Natalia Mehlman Petrzela, Ph.D. is a historian of contemporary American politics and culture and is currently writing a book on American fitness culture, FIT NATION: How America Embraced Exercise As The Government Abandoned It (under contract with University of Chicago Press). She is the author of Classroom Wars: Language, Sex, and the Making of Modern Political Culture (Oxford 2015), co-host of Past Present Podcast, a frequent media guest expert, speaker at universities and conferences, and contributor to international and domestic news outlets from the BBC to the New York Times to the Atlantic. Natalia is Associate Professor of History at The New School, a co-founder of wellness education program Healthclass 2.0 and a Premiere Leader of intenSati. She is a co-producer and the host of WELCOME TO YOUR FANTASY, a forthcoming podcast from Pineapple Street Studios. She holds a B.A. from Columbia and a master’s and Ph.D. from Stanford and is based in New York City.