During a short career in tech, I quickly realized I did not like my job. Rather than confront what this meant for my future, I decided to channel my energy into how much weight I could lift.
This now near-decade-long focus on self-improvement has resulted in the consumption of hours upon hours of health content, much of it from podcasts hosted by fit dudes, such as “The Peter Attia Drive,” “The Proof With Simon Hill,” “The Rich Roll Podcast” and, occasionally, “The Joe Rogan Experience.” It’s a genre that’s been referred to — often with an eye-roll — as “bro science,” a term used to dismiss anything a guy like me might say in the realm of fitness and nutrition if he’s deemed annoying.
If you’ve heard about delaying your morning coffee, the cognitive benefits of creatine supplements, the popularity of cold plunges or the stamina-boosting effects of moderate exercise, you know what I’m talking about. These ideas can fall somewhere on the spectrum of scientifically untested to scientifically pointless.
Sometime last year, I realized that bro science was no longer just for the bros. A friend asked if I’d heard of Andrew Huberman, a professor of neurobiology at Stanford who hosts a popular health and science podcast called “Huberman Lab.” He’d heard about it from his mom. Bro science has always run parallel to big wellness brands aimed at women, like Goop — pointing in the same direction, but not always overlapping. Now it’s reaching a far wider audience.
If you’re worried about your husband or your mom getting medical advice from a muscled guy with a mic, let me explain something: Being into wellness isn’t always about health. These podcasts are often about human performance. But they’re also a performance. As in entertainment. They’re about companionship. In fact, wellness is probably healthiest when it’s treated like a hobby, or even as a spectator sport.
A stereotypically straight male obsession with wellness is sometimes coded to align with less than palatable politics, which makes sense when you consider how many questionable influencers — including vaccine skeptics, that one guy who saw a U.F.O. and President-elect Donald Trump — have appeared on Joe Rogan’s podcast. But I refuse to cede my love of fitness to the far right.
For me, listening to these podcasts carries a greater risk of taking an expensive placebo than getting red pilled. I’m aware that much of the content overcomplicates healthy living, and I would venture a guess that many listeners already have a steady grasp on the basics of health — exercise, get enough sleep, hydrate, eat vegetables. (Though if you want an all-meat diet, there are podcasters for you.)
Like any hobby, wellness can provide a sense of purpose and community, and maybe even some personal growth. The constant reminder of health may help reinforce the important stuff. It can make health practices feel like less of a chore and more of an enjoyable, self-expressive activity. I also know you can engage in it without adhering to every concept discussed, such as mouth taping (taping your mouth closed while sleeping to encourage breathing through your nose), intermittent fasting (not eating for a period of time each day or week) or experimenting with the herb ashwagandha. (In full transparency, I practice intermittent fasting, intermittently.)
Sure, it sometimes feels like the unspoken guidance around cold plunges is that they only work if you tell everyone you know about them. But there is a quiet crowd of wellness consumers who religiously take their daily five grams of creatine and still manage to be normal people.
If I sound defensive, as though I’m on the back heel of my barefoot sneaker, it’s because I kind of am. I am married, and I’ve listened to several dozen hours of Andrew Huberman’s podcast. But I am not a “Huberman husband,” as reporters, including at The Times, have described men who subject their wives to the knowledge they’ve discovered on his podcast. I am instead running an N-of-1 study where sometimes I try stuff I hear about from wellness gurus. I leave my wife out of it so she doesn’t complain about me in the media. If we can binge-watch shows like “Love Is Blind” with a sense of remove, shouldn’t we be able to do that with our wellness podcasts?
Foundation-shifting developments in health don’t occur on the cadence of a regular podcast schedule. And I don’t expect them to. But the hint of health reminds me to do things that are good for me, performing my weight training while picturing myself strong enough to lift my currently nonexistent grandchild well into old age.
But those of us who dabble in this stuff should also do so with our eyes wide open, especially as it becomes more widespread and harder to fact-check. Some of the worst that the wellness world has to offer is neatly packed into Robert Kennedy Jr.’s Make America Healthy Again platform. Mr. Trump has said that he will let Mr. Kennedy — the most “I heard about this on a podcast” kind of guy — “go crazy” on health care. And that horrifies me. A healthy skepticism of Big Pharma and the health care industry is reasonable, and much of that is discussed on these podcasts, too. But more outlandish issues, like the alleged dangers of Wi-Fi, could soon be entertained by the leader of the United States. (I agree that the internet can irreparably destroy one’s brain, albeit in a different way than Mr. Kennedy suggests.)
In some ways, the institutional barriers to health care have made this progression inevitable. Free health content is a major market in the United States where mentioning you’ve recently seen your primary care physician is like saying you’ve gifted your butler a new top hat. That’s great for you, but many of us cannot relate. The average wait time to book a new primary care doctor is 26 days — granted you can afford one.
For now, when I tune in to my podcasts, I take the tips I like and leave out what I find less useful. If I’m unsure which is which, I’ll ask a doctor (if I can get an appointment) and brace for a grimace when they ask where I heard it. I still don’t know what the secrets to longevity are — and I am not aspiring to live into triple digits. I’m bracing to hear more questionable solutions to very real problems, but I’m not going to take them seriously. I just want to lift in peace.
The post I Refuse to Cede My Love of Fitness to the Far Right appeared first on New York Times.
