Start with the record
We spend hundreds of hours reading books, papers, primary sources, and archives—then speaking with the people who were there.
SEASON ONE · EPISODE 02 OUT NOW
The medicines that changed us—and the stories behind them.
01INSULIN
02rDNA
03SILDENAFIL
THE GOOD PHARMA IDEA
Pharma and biotech have an outsized impact—and receive undersized attention.
Good Pharma is a podcast, created by Deeya Kotecha, exploring the business, science, and human stories behind medicine.
Deeya trained in medicine at Cambridge and worked as a doctor before moving into public markets and venture capital. She writes about biotechnology, the history of drugs, and the business of medicine. More about Deeya →
Behind the medicines are daring founders, accidental discoveries, difficult tradeoffs, and decades-long bets. Good Pharma follows those stories to understand how treatments are discovered, developed, and brought to the people who need them.
“The history of medicine is a history of people deciding what progress should mean.”
GOOD PHARMA · EDITORIAL NOTETHE SHELF
Explore every episode
Amgen
How a Biotech Startup Became Big Pharma
→Eli Lilly, Part 1
The company that learned how to manufacture hope at industrial scale.
→Genentech
The rebellion that turned recombinant DNA into an industry.
→Viagra
The failed heart medicine that became a cultural phenomenon.
→Statins
The pill that changed how medicine thinks about risk.
→Antidepressants
How a class of medicines changed the language of mental health.
→Botox
How a potent toxin became both therapy and cultural shorthand.
→THE METHOD
Follow the incentives
The business story matters because incentives determine which ideas get funded, which medicines get developed, how they reach patients, and who can afford them.
Keep the human scale
Science becomes real in people’s lives. We keep patients, clinicians, researchers, and families at the center of every story.