Podbit · Call Her Daddy
Erectile dysfunction affects 19% of men and has received 5 times more research funding than PMS, which affects 90% of all women. Katie Couric says this single statistic says everything about how the medical establishment has valued women's suffering.
Where this was said
At 1:12:20 · chapter starts 1:09:20
The episode's most data-dense and incendiary chapter opens with Katie explaining how her spidey sense picked up on a wave of emerging reporting about women's health inequity about 5 or 6 years ago [1] — Katie Couric "For decades, medical research excluded women because scientists thought hormonal fluctuations would 'screw up the data.' Women weren't requ…" 1:09:50 . She began connecting dots that no one had fully assembled: from puberty to old age, women have been dismissed, marginalised, and underfunded. The core historical fact: women were not required to be included in US clinical trials until 1993, and scientists didn't routinely differentiate between male and female subjects until roughly 2015. The practical result: women take 4 extra years longer to be diagnosed, endometriosis takes 10 years on average to diagnose (50% still undiagnosed), and 80% of autoimmune disease patients are women. The most arresting single statistic [2] — Katie Couric "Erectile dysfunction affects 19% of men and has received 5 times more research funding than PMS, which affects 90% of all women. Katie Cour…" 1:12:20 : erectile dysfunction, affecting 19% of men, has received 5 times more research funding than PMS, which affects 90% of women. Only 1% of global health research investment goes to women's health outside of cancer. Only half of medical schools teach women's health courses. Crash test dummies were male until recently and female dummies aren't required in safety testing until 2028. The documentary, Hormonal, is being made with Emmy-winning director Esther Deer and filmmaker Dawn Porter, and is designed to be both enraging and entertaining — connecting the dots from the past to the present to a hopeful future if the aperture on women's health changes.
For decades, medical research excluded women because scientists thought hormonal fluctuations would 'screw up the data.' Women weren't required in US clinical trials until 1993, scientists didn't distinguish between sexes until roughly 10 years ago, and today women still take 4 extra years longer than men to be diagnosed with a condition.
Women were not legally required to be included in clinical trials in the United States until 1993, decades after modern medical research began.
It was only about 10 years ago that scientists began routinely differentiating between men and women in their research studies.
Erectile dysfunction, affecting 19% of men, has received 5 times as much research funding as PMS, which affects 90% of all women.
Only 1% of global research dollars and innovation investment is directed toward women's health outside of cancer.
On average, women take 4 extra years longer than men to receive a diagnosis, a direct consequence of under-researched women's health.
AI nailed Andrew Huberman's vertigo-vs-low-blood-pressure diagnosis because that pattern has been reported millions of times. But every patient's liver is different and data on liver surgeries is scarce worldwide — making solo robot surgery dangerous. The rule is simple: data abundance means AI can help; data scarcity means keep the human in the loop.
Fei-Fei Li's father had liver surgery performed by a da Vinci robot guided by a surgeon. The result: 10 times less blood loss than a typical procedure. This isn't replacement — it's the gold standard of human-machine collaboration, where the human's judgment and the robot's precision combine.
US drug overdose deaths fell from 110,000 to roughly 70,000 — the biggest CDC-recorded single-year drop ever. Men's rates fell 27% in one year, and the steepest decline of all was among 15–24-year-olds, down 37%. The crisis narrative around young men needs to make room for signs of genuine progress.
Kessler thought his grief expertise would protect him. It didn't. When his son David died unexpectedly, he found himself on the floor — and eventually realized that acceptance alone wasn't enough. That unmet need became the sixth stage: finding meaning.
Grief isn't just death — it's any unwanted change. Kessler lectured at Coca-Cola and General Mills not because they had lots of funerals, but because change management is grief management. People who grieve well live well.
Witnessing someone's grief isn't just emotional support — it's an essential act of healing. Kessler argues grief is a severance and connection heals it. But real witnessing has two steps: seeing the pain AND affirming the person's capacity to recover.
Avoiding grief isn't free — it's exhausting. Kessler's beach ball metaphor nails it: pushing a small balloon down is easy, but holding a massive beach ball underwater takes constant, draining energy. Unattended feelings don't disappear; they just consume you.
Most people try to control their environment to avoid triggers. Kessler flips this entirely: triggers aren't problems to manage around — they're a detailed map to your pain and your healing. Every trigger points directly to what needs attention.
Running from pain doesn't leave it behind — it accelerates the chase. Whatever we run from pursues us, and whatever we face transforms us. Both Kessler and Lewis Howes testify to knowing both roads firsthand.
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