Think of the duo as your fact-checking BFFs.

“There’s actually research on that specific thing,” replies Gordon.

“And we’re totally going to [bleep]ing talk about it.”

Researchers downplay systemic racial bias, poverty, lack of health insurance—all factors shown to have major impacts on health—because they haven’t investigated their own assumption that fat people should be thin.

“As a gay man who researches this issue, I am very familiar with this format.”

Both started their careers in the nonprofit sector.

Gordon was a community organizer focusing on LGBTQ+ rights, while Hobbes worked in international development.

Most of what we know about diet and health comes from studying populations. Individuals are a lot more complex.

That sense of mission led them into reporting.

Hobbes and Gordon first connected over a 2018HuffPostexpose Hobbes wrote aboutmyths surrounding the obesity epidemic.

They cracked each other up.

They agreed with each other.

What would it be like, they decided, if they recorded their conversations?

Gordon and Hobbes also track down the origins ofcommonly quoted statistics about the obesity epidemic.

They don’t question that.

“But most of what we know about diet and health comes from studying populations.

Individuals are a lot more complex.