PJ Vogt

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This week, we are covering peptides, not as a medical story.

This is not about whether you, dear listener, should take peptides.

Who do you think I am, Andrew Huberman?

We're covering it as anthropology, meaning we want to know how so many disparate groups of Americans in such a short time went from not having heard of these drugs to buying them online from Chinese factories and injecting them into their bodies.

This is a story about the internet and how it connected some unlikely communities.

And I heard it from two different reporters.

The first one you'll meet, she writes a substack I've been reading more and more these days as I continuously try to make sense of our evolving internet.

First things first, can you just introduce yourself?

AI and Silicon Valley culture.

That's how you describe your beat?

I really enjoy your writing.

As somebody who's on the East Coast and feels like strange ideas are moving through San Francisco very quickly, sometimes they make it here, sometimes they don't, but it feels like a laboratory for weird shit.

Like not just technology, but just like ways to live.

Why are you drawn to that?

Like why do you like being there for that?

So you're running around here talking to all these people far from the emperor's view.

One of the stories that has, I feel like it's been percolating for the past couple of years.

I had an awareness of it, but anything that involves science or medicine, I'm always like, how long can I wait before I have to actually understand this?