This episode is brought to you by you, Biome. Your gut feeling can tell you a lot, but your gut

also can tell you what may be causing your IBS symptoms like discomfort or bloating.

Your gut is home to trillions of microbes that affect your health in countless ways,

including digestion, mood, and your ability to fight illness.

You Biome makes understanding it simple with SmartGut, a quick and easy at-home test that screens

for microbes associated with IBS, IBD, prediabetes, and many other chronic conditions.

Your SmartGut test results can help you and your health care provider understand how your gut

microbes may be affecting other aspects of your health, such as cardiovascular conditions and kidney

zones. Sampling is quick and easy, it takes less than three minutes, and you can do it at home.

SmartGut is reimbursed by most health insurers and must be ordered by a health care provider.

Request your SmartGut test today. Just go to youbiome.com slash friends. That's you biome, you bi-o-m-e.com slash friends,

and we thank them for sponsoring this podcast.

Hi, I'm Anna Marie Cox, and welcome to With Friends Like These, the show where we talk about the

differences between us without letting them divide us. This week's guest is Heather Havrleski,

and she is an example of how I sometimes use my editorial power to bring someone on the show that

is really just a friend like this and not someone that is talking about something especially

uncomfortable or a huge difference between us. Heather and I are actually a lot of like,

which may explain why we didn't like each other at first. We first met 20 years ago,

which we kind of reference a lot in the conversation because I know for me it's weird to be friends

with someone after 20 years, and actually it's even weird to be really good friends with someone

that 20 years ago. Again, we didn't like each other very much. Unfortunately, we spend a lot of time

in this interview kind of talking about politics and talking about our friendship, but we don't talk

...