Ezra Klein

They seem to protect people's heart health independent of losing weight.

They're protective of kidneys, of livers.

There is ongoing research about dementia and Alzheimer's.

They have all these strange effects on addiction and desire.

But should everyone be on these?

Like, what does it mean for society to have access to drugs that regulate desire in this way?

What do they mean for the sick?

What do they mean for the well?

I want to do an episode on this for a while, but I haven't known quite how to approach it.

And then Julia Ballouz, who's a contributing writer at New York Times Opinion and co-author of the book Food Intelligence, and also was a health and science reporter with me back at Vox.

She started doing a lot of reporting on GLP-1s, and she's written a lot of great pieces on them, including doing some really interesting survey work.

One of the survey questions that really stuck with me was if people on them, more than 60% would continue with them, even if they didn't help them lose weight.

So why is that?

Well, I want to ask Julia.

She's someone who I really, really trust to look at the science of these questions in the most rigorous way possible.

And also to look at the experiences patients are having on them in the most compassionate and curious way possible.

As always, my email is reclineshow at nytimes.com.

Julia Blues, welcome to the show.

So I was shocked by this number.

According to the Kaiser Family Foundation's poll, one in eight Americans are currently taking a GLP-1.