Good Life Project

Gotta love a good midlife reinvention story, and today we’ve got a great one!

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 & partners: 

• Join My New Writing Project: Awake at the Wheel
• Visit Our Sponsor Page For Great Resources & Discount Codes

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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.

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 argument for animal protein.

If you have been told that your MRI findings, your arthritis, your bulging disc, or your bone density numbers mean you cannot or should not lift, this conversation is for you.

You can find Vonda at: Website | Instagram | Episode Transcript

Next week, I am sitting down with Sari Botton to talk about why the life you keep putting off might be the most honest thing about you — and what it actually takes to stop waiting for permission to live it. 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

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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.

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 | Instagram | Episode Transcript

Next week, we are sitting down with Dr. Vonda Wright to talk about why most of what you have been told about aging is actually data about people who did nothing. The decline curve, it turns out, is negotiable, and ages 35 to 45 are the highest-leverage window. But she also makes the case that the door never closes. 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/privacy for more information.

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.

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 everything from motivation to genuine connection harder than it should be. 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 Codes

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

There is a particular kind of loneliness that hits in the middle of a full life. 

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 it.

You can find Bruce at: Website | Instagram | Episode Transcript

Next week, we're sharing our conversation with Stanford professor Tina Seelig to talk about something most of us have completely backwards: how luck actually works, and why most of what we call luck is the result of deliberate actions hiding in plain sight. If you have ever wondered why some people seem to catch every break while others keep missing them, this is going to change the way you see that. 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 Codes

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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.

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 like these for thousands of years have largely disappeared. 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 Codes

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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.

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 Codes

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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?

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 | Instagram | Episode Transcript

Next week, we're sharing a really meaningful conversation with Tom Rath, whose books have shaped how millions of people think about their work and lives. His new book makes a direct challenge to the whole "find your passion, follow your purpose" framework, and argues that the source of real fulfillment isn't looking deeper inside yourself. It's what you contribute to other people every day. 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 Codes

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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.

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 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 Codes

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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.

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 | Episode Transcript

Next week, I am going solo to talk about something that I think a lot of us are quietly carrying, the conversations we know we need to have with the people who matter most to us, and why we keep finding reasons not to have them. The research turns out to be really clear on this: we consistently overestimate how bad it will be and underestimate how much it costs us to stay silent. 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 Codes

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.