Over the last decade, an extraordinary scientific breakthrough has taken place. A new kind of drug has arrived on the market, working in an unprecedented way to revolutionise weight loss and dieting.

In 2023, Johann Hari began injecting himself with one of the weight loss drugs transforming how we look, feel and live.

What began as a personal journey soon took him on an international investigation, tackling some of the most world-changing issues as he asked: Who should be taking these medications? How are they set to change not only the way we think about weight loss, but our economies? What are the benefits – and what are the risks?

This is the book to read on the weight loss drugs taking over the world.

‘Really important, and very necessary’ STEPHEN FRY
‘Compassionate, wise and mind-expanding . . . A must read’ PHILIPPA PERRY

The bestselling author of Lost Connections and Stolen Focus takes a revelatory look at the new drugs transforming weight loss as we know it – sharing his personal experience on Ozempic and examining our ability to heal society’s dysfunctional relationship with food, weight and our bodies.

In January 2023, Johann Hari started to inject himself once a week with Ozempic, one of the new drugs that produces significant weight loss. He wasn’t alone – some predictions suggest that in a few years, one in four of the British population will be taking these drugs. While around 80 per cent of diets fail, someone taking one of the new drugs is likely to lose up to a quarter of their body weight in six months. To the drugs’ defenders, this is a moment of liberation from a condition that massively increases your chances of diabetes, cancer and an early death.

Still, Hari was wildly conflicted. Can these drugs really be as good as they sound? Are they a magic solution – or a magical illusion? Finding the answer to this high-stakes question led him on a journey from Iceland to Minneapolis to Tokyo, and to interview the leading experts in the world on these issues. He found that along with the drugs’ massive benefits come twelve significant potential risks. He also learned that these drugs radically challenge what we think we know about shame, willpower and healing.

These drugs are about to change our world, for better and for worse. Everybody needs to understand how they work – scientifically, emotionally and culturally. Magic Pill is an essential guide to the revolution that has already begun – and which one leading expert argues could be as transformative as the invention of the smartphone.

‘A brilliant synthesis of so much important information. Really important, and very necessary’ STEPHEN FRY
‘Compassionate, wise and mind-expanding . . . A must read’ PHILIPPA PERRY

In Pharmanomics, investigative journalist Nick Dearden digs down into the way we produce our medicines and finds that Big Pharma is failing us, with catastrophic consequences.

Big Pharma is more interested in profit than health. This was made clear as governments rushed to produce vaccines during the Covid pandemic. Behind the much-trumpeted scientific breakthroughs, major companies found new ways of gouging billions from governments in the West while abandoning the Global South. But this is only the latest episode in a long history of financialising medicine – from Purdue’s rapacious marketing of highly addictive OxyContin, through Martin Shkreli’s hiking the price of a lifesaving drug, to the 4.5 million South Africans needlessly deprived of HIV/AIDS medication.

Since the 1990s, Big Pharma has gone out of its way to protect its property through the patent system. As a result, the business has focused not on researching new medicines but on building monopolies. This system has helped restructure our economy away from invention and production in order to benefit financial markets. It has fundamentally reshaped the relationship between richer and poorer countries, as the access to new medicines and the permission to manufacture them is ruthlessly policed. In response, Dearden offers a pathway to a fairer, safer system for all.