Mara Santilli is a journalist and researcher asking some of the most urgent and uncomfortable questions about women’s health, power, and who gets to control our bodies. Mara is a leading voice examining the intersection of contraception, culture, and systemic inequality. Her work unpacks everything from the rise of “tradwife” content and anti-birth control rhetoric to the deeply rooted histories of eugenics, coercion, and misinformation that still shape reproductive care today. In this conversation, we get into what’s really driving the resurgence of anti-contraception narratives, how social media is reshaping our understanding of “choice,” and why Mara says we cannot afford to be lied to about birth control. We also talk about data privacy, medical mistrust, and what true reproductive autonomy should actually look like in 2026, because this isn’t just about health. It’s about power, access, and the right to informed choice. If you’ve ever questioned the narratives you’re seeing online or felt like something deeper is going on beneath the surface, this episode will give you language, context, and clarity.

Episode Resources:

Keep in touch with Mara on Instagram, Bluesky, LinkedIn, or on maracsantilli.com

The Pain Gap

Follow Anushay on Instagram

Little Saints

To learn more about Anushay Hossain's work, check out Anushay's website or sign up for her Substack, where she writes about women's health, politics, and power. To continue the conversation, feel free to DM @anushayhossain or email me at [email protected]

We’re joined by Kellie Pean and Alyssa Convertini-Lindquist, co-founders of Brand New: A Collective, a bicoastal, award-winning marketing agency spanning creative, strategy, experiential production, and talent partnerships. But beyond building a powerhouse agency rooted in cultural insight, Kellie and Alyssa are redefining what leadership looks like for women, especially in industries that weren’t built with them in mind.

In this conversation, we go far beyond marketing. We get into the realities of being women navigating corporate America, the moment you realize your work is valued differently, and what it takes to advocate for yourself, financially, professionally, and personally. From being talked over in meetings to having their ideas credited to male colleagues, their stories are a powerful reminder of the systemic challenges women still face and of what it takes to walk away and build something better.

We also explore the invisible labor women carry, especially in the workplace, where leadership, caregiving, and identity constantly intersect. Kellie and Alyssa open up about motherhood, sacrifice, and the myth of “having it all,” offering an honest look at what it actually takes to lead while navigating the demands of life outside of work.

Episode Resources:

Connect with Kellie and Alyssa on their Instagram

Brand New: A Collective

The Pain Gap

Follow Anushay on Instagram

Little Saints

To learn more about Anushay Hossain's work, check out Anushay's website or sign up for her Substack, where she writes about women's health, politics, and power. To continue the conversation, feel free to DM @anushayhossain or email me at [email protected]

We’re joined by urologist, author, and one of the most unfiltered voices in women’s sexual health, Dr. Kelly Casperson. What started as one patient’s pain became a complete career shift, one that led Dr. Casperson to uncover just how deeply women are underserved, dismissed, and undereducated when it comes to their bodies, especially in midlife and beyond.

In this conversation, we get into the systemic gaps in women’s healthcare, from the shocking disparities in how men’s and women’s sexual health are treated to the myths that still surround menopause and hormone therapy. Dr. Casperson breaks down why so many women are told to “wait until it gets worse,” why pleasure is still treated like a luxury instead of a health issue, and how misinformation continues to shape care at every level. We also talk about the emotional toll of feeling “broken,” the cultural conditioning that keeps women from advocating for themselves, and what it actually looks like to reclaim ownership over your body, your health, and your voice.

Episode Resources:

Dr. Kelly Casperson's first book, “You Are Not Broken: Stop Should-ing All Over Your Sex Life,” is available on Amazon and Audible.

Order The Menopause Moment: Mindset, Hormones, and Science for Optimal Longevity

Find Dr. Kelly Casperson's website at www.kellycaspersonmd.com

Dr. Kelly Casperson's Instagram

Dr. Kelly Casperson's YouTube

Dr. Kelly Casperson's Podcast

Dr. Kelly Casperson's Facebook

Private Membership Information

The Pain Gap

Follow Anushay on Instagram

Little Saints

To learn more about Anushay Hossain's work, check out Anushay's website or sign up for her Substack, where she writes about women's health, politics, and power. To continue the conversation, feel free to DM @anushayhossain or email me at [email protected]

Reed Beeley is a clinician working at the intersection of mental health, addiction, and ADHD, and what he's seeing points to something much bigger than individual diagnosis. It's a systemic gap in how ADHD is understood, identified, and treated in women. In this conversation, we unpack why ADHD is so often missed, starting with diagnostic criteria built around how symptoms present in boys, not girls. Reed explains how cultural expectations and gender stereotypes delay diagnosis or prevent it altogether, leaving many women mislabeled as anxious, emotional, or burned out. We also get into how ADHD is frequently misdiagnosed as bipolar disorder or borderline personality disorder, and why those misdiagnoses don't just miss the mark; they can lead to the wrong treatments and deeper cycles of shame.

At its core, ADHD isn't just about focus; it's about dopamine regulation, emotional processing, and how the brain responds to reward and stress. We explore the connection between ADHD, addiction, trauma, and hormones, including how estrogen fluctuations can directly impact symptoms and cravings. And at the center of it all is disempowerment: women being taught to question themselves, minimize their symptoms, or push through. As Reed makes clear, that disconnect isn't just emotional; it can become a real barrier to getting the care that could actually change everything.

Episode Resources:

Connect with Reed on Instagram or email him at [email protected]

The Pain Gap

Follow Anushay on Instagram

Little Saints

To learn more about Anushay Hossain's work, check out Anushay's website or sign up for her Substack, where she writes about women's health, politics, and power. To continue the conversation, feel free to DM @anushayhossain or email me at [email protected]

Parul Somani was 31 years old, newly postpartum, and had just brought her baby home from the NICU… when she was diagnosed with aggressive breast cancer. What followed wasn't just a fight for her life; it was a complete unraveling of everything she thought she knew about control, success, and certainty. Because like so many women, Parul had done everything "right", the degrees, the career, the plan. And still, her body told a different story. In this conversation, we talk about what happens when the healthcare system dismisses your instincts, why self-advocacy can be the difference between life and death, and how women are conditioned to question themselves, even when something feels deeply wrong. We also explore the emotional toll of a diagnosis, the power of reclaiming agency in moments of uncertainty, and how Parul transformed one of the hardest chapters of her life into a framework for decision-making, resilience, and meaning. Because this isn't just a story about cancer, it's a story about listening to your body and what it costs when no one else does.

Episode Resources:

parulsomani.com

The Path of Least Regret (Forbes Books, March 2026) is available on Amazon and other major booksellers

Follow Parul Somani on LinkedIn and Instagram

The Pain Gap

Follow Anushay on Instagram

Little Saints

To learn more about Anushay Hossain's work, check out Anushay's website or sign up for her Substack, where she writes about women's health, politics, and power. To continue the conversation, feel free to DM @anushayhossain or email me at [email protected]

For millions of women, what we’ve been told is anxiety, depression, or just “getting older”… is actually something else entirely. Today, we’re talking about menopause, not just as a biological transition, but as a mental health crisis hiding in plain sight.

Mandi Dixon is a therapist who began noticing a pattern: women walking into her office saying, “I don’t feel like myself,” after being dismissed by doctors and handed diagnoses that didn’t quite fit. And what she discovered changed everything, not just for her clients, but for herself. In this conversation, we unpack how hormonal changes during perimenopause and menopause impact mood, anxiety, identity, and why so many women are misdiagnosed, dismissed, or left to suffer in silence. We talk about the dangerous gap in medical education, the real mental health consequences of that gap, and what it means to finally feel seen, validated, and understood in your own body. Because this isn’t just about hormones. It’s about the cost of not believing women and what happens when we finally start to listen.

Episode Resources:

Mandi Dixon's Website

Mandi Dixon's Instagram

Mandi Dixon's TikTok

The Pain Gap

Follow Anushay on Instagram

Little Saints

To learn more about Anushay Hossain's work, check out Anushay's website or sign up for her Substack, where she writes about women's health, politics, and power. To continue the conversation, feel free to DM @anushayhossain or email me at [email protected]

Dr. Zed Zha is a physician, writer, and author of the forthcoming book Consented: A Doctor’s Call to End Medical Violence and Reclaim Patient Autonomy. In this powerful conversation, Dr. Zha takes us inside the hidden culture of medicine to expose how consent is too often treated as paperwork instead of an ongoing act of trust, transparency, and respect. We talk about what happens when medical training strips providers of their humanity, how women’s pain is routinely minimized in everything from Pap smears to childbirth, and why so many patients still don’t know they have the right to stop a procedure at any time. Dr. Zha shares deeply personal stories from her journey through medicine, reflecting on moments that forced her to confront not just the system’s failures but also her own complicity within it. We also explore the realities of caring for underserved communities, the crisis of maternity care deserts, the power dynamics that shape who gets believed in healthcare, and why patient bodily truth must matter just as much as medical expertise. This is a conversation about misogyny, hierarchy, trauma, and what it would look like to build a more human, ethical, and truly consensual healthcare system.

Episode Resources:

Preorder Dr. Zha's upcoming book Consented: A Doctor’s Call to End Medical Violence and Reclaim Patient Autonomy.

Code: ASKTHEPATIENT

Discount: 25% off + free shipping

Dr. Zha's Substack newsletter - Ask The Patient

The Pain Gap

Follow Anushay on Instagram

To learn more about Anushay Hossain's work, check out Anushay's website or sign up for her Substack, where she writes about women's health, politics, and power. To continue the conversation, feel free to DM @anushayhossain or email me at [email protected]

Dr. Anna Malaika Tubbs is a sociologist, 2x NYT bestselling author, and one of the sharpest thinkers we have on erasure, patriarchy, and the stories that shape power. If you've ever felt like women, especially women of color, are living in a version of history edited out of our minds, this conversation will hit home. Anna and I talk about what it means to be erased, not just from textbooks, but from healthcare, policy, culture, and even our understanding of who gets to be fully human in this country. We get into how patriarchy was deliberately built into American systems, why progress can be rolled back so quickly, and what it takes to reclaim the stories, voices, and truths that were pushed aside. We also talk about motherhood, race, power, and why naming what's happening is the first step toward changing it.

Episode Resources:

Dr. Anna Malaika Tubbs on Instagram

The Pain Gap

Follow Anushay on Instagram

To learn more about Anushay Hossain's work, check out Anushay's website or sign up for her Substack, where she writes about women's health, politics, and power. To continue the conversation, feel free to DM @anushayhossain or email me at [email protected]

This week on The Pain Gap, Anushay sits down with acclaimed novelist and memoirist Darcey Steinke, author of Flash Count Diary and the new book This Is the Door: The Body, Pain, and Faith, for a deeply honest conversation about menopause, female pain, sexuality, aging, and what it means to stop performing and start telling the truth, finally.

Darcey reflects on what it was like to enter menopause with almost no preparation, why she began documenting every hot flash, and how writing in vivid bodily detail became a way to challenge the ridicule and dismissal women so often face. Together, she and Anushay unpack the cultural shame surrounding menopause, the psychological toll of living in a world that treats women's suffering as normal, and the freedom that can come with aging out of performance, pleasing, and pretending.

They also talk about post-reproductive power, killer whales as models of female leadership, the myths we still tell about sex and desirability in midlife, and why menopause is not a disease to be erased, but a profound transition to be understood. It's a conversation about the body, voice, ambition, and how much life can open up when women stop apologizing for who they are becoming.

Episode Resources:

Flash Count Diary: Menopause and the Vindication of Natural Life

This Is the Door: The Body, Pain, and Faith

The Pain Gap

Follow Anushay on Instagram

To learn more about Anushay Hossain's work, check out Anushay's website or sign up for her Substack, where she writes about women's health, politics, and power. To continue the conversation, feel free to DM @anushayhossain or email me at [email protected]

Adrianne Nickerson is a healthcare operator and entrepreneur who built Oula after years of working inside major health systems and consulting on healthcare transformation. And if you’ve ever wondered why maternity care feels so outdated, so fragmented, and, too often, so unsafe, Adrianne is one of the clearest voices I’ve heard on what’s broken… and what a better system can actually look like.

In this conversation, we talk about what she saw from the inside that convinced her real change couldn’t come from within bureaucracy alone, and why innovation sometimes has to be built outside the system, then pulled back in to scale impact. We get into why this maternal health crisis is solvable, even if it doesn’t always feel that way, and the redesigns we already know work: integrating midwives, building real community support, extending postpartum care beyond a single six-week visit, and treating mental health as essential healthcare, not an afterthought.

Adrianne also breaks down why so many women say, “No one ever told me,” and how that disempowerment isn’t just emotional; it can become a clinical risk when women don’t feel safe enough to speak up about what’s happening in their bodies. This episode is about what it would take to rebuild maternity care with women at the center, not as a slogan, but as a measurable, scalable standard of care.

Episode Resources:

Oula

The Pain Gap

Follow Anushay on Instagram

To learn more about Anushay Hossain's work, check out Anushay's website or sign up for her substack. To continue the conversation, feel free to DM @anushayhossain or email me at [email protected]