Wellness, Actually with Emily Oster & Perry Wilson, MD

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Latest Episodes:

Caitlin Murray's Late-Night Panic Google Sep 19, 2024

Show notes

Instagram's Caitlin Murray (@BigTimeAdulting) contemplates fear of the unknown, the probability of rare childhood diseases, getting hit by meteors, and the gentle parental art of "...what if you just didn't think about it?".
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Phones and the Importance of Play: Are phones really to blame for the decline in kids’ mental health? Sep 12, 2024

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If you're a parent who reads the news - and who listens to this podcast - you probably heard a lot about screens this summer. And even now, as kids go back to school, we're hearing a lot about phones. No phones in schools. Put your phone in a Yondr pouch. Hide your phone in your backpack. People are doing TikToks in the bathroom. Take their phones away.

Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt is at the forefront of a lot of these conversations. His book, The Anxious Generation, has really galvanized a lot of these conversations, around kids and phones and schools and their mental health. Today on ParentData, Jon joins us to talk about it all: both what his research has revealed and what's gotten a fair amount of pushback, particularly around the question of whether phones are really the boogeyman for teen mental health that everyone seems to think they are.

Study on social media and mental health (Braghieri, Levy, and Makarin: American Economic Review, Nov. 2022)

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Chelsea Sodaro's Late-Night Panic Google Sep 05, 2024

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Champion triathaloner Chelsea Sodaro talks baby wipes and the kindest way to say goodbye to your poop.
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(Part Two) Kids, Screens, and Schools: How worried should we be? Aug 29, 2024

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This is the second in a two-episode series on the issue of kids and screens and schools. The first episode featured Jessica Grose of the New York Times about her survey of parents about their kids’ screen use. The tenor of that episode, overall, was pretty negative on screens. Basically, less is better than more.

Today on ParentData, we welcome Dr. Michael Rich, a pediatrician, child health researcher, and children’s media specialist. Dr. Rich has built his practice and research around helping families with problematic screen use, but also around providing actionable, realistic guidance to parents and families. Put simply: our kids’ lives are going to involve screens. Our job is to mentor them and help them develop a healthy relationship with devices. Even if it means watching some truly stupid YouTube videos every now and then.

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Ask Bubbie's Late-Night Panic Google Aug 22, 2024

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Pediatrician-turned-grandma influencer, Dr. Flo Rosen - better known as Ask Bubbie - tackles the super easy issues of vaccine hesitancy, sleep training, and intergenerational harmony.
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(Part One) Kids, Screens, and Schools: How worried should we be? Aug 15, 2024

Show notes

When we were growing up, screens came in fixed, predictable contexts: TV, movie theaters, computer labs, Oregon Trail. But kids today use screens all the time, especially at school, where they've become a ubiquitous part of classroom life. We've been hearing a lot lately about how detremental this is to learning. But how bad is it really?
Today on ParentData is the first of two episodes on kids, screens, and schools. In this episode, we're joined by New York Times reporter Jessica Grose, who writes on parenting and recently ran a survey of parents about their kids' screen usage. Her goal with the survey was crowdsourced data to understand, basically, how much are kids actually using screens? And do their parents think it's good for them?
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Myleik's Late-Night Panic Google Aug 08, 2024

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Serial entrepreneur Myleik explores buttholes, pinworms, and when, as a parent, there's nowhere to go but up.
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Every Kid is a Math Kid: Debunking the myths around learning math Aug 01, 2024

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Many of us grew up dividing the world into "math kids"... and the rest of us. It can be just as scary when our kids present us with their math homework as it was when we were assigned our own. So how do we get our kids excited about math?
Today on ParentData, we're joined by Shalinee Sharma, who runs an online math platform called Zearn. She is a math zealot — a person who really, truly believes that all kids can not only succeed in math but love it. We talk about putting those beliefs on the page in her new book "Math Mind: The Simple Path to Loving Math". It’s a guide to how we can make all kids “math kids.” We talk about why she wrote it, what she hopes people will get from it, and how schools can do math better.
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Mandy Moore's Late-Night Panic Google Jul 25, 2024

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Actress and singer Mandy Moore contemplates croup, toddler beds, and Bayesian statistics.

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Ozempic 101: A doctor explains the data and science behind weight-loss drugs Jul 18, 2024

Show notes

News about weight-loss drugs is hard to miss. A new generation of drugs — Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro, Zepbound — are on television, on billboards, and in many of our homes. There is little debate about the efficacy of the drugs for weight loss (they work, at least for most people) but lots of discussion about everything else surrounding them.

But what's been largely missing from this conversation is the answer to the practical questions that many people would like to ask their doctors. Are these drugs right for me? How do the side effects work? How fast would I lose weight? Do I really have to take them forever? What if I’m breastfeeding?

Today on ParentData, we invite back Dr. Gillian Goddard, the endocrinologist and brain behind our Hot Flash newsletter, to dive into the data behind these drugs. Dr. Goddard has been prescribing them for many years, and is both extremely knowledgeable about the science behind them, and extremely thoughtful about who is a good candidate, how to weigh the risks and benefits, and the kinds of questions you should be asking your doctor if you're interested in exploring them.

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