The goop Podcast

Award-winning investigative journalist and New York Times–bestselling author Gerald Posner is telling the wild, true, and urgent story behind America’s now trillion-dollar-a-year pharmaceutical industry. In Pharma, Posner begins with the Sacklers: Before they became the family driving the rise of Oxycontin, they orchestrated the birth of medical advertising and all the monetization that came after it. Moving forward in time, Posner tells us how menopause became medicalized for profit in the ’70s—with devastating health consequences for women. And in the present day, Posner reveals the underbelly of health care, including the ways bribery can interfere with patient care. It’s not all doom and gloom, though: Heroes emerge, and Posner reveals that even dark, complex figures like Arthur Sackler did some good. And after all he’s learned, Posner is able to look at the scope of our current health care and offer solutions for a better future.

“We’re just not taught these days to feel our feelings,” says psychiatrist Ellen Vora, MD. In her New York City practice, Vora takes a holistic, functional-medicine approach to mental health. She sees symptoms—anxiety and depression, hormone and gut issues—as “our really beautiful, brilliant body’s way of communicating to us.” And to communicate back, Vora focuses on food, sleep, stress, and other lifestyle changes. She meets patients where they are; she works with people who are on antidepressants and who are tapering off of SSRIs. Her most important work is not fixing a problem but helping us to hold space for the full human experience.