the goop podcast

The spiritual legend best known as Swamiji went to New Jersey—and so did our chief content officer Elise Loehnen. Swamiji created and runs the Vedanta Institute in Mumbai. Vedanta is the study of Vedic tests and translates to “the end of knowledge.” At the institute, and now throughout the world, his scholars explore why so many of us are so unhappy. In the world of Vedanta, they believe that ther...

“To be a helpable person seems counterintuitive,” says Bonnie St. John. “I’m the one-legged black woman. You know, I spent my whole life proving that I could do it all myself.” St. John is the first African American to ever win medals in winter Olympic competition, taking home a silver and two bronzes at the 1984 Paralympics. She graduated magna cum laude from Harvard. Earned a Rhodes Scholarship...

“We’ve wiped out 40 percent of biology on earth in just fifty years,” says Zach Bush, MD. “And yet that Mother Earth keeps reaching out saying: Are you sure you don't want to keep playing? Because we could have some fun together.” For Bush, the health of our soil microbiome is the single most potent factor determining how healthy—or unhealthy—we are. What makes Bush’s case particularly compelling...

“You’ve got to meet people where they are,” says Sally Kohn. “But then you don’t have to leave them there.” Kohn, a TV commentator and columnist, appeared on Fox News representing a liberal point of view for many years—that experience alone taught her a lot about listening, bridging, and ultimately persuading. Before that, Kohn worked for more than fifteen years as a community organizer. And today...

GP hung out at Universal Studios with Oscar-winning actor Lupita Nyong’o as she prepped for the release of her new film Us (written and directed by the talented Jordan Peele). They talked about Nyong’o’s path to the platform she has today: growing up in Mexico and Kenya, her politician-professor father who was in self-exile, Nyong’o’s education (and why getting an Ivy League degree was important t...

“Nothing itself is addictive on the one hand,” says Gabor Maté, MD. “And on the other hand, everything could be addictive if there’s an emptiness in that person that needs to be filled.” Maté is known for his unique perspective on addiction, child development and trauma, and how this stress manifests in the body. He has written several books, including In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, Hold On to You...

“Nobody changes until they change their energy—and when you change your energy, you change your life,” says researcher and author Joe Dispenza, DC. Dispenza’s work explores neuroscience, epigenetics, quantum physics, and consciousness. He’s become known for helping people heal in miraculous ways. (His latest book is called Becoming Supernatural: How Common People Are Doing the Uncommon.) In this e...

GP caught up with Dax Shepard at his studio and they covered a lot of ground: They talked about the roots of shame and fear, the things that they find triggering, and trying to figure out how to be intentional. They talked about what erodes self-esteem, what is erroneous to self-esteem, and what builds it. They swapped stories: relationship challenges, second chances at intimacy, navigating parent...

Boston-based clinical psychologist Ellen Hendriksen has become known for helping people through anxiety, which is something she has struggled with, too. Hendriksen wrote a book about it called How to Be Yourself: Quiet Your Inner Critic and Rise Above Social Anxiety. Our chief content officer, Elise Loehnen, asked Hendriksen to share the strategies she’s learned and tested to cope with social anxi...

“Dads saved the human race,” says Anna Machin, evolutionary anthropologist and author of The Life of Dad. In this conversation with goop CCO Elise Loehnen, Machin calls us to reimagine the role of the modern father, think differently about sex and gender as they relate to parenthood, and explore what it means to be a family, to be social, to form long-lasting relationships. Machin’s research on th...

“I never thought you had to be any one way to be a person and to be kind and to learn,” says Erin Brockovich, who continues to redefine what it means to be an activist. The tough news, Brockovich tells us, is that Superman is not coming to save the environment, to clean up our water, to kick harmful chemicals out of our neighborhoods. But here’s why Brockovich is optimistic: We’ve had the power al...

“I've been kind of a student of family secrets all my life,” writer Dani Shapiro says. All of her novels have centered around family secrets, and her memoirs have explored secrets in her own family history, some of which she didn’t know existed—until she took a DNA test on a whim. When the results came back, Shapiro learned this: Her father, her beloved father whose deep Jewish lineage Shapiro had...

“People get used to sometimes feeling a certain way, and they don't know that they could feel better,” says naturopathic doctor and aesthetician Nigma Talib. “I think when people get the taste of what it’s like to feel optimal, they quite often stick to it.” Working with Talib is fascinating because she can connect how you’re feeling to what’s happening in your gut to the way your skin looks. And...

GP catches up with her old friend Elena Brower, yoga teacher and coauthor of Better Apart: The Radically Positive Way to Separate. They talk about their own divorces, relationship endings and beginnings, and transformations. Brower doesn’t believe it’s ever too late to “fix it.” She pushes for taking responsibility for your attitude and reality, vigilantly taking care of yourself during and after...

“For better or worse, I’m the asshole guy,” Robert Sutton once told us. Sutton is a professor at Stanford and the author of The Asshole Survival Guide. Of course, his work encompasses a lot more. Sutton studies organizational change, leadership, innovation, workplace dynamics, friction. Today, we’re talking a lot about assholes though: What makes someone act like one? How can we identify the tende...

“Our memory is shit,” says couples therapist and author of We Do Stan Tatkin. “It can’t be relied on, and our perception is like a fun-house mirror…. And so that should give way to more cautiousness, more consideration, and more curiosity than we tend to have, especially in love relationships.” Tatkin’s approach to helping couples develop “secure-functioning relationships” is both realistic and op...

“I didn't think that anybody thought or felt or experienced the world the way that I did until I came into recovery,” Bill Clegg tells our chief content officer, Elise Loehnen. Clegg is the author of two harrowing, poignant memoirs: Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man and Ninety Days. (He’s also a novelist—read Did You Ever Have a Family—and one of the most respected literary agents in publishing...

“When we promote, if you will, acting compassionately, there’s a subset of people who look at this as a soft science,” says neurosurgeon James Doty, MD. But his research and that of others has demonstrated on a scientific level “that when you practice compassion with intention, it has a profound effect on your mental and physical health and wellness and even your longevity.” Today, Doty shares his...

“I think we build up this thesis of who we are, and then it gets shook.” This is how Abbi Jacobson—one of the creators, executive producers, and stars of Broad City—begins to describe the ups and downs of her love life. And the road trip she departed on with a broken heart. It was this adventure that eventually became her poignant collection of personal essays, I Might Regret This. And it was on a...

Alain de Botton talks to Elise Loehnen about the complexities of falling into, and out of, relationship and how we will always be students of love. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Financial expert Farnoosh Torabi knows how to help people get out of debt and in this episode she explores the ways in which we relate to money. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Jessice Helm provides insight into how endocrine-disrupting chemicals affect our health and what we can do about them that isn't all-consuming and overwhelming. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Howard Schultz, the author of the new book From the Ground Up, tells stories about his time as the Starbucks CEO and how it almost slipped away from him early on and about a moment that gave him a sense of spirituality. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Deanna Minich, PhD, highlights why our health should be a joy, not deprivation and how her detox focuses on what we can add back in to really nourish the body, mind and spirit. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Steven Pinker, the experimental psychologist, Harvard psychology professor, and bestselling author of Enlightenment Now explains our tendency to look at the past through rose-colored glasses and view the present world much more pessimistically and why that thinking doesn't reflect reality. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices