The goop Podcast

Although Michelle Pfeiffer and GP do talk about acting and costars, they also talk about who they are off-screen. They talk about why they both decided to get married a second time and what they’ve learned from committing to intimacy. And of course, they talk about how Pfeiffer got into nontoxic beauty, how she wound up on the board of the Environmental Working Group, and her innovative, incredibly cool line of clean perfumes, Henry Rose. After GP sampled each one, we knew we needed to get our hands on these fragrances, so we stocked every Henry Rose scent in the goop shop. Happy listening, shopping, and spritzing.

All parents need to know one thing, says Esther Wojcicki: “There is no perfect parenting.” Wojcicki is the author of How to Raise Successful People, a legendary journalism teacher, and founder of the renowned Media Arts programs at Palo Alto High School. She’s also the mother of three famously successful women. And today, she’s sharing her formula for raising, mentoring, and developing people to reach their highest potential. It starts with her acronym TRICK: trust, respect, independence, collaboration, and kindness. If you’re a parent, it involves giving yourself a break and finding ways to empower your children to be independent thinkers. And for many more of us (parents or not), it means rethinking our assumptions of what it takes to be happy, to be impactful, to be successful in the world. (For more, see The goop Podcast hub.)

“We get into fear, and then we assume what we’re feeling is ours,” says Dana Childs, an intuitive and energy healer. Childs believes that a big part of the anxiety, fear, or even pain we feel—does not always belong to us. And that we have a tendency to take on the feelings (both emotional and physical) of others. She helps us to identify what’s “ours.” And to ask for permission to be free of what’s not. She show us how she uses her intuition to guide her and others (couples included). Explains the difference between the spirit and the soul. And how we can use both to learn and grow. She reminds us that we’re self-healing; and suggests that life is about peeling back the layers to reveal that already healed self within. (For more, see The goop Podcast hub.)

Jasmine Hemsley, the author of East by West, was in university when she realized the food she was eating (mainly cheese toasties, morning, noon, and night) was not serving her. Over time, she adapted Ayurvedic principles that changed her life. “Ayurveda is a philosophy that understands nature and helps you understand that you are nature,” says Hemsley. She joins Elise Loehnen to talk about the three doshas and what they mean for our “digestive fire,” what and how we eat, and how we think about optimizing our health. And if you’re eating fish and chips at the airport: “Enjoy every mouthful, eat it slowly, chew it well—and be very grateful that you’ve got some food.” (For more, see The goop Podcast hub.)

BJ Miller, MD, is the kind of person who can make you feel good about death—and, in turn, life. He’s also the kind of person who can coauthor a book called A Beginner’s Guide to the End that makes you smile. Today, Elise Loehnen talks to Miller, a palliative-care and hospice physician, about some of her favorite topics to discuss: How do we plan for the one inevitability in life? How do we help our loved ones find comfort and beauty at the end of their lives? How do we make room for grief? How do we make meaning of it all? And how do we feel the wonder, the joy, along the way? “The kindest service a person can do the world,” Miller says, “is to find happiness.” He helps point us in that direction. (For more, see The goop Podcast hub.)

“We’re just not taught these days to feel our feelings,” says psychiatrist Ellen Vora, MD. In her New York City practice, Vora takes a holistic, functional-medicine approach to mental health. She sees symptoms—anxiety and depression, hormone and gut issues—as “our really beautiful, brilliant body’s way of communicating to us.” And to communicate back, Vora focuses on food, sleep, stress, and other lifestyle changes. She meets patients where they are; she works with people who are on antidepressants and who are tapering off of SSRIs. Her most important work is not fixing a problem but helping us to hold space for the full human experience (For more, see The goop Podcast hub.)

People are disengaged at work across the board, says Laura Morgan Roberts, PhD, an organizational psychologist who teaches executive and leadership programs at places like Harvard Business School and Georgetown McDonough. Some people are so actively disengaged, says Roberts, that employers would be better off paying them to stay home. But Roberts is here to show us how to find joy in our careers and how to help others do the same. She tells us what companies and leaders are doing wrong, ways we can do better, and why she believes in a framework she calls radical affirmation. Our individual, diverse strengths can absolutely complement one another and align with the collective goal of our organizations, says Roberts. And we can “feed our soul” while adding value to the bigger picture. (For more, see The goop Podcast hub.)

“We are either living in a suffering state, or we are living in a beautiful state,” says philosopher Preethaji. “There is no third state.” Which state are you nurturing? asks Preethaji, who is a coauthor (with her husband, Krishnaji) of a new book called The Four Sacred Secrets. Are you fueling the suffering state (stress, worry, fear), or are you cultivating a beautiful state (joy, love, understanding)? Today, Preethaji shows us how to get to that beautiful state. And how to connect to ourselves and expand our consciousness along the way. (Don’t miss her short guided meditation at the very end.) (For more, see The goop Podcast hub.)

“We don’t actually detect things in the world,” says neuroscientist and psychologist Lisa Barrett. “We infer what we expect to see.” Barrett is the author of How Emotions are Made, a book that overturns a lot of what we thought we knew about the mind and brain. For one, we aren’t as good at reading other people as we think, says Barrett. Emotions don’t live in distinct parts of the brain. They aren’t universally expressed. When it comes to expressing emotion, Barrett says, variability is the norm. She shows us how we construct emotion in the moment and how we make sense of our body’s sensations. And: She teaches us how to master a significant system of regulation that she calls “the body budget.” (For more, see The goop Podcast hub.)

Michael Gervais, a high-performance psychologist and the host of the podcast Finding Mastery, always loved sports. But he says he struggled “above the neck.” His own mental blocks got in the way when it came time to compete. Gervais got curious about this: How do we perform at our highest potential? He did a lot of research, and he decided that competition was great but that it goes wrong when we’re trying to compete to be better than other people. Today, he helps people become the best versions of themselves (whether they’re a pro athlete or not). He teaches people how to “train our craft, body, and mind.” And to live in the present moment, where he says all our potential lies. (For more, see The goop Podcast hub.)

“To me, justice is when everybody has a fighting chance to have a fighting chance,” says Lindsay Toczylowski, cofounder and immigration attorney at Immigrant Defenders Law Center—and easily one of the most inspirational people we’ve ever met. Toczylowski represents the most marginalized children, mothers, and fathers who are being traumatized in the family separation crisis. She does it with grace. She reminds us of the humanity in this world, that we don’t need to look away, that there is something we can all do to help—and she moves us to change. After you hear her, you’ll want to learn about, donate to, or otherwise support an organization she mentions (in addition to her own): Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Al Otro Lado, Immigrant Families Together California, Border Angels, This Is About Humanity, ACLU. (And, be sure you’re registered to vote in the next election.)

When it comes to beauty, there are 70 billion questions. On goop’s newest podcast, editors Jean Godfrey-June and Megan O’Neill are going to answer as many of them as they can. They’ll have help from top makeup artists, dermatologists, clean beauty founders, researchers, plastic surgeons, hairstylists, and of course their boss, Gwyneth Paltrow.

Gastroenterologist Robynne Chutkan (author of The Microbiome Solution)and endocrinologist Eva Cwynar (author of The Fatigue Solution) joined Elise Loehnen on stage at In goop Health Los Angeles. They had a dynamic conversation about hormones and gut health and the symptoms Chutkan and Cwynar see again and again: constant bloating, brain fog, anxiety, weight gain. These are not normal symptoms we should just have to deal with, they say. Instead, Chutkan and Cwynar are opening up their toolboxes—and also showing us how to become our own medical detectives. (For more, see The goop Podcast hub.)

GP got a little starstruck when she first met Krista Tippett, creator of the On Being Project and host of the On Being podcast and radio show. But then she got into it: They talked about why we tend to let ourselves do only the things we think we’re good at and what happens when we let this restriction go. They talked about the different forms of love, realizing that there are many ways to not be alone, and how our sexuality changes as we get older—which doesn’t mean we stop being sexual. And, they asked, what does it mean to be a modern spiritual person? What are we here to learn? (For more, see The goop Podcast hub.)

We’re all addicts, according to Judson Brewer, author of The Craving Mind, director of research and innovation at the Mindfulness Center, and associate professor of psychiatry at the School of Medicine at Brown University. Consider our everyday habits—scrolling through Instagram, stress-eating, sugar, more sugar. Our habits, Brewer says, run our lives. And we get fooled into thinking we need just a little more willpower to make a change, quit smoking, drop an addiction. But willpower is finite and often not enough. Which is why Brewer is using research-based mindfulness techniques to help people understand and overcome their cravings. Part of this work is learning to bring curiosity to the roots of your cravings—and compassion to yourself. (For more, check out The goop Podcast hub.)