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 poor graduation rates to mundane marital arguments. They examine how little tweaks in a big system c...
Apr 02, 2020•51 min
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 for a walk is good, but instead of making it mindless, Brewer suggests changing your pace to match w...
Apr 01, 2020•34 min
“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, should, and could play (for example, looking at just how much water is used to make a single pair ...
Mar 31, 2020•43 min
“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 impact our digestive system, Gordon outlines mindful eating habits. He recommends certain supplements ...
Mar 26, 2020•50 min
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 reduce feelings of disorientation, says Payne, which he believes are at the root of so-called misbehavi...
Mar 25, 2020•49 min
“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 in myriad ways. The critical inner work that Saad inspires can be difficult and messy, but it is s...
Mar 24, 2020•49 min
“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 function well (space, equipment, and people) and how to best support them. He traces the expected impact th...
Mar 20, 2020•47 min
“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 tells GP how she’s learning to live as herself, fully. “I’ve always been a little wild,” says Aiko. Wh...
Mar 19, 2020•47 min
In this special episode, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Matt Richtel highlights what he learned about the immune system while researching his latest book, An Elegant Defense . Host Elise Loehnen asks him how these lessons apply to us today as we try to slow the spread of the coronavirus and stay healthy. Our immune system, says Richtel, doesn’t need a boost as much as it needs balance. “Stress, sleep, and nutrition are the three ways we best understand to keep our immune system in balance,” s...
Mar 18, 2020•41 min
The Vagina Monologues author and playwright Eve Ensler joins Elise Loehnen to share her heartbreaking, honest, and hopeful story of healing her personal trauma. Ensler wrote her new book, The Apology , as a letter from the perspective of her late father, who sexually and physically abused her throughout her childhood. She describes her deeply transformative writing experience, how it felt like she was channeling, and why she believes the imagination is sometimes more accurate than anything else....
Mar 17, 2020•38 min
Award-winning investigative journalist and New York Times –bestselling author Gerald Posner is telling the wild, true, and urgent story behind America’s now trillion-dollar-a-year pharmaceutical industry. In Pharma , Posner begins with the Sacklers: Before they became the family driving the rise of Oxycontin, they orchestrated the birth of medical advertising and all the monetization that came after it. Moving forward in time, Posner tells us how menopause became medicalized for profit in the ’7...
Mar 12, 2020•58 min
“There is always something one can do,” says former UN ambassador Samantha Power. The Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Education of an Idealist shares her extraordinary story: As President Obama’s former foreign policy and human rights advisor, she’s spent time both in war zones and in the situation room. She knows the internal struggle of feeling that the world should be different than it currently is. Power teaches us the strategy she’s used to slice outsize problems into bite-size pieces ...
Mar 10, 2020•46 min
“When we see a woman who stepped out of line, we want to put her back in her cage,” says Glennon Doyle. The New York Times –bestselling author of Untamed and founder of Together Rising joins Elise Loehnen for a conversation about the moment she decided to stop abandoning herself. Like many of us, Doyle spent the majority of her life feeling that she had to be “good.” And then she quit pleasing so that she could be free. Today, Doyle shares a recipe for bravery and a new definition: Being brave i...
Mar 05, 2020•1 hr
“We’re fighting ourselves to get to a goal instead of getting into a flow state to get there,” says holistic nutritionist and author of Body Love Every Day Kelly LeVeque. As a health coach, LeVeque is familiar with the uncomfortable pendulum swing many of us feel we’re stuck in. She helps her clients make peace with—and celebrate—their food choices. In the process, they let go of guilt and shame, create healthy lifestyle habits that last, and follow a way of eating that’s nutritious and doable a...
Mar 03, 2020•49 min
“Ibogaine made them ready for change,” says researcher Deborah Mash, PhD. Mash has been studying the effects of ibogaine since 1992. A psychedelic compound derived from the bark of a shrub native to western central Africa, ibogaine is being used as a potent addiction disruptor (specifically for opioid use). Ibogaine may have the power to reset opioid tolerance and bypass many of the withdrawal symptoms that people endure when coming off of these drugs. Mash shares the extraordinary stories, peop...
Feb 27, 2020•47 min
“The trauma was playing out in my decisions because it hadn’t healed,” says spiritual writer Lalah Delia. The author of Vibrate Higher Daily joins Elise Loehnen to share her journey out of survival mode and back to herself. Today, they talk about knowing your energetic worth, rediscovering circles of healing and ways to hold communities together, and what happens when we allow our energy to express itself freely. (For more, see The goop Podcast hub .) To learn more about listener data and our pr...
Feb 25, 2020•39 min
“The thing all great ideas have in common,” says Kevin Systrom, “is that they all seem crazy at the beginning.” The cofounder and former CEO of Instagram joins GP to tell her how he created one of the most popular companies in the world—and what we can learn from it. They talk about mistakes, taking chances, what you don’t know you don’t know, being a leader, and leaving room for creativity when you’re trying (hard) to achieve a mission. (For more, see The goop Podcast hub .) To learn more about...
Feb 20, 2020•51 min
“Why do I have to be super sweet to get something done?” asks Issa Rae. The actor, writer, and producer of Insecure joins Elise Loehnen to talk about owning our power as women. Rae admits that she used to avoid speaking up—but now recognizes how important it is to use her voice to make change. She is honest about how much power she feels she has in our current culture and the progress we still need to make. Rae shares her passion for telling stories and her goal to “stay grounded and relatable.”...
Feb 18, 2020•40 min
“The fear is kind of like the gas in your tank,” says Julia Louis-Dreyfus. The actor and producer sits down with GP to talk about motherhood, family life, how she looks back on her career (Second City, SNL , Seinfeld, Veep ), and where she’s going next. They talk about marriage and what makes a relationship get “cozy” over time. They talk about acting, humor, laughter. And they talk about their experiences with post-partum depression. Louis-Dreyfus shares the mindset she cultivated when she was ...
Feb 13, 2020•56 min
“This generation of women has worked very, very hard,” says writer Ada Calhoun. “And yet, not everyone has what they want.” The author of Why We Can’t Sleep joins Elise Loehnen to talk about the pressure to be perfect. They talk about the ways women—particularly Generation X women approaching midlife—have taken on the stresses of caregiving, building a successful career, and having enough money. They talk about why many of us live in a state of fear and anxiety, and how we can support ourselves ...
Feb 11, 2020•41 min
The good news, says New York Times –bestselling author Seth M. Siegel, is that we know how to fix our water systems and we can afford to do it. The bad news is there’s a lot wrong with the water we’re drinking right now: We still use the same water technologies that were put in place a century ago. Lead contamination in water pipes is still affecting the majority of our water lines. Remnants of medicines and pills can make their way into our water. To fix a problem, we have to know there is a pr...
Feb 06, 2020•47 min
“You don’t need to wait for biotechnology,” says William Li, MD. “Foods can actually activate and boost our body’s health defenses.” The Harvard physician and author of Eat to Beat Disease reports on the remarkable things the body is capable of when food and medicine are used in tandem. He explains which foods have powerful properties that can help us prevent and heal from illness. For example, Li says that mangoes can support our circulation and stem cells and feed our microbiome (our bacteria ...
Feb 04, 2020•47 min
“What part do I play?” asks Robin DiAngelo, academic and author of White Fragility . DiAngelo’s critical, urgent work asks us to question what we thinkwe know about racism, the conversations we avoid having about racism, and the roles we might (unintentionally) be playing in upholding inequality. For example, says DiAngelo: “We white women have to stop using sexism to protect racism.” In this conversation with Elise Loehnen, DiAngelo calls on white people to let go of guilt and to pick up respon...
Jan 30, 2020•1 hr 6 min
Valter Longo, PhD, author of The Longevity Diet , sat down with Elise Loehnen at In goop Health to share what he’s learned about our ability to optimize our health largely through diet and lifestyle changes. Longo, who is the director of the USC Longevity Institute, continues to conduct a wide range of fascinating research on different forms of fasting: What kind of fast is safest? How does fasting affect the body? Could particular forms of fasting have beneficial outcomes for particular health ...
Jan 28, 2020•44 min
“My job is not to tell you something,” says BJ Miller, MD. “My job is to help you receive something.” The palliative care physician and coauthor of A Beginner’s Guide to the End joined GP on stage at In goop Health. He brought his dog, Maysie, which you’ll hear them talking about. Miller shared his own incredible personal story and wise insights about what it means to live a good life and die a good death. GP asked him about dealing with regret (which Miller says is normal and nothing to be asha...
Jan 23, 2020•46 min
“The reason we don’t change,” says Shauna Shapiro, PhD, “is because most of us are missing this essential ingredient of self-compassion.” The psychology professor and author of Good Morning, I Love You joins Elise Loehnen to explain why we can forget about self-esteem and why “heartfulness” may be more meaningful to you than “mindfulness.” When we find ourselves in cycles of negative self-talk, how do we pull ourselves out of it? Shapiro suggests talking to yourself the way you would to a close ...
Jan 21, 2020•43 min
“We can decouple shame from your sexuality,” says sex therapist Michael Vigorito. Vigorito joins Elise Loehnen to talk about how removing judgment can help us reframe our thinking about sex, desire, and the label: sex addiction. Vigorito prefers the term “out of control sexual behavior.” It doesn’t mean that someone is out of control, necessarily, but that they feel out of control. Often, Vigorito finds that problematic patterns of sexual behavior can be a disguise for other, deeply rooted issue...
Jan 16, 2020•54 min
“Most humans live as if past and future—and especially future—were more important than this moment,” says renowned spiritual leader Eckhart Tolle, author of The Power of Now and A New Earth . In this special conversation with GP, Tolle teaches us how to not resist our experience of the present moment, and why the feelings that we do resist have a way of—persisting. GP asks Tolle about the relationship between the ego and soul, and how we can come to see that we are not our thoughts. Tolle explai...
Jan 14, 2020•1 hr 3 min
“Do what only you can do with your particular talents, gifts, and flaws,” says Jennifer Freed, psychological astrologer and author of Use Your Planets Wisely. In this episode, Freed joins friend Elise Loehnen to explain how we can use astrology to explore our own divine possibilities and potential. Freed reminds us that we are all a work in progress—moving away from primitive behaviors and toward our evolving selves is not a linear path. But regardless of how winding the path is, Freed believes ...
Jan 09, 2020•48 min
“Conflict is really what sharpens our ability to love,” says John Gottman, PhD, who is the cofounder, with his wife Julie, of the Gottman Institute for relationships. (They’re also coauthors of the new book, Eight Dates .)Today, they join Elise Loehnen to share the tools for communication and conflict resolution that make a relationship work. We learn about perpetual issues—and how to talk about them in a way that’s productive, instead of pushing them aside. Which doesn’t mean we get to change o...
Jan 07, 2020•54 min
