AI Summary
5 min readGoing broke on wellness
A reporter named Hadi walked into a health club in Austin, Texas called Kuya Wellness, took off his shirt, and plunged into a 40-degree ice bath. He gasped. Then he sat in a sauna. Then he got an IV drip of vitamins and amino acids. Then he floated in a sensory deprivation tank filled with 2,000 pounds of magnesium water. By the end, he felt great—and also wondered whether any of it actually worked.
Kuya is a "health and longevity club," a new kind of social space where members pay hundreds or even thousands of dollars a month for treatments that look medical but feel luxurious. There are no gyms or massage tables. Instead, there are infrared saunas, cold plunges, breathwork classes inside heated rooms, and IV vitamin infusions administered by health professionals. The president of Kuya, Megan Butler, described it as a clinic that "doesn't feel like a clinic." The clientele are young, wealthy, and busy—people with high-powered jobs who are looking for a way to relax and optimize their bodies.
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What you'll learn
- 1 Going broke on wellness — Today, Explained
- 2 Timestamped Outline
- 3 (01:04) **Wellness as a luxury good** - The episode opens with the core tension: everyone wants to live a long, healthy life, but the wellness industry often sells a productized version of health that prioritizes spending over science.
- 4 (04:20) **Inside a wellness club: Kuya Wellness** - Hadi tours a clinic that doesn't feel like a clinic, where members pay thousands for infrared saunas, ice baths, and IV treatments.
- 5 (08:08) **Hadi's personal experience: did it work?** - Hadi reports feeling energized after the cold plunge and sauna, but the sensory deprivation tank triggered a fear of the dark.
- 6 (11:06) **The historical roots of wellness** - Clinical psychologist and pseudoscience debunker Jonathan Stea traces the modern wellness industry back to the late 19th century.
- 7 (14:44) **The problem with selling health as a moral virtue** - Stea explains that both Kellogg and McFadden sold health as a moral virtue, where virtuous eating and exercise were seen as the cure for all conditions.
+ Full timestamped outline available in the app
Show Notes
Americans spend billions on healthcare products, from green powders and cold plunges to costly gym memberships. Last summer we asked: what good do they do?
This episode was produced by Hady Mawajdeh, edited by Miranda Kennedy, fact-checked by Melissa Hirsch, engineered by Matthew Billy, and hosted by Jonquilyn Hill.
Visitors wear the Myblend myLEDmask2 "Anti-Aging" product at the FIBO trade show for health, fitness and wellness in Cologne, Germany. Photo by Ina Fassbender/AFP via Getty Images.
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