Vox

The untold history of diabetes and Black Americans - November 11, 2026 - Vox
GLP-1s have become the newest celebrity miracle drug, with famous athletes like Serena Williams and Charles Barkley sharing that they’ve used it for weight loss.
Drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy have become a status symbol. But before they were famous, GLP-1s were developed to treat Type 2 diabetes, a disease that occurs when a person’s blood sugar becomes too high. It affects nearly 40 million Americans and hits Black Americans especially hard. According to the CDC, about 12 percent of Black adults have diabetes, compared with roughly 7 percent of white adults. Yet when researchers reviewed 26 studies from across the country, they found that Black patients were about 20 percent less likely than white patients to be prescribed newer diabetes drugs.
That gap has deep roots. A century ago, doctors called diabetes a “luxury disease” of wealthy white and Jewish people, and many didn’t believe Black people could get the disease at all. Even after the landmark 1985 Heckler Report exposed stark racial disparities in American health, Black patients’ diabetes was often blamed on lifestyle rather than on the housing, food, financial, and healthcare inequities shaping their health.
Hosted by Kahlil Greene, this video is part of our series, Kahlil Explains, which unites Vox’s unique brand of explainer journalism with Greene’s expertise in how politics and culture shape society. This episode traces the history of race and diabetes in America to unpack why Black patients are still less likely to get access to GLP-1s, and why closing that gap will take more than a prescription.
Read more about GLP-1s, diabetes, and race in American medicine:
- Arleen Tuchman’s book Diabetes: A History of Race and Disease: https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv14rmqdm
- JAMA Health Forum’s study on racial and income disparities in GLP-1 prescriptions: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama-health-forum/fullarticle/2787276
- The Journal of General Internal Medicine’s review of racial disparities in diabetes drug access: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11606-026-10178-z
- University of Colorado Anschutz’s explainer on how GLP-1 drugs went from lab discovery to weight-loss breakthrough: https://news.cuanschutz.edu/news-stories/how-glp-1-drugs-went-from-lab-discovery-to-weight-loss-breakthroughs
- Tablet magazine’s article on Diabetes, the Jewish disease: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/science/articles/diabetes-jewish-disease-tuchman
- The original 1985 Heckler Report on Black and minority health: https://collections.nlm.nih.gov/ext/heckler/8602912X1/PDF/8602912X1.pdf
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Why your cold emails aren't paying off | Best of Luck - November 10, 2026 - Vox
Everyone tells you it’s who you know. But what do you do if you don’t know anyone?
Marshall Kosloff is really good at building genuine connections, and it’s really paid off for his career. And when he first moved to DC, he didn’t know a single person.
Marshall says his job is to "throw parties." Officially, he is the host of the political podcast The Realignment, and Senior Fellow and Director of Special Projects at the Niskanen Center, a think tank in DC.
In this episode: how to start a conversation that turns into a professional connection, why your cold emails aren’t getting answered, and how to de-risk your big career leap.
00:00 Marshall is the best networker I’ve met
00:48 A message brought to you by AlphaSpace
01:36 Remember Abercrombie models?
05:57 How to network as a nobody
10:06 A message brought to you by AlphaSpace
11:18 Just be confident! On taking action
14:33 #1 career tip: just show interest
16:25 How to write a good cold email
22:05 Rethink risk in your career
24:37 Your manager’s feedback might be wrong
31:34 Grad school is a trap
32:18 Do you take an unpaid internship?
36:30 Applying to be Gandalf
39:56 Luck questionnaire
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Follow Kyla Scanlon on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kylascan
This interview was taped at ⁠Aspen Ideas: Economy⁠: https://www.aspenideas.org/attend/economy
Our theme song is "Frolic" by Jake Xerxes Fussell. Discover more of his music and tour dates here: https://www.jakexerxesfussell.com/
Produced by: Megan Cunnane, Wendy Mullin, Devan Joseph, Garrett Williams, Coby Weiss
Chocolate is getting worse. So is everything else. | The Gray Area - November 9, 2026 - Vox
If even chocolate is getting worse, what does that tell us about our economy and the state of life’s small pleasures?
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In today’s episode, Vox host Jonquilyn Hill talks to New York Magazine writer Rachel Handler, who spent seven months investigating that question and uncovered a story that goes well beyond candy. Handler explains how manufacturing has changed, what chocolate reveals about corporate profits and inequality, and why even life’s smallest pleasures increasingly feel like luxuries.
They explore the hidden costs of convenience, whether we’ve learned to like inferior products, and the indignity of being told nothing has changed, even when we can taste the difference. What do we lose when we stop expecting everyday things to be good? And what would it take to make a decent chocolate bar an ordinary pleasure everyone can afford?
Host: Jonquilyn Hill, host of Explain It To Me
Guest: Rachel Handler, features writer for New York Magazine
Chapters
00:00 Intro
01:24 Why does chocolate taste worse now?
11:15 What’s actually in your chocolate?
17:34 Who pays the price for cheap chocolate?
20:01 Is good chocolate becoming a luxury?
25:37 What’s the hidden cost of convenience?
31:21 Have we learned to like worse chocolate?
33:23 Why this is about more than chocolate
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Wes Moore to Dems: Move fast on affordability | America, Actually - November 7, 2026 - Vox
Don’t call it a blue wave. Maryland Gov. Wes Moore sits down with Vox’s Astead Herndon to explain why the midterms proved that the party's future belongs to a mobilized multiracial coalition—and why moving fast on costs matters more than anything else.
Plus, we look back at America, Actually’s midterm study guide to unpack what lessons we can learn from the election results on the issues that matter most.
America, Actually publishes video episodes every Saturday tackling key issues in politics, culture, and the economy. Subscribe to Vox’s YouTube channel to get them. Listen to episodes of America, Actually on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite app.
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