How our bodies changed during the pandemic
Post Reports
The Washington Post
4.4 • 5.1K Ratings
🗓️ 30 September 2022
⏱️ 43 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Today on “Post Reports,” a show about how our bodies have changed during the pandemic. We hear from our listeners about how their bodies have surprised, delighted and worried them after these past few years.
Read more:
Here on the “Post Reports” team, we’ve been thinking a lot about…our bodies. Specifically, how they’ve changed over these past two years, as we’ve gone through lockdowns, isolation and return-to-work. We reached out to our listeners to hear how their bodies have evolved over the course of the pandemic and got lots of fascinating stories, of both big and small evolutions. Today on the show, stories from our listeners and our newsroom, on everything from getting a lung transplant to growing out an afro.
Plus, we talk with Well+Being editor Tara Parker-Pope about how to understand the changes we’ve gone through — and what the pandemic can teach us about caring for our communities.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | At some point during the pandemic, I developed this weird obsession. |
| 0:08.4 | I wanted to measure all the ways my body had changed since the beginning of COVID. |
| 0:14.7 | So let me explain. |
| 0:16.0 | This started at about the 18 month mark of the pandemic, right about the time that the |
| 0:20.2 | world kind of settled into this new normal and it felt like the before times were another |
| 0:25.0 | existence. |
| 0:26.5 | So I wanted to see how much of that change was reflected in me, like in my physical presence |
| 0:32.7 | on Earth. |
| 0:36.7 | There were all these obvious ways. |
| 0:38.9 | My hair changed. |
| 0:40.1 | It got so long through the first year of lockdown that at some point I was like, I hate |
| 0:44.7 | all this hair and then cut most of it off. |
| 0:47.6 | I lost weight and then I gained weight and then I lost a little more weight and then I |
| 0:51.8 | gained even more weight, which I think a lot of people can relate to. |
| 0:56.3 | But there were also these weird and hyper-specific ways that my body started to change. |
| 1:01.8 | I noticed that the skin on my feet was different. |
| 1:05.0 | Like I no longer had calluses on the back of my heels because I wasn't wearing uncomfortable |
| 1:09.5 | shoes anymore. |
| 1:10.8 | And instead I had calluses on my ankles because I sat criss-cross all day at home and so my |
| 1:16.4 | bare feet would rub against the chair. |
| 1:19.6 | And I know a lot of people will hear this and think it is too much information, but let's |
| 1:23.6 | normalize women's bodies. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Washington Post, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of The Washington Post and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.