Making It Awkward

Dietitian Sherene Chou and Jessica had a drastically different experience at the ADA Scientific Sessions than the researchers who were removed! Sherene may have been the first person to include a Subway Take at a medical conference. Today's episode continues the conversation about the ADA conference, one that started a few weeks back with journalist Lindsay Lee Wallace. Just last week, the medical...

Have you wondered how 5G conspiracies developed or what makes some people more vulnerable to conspiracy theories?  Today Jessica talks with Dr. Eoin Flaherty, assistant professor at Maynooth University to find the  answers to these questions and many others. The two talk about conspiracism and the post-truth era in which we're living.  Dr. Flaherty explains 5G and why some people believe it's dang...

Closing out Pride Month with a conversation about body image in queer men.  Blake Flaugher MPH returns to the show and joins Caleb Draper to talk about gym culture among queer men including a selfie-specific locker room mirror, peacocking among queer men, nudes, looksmaxxing, dating apps and body dysmorphia. The three of them got to be besties while playing kickball with Outloud Sports , stories a...

The American Diabetes Assoc . conference got spicy! But was that intentional? Did it have to? Lindsay Lee Wallace returns to the show to talk about her recent trip to the Health Journalism 2026 conference and the ADA conference where police escorted researchers out of the venue after they distributed paper copies of a published editorial . The researchers detained were not allowed back, including...

Happy Pride month! 🏳️‍🌈 50% off Ozempic for Pride!!! Jessica traveled to NYC in 2024 and got to investigate an ad for Ozempic. Kent Thosmas, MSW joined Jessica to talk about this ad and her visit to the clinic offering the deal, and what this means for gay men. Kent shared how his Christianity played into his eating disorder and the two talk about queer men, and how religion, queerness, and healt...

Spoilers! Meghan Cichy, trad wife Leslie Voorhees Means, Selena Salfen and Alison Pill are back on the show for Part 2 of a conversation about Yesteryear, a novel about a tradwife, Natalie, and her curated yet frightening life. Yesteryear offers the reader two lived experiences for Natalie. One in contemporary times, the other in the 1850s. The novel switches back and forth between these two lives...

No spoilers! Meghan Cichy, trad wife Leslie Voorhees Means, Selena Salfen and Alison Pill are back on the show for Part 1 of a conversation about Yesteryear, a novel about a tradwife and her curated yet frightening life. Each of them shares who, if any, of the characters they connect with. They also discuss trad wives and whether we can define them, the idea of family values and the valuing of wha...

Dr. Oz has made up a new description of American women: under-babied . So it was a good time to return to this conversation with Dr. Eoin Flaherty. The Trump administration has talked about using  awards , scholarships and cash as incentives to have more children. People see Elon as a leader in pronatalism conversations. Dr. Eoin Flaherty is back on the show to connect the dots between population...

People are hungry in America , in a country of billionaires, where food should be a human right, and the administration will no longer collect data on food insecurity in the US saying that it is "redundant, costly, politicized, and extraneous" and that number is only going to grow as people attempt to renew their benefits and the work requirements for SNAP go into effect.  In this episode Meghan C...

Jessica attended the People vs Poison rally that was held in Washington DC on April 27th and Trampus Harmon comes back to the show to hear all about it. She shares her conversation with a Bernie Sander door knocker turned Trump supporter and the two talk about Alex Clark's speech, Cory Booker's appearance, and whether things were truly bipartisan at the rally.  Trampus also shares his thoughts and...

Jessica's UPF experiment has been in the news again! She invited journalist Lindsay Lee Wallace back to the show to see if the two could answer some questions: How has the ultra-processed food hysteria impacted politics today? And what the heck is happening with the news media?  The two talk about gender, the recent UPF coverage, who has been interviewing Jessica recently, the feedback she's gotte...

How much should we fear glyphosate ? We get drastically different answers depending on who you ask. Trampus Harmon, Making it Awkward's farmer in residence, returns to the show to provide us the facts, context and nuance that was missing from podcaster and Wellfluencer Courtney Swan's Realfoodology podcast episode about glyphosate. Trampus loves facts over fearmongering, and prefers nuance and com...

The Center for Science in the Public Interest is the original nutrition influencer. It has used the same alarmist language that gets traction currently used on social media for over 50 years. Sherene Chou returns to the show to talk about our shared experiences reading CSPI's Nutrition Action Healthletter , and how calories are the things that the org cares about. The two of them find multiple exa...

Today's ep is to wrap up the conversation about Jillian Michaels , phew! And will provide some brief initial feedback received on last week's episode with MAHA Mom Leslie Voorhees Means. Today you'll hear from two college students whose moms were influenced by Jillian Michaels and the continued impacts on their physical and mental health. You'll also hear a dietitian's path to her career via an al...

MAHA Mom Leslie Voorhees Means joins the show to talk about people, politics and making the effort to be curious and find humanity. Leslie is the wife of Calley Means , a  senior adviser for the Department of Health and Human Services.  Their conversation covers a lot of ground! The two chat about how they got connected, healthcare as a human right, food access, universal healthcare, MAHA wins and...

Tigress Osborn debated Jillian Michaels about the health and wellness field on Jubilee Media's Surrounded –and won! Tigress, the Executive Director of NAAFA , comes back to the show to talk about her experience being one of (supposedly) 20 body positivity activists to debate Jillian . The two talk about her experiences including the production and editing of the show, how she ended up in one of th...

Jillian Michaels is a one hit wonder who keeps trying to make a comeback. She also is also loud about her changing politics. About her becoming a Conservative in 2020, "I was forever gone. Took the red pill." Today is a prequel to next week's episode with NAAFA Executive Director Tigress Osborne who got to debate Jillian for the newest episode of Jubilee Media's Surrounded .  In today's episode ed...

Would you ever add chia seeds to your latte? Levels Health , a health-tech startup co-founded by presumptive Surgeon General Casey Means , is a deeply unserious company and provides both hilarious and irresponsible guidance on its app.  Public health dietitians Selena Salfen and Meghan Cichy return to the show to discuss our 30 days of using a CGM paired with the Levels app .  Jessica didn't find...

Dr. Casey Means went to Congress last week. On February 28 2026 she went before the Senate's committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions to make her case to be the next Surgeon General .  During the hearing Casey was asked about her statements on vaccines, her medical license , birth control, and her social media sponsors, but were those the questions that needed to be asked? Today public h...

RFK told us that  "We are ending the war on saturated fats" with the release of his food triangle and accompanying Dietary Guidelines . Dr. Selina Wang , Faculty Director at the UC Davis Olive Center, returns to the show to talk about the triangle which emphasizes "healthy fats" like olive oil, butter and tallow. RFK has told us over and over that saturated fats are actually healthy for us, but is...

Tigress Osborn , Executive Director of the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance returns to the show to discuss Mike Tyson's Super Bowl ad for MAHA and the inverted food triangle . The fat shaming ad is part of an ongoing appeal to the manly man, providing us with boxer Mike Tyson telling us about how he wanted to kill himself when he was fat, and telling us all that "something needs to b...

Lindsay Lee Wallace returns to talk about why she thinks women who have sex with men are drawn to Heated Rivalry . She wrote in, Yearning and Submission in 'Heated Rivalry ', "Women who yearn and submit are often main characters—but they are simultaneously seen as frivolous and typical. Their yearning and submission aren't treated as meaningful, or as specific to them and their relationships… So i...

Blake Flaugher, MPH returns to the show to chat about all things Heated Rivalry . He shares some topics that have been left out of the discourse, and teaches us about the importance of seeing romance in gay relationships, the role of hags in gay men's lives, and representation of bottoming. Blake and Jessica share their coming out stories, discuss if we're beyond conversations about coming out,  a...

F*** ICE. This bonus episode shares the stories of immigration and ICE occupation from Making it Awkward guests. Hear stories of immigrants in LA, what it's like to be on the ground in Minneapolis right now, and a story from a mom in Charlotte deliverying groceries to neighbors too afraid to leave their homes.  HCMC protest  https://www.kare11.com/ article/news/local/breaking- the-news/hcmc-doctor...

Jessica Wilson, MS. RD. made a social media ad for Dr. Robert Lustig 's Monch Monch; a fiber supplement that's supposed to act like a sponge in our digestive tract. Now listeners get to hear the ins and outs of the partnership and about the supplement from top to bottom. Our favorite podcast editor Jen Jacobs returns to this side of the show to hear about the whole commercial making process, behin...