26 OCT

Gender Pain Gap: Why Women Aren't Believed

What happens when your body screams but the world shrugs? For countless women, pain is not just physical, it’s a fight for credibility. In this episode, Dr. Jeffrey Bone examines the hidden architecture of medical disbelief: the history that pathologized women’s sensitivity, the research that ignored their biology, and the diagnostic trauma that leaves them doubting their own truth. Through powerful voices and literary testimony, we explore how women are rewriting their medical stories back into existence, one narrative at a time. Your pain shouldn’t need proof. Sometimes the most radical medicine is simply being heard.

22 min

18 OCT

The Matrix, Reality, & Illness

In this episode of To the Bone: Honest Conversations on Pain, Illness, and Meaning, Dr. Jeffrey Bone explores The Matrix as a modern existential myth, a story about awakening from illusion, confronting control, and finding freedom within limitation. Through the lens of chronic illness, Dr. Bone reflects on what happens when the body becomes the red pill, when you’re forced to awaken to the fragility of life, stripped of certainty, and asked to live meaningfully within the real. Drawing on the film’s iconic imagery, the red pill, the desert of the real, and Neo’s awakening, this episode becomes a meditation on truth, vulnerability, and love as acts of resistance. What if illness, rather than trapping us, invites us to see reality more clearly? What if pain is not the enemy, but the beginning of awareness? The Matrix and the Meaning of Pain invites listeners to awaken gently, not to escape the body, but to inhabit it consciously, to find depth in limitation, and to see the beauty that only emerges when illusion falls away.

16 min

11 OCT

Four Agreements and Illness

In this episode of To the Bone: Honest Conversations on Pain, Illness, and Meaning, Dr. Jeffrey Bone explores the timeless teachings of Don Miguel Ruiz and Toltec mysticism, uncovering how The Four Agreements can serve as a framework for living with chronic illness and pain. Through the lens of psychological awareness and existential reflection, Dr. Bone examines each agreement, Be impeccable with your word, Don’t take anything personally, Don’t make assumptions, and Always do your best, as tools for reducing unnecessary suffering and reclaiming agency within limitation. This episode invites listeners to explore how words shape the body’s inner world, how freedom arises when we stop personalizing misunderstanding, and how compassion becomes a daily practice of endurance. Drawing on both ancient spiritual insight and modern psychology, it offers a path toward greater clarity, gentleness, and meaning inside the experience of pain.

24 min

4 OCT

Improvising and Illness

When life no longer follows the script you wrote for it, what do you do? In this episode of To the Bone, Dr. Jeffrey Bone explores the art of improvisation, not as performance, but as survival. Through the lens of musician and comedian Reggie Watts, Jeff reflects on how people living with chronic illness and pain can learn to improvise meaning inside a body that no longer behaves predictably. Reggie builds entire worlds out of chaos, looping his voice, distorting sound, and finding beauty in the unexpected. Chronic illness demands the same skill: presence instead of control, curiosity instead of certainty, creativity within constraint. This episode weaves together existential philosophy, clinical insight, and lived experience to ask: What if your symptoms aren’t interruptions, but invitations to improvise your life in new ways?

19 min

29 SEPT

"Loneliness and Illness" with Dr. Bone

In this episode of To the Bone: Honest Conversations on Pain, Illness, and Meaning, Dr. Jeffrey Bone explores one of the deepest struggles of chronic illness: loneliness. Drawing on the philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre, we consider the inescapable solitude of human existence , how no one can fully live, or suffer, in our place. Sartre’s reflections on freedom, responsibility, and the impossibility of being completely understood echo the lived reality of illness: even surrounded by others, we often feel profoundly alone. This theme is then brought into the present through the work of Susan Sontag, whose groundbreaking book Illness as Metaphor dismantled the isolating myths and stigmas around disease. By naming illness truthfully, without shame or metaphor, Sontag showed how honesty itself can bridge the silence that isolates the sick. Practical reflections follow: learning to face loneliness honestly, transforming silence into connection, and reframing solitude as a space for meaning rather than emptiness. This is an episode for anyone who has felt the heavy weight of isolation in illness , and who longs for a way to carry it with authenticity and dignity.

24 min

22 SEPT

"Pain Becomes Music" with Dr. Bone

In this episode of To the Bone: Honest Conversations on Pain, Illness, and Meaning, Dr. Jeffrey Bone explores how art can give voice to suffering when ordinary words fall short. Through the lyrical depth of Leonard Cohen and the haunting trumpet of Miles Davis, we see how pain can be transformed into expression. Cohen’s poetry and songs, from Bird on the Wire to Hallelujah, turn despair into language, reminding us that even a “broken hallelujah” can carry beauty. Davis, through albums like Kind of Blue and Sketches of Spain, used improvisation, silence, and dissonance to embody pain in sound, showing that absence and imperfection can themselves become music. Blending reflection, philosophy, and story, this episode invites listeners to consider their own forms of expression: What is your music? What is your broken hallelujah? How might your pain be carried, not erased , by giving it voice?

30 min

15 SEPT

"Carrying Pain vs. Curing Pain" with Dr. Bone

In this episode of To the Bone: Honest Conversations on Pain, Illness, and Meaning, Dr. Jeffrey Bone explores the paradox between the longing for cure and the daily work of carrying chronic pain and illness. Drawing on the existential insights of Søren Kierkegaard, who wrestled with frailty, poor health, and despair, this episode reflects on how suffering can strip away illusions and call us toward authenticity. The story is then brought into the present through Michael J. Fox, whose decades-long journey with Parkinson’s disease shows what it means to live openly, creatively, and courageously while carrying what cannot be cured.

25 min

8 SEPT

"Why Me" with Dr. Bone

In this episode of To the Bone: Honest Conversations on Pain, Illness, and Meaning, Dr. Jeffrey Bone explores one of the most human questions in the face of chronic illness and suffering: Why me? Through personal reflection and insights from Viktor Frankl, Irvin Yalom, and Rollo May, Dr. Bone shows how this unanswerable question can be carried differently. Rather than offering easy explanations, this conversation invites listeners to sit with the rawness of “why me,” to reflect on what the question reveals about life, and to consider how meaning, courage, and authenticity can emerge even in suffering. With reflective pauses woven throughout, this episode offers companionship for anyone who has asked “why me?” and is seeking not quick answers, but honest ways of living with the question.

38 min

4 SEPT

Introduction Episode with Dr. Bone

In this opening episode of To the Bone: Honest Conversations on Pain, Illness, and Meaning, Dr. Jeffrey Bone sets the stage for a podcast unlike any other. Drawing on two decades as a psychologist and his own lived experience with chronic illness, Dr. Bone introduces the heart behind To the Bone: a place where suffering is spoken honestly, where meaning is explored, and where isolation can give way to connection. Dr. Bone shares why the name To the Bone matters, how illness strips life down to its essence, and what listeners can expect from future episodes. With honesty and compassion, he names what this podcast is not, no miracle cures, no quick fixes, and what it is: a space for truth, dignity, and shared humanity in the face of chronic pain and illness. Listeners will also be guided through reflective pauses to consider their own stories of loss, resilience, and meaning. By the end of this first episode, you’ll know not only what To the Bone is about, but why it exists, and how it may become a companion on your own journey through illness and beyond.

18 min

To The Bone: Conversations on Pain, Illness, and Meaning

Episodes

Gender Pain Gap: Why Women Aren't Believed

The Matrix, Reality, & Illness

Four Agreements and Illness

Improvising and Illness

"Loneliness and Illness" with Dr. Bone

"Pain Becomes Music" with Dr. Bone

"Carrying Pain vs. Curing Pain" with Dr. Bone

"Why Me" with Dr. Bone

Introduction Episode with Dr. Bone

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