Allergic: When the Body Misreads the World

Theresa MacPhail is driven by a curiosity about our bodies, our world, and the myriad unconscious conversations that take place between them. A medical anthropologist, former journalist, and professor with a background in global health, biomedicine, and disease, she blends her research with philosophy, history, and social sciences to make sense of our present moment. In her fascinating talks that touch on everything from the relationship between global and local health to the importance of failure, she brings lessons from the classroom and her research to a wide range of audiences, from college students to corporations.

For Theresa MacPhail’s new book, Allergic: Our Irritated Bodies in a Changing World, she set out to unravel the mystery of why the number of people diagnosed with allergies has been steadily increasing over the past half century, placing a growing medical burden on individuals, communities, families, and our health care system. A holistic and historical examination of allergies, Allergic spans their first medical description in 1819 to recent innovations. Along the way, MacPhail makes surprising discoveries and connections between climate change, pollution, and biologists that underscore how interconnected our bodies are to our environments.

In addition to her research on epidemics and allergies, MacPhail talks about our wider societal relationship with “unknowledge” and failure. In persuasive lectures, she explains that people don’t understand that science is just as much about what we don’t know as what we do. She explores the link between misinformation, mistrust, and the public’s lack of comfort with the level of uncertainty that scientific inquiry requires, arguing not only that the public needs to learn how to be more comfortable with uncertainty, but also that scientists need to get better at admitting what they don’t know.

As a college professor, MacPhail also has witnessed a rise in anxiety and depression among her students, which she credits to their crippling fear of failure. Too often, students are told that they should learn from their failures, but they don’t know how. In her “Failure 101” course and talks aimed at audiences of all ages, MacPhail normalizes failure by talking about historic, relationship, and business failures and concepts like groupthink and growth vs. fixed mindset.

Theresa MacPhail is an Associate Professor of Science and Technology Studies at Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey. She earned PhDs from the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of California, San Francisco. In addition to Allergic, her writing has appeared in Slate and Los Angeles Review of Books, and her academic work has been published in Public Culture, Limn, and Expertise: Cultures and Technologies of Knowledge. MacPhail is currently working on her next book, which dives into what happens to our minds and bodies as we age and why acceptance of aging is the key to “aging well.” She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

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