What happens when the drug that saves your life is still out of reach for thousands of people just like you?
Will Cathcart is a journalist, writer, war correspondent, and producer who worked on Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown. He also lives with cystic fibrosis. Growing up believing his life would be cut short gave Will what he calls “Carpe Diem syndrome” - a drive that pulled him toward coups, conflict zones, and risks most people would run from. When his lungs began to fail, a groundbreaking CF modulator changed his future almost overnight. It also left him carrying survivor’s guilt for the friends who never got the same chance.
Now, Will is turning that second chance into action. He tells the fellas why he travelled to Bangladesh to publicly take a generic version of a CF drug priced at roughly $360,000 a year, how pharmaceutical patents can determine who gets to live, and why a medical miracle means very little when geography and money keep it out of reach.
The conversation also gets into parenthood, mortality, the strange burden of receiving a future you never planned for, and Will’s darkly funny novel, This Is How People Die.
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