‘Maintenance Phase’ Has Dragged Pete Evans To Hell, So I Hope The BioCharger Has A Cure For That
The hosts also called out the Australian media on Evans for "lending credibility" to Evans' views.
If there’s one thing we love here on Junkee, it’s Americans discovering and roasting our most embarrassing celebrities.
The latest cringe-fail Aussie public figure to fall prey to American commentators is Pete Evans, in an episode of Maintenance Phase.
Starting in October 2020, Maintenance Phase is hosted by author and investigative journalists, Michael Hobbs and Aubrey Gordon. Every second Tuesday, Gordon and Hobbs break down a different topic relating to toxic diet culture and fatphobia.
Their most recent episode dissected the history of the paleo diet by taking an uncomfortably close look at Pete Evans. After briefly introducing Evans as a “discomforting lifesize Ken doll,” Hobbs and Gordon dive into how Evans went from pedalling paleo to pushing alt-right conspiracy theories over 2 hour long episodes.
Part one introduces Pete Evans as a lifelong proponent of paleo. Then, Hobbs and Gordon break down the paleo diet’s historical ties to supporters of eugenics, as well as its total lack of evidence-based health benefits.
At part one’s tail end, they start to walk through Evan’s worst hits, including his paleo cookbook for babies ‘Bubba Yum Yum’ that the federal department of health ordered Evans to postpone, Evans’ now infamous claims that paleo cures autism, as well as his years-long beef with the Australian Medical Association.
In part two, Hobbs and Gordon dive deep into how the pandemic appeared to radicalise Pete Evans into pedalling anti-vax content and alt-right conspiracies. These include Evans’ friendship with anti-vax activist Robert F Kennedy Jr., that time he promoted the totally not a scam “biocharger” and got himself kicked off Facebook, and his failed run for senate.
What’s even better, Hobbs and Gordon effectively call out the Australian news media for reporting on Evans in a “bloodless debate club” way. In their segment about Evans featuring known antisemitic conspiracy theorist David Icke on his podcast, the hosts discuss how toothless both Fairfax and Murdoch press were in calling him out. “It was totally irrelevant whether he agrees with David Icke. The fact is Pete Evans was very consistently delivering extremely fringe and odious views to a mainstream audience,” said Hobbs.
Gordon agrees, saying that kind of journalism was, “lending credibility and the benefit of the doubt to a public figure that has been publicly torching his credibility for eight years at that point”.
The Maintenance Phase episodes are a thoroughly explained example of the wellness to alt-right pipeline at work in our own backyard. If you chose to listen to the episodes, content warning for discussions of ableism, fatphobia, eugenics, and antisemitism.