The Strange World of Wellness, Dating Trends and Human Behavior with Journalist Madeleine Aggeler

Send us Fan MailA naked dinner party assignment. An alligator living by a dollar store. A “be more efficient” book that actually teaches you to rest. Lifestyle and wellness reporter Madeleine Aggeler has made a career out of taking the internet’s strangest trends seriously enough to find the human truth inside them, and she joins us to explain how that work actually happens. We start with Madeleine’s unconventional journalism origin story: a childhood spent devouring magazines, a detour through the Peace Corps and Foreign Service ambitions, then a one-year gamble in New York that turns temp work and small gigs into a real reporting career. She breaks down what it was like learning on the fly during the high-output days at The Cut, why writing fast can sharpen your voice and how a bold pandemic-era move helped her chase the kind of long-form journalism she wanted to do. From there, we get practical about idea generation and wellness reporting. Madeleine shares how she spots stories, why trusting your gut often beats guessing what readers want and how she balances curiosity with healthy skepticism in an age of nonstop health content. We talk about trends that surprised her, trends she’d never do again and the “boring” habits that keep showing up as the most reliable wellness advice. Finally, she tells us what she’s watching now, including strength training culture and the relationship side of GLP-1 medications. If you like smart, funny reporting that still asks big questions about loneliness, dating culture, beauty standards and self-improvement, hit subscribe, share this with a friend and leave a review so more listeners can find us.Madeleine Aggeler’s author page at The Guardianhttps://www.theguardian.com/profile/madeleine-aggelerMadeleine’s LinkedInhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/madeleine-aggeler/Blueskyhttps://bsky.app/profile/mmaggeler.bsky.social