the goop podcast

“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, working with others, and just getting it done. (For more, see The goop Podcast hub and St. John’s book Micro-Resilience: Minor Shifts for Major Boosts in Focus, Drive, and Energy.) 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

“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 regenerative agriculture, and from a culture of dis-ease toward one of healing.” (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

“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 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

“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.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices