Wellness Resources
Dear Ajenders: I Made You a Podcast (And Now I Need Your Help!)
Dr. Jen is launching Dear Dr. Jen, a podcast inspired by the questions women have been asking in newsletters, surveys, and DMs. The show will combine expert conversations, real patient stories, listener AMAs, and solo episodes covering women’s health, nutrition, menopause, and weight management—with a focus on practical, evidence-based answers.
I have been sitting on this for months, and I am finally allowed to say it out loud. Dear Dr. Jen launches this Friday, and it exists because of you!
That is not a nice sentiment I am tacking on for the sake of blowing hot air. It’s the actual origin story. Every time I have asked what you want more of, you answer, in the reply box, in the survey comments, in the DMs that start with "I know you're busy, but..." You want the science without the sales pitch. You want to hear what happens when a real woman walks into an office with a real problem. You want me to answer the question you have been too embarrassed to ask your own doctor. So, I wrote down the wish list, and then I built the thing.
Here’s why I think it will feel different and why I know it will BE different
Most health podcasts follow one of two scripts. Either a single guest expert arrives with a single point of view and spends an hour defending it, or two experts talk to each other at 30,000 feet while the rest of us wait for something actionable to land. I will have expert conversations, because some questions genuinely require a specialist. But that is just one lane on this show, not the whole road.
The second lane is real people telling their own stories. Think of it as being a fly on the wall during a very long doctor's visit, the kind we almost never get anymore. You’ll hear how a symptom actually started, what got missed, what finally worked. I have learned more medicine from patients than from any textbook, and I want you in the room for that. We’re at the point where the celebrity or expert guest is, well, kind of boring. I’m interested in the real person—never boring!
The third lane is the reason for the title. I’m doing a lot of AMAs, because your questions arrive as though you’re writing me a letter, and they deserve a real answer, rather than a 30-second clip. Dear Dr. Jen, is it too late to start lifting at 64? Dear Dr. Jen, my doctor says my labs are fine and I still feel terrible. Dear Dr. Jen, I’m thinking of starting a GLP-1. Should I? Those are the episodes I’m most excited about.
Then there will be solo episodes, where I go deep on the topics that actually move the needle in women's health, nutrition, menopause, and weight management. Essentially, this is the newsletter coming to life, with my voice instead of my typos.
What you will not get: extremism, hyperbole, or flexing. No protocols named after somebody's last name. No pretending that emerging evidence is settled, and no pretending that settled evidence is up for debate. Just smart talk and, I hope, even smarter questions. The upside of audio is that you are spared my hand gestures. My family assures me they’re excessive, but, because I’m half Italian and half Jewish, they’re as much a part of my speaking as my mouth is!
Now the part where I need you, and I mean that literally.
A new podcast does not succeed because of the host. It succeeds in its first two weeks or it quietly disappears into a library of a million other shows. The platforms decide what to promote based on how many people subscribe early, how many finish an episode, and how many leave a rating. That sounds cold, and it is. I decided to produce this podcast myself rather than sign with a huge podcast network that just dumps this one with all its others in one giant pool of noise. I am taking a risk by doing this because I am going up against the established cold system of podcast promotion. But here’s the thing about cold systems: They can be moved by organized people.
And you are the most organized group I have ever had the privilege of writing for. There are more than a quarter of a million of you—and roughly two out of three of you open this newsletter every single time it lands, which is a number that makes media executives ask me if I’m making it up. That is not a mailing list. That is a constituency, and I am beyond proud and inspired by your commitment to health.
So, here’s the ask
Subscribe or follow Dear Dr. Jen right now, before launch day, wherever you listen. It’s FREE. Pre-launch subscribers are the single strongest signal to the platforms that this show deserves a spot on the shelf next to the ones with a marketing budget.
Listen to the first episode all the way through in the first week, even if you do it in pieces while you walk the dog or log your steps. Leave a rating and a sentence of a review. Just a sentence. That’s the whole bar. Send it to one woman who needs it. Not a mass forward, just one text to the friend who’s been told her labs are fine and she should try yoga. You know exactly who she is—we all do!
I have spent a long time speaking into cameras for organizations that were much bigger than I am. I had to cap my answers to 20 to 180 seconds and there was always so much more to say. Now, we have unlimited time, no headlines to chase, just calm, curious commitment to science, medicine, health, and life. This one is just us, which is both the point and the terrifying part. If you show up the way you always do, we’re going to build something that changes how women our age get information about their own bodies.
You have been my ride or die. I need your help to spread the word on this podcast. Let's go make some noise.
