Welcome to the Waves, Slates podcast about gender, feminism, and body horror.

Every episode you've got a new pair of women to talk about the thing we can't get off

of our minds.

And today you've got me, Shannon Paulis, a senior editor at Slate covering science

and health, and me, Alonore Cummins, a freelance science journalist for wire, the new republic,

and of course, Slate.

Today, we're going to be talking about the mysterious symptoms that can apparently be

caused by breast implants.

You might remember this issue from the 90s, when the FDA issued a moratorium on silicone

boobs.

And David Schwimmer starred in a made-for-TV film called Breast Man, among many other cultural

touchstones on this topic from the time.

A Texas physician and his young protease, making women's breast larger, I'm very disappointed.

Turned that obsession.

Do you want to cut holes in me and stick bags of goo in my chest?

It's all right, I'm a doctor.

Into a global phenomenon.

You're going to be very rich men.

One of these events involved in their own ways, the fact that women were complaining of

symptoms like fatigue, headaches, rashes from their fake boobs.

The moratorium expired a while ago, but breast implant illness, as it's called, is one

of those things that every so often you'll read about in a page 6 story, some star like

...