Just last month, I marked my 25th year as a professional journalist, which I guess means my journalistic career is old enough to rent a car, no questions asked. Work in the news for that long, and you’ll occasionally find yourself surprised by things you published in the past. Like, I had all but forgotten that I had written this Time magazine cover story in 2008:
A couple things here. One, as the cover demonstrates, journalistic sensitivity was…less than ideal then, to say the least. And two, over a quarter-century occasionallycovering obesity (both childhood and adult), that story only seemed to go in one direction: worse.
It wasn’t for lack of trying. We put calorie counts on menus, taxed soda (well, in some places), built workplace wellness programs, and funded a small library of diet research. We deplored food deserts and promoted farmers’ markets. We told people — again and again — to eat less and move more. But the lines just kept going up.
By the CDC’s measured survey, the share of US adults with obesity did not change meaningfully between 2013 and 2023. The age-adjusted obesity rate sat at 40.3 percent, while the age-adjusted severe obesity climbed from 7.7 percent to 9.7 percent over the same stretch.
While the question of weight in America is inextricably tied to body image and moralizing, those numbers had a deadly effect. One demographic model estimated that obesity was associated with roughly 18 percent of deaths among Black and white Americans ages 40 to 85 between 1986 and 2006. From diabetes to kidney failure, heart disease to sleep apnea, obesity is the delivery system for other diseases.
Which is what makes a Gallup report published in July so surprising. In Gallup’s self-reported height-and-weight series, the US adult obesity rate fell to 36.4 percent, down from a peak of 39.9 percent in 2022. Over roughly the same period, the share of adults who said they were currently taking a GLP-1 drug for weight loss rose from 3 percent in 2024 to 11 percent in 2026 — approximately 29 million people. While this only shows correlation, not causation, and Gallup’s self-reported measure should not be compared directly with the CDC’s measured rate, the timing is suggestive to say the least.
And the weight might be the least interesting thing about these drugs.
Semaglutide — the molecule sold as Ozempic and Wegovy — was first developed and approved as a treatment for type 2 diabetes, not obesity. It was only after earlier GLP-1 drugs and diabetes trials showed substantial effects on appetite and weight that researchers deliberately tested a higher dose for obesity, resulting in Wegovy in 2021.
But as it turns out, the list of things that have been noticed happening on the side with GLP-1s has gotten so long it’s begun to eclipse the main event. The coverage of GLP-1s has barely kept up with this news, because weight loss is what made these drugs famous and what we continually obsess over. But it turns out, weight loss may not be what they’re best at.
Side effects may include…
Let’s start with sleep apnea, which, untreated, drives up blood pressure, strains the heart, and raises the risk of stroke. These are people whose breathing stops dozens of times an hour, all night, every night. Two year-long trials put 469 of them on tirzepatide — the drug sold as Mounjaro and Zepbound — and cut those interruptions by more than half. Roughly half the group finished the year with no apnea at all, or with so little left that they stopped being tired all day.
Then there are the kidneys. A major trial followed 3,533 people with type 2 diabetes and chronic kidney disease for a median of 3.4 years. Semaglutide reduced the relative risk of a composite of kidney failure, a sustained loss of at least half of kidney function, or death from kidney-related or cardiovascular causes by 24 percent; all-cause mortality was 20 percent lower.
And the liver: A trial, still underway, biopsied the livers of 800 people whose organs had grown fatty, inflamed and scarred and randomly assigned them to semaglutide or a placebo. After 72 weeks the inflammation had cleared in nearly 63 percent of those on the drug, with no worsening of the scarring, against 34 percent on placebo.
And to top it off, a 17,604-person trial of participants who were overweight or obese but did not have diabetes found a 20 percent drop in major cardiovascular events.
As GLP-1s — which in part came out of a hormone in Gila monster venom — demonstrate, medicine has long found some of its biggest wins in the margins of drugs ostensibly built to do something else entirely.
Sildenafil, better known as Viagra, began life at Pfizer as a candidate treatment for the heart disease angina. It failed at that, and its now-famous use turned up in data as a side effect in what must have been a very interesting trial for its subjects. Minoxidil (Rogaine) was a blood pressure pill that turned out to help patients grow hair. Finasteride (Propecia) was approved for enlarged prostates before anyone thought to sell it for baldness — and then a trial of more than 18,000 men found it cut prostate cancer diagnoses by about 25 percent, a benefit that took 20 years of follow-up to fully vindicate.
Perhaps the most famous example is aspirin, which spent most of a century as a painkiller before a doctor in California named Lawrence Craven noticed that the patients he’d given aspirin gum to after tonsillectomies bled more than they should. He guessed the aspirin thinned the blood, and started handing it out to middle-aged men, who were at higher risk of heart attacks. Craven died in 1957; the trial that ultimately proved that he was onto something — showing that aspirin in heart attack victims cut vascular deaths by a fifth — didn’t run until 1988.
The strange morality of Ozempic
Viewed this way, GLP-1s can seem like miracle drugs — but even miracle drugs can’t cure everything.
There had been great hope that GLP-1 might reduce dementia rates, but when Ozempic maker Novo Nordisk ran a proper trial, it didn’t show evidence of slowing clinical progression of Alzheimer’s. Much the same happened with cancer. Observational data had hinted that GLP-1 users developed tumors less often, but when a Harvard team pooled 48 placebo-controlled trials covering 94,245 people, they found the drugs have little to no effect on the risk of thyroid, breast or kidney cancer, though evidence for other cancers was less certain, leading to FDA boxed warnings. One plus: In some early animal studies, high doses of GLP-1 drugs caused thyroid tumors in rodents, but further research largely hasn’t validated the fears that it could be more widespread, though uncertainty about some rare thyroid cancers remains.
For many people, weight loss isn’t the end of what these drugs seem able to do. It’s where the benefits begin.
The bigger concerns largely remain the known ones, starting with muscle loss. Across 22 randomized trials, about 25 percent of the weight lost on these drugs turns out to be lean muscle mass. Some of that is simply unavoidable in any weight loss, but too much can mean a great deal, especially if you’re 75.
And cost remains a barrier: In a 2025 KFF poll, 56 percent of adults who had ever used a GLP-1 said the drugs were difficult to afford; 27 percent said they had insurance but paid the full cost themselves. In a separate Cleveland Clinic chart review of 288 adults without diabetes who stopped injectable semaglutide or tirzepatide within a year, 47.6 percent stopped because of cost or insurance problems, compared with 14.6 percent because of side effects. (The money, at least, is improving. An oral GLP-1 drug was approved in April, and it starts at $149 a month for people paying cash, while Medicare trial pricing of $50 a month for some GLP-1s went live in July.)
A stickier obstacle is the one that can’t seem to be divorced from questions about weight: judgment. As my colleague Dylan Scott wrote recently, researchers at Rice University found that people rate a GLP-1 user more harshly than someone who never lost weight at all. That makes perfect sense when you consider how contentious weight is in America — and none at all when you think about just how many people have benefited from these drugs in so many different ways.
I sometimes wonder how we would view GLP-1s if they could do everything they’ve been shown to do, but somehow not change a person’s appearance.
So much of the discourse around these drugs has been shaped by the fact that many of the earliest and most public and apparent users were already thin people, often celebrities, using them to get even thinner. But that framing has become increasingly difficult to square with reality.
Two things can be true at once: American culture has a toxic relationship to weight, and millions of Americans can and are benefiting from these drugs. For many people, weight loss isn’t the end of what these drugs seem able to do. It’s where the benefits begin.
A version of this story originally appeared in the Good News newsletter. Sign up here!
London police force tells Telegraph incident was result of ‘human error’ and it is conducting an investigation
The Metropolitan police have apologised for accidentally exposing the email addresses of more than 140 victims of Mohamed Al Fayed.
In a group update about its investigation into the former Harrods owner, the force copied the email addresses of 143 victims of Fayed in a message that included about 12 other recipients, the Telegraph reported.
Boats carrying hundreds of people are a clear and alarming trend. But where do such large vessels come from?
Providing a large dinghy for use in the choppy seas of western Europe was not a problem, as long as the order was for more than 20 vessels, they said. The sales manager at the Chinese company even had an online brochure for an undercover Guardian reporter, posing as a prospective client, to peruse.
They had a production capacity of 500 boats a month and, yes, it was possible to get even bigger ones for the right price. They could do a seven or even an eight-metre military-style dinghy for $1,678 (£1,238) a boat, without the engines, but that would be lacking CE certification, the mandatory mark that shows a product meets EU health and safety requirements.
In one court in Kent, most cases relate to term-time holidays, but non-attendance is a complex issue and post-pandemic rates remain high
As the long school summer break approached its mid-point recently, Margate beach was crowded with families enjoying the brief reprieve between the year’s fourth and fifth heatwaves. For most, thoughts of the classroom were probably not at the forefront of their minds.
But for the seven mothers and two fathers who were summoned at 10am to a stuffy room in the town’s magistrates court, set just behind the beachfront strip of arcades, the subject was unavoidable. They were among hundreds of parents due in courts across England this month for failing to ensure their children had regularly attended school over the course of the last academic year.
The boxing world was in mourning Friday following the death of Puerto Rican fighter Prichard Colón at the age of 33, 11 years after he sustained brain damage in the only defeat of his professional career.
Colón’s death was confirmed in statements by the World Boxing Council and the World Boxing Organization late Thursday.
19-year-old killed on Friday by collision with van
‘We will continue to hold Fin in our hearts’
Finlay Tarling’s NSN Development team withdrew from the Volta a Portugal on Saturday, the day after the death of the 19-year-old British rider in an accident during the race.
Tarling, the younger brother of the Ineos rider Josh, was reportedly involved in a head-on collision with a vehicle unconnected with the event that was travelling in the opposite direction.
Boats carrying hundreds of people are a clear and alarming trend. But where do such large vessels come from?
Providing a large dinghy for use in the choppy seas of western Europe was not a problem, as long as the order was for more than 20 vessels, they said. The sales manager at the Chinese company even had an online brochure for an undercover Guardian reporter, posing as a prospective client, to peruse.
They had a production capacity of 500 boats a month and, yes, it was possible to get even bigger ones for the right price. They could do a seven or even an eight-metre military-style dinghy for $1,678 (£1,238) a boat, without the engines, but that would be lacking CE certification, the mandatory mark that shows a product meets EU health and safety requirements.
BBC Sport looks at the numbers behind the drop in attendances at The Hundred compared to 2025, in the tournament's first year under new private ownership.
Привет, Хабр! В первой части я старался держаться в рамках оригинального Fallout 4. Мы исправили проблемы движка, убрали подергивания, обновили текстуры, погоду, воду и растительность. В результате игра стала выглядеть и работать заметно лучше, но по сути осталась той же. Именно этого я тогда и добивался.
Но в конце я обещал, что во второй части начнется хардкор. На этот раз будем менять уже не картинку, а саму игру: отдадим строительство городов поселенцам, добавим полноценную сюжетную линию Анклава, серьезно расширим фауну Содружества и снимем ограничения с режима мастерских. Открывайте баночку нюка-колы: дальше будет рассказ о больших и популярных проектах, а не о случайных экспериментах, заброшенных десять лет назад.
English football’s regulator is consulting on rules that will further intensify the cost pressure on clubs if the Premier League and English Football League (EFL) fail to reach agreement on a landmark financial redistribution deal.
The BBC's lawyers argue Trump's family members "have personal knowledge" of his intentions in the speech he gave outside the US Capitol on 6 January 2021.
Постепенно видя, как работает рынок труда, мне стало интересно изучить не классический формат оценки уровня оплаты сотрудников, этого хоть отбавляй, а то, сколько рынок доплачивает именно за опыт.
Для этого на сайте простой аналитики есть отдельный индекс, там все опубликованные вакансии делятся на две группы: "стартовые" - то есть с требуемым опытом до 3 лет, и опытные - от 3 лет и после этого сравниваются медианные зарплатные предложения.
Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Hasan Piker stand with Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate Francesca Hong during a campaign rally for Hong on August 2, 2026, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. | Joshua Lott/Getty Images
Hasan Piker has for years now been both an asset and a liability for Democrats. The Twitch streamer has elevated base-energizing progressives, such as Darializa Avila Chevalier and Zohran Mamdani, in interviews and with endorsements. But he’s also stoked controversy with past anti-Israel commentary and generally caused headaches for establishment Democrats who would rather not see Hasan’s favored candidates get any more oxygen.
Why? A familiar concept for these kinds of centrist Democrats: electability.
That concept has been on many left-leaning voters’ minds over the past few weeks, as primaries have put progressive candidates to the test — with very mixed results. Last week, Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate and democratic socialist Francesca Hong lost her primary to establishment favorite David Crowley. Not long before that, though, progressive Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed won his primary against the more mainstream Democratic candidate, Rep. Haley Stevens — albeit by a much smaller margin than many polls predicted.
America, Actually host Astead Herndon caught up with Piker to talk about whether the recent primary results have refined his understanding of how prepared Americans are to vote for democratic socialists, what support for unabashedly progressive candidates tells us about the changing working class in America, and the “pundit brain” problem in the Democratic Party.
Below is an excerpt of Astead’s conversation with Piker, edited for length and clarity. There’s much more in the full show, so listen to America, Actually wherever you get your podcasts or watch it on Vox’s YouTube channel.
The last two weeks have produced mixed results for left-wing candidates: a big win in Michigan and a win this week in Minnesota for Peggy Flanagan, but a loss for Francesca Hong, which was a surprise in Wisconsin.
What have been your takeaways from the last set of results?
I think the ground game is phenomenal. There’s a lot of excitement on the platform. There’s a lot of excitement for the first time for “Change Candidates.” It’s still a good environment to be in if you are a socialist.
The establishment does have a lot of juice still, for sure. And when they can put together a similar strategy to what happened in 2020 against Bernie Sanders with Joe Biden, especially in a place like Wisconsin where Tony Evers is very clearly still a very popular governor, they were able to elevate David Crowley’s campaign, who actually had dropped out and consolidated support behind Sara Rodriguez initially. And he had to drop out because he was only performing at, like, 6 percent.
Yeah, the consolidation was swift, and it was complete. I mean, you’re comparing it to 2020, in which the establishment lined up behind Joe Biden and kind of nixed that Bernie Sanders campaign in the blink of an eye. I imagine you were surprised at the result.
I never underestimate my opponents, whether they be Republicans or whether they be establishment Democrats. You have to always operate as though you’re down 10 points. I don’t believe in the notion that we are going to win easy victories at the end of the day.
There are a lot of powerful interests at play here. There are a lot of people in positions of power that don’t wanna lose their seats. So they’re gonna fight like hell, so we have to also fight like hell. We have to fight extra hard, as a matter of fact, because we’re almost always outspent, right?
I got an alert right before we started talking from the New York Times that said, “A democratic socialist lost in Wisconsin, which shows the movement’s surging wave might crash before rippling out from big cities.” Is that wrong?
Oh, I love that. Look, people are gonna have their opinions. I’ll just say it like this.
Abdul El-Sayed’s one-point victory margin showed that the Democratic socialist-aligned movement or the progressive movement was in tatters. It was obviously a failure. And now, David Crowley’s less-than-one-point victory proves that the centrist bulwark is still here, and that the Democratic socialist movement is dying.
It kind of feels like it’s wish-casting for the most part, from a lot of people who maybe want to go back to the way things used to be. My assessment on this is definitely a little bit different. I think, at the end of the day, these are insurgencies, right? These are insurgent candidacies.
We’re talking about no name recognition for a state legislator that was entirely propped up by local Wisconsin DSA chapters. These people didn’t have a lot of money necessarily, and they were able to defy the odds, and they continued defying the odds all the way until the end.
The idea that the polls showed that Francesca was a clear frontrunner and was running away with this race is utterly irrelevant. Especially if you were to look at this with a broader perspective, like thinking about where Democratic Socialists of America have gotten to in the last two years.
I mean, I remember how I felt in 2024, in the aftermath of the DNC, about where the American socialist movement was as opposed to where it is now. We are clearly a force to be reckoned with, and that’s precisely the reason why a lot of people are paying close attention to what’s going on.
And I’ll say it like this. The fact that the Hong campaign did not have any major progressive national endorsements, and that I was like their top surrogate.
There was no Bernie Sanders endorsement, there was no AOC endorsement. That did make the Hong campaign unique on that front.
I think there were a couple other races that I was also involved in where my candidates lost, right?
I mean, Saikat Chakrabarti was another great example of this as well. It wasn’t a statewide race, and obviously, there’s always clear local differences that play a formative role in how these races turn out.
But we’ve looked back at this data. There are a couple different endorsement trackers out there, and they’ll put my endorsement up there, and they’ll put, like, AOC and Bernie Sanders. And it’s very clear that the best likelihood of success usually comes from a consolidation of national progressive forces, whether it be outside expenditures coming from Justice Democrats or things like that. And with the Francesca Hong campaign, I think it’s a testament to their success. It’s a testament to how popular the platform is in general.
And one thing I will have to stress here is the salience of the electability narrative. I think that’s still a real motivator for a lot of people.
Yeah, I hear that. Both El-Sayed’s campaign and Hong’s campaign did better among middle-class voters — I should say, than the data would tell us, among working-class voters. Considering how central working-class and bottom-up issues are to the DSA message, why has it not produced results that actually get it more working-class votes? Because that does seem to be something we’ve learned over the last three, four weeks.
I think that we have to dramatically reconstruct how we understand what it means to be working-class in this country. I think a lot of people will disagree with what I’m about to say here, but we have to do away with this fantastical notion that the working-class is one specific thing.
I think for the longest time, people have thought about this hardhat-wearing coal miner as the true working class, oftentimes White as well. And the working class is unbelievably diverse in this country, and it’s also a lot more college-educated than people actually give it credit for.
I think partially this is because if you look back to the ’90s as opposed to right now, yes, if you had a college education, you were upwardly mobile. You were probably a professional managerial class individual that was going to be able to retire at a reasonable age. You were doing fairly well. It was a guarantee for getting a good job, right?
That’s not the case in America any longer. There are a lot more people who have a college degree who are downwardly mobile, who are having a very tough time in the current job market, who do not own a home, and it’s seemingly less likely than before that they will ever be able to own a home.
And that is the actual working class. It’s much broader, right? So we’ve seen in Zohran’s race and in Abdul’s race, there’s this massive group of working-class folks that constantly get cast aside as not being a true representation of the American working class, when I think like, No, that is the true representation.
Артур Григорьевич Погосов – доктор физико-математических наук, профессор и заведующий кафедрой общей физики Физического факультета Новосибирского государственного университета. А еще это человек, который по-настоящему увлечен физикой и преподаванием. Мы с удовольствием поговорили с Артуром Григорьевичем о физическом мышлении, школьной физике и особых физических задачах, которые обучают, а не просто проверяют знания.
Две недели назад выложил сюда разбор 60 тысяч составов. Комментаторы за два дня нашли в алгоритме четыре дыры — про две я знал и молчал, про две не догадывался. Разбираю все четыре, без отмазок.
Недавно мы рассказывали, как зародилась концепция QoS, начиная с первых телефонных линий. Сегодня продолжим тему и поговорим о том, как появились архитектуры IntServ и DiffServ, и как работали с качеством обслуживания в беспроводных сетях.
Alex McKee died when picking up showerhead in ‘outdoor and rudimentary’ bathroom on Kimolos
The death of an Irish teenager, electrocuted while taking a shower in a holiday home in Greece, has led to calls for tighter checks on appliances at tourist accommodation.
Alex McKee, 17, is said to have died instantly when picking up the showerhead in a bathroom described as “outdoor and rudimentary” on Kimolos.
Defense argues New York cannot try Mangione over same act or offense as federal case – the killing of Brian Thompson
Luigi Mangione’s plea to federal stalking charges in UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson’s death has spurred questions about the fate of the separate Manhattan murder case against him, with experts saying New York’s double-jeopardy law could derail that trial.
Mangione pleaded guilty to one count of interstate stalking resulting in death, and one count of cyberstalking through use of interstate facilities resulting in death, in connection with the 4 December 2024 shooting outside a Midtown hotel. Both charges carry a potential maximum life sentence.
US navy veterans and military health experts are expressing concerns about the strain on sailors aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, which has spent nearly nine months at sea supporting US operations in the Middle East, amid reports of poor living conditions and worsening mental health among its crew.
The San Diego-based aircraft carrier left port on 21 November, originally bound for the Pacific, but was redirected to the Middle East as the US-Israel war with Iran began. It has now spent more than 250 consecutive days at sea without a significant port visit, with its deployment repeatedly extended.
Prosecutors pointed to internet searches made on the family computer in the months before the killings to make their case
Prosecutors revived a theory in the Lindsay Clancy murder trial case this week, suggesting she had faked a suicide attempt after allegedly strangling her three children.
While prosecutors have been arguing that Clancy acted intentionally and should be held criminally responsible, her defense has said she suffered from postpartum psychosis.
The UK’s biggest gigafactory has shelved plans to expand production in Sunderland because of stalled talks on a deal to supply electric car batteries to Jaguar Land Rover.
Chinese-owned AESC produces batteries for Nissan at its gigafactory next door to the Japanese carmaker’s Sunderland plant. However, AESC has had to push back its ramp-up plans because of lower-than-expected demand from Nissan and the lack of a deal with JLR, according to people with knowledge of the situation.
I was struggling to make ends meet as an unpaid intern when a sarcastic song from the hit comedy gave me the clarity to walk out
It was 3am in the summer of 2017, and I was lying in a triple bunk bed in a hostel in London, listening to the sounds of the 14 other people in my dormitory snoring. I had been working unpaid internships in the fashion industry in London for the past 18 months and living in £12-a-night hostels. When I couldn’t sleep, I would watch TV on my beaten-up phone to drown out the snores. I was watching Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, an absurdist comedy about a woman who moves to New York after 15 years imprisoned in a doomsday cult’s underground bunker.
Her relentless positivity often inspired me to keep going, but on that particular night, the opposite happened: Kimmy gave me the courage to give up.
Daniel’s boyfriend thinks his youthful complexion is down to fancy skincare, and Jessica’s nearest and dearest still don’t know she’s had a breast enhancement …
Jessica was at a spa with her friends of more than 20 years when she noticed one stare at her bikini, lock eyes with her and laugh, before asking: “Wait, have you …?” The game was up – eight months after she’d had a secret breast enhancement, she’d been rumbled. Fearing judgment from even her closest circle, she had only spoken to two people who’d had the procedure, for advice, and told a neighbour in case she was unwell after the surgery. “My family still don’t know – most people don’t,” the 42-year-old from London says, including her two children who live between her and her ex-husband. “I’m not alone; I’ve since learned winter is the most popular time for people to get things done, then they can just hide under jumpers while everything settles in, so no one notices.”
For years, celebrities have endured public speculation about their tweakments and surgeries – but as procedures become more commonplace, “civilian” patients are facing the same questions from family and friends. And many of them are choosing to go incognito; some surgeons estimate up to 70% of their clients aren’t telling others about their aesthetic procedures. But what are the practicalities of disguising everything from breast augmentation to filler to hair transplants from your closest circle? And why are so many people spending thousands of pounds to alter their appearance – only to hope that no one notices?
US navy veterans and military health experts are expressing concerns about the strain on sailors aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, which has spent nearly nine months at sea supporting US operations in the Middle East, amid reports of poor living conditions and worsening mental health among its crew.
The San Diego-based aircraft carrier left port on 21 November, originally bound for the Pacific, but was redirected to the Middle East as the US-Israel war with Iran began. It has now spent more than 250 consecutive days at sea without a significant port visit, with its deployment repeatedly extended.
Sharpies are on sale for up to 42 percent off at Amazon, from classic permanent markers to gel pens and highlighters. Shop the best deals before back-to-school season hits.
Открытые веса модели мало помогают, если для её запуска нужен конкретный GPU и непростое окружение. Разберём, как запустить AIFS Single 2.0 от ECMWF через Hugging Face Jobs или локально, обойти зависимость от flash-attn и получить собственный прогноз погоды даже на CPU или Apple MPS.
Women’s football has much to gain from the kind of reforms that threats to snub upcoming tournaments might prompt. Infantino should be taken on
“And I say to all the women … Pick the right battles. Pick the right fights. You have the power to change. You have the power to convince us men what we have to do and what we don’t have to do. You do it. Just do it. With men, with Fifa, you will find open doors. Just push the doors. They are open.”
Those were the condescending words of Fifa’s president, Gianni Infantino, three years ago during a tone-deaf speech in Sydney, which left his audience, including some of the most senior women in the game, exasperated. It is a damning indictment of Infantino’s tenure that his patronising monologue on the eve of the Women’s World Cup final now barely even creeps into the top 10 of the most controversial moments since his latest re-election, in March 2023.
You can’t help but feel the Argentinian with a penchant for red cards has arrived at his spiritual home with his move to Diego Simeone’s Atlético Madrid
“He’s not that kind of player” is perhaps the greatest of the co-commentators’ meaningless banalities. Used shortly after a “nice guy” has scythed someone in half about a day after the ball has gone, it is by definition nonsense because if you have scythed someone in half about a day after the ball has gone, then you are indeed that kind of player.
But I don’t recall ever hearing anyone saying “the thing is Clive/Brian, heis that kind of player”. I haven’t analysed every foul in Premier League history to tell if you those kinds of challenges are carried out by players all of us would consider to be “that kind of player” as opposed to the opposite – but the list of players with the most red cards suggests a pattern – Richard Dunne, Duncan Ferguson, Patrick Vieira with eight reds, Lee Cattermole and Roy Keane on seven, Vinnie Jones, Joey Barton and Alan Smith (obviously not that one) among those on six.
Defense argues New York cannot try Mangione over same act or offense as federal case in killing of Brian Thompson
Luigi Mangione’s plea to federal stalking charges in UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson’s death has spurred questions about the fate of the separate Manhattan murder case against him, with experts saying New York’s double-jeopardy law could derail that trial.
Mangione pleaded guilty to one count of interstate stalking resulting in death, and one count of cyberstalking through use of interstate facilities resulting in death, in connection with the 4 December 2024 shooting outside a Midtown hotel. Both charges carry a potential maximum life sentence.
The Lebanese health ministry said children were among those killed. The Israeli prime minister’s office said Hezbollah had struck first, injuring three Israeli soldiers.
Rescue services search for survivors and bodies after airstrikes hit homes in Ansar and Deir al-Zahrani
Eleven people have been killed, including three children, and 19injured in two Israeli airstrikes on southern Lebanon, the worst toll since deals in June brought a lull in hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah.
Israeli warplanes bombed a home on the outskirts of the village of Ansar, killing seven people and flattening the building early on Saturday morning. Rescue services were working at the site to try to find survivors and locate bodies.
He sits shirtless, muscular, and shaggy, baseball hat turned backwards (of course) as he bites into a hunk of raw liver the size of a Shih Tzu. Brian Johnson, known as the Liver King, consumes and advocates for a steady diet of raw organ meat to maintain an “ancestral lifestyle.” Johnson has millions of followers on Instagram and TikTok who tune in specifically for this content.
Johnson’s fans are not alone. As economic anxiety reshapes American masculinity, a growing subculture of young and working-class men is turning to maxxing out their bodies as a way to reclaim value in a labor market that increasingly devalues physical work. Working out isn’t enough. It’s how they eat, dress, and sculpt—especially how they eat. And their staple food isn’t expensive biohacker supplements; it’s ground beef, the cheap, protein-dense “boy kibble” endlessly promoted by fitness influencers.
The rise of carnivore aesthetics, lifting culture, and hyper-protein diets reflects a deeper crisis of identity among men who see the traditional beacons of secure manhood—having a well-paying job, owning their own home, being a dad—dimming before their eyes. They’ve come to feel their bodies are one of the few forms of capital they still control. And, perhaps most interestingly, this obsession is nothing new. And, like the fads that came before, they’re following a path that is certain to leave them unfulfilled.
The history of America’s beef obsession
The history of our obsession with beef and masculinity goes back at least 140 years. In 1886, the great novelist Henry James published his novel The Bostonians,in which the unsympathetic Southern patriarch Basil Ransom thunders: “The whole generation is womanized, the masculine tone is passing out of the world; it’s a feminine, nervous, hysterical, chattering, canting age, an age of hollow phrases and false delicacy.”
Later, in 1909, Woods Hutchinson, a physician and health writer, wrote a bestselling book of health advice for young men, Instinct and Health, advising that men consume: “Meat! R-r-red meat, dr-r-ripping with b-l-lood, r-r-reeking of the shambles!”
Then, as now, economic changes, fundamental shifts in family life, and evolving domestic relations all combined to make many young white American men feel anxious about their identity, and desperate to prove their masculinity in a world they perceived as increasingly sapping their virility.
The solution? Beef. And this isn’t the first time Americans have sought to eat their way out of an existential crisis of identity.
These observations sound familiar because at several times in our history, observers have declared a veritable crisis among American men. The transition from farms, the open range, and artisanal workshops to offices and large, impersonal, factories was seen as sapping virility—just as our tiny cubicles and remote workstations are said to do today. Rapid immigration, alongside the entry of women and people of color into new sectors of the workforce in the early 1900s, arguably caused as much alarm as those same groups do today.
So, as now, many men followed the adage that when the going gets tough, the tough, well… toughen up. The first YMCA gym was built in 1869, the first dude ranch a decade later. An estimated one in five American men belonged to a fraternal order in the early 1900s, where they could relax in an all-male and all-white social space.
The Boy Scouts of America (co-founded in 1910 by Ernest Thompson Seton), and the Boone and Crockett Club (founded in 1887 by Theodore Roosevelt before becoming president) heralded the “strenuous life” as virtual boys’ liberation movements. Even the great psychologist and early manfluencer G. Stanley Hall, coiner of the term “adolescence” in 1904, wrote, “you cannot have a firm will without firm muscles.”
Today’s manosphere revives an old script
Old, bad ideas do not simply fade away. Sometimes they return as viral content. And that’s quite clear today, as the internet is awash with advice about what to eat, wear, pump up and slim down.
Today’s masculinist influencers warn that masculinity is under siege and argue that modern society has made men dangerously weak. British-American social media personality Andrew Tate claims that, “Society as a whole is telling men to be weaker and weaker, saying it’s somehow the solution to everything because being a man is toxically masculine. Being a strong man is bad,” he said on Tucker Carlson’s podcast. “To be a good man, you have to be a very weak one.”
Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson insists that “The masculine spirit is under assault. It’s obvious,” and, ““If you are not capable of cruelty, you are absolutely a victim to anyone who is.” Podcaster Joe Rogan echoes the familiar maxim that “Hard times create hard men. Hard men create easy times. Soft times create soft men. Soft men create hard times,” while fitness influencers like Liver King declare bluntly, “We have a soft man problem today.”
Together, these men, alongside others including Myron Gaines, David Goggins, and Hamza Ahmed, compose the “manosphere,” a group that doles out advice online about how to toughen up and seduce women—in other words, to become “real men.”
They’ve swallowed The Red Pill, and like their early 20th-century forbears, they’re incredibly nostalgic. They look back towards a mythic time when real men roamed the earth like dinosaurs—brawny men, physically strong, emotionally stoic, effortlessly dominant—men who worked with their hands, fought in wars, sacrificed for their families and endured pain and hardship without blinking.
The fact that such men are in short supply, and that this romanticized myth didn’t even remotely compare with the lives such men actually lived, is of little concern to today’s masculinists. Indeed, the language of conservatism is often the language of nostalgia. It’s not just to “conserve” what’s there, but to return, retrieve, reclaim, and restore what has been lost.
How beef became a symbol of masculinity
When it comes to what is perceived as the increasingly enfeebled and emasculated bodies of American men, today’s manosphere influencers hark back to the words of bodybuilder Bernarr MacFadden from 1900.
Think of MacFadden, “America’s foremost health crusader,” as America’s first masculinist influencer. Instead of podcasts and Instagram reels, MacFadden’s popular magazine, Physical Culture, and his best-selling books like The Virile Powers of Superb Manhood: How Developed, How Lost, How Regained helped instruct men to man up through diet and exercise. He even invented a “peniscope,” a small vacuum tube that was said to enlarge the male organ and thus help men feel more manly.
Then, as now, manfluencers seem to believe that you are what you eat. And beef is the most masculine of all foods. Enough with the vegetables! No more broccoli! No more sushi! That’s surely a diet for “soy boys.” (Many proclaim that long-debunked association of soy products, like tofu, with increased estrogen, therefore making men more feminine, and therefore, turning them gay).
The manosphere is drenched in blood-red carnivorous encomiums. “They don’t want you strong. They want you weak. And that’s why they’re promoting this veganism garbage,” says Tate. “I eat beef and salt and water,” proclaims Peterson. “That’s it.” (A British journalist followed that regimen. It did not go well.)
Something called “the lion diet” eschews even dairy in favor of water, salt, and meat from ruminant animals. (Monogastric chickens do not qualify.) Popular podcaster of “FreshandFit”, which boasts over 1.5 million subscribers on YouTube and close to 300 million views, Myron Gaines mixes raging misogyny and anti-Semitism with suggestions about a carnivorous dietary regimen.
You can’t eat your way to manhood
Of course, masculinity is complex. Beef is no longer “what’s for dinner,” as the old Beef Industry Council ad told us. Nor the ingredient about which one was always asking its whereabouts: “Where’s the beef?”
To be sure, you can not eat your way to manhood. But Americans have been struggling to learn this lesson for decades.
At the turn of the century, health reformers like J.H. Kellogg, C.W. Post and Sylvester Graham (he of the cracker) promoted whole grains and unprocessed foods as a sure way to prevent the scourge of masturbation.
One concern, of course, is the cost of such carnivorous gorging. At a popular neighborhood restaurant on my block, a grass-fed sirloin goes for $46. At a time when prices are hurtling upwards and men’s labor force participation is falling, meat prices have been climbing steadily, from an average of around $3.55 a pound for ground beef when President Trump first took office to about $6.75 a pound in 2026, and steak prices to over $11 per pound.
Combine these carnivorous cravings with the compulsive bodybuilding and muscle-maxxing, and you have a cardiovascular nightmare. And add to that the newest craze of “looksmaxxing” by which men sculpt their physiques and faces (through cosmetic surgery, extreme diets, and even surgical altering of facial bone structures) and you can feel the desperation like anxious sweat.
The fantasy that masculinity can be recovered through diet is as old as the United States. Every generation discovers its own version of “boy kibble.” Every generation eventually learns that strength of character cannot be bought by the pound.
Just as American men discovered a century ago, masculinity is not a diet nor a fashion accessory. It comes from within, being morally and emotionally strong enough to serve one’s family, community, and nation. That’s the meat of the issue.