Kelly Corrigan Wonders

Today is #3 in a special 5-part series about moms in honor of Every Mother Counts. Bono lost his mother Iris when he was 14 years old. She had an aneurysm at her father’s funeral and as he says, he’s been singing to her ever since. This is a very special conversation, possibly my favorite interview of all time, made more lovely and intimate by the friendship between Bono and Christy going back many years now.

This seri...

Today is #2 in a special 5-part series about moms in honor of Every Mother Counts. Amy Schumer is as sharp a writer as she is a performer. I love her always-on-point work in Life & Beth, Trainwreck and all 44 episodes of Inside Amy Schumer. She’s honest in way I wish more people were and you’ll hear that in this candid conversation about her mother, Sandra.

This series hopes to raise $100,000 to support maternal he...

Today begins a 5-part series of conversations about moms in honor of Every Mother Counts. Jen G, as we call her in my house, is as special and wonderful as you think she is. She is such a ready learner that she carries around a pen and notebook everywhere she goes. She cares about all the right things and not one bit of the nonsense. She is still, in many essential ways, one of the “Garner girls” from West Virginia. T...

You cannot talk about well-being without talking about our connections. As my guest, the divine Esther Perel, makes gin clear, the quality of our relationships determines the quality of our lives. Esther, a Belgian psychotherapist and bestselling author of State of Affairs and Mating in Captivity, has spent as much time investigating and evaluating relationships as anyone on earth. Joining us for this essential discussio...

At this time of year, we are knee-deep in sports: college lacrosse, the NBA play-offs and all the golf majors. Where there are sports, there are adjectives describing the athletes and where there are sports championships, those adjectives are garish and piled-high. Kelly wonders if maybe it’s time to use those dazzling descriptors to honor not the elite athletes out there but the army of regular, everyday, hard-working mo...

Doctors Julie Schwartz Gottman and John Gottman are probably the world’s reigning experts on relationships. They are well into their 5th decade of research that reveals why we treat each other as we do and how a few small but essential adjustments to our everyday patterns could change our relationships for the better. Everything we talked about is applicable across the board - from couples to parents and children and all...

Dr. Leanne Williams is determined to spare people the suffering she’s endured. Her partner of many years died by suicide after fighting a depression that resisted all treatment. She has devoted her life as a scientist at Stanford to applying the principles and tactics of precision medicine to depression, which she has categorized into sub-types (much as was done with cancer decades ago). Joining me in this conversation ...

Nancy Brown, a military spouse of 19 years, wrote this loving tribute for her two best deployment buddies. It honors the way the three friends formed one great big family while living through several deployments in Eastern North Carolina. Three women, no husbands and nine children all dressed in each other's hand-me-downs. On paper, they were more different than alike but maybe that's a more accurate description of a fami...

I’ve done it again. I accidentally saw the world through my own lens and forgot all the other ways life unfolds for the people who listen to this show. Thanks to a listener named Micah Boyett who sent a lovely piece of unmistakable feedback — coated in genuine kindness — I learned the lesson again. We really respect our listeners and find your emails invaluable as we steer this ship we’ve built. Write any time. hello@...

How much can we blame DNA for our depression and anxiety? Is something about our mental health pre-written into our genetic code? How much trauma carries over from one generation to the next? How should we think about epi-genetics? These were 4 of the 20 questions I brought to Dr. Francis Collins, the guy who let the team that mapped the human genome. There’s two things I want to say about this episode: I learned so...

When my girls were young, I must have told them a hundred times: you get what you give. I believe it like I believe the sun will rise tomorrow. Chris Anderson, the genius do-gooder behind TED, believes it too. And with good reason. He’s seen generous giving pay off in big ways — giving his brand to TEDx conferences around the world, giving away TED speeches to anyone who wanted them online, giving attention, support an...

Here’s why I had to sit with Dr. Dima Amso, who teaches and runs a lab that studies developmental cognition at Columbia: in a sea of hyperbole, she offers the voice of sanity and moderation, clarifying basic ideas like “good enough parenting.” For anyone who wonders how well-being is affected by our earliest childhood environments and relationships, this is the conversation for you. Please share widely with everyone who ...

There is a lot to know about what makes love last. People like John Gottman and Helen Fisher have been studying sex, love and connection for decades. Here’s a few excellent ideas to hold on to as you live out the day to day of your core relationships. Very good episode to share with your partner. Will start a valuable conversation! (Previously aired.)

Kelly mentions that our episode with Dr. Helen Fisher will air next...

Is it nature? Is it nurture? Is it daily choices or the contexts we live in? What are the drivers of well being? This conversation kicks off a 10-part series of Being Well where we talk to the best researchers and scientists in the country about how to feel good about our lives and in our lives — what’s true and trustworthy and evident in the data … and what’s a bunch of Tik Tok nonsense. Today, we’re with two friends...