In this episode, we talk with Dr. Jada Wiggleton-Little, assistant professor of philosophy at ‘an’ Ohio State University, about fat phobia and the dismissal of fat patients' pain. She unpacks how clinicians treat such pain as normal and even deserved — a "desert pain" framing that casts patients as unentitled to further investigation, empathy, or care.

Additional Readings:

• Kate Manne, Unshrinking: How to Face Fat Phobia

• Sabrina Strings, Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia

• Roxane Gay, Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body (2017)

Dr. Wiggleton-Little’s Selected Publications:

• "Black Women and 'Doing' Pain: An Insurgent Act," American Philosophical Quarterly (Special Issue on Contemporary Issues in Black Philosophy), forthcoming.

• "Cure but Not Cured: Gene-Editing Therapy and The Ethics of Framing Language for Transforming Sickle Cell Disease," (with Shameka Poetry Thomas, Kristin Seastrand, and Consuela Albright), Hastings Center Report, forthcoming.

• "Pain Dismissal and the Limits of Epistemic Injustice," Hypatia, 1-17, 2025.

• "Sharing Pain: A Hybrid Expressivist Account," Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 102(3): 808-822. 2024.

• "'Just' a Painful Period: A Philosophical Perspective Review of the Dismissal of Menstrual Pain," Womens Health (London), 20:1-6. 2024.

In this introduction to Inked by Faith, we begin the story of Operation Tat-Type, a Cold War civil defense program that blood-typed and tattooed thousands of Americans in the early 1950s, including children.

The series begins with a family discovery: a grandmother’s tattoo; never hidden, just never talked about. From there, we ask a larger question—not about secrets or conspiracies, but about how communities normalize extraordinary measures in moments of fear… and how those memories fade.

This episode sets the stage for the stories still waiting to be told.

Devan and Tyler catch up after a busy few months.

For the past several months, listeners have been asking the same questions:
Did you quit? Are you guys fighting? Did the podcast die?

The answer is no, no, and no.

We’ve been working on a limited series that takes us deep into a particular moment in medical history. A moment with long shadows. Legal consequences. Ethical fault lines. Human impact that still echoes.

This time, we’re not just talking. We’re investigating and reporting.
In archives. In communities. In stories that haven’t been told this way before.

This project has taken time because it demands care—care for the history, for the people involved, and for the complexity of the ethical questions it raises.

We’re almost ready to share it.

Stay tuned in 2026.

In this episode, Tyler and Devan talk with Ray Moseley and Marcia Brown, both from the University of Florida School of Medicine. Ray and Marcia talk about their pilot project that looked at how accurately an AI tool can predict the medical decisions of a patient, compared with a family member or surrogate. The outcomes are surprising.