Welcome to the Commune podcast. My name is Jeff Krasnow. Okay, so this episode is a long time coming.

Virtually every private conversation I've had with my friends and colleagues in the wellness sphere over the past six months has hovered around the discussion that I finally have publicly here with my guest today, Dr. Jolene Brighton.

Dr. Jolene is a pioneer in women's medicine and an award-winning board-certified naturopathic

endocrinologist and certified sex counselor. She is the author of Beyond the Pill and Healing Your

Body Naturally After Childbirth. Jolene is also no stranger to controversy. Jolene consistently

and fearlessly tackles thorny issues and

conversations on her podcast and on social media with a unique mixture of vigor and rigor and compassion

and good humor. So we were housemates last week, and our dinner conversations spilled into the studio,

and I'm glad that they did. It's been really hard to know where to stand over the past six

months as anti-establishment thinking on the right has adopted the healthy food and

integrative medicine universe. Of course, both Jilline and I have

long advocated for regulatory measures that would get chemicals out of our food supply,

reduce the mass production of ultra-processed foods, and address toxic additives in things like

formula. We've long seen issues related to healthy food and preventative medicine

as part of a constellation of policies that also include sane climate policy and women's health.

These initiatives complemented each other and were the province of the left until recently.

And now we have a Republican administration promising to make

America healthy again, while also simultaneously rolling back regulations at the EPA and gutting

funding for scientific research. Jolene and I talk about the dissonance between the Maha movement that is

addressing real issues like chemical additive, seed oils, and big food, and an administration

that is defunding Planned Parenthood, eviscerating environmental protections, shutting down the Department

of Education, and cutting funding for Medicaid. We talk about the inability of the left to stomach

...