Karen Maschke

I'm Brittany Luce, and you're listening to It's Been a Minute from NPR, a show about what's going on in culture and why it doesn't happen by accident.

I actually want to start with you, Jasmine.

Can you set the scene for us?

What is the new trend making its way through Silicon Valley?

And what is it hoping to hack?

And I want to note here that the P and GLP-1, that stands for peptide.

When I first came across your story, I was like scanning, scraping the inside of my brain, trying to remember the last science class I took in 2004.

For those of us who don't know or simply may not remember, what are peptides?

Okay.

So Karen, as a bioethicist, can you break down what makes biohacking so compelling to people, like especially in the tech space?

Karen, when you bring up this idea that like,

Regulations take too long or it's too difficult to be able to have access to the things that you feel that you might need or people might feel that they need to be able to change their body or their life in the way that they want to.

It makes me think of something that one of your sources, Jasmine, said in your article.

They said that these peptides, or there was a certain peptide that they were discussing, I believe it was oxytocin, and they described it as like ozempic for autism.

What does it say about both this specific culture that you're looking into in Silicon Valley, but also...

our American sort of culture and our attitudes about bodies and health more broadly, that ozempic is being used as a kind of shorthand term for like a very simple quick fix.

I can't lie.

I would be laughing very heartily the day that that really goes wrong because

For a person who doesn't want to live that life.

But I mean, aside from that, which is like a very specific circumstance that I personally find hilarious.