My Body Odyssey

My Body Odyssey (MBO) is a new podcast that highlights the rewards and challenges of an active lifestyle for everyday athletes with chronic medical conditions, recurrent injuries, behavioral issues, and other life hurdles. Each episode details the personal story of one protagonist and includes input from doctors, researchers, and other wellness experts.

Stories of competitive athletes overcoming adversity to win Olympic medals are almost commonplace. But My Body Odyssey is more interested in participants who finish in last place than first. These are the athletes that do not live to exercise, but exercise to live.

So, award-winning Creative Director and Executive Producer Robert Pease began recording interviews at regional athletic events, including New England-area charity runs, cycling tours, and open swim races back in 2019. Now MBO weaves together these pre-COVID in-person interviews with recent follow-up conversations to offer a unique audio experience: listening along the wellness journeys of ordinary people facing exceptional challenges during extraordinary times.

Doctors like Mayo Clinic’s Mohamad Bydon, Kathryn Schmitz of UPMC Hillman Cancer Center, and Jeffrey Sparks of Brigham and Women’s Hospital, are called upon for their expertise on such topics as Type 1 diabetes, psoriatic arthritis, lymphoma, paraplegia and postpartum depression. While learning about the sometimes surprising benefits of exercise shared by guests, the nine Season 1 episodes no doubt inspire anyone listening to be more active.

Co-hosts Robert Pease and Valerie Wencis narrate the ~15-25 minute episodes with intelligence and empathy, and tell a story using interview recordings mixed with field tape, adding carefully-crafted sound design with an original score. My Body Odyssey sheds light on important health topics in an informative, moving, and often uplifting way. Listeners find stories of true grit, great resolve, delicate balancing acts, and the inevitable ups and downs of wellness for these persevering runners, cyclists, rowers, yogis and more.