Pumped-up nonsense or the real deal? Peter Attia and the rise of bro science

One of the biggest stories to travel retired from Donald Trump’s triumph successful US the statesmanlike predetermination is the power of the podcast. Specifically, the powerfulness of the Joe Rogan Experience, the astir fashionable programme successful the world. Did it assistance the Donald triumph the election? There’s a beardown lawsuit to beryllium made for it. Rogan, whose podcast holds immense sway implicit legions of young men, a captious demographic which Trump's run continually courted, explicitly endorsed the winning campaigner the time earlier the predetermination close aft helium published an occurrence with Trump’s biggest cheerleader, Elon Musk.

In this podcast manosphere, 1 genre reigns supreme: wellness & fitness. It's a ripple effect of the Right's obsession with accepted masculinity, and a improvement immoderate person termed “bro science". It includes specified voices arsenic Rogan’s, a comedian turned commentator who opines decisively connected matters similar cryotherapy and vaccines, arsenic good arsenic Andrew Huberman's, an subordinate prof of neurobiology astatine Stanford whose podcast, the Huberman Lab, is successful the Spotify Top 30.

One of the astir reputable figures successful the abstraction is Peter Attia, big of The Drive, who appears contiguous connected The London Standard's Brave New World podcast. Attia is simply a doc and bestselling writer whose backstage signifier offers bespoke services to a prime radical of clients. One of them is Steven Levitt, a University of Chicago economist and the co-author of Freakonomics, who earlier this twelvemonth described Attia to the New Yorker arsenic a antheral who has “always been extreme”. More than world rigour, this is what characterises the bro scientist: a gruelling, quasi-unachievable level of manliness based connected regimen, subject and pushing the boundaries of what’s possible. The duplicate preoccupations of astir bro scientists are, naturally, longevity and self-optimisation.

However amusive it whitethorn beryllium to lampoon the bro scientists (“if you locomotion barefoot connected the writer for, like, 10 minutes it wholly balances your body’s electrical charge”), their entreaty is undeniable. Attia’s male-skewing assemblage is good into the tens of millions – for The Drive – and helium has much than a cardinal followers connected Instagram unsocial – including Mark Hyman, Gwyneth Paltrow and Sofia Vergara. He completed his wide country residency astatine Johns Hopkins Hospital, followed by 2 years successful surgical oncology astatine the National Cancer Institute. He past worked arsenic a absorption advisor and returned to medicine conscionable implicit a decennary agone arsenic an entrepreneur. He’s known for providing unfettered explanations of analyzable technological phenomena, and his refusal to dumb things down has won him immense support.

More importantly, he’s catchy. While moving astatine McKinsey & Co from 2006 to 2008, Attia acquired the self-inflating fluency of the absorption consultant. He refers to the existent authorities of healthcare arsenic “Medicine 2.0” and the preventative exemplary which helium supports arsenic “Medicine 3.0”. In 2012, helium founded a session dedicated to the pursuit of longer beingness – Early Medical – and has continually supported probe and exertion designed to widen quality healthspan to lucifer beingness expectancy.

Attia’s qualifications are impeccable connected paper, but what astir his ideas? What beingness philosophies are his listeners expecting to ingurgitate? Attia has ne'er sought to beryllium a guru; yet millions flock to him for proposal not connected however to unrecorded their lives. It’s the strong-man adulation problem: he's bully astatine wellness & fitness, truthful helium indispensable beryllium bully astatine life. The contented with bro subject is not bro subject itself, but that audiences expect doctors and nonrecreational bodybuilders to supply them with robust motivation and philosophical positions. 

When they do, the effect is laughably shallow – though the modern lexicon of productivity has a mode of zhuzhing it up. “Pull your socks up” becomes “people who follow a mindset of proactive accountability acquisition important improvements successful some their idiosyncratic and nonrecreational outcomes”.

Attia, for his part, has go a byword for defenders of bro science, who mention him whenever idiosyncratic derides the movement’s quackeries. He flirts with the aforesaid topics, and rubs shoulders with the aforesaid names arsenic Rogan, but his views are much palatable. He speaks retired against vaccine scepticism and conspiracy theories; his 2023 book, Outlive, talks up the worth of being benignant to oneself amid the pursuit of cleanable health. He recalls a clip erstwhile helium followed a regimen truthful restrictive helium denied himself pasta during trips to Italy. “I was doing everything to unrecorded longer,” helium wrote, “despite being wholly miserable emotionally.”

Attia is, much importantly, a antheral of extremes. He fasts, ne'er drinks effect juice, and his meal consists of 4 eggs and 4 ovum whites with toast and food – which strikes maine arsenic acold supra the recommended dose for keeping down cholesterin levels. He besides takes rapamycin, a cause usually reserved for organ-transplant patients. This has occasionally fixed him rima sores – but it has besides been known to widen the lives of laboratory animals. Clearly, Attia thinks, that is crushed capable to springiness it a spell – and to notation it successful his book, which has sold much than 2 cardinal copies. In speech with the New Yorker, Attia insisted that helium did not overtly urge rapamycin. But it would beryllium naive not to recognise that devoted readers and listeners of The Drive volition spot this and think, hey, I’ll effort this too.

There is simply a wider problem, still, with bro science: the lack of women. Bar Rhonda Patrick, a erstwhile impermanent connected Brave New World, each the big-name players are male. Science has, historically, skewed successful men’s favour: for overmuch of the 20th century, women were absent from objective trials owed to inherited perceptions of the antheral assemblage arsenic “default”, portion much probe backing was directed towards conditions that affected men much prominently (like cardiovascular diseases). By contrast, diseases that predominantly impact women (like endometriosis oregon autoimmune diseases) person been historically under-researched. If a extremity similar longevity is, arsenic Attia and others claim, the aboriginal of medicine, it doesn’t bode good for women if men are calling astir of the shots. 

Attia seems much preoccupied, however, with different interest of the longevity movement's critics: the paradox that, arsenic we turn older and suffer our capacities, we thin to go happier and much content. One of the lone different well-known women successful the space, a workfellow of Andrew Huberman’s, Laura Carstensen, argues that arsenic radical age, they go much selective astir however they walk their clip – and who they walk it with. Carstensen is the founding manager astatine the Stanford Longevity Center and has formalised the commonly held presumption that the aged are astatine their happiest erstwhile they set their expectations, alternatively than trying to combat the inevitable. The precocious Daniel Kahneman, for his part, believed the elderly’s contemplation of decease compelled them to look backmost connected affirmative memories and bespeak connected lives good lived.

Against these duplicate logics, Attia proposes a 3rd way, successful which we don’t conscionable unrecorded beyond 100 but bash truthful with an capable assemblage and an capable mind. What Attia wishes to bash is destruct diminution – for america each to dice peacefully successful our slumber without anterior warning. I wonder, if radical are near incapable to hole for the nonaccomplishment of their loved ones, wherever that leaves grief. But past again, morals aren’t truly the bro scientist’s bag.