the goop podcast

“Our votes with our fork, our votes with our wallet, make a difference,” says Mark Hyman, MD. He sat down with GP to talk about his latest book, Food Fix, and what led him on his own personal path into functional medicine. As a physician, Hyman looks for the root causes of chronic health issues—and the factors that contribute to optimal health. He says a lot of it boils down to food and our agricu...

“We think about loneliness as a stereotype of the person sitting alone in a corner at a party,” says former surgeon general of the United States Vivek Murthy, MD. “But loneliness doesn’t usually look like that.” The author of Together joins host Elise Loehnen to explain the downward spiral of loneliness: When we don’t feel comfortable showing up as who we are, we tend to try to be somebody we’re n...

“We are all meant to feel alive and to feel powerful,” says Peter A. Levine, PhD. “That’s what being a human is.” The psychologist and author of Trauma and Memory joins Elise Loehnen to talk about how trauma lives in the body and how it can work its way out. We learn some of Levine’s favorite strategies for energetic movement, like skipping and chanting. He says the key to moving trauma out of the...

“We’ve attached importance and status to busyness,” says Brigid Schulte. The director of the Better Life Lab at New America and the New York Times–bestselling author of Overwhelmed joins Elise Loehnen to dispel the busyness myth. She also breaks down the varied ways our home and work systems make it particularly difficult for women to just get to the end of the day. She suggests solutions for chan...

Today, Daniel Pink teaches us how crack the code of “perfect timing.” The New York Times–bestselling author of When and Drive explains that much of our lives is episodic: We tend to think of projects, days, and life events in reference to beginning, middle, and end. And Pink explains that our brain and our mood function differently over the course of the day. Becoming aware of these patterns allow...

“You’re desperate to find causality even where there is none,” says Kate Bowler. She’s a historian at Duke Divinity School and the author of a memoir called Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I’ve Loved. And she makes us laugh, even when she’s talking about death, dying, and grief. In this episode, Bowler tells Elise Loehnen about what happened after she was diagnosed with stage four...

GP got on a video call with Peter Attia, MD, data-focused physician, longevity specialist, and host of The Peter Attia Drive podcast. She asked Attia about the research and science evolving around the COVID-19 pandemic and what’s known (and not) about how viruses function—and how our bodies respond to them. Attia provides helpful updates on antibody testing, along with his thoughts on what might c...

“I try to create the illusion of simplicity because life’s too complicated,” says Eileen Fisher. Today, the founder and clothing designer joins Elise Loehnen to talk about her appreciation for simplicity (which Loehnen shares). Fisher reveals that her own discomfort inspired her career—she could never understand why women were so willing to suffer to look good. Beyond creating a simplified system...

“The best way to get respect from people is through honesty and authenticity,” says Bob Iger, executive chairman of Disney (and one of GP’s idols). In this conversation, Iger and GP go back and forth about what makes a great leader. (After serving as the CEO of Disney for the past fifteen years and writing a memoir, The Ride of a Lifetime, Iger had some interesting insights.) Iger outlines the str...

“Pay attention to your vulnerable feelings and lead with those,” says therapist Terry Real, who comes back on The goop Podcast to help us navigate sheltering in place with significant others. Real guides us on how to step up for our partners (and ourselves) in crisis. He dissuades us from falling back on losing strategies that make us feel disconnected and instead outlines a path toward a healthie...

“It’s the fuel of fear that keeps these patterns going,” says Craig Malkin, PhD. The Harvard Medical School psychologist joins Elise Loehnen to redefine narcissism. As he outlines in his book Rethinking Narcissism, Malkin believes that being a little narcissistic may help us—there’s a spectrum: “When we have that little bit of self-enhancement, that’s what gives us the protection against adversity...

Host Elise Loehnen sits down with Pulitzer Prize–winning authors Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn to talk about their new book, Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope. It’s a story about our country that begins in rural Yamhill, Oregon—where Kristof grew up—and moves to the Dakotas and Oklahoma and New York and Virginia and everywhere in between. Through vivid personal reporting and the lives of...

“This is not outside us,” says Terry Tempest Williams. “This is alongside us.” Today, the conservationist, activist, and award-winning author offers a spiritual perspective on this planetary change, as she calls it. She shares moving stories from her newest book, Erosions, that show how our undoing may be our becoming. She urges us to redefine what we deem essential. To ask ourselves if we could a...

“Healing is always a surprise,” says Bill Bengston, PhD. Bengston, a sociology professor and researcher, sat down with host Elise Loehnen to talk about his wild, fascinating, unconventional research. A reformed skeptic, Bengston set out to disprove the effect of hands-on healing, only to be proven wrong himself. (“Don’t spend all your time defending beliefs,” says Bengston. “The world is more inte...

“There’s no secret sauce to parenting that parents need to know that kids shouldn’t be let in on,” says pediatrician Cara Natterson, MD. After GP read Natterson’s newest book, Decoding Boys, they sat down to talk about different ways to approach difficult and awkward conversations with our children—about, say, puberty. Natterson explains why puberty is occurring earlier and earlier in boys and gir...

“What I know is that we’ve always recovered,” says Sallie Krawcheck, CEO and cofounder of Ellevest. The Wall Street legend and personal finance expert returns to The goop Podcast to demystify what’s happening right now in the fluctuating market and explain why she foresees it rebounding and what we can do in the meantime for our financial health. She suggests different ways to think about money du...

“It’s really important to draw attention to not only the physical but also the mental consequences of a rampant environmental poisoning,” says medical ethicist Harriet A. Washington. In her book A Terrible Thing to Waste, Washington outlines the staggering, extensive impact of environmental racism. She examines how marginalized communities—and particularly the infants and children in these communi...

We celebrate the heroes who save the day, but what about all the people who keep the day from needing to be saved? In his new book, Upstream, New York Times–bestselling author Dan Heath teaches us ways to prevent and fix problems before they become problems. And in this conversation with Elise Loehnen, he tells us about times when upstream thinking has solved issues ranging from homelessness to po...

Psychiatrist Judson Brewer, MD, describes anxiety as a form of uncertainty. How do we bring some certainty to our lives when our world feels out of control? Brewer says that becoming aware of our physiological needs—are we hungry, thirsty, tired?—can help us feel more secure. Being conscious about how we consume news can also help. Grounding techniques—try focusing your feet—can ease panic. Going...

“Climate change is a justice issue,” says journalist Tatiana Schlossberg, author of Inconspicuous Consumption. At In goop Health, Schlossberg sat down with Elise Loehnen to talk about how we can let go of individual guilt around climate change and move toward collective responsibility and meaningful change. She begins by taking some pressure off of consumers and illuminating the role companies do,...

“The reality is challenging, and then, of course, our fears about what might happen magnify immensely the actual situation,” says psychiatrist James Gordon, MD, author of The Transformation. Gordon returns to The goop Podcast to offer strategies that can help us during periods of prolonged stress: We learn how the amygdala and vagus nerve react to anxiety and how to ease it. Because stress can imp...

Family counselor, school consultant, and educator Kim John Payne shares tips, guidelines, and resources to help parents and children adjust to this new normal. Kids feel safe, says Payne, when they sense their parents are in charge—even, and perhaps especially, in uncertain moments. Start smallish, suggests Payne: Declutter your home. Remove obvious triggers. Creating a calming environment can red...

“We need people who are willing to turn within and see: How am I part of the problem?” says global activist Layla Saad. The New York Times–bestselling author of Me and White Supremacy has become known for helping people examine—and talk about—the ways we unconsciously uphold racism. White supremacy may not be something you’ve chosen, says Saad, but it’s in the water, and it’s conditioned all of us...

“Our relationships are the foundations on which we build everything else,” says Vivek Murthy, MD. And when they’re strong, he believes there’s nothing we can’t face together. The former surgeon general of the United States joins Elise Loehnen from the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic to share what we need to prioritize right now. He outlines the three things hospital systems require to functio...

“We don’t deal with grief enough,” says Jhené Aiko. Today, the LA-born-and-raised singer and songwriter plays GP new tracks from her album Chilombo (which she translates roughly to “wild beast”). They talk about the ways sound healing—specifically, singing bowls—have aided in Aiko’s grieving process. And how we can find different ways to make space for our emotions and move through trauma. Aiko te...