Welcome to GLP-World
Ozempic’s societal impact goes way beyond suppressing hunger pangs. It may fundamentally rearrange a large swathe of humanity’s relationship with desire, ambition, even violence.
Welcome to another edition of Generalist Intelligence, the weekly intelligence briefing that delivers situational awareness in 20 minutes or less. To unlock the full briefing, join as a member.
This week, we distill the second and third-order effects of GLP-1s, a narrative violation in AI, and growing tension around rare earth minerals.
— Mario
“Advertising may be described as the science of arresting the human intelligence long enough to get money from it.”
— Stephen Leacock, teacher and humorist, in The Garden of Folly.
Welcome to GLP-World
There is a large, venomous desert lizard called a Gila monster, which eats only once or twice a year. In the early 1990s, an endocrinologist named John Eng started wondering how that was possible – just an idle curiosity, but he cobbled together a small study. He soon isolated a novel peptide in the reptile’s venom that dramatically lowered blood sugar, just like the human body’s naturally occurring GLP-1 hormone, only it lasted for hours instead of minutes. Three decades later, a synthetic version of the molecule Dr. Eng discovered in Gila monster venom is quietly upending capitalism. You know it as Ozempic, and it’s changing everything.
So, no more obesity?
There’s that, obviously, with all the knock-on effects for junk food makers (bad – research shows high-calorie, ultra-processed foods are first to go) and tailors (very good – all those alterations and newly body-confident folks buying their first really good tuxedo). But the mechanism by which GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic suppress people’s appetites looks likely to be far more powerful than cutting out mere “food noise” for those who want to snack less.