Why is the WNBA so hot right now?
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I'm Yasmin Gagne. I'm Josh Christensen. And this is Most Innovative Companies. ♪

On today's episode, AJ Hess talks about the WNBA. Women's sports have this great story of like women empowerment and role models, this kind of feel good story. Then there's me on Weight Watchers. You can still eat cake as long as you eat literally nothing else. And as always, keeping tabs. He's singing lines like, you know, I'm thicker than a snicker. But first, here's the download. ♪

The news you need to know this week in the world of business and innovation. Builders and suppliers have called out Elon Musk's SpaceX for not paying its construction bills. Man, we got a lot of Elon Musk news today because he, man, he is... Sorry, guys. Yeah, he's been called out for not paying SpaceX's construction bills as the company expands across Texas. They've been building new launch facilities, office buildings, and even shopping centers.

Many bills are in the high thousands, causing companies to file liens to get compensated. And these allegations are not new, since 2019, over two dozen companies have filed at least 72 liens against SpaceX.

seeking payments totaling over $2.5 million, which $2.5 million is like pocket change for Elon Musk. Yeah, I mean, it's like the Donald Trump thing. You're perceived as mega rich, and therefore you can just decide not to pay anyone. Yeah, it's wild. So on Monday, OpenAI held a webcast to roll out a new version of ChatGPT, which they say returns answers much faster than GPT-4 and improves on its text, vision, and audio abilities.

The app sounds and acts like the AI in the 2013 Spike Jonze film, Her, which I sobbed through when it came out. Her was voiced by Scarlett Johansson at the time. This new chat GPT responds to users in funny and spontaneous ways. The app will roll out to users over the next few weeks. Following a crash with TikTok,

To motorcyclists, Amazon's self-driving robo-taxi unit is being investigated by the U.S. government's Highway Safety Agency, which I know it means it's investigating Amazon and the unit, but I just picture, what's the name, Herbie? Herbie Fully Loaded on the stand answering questions for their crimes. That's so good.

Anyways, the agency is seeking to evaluate the automated driving system of their Zoox robo-taxis, focusing on how it performs during crashes and how it behaves around pedestrians. And yes, it's pronounced Zoox, at least according to the way too much research that I had to do to figure that out. Can we just stop with the dumb names? Like...

Yeah, you gotta stop. It's really just creating so much extra work for journalists and the audio and video medium to figure out how to say your company names. All right, so we took a quick break, but Elon is back. Earlier this month, Tesla reportedly rescinded internship offers as part of a larger cost-cutting measure as the EV maker sees profits sink 2%.

to a six-year low. How much can internships really cost you? Come on. I know. Although, you know, probably people who intern at Tesla are like pretty highly skilled. Sure. Although our interns are highly skilled. They wrote this newscast. Yeah, they did. They're doing a great job. They probably were writing this like, please don't rescind my internship offer. Yeah.

Ellie, Claire, you're fine. You're doing a great job. You guys are doing great. The company has laid off thousands of workers in recent weeks, with high-profile executives announcing plans to resign as well. Previously, it was one of the most sought-after intern programs in the country. Tesla is likely to have less success convincing interns to work for them in the future.

Yeah, I mean, knowing that your job is not guaranteed is not ideal. Yeah, big duh there. One of their competitors, General Motors, has already turned Tesla's loss into their gain, posting an invitation on LinkedIn for those interns to work for them instead. That's so funny because it's like Tesla did all their vetting. That's a real budget-conscious move right there, save on all the recruiting that you have to do to get those interns. It's also kind of like swooping in in the rebound period to get, you know what I mean? Like,

you're, uh, you're sort of frenemy, uh,

like breaks up with someone and then you like slide into their ex's DMs. That's what this feels like. Yeah, not that you've been there, obviously. No, absolutely not. And finally, the department store Kohl's is revitalizing Baby's R Us as it plans to open 200 stores across the country later this year. Baby's R Us went out of business along with its parent company, Toys R Us, or as it used to be known, the R Us Mafia.

It's not true. In 2018, Butt staged a comeback with a 10,000-square-foot flagship store in East Rutherford, New Jersey, amid a wave of closures in the baby goods retail sector. Coles hopes that by integrating baby's

RROS offerings into their retail ecosystem. It will provide a seamless shopping journey for new parents from pregnancy to parenthood. Yo, what about Adults RROS? Am I right? Yeah, got it. That's... Us Erasure. Yeah. What do you think Adults RROS is? Like, what's the store? Probably Target. Target is Adults RROS. Like, that's hands down Adults RROS. And that's the news you need to know today.

So Josh, we've kind of talked about what Olympian athletes we'd be, but if you were an athlete, what would you be? And what would your signature merch be? Like, would you have a sneaker? What does that look like? This is a hard one. There's the sports that like I want to play. I'm a huge basketball fan, but I just know that like I could in my heart of hearts, I would love to be a basketball player. But I think in reality, I'm more built like a

non-skill position football player. Nice. So like a linebacker or something. I... Off-ball linebacker for those sports nerds out there. And what would my signature product be? Man...

I guess it would just be, you know what? There was an offensive lineman for the New England Patriots when I was growing up that was a co-owner and sports spokesperson for a garage door replacement company. There you go. That's what I want to do. Garage doors. That would be my product. What about you? I don't know if this counts as a sport, but I would like to have a signature leotard if I was a river dancer. Yeah.

A riverdancer? Why couldn't you just go with gymnastics and then you could do the same thing? Yeah, hindsight 2020, gymnastics makes a hell of a lot of sense. Riverdancer is your choice for sport you would play. Amazing. Leotard would have a big G on it.

Fantastic. Oh, my God. Well, clearly, we're not entering into professional sports league anytime soon. Speak for yourself. I'm about to enter a river dance era. My river dance era is upon us. We're about to talk to someone who was much closer to being a professional athlete than us, who's going to be talking about actual professional athletes.

You've literally never seen me tap dance, but that's fine. I sure. OK, show me next time we're in we're in person together. Right. So AJ has is here and she's here to talk to us about WNBA and Candace Parker.

So your story came out yesterday, and it's about how this is a make-or-break season for the WNBA. Tell me why the stakes are so high. I mean, the stakes are really high because expectations are really high. Last season was the WNBA's highest viewership season in 20 years, 36 million unique views. We're coming off the heels of the hottest NCAA Women's March Madness Tournament ever, far surpassing the men's tournament.

There's recently been this groundswell of investment. So I think now the expectations are really high and people have started putting money in. And now the league really needs to provide and show those results that they have said that they could provide for a long time. So I want to talk a little bit about the groundswell of investment. When I think about increased investment in the WNBA, it can feel like a chicken and egg situation. And by that, I mean, is it more popular because there's more investment in it or is there more investment in it because it's more popular? How do you think about that?

Yeah, I mean, there's definitely been this cycle where brands and the league have refused to invest in women's basketball, and then they don't get the game in front of viewership, and then you don't see viewership because the game's not even on TV. So I think now that we see brands investing, we see the league starting to really invest, we're going to see viewership really take off. I think March Madness was a really great example because brands, players, the NCAA really called bullshit on that.

invested, got the game in front of people, and all of a sudden they're breaking records. This is the playbook I'm trying to apply to podcasts at Fast Company. I'm the Caitlin Clark of Fast Company. You are. You know me. I'm the John Quell Jones. That's my go-to. I don't know who that is. I'll probably learn after this segment. Yeah.

She's a tall defensive force. They're all fucking tall anyway. That's true. The tall one. The tall one in basketball. Yeah.

So, you know, obviously we just talked about investment, but what are the factors contributing to the league's current popularity? Like, why was it so popular last year? Why is it set to break records this year? I think one, the sport has just gotten better. When I spoke to the chief growth officer of the WNBA, she was like, I think our just basketball product has gotten better. The NBA has been around for decades now. This is only the 28th season of the WNBA. We're only a few generations after the passage of Title IX, right? This

is only the first few generations of women playing sports seriously that we're ever really seeing. And I think the game has just matured. And then I think also the media landscape has matured. I saw one figure that said that 83% of brands expect to increase their investment in women's media this year. So I think it's this combination of the game's gotten better, we're finally seeing investment, and then it's just a more fun product

watch. It also seems like WNBA Commissioner Kathy Engelbert is kind of an interesting person in all this. Tell me a little bit about her and her background.

In 2019, Cathy became the CEO of Deloitte, and she was the first woman to hold that role in any of the major accounting firms. She's a deeply serious person, and I think she's really tried to show the league as an ally and partner to brands. Describing someone as deeply serious is so funny. It's never been applied to us. Never been applied to us. That is also something I would say when I'm trying to call someone a bitch, but in a polite way. Yeah.

I'm not saying that. No, not what you're saying at all. I think you know when someone's a deeply unserious person. That feels very obvious. This guy, me. Yeah.

Um, but you know, she's like very business forward, very much as like, I'm an ally to brands. She has like developed these really strong partnerships, uh, sponsorships with the, you know, young brands, new brands, brands that are marketed towards women, brands that aren't. So I think she's really pushed the business fundamentals of the league and now they're kind of taking off. And in doing that, I think one of the things she's been credited for is, you know, as investment and the financial security of the league has gone up, she's also provided a new, uh,

player deal with a collective bargaining agreement with the players that increased wages. She recently announced an investment of $50 million over two years to give the women full-time charter planes, which is something that the men get, but the women hadn't for years. So it's kind of cool because she's like taking the league really seriously, gotten these brand investors and like actually is showing some signs that she's making sure that money goes to players as well. There's a pretty rich history of like difference-making commissioners in sports leagues. I think about in the NBA, David Stern,

made a huge difference and is sort of both a reviled but respected figure in NBA sports. And so it's interesting to see Kathy Engelbert like following that path of professionalizing a league and making this sort of huge dynamic difference in the way that David Stern did and other sports have seen kind of the similar effect.

And I think her big kind of one of her big make or break moments is going to be this new media deal that they're negotiating. The current deal was negotiated in partnership with the NBA and is set to expire in 2025. It drives about 60 million in revenue for the league.

The reported estimates is that they're pushing for now closer to 80 to 100 million and that they could negotiate that independent of the NBA. I think if that negotiation goes well, that can really push the WNBA over the edge. Bit of an inane thing to say for me, but there is still a massive pay disparity between NBA and WNBA players. I mean, I was looking at Kaitlyn Clark's salary and it seemed fairly low to me that said her endorsements sort of make up actually probably the bulk of what she's going to make over her careers.

Yeah, no, it's like there's actually astronomical differences between

I've interviewed some of the highest paid women's basketball players of all time, and they all have jobs after retirement. And if you look at the retirement careers of, you know, a lot of famous players, Kobe Bryant didn't need to work. He might have had like projects on the side, but like that guy didn't need to work into the day in their life. And for a lot of these players, even if you're at the top of your game, you'll probably work for the rest of your life. Do you know what roughly the like minimum salary is in the WNBA right now? Because I'm pretty sure like the veterans minimum in the NBA is like,

million dollars or like high like or like rookie deals is like high six figures uh so the wmba starting salary is 76 000 a little bit over 76 565 that's my salary yeah i know right

And I'm not sore every day when I get home from work. Yes. And I think the starting baseline salaries for a lot of the NBA players is close to a million. I think the max salary in the WNBA's collective bargaining agreement is still only in the $200,000 range. Yeah. Really? It's like in the hundreds of thousands range. Oh, my God. Bradley Beal's getting like $50 million a year to suck on the Phoenix Sox. Yeah.

Exactly. Just to talk about brand interest and sponsorship, why are brands so interested in the WNBA right now? And what are some of the brands that are working with them? Why are they so interested? One, I think the demographics of the WNBA and women's sports are really appealing to a lot of brands. Most women's professional leagues will claim that they have the youngest viewership of any league in their sport. That's

pretty much true, soccer, basketball. They have more diverse audiences. Some might think that that diversity would skew towards women, that the viewership would be women, but that's not true in the WNBA. I think viewership is still 56% of fans are men at the WNBA. So you have this really cool, diverse, young audience that a lot of brands are going after. Two is what people talk a lot about affinity.

you know, women's sports have this great story of like women empowerment and role models. And so typically, you know, marketing plays in women's sports perform better in affinity. It's this kind of feel good story. You can like tell a whole bunch of like really empowering stories around women's sports and also like

because of some of the pay disparities, women's athletes like make themselves more available to brands. Like if you're a star NBA player, you're not taking time to like sign autographs for everybody. Like these women like have to be role models and like really wholesome characters for better or for worse. And so I think brands love aligning with that. Can I be honest? I want more shit talking in

the league yes I'm like guys should talk each other on the court it's a sport like you can do yeah you saw that did happen with like Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese not this well I mean it was a little bit of a carryover this year but particularly last year and it was like the discourse was yeah yeah the discourse was pretty toxic around it um

the year before, but I do think it was ultimately there was some positive that came out of it. Yeah. Where people are like, yeah, athletes shit talk each other. It's part of the game. That's, yeah, exactly. I think we, like, love to hate it, but the truth is that I think if there was, like, a fight, like, it would be good for pretty much any women's league, right? Like, I actually think that would drive views, and I think, you know, every professional player... Now it's in the palace, baby. Yeah.

slam down. No, but like, I actually think, I know we like, haven't really accepted yet that these like, women's role models trash talk each other, but I actually think we really like to watch it and so we just need to admit that we want to see Caitlin Clark get in a brawl on the WNBA floor and maybe we'll get to see it. And listen, over the weekend, we all listened to the Kendrick and Drake beef and it,

It captivated everyone. Nothing better than two grown men arguing with each other through poetry. This whole podcast is just us going, fight, fight, fight, fight. That's basically me in every interview. It's like, yeah, as you're talking to the real, real president, you're like, are you going to fight Poshmark? Yeah. Yeah, I heard she said you weren't that cute. That's so good. That's so good.

That's so funny. So just in terms of some of the partnerships going on, I know there's one with CarMax. That investment has increased a ton. Tell me a little bit about that. Yeah, CarMax is one of those big investors. They launched a new ad yesterday at the tip-off.

They make sure that their brand is seen kind of across the game. And when I spoke to their chief marketing officer, she really spoke about ROI, right? Like by getting in early in 2020, they had a really low cost investment that like has just boomed and increased exponentially.

And the funny thing is, you know, when I talk to brands about being like, well, you know, like now that people are investing, that marketing might get more expensive, right? That real estate might get more expensive. And everyone I've spoken to has said, like, we're still going to continue to invest. Like just the ROI in terms of the number of views we see on social, on TV, it's like really positive brand affiliation. Like no one has told me that they're going to be cutting their market.

in women's basketball or women's sports in general. And it doesn't necessarily conflict with the NBA, right? I mean, you could have a company that advertises across both. I've also seen like Glossier's had a longstanding partnership with the WNBA that has done really well for them. Side note that when I was in high school, I once asked a woman, I was like, I want to buy makeup so I look good when I play volleyball. And she was like, you shouldn't be wearing makeup when you play sports. And I was like, you don't understand me.

Mom. I know. I suspect that makeup has improved because everybody looks amazing on the courts. I was going to say. They're sponsored. They're sponsored.

They're sponsored. And yeah, a lot of them are wearing like full faces of makeup. A lot of them are wearing like lashes. I was ahead of my time. Oh my God. I could not imagine wearing lashes and playing a sport. I know. That seems horrible. Kind of incredible. Like that's hard. It's hard that the woman who wear lipstick, I'm really impressed by. Like, I don't know how you're like

drinking a Gatorade water bottle and also wearing a full red lip. Yeah, I don't understand that. The second overall pick in this past year's draft, I can't remember her name off the top of my head, but she's like known for like serving looks like overall. It's really interesting. Cameron Brinkford. That's her name. Yes.

So WNBA also has an official wine partner, which is really funny. But what does that partnership mean? I know. I love that. And I honestly think it's genius. Yeah.

Yeah, La Crema Wineries is like the official wine of the WNBA. The parent holding company has another brand that's affiliated with the NBA, and then they specifically associated La Crema with the WNBA. But when I spoke to their chief marketing officer and proprietor, I was really convinced that it was pretty smart. They were like, you know, this is a young, diverse audience that like we can push wine at what

women's sports events in a way that we like can at men's events and they're doing these pop-up like free wine tasting at like WNBAs where you can like go before the game and like try different wines I think it's genius I really do that's so funny I'm listen no shade to them and I don't drink so I don't know but that wine can't be good right

I haven't tried it yet. I can't. I couldn't tell you. No idea. If you wanted to sponsor us, though, La Crema, we have an engaged, young, and diverse audience. AJ, you also wrote a profile pretty recently on basketball legend Candice Parker. She announced her retirement in late April, but then she made a kind of interesting move with Adidas. Tell me a little bit about that situation. Yeah, we got to announce exclusively that Candice Parker was named the president of women's basketball at Adidas.

It's really kind of like when she announced her retirement, it was a little ironic because everyone was surprised. But we also shouldn't have been surprised because she's like 38 years old and done everything there is to do. Yeah. Like everyone's like, it's like, well, okay, like it's actually not that surprising. And I think the Adidas announcement was similar in that like on the one hand, we're like, oh my God, this is so exciting. But

It also makes total sense. Like she has been wearing Adidas shoes for so long. She's been involved in so many ways. I think she has three collections with them. She was the first woman to get a signature shoe with them. And I think they've just seen over and over that if you can associate Candice Parker with a line for Adidas, it does really well. I think it's also interesting because when I interviewed sneaker experts, like they're all like,

Adidas really is getting bullied by Nike in the basketball shoe market. Like everyone was like Nike's like really far ahead. And I think they see women's basketball as their way to get into the basketball shoes market. What's the last I'm trying to think of the last Adidas sneaker that I remember. The Samba baby. No no no not the classic one. Yeah. I'm

I'm talking about the ones associated with a player. Did they make the kawaii shoe? The Spongebob one? Or was that Nike? I couldn't tell you. I can't remember. Yeah. That was Kyrie Irving. Blake, our producer, is a sneakerhead. Who is the last big Adidas? It was Kyrie, you said? That was Kyrie Irving.

Kawhi's with New Balance. Kyrie had it with SpongeBob. Like, Kyrie 4's or something was with SpongeBob. That was a Nike partnership, actually. I just looked it up. Yes, it was. Kawhi Leonard is with New Balance. And they did that as a foolproof plan to get away from being the white conservative shoe. And they were like, we need to sign. Okay. Okay.

Didn't work. But they need, we need to sign basketball players. We need to have more open market. They should have just gone with Myers Leonard and dug down deep. But yeah, Kawhi was their first signing. We got the Alec Caruso heirs. Is LeVar Ball's thing still around? Uh,

Big baller? It is, but one of his son's knees aren't. They're cooked. And some of it has to do with the sneakers. The sneakers aren't that good. Right. Yeah. Oh, wow. Thank you, Blake. You're welcome. This has been our sneaker segment. This is Sneaker Corner with Blake Odom.

So just in terms of this Candace Parker deal, what does that sort of mean for the WNBA's future with Adidas? Like, have they announced any other deals coming up? Is Candace going to look for more partnerships? What does that look like? I think the big thing people are keeping their eyes on is who Adidas is going to sign. They pretty publicly were also going after Caitlin Clark and Nike just outbid them by like millions of dollars.

So the next question is, who are they going to sign if they're going to invest in, you know, signing with these multi-million dollar signature shoe deals with a women's player? I think also one of the interesting things about my conversation with Candice, you know, you mentioned, you know, players blowing out their knees. There's this big conversation in the women's basketball industry and women's sports in general about, you know, a lot of brands making shoes for men and then just resizing them and giving them to women. One guy called it picking and shrinking it. And

Which I love. But Candice talked a little bit about like the negotiation of like we can create sneakers that both men and women wear, but also we can create some signature shoes that are designed for women first. And a lot of like physiologists and like sports scientists believe that that could cut down on the number of injuries that we see in the women's game.

I didn't realize our feet were that different. Yeah, I spoke with Sue Bird, who's like a famous, you know, former player, point guard and is now one of the part owners of the Seattle Storm. And she was like, I don't think my foot's that different, but that's just me. So, yeah, I don't know. I always wore like men's cleats growing up. But, you know, there are some people who say that they really like need like a thinner shoe or a more supportive ankle piece, things like that. What can we look forward to from the WNBA? What lies ahead?

One, I think we're going to see really big rivalries. We're coming into this kind of super team era where teams are collecting huge all-star rosters and building up these big rivalries between the Vegas Aces, the New York Liberals.

New York Liberty. I think we're going to see more like superstar moments from Angel Reese, Caitlin Clark. People love those narratives and they're sold. And then I think also like it's going to be really fun to see like Indiana become a woman's sports state. Like they're fucking sold. They're sold on it. I'm excited to see like what Indiana like women's basketball fandom looks like. So I think, you know, the fandom is going to change. Rivalries are going to go up and we're seeing this kind of super team era. Great. Well, thank you, AJ. Thank you.

We're going to take a quick break, followed by something a little different. Josh is going to interview me, yikes, about an article I recently wrote on Oprah's virtual event with Weight Watchers.

Okay, we are back. And I'm going to turn the tables on Yaz for this segment today. It's not a good feeling. Getting interviewed is not a good feeling. Yeah, I'm interviewing you. Now you do it to so many other people. I usually just sit here and make sense. I'm so mean to some people, too.

on occasion, but you wrote a wonderful feature for FastCompany.com last week, and it came out on Saturday, actually, and it was about Weight Watchers, diet culture, and our favorite topic on the show, GLP-1s, your Ozempics, your Wigovis, your Munjaros. Munjaro, yeah. And the impetus for this article was this event that Weight Watchers put on last week in New York, where Oprah was speaking. What exactly was this event?

So Thursday night was basically Oprah Winfrey's last event as a Weight Watchers board member. So she leaves the board this month after nearly a decade serving on it. She was also a shareholder for a really long time, and she's been a vocal spokesperson for the company. I went to a stop on her tour of the Barclays Center in 2018 with Weight Watchers, and obviously the entire...

arena, stadium, whatever was totally full. This one was a really intimate event. So there were only about 100 of us in the room, but it was live streamed to thousands of people and mostly Weight Watcher members. So as I said, Oprah was on the company's board. She also owned about 15% of the company. But last year, everything kind of changed for her and for the company.

Weight Watchers has spent, you know, like years. I mean, the company's been around for 60 years preaching moderation and self-control is the best way to lose weight. So for a long time, they had a point. What possibly could have happened in the past year that could have changed that conversation? So for a long time, they had their famous point system. You know, they had their whole tagline that was like, you can still eat cake as long as you eat literally nothing else. And in the past year, Ozempic became a thing.

And like a lot of celebrities, Oprah debuted a significantly slimmer figure in December. And that month, she also shared that she was on GLP-1 medication. Now, Weight Watchers saw the writing on the wall, and they acquired a telemedicine platform called Sequence for $132 million last year, which allows them to prescribe GLP-1 medication to consumers. The thing is, it's obviously like a weird...

Right.

We can help you that way, too, is sort of a confusing message. Just a little bit. Yeah, pretty much. And I think Oprah's thinking, as she claims, sort of changed over the past year once she got on the medication. You know, on stage, she sort of talked a whole bunch about being lied to about the reality of weight loss and then obviously disengaged.

disseminating that lie to millions of subscribers. So, you know, during this event, it was three hours long. There were no bathroom breaks, which killed me. Oh, my God. Who else was there? So there were speakers. She shared the stage with a bunch of celebrities who sort of came on for short segments. They range from Rebel Wilson, who has a book coming out, to Busy Phillips, who's just like a very outspoken person, I guess, to the founder of It Cosmetics, Jamie Kern Lima.

And they all basically talked about their relationships with their bodies. So it was weird because it wasn't really promoting anything from Weight Watchers. It was literally just like a bunch of

Sort of speakers being like, either I felt ashamed for so long about my weight or speakers coming up and being like, you shouldn't feel ashamed of your weight. Like, don't be afraid of wearing a swimsuit to hang out with your kids. It seems like kind of an apology event from Weight Watchers in a way. Yeah, that's exactly it. It was, you know, it was a build is making the shift, but it was really like the Weight Watchers apology tour. Speaking of kind of an apology tour, Oprah's had like sort of a

problematic history with diet culture even back before her association with Weight Watchers. And you talked about this in your article, and specifically you wrote that Oprah both propagated that culture, but was also a victim of it. Can you speak about that a little bit? Absolutely. It's interesting. During her interviews or during the talks that she was giving, she started doing this thing where she was like,

I've divested from the company, y'all, so I can tell you the truth. And I was like, that's weird. That's wild. You're also at their event. Exactly. But I can tell you of two instances that are so famous with Oprah that she brought up both in 2018 on her Weight Watchers tour that I attended where she was still preaching moderation and at the event on Thursday.

So she came back to this 1985 clip of herself being interviewed by Joan Rivers. I think Joan Rivers is subbing in for Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show. In the clip, Rivers wagged her finger in Oprah's face and told her to lose weight, which is crazy and horrible for anyone. You know what I mean? The hat, you gain the weight.

I ate a lot. No, no, no, no, no, no. You said 50 pounds. You shouldn't let that happen to you. You're very pretty. You know what? No, I don't want to hear. Let me tell you this. Let me tell you something. You're a pretty girl and you're single. You must lose the weight. I'm going to. You know what?

We are now in Chicago. We're starting a diet with Oprah. Grace, yes. The other famous event that she references all the time is her sort of famous wagon of fat episode from her talk show where she literally wheeled in 67 pounds of animal fat to represent the amount of...

Wait, she lost. If you can believe in yourself and believe that this is the most important thing in your life, you can conquer it. Because if I did it, you can do it. I thank you very much. I'm not an Oprah fan, so...

Well, I'm not an Oprah show fan. I didn't watch Oprah's show coming up. Oprah's great. I love Oprah for all the things that she does. I don't want to come out against Oprah in a major way. I think she's like a very problem. She's like both. I love her sometimes. And other times I'm like, you gave us Dr. Phil question mark.

Yeah. But why was she wheeling out 67 pounds of animal fat? Because she had lost 67 pounds and she wanted to be like, look at me like you two could do this with like some self-control. And then she literally talked about the fact that later that night she like ate a huge meal and subsequently gained all that weight back. Not because of the one meal, like over over a period of time, she gained 67 pounds. That's a big meal. She ate that 67 pounds of animal fat. Exactly.

But she comes back to those two clips all the time. And she did something in this event that I think she is so good at, which is taking the sort of political or the sort of public, like big issue thing and making it personal. You know, and that's what's like people love that about Oprah. It also endears her to her audience because she's like, I'm just like you. I love bread. But she's.

Yeah, but she's not just like us in that, like, she was a spokesperson for Weight Watchers and, like, kept telling us to go on diets for a long time.

You know, it's sort of a confusing note to strike where it's hard to sort of fit the pieces of the puzzle together because of that. So now she's this sort of apology tour of the Weight Watchers diet culture thing. But now Oprah is, as you mentioned, taking GLP-1s or had been taking GLP-1s, whatever that happens to be, and is doing some similar kinds of evangelizing for GLP-1. So has anything really changed for her?

First of all, I'll say she's done a full 180 is the full turn, right? Not 360. 360 is back to the same direction where you started. I mean, she's kind of done both of those things here. But Oprah sort of claims that the arrival of GLP-1 medications changed everything she thought she knew about weight loss. And I quoted her in the piece. I'll just say it here because I feel like she I don't want to put words in her mouth.

She said, I want to acknowledge that I have been a steadfast participant in diet culture through my platforms, through the magazine, through the talk show for 25 years. I've been a major contributor to it. I set a standard for people watching that neither I nor anybody else could uphold. And then she quoted Maya Angelou, which...

just seemed like a bit of a strange um i love when people there's never like an unawkward way to quote a historical figure i never feel like it goes well yeah it's like if i had a dream last night and i was like as mlk said and then i tell you what my dream was like what

So I was driving a car and then I just couldn't slow down. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And then an owl spoke to me. But Oprah quoted Maya Angelou. Oprah quoted Maya Angelou. She said, why does the caged bird sing? She said, when you know better, you do better. These conversations are an effort for me to do better.

that's partially true. But I but there's sort of another layer to this that was touched on in one of the segments where she spoke with New York Times opinion columnist Tressie McMillan Cottom, who I want to say was phenomenal. Like they were at the event. Yeah, they were at the event. She interviewed her on stage. Oh, Oprah spoke with her on stage. I actually felt very moved by this segment. They didn't. It was very short.

But it sort of exposed what I think is the real reason or the true dissonance between Oprah and Weight Watchers at this point. Because I think it's fair for Oprah to say she's had a total 180 when it comes to GLP-1s. But the other side of this is Oprah's always marketed herself as like a woman of the people. She's like, I love bread. Like,

Like, I love family. Like, I read the same books as you or like I want us to read the same books and being calm. You get a car, you get a car, you get a car. Everyone gets a car. Yeah, exactly. She wants to give everyone a car because she has a car or probably many. But GLP-1s are not a medication of the people yet. They are actually incredibly expensive.

Like it was totally on brand for Oprah to market a service like Weight Watchers that cost people $23 a month and that relied on community support in addition to dieting, which I think was a good thing. And, you know, I think that makes sense with her brand. But I think promoting a company that, you know, has this other arm that has a $99 a month subscription price to access the telemedicine platform is,

You then have to pay, you know, a thousand a month or whatever if you don't have insurance to get it or if your insurance doesn't cover it to get Ozempic or, you know, other GLP-1s. And insurance is still very spotty on covering these GLP-1s at best. Yeah. And something that Tressie brought up on stage, Oprah acknowledged it, but they didn't really go into too much detail. But I really think that's why...

and Weight Watchers like maybe didn't make sense for her anymore. You know what I mean? Because she can't say you can be just like me and have my figure. Like you can be just like me, struggle with your weight, have my figure and

What she's really saying is you can be just like me. You can struggle with your weight. If your insurance covers it, maybe you can have my figure, but most people will live in a bigger body while I am slim. And that's kind of a hard message to give to people. Yeah, I mean, it's kind of the sticking point with everything with these GLP-1s where there's a class divide on it. It's changed maybe some of the conversation around obesity being a disease, but it's not actually...

prescribed as a drug covered by insurance in the way like it is a disease. It's still covered like a cosmetic procedure. And with some exceptions, under some plans, under some insurance companies, it can be treated like a disease. Totally. And it would be like having Oprah as the face of Hermes. You'd be like, this doesn't make any sense. That said...

You get a scarf. You get a scarf. You get a scarf. That said, later over the weekend, I saw photos of her at Gwyneth Paltrow's Loro Piana collaboration celebration in the Hamptons. And I was like, yeah, that's like the real Oprah. You know what I mean? Yeah, that's fair. Oprah's on GLP-1s and she's doing that, but she doesn't want people to think of her that way. So let's switch gears to Weight Watchers as a business. They have been struggling and that dates back to...

to before Ozempic and Wigovie really blew up, right? Yeah, that's absolutely correct. So I think it's fair to say that for six decades, Weight Watchers led the conversation around weight loss. Like that name is so ubiquitous and so synonymous with weight loss because it was everywhere and it was accessible. But I think over the past, you know, five years especially, it lost that position. It stopped being the company that was sort of setting the pace.

And even prior to the arrival of GLP-1s, Weight Watchers was facing competitors like Noom, for example, that were more technologically advanced than maybe appealed to younger people where Weight Watchers seemed like, you know, something maybe your mom did or your grandma did.

when it also appealed to people who didn't necessarily want to go to meetings. They wanted digital support and they wanted to be able to access information quickly. So it had already kind of struggled to adapt there. They did beef up their digital offerings. I think there was just like a newer, cooler kid on the block that was gaining a lot of ground. And then, and this was bad for Noom too, GLP-1s arrived, right? And Weight Watchers did ultimately acquire Sequence, the GLP-1 provider, but

It took them kind of a long time. Like by that point, there were quite a few other platforms that were offering that service. Additionally, Weight Watchers has to contend with the fact that they have...

years of marketing that they're now sort of disavowing whereas you know maybe the motto that was on the wall of every Weight Watchers like even including the logo the slogan that was on the wall of their their clinics or studios or I actually don't know what you call a Weight Watchers storefront totally so something um current CEO Seema Sistani said was on our walls it says

choice, not chance. They actually took that down from the walls. And Sistani said at the time, we needed to have a hard conversation and say, this program that we all can acknowledge has helped millions of people is also a program that failed many people who walked away feeling that it was their moral failing.

And that, you know, not being able to lose weight was their fault. Like that kind of says it all, right? Weight Watchers just didn't really know, doesn't really know how to meet the moment or is still kind of in transition there. The other thing I'll say is that five years ago, the company had a different CEO. They tried to pivot before to being renamed Wellness That Works.

And they had literally like all of the same techniques. You know what I mean? Like nothing really changed about the Weight Watchers program itself. They just wanted to try and like live in this era where like body positivity and body acceptance was a thing.

And consumers totally saw through that. We're not stupid. It's when you treat like a real problem as a PR problem. It's not really a PR problem. But can we stick with Seema for a little bit? Yeah. What is her background and how did she get to Weight Watchers? So Sistani is actually a former tech executive. She worked at Tumblr. I think we wrote about her then. And then she co-founded and ran social network House Party, which I don't know. I feel like during peak pandemic, everybody at some point got a House Party link.

Yeah, I remember having that for a very brief moment. So she'd never run a public company before this, but she's been a Weight Watchers member for a long time. She actually mentioned during the event that she lost 60 pounds through the program. That's also the weird part about the event where Oprah's like, we've all been lied to. Like, I needed to take GLP-1s to lose weight. And Sistani is like...

We acknowledge that Weight Watchers may not work for everyone, but so you know I lost 60 pounds on this program. It does work for some people. It's like a weird, you know what I mean, a weird needle to thread. That's kind of indicative of like the weird shame around everything. Exactly. And I have to say, I actually was really impressed by Seema. Like, I think that she is a really interesting executive. I'm sort of excited to see what the new marketing looks like. And

The thing that spurred this entire event happening was something Seema Sistani posted on Instagram. So this was a couple months ago. Body acceptance activist Katie Storino, she also founded a brand called Megababe. I love their deodorant for what it's worth. Posted on Instagram a little bit about her feelings about Weight Watchers after seeing this special that Oprah put on with ABC News about GLP-1s, about Ozempic.

And Storino basically said, I'm a bigger person and my whole fucking life Weight Watchers has been telling me to lose weight. And people ask me if I'm going to, even as a child, it was always like, oh, if you consider going to Weight Watchers. And Weight Watchers pushed this sort of marketing agenda that was very like, you're just not working hard enough.

Sistani saw the video and actually responded to it in a video message. She apologized for the way her company had made so many people feel ashamed over the years. And that got a ton of coverage. It was actually kind of a branding coup for her and for Weight Watchers.

Because it seemed so vulnerable and off the cuff and it made people believe like maybe Weight Watchers will change. It's still kind of in that moment of transition. Storino came and spoke at the event with Seema Sistani. No one on stage aside from Oprah divulged whether they were on GLP-1s or not.

When the conversation ended, everybody was kind of left wondering, what does this mean for Weight Watchers? Like, okay, so you don't want us to feel ashamed about our weights, but then why would I go to Weight Watchers if I don't? Yeah. I don't know if that makes sense. It seems like they're kind of like mid-pivot, but it seems unclear what they're pivoting to. That's correct. I think something that I think about a lot is Weight Watchers is pivoting to offering this buffet of options. So they're basically saying like,

You may want to be healthy and not want to lose weight. So you might be able to use our nutritional information to make your diet healthier. You may want to lose weight and not take GLP-1s. We will offer you a way to do that through diet. That may or may not work. And then they're saying, we can help you get access to GLP-1s if you qualify through our telemedicine platform. It may just be really expensive. They say that on their webpages, right? Like the cost is there.

And the thing about that kind of message is on some level, I totally get it. Like, it does make sense to just be like, we're a one-stop shop for anything nutrition and weight loss.

But, you know, there's that kind of famous marketing phrase that's like, if you're for everyone, you're from no one. And I think that's really true. Like, I think people kind of want to know what they would go to Weight Watchers for. And it's like, if I have to explain it in more than one sentence, like, because before it'd be like to lose weight, you know, to like get on a diet and stay on it.

And if it takes more than one sentence to explain something like that, it's hard. You know, it's hard to like see what the future looks like for a company like that. Especially for something that is for so long been one thing. It's the midlife crisis of Weight Watchers. I mean, like they're 60. They're like a boomer company trying to... A boomer company in a Gen Z world. That's exactly what I was going for. I guess we'll see what the future holds for Weight Watchers. One thing I will say is...

This event was clearly the beginning of a bunch of things. So I think over the next few months, we're probably going to see some different marketing, some different language around it. And I'm excited to see where the company goes and how they sort of focus in on their brand. But right now, as far as what I learned about where the company is going, I'm not really sure. I don't really know. Okay, so that's all for our conversation on Weight Watchers. We'll be back with Keeping Tabs.

Okay, we are back with AJ and one of our interns, Claire Zhao. She's worked a bunch on this podcast, helped us put together the newscast a few times. So it's time to wrap up the show with Keeping Tabs. This is where each one of us shares a story, trend, or piece of pop culture we're following right now. Claire, let's actually start with you. What are you Keeping Tabs on?

So I'm sure you've all seen on social media this weekend that the Northern Lights could be seen all across America and in the UK. And as someone who grew up in the UK, went to school in California, and I'm now in New York, it really seems like everyone from every different part of my life has been watching the Northern Lights and has been posting about these Northern Lights when I did not see a thing, did not even know that these Northern Lights were happening. So I felt very seen when I found a list of 38 tweets posted

that were from people who also didn't see the Northern Lights. And I'm going to share some of my favorites. Share some of the tweets. I also am convinced that it's a big scam. It's psyops. So stop!

pitching things as psyops on the podcast. This is what we're talking about, deeply unserious on this podcast. I do have to say, I was obsessed with Aurora Borealis, as it were, when I was a kid. Josh, you famously hated the eclipse. I did hate the eclipse, but Northern Lights fucking just slapped. I was obsessed with...

I was obsessed with Northern Lights and Aurora Borealis when I was a kid. I did like a whole science project on it in fourth grade. I was so into it. I was obsessed. Wait, Claire, take it away. Give me some of the tweets. So Vincent Prologo says, solar eclipse FOMO was manageable, but Northern Lights FOMO is on another level.

Which is crazy because everyone was talking about the solar eclipse months before it happened. And no one mentioned the Northern Lights until after. No, I was not ready for that. And the Northern Lights are so much cooler. They're blue and purple. The solar eclipse is kind of just there for a moment. And you can look at them directly. You don't have to look through weird glasses or some shit like that. Wait, give me a couple of others. Backhope24 who says, My favorite genre of tweet tonight is...

is people who think that they're seeing the aurora in New York, but in fact, they're just seeing the lights from the Kosciuszko Bridge reflected in the clouds. I hope you were going to say that. Those are my favorite. Everyone's like, oh my God, they're so beautiful. And it's like, that's the Kuduska Bridge. That's the TKTS sign in Times Square. AJ, what are you keeping tabs on? I am keeping tabs on what I think is already going to be the song of the summer, which is BBL Drizzy's

Metro. If you're not aware... I have no idea what this is. Okay. What? We already picked a song of the summer. Listen, one of our interns told us a song of the summer last week, and I trust her because she's not our age. Yeah.

I'll take that and I will eat my words. Have me back on in the fall and I'll be like, I was wrong, guys. I'm old. I should have known better. But I really think it's going to take off. If you don't know, in the Kendrick, Drake beef, Drake called out this DJ and was like, shut up and go back to making beats. And in exchange, Metro made this beat where the hook is BBL Drizzy, BBL Drizzy, just accusing Drake of having a Brazilian butt lift. And it's so freaking good. Yeah.

It's catchy. It's beautiful. It's stupid. And I can't think of a better way to torture someone than with this song. That's so good. I mean, honestly, of the criticisms lobbied at, oh God, Blake's camera just came in on our riverside. Blake said, okay, I have to say.

Our sneakers and hip hop correspondent, Blake, has entered the chat. Yeah. Thank you, AJ, for creating the platform for me. So, yeah, they made an AI song for BBL Jersey by this guy called like the AI name is like

King Willonius or something like that. It's like just... The front cover is like someone that looked like they could have been the Gap Band in the 80s or late 70s, something like that. And he's singing lines like, you know, I'm thicker than a snicker and I'm going in no ditty. He's singing like it's AI singing these lines. And then some of the best renditions I've heard of BBL Drizzy is the merengue version of BBL Drizzy. There is a...

Josh, you would like this. There's like a like early 2000s Blink 182 style version of BB-8. Oh, send me that. Send me that. I need to step back one second because part of the genius of what Metro did is he made the beat and then he like... Wait, this is Metro Boomin, right? Yes, this is Metro Boomin. Full name Metro Boomin. I apologize. I'm colloquializing. I'm too casual. Sir Metro Boomin. Close personal friends. That's his government name.

The genius of Metro Movement is that he put out the song like Willy Wonka, Golden Ticket style, where he was like, whoever does the best verse on this beat gets a free beat. And so everyone is getting it, including all those people that play. You know, Drake told him to shut up and make some drums. And he's like, OK. And that's what he did. So that's what happens.

They should now overlay to have full monoculture. Overlay that. BBL Drizzy with the TikTok girl. I'm looking for a guy in finance with a trust fund. It's going to happen. It's going to happen. If it hasn't happened already, it's going to.

I'll also say the other genius of it is Drake's big critique of Kendrick from a business standpoint was that he makes niche music that isn't popular and that Drake actually sells records. And it's so genius for Metro to be like, selling records isn't that fucking hard. I can make a song people will play a million times and it's going to be so dumb. It's not even that hard. It's layered. It's beautiful. My favorite is there's a saxophone cover by Cautious Clay.

Highly recommend it. Oh, nice. There's like a version of Metro Boomin produced one where it's like a Japanese rapper rapping off of it. I'm like, this is great. Along with this and the last diss track from Kendrick, Not Like Us with all the TikTok videos. This has been like, oh, so much fun right now. Josh, what are you keeping tabs on? RFK's brain worm. Oh my God. That was the craziest story.

There's not much more to add to it than the fact that like RFK came out that doctors removed a brain worm that ate a portion of his brain. Apparently the portion that understood how vaccines work.

Yeah, that one was so crazy. I don't know what else to say. I don't know what else to say about this. What? Why? Was someone about to drop this story and he had to get ahead of it? Was Ronan Farrow deep in the feet of the brain worm story? Does somebody have the brain worm on record?

It's this, what is happening? I mean, listen, there's a lot of, no sane person runs for president. But if a doctor is like a worm ate a bunch of your brain, you still go like, I should be president of the United States of America. At some point, that has to be disqualifying. Listen, I'm all for democracy and self-actualization. But if a worm eats part of your brain, maybe sit this one out. That's it. Yaz, what are you keeping to yourself?

So my friend is this writer named Emily Sundberg. She has a very popular newsletter called Feed Me that you should all subscribe to. And she recently wrote this piece that came out today that I absolutely loved about all of the members only clubs in New York, like from old school to new school, because there's like new ones that keep popping up everywhere. And she visited all of them and describes all the like weird ass vibes they have.

You know, I'm talking everything from like the core club that is very popular with like people in the early 2000s through like the athletic club through this like weird private club that Carbone Restaurant Group has where like... It's a club where you can pay a lot to get...

get like overrated Italian food. That's absolutely correct. In the article, they actually say this one wild thing where they're like, yeah, well, the cool thing about our clubs, if you remember, they have like a concierge chef where you can contact the chef like 24 hours or 48 hours in advance and be like, my favorite food growing up was like X, Y, Z, like macaroni and cheese with like a

extra whatever in it and they will like make a cool version of it for you wow which is their major competitor the private club owned by buka de beppo is and

Anyway, it's just a great article. I thought it was like I feel stupid because I feel like it was just an idea that was waiting out there. You know what I mean? And I also feel like it was probably a blast to report. So good job, Emily. And that's it for most innovative companies. AJ, Claire, Blake, thank you for joining us. Thanks, y'all.

Our show is produced by Avery Miles and Blake Odom with some help from Claire Zhao and Ellie Stevens, our interns. Mix and sound design by Nicholas Torres and our executive producer is Josh Christensen. Remember again to subscribe, rate, and review, and we'll see you next week.