A Slight Change of Plans

After a turbulent adolescence and decades of reinvention, Zarna Garg found her voice somewhere she never expected: stand-up comedy. On today’s episode, she tells Maya why she believes courage is a skill you can learn, and how failure has been a key to her success on stage and off.

Therapist Meg Josephson learned early on to put others’ needs before her own. It was a way for her to stay safe in a home that didn’t feel emotionally stable. But over time, she saw that her people-pleasing habits were eroding her sense of self, and straining the very relationships she was trying to protect. On today’s show, we explore how we can stop asking ourselves if other people are mad at us. Who can we become when we stop trying to please everyone else?

The world feels especially heavy these days, and it’s easy to feel cynical. So today, Maya is revisiting her conversation with psychologist Jamil Zaki, who offers an alternative to cynicism: a mindset he calls “hopeful skepticism.” Jamil explains why hopeful people are  more resilient, more successful in accomplishing goals, and more willing to tackle societal problems head on.

It’s been more than a decade since Malala Yousafzai, then a 15-year-old student and advocate for girls education, survived an assassination attempt. Malala is 28 now, and she’s written an intimate new memoir called “Finding My Way,” revealing  sides of her the world has never seen before. In today’s episode, Maya sits down with Malala to explore the tension that exists between the different versions of ourselves that we carry — who the world expects us to be, who our families raised us to be, and who we’re still in the process of becoming.

When Dr. Vivek Murthy first appeared on the show a few years back, he and Maya discussed the science of loneliness and its impact on our long term health. Now, the former U.S. Surgeon General is back to share simple, practical steps we can take to nurture more meaningful relationships—and why making even small changes can help us feel more connected.