the goop podcast

Our guest today is James Nestor, journalist and author of Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art, which explores the often overlooked and undervalued function of breathing and all the ways that breath is at the center of health—and potentially illness. Nestor spent a decade studying ancestral breathing techniques and New Age technology and diving deep into studies that have brought surprising infor...

GP is joined by two-time Olympic gold medalist, FIFA World Cup Champion, and New York Times–bestselling author Abby Wambach. Since retiring from her record-breaking soccer career, Wambach has become known for her work around equality and inclusion alongside her wife, activist and author Glennon Doyle. She’s also just published a young readers edition of her book Wolfpack, urging young people to br...

The former CNN White House correspondent has become known as an independent news source and appreciated by followers for her cogent, insightful approach and for allowing people to draw their own conclusions—without all the added drama. For this special episode, Yellin joined Elise Loehnen on the afternoon of Wednesday, November 4, and talked through how she believes the next few weeks will play ou...

Eli Finkel, PhD, is a psychology professor at Northwestern University and the author of the fascinating book The All-or-Nothing Marriage, which explores the surprising things that make marriages fulfilling and what can put them on the rocks. Today, he joins host Elise Loehnen to chat about how the definition of an ideal marriage has shifted over time, what he thinks of nonmonogamy, why he argues t...

Journalist Rebecca Traister has written three books, including her most recent New York Times bestseller, Good and Mad, which explores how women’s anger has provoked political and social change over centuries. Traister joined host Elise Loehnen to talk through all she’s uncovered in her research and why our society continues to consider anger to be acceptable only for White men. “This is one of th...

Writer and attorney Christie Tate had big reservations when a therapist first suggested she pursue group therapy. The idea of voluntarily sharing her secrets and vulnerabilities with a group of strangers was not appealing. It was terrifying. But she went. Now she’s been in group therapy for 19 years—and probably will be for the rest of her life. Tate wrote a book about her experience called Group:...

“Hope isn’t an optimism that one day it will be okay,” says Austin Channing Brown. “Hope is what we owe to one another as human beings.” Brown is a media producer, a speaker, and the author of the New York Times bestseller I’m Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness. In her racial justice and leadership work, Brown doesn’t chase hope; she lives it. Brown joined host Elise Loehnen t...

“The work that I do helping people exit these groups, it isn’t about persuading them to leave,” says mental health counselor Steven Hassan. “It’s teaching them how the mind works, teaching them about social psychology and hypnosis, which helps them see whether or not they have been co-opted.” Hassan is a leading expert on mind control and hypnosis and the author of The Cult of Trump. For the past...

Brian Muraresku—author of The Immortality Key: The Secret History of the Religion with No Name—spent twelve years entrenched in connecting the dots between the use of mind-altering drugs and the foundation of Christianity as we know it today. Many of us are familiar with the holy wine present at ancient religious celebrations. But what was actually in that wine? Was it anything like the wine we dr...

GP catches up with her friend Kate Hudson, and true to form, they cover a lot of ground. They talk about being girl moms, what it looks like to own your trauma, and how, at this stage in her life, Hudson creates sustaining relationships. “It’s not fun to work through the pain—it sucks. And it definitely feels like it’s easier to avoid it,” Hudson says. “But we know that the more you avoid it, the...

“It’s the possibility of greater change that rejuvenates me,” says Michele Harper, MD. “That’s what makes it possible for me to keep going.” Harper is an emergency room physician who has worked as chief resident at Lincoln Hospital in the South Bronx and in the emergency department at the VA medical center in Philadelphia. She is also the author of The Beauty in Breaking. Today, she joins host Eli...

Author Toni Jensen joined us for the September edition of goop Book Club to talk about her first memoir, Carry, which traces her Métis roots, her childhood in rural Iowa, her closest relationships, and the classrooms she’s inhabited around the country as a student and a teacher. In this conversation with Elise Loehnen, Jensen talks about making peace with childhood trauma, her complex relationship...

Laura Wasser is a family law expert, a divorce attorney, and the founder of It’s Over Easy, a platform that provides tools to help families navigating divorce. She joins host Elise Loehnen to talk about how people can prepare for the best and the worst in a relationship, whether or not she thinks prenups serve a partnership, if the years she’s spent in this field have changed her views on marriage...

David Sheff is a journalist and the author of the number one New York Times–bestselling book Beautiful Boy. Sheff joins us to talk about an incredible man and the subject of his latest book, The Buddhist on Death Row: Jarvis Jay Masters’s childhood was marred by severe trauma that sent him down a path of violence and into San Quentin. In 1990, while in prison, Masters was set up for the murder of...

Ambassador Susan Rice has had an impressive career in service and government as a diplomat, policy advisor, and public official. She served throughout the Clinton administration, becoming one of the nation’s youngest secretaries of state, and later, became one of President Obama’s most trusted advisors. After years of speaking on behalf of presidents and the country, Rice finally shares her incred...

Many people find it difficult to exercise self-compassion, in part because we fear that being tender with ourselves will make us lose our edge. But Kristin Neff, PhD—who wrote Self-Compassion and The Mindful Self-Compassion Workbook and is steeped in the field’s research—says that couldn’t be further from the truth: “Here’s the thing with self-compassion—our goals are just as high. But when we fai...

“Each of us, in our own infinite precious particularity, will be led to what’s to be done next in our own time and space,” says Cynthia Bourgeault. The modern-day mystic and Episcopal priest is the author of several brilliant books, including Eye of the Heart: A Spiritual Journey into the Imaginal Realm. Today, she joins us to discuss a question that comes forth for many of us at some point: Are w...

Jay Shetty, author of the new book Think Like a Monk, is in part known as a former monk. Now, he serves as a coach, helping people identify and live out their purpose. He joined GP to talk about why many of us have never really spent time by ourselves, with ourselves—and what can happen when we do. Shetty has a different way of thinking about compassion for self and compassion for others; and it i...

“I grew up with this intense fear of failure,” says Cathy Park Hong. “And in retrospect, I can understand why my parents instilled that in me—because for them, there was no safety net.” Hong is a writer, a professor at Rutgers-Newark University, and the author of Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning. It’s a book about family, identity, culture, and self-worth. Hong joins us today to talk ab...

“There is so much hurt that doesn’t have to remain unhealed,” says Molly Howes, PhD. “A good apology can go the distance to lessen that pain.” Howes is a Harvard-trained clinical psychologist and the author of A Good Apology: Four Steps to Make Things Right. Many of us are bad at apologizing, which according to Howes, is not for lack of care, but because we may have a misunderstanding of what it t...

“Most of the diseases that we experience are not inevitable,” says Bruce Lanphear, MD. “They’re preventable.” Lanphear is a clinician scientist at the Child & Family Research Institute, BC Children’s Hospital, and a professor in the Faculty of Health Sciences at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. He’s spent the majority of his career exploring how environmental factors like toxic chemicals, pol...

We often view moments of serendipity, or happy accidents, as situations that we play no part in and can't control or influence. But author Christian Busch, PhD, believes that luck may not always be circumstantial—and that by training ourselves to see something in the unexpected, we can make those accidents more meaningful. Which is the subject of his book, The Serendipity Mindset: The Art and Scie...

You’ve probably been fed the myth that your life will generally follow a linear path, with maybe a midlife crisis and a few other upheavals thrown in along the way. But in reality, you’ve probably experienced more big transitions, or “lifequakes,” as author Bruce Feiler calls them. For his book Life Is in the Transitions, Feiler spent a year exploring how people move through these moments. What he...

Gordon Neufeld is a developmental psychologist and the author of Hold On to Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers. In his forty-plus years studying child development, a few common threads have emerged. According to Neufeld, parents tend to be hyperfocused on socializing their children in order for them to be well liked and have plenty of friends. This good intention can cause child...

GP talks with her friend Cameron Diaz about the best part of turning forty, what affects our capacity to be intimate, taking responsibility for who you are, and the launch of Avaline, Diaz’s organic wine line. Diaz explains why she pivoted away from her acting career, what happened after she decided to start over, and how she learned a surprising amount about herself in the early days of her relat...