Gretchen Rubin / The Onward Project
500 episodes listed below
Sisters Gretchen Rubin and Elizabeth Craft turn the Four Tendencies into weekly habit advice.
Happier with Gretchen Rubin is a warm, practical show about small choices that shape mood, connection, and home life. Episodes move from personal anecdotes into usable rules, from the one-minute rule to organizing styles and the habits that make follow-through easier.
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Happier with Gretchen Rubin is a conversational, sibling-hosted show that has run for over a decade (past its 11th anniversary) without missing a weekly episode. The core format is a two-person panel between Gretchen Rubin, author of The Happiness Project and Secrets of Adulthood, and her sister Elizabeth Craft, a Los Angeles-based TV writer who serves as both co-host and self-described 'guinea pig' for Gretchen's habit experiments. Regular segments include check-ins on ongoing challenges (such as the 'Move 26' movement challenge), responses to listener email and voicemail, and revisits of Rubin's recurring frameworks, especially the Four Tendencies quiz and moderator-versus-abstainer habit typing. Recurring subject matter includes resolution-keeping, relationship connection and disconnection, family rituals and reading habits, home organization, and occasional detours into personal finance. Guest interviews appear periodically and tend to be with other habit- or advice-adjacent podcast hosts and authors, such as financial educator Haley Sachs ('Mrs. Dow Jones'), Marketplace's Reema Khrais, and professional organizer Cass Arson ('Clutterbug'). Executive producer Chuck Reed is referenced by name by the hosts fairly often. Bonus episode strands like 'More Happier' and 'Move Happier' extend the main feed with shorter or guest-driven content. The show also carries heavy sponsor integration, with some episodes' available content dominated by extended ad reads for household and lifestyle products. Listeners are typically people looking for practical, incremental self-improvement advice delivered in a casual, personal, sister-to-sister conversation rather than clinical or academic self-help. The production is unscripted-sounding and personal, drawing on the hosts' own family history, including references to their father's death and their mother's habits, as material for the advice given.
Made for: Listeners looking for practical, incremental happiness and habit-building advice delivered through a casual, personal conversation between two sisters rather than clinical self-help.
What sets it apart: Built around Rubin's own proprietary Four Tendencies framework and an 11-plus-year archive of listener-driven segments, rather than a rotating single-topic or pure guest-interview format common in the self-help category.
Gretchen Rubin is HAPPIER, and she wants you to be happier too. The #1 bestselling author of The Happiness Project and Better Than Before gets more personal than ever as she brings her practical, manageable advice about happiness and good habits to this lively, thought-provoking podcast. Gretchen’s cohost and guinea pig is her younger sister, Elizabeth Craft, a TV writer and producer living in Los Angeles, who (lovingly) refers to Gretchen as her happiness bully. Sales and Distribution by Lemonada Media https://lemonadamedia.com/
The camera roll becomes your backup memory when "Did I lock the door?" starts its encore.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
The episode reframes late-February discouragement as a prompt to adjust course rather than quit.
The show flips the usual late-February script: instead of treating it as the month resolutions go quiet, Gretchen and her co-host call it Determination Day, a cue to check in and adjust rather than quit.
Jonquilyn Hill chases one listener question per episode to the experts who can answer it.
Three hosts and psychologist Dr Emily talk vulnerability, therapy, and imperfection with guests.
Fearne Cotton interviews guests like Boy George and Bryony Gordon about mental health and identity.
Dr. Joy Harden Bradford pairs therapy insight with Black TV recaps, maternal health, and history.
Gretchen Rubin's Move Happier bonus episode pairs with the Move 26 Challenge and frames clutter-clearing as movement.
The transcript available here is dominated by sponsor spots for Caraway and Mill, with Gretchen Rubin and Adam discussing easier home cooking, organized food storage, and a kitchen that feels more workable.
Gretchen Rubin opens Happier with a promise to cover “the seven deadly sins of disconnection” and “a super easy hack” for raising happiness.
This episode features a promotional ad for Mill food recycler and Harvard Business School Executive Education, but the show typically offers practical advice on happiness and good habits.
Gretchen Rubin describes how visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art every day for a year — a practice she began while writing 'Life in Five Senses' and never stopped — became the most transformative experiment of her project.
Gretchen Rubin and Elizabeth Craft discuss practical advice for happiness and good habits.
Gretchen Rubin and Elizabeth Craft discuss practical advice for happiness and good habits, with a sponsor segment for David Protein bars and a promo for Mill food recycler.
This episode features an ad for Mill food recycler and a promo for Harvard Business School Executive Education, but the show's core is about happiness and good habits.
Julie Louis-Dreyfus opens with a direct pitch about Mill, saying food waste “shouldn’t exist” and that about a third of the food we grow ends up in a landfill.
Gretchen Rubin opens with a discussion of why making plans with friends can feel harder than it should, and the episode frames that problem around a specific question: how people can question a questioner without making conversation awkward.
Gretchen Rubin and Elizabeth Craft discuss practical advice for happiness and good habits, with a sponsored segment on food waste reduction.
Julie Louis-Dreyfus opens with a Mill ad that says about a third of the food we grow ends up in a landfill.
Gretchen Rubin and her sister Elizabeth Craft offer practical advice on happiness and good habits in a lively podcast.
This episode features a sponsored ad for Mill food recycler and a promo for Harvard Business School Executive Education, but the show typically offers practical advice on happiness and good habits.
This episode promotes the Mill food recycler as an easy solution to reduce food waste by turning scraps into nutrient-rich grounds instead of sending them to landfills.
The episode begins with a sponsored ad for Mill food recycler, then transitions into the show's theme of happiness and good habits.
This episode features an ad for Mill food recycler and Harvard Business School Executive Education, but the show's core is about happiness and good habits.
Gretchen Rubin and Elizabeth Craft discuss practical strategies for increasing happiness and building good habits.
Gretchen Rubin offers practical advice on happiness and good habits, often with her sister Elizabeth Craft.
Determination Day gets a softer second chance.
Gretchen Rubin offers practical advice on happiness and good habits, with a personal and lively approach.
The episode begins with a sponsored ad for Mill food recycler, then transitions into the show's theme of happiness and good habits.
Gretchen Rubin offers practical advice on happiness and good habits, with personal anecdotes and sisterly banter.
This episode features an ad for Mill food recycler and a promo for Harvard Business School Executive Education, but the show's core is about happiness and good habits.
This episode features an ad for Mill food recycler and Harvard Business School Executive Education, promoting sustainability and leadership development.
This episode features a sponsored ad for Mill food recycler and a promo for Harvard Business School Executive Education, but the show typically offers practical advice on happiness and good habits.
Gretchen Rubin and her sister Elizabeth Craft discuss practical advice for happiness and good habits.
Gretchen Rubin offers practical advice on happiness and good habits, often with her sister Elizabeth Craft, in a lively and personal podcast.