MenOpod: all things fifty +

We’d like to thank the Academy… and remind everyone to GET OFF THEIR ASSES AND VOTE! 🏆🗳️ MenOpod is officially an AWARD-WINNING podcast! Apparently, two loudmouth sistrers with no filter can actually do some good in the world. We’re celebrating our Silver Davey Award win in the Social Good category for Episode 36, our powerful conversation with Ben Pargman about losing his son Manny to suicide an...

Remember when everyone was named Debbie, David, or Jennifer, nobody had a digital footprint, and your teenage stupidity couldn’t come back to haunt you 40 years later? Ahhh, the good old days. At least we THINK they were good. At our age, who the hell remembers? 😂 This week on MenOpod, Eliana and Leora take a trip down memory lane—where the facts are fuzzy, sibling rivalries never die, and their...

Getting your kid into college apparently requires 47 passwords, a second mortgage, an overpriced consultant, and a mother on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Getting him to stop picking his nose? Still a work in progress. 🎓🤦‍♀️ This week on MenOpod, Eliana is applying to college. Sorry—her SON is applying to college. Leora is threatening a sister breakup, Eliana is reliving her Yale rejection,...

Leora turns 53. Eliana has another UTI. One of these sisters is aging better than the other. 🎂🔥 This week, cousin Jamie of Mah Jongg & Mingle attempts to teach the MenOpod sisters mahjong. She brings decades of family tradition, a treasured 1942 mahjong card, and actual expertise. We bring absolutely nothing useful. Leora wants to learn a new skill and make new friends. Eliana wants to know...

New year, clean slate? Please. Eliana and Leora kick off 5787 debating forgiveness, family food trauma, and Eliana’s new favorite commandment: “Thou shalt not try me.” Shana Tova, everyone! 🍎🍯 Also on the High Holy Days agenda: a HYROX horror story nobody asked for, the theological implications of GLP-1s on Yom Kippur, and a 6 A.M. sisterly SOS involving their mother, their dead dad, and his sur...

Eliana and Leora are barely speaking again, so naturally they’re planning their nursing-home futures. Who’s losing her marbles first? Whose kids will actually visit? And does learning mahjong guarantee you a better table in assisted living? 👵🏻🀄️ First up, Leora puts Eliana through a cognitive test involving subtraction by sevens—which seems like a pretty shitty way to determine whether someone...

Leora returns from safari with tales of lions, horny hippos, terrifying night drives, and the shocking discovery that lionesses do all the hunting while males eat first. So basically, the Serengeti has husbands. Meanwhile, Eliana welcomes grand-bunny Gunnar — (RIP Thumper 1, 2…and possibly 3.) and we tackle life’s essential post-50 questions: neck-up or neck-down beauty, becoming our mothers, husb...

We’re back from “summer hiatus” — AKA a sister fight — and apparently absence makes the insults grow stronger. This week: Eliana ups her hormone patch, gets vindicated by a UTI, admits she actually DOES miss flights, and joins Leora in inventing the training diaper — for that delicate stage of midlife when Depends feels premature but you can no longer trust a fart. Plus: college chaos, empty-nest...

Apparently, we’ve reached the stage of life where we think we can solve the world’s problems, invent million-dollar businesses, and improve civilization—all before our coffee gets cold. This week we’re talking about the Tate brothers’ latest legal drama (because karma loves a sequel), robot husbands, road rage, menopause, gay dads, college application insanity, and our newest invention: Oy VeyMo™️...

Eliana and Leora are back after a sisterly standoff that proves one thing: after 50+ years of sibling history, passive-aggressive can still become aggressively aggressive. This week on MenOpod, Eliana turns hormone replacement therapy into a math problem, somehow ends up with three hormone patches in play, misses a flight (then nearly misses the next one), battles the world of concierge medicine,...

Menopause has entered the chat… and apparently stolen Eliana’s memory, patience, and ability to remember why she walked into a room. This week, the sisters revisit childhood rivalries, debate who was actually Mom’s favorite, and wonder if they’ve been fighting for five decades purely for everyone else’s entertainment. Meanwhile, Eliana escapes to New York for a Broadway binge featuring vampires, R...

Turning 56 apparently comes with two unexpected perks: a Ross senior discount—and the ability to forget the word “fork.” This week, Eliana goes into Ross for one suitcase and somehow loses an entire day, trusts ChatGPT over her husband during a full-blown shopping crisis, nearly sacrifices brand-new HOKAs to a Florida flash flood, falls in love with a beach sweater so ugly it should’ve come with a...

Midlife is realizing that no matter how many doctor appointments you drive your mother to, how many groceries you carry into her house, or how many times you explain FaceTime versus speakerphone, one call from the favorite child can erase decades of service faster than a factory reset. This week, Eliana and Leora compete in the Family Dysfunction Olympics, where their mother’s 83rd birthday proves...

Midlife doesn’t arrive politely—it kicks down the door, rearranges your gut, and leaves behind symptoms it refuses to explain. This week, gastroenterologist Dr. Jeffrey Brooks joins Eliana and Leora for a deep dive into the glamorous underworld of aging digestion: reflux that shows up uninvited, bloating that ignores physics, constipation with commitment issues, and bathroom “emergencies” that red...

Ever feel like the older you get, the more things there are to worry about? In this hilariously relatable episode of MenOpod: All Things Fifty Plus, sisters Leora and Eliana tackle the growing midlife anxiety that shows up uninvited and overstays its welcome. From grown sons who still can’t manage basic self-care, to brain fog, forgotten medications, cleaning lady confessions, and the overwhelming...

Forget Eat, Pray, Love. This is menopause-era reinvention with rolling luggage, emotional support snacks, and a husband at home slowly discovering that “what’s for dinner?” is now a deeply personal problem. Psychotherapist and author Leah Fisher joins MenOpod to talk about what happens when an empty nest identity meltdown, a long marriage, and a full-blown midlife crisis collide at the exact same...

This week on MenOpod, Eliana enters her full feral menopause era after abandoning an entire Trader Joe’s haul — including ice cream and near-mythical protein pancakes that drop like Taylor Swift tickets — to melt into a warm dairy crime scene while she wandered Miami dissociating on a “quick walk.” Meanwhile, Leora questions whether brain fog is real or whether Eliana simply cannot be trusted with...

A 30-year law school reunion means squinting at name tags, pretending everyone looks EXACTLY the same, and hearing “You haven’t changed a bit!” from people you would not recognize in a hostage lineup. Meanwhile, everyone’s comparing hormone protocols like trial strategy and casually discussing frozen shoulders, insomnia, and ungrateful children over lukewarm pinot grigio. Also: why does every rent...

Eliana enters her MenOparty era the only way a menopausal woman can: rage-vacuuming 40-year-old disintegrating ski pants out of the dryer at 2 a.m. while wondering if an “Alpine Divorce” is technically premeditated murder or just self-care. Between exploding hard-boiled eggs, husbands who “forget” the lettuce after a 40-minute discussion about lettuce, and mothers who lure you over with a birthday...

For her 56th birthday, Eliana is celebrating with purple cat-eye glasses, a Jane Fonda–inspired wolf cut, and a new life philosophy called “selective executive functioning” (everything gets done except the thing that matters). This week: AI flirts shamelessly with Leora like a horny life coach with perfect grammar and zero boundaries, the sisters debate whether 32 was humanity’s physical peak, tak...

Welcome to the skincare industrial complex, where your $200 cream is mostly hope in a jar and your wallet is the real anti-aging victim. Myth-busting dermatologist Dr. Fayne Frey joins us to call BS on the entire beauty aisle—from “miracle” creams to trendy ingredients present in quantities best described as decorative (hi, angel dusting). Collagen? Not happening. Those molecules are basically Mac...

Eliana is deep in her heated “butt throne” era—because menopause is hard, but at least her seat is comfy. Between HRT roulette, brain fog that has Leora losing groceries and Eliana chasing imaginary roof leaks, and a digestive system that’s suddenly “sharting” overtime, functioning like a normal adult feels…aspirational. Meanwhile, a husband’s innocent Costco run becomes a full-blown red flag. No...

Eliana tries her first HRT patch live and immediately questions everything—placement, adhesion, and why some patches feel designer while others feel… medical-adjacent—while Leora delivers unfiltered commentary no one asked for but absolutely gets anyway. Then it’s straight into Passover: Ziploc’d hard-boiled eggs, questionable Seder tunes, and a vibe that’s somewhere between tradition and total ch...

Menopause is calling the shots this week, and we are officially unqualified. Leora’s brain fog peaks when she can’t find a store she’s visited for years—while literally standing two blocks away—and a listener shares a cautionary tale so horrifying it deserves its own emergency alert: toothpaste… on hemorrhoids. Yes, it burned. Yes, we screamed. Yes, therapy is optional. Meanwhile, Eliana is in a f...

Eliana finally went to the hormone doctor after almost canceling the appointment six times, and suddenly the conversation takes a hard turn into the midlife bedroom gap—that awkward stage where women would rather binge watch Bridgerton, read a book, or reorganize the pantry than have sex. Enter Dr. Maria Sophocles , gynecologist and author of The Bedroom Gap , here to explain what’s actually happe...