Was it around 2016 when "self-care" came of age, when the news cycle really began to feel like it was undergoing incessant and radical change? Self-care is not just an inward instinct, but a necessary and often overlooked component of active participation in a frightening world: you have to put on your own oxygen mask before you can help others. Burnout is not the path to positive change. Sometimes it means doing something just for yourself, taking a short break from social media, or developing a new habit like meditation, cooking, or running. All of these are good things.

But wellness, self-care's fraternal twin, offers a more complex coping mechanism. Whereas self-care is framed as a strategic retreat before returning to the hard work of saving the world, the pursuit of wellness rarely requires turning back outward. The difference that emerges is that while self-care can be proactive, achieving wellness is vague and can be a constantly shifting goal post with no way to determine when it has been achieved. The difficulty of identifying wellness has also provided a new springboard for audacious counterfeit drug salesmen. Sometimes they literally try to sell snake oil, but more often they are selling expensive stones to be inserted into body cavities. (Fortunately, some bright and entertaining minds are challenging this notion and bringing science, comprehensiveness, and truly thoughtful analysis back into the conversation. The podcasters hosting the following shows honestly assess the wellness craze, dig deep into accepted truth claims, and explore the kinds of meaningful self-care that might actually make you feel better.

What exactly is a calorie? Or why has protein come to play such an important role in the American diet? Maintenance Phase, hosted by Michael Hobbes and Aubrey Gordon, answers these and other burning questions about wellness and diet culture with a great deal of research and skillful storytelling. The hosts are engaging and smart, bringing empathy and humanity to a difficult topic. Prepare to have everything you thought you knew about health "facts" you've heard since childhood overturned.

Registered dietitian Christy Harrison helps listeners reconcile with food. She calls diet culture a "life thief" that pretends to be about health and wellness but leads to body phobia and disordered eating. Instead, Harrison talks to guests about how listeners can improve their relationship with food, body image, and fat acceptance.

Comedy's best friends and self-proclaimed "hags," Kate Berlant and Jacqueline Novak, admit to loving the wellness culture, but also describe it as fraudulent. Ostensibly, the show is about two hilarious people trying out a bizarre wellness fad (note that the podcast name is just "Goop" in reverse), but when Berlant and Novak talk about their anxiety, their health, and how they navigate being emotional people in an intense world, Poog goes surprisingly deep. It's like comedy and therapy rolled into one podcast.

When the podcast began in 2016, host Caroline Doerner focused on the same themes addressed in her book The F*ck It Diet, namely body image issues and disordered eating brought on by diet culture, with intuitive eating and radical She mainly discussed replacing them with self-acceptance. More recently, the podcast has taken on a number of seemingly healthy issues that tend to cause misery. The myth of virginity, productivity culture, and "healthy" diets are explored by Duner in an irreverent and accessible way.

Sarah Marshall (who also hosts an excellent podcast called "You're Wrong About" (open in new tab)), which is more about rethinking self-care than debunking wellness claims. Each episode of You Are Good takes a classic, feel-good movie (think "9 to 5" or "Practical Magic") and uses it as a vehicle to talk about emotions, what it means to find comfort, and the unique world experiences of the hosts and guests themselves The hosts are very kind and respectful of each other. The hosts are so kind and respectful of each other that it becomes a lesson in active listening and offering emotional support, making "You Are Good" a podcast akin to a warm bath at the end of a long day.

You know the saying, "If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's probably a duck. "Sounds Like a Cult hosts Amanda Montel and Isabella Medina-Mate use this general duck framework to evaluate various trends and determine whether they are simply healthy pastimes or cults. Past topics include soul cycles, multi-level marketing, and peer groups, and the hosts look for red flags such as exorbitant initial costs, fans who become preachers for a cause, reviews of the "life-changing" characteristics of fads, and pyramid-shaped business plans. The show is well-researched, wonderfully produced, and a bit like discussing a fad over cocktails with your best friend, only a little less well behaved.

Television critic Willa Paskin wants to figure out how the strange cultural ephemerality came about, which of course means that Decoder Ring ventures into the realm of wellness. Paskin and the producers of this podcast will be going deep into history with first-hand interviews to find out why Jane Fonda's workout was such a big deal, when "hydration" became a habit, and how storytelling became a purchasable commodity in its own right, It makes each episode feel like an important resource explaining to future generations (or maybe visiting aliens).

Bonnie Roney once had a strained relationship with food. As a young gymnast, she had a years-long diet plan that often involved secret binges. After becoming a registered dietitian and addressing her own feelings about eating, she now hosts a podcast aimed at shedding light on why so many people feel guilty about food and how to break out of the cycle of toxic diet culture.

Some wellness trends, while ridiculous, are essentially harmless. But some lead would-be believers down a dangerous rabbit hole that leads to things like anti-vaccine sentiment, pyramid schemes, and even extremist politics, Conspirituality hosts Derek Velez, Matthew Lemsky, and Julian Walker, want to understand how New Age pseudo-philosophy began to merge with far-right conspiracy theories and how they can help those who have been sucked in. Each episode, the host features a new group or individual who takes advantage of those who seek the greater good, and posts a list of so-called "wellness influencers" on its website who publicly support dangerous conspiracies.