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I'll start off by saying I like Andy and his podcast. I've listened to his other episodes and they're pretty good. However, he allowed his biases to creep into this episode. When interviewing the reported and talking about why Americans feel the way they do about alcoholism and allows the "well America is a puritanical Christian nation" comment to go unchecked. This fits well within his "I used to be Christian before I found out how bad they are" schtick.

The reason people don't feel bad for alcoholics is because alcoholism is a choice. The alcoholic made the choice to start drinking in the first place and allowed themselves to continue to up the ante to the point that now their body is addicted to it. The addiction is very real, but the way it started isn't by chance.

We feel bad for cancer victims because of the randomness of the cruelty. They didn't ask for this and generally speaking nothing they did knowingly contributed to getting cancer. Except for lung cancer for smokers, we don't give a shit about them as a society. And this is largely for the same reason: the average person with common sense asks rhetorically "Well, what did you think was going to happen?"

I wrote largely the same response to Bari's episode about Ozempic and her guest basically saying the same thing, it's so sad that we don't "treat obesity like a disease" and we want to "make them feel bad". No, we just don't pity people who make destructive choices and have to live with the consequences.

That being said, this approach seems highly effective and I'm all for it going mainstream. Regardless of their individual choices, I don't want people to continue to destroy their lives. Just don't expect me to pity you, pat you on the ass, and tell you it isn't your fault.

It is.

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