole bottle.
Thank you, Jeff.
You know.
And I read your colonic chapter in your book.
Amy, holy moly. How did you agree to do that?
You know, I was like, I'm never going to do it again. It was horrible. Oh my God, that
subway ride home to Brooklyn. All right. We'll end on that. And then you can see what
you can see what happens to me when I take ketamine in the first episode of the show.
Anyway, oh, never again. Hey, it's a great drug. I use it on people every single day. It's a, it's a
fantastic medication. Yeah, it's a medication that shouldn't be taken by Elon Musk, who's then
running our country.
Anyway, thank you all so much.
I really appreciate it.
We could talk for a long time,
and maybe I'll have you back to talk more.
I wish you all along and happy life.
I really do.
And a health span and not just a lifespan,
which is the way you say it these days.
Anyway, thank you so much, Katie, Amy, and Jeffrey.
Thanks, Kara.
Thank you.
Thank you.
One small thing before we go,
want career advice from Kara Swisher,
now's your chance.
Send a video to on at voxmedia.com.
and you might be featured.
I can't wait to see what you've got.
Ask any question.
I'll try to answer it.
Today's show was produced by Christian Castro Roussel,
Michelle Alloy, Catherine Millsop, Megan Bernie, and Kaelin Lynch.
Nishat Kerwa is Vox Media's executive producer of podcasts.
Special thanks to Bradley Sylvester.
Our engineers are Fernando Aruta and Rick Juan,
and our theme music is by Tracademics.
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Thanks for listening to On with Carous Swisher from Podium Media, New York Magazine,
the Vox Media Podcast Network, and us.
We'll be back on Thursday with more.
