Alle afleveringen
1.201 afleveringen, van nieuw naar oud
-
A Terminal Diagnosis Confirmed the Beauty of Life He'd Already Built | Dr. Bryant Lin
5 november 2026 · 59 min
When Stanford physician Bryant Lin was diagnosed with stage four lung cancer, a friend gave him one piece of advice about his own prognosis that he still credits with how he's lived every day since. Lees meer
Bryant Lin is a Clinical Professor of Medicine and Director of Medical Humanities and the Arts at Stanford, a fourth-generation physician who spent two decades in primary care before his own stage four diagnosis in 2024. He built a medical school class around his experience that drew coverage from the New York Times and CBS Mornings, and he's the author of Sunshine: An Exploration of Living When You Are Dying.
In this conversation, you'll explore:
The advice from a fellow doctor that changed how Bryant thinks about his own prognosis, and why he stopped looking at the numbers everyone else obsesses over
A simple filter he now uses to decide which commitments are worth keeping, and what needs to go
Why he changed very little, even after learning how much less time he likely had
Why he chose to teach a Stanford class, narrating his own cancer journey, while going through chemo in real time
What a good life means, once you learn you have a lot less time to live it.
It's a conversation for anyone asking themselves what's actually worth their time, whether or not a doctor has given them a reason to ask.
You can find Bryant at: Website | LinkedIn | Episode Transcript
Check out our sponsors and resources: Visit Our Sponsor Page
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
-
The 3 Signs a Father Wound Is Holding You Back (and What to Do About It) | Terri Cole
2 november 2026 · 52 min
The most accomplished women in Terri Cole's therapy practice kept describing the same private emptiness, and almost none of them could name where it came from. After nearly thirty years and a research group of 650 women, she has an answer that has very little to do with what you would expect. It’s about something called The Father Wound. Lees meer
Terri Cole is a licensed psychotherapist and the author of Boundary Boss and Too Much, whose new book Father Wound: Break Unhealthy Patterns to Reclaim Your Worth and Power is the first secular, science-grounded treatment of a subject she found almost nobody was writing about. She coined the term because she kept seeing it in her office with no name attached to it. For anyone in their forties or fifties who has done the work, checked the boxes, and still feels like something underneath is running the show, this conversation names the thing.
What you'll explore in this conversation:
The question Terri's own therapist asked about her ambition that reframed twenty years of striving in a single sentence
Why the traits most likely to get you promoted are often the exact adaptations that keep you from enjoying any of it
The two behaviors that look identical on a Tuesday night on the couch and do opposite things to your nervous system
What Terri means when she says you need nothing from your father to heal this, including his apology, his participation, or his being alive
The fear that stops high achievers from starting this work, and her direct answer to whether healing costs you what you built
If you have built a life that looks right from the outside and quietly wondered why it does not feel like yours, this is the conversation about what is actually underneath that.
You can find Terri at: Website | Instagram | Episode Transcript
Check out our sponsors and resources: Visit Our Sponsor Page
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
-
How to Do an Annual Review That Genuinely Helps You | Tiago Forte
29 oktober 2026 · 50 min
The year-end review most of us attempt starts with goals and ends in self-criticism. Tiago Forte has run one every year since 2008, and he has come to treat goal setting as the last step of the process, almost an afterthought. Lees meer
Tiago is the Wall Street Journal bestselling author of Building a Second Brain and The PARA Method, which have reached more than half a million readers in over twenty-five languages, and his new book is Life in Perspective: The Art and Power of the Annual Life Review. Through Forte Labs, he has taught this practice to more than ten thousand students in over seventy countries. He is also, by his own description, someone who resists self-reflection and does it anyway, which makes him unusually useful on the question of how to start.
The question Tiago offers the person whose year contained something they would rather not open, and the year his entire review became a single long walk
Why nearly everyone reaches for their work life first, and where he finds the actual source of most people's dissatisfaction
A daily capture habit with a name, and his sharp reason your AI-generated notes are the wrong raw material for it
Three signals he waits for in his own body before committing to anything big, and what he does when only two show up
Four principles built to stop a life review from turning into the performance review you dread
If you have ever closed out a year feeling like it went by without you, this is a conversation about getting some of it back.
You can find Tiago at: Website | Tiago's YouTube | Episode Transcript
Check out our sponsors and resources: Visit Our Sponsor Page
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
-
Can Anxiety Be a Super-Power? Science Says Yes…ish. | Dr. Wendy Suzuki
26 oktober 2026 · 51 min
Most of us treat anxiety as a malfunction to be fixed or medicated away, and the neuroscience points somewhere stranger. There is a narrow band, a razor's edge, where the same emotion stops running you and starts fueling you. Lees meer
Dr. Wendy Suzuki is a Professor of Neural Science and Psychology at NYU and the incoming Dean of its College of Arts and Science, a leading authority on neuroplasticity, and the author of Good Anxiety and Healthy Brain, Happy Life. Her TED Talk on exercise and the brain has been viewed more than 55 million times. What makes this one land is that she doesn't teach anxiety from the outside. She has lived with social anxiety since she was a kid at birthday parties, still feels it walking into a cocktail party, and built her science around it.
In this Best Of conversation, you'll explore:
The half of your nervous system nobody talks about, and the one lever you can consciously pull to switch it on
What to do the morning after a 3 a.m. spiral that converts the worry into forward motion, a practice she picked up from a stranger at a birthday party
Why ten minutes of walking lowers anxiety, and the timing detail almost everyone gets wrong
How much of your own anxiety you can predict before it arrives, and what becomes possible once you can
The form of anxiety you're most embarrassed by, and the thing it has been quietly training you to do for other people
If you've spent years trying to get rid of the feeling, this is an invitation to stop fighting it and start setting the volume.
You can find Dr. Wendy at: Website | Instagram | Episode Transcript
Check out our sponsors and resources: Visit Our Sponsor Page
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
-
Harlan Coben: It's Never Too Late to Start Your Creative Life
22 oktober 2026 · 51 min
Harlan Coben spent decades insisting his novels had nothing to do with his life. Then he went looking, and found his life inside every single one of them. Lees meer
With over 100 million books sold in forty-six languages and a run of number one Netflix hits including Fool Me Once, Missing You and I Will Find You, Harlan Coben is one of the most widely read storytellers on the planet. His new book, Plot Twist: Life, Craft, and the Messy First Draft, is both a memoir and a writing guide, because he can no longer separate the two. He is also, at this point, one of the most credible voices arguing that the creative work you keep postponing does not require a bigger life than the one you already have.
In this conversation, you'll explore:
The two-word question he has been asking since he was a kid, and how it turned a boring family hike into a global hit
Why he wrote three complete novels that nobody published, and flatly refuses to count them as failures
What incremental ambition means in practice, and the modest first goal he set that most writers today would be embarrassed to admit to
The two things fear does to people who want to make something, and the daily choice that decides which one you get
Why he tells every aspiring writer to stop talking about the book they're working on
If you've been waiting for more time, more proof, or more permission before you start the thing you keep circling, this one is likely to shorten the wait.
You can find Harlan at: Website | Instagram | Episode Transcript
Check out our sponsors and resources: Visit Our Sponsor Page
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
-
Inflammation, Aging, & How to Put Out the Fires Your Body Keeps Setting | David Furman, PhD
19 oktober 2026 · 49 min
Every year you get your blood drawn, and someone circles a number that supposedly tells you your inflammation level. Turns out that number is barely more accurate than a coin flip. But, knowing how chronically inflamed you are is critical in preventing disease and slowing the age clock. Lees meer
David Furman directs the Stanford 1000 Immunomes Project and runs the Bioinformatics and Data Science Core at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging, where he's spent over fifteen years studying how inflammation drives the diseases most of us start worrying about in our forties and fifties: heart disease, dementia, diabetes, cancer. He's the researcher behind the first published clock that can predict frailty seven years before it shows up, and along the way he's worked with NASA and SpaceX.
What you'll explore in this conversation:
Why the inflammation test your doctor already runs is barely more accurate than flipping a coin, and what David built to replace it
The everyday object sitting in a lot of living rooms right now that's silently raising one of the 7 key drivers of inflammatory aging
How chronic stress can disable the anti-inflammatory drugs meant to fight it
The one daily habit David says adds roughly fifteen years to your healthspan, and it isn't the kind of exercise you'd expect
What David actually eats, and avoids, to keep his own inflammation in check
If you've ever wondered what's actually happening beneath the surface as you age, this conversation gives you a real way to find out, and a real place to start.
You can find David at: Website | LinkedIn | Episode Transcript
Check out our sponsors and resources: Visit Our Sponsor Page
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
-
Jimmy Chin: The Cost of Risking Too Little
15 oktober 2026 · 55 min
We spend a lot of time weighing the cost of risking too much. Jimmy Chin has spent most of his life on the harder question, which is what it costs to risk too little, quietly, for twenty or thirty years, until the years are gone. Lees meer
Jimmy Chin is an Academy Award-winning director, a National Geographic photographer, and a New York Times bestselling author. He made Free Solo, Meru, The Rescue, and Nyad, he skied off the summit of Everest, and he lived out of the back of a Subaru from 21 to 28. Then he turned fifty, started looking at his life in chapters, and went looking for people who could tell him what success meant to them at the start and what it means to them now. Those conversations became his new book, Rules to Live By: How Extraordinary Lives Define What Really Matters.
Here's what we get into:
The question Jimmy says he has been asking since he was ten years old, and why the answer keeps moving while the question never does
What one of the world's great cellists realized in the middle of a technically flawless performance, and where it sent him afterward
Why the founder of a three-billion-dollar company looked at his own growth numbers and felt sick, and the one sentence of his Jimmy channels at every crossroads
The difference between a kid wanting a parent alive and a kid wanting a parent to feel alive, and what it takes to hold both at once
What a seven-year-old said to her father at thirteen thousand feet that he is still thinking about six years later
If you have hit the season where the boxes are checked and the question underneath them has gotten louder, this one is for you.
You can find Jimmy at: Website | Instagram | Episode Transcript
Check out our sponsors and resources: Visit Our Sponsor Page
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
-
The Social Fear That Keeps Us Lonely (and the easy fix) | Nicholas Epley
12 oktober 2026 · 47 min
Nicholas Epley studies how people misjudge each other, avoid conversations with strangers, and miss out on life-affirming relationships. It all started when he noticed something on a silent Chicago train that changed how he thinks about the strangers he avoids and the people he loves but never calls. The thing stopping him wasn't what he expected. Lees meer
Epley is a professor of behavioral science at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, where he's spent over fifteen years studying why smart, socially wired people routinely misread each other. His research on human connection has appeared in the New York Times and on NPR, and he teaches an MBA course called Designing a Good Life. His new book is A Little More Social.
What you'll explore in this conversation:
Why the experiment that convinced Nicholas to talk to a stranger on a silent train started with him assuming it would go badly
The specific belief researchers found sabotages more conversations than shyness, rudeness, or bad timing combined
What his team discovered when they photographed people's resting faces, and why it explains a train car full of strangers staying quiet
A kind word tends to land better than a polished one, according to decades of research on how we actually judge each other. Nicholas breaks down why
Acting more outgoing than you feel might not cost the energy you'd expect, even for people who've called themselves introverts their whole lives
If there's someone you've been meaning to reach out to, or a stranger you keep talking yourself out of talking to, this conversation makes the case for testing that instinct instead of trusting it.
You can find Nicholas at: Website | LinkedIn | Episode Transcript
Check out our sponsors and resources: Visit Our Sponsor Page
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
-
47 Doctors, Data Galore, and a Problem Only She Could Solve | Giorgia Lupi
8 oktober 2026 · 1 uur 12 min
She measured everything about her illness. The measuring turned out to be part of what kept her sick. Lees meer
Giorgia Lupi is an information designer and a partner at Pentagram in New York, and one of the few people alive who can take raw data and turn it into something you understand in your bones and feel in your body. In 2020, a mild COVID infection set off four years of long COVID, chronic fatigue syndrome, POTS, mast cell activation, and a level of disability that left her housebound, out of work, and eating eight foods for an entire year.
Giorgia did what she does. She tracked every symptom, every test, every prognosis, and limitation. Then she published 1,374 Days, a visual op-ed in the New York Times built from her own symptom data, and readers with chronic illness wrote to say it was the first thing they could hand to the people who loved them.
That, however, was just the beginning of a story of recovery that was about to take a wild, transformative turn. One that would find her rethinking her approach to measuring what was wrong and shifting to the opposite, realizing, all too often, that what we measure reinforces our reality.
In this conversation, you'll explore:
The number of practitioners she saw over four years before a single one offered to coordinate her care, and what her body did in that exact moment, before any new treatment was tried
What she took off her wrist and archived on her hard drive, after believing for years that it was the thing keeping her safe
The first entry in the new spreadsheet she opened in 2024, and why something that small was the turn
Why the online illness communities she went to for support sent her home more frightened every time, and what she went looking for instead
How she started charting a different kind of data, and finding new answers that not only refuted much of the dire prognosis she’d been given, but also, slowly, brought her back to life.
Why her working definition of recovery now, which is not the one she …
-
How 7 Core Beliefs Shape Your Health, Happiness, & Success | Shawn Achor
5 oktober 2026 · 1 uur 7 min
Shawn Achor spent twelve years at Harvard studying the science of belief and success, and his TED talk has been watched more than 25 million times. His new book, The Power of Beliefs, grew out of research with the NFL, NASA, and six Marine battalions at Camp Pendleton, and out of watching his own daughter fight for her life three months early. Lees meer
The 7 core beliefs that control much of our lives, without us knowing it
Why believing you’re alone in your effort can make hard things harder.
The two small words that turn a hollow pep talk into a path to success.
What a stranger's ten seconds on an escalator taught Shawn about the difference between mattering less and not mattering at all.
A five-minute weekly habit Shawn's family calls the Memory DeLorean, and what it does to the story you tell about a hard season.
How time-stress can make you abandon everything you believe is important.
How to harness hidden beliefs to feel more alive and connected, and thrive in all parts of life.
For anyone in a season where the ground feels tilted against them, this is a reminder that the tilt might be more changeable than it feels.
You can find Shawn at: Website | Instagram | LinkedIn | Episode Transcript
Check out our sponsors and resources: Visit Our Sponsor Page
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
-
Good Life Jam: Parenting Burdens & Self-Help Book Burials | Leah Smart
1 oktober 2026 · 1 uur 2 min
Today, we’re introducing a new conversation format that we’ll be working into the mix called Good Life Jams. These sessions take on 2-3 hot topics and go deep. Today’s conversation partner is Leah Smart, a senior editor at LinkedIn, a writer and speaker, and the host of Everyday Better. Lees meer
The topics we’re digging into: When women earn more, the physical housework shrinks. The mental load doesn't move at all. What’s going on there? And why are self-help books crashing, while coaching is taking off?
In this conversation, you'll explore:
Why the most common fix for an overloaded household leaves the heaviest part completely untouched
The question Leah's husband asked her about the word "good" that quietly reset her entire standard for running a home
What the data leaves out, and why the scorekeeping it invites can erode a long partnership
Self-help book sales fell roughly 25% in a year while coaching grew about 15%, and what people are actually paying for instead
The one thing a human can do that no book and no chatbot can, which may be the real reason the advice stopped working
Both halves of this conversation land in the same place, which is that the discomfort you keep trying to optimize away is usually the thing worth turning toward instead.
You can find Leah at: Instagram | Everyday Better with Leah Smart Substack | Episode Transcript
Check out our sponsors and resources: Visit Our Sponsor Page
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
-
Getting Back Up After You’ve Been Brought to Your Knees | Mark Nepo
28 september 2026 · 58 min
Martial artists spend years learning how to fall before they learn much of anything else. The rest of us just brace, then wonder why the landing does so much damage. Lees meer
This is a best-of conversation, first aired in 2023, and it has only gotten more useful with time.
Mark Nepo is a poet and spiritual teacher who has been working in poetry and spirituality for more than fifty years. His book The Book of Awakening was a #1 New York Times bestseller, he has written twenty-six books translated into more than twenty languages, and he was named one of Oprah's SuperSoul 100. In his thirties, he was diagnosed with a rare form of lymphoma, and that experience runs underneath everything he writes about adversity, grief, and what it costs to stay open. He wrote Falling Down and Getting Up when his cancer years came flooding back during the pandemic. Since this conversation first aired, Mark has published The Fifth Season: Creativity in the Second Half of Life.
What you'll explore in this conversation:
Why aikido teaches students how to fall before anything else, and what that translates to when the fall is emotional rather than physical
The journal question Mark asks people in circle that tends to surface, fast, whose voice you have actually been living under
What a friend in the depths of grief told him about "the life after tears," and the line that separates it from everything that came before
The difference between grounding and chasing, and the small reorientation that changes where you go looking for a life
What happened in a bar after the Iraq war that taught him how to feel for pain he had never lived through
If you are somewhere in the middle of a fall, or still carrying one that never quite finished, this conversation offers you something steadier than advice: company, and a way to keep going that doesn't ask you to pretend you're fine.
You can find Mark at: Website | Instagram | Episode Transcript
Check out our sponsors and resources: Visit Our Sponsor Page…
-
He’s Spent 20 Years Trying to Change The World | Scott Harrison
24 september 2026 · 43 min
Jonathan sits down with Scott Harrison, charity: water founder, for a wide-ranging reflection on his 20-year mission to bring clean water to everyone on earth. Scott revisits the original spark, the scale of the problem, the storytelling strategy that helped build the movement, and the personal tension of leading a global nonprofit while raising a family. Lees meer
We discuss the long game of solving a problem that is both massive and solvable, why generosity is often unlocked through story rather than statistics, and how Scott thinks about balance, legacy, and “the work with no end.”
Key topics:
Scott looks back on the early days of charity: water and the energy of the original nightclub fundraiser that launched the organization
The scale of the mission has grown to more than $1 billion mobilized, 216,000 projects across 29 countries, and about 700 million people still without clean water
Storytelling, not statistics, is the core tool charity: eater uses to overcome apathy and make distant suffering feel personal
The Rachel Beckwith story shows how one child’s birthday campaign became a global movement that ultimately helped more than 100,000 people
The conversation digs into the tension between mission and family, especially for leaders whose work could easily consume all their time
Scott shares how his kids reflect back the values he hopes to model
The closing theme is generosity as an endless practice - giving, serving, and sharing rather than accumulating
You can find Scott at: Website | Charity Water Instagram | Scott's Instagram | Episode Transcript
Next week, we're bringing you a best-of episode with Mark Nepo, to talk about why falling down might be the most useful thing that happens to you all year. Be sure to follow Good Life Project wherever you get your podcasts so you don't miss that or any upcoming episodes!
Check out our sponsors and resources: Visit Our Sponsor Page
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
-
Sex in Midlife: It Doesn’t Have to Fade (and Can Even Be Great) | Susan Bratton
21 september 2026 · 55 min
Susan Bratton has spent over two decades teaching people the passionate lovemaking and intimate communication skills that sex education (and life) never covered. At 42, after eleven years of marriage, she had never had an orgasm from intercourse, and her husband was already having an affair to cope with it. What actually turned things around wasn't couples therapy. It was something else entirely, and it changed how she teaches everyone who's come to her since. Lees meer
Susan is the author and publisher of 44 books and programs on lovemaking, sensual communication, and what she calls regenerative intimacy, reaching more than 1.5 million people worldwide. She's become one of the most trusted, least censored voices teaching people how sex actually works in the body, at every age. This conversation is guest-hosted by acclaimed author and coach Cynthia Morris.
What you'll explore:
The three different things people lump together under "low libido," and why untangling them changes what you actually need to fix.
Why Susan stopped using the word "sex" altogether, and the shift she's seen in how people respond once she doesn't.
The physical reason arousal builds so differently in men's and women's bodies, and the one image that makes it click instantly.
The specific framework Susan built after her own marriage nearly came apart over unmet needs, and how any couple can use it.
What changed the moment she stopped treating tools and technique as something to be ashamed of.
If you've quietly decided your best sex is behind you, this conversation is the case for reconsidering that, whatever decade you're in.
You can find Susan at: Website | Instagram | Episode Transcript
You can find Cynthia at: Website | Instagram
Next week, we're sitting down with Scott Harrison to talk about how twenty years, a lot of failure, and one story told the right way turned into a movement that's brought clean water to tens of millions of people who never had it. Be sure to follow Good Life Project …
-
The Endings You Don’t See Coming (Until They’re Gone) | Jonathan Fields
17 september 2026 · 39 min
Somewhere in the past few years, you did something you love, with someone you love, for the very last time. And you had no idea when it happened. This solo episode is about why we cruise through our most meaningful endings, and why that might actually be the best possible news about how you've been living. Lees meer
In this deep-dive solo, Jonathan Fields unpacks an idea he calls unmarked lasts, the everyday endings that slip past without ceremony, starting with a story about fifteen years of chairlifts with his daughter and the ordinary Sunday that unceremoniously closed an era. It's a conversation built for anyone in their 40s, 50s, or beyond who has started to notice that the archive of things that ended is getting fuller, and wonders if they should have been paying better attention.
In this episode, you'll explore:
Why the baby book has a page for every first and not a single page for the lasts, and what that asymmetry does to us
The structural reason you cannot catch a casual last while it's happening, no matter how present or grateful you become
What researcher Hal Hershfield discovered when he asked people to imagine a meaningful place for the very last time, and the surprising thing that didn't happen to their happiness
The centuries-old Portuguese word for the ache you've probably never been able to name
Two kinds of lasts, and the completely different thing each one asks of you
The endings you can't remember may be the strongest evidence of a life you were fully inside of.
Episode Transcript
Next week, guest host Cynthia Morris is sitting down with Susan Bratton to talk about why desire in midlife doesn't fade so much as it gets misread, and what actually rekindles it at any age. Be sure to follow Good Life Project wherever you get your podcasts so you don't miss that or any upcoming episodes!
Check out our sponsors and resources: Visit Our Sponsor Page
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
-
Jodi Picoult: Why Every Villain is the Hero of Their Own Story
14 september 2026 · 1 uur 1 min
Every villain is the hero of their own story. That line opens part two of Jodi Picoult's thirtieth novel, and she'll tell you it's also how most of us get through any given day, or life. Lees meer
Picoult is the number one New York Times bestselling author of thirty novels, including My Sister's Keeper, Small Great Things, and Wish You Were Here. Her new one, Hollow Bones, arrives right around the 25th anniversary of 9/11 and centers on a woman whose entire career is built on preparing for catastrophe, who gets blindsided anyway. For three decades, Picoult has done her research by climbing all the way inside other people's lives, including people whose beliefs she can barely stand to sit across from, and a good part of this conversation is about how and why she does that, how it impacts her own life, beliefs, and approach to storytelling. We explore:
What thirty years of living inside other people's heads has actually cost her, including the nightly ritual one narrator forced on her before she could face her own family
The moment in an interview when she had to leave the room, splash water on her face, and decide which version of herself was walking back in
One finding from her research on lying that explains why a small untruth gets harder to take back the longer you hold onto it
Why one of her books landed on the most banned book in America list last year, and how she responded
Where the line actually sits between sugarcoating your own life and bending the truth to protect someone you love, and what tends to happen to people who never find it
If you have ever told a gentler version of the truth to protect somebody you love, this conversation will sit with you for a while.
You can find Jodi at: Website | Instagram | Episode Transcript
Next week, it's just me, and I want to talk about something that's been on my mind: the moments in our lives that end without us ever knowing they were the last ones. Be sure to follow Good Life Project wherever you get your podcasts …
-
Single at Heart: What if You Don't Need Someone Else to “Complete” You | Bella DePaulo, PhD
10 september 2026 · 49 min
Bizarre fact, if you tell people you’re genuinely happy being single, they don’t believe you. You, in fact, may be among the doubters when it comes to your single-at-heart friends. Lees meer
Bella DePaulo has spent more than three decades studying what happens when someone is genuinely, unapologetically happy being single, and one thing keeps showing up in her data. People don't believe them. In studies where participants read identical biographies, differing only in one line, single or married, the single people who said they were happy were assumed to be exaggerating. The married people were taken at their word.
Bella is a social psychologist (Ph.D., Harvard) and the author of Single at Heart: The Power, Freedom, and Heart-Filling Joy of Single Life. Her TEDx talk on what no one tells you about single people has been watched more than 1.8 million times, and The Atlantic has called her America's foremost thinker and writer on the single experience. She's been writing the Living Single blog at Psychology Today since 2008, and she founded the Foundation for the Empowerment of Single People.
In this conversation, Jonathan and Bella dig into what her research, drawn from more than 20,000 people across over 100 countries, actually shows about who thrives alone, who doesn't, and why the cultural story about both gets it backwards.
In this one, you'll hear about the single sentence Bella clipped from a newspaper column in 1992 that started her whole body of work. You'll hear why she believes solitude and loneliness are separated by exactly one thing, not personality, not introversion, but choice. You'll hear the surprising story of what actually happened to single-at-heart people during pandemic lockdown, when isolation should have driven them straight into relationships. You'll hear why married people tend to become more insular over time, and what that quietly costs them later in life. And you'll hear the real story behind a bike accident, a hospital, and forty-nine people w…
-
The Midlife Curiosity Tour That Changed Everything | Allison Aubrey
8 september 2026 · 1 uur
Allison Aubrey walked into a longevity lab expecting a great story. She walked out believing she was failing at key parts of her own life. After 25 years as one of NPR's most trusted health and science reporters, Aubrey agreed to a battery of tests meant to measure her biological age, and the results rattled her enough to send her on a curiosity tour, looking for answers that had nothing to do with biology. Lees meer
What she found became her new book, Your Turn, a reframing of the years between 50 and 75 as a third turn, the part of life where, against every expectation, a hidden surge of energy and purpose becomes possible. In this conversation, Jonathan and Allison get into the moment a lab technician's offhand comment sent her into a spiral, the recurring dream that a professional dream analyst helped her decode, and the real reason she finally stepped away from the newsroom rhythm she'd built her 25-year identity around.
You'll hear how she distinguishes passion from purpose from simply mattering, and why one of those three actually shows up in your bloodwork. You'll hear the real stories behind her "curiosity tour," including a retired police officer who found her purpose as the last person walking a community 5K, and a scientist who left a powerful research job to pull invasive vines off trees in her own neighborhood. And you'll hear the simple, repeatable patterns Allison found across dozens of women from all walks of life who made real pivots, one that starts by going inward before it ever asks you to go outward.
If you've ever wondered whether the pull toward something different in your life is real or just restlessness, this conversation offers something rare: actual evidence, and actual permission.
You can find Allison at: It's Your Turn Substack | Instagram | Episode Transcript
Next week, we're sitting down with Bella DePaulo to talk about what it actually means to be single at heart, and why some of the deepest, most authentic lives being lived right now a…
-
Why Grit Alone Doesn’t Cut It: New Research From Angela Duckworth
3 september 2026 · 1 uur 3 min
Angela Duckworth on why grit is only half the story. Acclaimed researcher Professor Angela Duckworth returns to unpack a bigger idea behind grit: your environment matters as much, if not more, than your mindset. Jonathan and Angela Duckworth explore how situation, peers, mentors, and culture shape the thoughts you have, the effort you can sustain, and the kind of person you become. Lees meer
They also dig into the practical question of change: if you want a different outcome, how do you stop blaming yourself and start redesigning the conditions around you?
Key topics:
Angela Duckworth reframes grit as part of a larger system, arguing that the "inside game" and the "outside game" are linked.
She explains why high achievers often think in more positive, productive ways, and why those thoughts are strongly influenced by the situation they are in.
The conversation breaks down the three-box model: situation, thoughts, response.
Angela and Jonathan discuss how emotions and behavior fit into that model, and how feedback loops can create either virtuous or vicious cycles.
Angela shares how trying harder during a difficult period in her marriage and career made things worse until she changed the situation.
They walk through four situational levers: personal space, peers, mentors, and culture.
Angela gives concrete examples of environmental design, from keeping her phone out of reach to using visible reminders like notes, rings, and calendar prompts.
The episode makes a strong case for noticing before changing, using situational awareness as the first step toward agency.
Angela distinguishes agency from blame, arguing that recognizing a harmful situation does not mean it was your fault.
The conversation closes with a broader definition of a good life: creating situations that bring out the best in other people.
You can find Angela at: Website | Instagram | Episode Transcript
Next week, we’re sitting down with Allison Aubrey to talk about why midlife can become a turning …
-
How to Make Better Decisions | Shane Parrish [Best of]
31 augustus 2026 · 1 uur
Most of us think good decisions happen in the moment. Shane Parrish says they’re already decided before you sit down. And most of them end up being bad, because you waited too long to make them good. Lees meer
Shane Parrish spent years inside Canadian intelligence, making real-time decisions where the stakes were other people's lives, long before he founded Farnam Street and The Knowledge Project podcast. He's the author of Clear Thinking: Turning Ordinary Moments into Extraordinary Results, and has quietly become the person elite investors, athletes, and Silicon Valley leaders turn to when a single decision carries outsized weight.
In this conversation, you'll explore:
Why the position you're in before a decision matters more than the decision itself, and how Warren Buffett almost never finds himself in a bad one
The four hidden "defaults" that hijack your thinking before you notice
The three-word phrase Shane uses with his own kids to defuse an argument before it escalates
Why "doing your best" almost never happens in the hour it counts, and what actually determines the outcome
A simple night-before, morning-after trick for spotting the blind spots in any decision you're about to make
Whatever season of life you're in, this conversation will change how you see the ordinary moments that quietly decide everything else.
You can find Shane at: Website | Instagram | Episode Transcript
Next week, we're sitting down with Angela Duckworth to talk about why the advice to just make the best of your situation might be exactly backwards, and how the people and things within arm's reach are quietly shaping who you become before you ever get a say. Be sure to follow Good Life Project wherever you get your podcasts so you don't miss any upcoming episodes!
Midlife Design Lab: I'm opening up an intimate retreat with me and a small, curated group in Boulder, CO (Oct 24-25, 2026), followed by 3 months of virtual group coaching. A few weeks back, I shared something I'd been buildin…
-
Why Avoiding a Fight is Killing Your Relationship (and How to Fight Well) | Priya Parker
27 augustus 2026 · 58 min
Priya Parker comes back to argue that the fights you're avoiding aren't threatening your closest relationships; they're the only thing that can save them. Lees meer
Priya Parker is a facilitator and strategic advisor who has spent two decades helping churches, companies, and families fight better, not less. She's the acclaimed author of The Art of Gathering and her new book, The Art of Fighting, and she's spent her career inside the rooms where groups either fall apart or find their way back to each other.
What you'll explore:
Why "conflict is not sin," and how a moral hangover from that idea keeps good relationships stuck in surface-level peace
The concept of "relational longing," the pulse underneath a fight that tells you whether it's worth having
Priya's three-phase framework for a healthy fight, and the one question that unlocks the middle phase
The "we're not a" clause: a phrase to listen for that reveals what a group is actually trying to become
Why giant sequoias can't reproduce without fire, and what that means for families, teams, and marriages that go decades without a real disagreement
If you've been mistaking distance for peace, this conversation is an invitation to find out what's actually still alive underneath.
You can find Priya at: Website | Instagram | Episode Transcript
Next week, we're sitting down with Shane Parrish to talk about why the way most of us make big decisions is quietly working against us, and the small, repeatable shifts that can change that. Be sure to follow Good Life Project wherever you get your podcasts so you don't miss any upcoming episodes!
Midlife Design Lab: I'm opening up an intimate retreat with me and a small, curated group in Boulder, CO (Oct 24-25, 2026), followed by 3 months of virtual group coaching. A few weeks back, I shared something I'd been building for myself, and the response blew me away, so spots are limited and I expect them to fill fast. If this calls to you, apply here.
Check out our sponsors and res…
-
The Menopause Timeline Most Women Never Learn Until Midlife | Dr. Jessica Shepherd
24 augustus 2026 · 45 min
Most women don't hear about perimenopause until they're already deep into it, sometimes a decade in. This week, guest host Karen Walrond talks with OB/GYN and Generation M author Dr. Jessica Shepherd about the actual, gradual shape of that transition, the real math behind hormone therapy decisions, and why nearly 40% of a woman's life happens after menopause even begins. It's less a symptom checklist than a new starting point for the next several decades. Lees meer
What you'll explore:
The gas-tank way to picture where you actually are between reproductive years and menopause
Why symptom severity has almost nothing to do with how "together" you otherwise are
The difference between the "symptom bucket" and the "longevity bucket" in deciding on hormone therapy
Why perimenopause itself splits into an early, mid, and late phase, and why the late phase is the window with the most protective upside for starting hormones
What the SWAN study found about how menopause symptoms differ by race, and why that matters long-term
If you've been treating menopause as a phase to survive rather than a stage to prepare for, this resets the starting point.
You can find Jessica at: Website | Instagram | Episode Transcript
Next week, we're sitting down with Priya Parker to talk about why conflict, handled well, might be one of the things that makes your closest relationships stronger instead of weaker, and what most of us get backwards about the moment right before it happens. Be sure to follow Good Life Project wherever you get your podcasts so you don't miss any upcoming episodes!
Midlife Design Lab: I'm opening up an intimate retreat with me and a small, curated group in Boulder, CO (Oct 24-25, 2026), followed by 3 months of virtual group coaching. A few weeks back, I shared something I'd been building for myself, and the response blew me away, so spots are limited and I expect them to fill fast. If this calls to you, apply here.
Check out our sponsors and resources: Visit Our Sponso…
-
How to Avoid Cognitive Decline & Dementia (starting in your 40s) | Dr. Tommy Wood
20 augustus 2026 · 1 uur 3 min
Your brain does not have to decline with age. Recent research reveals that for most people, staving off cognitive decline or dementia is more about lifestyle, especially in your 30s to 50s, than age or genetics. And, amazingly, retirement might be the single biggest danger zone for your brain health. Lees meer
Neuroscientist Dr. Tommy Wood has spent his career studying what actually predicts a declining brain, and the answer has almost nothing to do with age. It's what happens the day you stop being challenged, especially the day you retire. This week: why the smartest, most accomplished people you know may be the ones most at risk, and the two-part check you can run at your next doctor's visit that sets the stage for the next fifty years.
What you'll explore:
Why age-specific dementia rates have quietly been falling for decades, even as headlines warn of a coming epidemic
The real difference between forgetting a name (a retrieval problem) and never actually experiencing it in the first place (an encoding problem), and why only one of those predicts dementia
Tommy's 3S model: stimulus, supply, and support, the framework he uses to make sense of everything that keeps a brain sharp
The truth about brain games, and what really works to keep your brain primed with age
Why the most educated, highest-achieving people often face the steepest cognitive drop right after they stop working
The exact numbers to get checked at your next doctor's visit if you're in your 40s or 50s
If you're standing at the edge of any major life transition, or supporting a parent who is, this conversation will change how you think about what actually protects your mind.
You can find Tommy at: Website | Instagram | Episode Transcript
Next week, we're sitting down with Dr. Jessica Shepherd, alongside guest host Karen Walrond, to talk about why so much of what we've been told about menopause is either outdated or flat wrong, and what personalized care for this stage of life can actually look like.…
-
Sleep Doesn't Have to Get Worse With Age | Dr. Rebecca Robbins
17 augustus 2026 · 56 min
Every night, while you're asleep, your brain runs a cleaning cycle that clears out the kind of toxic buildup linked to Alzheimer's and dementia. And, with age, most of us sleep less. We are shortchanging the benefits without ever realizing how much control we actually have over sleeping longer, and better. Lees meer
Dr. Rebecca Robbins is an Assistant Professor in Sleep Medicine at Harvard Medical School and an Associate Sleep Scientist at Brigham and Women's Hospital, where her research spans sleep's relationship to cognitive function, cardiometabolic health, and long-term brain health. She's published more than 100 peer-reviewed studies, co-authored Sleep for Success!, and her work is exactly the kind of research most of us never hear about until someone frames it the way she does here.
In this conversation, you'll explore:
Why sleep really does shift around age 38 to 40, and what that shift does and doesn't mean for you
The neuroscience discovery of the brain's overnight "wash cycle," and what Dr. Robbins's own eight-year study found about sleep complaints and dementia risk
Why jumping your bedtime back an hour almost never works, and the fifteen-minute method that does
The at-home test Jonathan didn't realize he'd already run on himself
The "sleep divorce" reframe one of Dr. Robbins's patients calls a "sleep marriage," and what it means for couples
If you've quietly decided your sleep is just what it is at this stage of life, this conversation will change what you think is actually possible tonight.
You can find Rebecca at: Website | Instagram | Episode Transcript
Next week, we're sitting down with Tommy Wood to talk about what the research actually shows about keeping your brain sharp across decades, including which levers matter most, what's mostly noise, and what you can realistically start tomorrow, whether you're 45 or 65. Be sure to follow Good Life Project wherever you get your podcasts so you don’t miss any upcoming episodes!
Midlife Design Lab: I'm op…
-
The Self-Care Trap: Why Doing Everything Right Often Isn’t Enough | Jonathan Fields
13 augustus 2026 · 56 min
You can have a genuinely excellent self-care practice, the meditation, the training, the tracked sleep, the nutrition, and still be using every bit of it to avoid the one question that actually needed asking. Lees meer
In this episode, I turn the mic on myself. After 14 years and thousands of conversations about what it takes to live well, I trace the year my own "robust" wellness practice, meditation, training, nutrition, connection, everything, ended in a stress-induced medical diagnosis at the exact moment I'd have called myself the most dialed-in version of my life.
Turns out, you cannot self-care your way out of a fundamental misalignment in a core area of your life.
So, today, we’re exploring:
The real distinction between self-care that restores you and self-care that just makes a misaligned life more bearable, or worse, hides what actually needs your true attention.
Three 90-second tests, duration, imagination, intensity, that tell you honestly which one you're running
The five places structural misalignment hides in midlife, including the "cumulative weight" version almost nobody names
Why subtraction, not another practice, is usually the actual fix
A six-move menu for making one concrete structural change in the next 30 days
If your practice has been working harder for smaller returns lately, this conversation will tell you whether that's a regulation problem or a fit problem, and what to do about either one.
Episode Transcript
If you LOVED this episode, you can find the 1-page worksheet HERE.
Mentioned in this episode: How to Finally Have the Talk You’ve Been Avoiding.
Next week, next week we're sitting down with Dr. Rebecca Robbins to talk about why the sleep advice most of us are following was built for a body and a schedule most of us don't actually have anymore. Be sure to follow Good Life Project wherever you get your podcasts so you don't miss any upcoming episodes!
Check out our sponsors and resources: Visit Our Sponsor Page
Hosted on Acast. S…
-
What 10-Year-Olds Know About Mental Health That the Rest of Us Forgot | Dr. Niobe Way
10 augustus 2026 · 1 uur 9 min
We've been calling it a loneliness epidemic and treating it like a mental health problem. NYU developmental psychologist Niobe Way says that's the wrong diagnosis, and she has almost 40 years of data on teenage boys to make her case. Lees meer
Niobe Way has spent nearly four decades running longitudinal studies with teenagers, tracking the same kids from middle school into adulthood. Her research on boys, friendship, and masculinity has made her one of the go-to voices on loneliness, connection, and what's actually driving rising rates of depression, anxiety, and violence among young men, along with similar struggles with girls. And, these all tend to follow us well into adulthood. Her latest book is Rebels with a Cause: Reimagining Boys, Ourselves, and Our Culture.
In this conversation, you'll explore:
Why mental health is a symptom, not the root problem, and what Way calls "social health" instead
The moment, around age 15, when boys start hiding their feelings in public
Why boys learn to sacrifice the relationship to protect themselves, and girls learn to sacrifice themselves to protect the relationship
The dinner-table questions that build real closeness instead of shutting kids down
A simple, almost embarrassingly doable practice Way uses with total strangers to rebuild a sense of belonging
Whether you're raising a teenager, trying to figure out why your own friendships have gone thin, or just wondering why everyone feels so alone lately, this conversation reframes the whole question.
You can find Niobe at: Website | Instagram | Episode Transcript
Next week, it's just me, flying solo, to talk about the self-care trap: the difference between practices that actually help you thrive, and ones that just help you tolerate a life that no longer fits. Be sure to follow Good Life Project wherever you get your podcasts so you don't miss any upcoming episodes!
Check out our sponsors and resources: Visit Our Sponsor Page
Share your midlife reinvention story with us HERE…
-
Not All Pain Has a Purpose | Marisa Renee Lee
6 augustus 2026 · 53 min
What if the kindest thing someone told you about your pain was that it didn't have to mean anything? Lees meer
Marisa Renee Lee has spent her career inside other people's grief and her own. She's the bestselling author of Grief Is Love, a former deputy director in the Obama White House, and now CEO of Beacon Advisors. Her new book, Waiting for Dawn, comes out of her own experience with chronic illness, and it argues against nearly every wellness cliché about turning pain into purpose.
In this conversation, you'll explore:
Why Marisa refuses to promise anyone that their suffering serves a purpose, even her own family's
"Gray grief": a name for the grief that has no end date, no diagnosis, and no cultural script
The difference between identity (what you built) and essence (what's still there when it's gone)
Why she calls hope a discipline, not a feeling, and what that looks like on the worst days
How her family held onto hope through her aunt's most devastating loss, and what happened after
If you've ever felt ashamed for not finding the silver lining in something genuinely hard, this conversation is your permission to put that pressure down.
You can find Marisa at: Website | Instagram | Holding Both Substack | Episode Transcript
Next week, we're sitting down with Dr. Niobe Way to talk about why so many of us feel lonelier than ever even when we're surrounded by people, and what decades of research say is actually driving it. Be sure to follow Good Life Project wherever you get your podcasts so you don’t miss any upcoming episodes!
Check out our sponsors and resources: Visit Our Sponsor Page
Share your midlife reinvention story with us HERE.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
-
Top Headache Doc: Migraine Is Not What You Think
3 augustus 2026 · 1 uur 3 min
For decades, migraine was explained to patients as a blood vessel problem: swelling, throbbing, treat it by shrinking things back down. That explanation is mostly a myth, and it may be part of why so many older treatments never worked. Lees meer
Dr. Fred Cohen is medical director of Headache Intervention and an assistant professor of medicine and neurology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. He's one of the few headache specialists in the country trained in both internal medicine and headache medicine, has over 40 publications in journals including The Lancet and Cephalalgia, and has lived with migraine himself since his teens.
In this conversation, you'll explore:
Why migraine is a neuroinflammatory condition, not a vascular one, and why some medical schools still teach the outdated version
The "broken thermostat" phenomenon of chronic sensitization, and how untreated migraine can convince your brain that constant pain is normal
Why only about 30% of people with migraine ever experience aura, and the surprising range of ways it can actually show up
The current treatment landscape, from triptans to CGRP therapies, Botox, neuromodulation devices, and what's coming next
Why Dr. Cohen calls this the golden age of headache medicine, and what that means if you gave up on treatment years ago
If migraine has ever made you feel like your body was working against you, or like you'd already tried everything, this conversation will change how you see both.
You can find Fred at: Website | Instagram | Episode Transcript
Next week, we're sitting down with Marisa Renee Lee to talk about why the tidy stories we tell ourselves about grief and resilience tend to fall apart, and what it actually looks like to build a life around pain instead of waiting to get past it. Be sure to follow Good Life Project wherever you get your podcasts so you don’t miss any upcoming episodes!
Check out our sponsors and resources: Visit Our Sponsor Page
Share your midlife reinvention story…
-
Time Anxiety: Beating the Dread That You’ll Never Get Ahead | Chris Guillebeau
30 juli 2026 · 49 min
You know that feeling, like you’re forever running behind in work and life? That you’ll never finally be “there,” or be able to relax and enjoy things. Like the days are just collapsing into each other? Welcome to the wacky world of time anxiety. You are not alone. Lees meer
Chris Guillebeau has spent fifteen years writing about the questions that keep smart, capable people stuck. He is back on the show to talk about his new book, Time Anxiety, the clearest thing he has written yet on why "get up an hour earlier" backfires and what actually helps.
In this conversation, you'll explore:
Why your brain is chronically wrong about how much time anything takes, and the fifteen-minute fix for chronic lateness
The eighth day exercise, a way to find out what you actually want to do with your time by imagining a day with zero obligation to anyone else
The traffic light method for working with your real energy instead of fighting it
Why swapping the word "productive" for "valuable" changes how a day feels
The shame so many caretakers feel about carving out time for themselves, and the answer Gretchen Rubin gave Chris that changed how he thinks about it
If you've ever felt like your calendar is lying to you about how much time you have, this is the conversation for it.
You can find Chris at: Website | A Year of Mental Health Substack | Instagram | Episode Transcript
Next week, we're sitting down with Dr. Fred Cohen to talk about why almost everything you've been told about migraines is outdated, and what the science actually says about treating them. Be sure to follow Good Life Project wherever you get your podcasts so you don’t miss any upcoming episodes!
Check out our sponsors and resources: Visit Our Sponsor Page
Share your midlife reinvention story with us HERE.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
-
The 3 Things Every Room You Live In Must Have to Be Okay | Leidy Klotz
27 juli 2026 · 47 min
Most of us think the biggest decision about a room is whether it's functional. Leidy Klotz thinks that's the wrong question, and the right one changes how a desk, a kitchen, or an entire return-to-office policy actually lands on the person living inside it. Lees meer
Leidy Klotz is a behavioral scientist and engineering professor at the University of Virginia who studies how and why humans design. His research has appeared in Nature and Science, and he's been interviewed everywhere from Hidden Brain to Freakonomics to The Atlantic. Before any of that, he spent 22 years as a professional soccer player and then built schools for a living, which is part of why his take on space is so physical and so lived-in.
In this conversation, you'll explore:
The three psychological needs that every space either feeds or starves, and why they trace straight back to hunter-gatherer survival
Why Susan Cain's open-office backlash and today's return-to-office mandates are the same failure wearing different clothes
The strange, well-documented phenomenon of "habituation," including the story of an architecture student who walked past a six-story landmark building for years without ever seeing it
A simple practice called "space before screen," and why the top of a parking garage might be the cheapest awe you'll ever find
What it means to build a space that keeps someone's memory alive, drawn from one of the most personal stories Leidy has ever told on a podcast
If you've ever felt something shift the moment you walked into a certain room and couldn't say why, this conversation gives you the language for it.
You can find Leidy at: Website | LinkedIn | Episode Transcript
Next week, we're sitting down with Chris Guillebeau to talk about why the anxious feeling that you're running out of time might be less about your calendar and more about a story you've never questioned. Be sure to follow Good Life Project wherever you get your podcasts so you don't miss any upcoming episodes!
Check out …
-
How Much Money Is Enough? Your Confusing Money Questions Answered. | Leisa Peterson
23 juli 2026 · 52 min
By the age of 7, most of us have absorbed the rules that run our financial lives…forever. And almost none of us checked to see if they were true. Not the numbers. The rules. The slogans we heard around the kitchen table about what money means, who deserves it, and what it says about us if we don't have enough of it. Lees meer
Leisa Peterson spent three decades inside the financial services industry before a near-fatal event forced her to see how far she had drifted from her own life. Today she coaches people, most of them women, on the inherited stories that quietly run their financial decisions long after childhood ends, and how to rewrite them, along with their financial futures.
In this conversation, you'll hear:
Why twins raised in the exact same household can end up in completely different financial and emotional places as adults
The specific questions to ask a financial advisor before you hire one, and the one answer that should make you walk away
Why financial regret research shows the real damage isn't the bad decision, it's the silence around it
How to start defining your own "enough" instead of borrowing someone else's number
What Leisa's husband's diagnosis taught her about the assets that never show up on a bank statement
If you've ever felt behind, ashamed, or just quietly unsure whether you're getting this right, this conversation will change how you think about all of it.
You can find Leisa at: Website | Instagram | Episode Transcript
Next week, we're sitting down with Leidy Klotz to talk about how the rooms you live in every day shape how much control, connection, and competence you feel, often without you ever noticing it. Be sure to follow Good Life Project wherever you get your podcasts so you don’t miss any upcoming episodes!
Check out our sponsors and resources: Visit Our Sponsor Page
Share your midlife reinvention story with us HERE.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
-
Tapping: Surprising Science Behind Healing Claims (and how to do it) | Jessica Ortner
20 juli 2026 · 58 min
Your body already knows you're stressed before your brain finishes the thought. That tightness in your chest before a hard conversation. The way your stomach drops before you walk into a room full of people. Logic doesn't reach it. Telling yourself you're fine doesn't touch it. What if you could send a direct signal to your nervous system that you're safe, and actually change the chemistry? Lees meer
Jessica Ortner is a New York Times bestselling author and co-founder of The Tapping Solution, a movement that has brought EFT Tapping to millions worldwide, fueling hundreds of published studies, a massively downloaded app with tens of millions of sessions completed, and work that now extends to veterans, schools, and communities in crisis.
In this conversation, you'll explore:
What tapping is, where it came from, and how it works.
Why positive thinking and reframing often fail, and what the nervous system actually needs to release stress
The cortisol study that shows a serious reduction in stress hormones from a single session, and what that means for your daily life
How tapping physically rewires the brain's response to food cravings, trauma, and intrusive thoughts, with fMRI data to back it
Why your body can hold chronic pain in ways that have nothing to do with the original injury, and tapping might help
How to use tapping covertly before a difficult conversation, a big presentation, or a social situation when anxiety tends to take over
You don't have to believe this works for it to work. You just have to try it.
You can find Jessica at: Website | Instagram | Episode Transcript
Next week, next week we're sitting down with Leisa Peterson to talk about why the quiet question "am I actually behind with money?" never goes away, no matter how many articles you've read or podcasts you've listened to — and what it actually takes to resolve it at the level it lives. Be sure to follow Good Life Project wherever you get your podcasts so you don't miss any upcoming episodes.…
-
Why Plans Fail, and What To Do Instead | Midyear Reset Pt 2
16 juli 2026 · 54 min
Share your midlife reinvention story with us HERE. Lees meer
You have a plan for how to succeed in the second half of the year, how to “get back on track.” And a plan, it turns out, is the most sophisticated way to actually stand still while feeling like you're moving.
This is Part 2 of a special two-part midyear series on Good Life Project. In Part 1, Jonathan led a different kind of honest check-in, setting down the scorecard version of taking stock and actually looking at the one part of life that has been running quietly low. This episode is the moving part. It’s about taking action and building momentum, without waiting for a plan.
In this episode, you'll explore:
Why plans fail, and why the reason is not the one you've been told. The flaw isn't you. It's how plans are built.
The difference between a plan and a move, and why only one of them has ever actually changed a life.
Seven elements that make a move more likely to survive a bad week, including Peter Gollwitzer's research on implementation intentions.
The four traps that turn a move back into a plan, and how to recognize them before they happen.
Why the middle of the year is one of the most powerful fresh start landmarks available, and almost nobody uses it.
A five-step sequence you'll work through before this episode ends, leaving with a specific move already made, not planned.
This episode is for anyone who has spent the first half of this year meaning to do something and hasn't yet. Not because you lacked motivation, but because you were waiting for the right conditions that were never going to arrive. They don't have to. You just have to make one move.
Episode Transcript
If you LOVED this episode, you can find the 1-page worksheet HERE.
Next week, I'm sitting down with an old friend, Jessica Ortner, to explore something that most people have never tried, that looks a little ridiculous at first, and that turns out to have a surprisingly serious body of research behind it. It's called tapping. We're…
-
Midyear Wake-Up Call | Part 1
13 juli 2026 · 52 min
You can hit every goal you set in January and still be running on empty in the parts of your life the list never thought to measure. That's not a failure story. That's a design flaw in the instrument most of us reach for at the midpoint of the year. Lees meer
Jonathan Fields has spent 14 years exploring what it takes to build a life that genuinely feels like yours. In this solo episode, he gets personal about a stretch that looked, by every external measure, like one of the best runs he'd had in years. A major work transition, real momentum in business, and every morning from 7:30 to 9, writing the first draft of his first novel. A genuinely good season. And one that was quietly drawing down on something no scorecard ever caught.
What you'll explore in this conversation:
Why grading yourself against January goals in July is the least useful thing you can do at the midpoint of the year, and what to reach for instead
The three Good Life Buckets framework (Vitality, Connection, Contribution) as a practical audit tool, not an abstract idea
Two ways a bucket drains that most driven, successful people never see coming: the leak and the missing refill
Why the most dangerous bucket is often not the one that aches, but the one filling and draining at the same time
Three reckoning questions that surface something more honest than any goal list you've ever written
Why so many of us would rather stay tired and certain than rested and unsure, and what it actually costs us
This is Part 1 of a two-part series. Part 2 arrives in a few days with the specific actions to take for your mid-year wake-up call.
Episode Transcript
If you LOVED this episode, you can find the 1-page worksheet HERE.
Next week, we're coming back for Part 2 of this series with Jonathan to talk about what to actually do once you've named the bucket, and why you don't need a plan for the second half of your year. You need a move. One small, real, repeatable move. And we're going to figure it out together in re…
-
Healing Family Estrangement: What To Say, And What Never to Say.
9 juli 2026 · 1 uur
Between 10 and 15 percent of mothers and 1 in 4 fathers are currently estranged from a child. If those numbers feel shocking, the harder truth might be this: most of the moves parents instinctively make once estrangement begins are the exact moves that keep the door shut. Lees meer
Dr. Joshua Coleman has spent more than four decades as a practicing psychologist and is a Senior Fellow with the Council on Contemporary Families. His own daughter once cut off contact with him. That experience, and everything he has learned since, shaped his work helping families find their way back to each other. He is one of the most trusted voices in the country on family estrangement and reconciliation.
In this conversation, you will explore:
Why estrangement rates are at historically high levels and what massive cultural shifts are driving them
The five defensive moves parents make that almost always make things worse, including why fighting for fairness is the most damaging trap of all
What a genuinely healing apology actually sounds like, and why most apologies miss the mark entirely
Why radical acceptance and hope are not opposites, and how to hold both at the same time
How the principles of repair transfer to sibling estrangements and to grandparents cut off from grandchildren
If someone you love has pulled away and you cannot figure out why, or if you are the one who has needed distance and are wondering what repair could look like, this is the conversation for it.
You can find Joshua at: Website | Instagram | Family Troubles Substack | Episode Transcript
Next week, I am going solo, actually for the entire week, for a two-part midyear summer series about really taking a fresh look at where we are right now. Be sure to follow Good Life Project wherever you get your podcasts so you don't miss it.
Check out our offerings & partners:
Join My New Writing Project: Awake at the Wheel
Visit Our Sponsor Page For Great Resources & Discount Codes
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privac…
-
The Caregiving Conversation Everyone Postpones Until It's Too Late.
6 juli 2026 · 47 min
Here is something most people never see coming: the hardest part of caring for an aging parent is not the logistics. It is the grief. The grief for who your parent used to be, for the life you thought you would be living by now, and for the version of yourself that is quietly disappearing inside a role you never planned to fill. Couple that with being there for kids, even adult kids, and it can feel like a lot. Lees meer
Candace Dellacona is a New York City estate attorney known as "a family's lawyer," advising families, athletes, and entertainers on estate planning, asset protection, and the full arc of what it takes to navigate a family through its most vulnerable seasons. Not just the logistics, but also the many, more nuanced shifts in identity, relationships, and responsibilities. She is also a member of the sandwich generation herself, which is what led her to launch The Sandwich Generation Survival Guide podcast. She brings both the legal expertise and the lived experience to this conversation.
What you will explore in this conversation:
Why the sandwich generation is far broader than you think, and why it applies to you even if your parents are healthy right now, or your kids are grown
The four shifts that happen inside you during a caregiving season, identity, ownership, grief, and loneliness, and why we almost never talk about them
Why the conversations about aging, death, and documents are almost always saved for the worst possible moment, and how to have them earlier in a way that actually feels like love
The three-person team that can change everything, and what each one actually does
The unexpected beauty that enters the equation in a caregiving season, the reconciliation, the closeness, the chance to usher someone you love through
If you have a parent who is still healthy and you have never had a real conversation about what happens if that changes, this one is for you.
You can find Candace at: Website | The Sandwich Generation Survival Guide Podcast …
-
When You Can't Stop Thinking About Something, Here's What To Do. | Donna Jackson Nakazawa
2 juli 2026 · 54 min
There is something your brain is spinning right now, that you may never have been given a name for or a way out of. The thought you keep replaying. The conversation you keep recasting. The reel that loads up again and again without resolution, making you feel worse each time and no closer to clarity. That is rumination. And according to the neuroscience, it is the single greatest pre-diagnostic factor for depression and anxiety we have identified, and we are all doing it more than we ever have. Lees meer
Donna Jackson Nakazawa is an award-winning science writer whose work sits at the intersection of neurobiology, emotion, and mental health. Her new book, Mind Drama, is the most rigorous and humane investigation of rumination yet written: what it is, why your brain does it, what it is actually trying to tell you, and how to use a specific neurobiologically grounded framework to loosen its grip.
In this conversation, you will explore:
Why rumination is a survival response gone rogue, and why knowing that changes how you relate to your own spinning thoughts
What a brain scan of Donna's own ruminating mind revealed, and what those red swirls in the default mode network actually mean for your daily life
Why midlife may be the season when old ruminative patterns return with the most force, and what that signal is asking you to hear
The research showing that women ruminate at significantly higher rates than men, why this is, and what the neuroscience says about the acting-in pattern and its link to depression
The MIST framework: a four-step neurobiological practice for naming the mental movies, emotions, and somatic sensations underneath your rumination so the brain can actually let go
Why rumination is never random, always circling the question of whether you matter to the people who matter most to you
If you have ever told yourself to stop thinking about something and found you could not, this conversation is for you.
You can find Donna at: Healing Together Substack | I…
-
Why More Choices Make You Less Happy | David Epstein
29 juni 2026 · 1 uur
Most of us believe more options equals better outcomes. Research says no. In much of life, the opposite is true, and the gap between what we believe and what the data shows is one of the more quietly consequential misconceptions shaping how we live right now. Lees meer
David Epstein is the author of Range and the new book Inside the Box, both New York Times bestsellers. He spent years studying human performance and creativity, and this conversation picks up where Range left off. If Range was about why broad exploration matters early in life, Inside the Box is about what you actually do once you have all that range. The answer turns out to be counterintuitive: you box yourself in.
In this conversation, you'll discover:
Why people with more options to watch are consistently more bored than people with fewer, and what that reveals about how your brain actually works
The difference between satisficing and maximizing, and why maximizers make worse decisions, feel more regret, and are less happy with their lives despite spending more time and energy on every choice
How Keith Jarrett recorded the best-selling solo jazz piano album of all time on a broken, out-of-tune instrument he almost refused to play, and what that says about where creative breakthroughs actually come from
The paired constraints process used by Monet, Dr. Seuss, and Isabel Allende, and how you can use the same structure to unstick your own creative projects
Why our attention switches tasks every 45 seconds on average now, down from every three minutes 25 years ago, and what it's actually costing us in terms of stress, creativity, and the simple experience of loving our work
This is a conversation for anyone who has ever felt scattered across too many possibilities, half-committed to too many things, and quietly wondered if the constraint they've been avoiding might be exactly the thing they need.
You can find David at: Website | Instagram | Range Widely Substack | Episode Transcript
Next week, we're si…
-
The Toll of Generalized Resentment (and What to Do About It)
25 juni 2026 · 47 min
There is a feeling many people in midlife carry that does not have a name, a clear cause, or anyone to blame. Lees meer
It shows up when you have been the dependable one long enough that dependable starts to feel like a cage. Or when you have handled everything capably and walked away feeling hollowed rather than proud. Or when you have given more than you have received for so long that the imbalance stopped feeling like generosity and started feeling like the terms of your life.
In this solo episode, Jonathan Fields examines what he calls diffuse resentment, a specific, accumulated form of feeling that is distinct from the anger or grievance most people recognize as resentment. It does not have an address. It does not require a villain. And because it feels illegitimate, because the voice in your head says you made these choices, you have so much to be grateful for, it tends to go unexamined, parked, managed, and silently expensive.
In this solo episode, Jonathan draws on his own experience, research from psychologists Jennifer Lerner, Laura Carstensen, James Pennebaker, and Nick Epley, and thousands of conversations over 14 years of doing this work, to offer a way of looking at this feeling directly.
In this episode, you will explore:
The five territories where diffuse resentment most reliably lives, the calcified role, the invisible labor ledger, the deferred self, relational drift, and the unlived path
Why midlife is specifically when this feeling tends to become unavoidable, and why it often intensifies precisely when things are going well
What the research on emotional suppression actually shows about the cost of carrying unexamined feelings
Two movements (not steps) for beginning to look at this honestly, and why the first must come before the second is possible
What becomes available on the other side: accuracy, energy, and a different quality of closeness in the relationships that matter most
If you have been explaining away a feeling you cannot quite name…
-
You Spent Years Acting Normal Inside a Life That Never Fit | Sari Botton
22 juni 2026 · 54 min
Gotta love a good midlife reinvention story, and today we’ve got a great one! Lees meer
Sari Botton built her career editing some of the most celebrated voices in American literary nonfiction.
Then, in her mid-50s, she watched doors close in her face, turned down for jobs she was overqualified for, told by interviewers in their 30s that she had "done enough."
Out of that experience, she launched Oldster Magazine on Substack, a publication dedicated to aging honestly, at every age. It became a global phenomenon, and led to a book deal. She turned 60 and called it the best moment of her career.
In this conversation, Jonathan and Sari explore:
Why the most painful thing about midlife is not getting older but realizing how long you spent performing a version of yourself that never quite fit
What it costs to live at the intersection of "should" and "whatever," and what becomes possible when you stop
The Gen X inheritance: latchkey-kid freedom, zero parenting bandwidth, and a generation that had to figure out what normal even meant
Why the best memoir illuminates the mundane, and why women claiming that territory is a quietly radical act
What it means to be "found-ish": knowing the truest part of yourself while staying open to how life keeps changing you
Sari arrived at the conversation we are having right now by surviving the wrong relationships, the wrong careers, and a deep reluctance to let herself want what she actually wanted. If any of that sounds familiar, this conversation is for you.
You can find Sari at: Website | Instagram | Oldster Substack | Episode Transcript
Next week, I am doing a solo episode on something I have been sitting with for a long time: the hidden resentment you are probably carrying right now, and why it might be one of the most honest things about you. If you think you are not carrying any, that is especially worth your time. Be sure to follow Good Life Project wherever you get your podcasts so you do not miss it.
Check out our offerings …
-
The Midlife Muscle Loss Lie: How to Stay Strong at Any Age | Dr. Vonda Wright
18 juni 2026 · 54 min
According to Dr. Vonda Wright, almost everything we believe about aging and muscle loss is wrong. The research that told you to expect decline was built on populations where 70 percent of participants barely moved. Which means the trajectory most of us are bracing for is not biology. It is behavior. You do not have to be a statistic. Lees meer
Dr. Vonda Wright is an orthopedic surgeon, researcher, and the founder of PRIMA, the Performance and Research Initiative for Masters Athletes at the University of Pittsburgh. She has spent her career studying what happens to the body when people stay active, not what happens when they don't. Her book, Unbreakable: A Woman's Guide to Aging with Power, distills what that research actually shows about muscle, bone, hormones, and aging in midlife.
What you will explore in this conversation:
The three MRI images that upended what we thought we knew about aging muscle, a visual comparison between a sedentary 74-year-old, an active 70-year-old, and a 40-year-old, that has become widely shared because of what it shows about what is actually possible.
Menalescence, Dr. Wright's term for the hormonal, physiological, psychological, and social upheaval of perimenopause and menopause, and why naming it the way we named adolescence changes how women advocate for themselves in the doctor's office.
The musculoskeletal syndrome of menopause, a connection between estrogen loss and total-body joint pain that has been documented in medical literature since 1925, is still not taught in most medical schools.
The critical decade from 35 to 45, why this window is the highest-leverage moment for building the physical body you will have for the rest of your life, and exactly what to do if you are past it.
Why lifting heavy is not optional for women in midlife, and what four reps, four sets actually does for strength and power that lighter lifting cannot.
How much protein you actually need, why the math most people do is probably too low, and the leucine…
-
The 4 Chemicals That Run Your Brain…and Your Life | Tj Power
15 juni 2026 · 1 uur
Four chemicals, produced by your brain, serve as a master switch for nearly everything you think, do, and feel. In no small way, they also control our lives. But, all too often, instead of harnessing them to fuel amazing experiences and outcomes, we are controlled by them. Today, we learn how to take back control and harness them for good. Lees meer
Our guide is TJ Power, lead neuroscientist at the DOSE Lab and the author of The DOSE Effect. His research investigates how modern sedentary, digitally saturated lifestyles are reshaping the brain chemicals that govern how we feel, connect, focus, and recover from stress. He has delivered live experiences to over 75,000 people at institutions including Oxford University, Amazon, and the NHS.
His DOSE framework centers on four chemicals: Dopamine, Oxytocin, Serotonin, and Endorphins. These chemicals evolved over hundreds of thousands of years for a very different experience of life. One with more movement, more connection, more sunlight, more sustained effort, and far less of what TJ calls dopamine land, the scroll-and-reward loop that phones have engineered into our days.
In this conversation, you will explore:
Why dopamine is not the reward chemical you were taught it was, and why the phone has hijacked the system that was supposed to motivate you
The difference between dopamine and oxytocin, and why TJ believes we are pursuing the wrong chemical as a species
How 90% of your serotonin is manufactured in your gut, and what ultra-processed food is actually doing to your mood
Why stress evolved to be released through physical movement, and why sitting still with your problems makes them worse
The 20 free behaviors from The DOSE Effect that recalibrate all four chemicals without cost, pills, or a major life overhaul
If you have been wondering why certain things that used to feel easy now feel effortful, this conversation gives you a biological explanation and a practical path forward.
You can find Tj at: Website | Instagra…
-
What Lucky People Do Differently, According to Science | Tina Seelig
11 juni 2026 · 49 min
Luck is not a personality trait you either have or you don't. It is something you build, and science tells us there are specific, learnable skills behind why some people consistently seem to be in the right place at the right time while others walk right past the same opportunities. Lees meer
Tina Seelig has spent over 25 years at Stanford teaching and studying exactly this. As Executive Director of the Knight-Hennessy Scholars program and a longtime faculty member at the Stanford d.school, she has watched thousands of students move through the world, and the differences between those who generate luck and those who don't are far more concrete and actionable than most people realize. Her new book is What I Wish I Knew About Luck: A Crash Course on Turning Aspirations into Achievements.
In this conversation, you will explore:
What separates fortune from luck, and why that distinction changes everything about where you actually have agency in your life
The ship, crew, and sail framework for understanding what it really takes to become luckier, and where most people skip a step
Why your mental model of failure, whether it feels like a trampoline or a black hole, may be the single most powerful predictor of how much luck you create
The hidden social behaviors that consistently show up in the luckiest people, from thank-you notes to a very specific way of asking for help
Why luck is a long game, and the story of how behavior at a disastrous Costa Rica resort determined the outcome of a job interview fifteen years later
If you have ever looked at someone who seems consistently lucky and wondered what they are doing differently, this conversation will give you some clear answers.
You can find Tina at: LinkedIn | Episode Transcript
Next week, we are featuring one of our most talked-about conversations from the archive, Tj Power on the four brain chemicals that are quietly running your life and why the modern environment is throwing them out of balance in ways that make eve…
-
Why Rituals Matter More Than You Know, And How to Design Your Own | Bruce Feiler
8 juni 2026 · 55 min
There is a particular kind of loneliness that hits in the middle of a full life. Lees meer
Not because you are isolated. Because the relationships that used to hold you steady are all being renegotiated at once. Your kids have left. A parent has died. A marriage needs new terms. A friendship has frayed. And the cultural rituals that once helped people move through moments like this are mostly gone.
Bruce Feiler has spent the last three years traveling to 26 countries, attending over 100 ceremonies, and interviewing hundreds of people to understand what happens when we stop gathering in intentional ways. He's a seven-time New York Times bestselling author and the creator of the LifeQuakes framework. His new book, A Time to Gather, makes the case that we are living through both a celebration recession and a ritual renaissance at the same time.
In this conversation, Bruce and Jonathan explore what it actually means to feel homesick in your own home, why the four traditional life rituals no longer match the lives most of us are actually living, and what it looks like to design a ritual from scratch when the ones you inherited don't fit.
What you'll explore in this conversation:
Why 5,000 Civil War soldiers were officially diagnosed as dying of homesickness, and what that history reveals about the longing you feel now
The five building blocks of any ritual, from drawing the circle to creating a web of hope, and how to use them to mark a moment that matters
Why Bruce calls this a celebration recession: what we stopped doing, when, and what's quietly replacing it
The live ritual Bruce helps Jonathan design in real time, walking through every step from welcome to close
Why rituals are not just for grief and weddings, and the new ceremonies people are creating for divorce, mastectomies, miscarriages, sobriety, and career endings
If you have ever felt the ground shift under you and not known how to steady yourself with the people you love most, this is the conversation for i…
-
Dating in Midlife…Oh My! | Bela Gandhi
4 juni 2026 · 57 min
Here is something most of us have never been told: falling in love was never supposed to be easy, and the fact that it hasn't been isn't a character flaw. It's a design problem. Your biology may be working against you. Your cultural programming works against you. But, more than anything, the list you've been carrying around of what you want in a partner is almost certainly pointing you in the wrong direction. Lees meer
Bela Gandhi is a dating coach and the founder of Smart Dating Academy, where she has helped thousands of people find lasting relationships. She was a longtime dating expert on Good Morning America and the Steve Harvey Show and built her methodology after realizing that love, like anything else worth doing, benefits from a system.
What you'll explore in this conversation:
Why 74% of third marriages end in divorce, and what that tells us about how most people approach finding a partner
The "elevator people" exercise that reveals what you actually need in a relationship, and why it almost never matches your dream list
How biology, attachment patterns, and cultural messaging conspire to make us fall for the wrong people, again and again
What highly accomplished, independent women often get wrong in the dating world, and what to do about it instead
Why attraction can grow rather than just appear, and how pacing changes everything
If you've been wondering whether love is still possible for you at this stage of life, Bela's answer is clear. She's seen too many people find it at 50, 60, and beyond to believe otherwise.
You can find Bela at: Website | Instagram | Episode Transcript
Next week, we're sitting down with seven-time New York Times bestselling author Bruce Feiler to talk about something most of us have felt but never quite had words for: the particular loneliness that arrives in the middle of a full life, when the relationships that used to hold you steady are all being renegotiated at once, and the rituals that helped people move through moments li…
-
Your Ambitions Might Not Be Yours | Tom Rath
1 juni 2026 · 46 min
Most of us reach our 40s and discover something unsettling: the ambitions we've been chasing weren't entirely ours. They came from parents, from culture, from the two or three careers we happened to see up close. Tom Rath calls this looking through a pinhole, and he thinks it explains more midlife restlessness than most of us are willing to admit. Lees meer
Tom is one of the most widely-read researchers on how careers shape health and wellbeing. His books, including the instant number one New York Times bestseller How Full Is Your Bucket? and StrengthsFinder 2.0, have sold more than 10 million copies. His latest book is What's the Point?: Turning Purpose into Your Daily Superpower.
In this conversation, you'll explore:
Why only 50 jobs represent half the entire labor market, and what that means for the choices you made at 18
The difference between a ladder and a garden as frameworks for a life and why one of them is making you miserable
What headstones actually say (and never say) about what we thought mattered
The legacy question that most people answer wrong and what Tom's grandfather's final hours taught him about the purest form of giving
Why purpose is less about finding your calling and more about something entirely different
There's a particular kind of grief that comes from realizing your striving belonged to someone else. This conversation is for anyone in midlife who's starting to ask whether the ladder they've been climbing was theirs to begin with.
You can find Tom at: Website | Instagram | Episode Transcript
Next week, we're sharing our conversation with Bela Gandhi to talk about why midlife is actually the moment most people become more ready for a real relationship — and what's quietly getting in the way. Be sure to follow Good Life Project wherever you get your podcasts so you don’t miss any upcoming episodes!
Check out our offerings & partners:
Join My New Writing Project: Awake at the Wheel
Visit Our Sponsor Page For Great Resources & Discount …
-
Why Can’t Anyone Tell Me What’s Wrong? | Alexandra Sifferlin
28 mei 2026 · 58 min
Ever have something clearly wrong, and yet no expert can tell you what’s causing it? Or, worse, they DO tell you, but they’re wrong? Lees meer
Nearly everyone will experience at least one diagnostic error in their lifetime. Not a minor mix-up, but a missed, delayed, or wrong diagnosis that shapes how long you suffer, what treatment you receive, and whether anyone believes something is actually wrong with you. For people in midlife, when the body starts sending new signals and the stakes of getting it right feel higher, that statistic carries a particular weight.
Alexandra Sifferlin is a science and health journalist and the author of The Elusive Body: Patients, Doctors, and the Diagnosis Crisis. She spent years inside hospital systems, talking with leading diagnosticians, tracing families who waited decades for answers, and mapping the structural gaps that let real suffering fall through. Her book is dedicated to her sister, who spent years being told her severe hip pain was a pillow-placement problem, until imaging revealed torn cartilage that required surgery.
In this conversation, you will explore:
Why receiving a diagnosis is more than a medical event, and how a diagnosis gives you permission to be ill (in the best of ways)
How physicians actually build a diagnosis in real time, and what gets lost when appointments shrink to seven minutes
The case of the Proctor family, five siblings from rural Kentucky who spent decades with a mysterious, painful condition before becoming the first diagnosed case of the NIH's Undiagnosed Diseases Program
Why the best diagnosticians in the country share one habit that has nothing to do with medical genius
How AI note-taking in the exam room is making some appointments more human, not less
What to do when you've seen four practitioners and nobody can tell you what's wrong
If you've ever walked out of a doctor's office with more questions than you arrived with, this conversation is for it.
You can find Alexandra at: Website | In…
-
How to Finally Have the Talk You've Been Avoiding | Jonathan Fields
25 mei 2026 · 46 min
There is a conversation most of us are carrying right now. Not one we lack words for. We have plenty of those. One we keep finding reasons not to have. Not because we don't know what we'd say, but because we have become very skilled at building the case for staying quiet a little longer. Lees meer
Jonathan Fields has spent a lot of time in that particular waiting room. This solo episode starts with a story he describes as embarrassing in the specific way only true stories about your own behavior can be embarrassing: a decade-long friendship, a thing said in passing that he never addressed, and the slow drift that followed because he never said it. It's a story many people in midlife will recognize without needing the details changed.
What you'll explore in this episode:
Why intelligent, emotionally capable people are often the most skilled architects of avoidance, and what that architecture actually looks like from the inside
The difference between protecting a relationship and protecting yourself from discomfort, and how easy it is to mistake one for the other
Four distinct types of difficult conversations and why knowing which one you're actually having changes everything about how to begin
Why the perfect moment to have the conversation you've been postponing doesn't exist, and what to do instead
How to open a hard conversation without scripting it, performing it, or trying to win it
A question to carry with you, not answer immediately, that may be the most honest thing in this entire episode
For anyone in midlife who has been living carefully around something true that needs to be said, this one is for you.
Episode Transcript
Next week, we are sitting down with journalist Alexandra Sifferlin to talk about why millions of Americans are living with conditions that doctors simply cannot name, and what that does to a person when the system meant to help you keeps coming up empty. Be sure to follow Good Life Project wherever you get your podcasts so you do not miss…
-
Invisible Grief: How Hidden Loss Holds You Back (and how to release it) | Dr. Lucy Hone
21 mei 2026 · 52 min
There is a gap between where your life is and where you thought it would be. That gap has a name. It is grief. A kind of hidden, invisible grief. And most of us are walking around carrying it without ever calling it that, because we have been taught that grief belongs only to those who have lost someone to death. The rest of us are supposed to just get on with it. Lees meer
Dr. Lucy Hone is an adjunct senior fellow at the University of Canterbury, a leading resilience researcher, and one of the world's most trusted voices on loss and grief. Her TED talk on resilience has been viewed more than nine million times. She is also a mother who lost her 12-year-old daughter, Abi, in a car accident in 2014, and who has spent the decade since weaving her scientific training and her lived experience into tools that actually work. Her new book is How Will I Ever Get Through This?
In this conversation, we go to the places most conversations about grief are afraid to go.
What you will explore:
Why grief is not an emotion but a full-body experience that explains the exhaustion, brain fog, and 3 am waking you may have been blaming on other things
What "living losses" are, the griefs that come without a funeral, and why they may be driving far more of our suffering than we recognize
The difference between acceptance and coming to terms with, and why one word changes everything about how you move through loss
What the research actually shows about post-traumatic growth, including the statistic that will surprise you about how common it actually is
Why resilience is not about bouncing back, and what Dr. Hone means when she says you do not bounce back from anything that matters
The one question she asks herself in the hardest moments, and why it is a more useful starting point than any technique
If you have ever minimized something you were going through because it did not feel like it counted as real loss, this conversation is for you.
You can find Lucy at: Website | Instagram | Epi…
-
Your Life in One Word? This Could Change Everything | Erin Weed
18 mei 2026 · 1 uur 4 min
Somewhere in the last few years, a lot of us started asking a version of the same question: who am I now, and what am I actually here to do? The answers don't come from a quiz or a vision board. But they just might come from the one word that has been running your life all along, whether you knew it or not. Lees meer
Erin Weed is a speaker coach, keynote speaker, and the creator of the Dig, a purpose-excavation method she has used with over a thousand leaders, founders, and changemakers across every stage of life and reinvention. Her new book, Just One Word: The Surprisingly Simple Method to Discover Your Purpose and Unleash Your Power, is the culmination of that work. She also spent over a decade as head speaker coach for TEDxBoulder, helping people find the one true thing they need to say and the courage to say it.
In this conversation, you get to watch the Dig happen in real time, because Jonathan sits down in the chair and lets Erin guide him through the full process.
What you will explore:
What the Dig is and why close to 100% of people who think they know their word are actually wrong
How your life story, all of it, from childhood to present day, contains a 10-word operating system that explains exactly how you tick
Why your deepest violations, the things that make you genuinely angry, point directly toward your core word
The difference between the word you think defines you and the one that actually does
How knowing your word changes the way you make decisions, support the people you love, and build the things that matter most to you
What Jonathan's word turned out to be, and the moment in the conversation where it landed
If you have ever felt like you were circling your purpose without quite landing on it, this conversation is for you.
You can find Erin at: Website | Instagram | Episode Transcript
Next week, we're sharing our conversation with Dr. Lucy Hone to talk about something most of us are carrying without ever calling it what it is: the grief that …