This Ex-KING 5 Anchor’s Podcast Now Reaches 100 Countries

In the late 1990s, I knew Mark Wright from our time working in Spokane's KXLY broadcast house. He anchored the news downstairs for KXLY Channel 4, while I hosted an afternoon radio show upstairs on popular 92.9 KZZU. A couple of years ago, we ran into each other by chance while waiting in line at Lumen Field.

I wasn’t expecting a podcast update while waiting to get into a Sounders game. But there was Mark Wright, the longtime TV news anchor who worked in Spokane, Salt Lake City, and Seattle, most recently at KING 5 and Q13 Fox. He told me he’d left the newsroom for podcasting. Three years ago, he said he had no idea if anyone would listen.

Graphic: Mark Wright/Canva

Fat Science launched with Dr. Emily Cooper, a physician passionate about what she calls the scientific truth about obesity and metabolic health, and co-host Andrea Taylor. There was no social media. There was no marketing.

Slow Start, Then Takeoff

Wright says the show took more than two years to reach its first 500,000 listens and downloads. The next 500,000 came in about nine months.

Listeners now tune in from more than 100 countries. London is the show’s top city, and Portugal is its biggest YouTube audience. After nearly 40 years of storytelling, Wright says it confirms what he’s always believed: if it’s authentic, people will listen and share.

The Show’s Core Argument

Fat Science argues that obesity and metabolic dysfunction are disease states, not failures of willpower. Wright says doctors who simply tell patients to eat less and exercise more are wrong, and that the science doesn’t support that advice long-term. Taylor says she tried 35 diets starting at age 8, and the weight always came back.

Wright has been Dr. Cooper’s patient for 13 years. He says he’s lost about 30 pounds and has resolved his high blood pressure, high cholesterol, sleep apnea, and prediabetes. He also defends GLP-1 medications and calls them no more “the easy way out” than chemotherapy is for cancer patients.

Those are Wright and Cooper’s views, and the podcast carries a disclaimer that it isn’t medical advice. Anyone struggling with weight or diabetes, or worried about a child’s weight, should talk with their own doctor about treatment options.

The show is available wherever you get podcasts. The story of how it grew is a nice reminder that sometimes the quiet launches turn out to be the ones that take off.