Journalist and radio producer Stephanie Foo (This American Life, Reply All, Radiolab) joins us to discuss her book, What My Bones Know, a searing memoir of reckoning and healing, investigating the little-understood science behind complex PTSD and how it has shaped her life. In conversation with Michelle Shephard.

By age thirty, Stephanie Foo was successful on paper, but behind her office door, she was having panic attacks and sobbing at her desk every morning. After years of questioning what was wrong with herself, she was diagnosed with complex PTSD—a condition that occurs when trauma happens continuously, over the course of years.

Both of Foo's parents abandoned her when she was a teenager, after years of physical and verbal abuse and neglect. She thought she'd moved on, but her new diagnosis illuminated the way her past continued to threaten her health, relationships, and career. So, Foo set out to heal herself.

In this deeply personal and throughly researched account, Foo interviews scientists and psychologists, investigates the effect of immigrant trauma on a community, and tries a variety of innovative therapies. Powerful, enlightening, and hopeful, What My Bones Know is a brave narrative that reckons with the hold of the past over the present, the mind over the body— and examines one woman's ability to reclaim agency from her trauma.

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Stephanie Foo: What My Bones Know