The Long Game

Women’s health is not a niche market, it’s a massive blind spot in medicine, investment, and product design.Ross Cagan and Sandy Weir unpack how decades of male-default research created real-world harm, from delayed diagnoses to missed heart attacks, and why that neglect is now becoming one of the biggest opportunities in health. They break down the data problem at the centre of the women’s health gap, including why female biology was historically excluded from studies, why that assumption turned out to be wrong, and how missing data leads to missing diagnoses. You’ll hear why endometriosis can take 8 to 10 years to diagnose, how menopause affects careers and productivity, and why cardiovascular disease is still misread in women more often than it should be.Ross and Sandy also explore the rise of FemTech, from period tracking and fertility apps to pelvic health, contraception, and non-invasive diagnostics, and why the category needed a name before investors would take it seriously. They dig into the privacy and governance risks around sensitive reproductive data, especially after Roe v. Wade was overturned, and ask what happens when wellness tools sit somewhere between consumer app and medical advice.You’ll also discover:Why a meta-analysis of 293 studies challenged the old excuse for excluding female mice from researchHow non-invasive testing could shorten the road to endometriosis diagnosisWhy menopause is both a health issue and a workforce issueWhat the women’s health market could mean economically if the gap is finally closedThis conversation makes one thing clear: women’s health is a stress test for whether medicine can correct its own blind spots. It’s essential listening if you care about better care, better data, and a health system that serves half the population as more than an afterthought.

Private full-body MRIs are booming - but are you buying peace of mind or simply new things to worry about? Healthy people are lining up for scans that promise certainty, early detection, and control. Sandy Weir and Ross Cagan reveal why that promise can backfire, turning reassurance into anxiety, follow-up tests, and overdiagnosis. This episode unpacks the private scan boom and the uncomfortable truth behind elective whole-body MRI. Ross and Sandy explain why scanning a healthy body is not the same as investigating symptoms, and why the difference matters more than most marketing ever admits. When a scan finds a tiny cyst, nodule, or shadow, the question is not just "what is it?", it is "can you unsee it?"

Most longevity clinics are selling a seductive story, not proven results. If you care about biological age tests, rapamycin, supplements, or the booming market for “optimization,” this episode separates the real science from the expensive theatre. Ross Cagan and Sandy Weir take on the new body economy and ask the question at the centre of the longevity clinic boom: what actually improves health span, and what is just measurement, hope, and status wrapped in a premium price tag? The answer is more nuanced than the hype suggests, and far less magical than the marketing.

The Ozempic economy is already reshaping what people eat, how companies sell, and which health systems can afford to keep up. Sandy Weir and Ross Kagan kick off The Body Economy, a six-part series that starts with the drugs behind the headlines and ends with a much bigger question: what happens when appetite itself becomes medically adjustable?

One contaminated lab plate helped launch a multi-billion-dollar industry, save hundreds of millions of lives, and trigger one of the biggest IP blunders in British history. Ross Cagan and Sandy Weir trace the penicillin story from Alexander Fleming's messy "failed" experiment to the commercialisation race that changed medicine forever. They unpack how Fleming spotted the blue-green mould that killed staph bacteria, why his breakthrough sat ignored for a decade, and how Howard Florey and Ernest Chain turned the discovery into a scalable manufacturing process during World War Two. Along the way, they reveal why the real breakthrough wasn't just scientific, it was industrial, legal, and deeply political.