Alison Stewart: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. Theater of War Productions has partnered with WNYC to create a series of discussions around topics in the zeitgeist. The idea is to take a piece of journalism, have an actor read it live in front of an audience, and then discuss it. Last month, actor Chad Coleman from The Wire read a heart-wrenching piece that ran in The New Yorker about the murder of Jordan Neely on the subway. In April, Oscar Isaacs and others will read a piece from ProPublica about mental health and navigating the insurance industry.

This Saturday WNYC will air the discussion we are about to talk about right now about weight loss drugs. No matter where you are, watching TV or taking the subway, ads for Ozempic, WeGovy, and other GLP-1 drugs are inevitable. While these drugs can be life-changing to those with medical issues like diabetes, they can also be used for cosmetic purposes. They're expensive. A piece that ran in The Atlantic called A Diet Writer's Regrets by Rebecca Johns was a theater war event. It was read by Hope Davis. Here's an excerpt from the reading.

Hope Davis: I didn't think much about food because I didn't have to, but unlike some friends I know who don't care at all what they eat or who treat meals like brushing their teeth, a necessary form of self-maintenance that doesn't require much attention or result in much pleasure, I've always enjoyed food. I like the crunch of sunflower seeds on my salad, the melt of cheese on a burger. When I was in college I took a part-time job at McDonald's. I could walk there and hey, meals were included.

The freshman 15 suddenly turned into 30. I took a weightlifting course, swam laps, and bought a bike. I quit my fast food gig for a part-time office job. Though the weight gain slowed, it never stopped. Throughout my 20s and 30s, I gained 5 to 10 pounds a year, a result not of frequent pigouts but of small daily failures. That one extra piece of pizza, a couple of Oreos after dinner, a slice of the office birthday cake.

Alison Stewart: Author Rebecca Johns is here with us. Hi Rebecca. Rebecca, are you there? Let me check to see if--

Rebecca Johns: Yes. Can you hear me?

Alison Stewart: I hear you now. Nice to meet you.

Rebecca Johns: Nice to meet you too.

Alison Stewart: We're also joined in-studio by Theater of War artistic director Bryan Doerries. Welcome, Bryan.

Bryan Doerries: Thank you so much, Alison.

Alison Stewart: Listeners, we want to hear from you. Have you struggled with your weight? What has or hasn't worked for you? Are you on or have you ever been on a weight loss drug? What was your experience? What do you wish people knew about trying to lose weight? Give us a call at 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. You can call in and join the conversation or you can text us. Bryan, how does the series having actors read the words of journalists fit into Theater of War's larger mission?

Bryan Doerries: Theater of War Productions has been around 18 years. We've got over 40 projects that all use readings of important texts to frame crucial conversations with audiences that often have difficult and taboo subjects at the center of the discourse. We started with the military. That's led us to all kinds of other places. Homeless shelters, public housing. Over the span of the last 18 years, we've moved from the ancient texts to Shakespeare, now to journalism.

The idea, the theory behind the work is that we can bring to bear these amazing actors who are part of our company. We've got over 200 acclaimed actors who take part, bringing all of their skills to the reading of long-form journalism in a way that not only brings it alive but brings an emotional valence to the reading so that we can maybe feel a little bit more what we should be feeling when engaging with the news. That's the idea behind the series.

We perform the texts from magazines like The Atlantic, The New Yorker, ProPublica, and then we hear from audiences about how they've been affected by the reading, people in the room.

Alison Stewart: Rebecca, how did it feel to hear your words read aloud?

Rebecca Johns: Hope was absolutely incredible. I was fortunate enough to sit in on the rehearsals ahead of time, and Bryan gave her incredible directions. She just got every ounce of nuance out of that piece, both the humor and the sadness. It was a little surreal.

Alison Stewart: She said that you directed Hope well.

Rebecca Johns: Yes.

Alison Stewart: How do you direct a piece of journalism?

Bryan Doerries: [chuckles] Well, here's the thing. As journalists, I'm sure you know that there's this kind of myth of journalistic detachment that journalists can't be emotional. There's a reason for that. There has to be an objectivity to journalism. What we're doing is in journalism, it's the performance of journalism. There, there's this opportunity for actors to do something else, to bring us in touch with our emotions. The note I give all the actors is to find that place to bring a certain emotional weight to what they're reading. Not to overdo it, but not to undersell it.

When you hear audio of long-form journalism right now, it either sounds like AI or it often, is AI often.

Alison Stewart: Often probably.

Bryan Doerries: That's the opposite of what we're going for. We're going for the human. I would say that one of the maladies we suffer from as a culture is that we are numbed. We are inured to the news we consume. We're not in touch with how it affects us to read about the stories we hear every day.

Alison Stewart: Do you think because there are too many?

Bryan Doerries: I think there's too many. I think also the media itself is a one-way stream. In our model, it's a two-way discussion. That's Theater of War Productions' work for the last 18 years. It's about seating the floor, passing the mic to the audience, and believing that there's wisdom in every audience, especially audiences that have something at stake, some skin in the game. The idea is that actors have this role to play in helping us break through that numbness and really be in touch with how we respond to the news but that other people in the room also, with their reactions, have a role to play in helping us attune ourselves to what really matters in the stories that we're hearing.

Alison Stewart: That's what we're asking you, audience, become part of the conversation. We'd like to hear as we talk about Rebecca's story. Want to hear your story as well. Have you struggled with your weight? What has or hasn't worked for you? Have you ever been on a weight loss drug? Call in and tell us your experience. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. You can call in, you can join us on air, or you can text that number. I'm speaking with Bryan Doerries, Artistic Director of the Theatre of War Productions, and Rebecca Johns, author of A Diet Writer's Regrets, which is part of the Theater of War presented by WNYC Series. This is airing on March 22nd, right?

Bryan Doerries: Yes.

Alison Stewart: Okay. Rebecca, you wrote this piece after writing for women's magazines about health and dieting while you were struggling to maintain your weight. What prompted you to be so vulnerable?

Rebecca Johns: Well, the use of Mounjaro. I've now lost almost 80 pounds since I started taking Mounjaro. It was kind of revelatory that all the things that I had spent so many years trying-- I think I had worked under the same assumptions as everyone else, that if there was some kind of magic formula, something that would unlock my ability to lose weight, to reduce my food intake enough that the weight would start to come off, that there was some secret that other people knew that I did not.

The change that occurred when I started taking Mounjaro was so immediate, so noticeable, and so dramatic that I felt that it was only right that I say something. Not just for my own sake, but for the sake of all the people who read all the diet advice I wrote all those years. There is a biological component to weight loss and a mental component, a head component to weight loss that was just impossible for me to get over before. That has been changed as a result of taking this medication.

I also think there's a stigma against taking the medication. I have a good friend who reached out to me after the piece ran and said that she had been prescribed Wegovy for COVID-related diabetes and she was resisting taking it because she felt embarrassed or that she shouldn't be taking this drug. I felt that it was important to say something for people to see that this is part of your overall health journey. It's part of becoming a healthier person, taking care of your health. This friend of mine did not have a weight problem. She was prescribed this drug by her doctor. I want her to feel like she can take it without feeling ashamed because she needs it for her health, to keep her diabetes in check.

Alison Stewart: What were some of the issues that you wanted to be discussed or to be talked about a little bit when you talked about Rebecca's story? I'm asking this to Bryan, by the way. Bryan. What is it that you wanted to discuss in terms of Rebecca's stories? What part of it did you want to take out of the journalism of it?

Bryan Doerries: What was so powerful about Rebecca is that she herself, as a journalist, was being vulnerable in writing the piece. Here we have an actor delivering the emotions of her piece but she's already taken this huge risk and writing this piece of where she's made herself vulnerable, told her story. We're asking the audience to do the same, to be present with their own journeys of weight loss, to talk about the stigma of weight, the complexity of GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic and Mounjaro. For some, it's a miracle. For 30% of people, it doesn't work at all. For some, people hold moral judgments like Rebecca mentioned. For some, it's seen as failing. For some, it changes the entire game.

We wanted to create a space that could hold all that complexity because it's a conversation that demands a space of complexity where we can hold contradiction and hear each other's perspectives.

Alison Stewart: Rebecca, when you first started taking the drugs, did you have any side effects?

Rebecca Johns: Yes, fortunately, my side effects have been pretty minor. I do know some people, including my own husband, who've taken Wegovy and had some severe side effects, so it's hardly a cure-all for everybody. There's some digestive side effects just because it changes the way you eat. Also, the biggest side effect, I think, was the mental portion of it. I've talked to other people about this, how the food noise just goes away immediately. All that background noise of, "What am I going to have for lunch? What am I going to make for dinner? How can I hang on and not eat something until it's prescribed meal times?" et cetera. All that was gone immediately. That was remarkable. That really surprised me.

I wanted to share that experience, for good or ill, like I said, it's not going to be a miracle for everybody. As somebody who has kind of slowly gained weight over 30 years and then rapidly lost it, I felt like I owed it to be honest about what was actually going on with me. When people reached out and they were asking me on social media, "What did you do? How did you do it?" I felt like it was imperative that I actually be truthful about it, not hide, not equivocate about what was going on with me and to actually tell the truth.

Alison Stewart: Let's listen to another clip from Theater of War's event. This is a piece about your husband. His name is Brandon, and how he had to change his eating habits once you were on the meds. Let's take a listen.

Brandon: Hi, I'm Brandon. Full disclosure, I'm Rebecca's husband. I wanted to provide a perspective on what happened to the other half of that cheeseburger that didn't get eaten. What's been interesting about this journey with Rebecca is seeing the snap of where she just would not want to eat anymore. Really when the Mounjaro kicked in-- We have a lifelong relationship of eating. Going out to eat is one of our favorite things to ever do. To see that just kind of go away, my being raised to not waste food, my desire to eat, the fact that I like to overeat, overeating, is fun. It's terrible, but it's fun. I wound up in the early times of this picking up what was left over. Sometimes it was healthy food. It wasn't always fast food. That gets to the moral failing issue of it. Was I failing morally? Was I being a glutton? Was I being weak? Whereas this drug was allowing my wife to be able to turn that part of her brain off. It just acted in an instant. I think it does get at the idea that we often judge people who struggle with their ability to eat as weak people as moral failing when there just is clearly so much more going on there.

Alison Stewart: What did you get out of her husband speaking out?

Bryan Doerries: Well, it just humanized Rebecca's story all the more to hear her partner in life talk about observing her journey and how it impacted him. I think he was also speaking to a theme that we were talking about a lot in the room that's part of the installment, which is judgment. Where does that judgment come from? Is it from our culture? Is it from the media? Is it from religion? Is it from our puritanical heritage? Is it the inner voice that was inculcated when we were children? How do we move past that voice of judgment to both accept ourselves, to accept help, to pursue paths of healing?

He was opening that conversation up even wider by acknowledging he loves to eat. Don't we all? Also acknowledging the complexity of when we cast moral judgment upon people who are heavy or overweight or who pursue medical interventions for addressing that, where does that come from? Are we right to judge or have we been taught to judge by external forces that we should also be interrogating? The conversation is very much about that too. Let's look at the industrial conversation. Let's look at the food industry. Let's look at the for-profit medical industry. Let's acknowledge that this is not a simple question of whether you made a moral choice or not when you ate the cheeseburger or finished it that night.

Alison Stewart: Interesting text. "I'm a nurse who was a chubby kid, curvy young person. Then I became a fat, postmenopausal hypothyroid matron. I've always exercised. I did a tough 13.5 mile with 2015. Wegovy was a game changer. Two years in, 35 pounds lost. No shame here," which I think was very interesting. Rebecca, these drugs are expensive. You wrote in a piece that at a certain point, your insurance will stop covering it and you have to make some big decisions. Where are you with that?

Rebecca Johns: Well, I have been reapproved for one more year. I don't know if that will continue. I'm still trying to lose another 20 to 30 pounds before easing off the medication or going down to a maintenance dose. The maintenance dose is the one that the insurance company will only pay for twice a year. If I want to continue to stay on it, I might have to find a way to pay for it out of pocket. You're supposed to take these drugs every week. Only getting two of my doses covered a year would be very, very expensive for me to cover if I'm going to stay on it.

I am aware that that is a position of privilege that I have insurance that would cover it. Partly, I have insurance that would cover it because I was edging into the diabetes range so it was kind of a necessity for my health. My doctor was very relieved to prescribe it to me. I should say that the doctors who were in the room for the performance on Thursday were, I think, almost universally in favor of using this as a tool for people with weight-related health issues. I'm 54. If I were to continue to have diabetes, I could expect some very serious health problems. I think possibly staying on the Mounjaro long term is maybe less of an issue than risking going back into diabetic blood sugar range. Would I want my 16-year-old daughter to go on it? I don't know because we don't know what the long-term implications are.

Alison Stewart: That's one of the stories that you can discuss in Theater of War.

Bryan Doerries: Absolutely.

Rebecca Johns: Right.

Alison Stewart: What time does it air on March 22nd? I should know this.

Bryan Doerries: 2:00 PM on WNYC.

Alison Stewart: Excellent. I've been speaking with Bryan Doerries, the Artistic Director of Theater of War, and Rebecca Johns, author of A Dieter's Writer's Regrets. It's part of Theater of War presented by WNYC Series airing March 22nd at?

Bryan Doerries: 2:00 PM.

Rebecca Johns: 2:00 PM.

[laughter]

Alison Stewart: Thanks for your time.

Bryan Doerries: Thank you so much, Alison.