60 Minutes of Soft Soap

A lot of us have been wondering what will become of CBS News in the wake of that sixteen-million-dollar settlement over President Trump’s bogus lawsuit; the takeover of Paramount (its parent company) by David Ellison, a movie guy whose dad is one of the world’s richest men; and the appointment of Bari Weiss, founder of a site with a proclivity for conservative opinion pieces, as the division’s editor in chief.

Still, we can be a little hopeful, right? So I tuned in to 60 Minutes Sunday evening wanting to see if this show, among the most lauded and profitable news programs in television history, is keeping its standards intact.

Now, one anecdote is not a trend, and Weiss has been at the helm of CBS News for just a few weeks. But a fawning segment on Peter Attia—a bestselling author, popular podcaster, and longevity doctor—shows there is plenty to be done to rebuild 60 Minutes.

Attia charges his elite clients more than a hundred thousand dollars to give them a battery of tests and then provide a mix of both obvious advice and interesting, if quirky, regimens. He’s certainly newsworthy, but this thirteen-minute profile was more Home Shopping Network than Mike Wallace, with host Norah O’Donnell chugging away on a treadmill and then breathlessly (in the literal and figurative senses) parroting Attia’s ideas.

Some of Attia’s tips, like getting more exercise or developing strong personal relationships, are widely accepted ways to enjoy a longer, healthier life. But he is also given to shakier ideas, such as the use of rapamycin, an antirejection medication usually given to transplant recipients, as a longevity-enhancer. The efficacy of the drug for longevity is unconfirmed, and there are some significant side effects. His advice to get full-body, preventive MRIs is likewise questionable, given the many false positives and expensive, invasive procedures that can follow.

But you wouldn’t know about concerns over Attia’s medical advice until near the end of the segment, when O’Donnell says, in voice-over, “There are physicians, including a respected professor of public health we spoke to, who are skeptical that his extraordinary regimen will result in an extra decade of healthy life.” She never identifies this “respected professor” or what that skepticism is about. She then asks Attia, “When a fellow physician calls some of what you’re talking about ‘hocus-pocus’?”

Attia bats away such vague criticism: “People are entitled to think what they want. And just because someone is a physician doesn’t mean they’re even remotely equipped to evaluate the merits of exercise physiology. Remember, I went to Stanford Medical School, right? How many hours of education do you think I received on exercise?… Zero hours. And how many hours did I receive on nutrition? Zero hours.… It was twenty-five years ago, so maybe things have changed. But I’m pretty sure that if you’re talking to other esteemed physicians, they’re in the same bucket as me. So, you know, they might not be the ones that are best equipped to be my critics.”

Well, it isn’t hard to find on-the-record skeptics. In a 2024 New Yorker profile of Attia, Ezekiel Emanuel, a University of Pennsylvania oncologist and bioethicist, is quoted saying that “no one’s got that evidence” that Attia’s approach will work. (He also appears to be the source of O’Donnell’s “hocus-pocus” quote.) Eric Topol, a cardiologist with more than thirteen hundred peer-reviewed articles, added that Attia’s theory of medicine “is that you get this long life where you’re healthy, and then you fall off a cliff. It would be great if it were true. There isn’t any evidence for it.”

The New York Post’s Alexandra Steigrad reported this week that Weiss wants to shake up 60 Minutes and that the network is aware of how soft some of the program segments can be, with one source using the term “afternoon cable fare.” There’s not much evidence in Weiss’s background that she can restore 60 Minutes to its glory days, but removing puff pieces would be a great way to start.