Magic Pill

The Extraordinary Benefits and Disturbing Risks of the New Weight-Loss Drugs

De: Johann Hari

Narrado por: Johann Hari

The bestselling author of Lost Connections and Stolen Focus offers a revelatory look at the new drugs transforming weight loss as we know it—from his personal experience on Ozempic to our ability to heal our society’s dysfunctional relationship with food, weight, and our bodies.

In January 2023, Johann Hari started to inject himself once a week with Ozempic, one of the new drugs that produces significant weight loss. He wasn’t alone—some predictions suggest that in a few years, a quarter of the U.S. population will be taking these drugs. While around 80 percent of diets fail, someone taking one of the new drugs will lose up to a quarter of their body weight in six months. To the drugs’ defenders, here is a moment of liberation from a condition that massively increases your chances of diabetes, cancer, and an early death.

Still, Hari was wildly conflicted. Can these drugs really be as good as they sound? Are they a magic solution—or a magic trick? Finding the answer to this high-stakes question led him on a journey from Iceland to Minneapolis to Tokyo, and to interview the leading experts in the world on these questions. He found that along with the drug’s massive benefits come twelve significant potential risks.

He also found that these drugs radically challenge what we think we know about shame, willpower, and healing. What do they reveal about the nature of obesity itself? What psychological issues begin to emerge when our eating patterns are suddenly disrupted? Are the drugs a liberation or a further symptom of our deeply dysfunctional relationship with food?

These drugs are about to change our world, for better and for worse. Everybody needs to understand how they work—scientifically, emotionally, and culturally. MAGIC PILL is an essential guide to the revolution that has already begun, and which one leading expert argues will be as transformative as the invention of the smartphone.


* This audiobook edition contains a downloadable PDF with additional resources and endnotes.

Great book!

Well done research. I appreciate all the different angles/arguments presented . It is very thought provoking and I will look at my diet differently from now on.

Thorough and honest

So informative while also told with compassion and raw honesty. I love all Hari’s books and wish they were taught in schools.

Best book I’ve read on weight and weight loss drugs

Summarizes a lot of known science about weight, the food and drug industries all in a personal and digestible way. I would recommend this highly.

Such a great listen

Well written with some real “make you think” aha moments. Well done. Some science but more a psychology take

In-depth research, easy listen

This book was so good. I was looking for information about GLP 1’s and got so much from this book, along with an education on food, obesity, the culture and historical trajectory of obesity, and detailed information on side effects, while at the same time being entertaining and easy to digest. Johann Yohari has a very soothing voice and reads the book in storytelling fashion rather than textbook/lecture. The info is so good, I’d recommend it to anyone regardless of interest in GLP’s