Why Wellness Sells - the Benefits and Harms of Wellness Culture with Colleen Derkatch

Author and rhetoric professor Colleen Derkatch joins us to discuss why wellness sells (and her new book by that name), how wellness culture promises an alternative to the biomedical/pharmaceutical model but fails to deliver, why it’s important to acknowledge that certain aspects of wellness culture are helpful to people even as we critique its harms, and more.

Colleen Derkatch is Associate Professor of Rhetoric in the Department of English at Toronto Metropolitan University. She is the author of Bounding Biomedicine: Evidence and Rhetoric in the New Science of Alternative Medicine (University of Chicago Press) and Why Wellness Sells: Natural Health in a Pharmaceutical Culture (Johns Hopkins University Press). Her Twitter handle is @ColleenDerkatch.

If you like this conversation, subscribe to hear lots more like it!

Get the podcast in your inbox, plus biweekly Q&As about wellness culture and lots of cool bonus content, by signing up at rethinkingwellness.substack.com.

Christy's new book, The Wellness Trap, is now available wherever books are sold! Order it online or ask for it in your favorite local bookstore.

If you're looking to make peace with food and break free from diet and wellness culture, come check out Christy's Intuitive Eating Fundamentals online course.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rethinkingwellness.substack.com/subscribe