The Goop Podcast

P brought a couple friends—Demi Moore and Arianna Huffington—together for a chat at In goop Health in New York City. They talked a little bit about wellness routines and parenting advice. And a lot about how they’ve defined and redefined success throughout their lives and careers, which has sometimes required them to ditch society’s measuring stick. “I'm now convinced that failure is such an incredible way to build our resilience and to build our own inner strength,” said Huffington. “We won't be the same people without the failures along the way.” For Moore, the most important thing she thinks she’ll ever do in her life is the inner work. What does that look like? All three women weigh in. (See The goop Podcast hub for more.) To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“I was craving the straight and narrow path that I had arbitrarily created for myself without really any experience to base it upon,” Valerie Jarrett says. “It’s just what I thought should make me happy.” And then Jarrett hit a wall. In this intimate chat with our chief content officer, Elise Loehnen, Jarrett shares the path she took from a law firm in Chicago to become Barack Obama’s senior advisor in the White House and family confidante. She talks about being a single mom and how she learned to admit when life was hard, ask for help, and stop trying to be so perfect. Her stories show a different, more adventurous, and hopeful way to build a life of purpose—however you define purpose in your own life. (For more, see The goop Podcast hub and Jarrett’s new book, Finding My Voice.) To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“Wellness is not a state of mind,” Emily Nagoski says. “It is not coming to a place of loving yourself. Wellness is a state of action. It is the freedom to move through the natural cycles of the stress response.” Nagoski—author of Come As You Are—began her work as a sex educator and went on to earn an MS in counseling and a PhD in health behavior. Her new book, Burnout, explains why women experience burnout differently than men—and how we can all avoid it. This is one of those rare conversations about stress that didn’t make us…stressed. It did make us laugh. (For more, see The goop Podcast hub.) To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“I call shame the twenty-ton shield,” says Brené Brown. “It's a defense mechanism—very classic—that we carry in order to protect ourselves from getting hurt. But what it actually does is protect us from being seen.” Brown is a research professor at the University of Houston, a New York Times–bestselling author (read her latest, Dare to Lead), and the star of a new Netflix special, The Call to Courage. In this chat, she and GP talk about courage, which Brown says is teachable and possible to cultivate only from a place of vulnerability. They talk about being perfectionists: “Where perfectionism is driving, your shame is riding shotgun,” says Brown. And they talk about empathy—as a tool for combating shame internally and for stepping beyond yourself to connect with and lead others. (For more, see The goop Podcast hub.) To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Laura Day and Laura Lynne Jackson are renowned psychic mediums and friends. They both joined our chief content officer Elise Loehnen (another friend) at our last In goop Health summit. “Everybody thinks they need to come to someone like me or Laura to get their information,” said Jackson. “And the truth is you don't.” Day and Jackson work differently, but this is where they agree: Everybody has intuitive abilities, which routinely get dismissed. In this chat, they explain how to notice, listen to, test, and document your intuition so that you can use it as a tool to help you with your relationships, career, and daily routine. (For more, see The goop Podcast hub.) To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 there is a distinction between the mind and the intellect—and that the intellect should not be confused with intelligence. Because we do not exercise our intellects to control our minds, we are run by our likes and dislikes. We are controlled by our attachments and our emotions, the theory goes. How do we break free? Swamiji tells Elise—after taking her to the mat a couple of times. (For more, see The goop Podcast hub.) To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“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 to Oxford. Served in the White House as a director of the National Economic Council during the Clinton administration. “I was such a drive-yourself-until-you-drop person,” she says. Until she learned a different paradigm for high performance—one that was sustainable, with recoveries built in along the way. It’s not about pulling the throttle back, says St. John; when you follow her method, you’re able to do more. She calls it micro-resilience: “little hacks that have a big impact.” And in this episode, we get her favorite strategies and tools for changing pessimistic viewpoints, prioritizing, making decisions, workin

“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 is the unlikely path he took to realizing it: Bush is a board-certified physician with a background in internal medicine, endocrinology and metabolism, and hospice and palliative care. He thought he’d spend his whole life in academia, until a curveball took him to a nutrition center in rural Virginia. There, everything Bush “knew” about nutrition and the drivers of disease and medicine...broke. Slowly, he began to put together the pieces, which told a new story that felt both surprising and intuitive to him. Today, Bush shares that story, along with the steps we can take to move from chemical farming toward regenerat

“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 she’s talking to Elise Loehnen about her incredibly helpful, surprisingly funny book The Opposite of Hate: A Field Guide to Repairing Our Humanity. It’s a conversation that taught us about listening to understand—not to argue—and about getting comfortable with discomfort. It also reminded us that we’re all way more similar than we tend to think we are. (For more, see The goop Podcast hub.) To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 to her), landing her role in 12 Years a Slave, the cultural significance of Black Panther. They talked about shame—in the context of women’s sexuality and also the shame of not understanding something. “Ignorance doesn't have to be permanent. It can be momentary,” says Nyong’o. “You have to allow yourself to learn. And it starts with admitting what you don’t know.” Other highlights: the pair’s perspective on how beauty is being redefined in the culture, Nyong’o’s description of the most “dangerous” (in a good way) actor she’s ever worked with, and some critical tips on getting through a scary movie. (For more, see The

“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 Your Kids, and Scattered. In this moving conversation with Elise Loehnen, Maté talks about how early childhood experiences sometimes show up later in life and how we’re all affected by our social, cultural, economic, and relational environments. He also shares from his incredible personal experiences in family and palliative care and ministering to patients in the most drug-addicted district in North America. And he talks about the beauty of medicine—which, he explains, is not about control. (For more, see The goop Podcast hub.) To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.c

“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 episode, he explains what at first appears to be magic, where science and mysticism intersect. It’s possible, Dispenza believes, to change the way you think, the way you act, the way you feel; to change your mind and body. The hardest part: not making the same choices you did the day before, choosing not to live by the emotions that keep you anchored to the past. “People wait their whole lives for something outside of them to change how they feel inside,” Dispenza says. But priming your brain to be a map to a new future—that’s an energetic job in his book. (For more, see The goop Podcast hub.) To learn more about li

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 parenthood and fame. And they kept coming back to vulnerability—how to approach it, how to get comfortable with it, and what they’ve learned in the process. (P.S. On this episode, you’ll also hear a bit from Shepard’s right hand, Monica Padman. And as always, you can see more on The goop Podcast hub.) To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 anxiety and move from fear and doubt toward authenticity and a genuine comfort with the person you are in the world. (For more, see The goop Podcast hub.) To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“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 the anthropological roots of fatherhood and how fathers evolved to be parent figures has an equally extraordinary impact on men, women, and children—and the potential to change what our communities look like well into the future. (For more, see The goop Podcast hub.) To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“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 all along to rescue ourselves. We do not need to wait for oversight that does not exist. We simply have to believe that we can, that we should, that we have every right to speak up and speak out. And then we can start small, we can start local, and we can make the kind of big, life-altering changes that Brockovich has helped inspire all over the world. (For more, see The goop Podcast hub.) To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“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 always identified with, was not her biological father. Did this mean she was not the person she thought she was? Did it change everything? Did it change nothing? What did her parents (who have both passed) know? Following the publication of her new memoir Inheritance, Shapiro talks with our chief content officer, Elise Loehnen, about searching for answers, exploring what defines us, and ultimately “being willing to embrace and live with a certain amount of uncertainty—just simply not knowing.” (For more, see The goop Podcast hub.) To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audac

“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 then she helps you fix it all. She wrote about this process in a book called Younger Skin Starts in the Gut. And as the title suggests, Talib is also known for her approach to aging gracefully—and not prematurely. "Aging is beautiful," she says. "There's something about having those gorgeous expression lines." (For more, see The goop Podcast hub.) To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 the separation, having patience for the process, and having a lot of self-forgiveness. And GP explains why she always says intimate relationships are a meditation on everything that’s wrong with us. (For more, see The goop Podcast hub.) To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“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 tendencies in others and ourselves? How do you get rid of assholes in your office and personal life? And when you can’t, what are the best coping strategies for dealing with one? (For more, see The goop Podcast hub.) To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices