Puff Piece

By: John Safran

Narrated by: John Safran

Length: 10 hrs and 2 mins

Publisher's summary

The folks that bring you Marlboro - Philip Morris - are wheezing, slowly dying. Cigarettes are out of favour with everyone, from world governments and investors to, increasingly, smokers. So, what's their plan?

Prepare to be dazzled. Or, at the very least, befuddled.

Philip Morris has announced they will shut down as a cigarette company, and relaunch as a health enterprise, dedicated to convincing the one billion smokers of the world to quit.

The ever-curious John Safran leaves his apartment to find out what on God's green earth is going on. As he starts digging away he discovers a company up to brand-new shenanigans, wangling their way into unexpected places, desperately trying to keep their tobacco business alive by brandishing a mysterious new doohickey called an IQOS.

And not only that, now they're upending language itself, changing the meaning of words. Will they slip past bans by convincing governments they don't sell 'cigarettes' but rather 'HeatSticks', and that these don't emit 'smoke' but 'aerosol'? Can John get the real story out of them without his life catching fire?

Wild, hilarious and thought-provoking, Puff Piece is a probing look into Big Tobacco and the vaping industry, and how words can be literally a matter of life and death.

©2021 John Safran (P)2021 Penguin Random House Australia

Entertaining but meandering

This probably could have been a long essay rather than a whole book. It was entertaining enough but didn't really go anywhere in the end.

I'm still none the wiser about how safe the fire sticks or other vaping devices are

Excellent Blend of Comedy and Journalism

So much fun, and so interesting!
This is the most enjoyable non-fiction I’ve read/listened-to in a long time. While primarily focussed on Philip Morris, the content expands into so many compelling areas; such as language, lobbying, law, semantics, corporations, generational concerns, apathy and moral culpability. And the whole time the book is hilarious - John Safran is interested in the inconsistencies and complicated aspects to any issue, but also always finds a way to make hilarious! Self-deprecation mixed with political and social insight.