5SR - October 4, 2023

Hitha on health care, microorganisms, and women in sports

Author

Hitha Palepu
October 04, 2023

Today’s curator is the founder of #5SmartReads, Hitha Palepu. She’s a consummate multihyphenate - CEO of Rhoshan Pharmaceuticals, author of WE’RE SPEAKING: The Life Lessons of Kamala Harris and How to Pack: Travel Smart for Any Trip, and professional speaker. Hitha is an unabashed fan of Taco Bell, Philadelphia sports teams & F1, romance novels, and is a mediocre crafter. She lives in NYC with her husband and two sons

The United States is in her strike era. As soon as one ends, another one is gearing up.

I’ve yet to see a union engage in an unwarranted strike. What these workers are asking for are necessary wage increases and workplace protections, with those striking being at the front lines of their industry.

Consider the potential Kaiser coalition union strike. Nurses, radiology and x-ray technicians, and other front-line workers are striking due to understaffing (boosting profits without fairly compensating the frontline, understaffed workers who are still burnt out from frontline pandemic care).

66% of surveyed employees have observed fully-denied or delayed care to patients, which is unconscionable when you consider their $2.1B profit in Q1 2023 .

Did I mention they operate as a not-for-profit?

No wonder we’ve directed our attention to the Taylor Swift-Travis Kelce circus. As a devout Eagles fan (the better Kelce, Jason, is the center for the team) and a Swiftie-lite, I am enjoying the memes and the spectacle and tapping out when my algorithm overloads on Traylor (Tayvis? Swelce?) content.

I’m re-reading Alexa Martin’s excellent Playbook series - it just seems right.

I also enjoyed Amy Odell’s excellent reporting on the Swelce phenomenon, especially its impact on fashion and the economy. Longtime listeners of New Heights will know that Travis’ pre-game fit always has its own segment of the podcast, with the younger Kelce strutting to the locker room in head-to-toe “loud luxury” looks.

If you’re into this coupling, you’ll love this article. If you want a quick refresher of what’s going on, you’ll appreciate this article. And if you just like intersectional reporting on fashion, economics, and celebrity, this is the read for you.

Listen - I bleed Phillies red and am all about Red October.

IF the Phillies should lose to the Marlins in the wild card, I won’t be as distraught as I was in 1993 (when I threw anything blue out of the window of my bedroom because of our World Series loss to the Blue Jays). And that’s solely because of the Marlins’ manager, Kim Ng.

Ng is the only general manager within the MLB, NHL, NFL, and NBA who’s a woman. Since stepping into the role, she’s remade the starting lineup of the Marlins, gave Skip Schumaker his first manager role, and brought new life to Miami’s baseball team.

"That's Mama Kim right there," star center fielder Jazz Chisholm, Jr., told the Miami Herald in the locker room after Saturday's game. "She's been doing the right things, making the right moves every year. This year just shows what she can do. I hope she stays with us and hope we get more in the future."

Olympian Allyson Felix may have retired from competitive running, but she’s running on all cylinders in every other area of her life - building and growing Saysh, raising her daughter, and tirelessly advocating for solutions in childcare and maternal healthcare.

Tabitha St Bernard-Jacobs’ interview with the multi-hyphenated Felix is a highly relatable read that also inspires and informs. Felix’s propensity for hope in some of the most saddening areas is something that stuck with me:

“A lot of women, their pain isn’t heard. It isn’t believed, and that is infuriating, that you can tell a doctor that something doesn’t feel right, something is wrong, and be dismissed. It’s heartbreaking that so many lives are lost, but I am hopeful because a lot of these complications and deaths are preventable, so we can turn it around.“

Warning - I’m about to depress you.

“ In reality, hardly any plastic – just 9% – ever enters a recycling plant. The sole permanent way we’ve found to dispose of plastic is incineration, which is the fate of nearly 70 million tonnes of plastic every year – but incineration drives the climate crisis by releasing the carbon in the plastic into the air, as well as any noxious chemicals it might be mixed with.”

I’m sorry. But there’s hope in an underreported area of microbiology - microbes (bacteria and other micro-organisms) that are able to break down plastic and harvest the carbon to replicate and repeat at scale.

Ideonella sakaiensis was discovered in 2001 and was published about in 2016, to wide acclaim.

Scaling up microbiology to industrial solutions - which we desperately need for plastic recycling - takes time and extensive resources. There’s currently one company that’s processing about 250 kg of PET plastic waste daily in France, often to make new plastic. The company, Carbios, is building a new facility that will scale their recycling to 130 tons a day by 2025, which is aligned with France’s urgency on acting on plastic waste (the government has set a goal of making all plastic in the country fully recycled by 2025).

I hope we see more solutions - recycling along Carbios’ lines, scaling of microorganisms that can break down and harvest carbon at large scale and survive in urban environments, and for us to just be more conscious about how much plastic we’re using.

Oh, and for the major energy companies to slash their own emissions, since they’re the largest source of carbon emissions. In true 5SR fashion, it’s a both/and issue.

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