It's a dramatization of a wellness influencer who lied about having terminal brain cancer and she claimed that she had cured herself through alternative therapies. That got us thinking about the wellness industry. So on this episode we're gonna peer behind the curtain to find out what it's all about. Are terms like self-care and wellness just sexier ways of saying health? And are people using those terms to sell us things that we don't really need? We're gonna find out. Plus we're gonna tell you how you can identify online wellness scams. I'm William Lee Adams and this is What in the World from the BBC World Service. I'm in the studio with Jackie Wakefield. She's a reporter with our global disinformation unit. Jackie hi. Hey. So before we dive into online wellness scams, and there are a lot of them, I'm hoping we can look at the big picture. How big is the global wellness industry? So the global wellness industry is massive. It's bigger than the pharmaceutical industry. It's worth 6.3 trillion dollars worldwide and it's growing year-on-year with more and more people jumping on the trend trying to cash in. So I can picture what the profile of a fitness influencer might look like. Abs for days, spandex, exercise routines. But what does the profile of a wellness influencer look like? It's really tough because I think this changes year-on-year depending on the trends. But I think typically the profile is normally women, normally younger, normally looking quite thin, fit, have some form of aspirational life that followers might want to copy or get part of that magic that they seem to have.

Peppa isn't behind the curtain.

The top performance we see on screens or on stage is the result of endless hard work behind the curtain.

Behind the curtain I can store toilet paper and hide the brush.

Oh, okay, so they're behind the curtain so you can't see them.

The culprit behind the curtain varies from theory to theory.

Louis, the most dangerous city in America, to working as a mascot, to performing and speaking all over the world, see, I have been blessed to be able to look behind the curtain on both sides.

Time and time behind the curtain he hid till that came into sight.

There is no singular "they." In zeitgeist one, I describe the men behind the curtain to the effect of a specific niche of economics, the ones that control most government policy, and

There may be a human behind the curtain pulling the robot's strings.