Hello, I'm Lale Aricogli, and this is Women Who Travel, a podcast for anyone who's curious about the world.

We spent the last couple of episodes thinking about taking care of ourselves, through rituals like cooking and gardening.

Today, I'm diving into that big, broad and sort of vague word, wellness.

January, obviously, is a time when we're all trying to better ourselves, whether it be by

renewing gym memberships or trying to, if you're like me, just go to that yoga class a bit more.

It's why here at Condonast Traveller, we're running a whole series of stories about wellness on our website right now.

We found there's just such a huge hunger for it among our readers.

And so it's no wonder then that the wellness industry itself is hugely profitable.

But sometimes it feels like the more options there are,

sound baths, Ayovetic yoga, ayahuasca retreats,

the less I understand its meaning.

To find out more about what wellness actually is

and who it's actually for,

I caught up with author and friend Faria Rosen.

I met her in 2011 after we both arrived in New York for what I think we thought would be just a single summer.

Me from London, her from Sydney.

It was one of those magical, sticky NYC summers packed with rooftop parties

soundtracked by Brooklyn

fireworks and Puerto Rican music floating out of car windows. We were at the very start of our adult

lives and figuring out who we were and how to take care of ourselves. Today, Freer is a published

poet, a novelist and a non-fiction writer, and her recent book, Who is Wellness

Four, explores the ways the progressive health industry has appropriated and commodified

...