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Jonathan Fields / Acast

Good Life Project is a podcast and video series for people navigating midlife with intention. Hosted by Jonathan Fields, each episode is a deep, honest conversation about what it actually takes to build a life that feels like yours, through the reinventions, reckonings, and reclamations that define your 40s, 50s, and beyond. Grounded in science, fueled by genuine curiosity, and always in service of the real work of living well. Often top-ranked, it’s been listened to and viewed more than 100 million times. New episodes weekly. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Good Life Project

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

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

Getting Back Up After You’ve Been Brought to Your Knees | Mark Nepo

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.

He’s Spent 20 Years Trying to Change The World | Scott Harrison

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.

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 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

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.

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.

The Endings You Don’t See Coming (Until They’re Gone) | Jonathan Fields

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.

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 so you don't miss that or 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 Sponsor Page

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

Jodi Picoult: Why Every Villain is the Hero of Their Own Story

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. 

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 who showed up.

If you've ever loved your own company more than you're supposed to admit, or if you've ever wondered whether your relationships would survive without one person at the center of them, this conversation will change how you think about both.

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

Next week, we're sitting down with bestselling novelist Jodi Picoult to talk about how she steps inside the minds of people whose lives look nothing like her own, and why that kind of empathy might be one of the most undervalued skills we have.

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 Sponsor Page

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

Single at Heart: What if You Don't Need Someone Else to “Complete” You | Bella DePaulo, PhD

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. 

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 aren't built around a partner at all.

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 Sponsor Page

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

The Midlife Curiosity Tour That Changed Everything | Allison Aubrey

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.

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 point for purpose, connection, and a deeper kind of self-trust. Be sure to follow Good Life Project wherever you get your podcasts so you don’t miss that or 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 Sponsor Page

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

Why Grit Alone Doesn’t Cut It: New Research From Angela Duckworth

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.

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 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 Sponsor Page

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

How to Make Better Decisions | Shane Parrish [Best of]

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.

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 resources: Visit Our Sponsor Page

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

Why Avoiding a Fight is Killing Your Relationship (and How to Fight Well) | Priya Parker

Born in Ghana, West Africa,Kute Blackson was the child of a Japanese mother and a Ghanaian father who was a legendary faith leader with some 300 churches across Ghana and a massive following in the U.K.

By his early teens, Kute was being groomed to rise up in his father’s church, but that would all change when Blackson rejected the path his father laid out for him and chose his own instead.

Estranged from both his father and his community, and feeling called to blaze his own path, Kute headed to the United States where he’d struggle on nearly every level and finally come to a place where his true hero’s journey would begin.

That process of stripping away, hitting rock-bottom and eventually mounting his own search led Kute to rediscover his path to freedom, and rebuild his life and living, becoming a respected voice in spirituality and consciousness on his own terms, in his own way. His story and philosophy are detailed in his recent book, You. Are. The. One. 

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

Kute Blackson: Redefining Your Own Path to Freedom

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