Good Life Project

She measured everything about her illness. The measuring turned out to be part of what kept her sick. 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 wrote down while she was sick, is not "getting back to normal" A note on how we held this one. Giorgia is careful, and so are we. This is her story and not a protocol, her symptoms were real, documented in labs, and measurable, and nobody in this conversation is suggesting anyone thinks their way out of illness. If you have ever looked fine from the outside while something underneath was quietly giving way, this is a conversation about what your body might be trying to tell you before it has to shout. You can find Giorgia 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.

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. 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.

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. 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.

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

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. 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.