Saying The Quiet Parts Out Loud
There is a particular kind of relief that comes from hearing someone say the thing you have been thinking but never said. Not a polished, packaged version of it. The actual, unedited, slightly embarrassing version. The one you weren't sure anyone else felt.
That is what We Can Do Hard Things does, week after week, with over half a billion plays to show for it.
Who's in the Room
The podcast is hosted by three women who are also, somehow, a complete ecosystem of support on their own.
Glennon Doyle is the author of Untamed, the book that became a lifeline for millions when it landed at the start of the pandemic. The phrase at its centre, "we can do hard things," was a mantra she had carried for twenty years before it became a worldwide rally cry. She brings the emotional architecture of the show: the willingness to go first, to say the hard thing, to sit in the mess without rushing to resolution.
Abby Wambach is Glennon's wife, a two-time Olympic gold medalist and FIFA World Cup champion who turns out to be equally fluent in vulnerability as she is in sport. She grounds the conversations with a kind of no-nonsense warmth that stops them from floating away into abstraction.
Amanda Doyle is Glennon's sister, and the one listeners often describe as the voice of reason. She brings precision and sharp thinking to conversations that could easily become too tender to hold their shape. Lately she has also become the show's investigative thread, going deep on political and social stories that affect women directly.
Together they call themselves the Pod Squad. And listening to them, you understand exactly why their community sold out a ten-city live tour within hours.
What They Actually Talk About
The honest answer is: everything.
Addiction and recovery. Marriage, divorce, and what love actually requires of us. Motherhood and the ambivalence that comes with it. Body image. Sexuality. Grief. Boundaries and why setting them is so hard for women specifically. Mental health, therapy, and what it means to really ask for help. Political realities that land differently in a woman's body. And regularly, on what they call Easy Fridays, absolutely nothing heavy at all.
The guest list is a testament to what this show has built. Brené Brown has joined them. Esther Perel. Martha Beck. Poets, therapists, activists, Holocaust survivors, scientists. The conversations tend to feature both lived experience and research, which is what separates this podcast from the large category of shows that feel good but leave you with nothing to stand on.
They have also raised over $56 million in global aid through their nonprofit work. The Pod Squad, as it turns out, goes hard and stays soft at the same time.
Why It Belongs Here
From a mental wellness perspective, what this podcast does consistently well is model something that is genuinely therapeutic: honest, non-performative disclosure within a relationship of trust.
Glennon is not performing wellness. She is not telling you she has figured it out. She is sharing what she calls "the messy middle," the space between knowing you need to change and actually getting there, and she does it without flinching. That is rare. And for women who are used to consuming content that tells them who to be, hearing someone sit openly in who they still are becoming is quietly revolutionary.
"We do the only thing that has ever made life easier: we talk honestly about the hard. We laugh and cry and help each other carry the hard so we can all live a little bit lighter and braver, free-er, less alone."
What to Expect as a New Listener
Episodes run roughly an hour. They publish weekly, with bonus content throughout. The back catalogue is extensive and well worth going back into.
A few places to start:
- Any episode featuring Martha Beck, for the way she talks about listening to your body over your mind
- Episodes on boundaries, which Glennon and her co-hosts discuss with unusual specificity and honesty
- The Andrea Gibson episode, which many listeners describe as one of the most moving hours of audio they have ever encountered
The podcast is free, available on every platform, and requires nothing from you except a pair of headphones and the willingness to feel something.
If you have never read Untamed, the book that started all of this, it is worth knowing it exists. But the podcast stands entirely on its own. Start anywhere. You will find your way in.