The rise of the conservative wellness influencer
Post Reports
The Washington Post
4.4 • 5.1K Ratings
🗓️ 20 February 2025
⏱️ 35 minutes
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Summary
Alex Clark stands out on mic and on camera. The 31-year-old wellness influencer and podcaster has nearly half a million followers on YouTube and ranks among the top 10 wellness podcasts on Apple.
While wellness has long been associated with liberal hippies, Clark hails from a conservative background. She’s part of the new “Make America Healthy Again” movement questioning modern medicine, backing President Donald Trump and supporting anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has started as health and human services secretary.
For the last year and a half, reporter Kara Voght has been following Clark’s rise, spending time with her in Arizona. Today, Voght speaks with host Martine Powers about Clark’s rise as a conservative wellness warrior, what’s behind the changing politics of wellness, and what that could mean for the nation’s health.
Today’s show was produced by Elana Gordon. It was edited by Reena Flores and mixed by Sam Bair. Thanks also to Steve Kolowich.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | That bread gives me the creeps. |
| 0:06.5 | I know, right? |
| 0:07.3 | It looks fake. |
| 0:09.9 | Yeah, that's really nasty looking. |
| 0:12.1 | Alex Clark is on a mission. |
| 0:14.3 | She and fellow wellness influencer Courtney Swan are in a grocery store in Arizona. |
| 0:19.5 | This one, this is like one of the fakes... |
| 0:21.3 | They're filming a social media video for Alex Clark's popular podcast, Culture Apothecary, |
| 0:28.1 | and they're going around trying to identify products they think aren't safe to eat. |
| 0:33.5 | If something has an organic label, does that automatically mean it's better for you? |
| 0:38.2 | Not always. So you always want to make sure that you're reading the ingredients no matter what. |
| 0:42.7 | So they're going around the store filming and saying, don't buy this. |
| 0:46.8 | Reporter Kara Vote was also with them. She was shadowing Alex. |
| 0:50.8 | They're picking up products that have, for example, seed oils in them, which are like sunflower oil, a canola oil. They're picking up products that have, for example, seed oils in them, which are like |
| 0:55.9 | sunflower oil and canola oil. They very much believe that these oils are inflammatory and will cause |
| 1:02.0 | problems for you. Kara says it's clear from even this brief tour of the grocery aisle that Alex |
| 1:09.5 | stands out on Mike and on camera. She has presence. |
| 1:13.6 | She is style. She has this long brown, wavy hair. She seems like someone who's having a lot of fun. |
| 1:20.3 | Alex Clark, she has a kind of shock jock personality. So she does a lot of one-liners as she's doing. |
| 1:26.0 | This is something very catchy about it. One thing that she says, she and Courtney grab something that I think has |
| 1:32.2 | seed oil in it. And she goes, inflammation station. Inflammation station. And it has this very |
| 1:41.2 | catchy way of getting in your ear. I mean, the fact that I remember it now, you know, five months later, |
... |
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