Drug Story: Thomas Goetz on Drugs, Diseases and The Medicalization of Everyday Life
Episode Description
Does the history of drugs tell us something bigger about the world? That’s what former Wired executive editor and UC Berkeley Senior Impact Fellow Thomas Goetz is betting on with his new podcast Drug Story. He joins Claudia to talk about how big drug breakthroughs have shaped how we live and what it will really take to build health in our society.
Thomas and Claudia dive into:
- Fluoride: The paradox of public health success becoming invisible
- Why modern culture medicalizes ordinary human experiences like sleep, aging & energy
- How public health needs to communicate differently, think bigger, and position itself as essential infrastructure for everyday health
Thomas says the illusion of free will has been used to make sure consumers feel like unhealthy choices are their choice alone:
“There is some agency, like somebody decides to take a cigarette out of the pack. People decide whether to have a Coke instead of a glass of water or what have you. But there's also this vast machine, an invisible universe that is so powerful in compelling us from the commercials that are on our TV shows to the infrastructure of fast food in our neighborhoods. And it just is this easy inertia where oftentimes we don't actually have free will… We have much less free will than we think we do when it comes to things like what we eat, how we get our entertainment, where we live. There's a lot that is not really up to us and our choices.”
Relevant Links
Listen to Thomas Goetz’s podcast Drug Story
About Our Guests
Thomas Goetz is an award-winning science journalist and author. He has won National Magazine Awards (print and digital), Webby Awards, and FDA contracts. He created Drug Story as an Impact Fellow at the University of California Berkeley School of Public Health.
The former Executive Editor at WIRED, he has worked at The Wall Street Journal, Inc., and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and has written two award-winning books about technology and medicine. His writing has been selected for the Best American Science Writing and the Best American Technology Writing anthologies. He spent much of the past decade developing digital tools to help people make sense of prescription medications, including leading the development of openFDA for the Food and Drug Administration, and building an economic research team and editorial operations at GoodRx. You can reach him at thomas@drugstory.co
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For more information on The Other 80 please visit our website - www.theother80.com. To connect with our team, please email claudia@theother80.com and follow us on twitter @claudiawilliams and LinkedIn
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