#21: Why Health Became the New Religion | Alan Levinovitz

Why do people lose their minds over seed oils, raw milk, carnivore diets, and long Covid? Alan Levinovitz isn't a doctor or a health journalist — he's a religion scholar. And from that vantage point he noticed something you can't un-see: the way most of us think about health functions exactly like a religion, complete with ideas of purity, contamination, salvation, and tribes that turn on you the moment you question the doctrine.

Michael Easter sits down with Alan to unpack his explosive WIRED piece on long Covid and the vicious backlash it triggered. They get into why so many of our fiercest health arguments aren't really about data at all — they're about identity. Alan shares more points to illustrate his thesis, like the “guru” who mailed strangers his own feces to prove a health theory, and how the term "natural" in wellness circles became a stand-in for "holy."

Two Percent is hosted by Michael Easter. Today’s episode was produced by Joey Fischground, Robbie Hiser, Dana Brawer and Julia Nutter. From Kaleidoscope, our executive producers are Mangesh Hattikudur and Kate Osborn and Julia Nutter. From iHeart, our executive producers are Katrina Norvell and Nikki Ettore. Our Head of Video is Maria Paz Mendez Hodes. This episode was edited by Will Mayo. Our theme music is by the Heater Manager.

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Chapters:

00:00 — Cold open

00:52 — Why we think about health like a religion

02:11 — The WIRED long-Covid piece and the backlash

03:57 — $2 billion, five years, and still no biomarker

09:07 — "Natural" is just a secular word for "holy"

10:31 — Why people really choose natural childbirth

14:44 — The man who mailed his poop (and RFK Jr.'s shirtless pushups)

16:27 — How to weigh evidence vs. personal experience

19:56 — Why one study means almost nothing

23:28 — Why people get so vehement about health

31:28 — A hunter-gatherer village gets electric light

35:02 — "A lot of caves with a lot of trolls in them"

42:14 — Fear, danger, and why CPS takes long-Covid kids

46:59 — How debilitating long Covid actually is

51:53 — The "web of belief": why raw milk leads to anti-vax

1:12:18 — 20 people "overdose" by touching nothing

1:15:50 — We called them lazy. Then came Ozempic.

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