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The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot: Review, Summary, the Real Story and Books to Read Next

A woman's cells changed medicine, and her family was never told. Hailey reviews Rebecca Skloot's The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, summarizes its three parts, goes through the real story and the questions about consent that are still open, and recommends six books to read next. Content note: racism, illness and medical mistreatment are discussed.

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Books mentioned in this episode
Medical Apartheid by Harriet A. Washington
The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee
The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman
Being Mortal by Atul Gawande
Bad Blood by John Carreyrou
When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi

Chapters
0:00 Cold Open
0:27 Welcome
1:10 The Review
4:56 The Summary
7:44 The Real Story
10:37 What To Read Next
12:45 Outro

Scores, the full written review and the videos

Narrated by Hailey, the Book Explained host voice (AI-generated with Kokoro TTS).

Music
"Friday Morning" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0

"Fresh Air" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0