Are you drowning in a “wellness” whirlpool?

Hop in our life raft

Apr 13, 2025

Oh hey, we’re so sorry we totally spaced on… sending our newsletter. We’ve been really swamped with… (gestures wanly, expansively) everything.

But it seems like we’re not alone: the consistent circulation of the Broad City “How ‘am’ I?” gif in my (LA, creative, millennial) circle leads me to believe that people are... not doing great!

I and the rest of our little Prism team have been reflecting on what “doing well” means these days. Our society’s relationship with health and wellness has evolved since we started Prism in the height of the pandemic, thanks to the emergence of things like AI, Ozempic, MAHA, Luigi Mangioni, the manosphere election… the list is long. All of it adds up to a “wellness” discourse whirlpool of relentless optimization mandates, influencer therapy speak, ChatGPT diagnoses (how is it always IBS?), and wearables that make us mini data centers. It’s not a fun waterpark whirlpool… it’s one you can drown in.

So we’ve decided to do something a little more proactive than sending each other despairing gifs. We're restarting this newsletter as a life raft for people who want a more approachable way to feel healthy and sane; who’re looking for things that add to their life, not their to-do list. Climb aboard, we’ve got extra SPF if you need!

Prism Postcards will offer takes on health trends, advice from people we like, and some fun distractions (because play is healthy, duh). And our occasional Parcel issues will feature deeper dives on specific topics like plastic surgery, therapy speak, hormones, the rise of life coaches, and the caregiving crisis, to name a random smattering of the stuff we’re excited to talk about. We’re also eager to talk with all of you about what taking care of yourself looks like these days. We’ll send this breezy digest every week—usually! We’re a small team and only human, after all. (Even if we’ve all replaced our blood with some we got from random 17 year olds. JK… we don’t know any 17 year olds.)

Usually our issues will feature a long(ish) read from one of our contributors, but since I clearly had Some Things to Say this week, we’re forgoing that and instead sharing a few shorter morsels: clown/comedian/genius Natalie Palamides’ irrational fears, some surprising finds from our (ahem) original research on attitudes towards health and wellness, and some digital delights at the end.

Talk to you soon,

Jocelyn (and the Prism team)

PS - Oh also not to brag, but remember that Webby nomination we wrote you about? We won 😏
PPS - If you’re thinking “I can barely remember who you are, let alone your Webby nomination”, here’s a little refresher on the Prism team.
Final PS - We’re on Substack now! After a lot of healthy team debate, we ultimately made the switch because it’ll connect us more to you, dearest readers. More to come on that soon.

This week, we caught up with Prism friend and LA comedian/clown Natalie Palamides. You might know her from her genius gender and genre-bending show Nate (check it out on Netflix), but she’s also currently touring her “achingly tender 90s rom-dram,” WEER in LA and London.

What was the last thing that made you laugh unexpectedly? Cry?

Laugh: my friend trying to squeeze his huge feet into a pair of tiny brown slip on sandals at a Japanese onsen, because he preferred the color to the white ones that were in his size.
Cry: musical theatre.

What words do you most overuse when describing your mental state?

"freaking" "stressed" "freaking stressed" "overwhelmed" "staying positive" (brag)

What is your most irrational fear?

If I told you... I'd have to kill you... at a stop sign. It's running someone over at a stop sign.

What non-professional achievement are you most proud of?

Knowing how to merge in LA traffic.

What is your most unhealthy obsession?

Raw milk, don't hate.

FIND NATALIE ON

➚ Instagram ➚ Website

As you might have gleaned, we have some… conflicting feelings about the state of health and wellness today, and we thought our community might too. So we polled them and discovered some interesting insights.

Like the fact that 94% of them engage with self-improvement content even though the majority find it stressful.

Or that 3 in 4 people agree that the way they think about their health and wellness is connected to how they feel about their appearance 🙃.

They also told us that taking the survey was surprisingly interesting (we do our best), so if you have 4-5 minutes, you can take it here too and we’ll share the results with you in our next issue.