“I like a lot of different topics, and I like to be around a lot of different types of people,” says Arlan Hamilton. “And that keeps me flexible.” Hamilton is the author of It’s About Damn Time and the founder of Backstage Capital, a venture capital seed fund that invests in underrepresented founders. She built the company from the ground up—while experiencing homelessness. In this conversation with host Elise Loehnen, Hamilton shares some incredible lessons from her personal and professional li...
Jul 07, 2020•50 min
“Failure can be the best teacher if you know how to approach it properly,” says Ozan Varol, a former rocket scientist turned law professor. In his book Think Like a Rocket Scientist, Varol shows the benefit of approaching problems with a beginner’s mindset. He explains why it’s dangerous to conflate beliefs with identity and why it’s incredibly productive to ask yourself: What are my assumptions? His work is an unexpected and compelling road map for challenging the status quo, cultivating curios...
Jul 02, 2020•53 min
“Conventional medicine failed me. It is my mission to not have it fail other people as well,” says Amy Myers, MD. The New York Times– bestselling author of The Autoimmune Solution and The Thyroid Connection sat down with Elise Loehnen to talk about autoimmunity. Seventy-five percent of people with autoimmunity are women, explains Myers, and she believes that autoimmunity is spiking in children. She suggests manageable ways to look at and adjust diets to meet your personal health needs and food s...
Jun 30, 2020•54 min
“You’re never fully cooked,” says Chelsea Handler. GP catches up with her friend about her approach to activism, comedy, and self-discovery—which she writes about her in latest New York Times –bestselling book, Life Will Be the Death of Me . They start by talking about White privilege and why and how Handler set out to first dismantle it in her life. “How do you get okay with making yourself feel uncomfortable?” asks Handler. How do you allow your perspective to shift consistently, avoid getting...
Jun 25, 2020•49 min
Ibram X. Kendi—the number one New York Times –bestselling author of How to Be an Antiracist , Stamped from the Beginning , and Antiracist Baby —is a historian of change. This summer, he’s moving to a new academic post at Boston University, where he’ll become the founding director of the Boston University Center for Antiracist Research. In this conversation with Elise Loehnen, Kendi talks through the historical myths, misconceptions, and dangerous oversimplifications that have contributed to curr...
Jun 23, 2020•54 min
“There is a system that is a sustainable new business model in which health becomes the determinant,” says Jeffrey Bland, PhD. “Not just production per unit acre.” Bland, who is known as the father of functional medicine, joins host Elise Loehnen for a wide-ranging conversation on how long-defended systems (in medicine and elsewhere) have failed and how we can make them work and make them just. He also explains why we’re not hardwired and how our environment influences the way our genes are expr...
Jun 18, 2020•59 min
“You can’t grow up Black in America and not feel outraged by the terrible health disparities that are still going on every day,” says Nadine Burke Harris, MD, the first surgeon general of California. GP got on a video call with Harris, who is an expert on adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). Her book, The Deepest Well, explores the connection between adversity, trauma, and toxic stress in childhood and health outcomes later in life. Much of her work focuses on interventions that can mitigate an...
Jun 16, 2020•58 min
“Life is not just the beginning and the end,” says Nora McInerny. “It is all of these tiny things in the middle.” McInerny hosts the podcast Terrible, Thanks for Asking and is the author of It’s Okay to Laugh , The Hot Young Widows Club , and No Happy Endings . She’s hilarious. This episode is her very honest conversation with Elise Loehnen about grief and loss. Which also manages to be funny. McInerny tells her love stories. Some of them are about her first husband, who died of brain cancer. So...
Jun 11, 2020•54 min
We often think the best negotiator is the toughest person in the room. Bring Yourself author Mori Taheripour explains why this is not true: “Our superpower is our ability to have emotional intelligence in a conversation.” Taheripour teaches negotiation and dispute resolution at Wharton, and focuses on the human side of negotiating. Her method isn’t prescriptive. She helps people get out of their heads, let go of self-judgement, and get comfortable with stillness. “When you start talking too much...
Jun 09, 2020•55 min
“Historically in the US, progress has meant exploitation of someone, and usually people of color,” says Rhiana Gunn-Wright, director of climate policy at Roosevelt Institute. Gunn-Wright met with host Elise Loehnen to talk about her work in developing the Green New Deal, a proposal of ideas to address climate change. At its core, Gunn-Wright says this work is about justice and equity. “It’s really easy to talk about decarbonization and not talk about environmental racism.” But that would be miss...
Jun 04, 2020•55 min
Functional medicine psychiatrist Jeffrey Becker, MD, takes an uncommon approach to depression, anxiety, and mental health. Becker, who is also a cofounder of Bexson Biomedical, examines the genome, the gut, and micronutrient levels before prescribing drugs to a patient. He was an early advocate of ketamine-assisted psychotherapy for treating depression. “We are absolutely the nexus of body, mind, and spirit,” says Becker. Today, he talks about the chemical, biological, emotional, and spiritual c...
May 28, 2020•51 min
“The cause of all suffering is what we’re thinking and believing,” says Byron Katie. Katie is a legendary spiritual teacher, the author of Loving What Is, and the creator of a self-inquiry method that she calls “the Work.” Today, Katie guides Elise Loehnen through the Work in her life. The process involves asking four basic questions that can turn a negative belief on its head. Katie reminds us that emotions are emotions—not enemies. She invites us to do deeper within and ask ourselves this ques...
May 26, 2020•1 hr 3 min
“It’s not really science,” says David Michaels, PhD. “It’s public relations disguised as science.” Today, the epidemiologist and author of The Triumph of Doubt explains how frequently science is manipulated across industries—from tobacco to personal-care products to football. During his tenure as the assistant secretary of labor at the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, Michaels uncovered shocking truths about the way major industries distort scientific studies and withhold informati...
May 21, 2020•51 min
“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 agriculture system. Hyman explains that disease is correlated with the way food is produced in our countr...
May 19, 2020•55 min
“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 not. And when we become focused on seeking validation from others, we feel even more isolated. Today,...
May 14, 2020•59 min
“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 body is “bringing the energy up and then letting the energy settle.” He teaches us a sound exercise...
May 12, 2020•56 min
“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 changing this structure and easing the enormous pressures many women feel around balancing career, chil...
May 07, 2020•50 min
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 allows us to hack productivity. Pink shares fascinating studies about the best time of day to make a cri...
May 05, 2020•55 min
“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 colon cancer in her mid-thirties. She shares the moments she stopped feeling like a person, the pres...
Apr 30, 2020•45 min
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 come next. He also speaks more broadly about health span and the factors that support our immune func...
Apr 29, 2020•59 min
“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 for style, Fisher shows us a different way to define and run a company: She doesn’t see herself as t...
Apr 28, 2020•43 min
“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 strategies that have driven his success and the principles and questions he always comes back to. For h...
Apr 23, 2020•1 hr
“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 healthier, more pleasurable dynamic. (While reassuring us that a little “marital hatred” is still normal.) R...
Apr 22, 2020•51 min
“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 in the world, and even loss,” says Malkin. In his work, he’s found that survival mechanisms and eve...
Apr 21, 2020•48 min
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 real Americans, Kristof and WuDunn explore working-class America and the all ways our system has ne...
Apr 16, 2020•51 min
“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 accept that this is a part of us—not just happening to us. Could we allow ourselves to find refuge i...
Apr 15, 2020•54 min
“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 interesting than that.”) Throughout his career, Bengston has studied healing techniques on mice with can...
Apr 14, 2020•1 hr 4 min
“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 girls and why it’s generally more common and easier for girls to talk about what they experience durin...
Apr 09, 2020•1 hr 6 min
“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 during this crisis, whether you’re considering making an investment or trying to navigate some of the ...
Apr 08, 2020•54 min
“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 communities—are disproportionately affected by lead poisoning, atmospheric pollution, infectious disease, ...
Apr 07, 2020•50 min
