Every day, we’re bombarded with pressure to be positive. From “good vibes only” and “life is good” memes, to “look on the bright side,” we’re constantly told that the key to happiness is silencing negativity. Even when faced with illness, infertility, and other challenges, there’s little space for talking about our real feelings—and processing them so that we can feel better and move forward.

In this episode, Whitney Goodman, psychotherapist and author of the book Toxic Positivity, shares the latest research along with everyday examples and stories that reveal how damaging toxic positivity is to ourselves and our relationships.

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May is Asian American and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) Heritage Month. 8.5% of healthcare workers are AAPI, compared to 6.8% of the U.S. population. While Americans of Asian and Pacific Island descent have made many contributions to our healthcare system, they are facing increased discrimination at work and in their communities.

In this episode, Dr. Esther Choo discusses the racism faced by AAPI healthcare workers, and what we can do about it.

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Jake Eberts went viral from live-tweeting his experience participating in an 11-day clinical trial for a dysentery vaccine. He told the story incredibly humorous on Twitter, and I just needed to know more. In this episode, Jake shares all the details from drinking the "shigella smoothie" to his thoughts on clinical trial ethics.

Learn more about the shigella vaccine clinical trial.

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It’s National Nurses Week! As the most trusted profession for the last 20 years, nurses make up the highest percentage of the US healthcare workforce and serve as the primary providers of patient care. But we’re facing a nursing crisis and looming shortage.

In this episode, McKinsey Partner and former nurse Gretchen Berlin shares the challenges the profession is facing, and what’s needed to turn things around (not a parade).

Read the 2022 McKinsey Nursing Report.

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Decades of public health efforts to curb teen smoking have unraveled since Juul and other e-cigarette brands came on the market in 2015. With sketchy ads targeting youth and flavor names like “gummy bear” and “cool cucumber”, vaping has skyrocketed amongst youth. In fact, 10%-24% of high school students are now addicted to nicotine. In this episode, Dr. Susan Walley, Chief of the Division of Hospital Medicine at Children's National Hospital, discusses her work developing effective healthcare and school-based interventions to reduce youth tobacco use.

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Just because a computer isn’t running a Windows operating system doesn’t mean it’s broken, it’s just different. Same goes for people who are “neurodivergent”, a term used to describe any kind of divergence from dominant cultural norms of neurocognitive functioning. This can include people living with autism, ADHD, OCD, epilepsy, synesthesia, dyslexia, and more. In this episode, special guest host Marissa Pittard (who is neurodivergent herself, and the co-founder of Beaming Health) interviews actor Major Dodson about life on the spectrum. 

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For decades, the U.S. has been forcibly sterilizing women of color, taking away their basic human right to become a parent. It’s happening in prisons and immigration detention centers, where doctors are performing unwarranted hysterectomies and bilateral tubal ligation without proper consent. Last year, California announced it would pay out millions of dollars to living survivors of the state’s forced sterilization efforts. Co-sponsor of the bill, Laura Jimenez, Executive Director of California Latinas for Reproductive Justice, explains the racist, classist, ableist history of forced sterilization and why it’s still happening today. 

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LGBTQ+ people face worse health outcomes in our country due to a long history of oppression and discrimination. Dr. Mitchell Lunn is a physician and researcher of sexual and gender minority populations (SGM) at Stanford University. In this episode, he explains what health equity means for SGM people, and what we can do to be better allies. 

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Fentanyl is now the leading cause of death in 18-45-year-olds in the US, claiming more lives than car crashes and gun violence combined. After Dr. Beth Weinstock lost her son last year to what she calls “the most devastating health crisis this generation has ever seen,” she decided to do something about it. In this episode, Dr. Weinstock explains how a harm-reduction approach can protect young people from accidental fentanyl poisoning.

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In wartime, the dismantling of healthcare services due to destroyed infrastructure, understaffed hospitals, supply chain issues, and drug shortages often kill far more people than bombs and bullets. These effects linger long after the war has ended. And they impact the health and wellbeing of entire generations of people. In this episode, we share an overview of the situation in Ukraine from a healthcare perspective and how you can help. 

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