Overlooked: Women's Health Can't Wait

This episode is a special collaboration with Cramped, a podcast hosted by the dynamic Kate Helen Downey. Golda and Kate talk about the language of pain, why women talk about their pain differently than men, and how our pain is so often dismissed. Also - what’s the point of the pain scale, anyway?  You can listen to Cramped here : https://patreon.com/cramped For more resources on the topics mention...

Sanju Pal was a high-performing management consultant when she was told she had a cyst on her ovary the size of a Coke can. But sitting in her gynecologist's office, facing urgent surgery, all she could think about was her job. That moment was the beginning of a seven year struggle through endometriosis, dismissal by her employer, and two employment tribunals - that ended in a landmark ruling esta...

Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder, or PMDD is an overlooked and under-researched condition - a severe form of PMS. Shalene Gupta is the author of ‘The Cycle: Confronting the Pain of Periods and PMDD’, a raw account of her experience with this condition. Shalene talks about the havoc it created in her life and her relationships, and the difficult path to finding effective treatment. She also traces P...

Jasna Hodžić is a writer, researcher - and avid rock climber, and she's built a life around the sport she loves. When she was in her mid-twenties, her gynecologist ran a hormone panel and sent her for a bone density scan, and what came back was the last thing she expected. Jasna had the bone density of someone decades older. She was, as she puts it, 'crumbling from within' - and she had no idea. T...

Elle Murata is a neuroscientist with PCOS. When she was diagnosed - and dismissed in the same appointment - she designed a study and made herself the subject. This episode is about how PCOS is really a systemic disorder, how it impacts the brain, and what medicine still doesn’t know. For a deeper dive into PCOS and this episode, subscribe to the newsletter: https://overlookedpodcast.kit.com/f8ebd7...

This episode comes from our listeners, and features their stories about diagnosis and recovery, health and illness - documenting what they have lived through, how it has changed their bodies, and what this health journey has meant to them.  This episode features stories from Kasia Woźniak and Melissa Kirk. These immersive and personal audio stories from our listener community come from First Perso...

Nancy King Reame, Professor Emerita at Columbia University's School of Nursing, has spent decades researching tampon safety. She was on the FDA task force that investigated the link between tampons and toxic shock syndrome in the early eighties - a deadly outbreak that killed dozens of women and affected hundreds more. Her research led to the absorbency scale printed on every box of tampons sold....

Cesarean births are one of the most common operations in the world, and yet, we know surprisingly little about the impact and legacy of this surgery in our bodies. Host Golda Arthur had two emergency cesarean births, and 20 years later, she's still making sense of their legacy. In this episode, she sits down with Rachel Somerstein, author of Invisible Labor: The Untold Story of the Cesarean Sectio...

This episode comes from our listeners, and features their stories about diagnosis and recovery, health and illness - documenting what they have lived through, how it has changed their bodies, and what this health journey has meant to them.  This episode features stories from Spencer Moore and Jen Johnson. These immersive and personal audio stories from our listener community have come out of First...

A 'previvor' is a person who doesn't have cancer but carries a genetic risk for developing it. And if that's you, it can feel like you've suddenly been pulled into a world that can be overwhelming and scary. Michelle Zimmerman, CEO and co-founder of Previvor Edge, talks about what previvorship actually means, why people resist genetic testing, and how to move past the fear of knowing your cancer r...

In the last week of 2025, host Golda Arthur went to the emergency room with a sudden, intense headache. The scan showed nothing. But sitting in an uncomfortable chair with an IV in her arm, she realized something. In this audio essay, Golda talks about her experience in the ER, and why pain - how we express it, what we know about it, how we treat it - will be a central theme of Overlooked in 2026....

Cait Reeves lived with severe adenomyosis pain for years before getting a diagnosis. In this episode, she tells us about the struggle to be heard by doctors, the breakthrough moment when she found language to describe her pain - comparing it to a garden trowel carving into a pumpkin - and the changes that helped her reclaim her life. A listener-requested episode. The newsletter has the backstory t...

This is a listener-requested episode about the connection between migraine and hormones - and one hormone in particular. You guessed it: estrogen. Dr Rashmi B. Halker Singh from The Mayo Clinic talks about migraine at puberty, pregnancy and perimenopause, and how the menstrual cycle can worsen migraine, which is considered a chronic condition. She outlines the symptoms, an approach to treatment, a...

Preeclampsia is one of the most dangerous conditions in pregnancy, and we’ve struggled to see it coming. That’s changing fast, as tests to predict this condition are being developed. Dr Neel Shah is the chief medical officer of Maven Clinic and in this episode, we explore the breakthrough science that's finally solving the mystery of preeclampsia, what to know if you’re pregnant, and how new life-...

Two-thirds of people with Alzheimer's are women, but we don't really know why. Dr. Gillian Einstein, who studies women’s brain health at the University of Toronto, is uncovering how life experiences like surgical menopause and caregiving stress in the 30s and 40s might plant the seeds of this disease decades before symptoms appear. For the backstory to this episode and a deeper dive on Alzheimers...

This episode steps back in time, to the origins of the fight for birth control. It wasn't led by one woman - it was shaped by a fierce rivalry between two: Margaret Sanger, who founded Planned Parenthood, and an overlooked figure from history, Mary Ware Dennett, who was the first person to ever take reproductive rights to Washington. Their different visions for birth control - and their bitter per...

Golda hits the streets of Manhattan for an unscientific sampling to answer this question, then talks with Sanj Singh, CEO of Temple Therapeutics, about his mission to turn uncomfortable silence into curiosity, then advocacy from his fellow men. This episode explores how to turn men into not just supporters of the women they love, but advocates for systemic change. Because moving the needle on wome...

https://overlooked.simplecast.com/episodes/real-talk-on-menopause-myths-and-facts-with-dr-gillian-goddard There is a huge diversity of experience in menopause, and we don't talk about that enough. We’re leaning into Menopause Awareness Month and taking the opportunity to hear about the aspects of menopause we don't talk about enough, through listener stories. Hear from Samantha Gattsek in the US,...

Even a basic definition of endometriosis tells us a lot about why we need to rethink how we’re dealing with this condition. Rowan Gardner is co-founder of Precision Life, where she's using genetics to revolutionize how we understand endometriosis - breaking it into subtypes instead of treating it as one disease. We know that with endometriosis, the stakes are high, and the challenges are enormous...

Morgan Stanton's frustration with unanswered questions about her fibroids led her to start a company that's collecting menstrual blood to build better models of women's reproductive health. As CEO of Opal Therapeutics, she's creating "organoids" - miniature uteruses grown from menstrual blood - to help understand conditions like fibroids and endometriosis that affect millions of women but have bee...

Genetic testing is a powerful preventive tool for ovarian cancer, especially since there's no way to screen for this disease like we can with breast or cervical cancer. Golda's journey into prevention started with the results of a genetic test, which showed a gene mutation called RAD51C. But with that knowledge comes difficult decisions. She tells that story. And, Jason Rosenthal tells the story o...

Three innovators in ovarian cancer talk about their work in moving the needle: Oriana Papin Zogby from AOA Dx, Dr Ernst Lengyel from the University of Chicago, and Dr Jeanette Boudreau from Dalhousie University. Here's more on each of these guests: Oriana Papin Zogby: https://aoadx.com/our-team/ Dr Ernst Lengyel: https://www.uchicagomedicine.org/find-a-physician/physician/ernst-lengyel Dr Jeanette...

Three women share their experience of ovarian cancer symptoms - Erin Konrath, Jen Johnson and Susan Leighton. September is Ovarian Cancer month, and this is the first in a series of three episodes exploring this disease. Overlooked is a recipient of the AKR Foundation's Innovator Award, which made this series possible. Learn more about the Amy Krouse Rosenthal Foundation here: https://www.amykrous...

Overlooked is a podcast with a point of view: that women’s health can’t wait, not any more. And this season we’re bringing you fresh stories and conversations with the people who are moving the needle on women's health. ABOUT THE SHOW: Overlooked tells powerful stories about women's health conditions that don't get enough attention. The show is hosted by Golda Arthur, an audio journalist and produ...

Why are Black women are less likely to survive endometrial cancer? It’s a deep-seated inequality, and Dr Kemi Doll has been treating patients and studying it for years. She explains what endometrial cancer is, why this lethal disparity exists, and why she thinks Black women are the ‘canary in the coal mine’ in women’s health.  More about Dr Kemi Doll - https://www.uwmedicine.org/bios/kemi-doll Mor...