Good Life Project

For decades, migraine was explained to patients as a blood vessel problem: swelling, throbbing, treat it by shrinking things back down. That explanation is mostly a myth, and it may be part of why so many older treatments never worked.

Dr. Fred Cohen is medical director of Headache Intervention and an assistant professor of medicine and neurology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. He's one of the few headache specialists in the country trained in both internal medicine and headache medicine, has over 40 publications in journals including The Lancet and Cephalalgia, and has lived with migraine himself since his teens.

In this conversation, you'll explore:

Why migraine is a neuroinflammatory condition, not a vascular one, and why some medical schools still teach the outdated version
The "broken thermostat" phenomenon of chronic sensitization, and how untreated migraine can convince your brain that constant pain is normal
Why only about 30% of people with migraine ever experience aura, and the surprising range of ways it can actually show up
The current treatment landscape, from triptans to CGRP therapies, Botox, neuromodulation devices, and what's coming next
Why Dr. Cohen calls this the golden age of headache medicine, and what that means if you gave up on treatment years ago

If migraine has ever made you feel like your body was working against you, or like you'd already tried everything, this conversation will change how you see both.

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

Next week, we're sitting down with Marisa Renee Lee to talk about why the tidy stories we tell ourselves about grief and resilience tend to fall apart, and what it actually looks like to build a life around pain instead of waiting to get past it. Be sure to follow Good Life Project wherever you get your podcasts so you don’t miss any upcoming episodes!

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You know that feeling, like you’re forever running behind in work and life? That you’ll never finally be “there,” or be able to relax and enjoy things. Like the days are just collapsing into each other? Welcome to the wacky world of time anxiety. You are not alone.

Chris Guillebeau has spent fifteen years writing about the questions that keep smart, capable people stuck. He is back on the show to talk about his new book, Time Anxiety, the clearest thing he has written yet on why "get up an hour earlier" backfires and what actually helps.

In this conversation, you'll explore:

Why your brain is chronically wrong about how much time anything takes, and the fifteen-minute fix for chronic lateness
The eighth day exercise, a way to find out what you actually want to do with your time by imagining a day with zero obligation to anyone else
The traffic light method for working with your real energy instead of fighting it
Why swapping the word "productive" for "valuable" changes how a day feels
The shame so many caretakers feel about carving out time for themselves, and the answer Gretchen Rubin gave Chris that changed how he thinks about it

If you've ever felt like your calendar is lying to you about how much time you have, this is the conversation for it.

You can find Chris at: Website | A Year of Mental Health Substack | Instagram | Episode Transcript

Next week, we're sitting down with Dr. Fred Cohen to talk about why almost everything you've been told about migraines is outdated, and what the science actually says about treating them. Be sure to follow Good Life Project wherever you get your podcasts so you don’t miss any upcoming episodes!

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Most of us think the biggest decision about a room is whether it's functional. Leidy Klotz thinks that's the wrong question, and the right one changes how a desk, a kitchen, or an entire return-to-office policy actually lands on the person living inside it.

Leidy Klotz is a behavioral scientist and engineering professor at the University of Virginia who studies how and why humans design. His research has appeared in Nature and Science, and he's been interviewed everywhere from Hidden Brain to Freakonomics to The Atlantic. Before any of that, he spent 22 years as a professional soccer player and then built schools for a living, which is part of why his take on space is so physical and so lived-in.

In this conversation, you'll explore:

The three psychological needs that every space either feeds or starves, and why they trace straight back to hunter-gatherer survival
Why Susan Cain's open-office backlash and today's return-to-office mandates are the same failure wearing different clothes
The strange, well-documented phenomenon of "habituation," including the story of an architecture student who walked past a six-story landmark building for years without ever seeing it
A simple practice called "space before screen," and why the top of a parking garage might be the cheapest awe you'll ever find
What it means to build a space that keeps someone's memory alive, drawn from one of the most personal stories Leidy has ever told on a podcast

If you've ever felt something shift the moment you walked into a certain room and couldn't say why, this conversation gives you the language for it.

You can find Leidy at: Website | LinkedIn | Episode Transcript

Next week, we're sitting down with Chris Guillebeau to talk about why the anxious feeling that you're running out of time might be less about your calendar and more about a story you've never questioned. Be sure to follow Good Life Project wherever you get your podcasts so you don't miss any upcoming episodes!

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By the age of 7, most of us have absorbed the rules that run our financial lives…forever. And almost none of us checked to see if they were true. Not the numbers. The rules. The slogans we heard around the kitchen table about what money means, who deserves it, and what it says about us if we don't have enough of it.

Leisa Peterson spent three decades inside the financial services industry before a near-fatal event forced her to see how far she had drifted from her own life. Today she coaches people, most of them women, on the inherited stories that quietly run their financial decisions long after childhood ends, and how to rewrite them, along with their financial futures.

In this conversation, you'll hear:

Why twins raised in the exact same household can end up in completely different financial and emotional places as adults
The specific questions to ask a financial advisor before you hire one, and the one answer that should make you walk away
Why financial regret research shows the real damage isn't the bad decision, it's the silence around it
How to start defining your own "enough" instead of borrowing someone else's number
What Leisa's husband's diagnosis taught her about the assets that never show up on a bank statement

If you've ever felt behind, ashamed, or just quietly unsure whether you're getting this right, this conversation will change how you think about all of it.

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

Next week, we're sitting down with Leidy Klotz to talk about how the rooms you live in every day shape how much control, connection, and competence you feel, often without you ever noticing it. Be sure to follow Good Life Project wherever you get your podcasts so you don’t miss any upcoming episodes!

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Your body already knows you're stressed before your brain finishes the thought. That tightness in your chest before a hard conversation. The way your stomach drops before you walk into a room full of people. Logic doesn't reach it. Telling yourself you're fine doesn't touch it. What if you could send a direct signal to your nervous system that you're safe, and actually change the chemistry?

Jessica Ortner is a New York Times bestselling author and co-founder of The Tapping Solution, a movement that has brought EFT Tapping to millions worldwide, fueling hundreds of published studies, a massively downloaded app with tens of millions of sessions completed, and work that now extends to veterans, schools, and communities in crisis.

In this conversation, you'll explore:

What tapping is, where it came from, and how it works.
Why positive thinking and reframing often fail, and what the nervous system actually needs to release stress
The cortisol study that shows a serious reduction in stress hormones from a single session, and what that means for your daily life
How tapping physically rewires the brain's response to food cravings, trauma, and intrusive thoughts, with fMRI data to back it
Why your body can hold chronic pain in ways that have nothing to do with the original injury, and tapping might help
How to use tapping covertly before a difficult conversation, a big presentation, or a social situation when anxiety tends to take over

You don't have to believe this works for it to work. You just have to try it.

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

Next week, next week we're sitting down with Leisa Peterson to talk about why the quiet question "am I actually behind with money?" never goes away, no matter how many articles you've read or podcasts you've listened to — and what it actually takes to resolve it at the level it lives. Be sure to follow Good Life Project wherever you get your podcasts so you don't miss any upcoming episodes.

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