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Dr. Caroline Fleck on Validation and Why It’s Psychology’s Best Kept Secret
As our guest today, Dr. Caroline Fleck, writes in her new book Validation: How the Skill Set That Revolutionized Psychology Will Transform Your Relationships, Increase Your Influence, and Change Your Life—which came out February 18—validation is psychology’s best kept secret. What is validation, anyway, and why does it matter? Caroline and I dig into all of it, including the power of validation, and why Caroline considers it a superpower. Practicing validation can lead to improvement in five important categories across one’s life, Caroline says: improved relationships, decreased conflict, increased influence, increased ability to drive behavioral change, and increased self-compassion. (Um, yes please.) We also talk today about what validation isn’t, and go through the ladder of validation—its eight rungs and three sections. We then put validation into practice, giving examples of what it looks like with ourselves, with our kids, within an intimate relationship, and in the workplace. This really is psychology’s best kept secret, and I’m so glad it doesn’t have to be hidden under cover anymore because of Caroline’s book. Dr. Caroline Fleck is a licensed psychologist, corporate consultant, and adjunct clinical instructor at Stanford. She is a graduate of Michigan and Duke and has served as a supervisor and consultant for some of the most rigorous clinical training programs across the U.S. A respected voice in psychology, she’s been featured in The New York Times, on Good Morning America, and in HuffPost, and in her private practice, she works with adults, adolescents, and couples, specializing in dialectical behavior therapy, otherwise known as DBT, and other cognitive behavioral treatments. Her corporate work strengthens company culture and individual performance, and she not only implements training programs to Fortune 500 companies but also provides executive coaching to industry leaders worldwide. She’s got a great message to share.Validation: How the Skill Set That Revolutionized Psychology Will Transform Your Relationships, Increase Your Influence, and Change Your Life by Dr. Caroline Fleck
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47:14
Ilana Kaplan on the Incredible Nora Ephron and Her Impressive Resume of Movies That Still Shape Culture Today
I have spoken before on the show about my absolute love and admiration for the one and only Nora Ephron, who is the reason why I am a writer. I have met my match in today’s guest, Ilana Kaplan, who I previously worked with at People, who is absolutely fantastic, and who has written this gem of a book about our shared heroine called Nora Ephron at the Movies: A Visual Celebration of the Writer and Director Behind When Harry Met Sally, You’ve Got Mail, Sleepless in Seattle, and More, which came out last October 29. The words are beautiful, but it is a visually stunning book as well—one your coffee table absolutely needs. Today Ilana and I talk about the life, work, and legacy of Nora, who died far, far too soon at age 71 in 2012. And when I say I’ve met my match when it comes to being a Nora fan in Ilana, I mean it—she even had Nora in her wedding vows, which not even I can say I did. Among so much else, Ilana and I talk today about Nora’s rom-com trio: When Harry Met Sally (which is my favorite movie of all time), Sleepless in Seattle, and You’ve Got Mail—and Ilana shocks me with a revelation about how one of those movies is actually meant to be a sequel of the other. We talk about Nora’s successes in film, but also her failures, and which of Nora’s movies Ilana thinks are underrated. Nora was a writer, a director, a playwright—we talk about her legacy and how her fingerprints are still felt, even 13 years after her death. Ilana is a writer and culture editor whose work has been everywhere from the aforementioned People to PAPER, The Independent, The New York Times, New York magazine, the Los Angeles Times, Rolling Stone, GQ, Vanity Fair, Vogue, NPR, Pitchfork, Variety, Billboard, and more. She’s totally compelling, and I can’t wait for you to hear from her. Nora Ephron at the Movies: A Visual Celebration of the Writer and Director Behind When Harry Met Sally, You’ve Got Mail, Sleepless in Seattle, and More by Ilana Kaplan
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30:24
Jenny Wood on How Wild Courage Will Help You Go After What You Want and Get It
Today on the show we’ve got Jenny Wood discussing her new book Wild Courage: Go After What You Want and Get It, which hits shelves on March 25. In the book, Jenny writes about how courage is essential to our success, and how, in her words, “Wild courage will change your life.” She explains to us what wild courage is, anyway; how to look fear in the eye and do it—whatever it is to you—scared; the four-step goal setting practice of rock, chalk, talk, and walk; and in one of the most fascinating parts of the book to me, Jenny takes nine traits that aren’t necessarily associated with courage and reframed them for wild courage. You’ll see what I mean when you read the book and listen to the episode. Jenny tells us about her absolutely wild love story—which was featured in The New York Times—and Jenny really is just incredibly fascinating: she is a tap dancer, an FAA-licensed private pilot, and a zucchini bread connoisseur, in her words. She describes herself in her bio as an “Unstoppable confidence booster,” and was a top executive at Google and is the founder of Own Your Career, one of the largest career development programs in Google’s history. Jenny’s work is dedicated to helping people make their impossible dreams happen, and she is a speaker, writer, mom, and, while at Google, ran a large operations team that helped drive tens of billions of revenue per year. Her writing has been featured in the Harvard Business Review, Entrepreneur, Inc., and Forbes. Take a listen to our conversation!Wild Courage: Go After What You Want and Get It by Jenny Wood
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28:36
Brad Meltzer on a Secret Plot to Kill John F. Kennedy and the Book of Inspiration Everyone Needs to Grab
Our guest today, Brad Meltzer, is one of the busiest people in book writing. It’s only March, and already he’s had two books come out in 2025 alone: The JFK Conspiracy: The Secret Plot to Kill Kennedy—and Why It Failed, written with his friend Josh Mensch and released January 14, and Make Magic: The Book of Inspiration You Didn’t Know You Needed, which came out March 4. Today on the show we talk about both books with Brad—and they’re very different. In The JFK Conspiracy, we learn about a plot against John F. Kennedy’s life a full three years before 1963 and Dallas. The almost assassination happened in December 1960 in Palm Beach, Florida, after Kennedy had been elected to the presidency but before he’d been sworn in. I’ll leave it to the episode to explain the gritty details, but what’s interesting is that the book dives into Jackie Kennedy with as much gusto as it does JFK. It’s a fantastic read. Then we have Make Magic, which was birthed from the text of a speech Brad gave at the University of Michigan’s commencement last May, when none other than his son was one of the graduates. Brad, too, graduated from Michigan, and the book is in Michigan’s colors and the text is extremely substantive, especially when he goes into kindness and empathy. The books are very different, but I enjoyed them both immensely, and I can’t wait for you to hear about them. By the way—just want to throw this in here—The JFK Conspiracy and Make Magic were both instant New York Times bestsellers. Brad is such a likeable guy. He’s a No. 1 New York Times bestselling author and has written so many books, perhaps evidenced by the fact that he wrote two books already in 2025 alone. If that’s not enough, he’s also the host of the History Channel shows Brad Meltzer’s Decoded and Brad Meltzer’s Lost History, which he used to help find the missing September 11, 2001 flag that the firefighters raised at Ground Zero on that awful day. Brad has written across so many genres—novels to nonfiction books to comic books to children’s books. I know you’re going to love this conversation. The JFK Conspiracy: The Secret Plot to Kill Kennedy—and Why It Failed by Brad MeltzerMake Magic: The Book of Inspiration You Didn’t Know You Needed by Brad Meltzer
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36:08
Dr. Sharon Horesh Bergquist on Why Some Stress Might Actually Be Good for Us
There aren’t many of us—if any of us—who aren’t experiencing stress. But what if I told you that a little stress isn’t just okay for us as humans, but it’s necessary? That’s what Dr. Sharon Horesh Bergquist writes about in her new book The Stress Paradox: Why You Need Stress to Live Longer, Healthier, and Happier, which is out March 25. Now, hear her out—in this fascinating book, she argues that a little bit of being uncomfortable can actually have majorly positive results towards our longevity and vitality. We as humans have, as Sharon writes about, gotten ourselves into a bit of a comfort conundrum—while our modern day comforts are certainly nice, they are stripping us of temporary stressors that actually make us better. Today on the show Sharon walks us through what the stress paradox is and how brief and intermittent stress, counter to what we might think, actually heals, repairs, and regenerates us. There is, it turns out, actually such a thing as good stress, and stress might kind of be getting a bit of a rebrand here. We talk about how to spot the difference between good stress and harmful stress, what stress induced growth is, what a hormetin is and how we activate them, five major steps to bring good stress into our lives that we can all start doing today, and so much more. When you think about it, it really makes sense—no diamond was created without a little pressure first, and applied in the right manner for the right duration, we as humans need that pressure to grow into something (or, rather, someone) beautiful, too. It’s really interesting. Sharon is an award-winning physician and visionary researcher who has helped lead numerous clinical trials, including the Emory Healthy Aging Study and the NIH-funded Emory Healthy Brain Study. She is widely published in peer-reviewed journals and has contributed to over 200 news segments, including on CNN, Good Morning America, NPR, The Wall Street Journal, and ABC News. She too is a podcaster and hosts “The Whole Health Cure” show, and her popular TED video on how stress affects the body has been viewed over 6 million times. She is a graduate of Yale and Harvard Medical School, and makes a really compelling case for stress actually being a necessary component to living our best lives.⁠The Stress Paradox: Why You Need Stress to Live Longer, Healthier, and Happier⁠ by Dr. Sharon Horesh Bergquist
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