Welcome to Nobody Told Me.

I'm Laura Owens and I'm Jan Black.

What can you do if you suffer from a chronic, mysterious illness, which the medical

establishment doesn't know

how to diagnose and treat. Where do you look for answers? And how does this impact your life?

We delve into those questions on this episode with our guest, longtime New York Times opinion

columnist Ross Douthit, who's known for writing on politics, religion, moral values, higher

education, and film. He's with us today, though, to talk about his latest book, which is a very

personal one called The Deep Places, a memoir of illness and discovery. Ross, thank you so much

for joining us. Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me.

It's a pleasure.

Tell us more about the illness that led you to write this book.

This was an illness that I acquired basically about six and a half years ago.

It was 2015, and my wife and I, we lived in Washington, D.C. at the time.

We had two little girls.

We had a very small row house.

And we were both from New England.

And we had this fantasy of sort of getting out of the capital and moving somewhere in the country with our family.

And unlike some other people, we knew who nurtured that fantasy.

We actually went ahead and did it.

And we sold our house in D.C.

We sold it for more than we expected because the housing market was really hot.

...