Hey there!
You may have seen the news that I’m back from maternity leave, and I’m honestly SO excited to be here. My leave with my first daughter felt like it ended way too soon, but this one was just right. Granted, at the beginning it involved a lot of doctors’ appointments and time spent healing from the pretty gnarly postpartum health issues I went through, which I talked about a few weeks ago in the episode with my producer Amelia. But thankfully the worst of those problems were over in a few months, and then I got to spend a good amount of time just hanging out and bonding with our new baby, who is an absolute delight. I feel so lucky to have her in our family.
Having six months off also gave me the space to unplug, let my mind rest, and step away from the brain-intensive work I do here, which was such a huge gift (thanks in large part to my paid subscribers for making that possible). Now I feel more creatively energized than I have in years, and I’ve been cooking up some cool new things for a new season of Rethinking Wellness!
So today, I want to share a bit of what’s coming down the pike.
Monthly Office Hours for Paid Subscribers
I’ve been wanting to do this for a while, sort of a more informal way of answering people’s questions and thinking through ideas.
These will be roughly hour-long Q&A sessions every month (though I’ll probably go long, as I usually do with these kinds of things). Paid subscribers can come and bring all their questions about wellness and diet culture and disordered eating to ask in real time!
If you’re not a paid subscriber but you want a chance to ask a question live, sign up here. You can even sign up for just a month, which is only $6, and I think that’s a pretty great deal for a live workshop!
Obviously, since these will be happening in real time, I won’t be able to do the really thorough deep dives that I usually do when answering people’s questions here. But I’ll give you my best quick answers, and I’m also hoping to walk you through a bit of my process in digging into the science, so that you’ll leave with some tools for thinking through health and wellness-related issues on your own.
If you’ve ever wanted to chat with me about your questions and have me help you come up with answers, this is a great opportunity to do that. And that’s why I’m calling these sessions office hours, because they’ll basically be like stopping by my office for an informal chat.
Upgrade now to join our first office hours on Wed, Aug 19 at 1pm ET—or submit your question ahead of time and catch the replay!
More Free Podcast Episodes
This is for all the free subscribers who’ve been wanting more content: we now have ads on the podcast, so in the future you’ll see more ad-supported episodes and fewer paywalls.
Paid subscribers will always get the ad-free versions in their private podcast feeds and here on Substack, and they’ll continue to get extended interviews and subscriber-only Q&As and essays, as well as the monthly office hours going forward. We will occasionally unlock some older Q&As for free subscribers, like we did last week with the episode on ADHD and food additives. But the vast majority of those solo posts will remain paywalled, because they require so much labor on my part (see above re: brain-intensive work!).
Just one quick ask with the free episodes: can you please let me know if you ever hear any ads that seem a little off-brand? We’re working with a podcast ad agency that allows a lot of control over the advertisers on the show, but nothing is perfect. So if you ever hear an ad for, say, diets or GLP-1 drugs or supplements or food-allergy testing kits—all of which are totally out of alignment with our whole mission of critical thinking about these topics, and which should be blocked in our ad platform—please drop us a line.
I’m excited for these changes, and for lots of other new things I’m working on now that I’ll share with you in the coming months. Meanwhile, I hope you’re having a relaxing summer, and I’ll look forward to seeing many of you at our first office hours on August 19!
