May 27, 2025 • 17 mins
The following conversation was part of the KGB and Western Plots Against the Soviet Union event, hosted by the Hoover Applied History Working Group on on Friday, May 9, 2025.
ABOUT THE TALK
Stanford associate professor of history Amir Weiner joins Milbank Senior Fellow Niall Ferguson as part of a discussion of the Hoover Institution Applied History Working Group seminar series, previewing his forthcoming book, At Home with the KGB: A New History of the Soviet Security Service. Weiner examines how the Soviet security service-maintained control after Stalin—not through overt violence, but using methods such as psychological pressure, surveillance, and deeply embedded conspiratorial thinking.
The conversation explores how the KGB adapted, shaped leadership transitions, and ultimately failed to prevent the Soviet collapse—offering fresh insights into the Cold War era and the mindset of its most notorious alumnus, Vladimir Putin.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
[MUSIC]
>> Niall Ferguson (00:07):
Hello, my name's Niall Ferguson.
I'm the Millbank Family Senior Fellowhere at the Hoover Institution and
I'm also the director ofthe Applied History Working Group.
And today we've had the goodfortune of hearing a terrific
presentation by our guest andnear neighbourhood Professor Amir Weiner,
who is a director of the center forRussian East European and
(00:30):
Eurasian Studies as well as a professorof history here at Stanford.
Welcome, Amir.
You're here to tell us about your newbook, or at least a part of the new book.
And the book which iscoming out next year,
will be called At Home with the A NewHistory of the Soviet Security Service.
But the subject of yourtalk today was the KGB and
(00:54):
Western plots against the Soviet Union.
Well, everybody knows about the kgb.
It's one of the few things thateverybody knows about the history
of the Soviet Union.
And we also feel as if the KGBnever went away because, of course,
President Vladimir Putin was inhis young day, a KGB operative.
(01:14):
One of the key points that you'remaking in your new book is
that the KGB's antics abroad,though they were quite successful
as espionage weren'tdecisively in the Cold War.
Ultimately, it didn'tsave the Soviet Union.
But at home,the KGB was highly effective in keeping
the system going afterthe period of Stalinist terror.
(01:38):
How did it keep the Soviet Union going andwhat have you learned from writing
this book about the KGB that willchange the way we think about it?
>> Amir Weiner (01:48):
First of all, thanks for having me.
The KGB was very intrusive.
It simply adjusted.
It was continually adoptingthe new changes and
quite successfully whenit was told to do so.
It was restructured, it was cut tosize by Stalin's successors before
it made it its huge comeback under YuriAndropov in the late 60s, early 1970s.
(02:15):
But it started operating new methods,like, for instance,
prophylactica, prophylactic measures,which meant trying to nip
in the bud problems andtroublemakers before they burst on stage.
Which means that treatingmisdemeanors as they occur before
(02:36):
they metamorphose into political problems.
And in this case, about 330,000 Sovietcitizens are subjected to these
prophylactic chats with the KGBoperatives or their representatives.
It is peaceful, it is not pleasant,it's a psychological terror 101.
(02:56):
But it was quite effective in deterringpeople, shattering social fabric and
intimidating them enough thatthe very small rate of recidivism and
holding it quite tight untilthe very end when the new leadership
is beginning to change the system itself.
And then the KGB is Struggling to adjust.
(03:19):
Most important to remember.
Remember, the KGB never went away.
Political police never wentaway in the transition.
Not from Stalin to his successors,
not from the Soviet to theirRussian Federation successor.
Political police was always there.
>> Niall Ferguson (03:35):
So one point you make is that the KGB contrasted its methods
with those of its predecessors,the nkvd, which were notoriously brutal.
The KGB preferred not to use violence,
though it certainly alwayscarried the threat of violence.
(03:57):
As I was reading some of the interviewsthat you did with former KGB operatives,
I was wondering if they were somewhatwhitewashing the role of violence in
the period that you're interested in,in the 50s and 60s and 70s.
It does happen.
There are cells where people getbeaten up and there's a threat,
(04:18):
sometimes an explicit threat.
You gave the example of Nathan Sharansky,
in effect being told youmight not leave here alive.
Talk about the role of violencein the way the KGB functioned.
It was there always as at least a threat,wasn't it?
>> Amir Weiner (04:34):
It is hanging over constantly the threat of violence.
People are afraid when they are summonedto the KGB offices even for
these prophylactic chats,as the KGB understands very well,
they are shaking in their boots.
They use some other language,
a little bit rougher language of thereaction of people who are being summoned.
(04:55):
They are aware of this.
People are afraid of the kgb.
Very few of them are walkingnonchalantly and
in confidence to the KGB officers.
But violence is hardly used.
And again, this is not justthe KGB whitewashing itself.
(05:16):
This is testimonies of people who were so
called processed by the kgb,including dissidents.
Now of course, when they are put inprisons, they are being graphed up and
that's a different story when theyare locked in psychiatric clinics.
They are notorious psychiatric clinics,and there's large number of them.
(05:37):
This is a different story.
But while the KGB directly handles them,
violence is almost always off the tableand they feel that they don't need it.
>> Niall Ferguson (05:47):
Now something fascinating that you talked about today is
the KGB's predilection forconspiracy theories.
And it's as if something happensin 1962 that reactivates
the long standing Sovietfear of outside influence.
Talk about the events of 1962 andhow those events led to a new
(06:11):
sense of conspiracy againstthe Soviet Union from foreign agents.
>> Amir Weiner (06:16):
1962 is what I would call the perfect storm from all directions.
It is the Cuban Missile crisis thatrattled them behind closed doors,
of course.
It is the bread riots throughoutthe Soviet Union when Soviet
workers are cursing openlythe Soviet leadership and
(06:40):
becoming more and More violent.
It's the bread riots,
national rifts thatare coming on surface and
of course the Western reaction to it.
And I mentioned in this casecertain Western publicist
(07:01):
that really touched rawnerve with the Soviets.
All of this coming togetherto rattle them and
almost forcing them to goback to certain Stalinist
ideas of the master plots,conspiratorial plots.
They were never away from it.
(07:23):
This is a conspiratorial organization.
If you just think abouthow they came to being.
The KGB is born in a conspiracyagainst its predecessor.
The demotion, and dismissal,and execution of Birya.
It's their own master plot in whichthey participate, took active roles.
(07:44):
So they are born in conspiracy and
they conspire very often againstother parts of the leadership.
They are the one behind the dismissalof Nikita Khrushchev in 1964.
Without them it couldn't happen.
Although they did not orchestrate it.
This is an organization that livesbreathe and its conspiracies and
(08:07):
when it looks around has a lotof reasons to be suspicious.
And I mentioned in my talk earlier,
1956 Hungary that startedfrom a minuscule protest and
turned into the toppling down of acommunist regime, if only for a few days.
But this is an alarming.
>> Niall Ferguson (08:27):
You talk about an obscure German op ed that
becomes a kind of seedof a conspiracy theory.
And I was surprised I hadn'teven heard of its author.
And talk a little bit about how they foundevidence of the conspiracy in of all
places, a German foreign policy magazine.
>> Amir Weiner (08:49):
Well. They do read the Western
literature constantly.
There are teams of people who werereading these foreign publications.
The interesting partwas the KGB colonel who
informs his colleaguesabout it himself was a spy.
Although at the time whenhe's writing the rebuttal and
(09:13):
the marching orders to his guys,he's in the Soviet Union.
But later we know that hewas a spy in a certain
capitalist country that theydon't specify years later.
So quite likely he also spoke andread the language.
I suspect that he was working in Germany.
(09:33):
But certainly his rebuttalto Allard von Schaeck
was based on very intimatefamiliarity with the essay.
But this is nothing rare toreact to Western publications.
But this one, I admit threw me offa little bit that they take something
(09:55):
that who on earth was readingthese publications at the time?
The House and Politik is beingread by experts in foreign policy,
but it's still in German,but they refer to it, and
this comes the slight absurdity asthe American magazine House and Politik.
(10:15):
So There's a certain parochialityside by side with the knowledge of
the familiarity of foreign languages.
>> Niall Ferguson (10:24):
Speaking of KGB operatives with good German,
Vladimir Putin has become the mostinfluential alumnus of the kgb.
Do you think your book helpsus better understand him?
Because he's become one of the greatpuzzles for Western policymakers
(10:45):
who even up until the eve of hisall out onslaught on Ukraine was,
I think,being misunderstood by supposed experts.
Can we learn a bit more about Putin fromunderstanding the world he came from in
your book?
>> Amir Weiner (11:00):
Yes, by the way, just as an anecdotal,
one of the intervieweesthat quite prominent
in my book was a classmateof Putin in the academy.
And as he remembers him as a short guywith whiskers who did not socialize
(11:21):
with non Russians and does it make forsomething I don't know,
but he doesn't rememberhim uniquely fondly and.
>> Niall Ferguson (11:30):
He volunteered at 16, walked into the KGB office and said,
where do I join?
And they said, that's not how it works.
>> Amir Weiner (11:37):
Studying Putin is a study of mythology that is very carefully built.
I don't know, I cannot vouch for.
That's what he said in his socalled autobiography,
Interviews in First Person, it's called,that came out when he came to power.
It's sort of self aggrandizing andhumanizing,
(11:58):
someone who the worlddid not know much about.
Certain things that he saysthere certainly resonate with
a lot of the things that we hear about and
learn about other KGB officers in termsof the training, in terms of the pride.
He wanted to be a spy.
So many of them wanted to be a spy.
(12:19):
They want to be a Soviet James Bond.
They had their own Soviet James Bond.
Here in the west we don't know much, buta guy named Stirly, it's a fictional
character that they created inone of the most popular books and
TV shows, 17 moments of spring.
So his aspirations, his dreams of beinga spy are shared by thousands and
(12:42):
thousands of people whowanted to become spies.
With one difference.
The story of volunteering to the KGBdoesn't resonate that well because the KGB
was not a volunteer organization.
You not offer your services to the KGB.
It is not the CIA or MI6.
They came to you.
(13:03):
So he says that he wanted to join atthe age of 16 and was sent home to study.
One of the people I worked with andstudied was much the same that also
called them, because he called them,he was under suspicion.
And so they studied him a long,long time before they allowed him.
And apparently there was reason to besuspicious because later on he's one
(13:27):
of those who lead the inside rebellionof Lithuanian KGB officers during
glasnost and towards independence.
So they have a reason not to takevolunteers or wannabe Soviet James Bonds.
>> Niall Ferguson (13:41):
One last question.
This was an organization that was ableto keep the Soviet population under
tight control, snuff outthe dissident movement of the 1970s,
and yet at the end it couldnot stop the Soviet collapse.
What's your explanation forits ultimate failure?
>> Amir Weiner (14:02):
A variety of reasons.
There's not a single one.
I would simply say thisis an organization that
relied on getting its ordersfrom the civilian bosses.
And when the party isbeginning to lose its grip and
beginning to lose its confidence,the KGB is asking for
orders, what to do, how to dealwith nationalist demonstrations,
(14:26):
rough them up,make peace with them, et cetera.
At the beginning they tell them,do what you think.
And at a certain point,they don't even answer.
So they lose their leadership.
And they don't know they are nottrained to operate on their own,
to take these cataclysmicdecision on their own.
Second, this is an organization thatbecomes, for lack of better word,
(14:49):
vegetarian.
They don't shed bloodduring the Soviet era and
this is not a recommendation to shedblood, but they forgot how to do it.
And the last time thatthey've done it was in 1962.
They participated in these bloodysuppression of Novocherkassk,
and they vowed never ever to repeat it.
(15:11):
So they are not used tosimply shedding blood.
And this is detrimental foran organization that is in charge
of rescuing,protecting a crumbling organization.
Third, they are being swampedby their own conspiratorial
thinking that deviates thatlead to deviation from
(15:34):
focusing on the core realissues that were taking place.
And finally, this is an organization thathas become bureaucratized more and more.
We rejoice now when we go to the archives.
And we don't even know how to handle thesemyriad of documents on this and that.
(15:55):
But the question that we have toask ourselves, was it too much?
Did they gather so much informationthat was beyond digestions?
What's good forhistorians was not good for operatives.
>> Niall Ferguson (16:06):
That's a good note on which to end this conversation.
Amir, your book will come out next yearat Home with the KGB A New History of
the Soviet Security Service.
We'll all look forwardvery much to reading that.
Thanks so much for joining us here atthe Applied History Working Group.
It was an absolutely fascinating talk andit's really whetted my appetite for
(16:26):
the book as a whole.
That's it.
From the Hoover History working.
Applied History working group from me,Niall Ferguson.
We look forward to inviting you backto our seminar series in the next
academic year.
[MUSIC]
>> Niall Ferguson (00:07):
Hello, my name's Niall Ferguson.
I'm the Millbank Family Senior Fellowhere at the Hoover Institution and
I'm also the director ofthe Applied History Working Group.
And today we've had the goodfortune of hearing a terrific
presentation by our guest andnear neighbourhood Professor Amir Weiner,
who is a director of the center forRussian East European and
(00:30):
Eurasian Studies as well as a professorof history here at Stanford.
Welcome, Amir.
You're here to tell us about your newbook, or at least a part of the new book.
And the book which iscoming out next year,
will be called At Home with the A NewHistory of the Soviet Security Service.
But the subject of yourtalk today was the KGB and
(00:54):
Western plots against the Soviet Union.
Well, everybody knows about the kgb.
It's one of the few things thateverybody knows about the history
of the Soviet Union.
And we also feel as if the KGBnever went away because, of course,
President Vladimir Putin was inhis young day, a KGB operative.
(01:14):
One of the key points that you'remaking in your new book is
that the KGB's antics abroad,though they were quite successful
as espionage weren'tdecisively in the Cold War.
Ultimately, it didn'tsave the Soviet Union.
But at home,the KGB was highly effective in keeping
the system going afterthe period of Stalinist terror.
(01:38):
How did it keep the Soviet Union going andwhat have you learned from writing
this book about the KGB that willchange the way we think about it?
>> Amir Weiner (01:48):
First of all, thanks for having me.
The KGB was very intrusive.
It simply adjusted.
It was continually adoptingthe new changes and
quite successfully whenit was told to do so.
It was restructured, it was cut tosize by Stalin's successors before
it made it its huge comeback under YuriAndropov in the late 60s, early 1970s.
(02:15):
But it started operating new methods,like, for instance,
prophylactica, prophylactic measures,which meant trying to nip
in the bud problems andtroublemakers before they burst on stage.
Which means that treatingmisdemeanors as they occur before
(02:36):
they metamorphose into political problems.
And in this case, about 330,000 Sovietcitizens are subjected to these
prophylactic chats with the KGBoperatives or their representatives.
It is peaceful, it is not pleasant,it's a psychological terror 101.
(02:56):
But it was quite effective in deterringpeople, shattering social fabric and
intimidating them enough thatthe very small rate of recidivism and
holding it quite tight untilthe very end when the new leadership
is beginning to change the system itself.
And then the KGB is Struggling to adjust.
(03:19):
Most important to remember.
Remember, the KGB never went away.
Political police never wentaway in the transition.
Not from Stalin to his successors,
not from the Soviet to theirRussian Federation successor.
Political police was always there.
>> Niall Ferguson (03:35):
So one point you make is that the KGB contrasted its methods
with those of its predecessors,the nkvd, which were notoriously brutal.
The KGB preferred not to use violence,
though it certainly alwayscarried the threat of violence.
(03:57):
As I was reading some of the interviewsthat you did with former KGB operatives,
I was wondering if they were somewhatwhitewashing the role of violence in
the period that you're interested in,in the 50s and 60s and 70s.
It does happen.
There are cells where people getbeaten up and there's a threat,
(04:18):
sometimes an explicit threat.
You gave the example of Nathan Sharansky,
in effect being told youmight not leave here alive.
Talk about the role of violencein the way the KGB functioned.
It was there always as at least a threat,wasn't it?
>> Amir Weiner (04:34):
It is hanging over constantly the threat of violence.
People are afraid when they are summonedto the KGB offices even for
these prophylactic chats,as the KGB understands very well,
they are shaking in their boots.
They use some other language,
a little bit rougher language of thereaction of people who are being summoned.
(04:55):
They are aware of this.
People are afraid of the kgb.
Very few of them are walkingnonchalantly and
in confidence to the KGB officers.
But violence is hardly used.
And again, this is not justthe KGB whitewashing itself.
(05:16):
This is testimonies of people who were so
called processed by the kgb,including dissidents.
Now of course, when they are put inprisons, they are being graphed up and
that's a different story when theyare locked in psychiatric clinics.
They are notorious psychiatric clinics,and there's large number of them.
(05:37):
This is a different story.
But while the KGB directly handles them,
violence is almost always off the tableand they feel that they don't need it.
>> Niall Ferguson (05:47):
Now something fascinating that you talked about today is
the KGB's predilection forconspiracy theories.
And it's as if something happensin 1962 that reactivates
the long standing Sovietfear of outside influence.
Talk about the events of 1962 andhow those events led to a new
(06:11):
sense of conspiracy againstthe Soviet Union from foreign agents.
>> Amir Weiner (06:16):
1962 is what I would call the perfect storm from all directions.
It is the Cuban Missile crisis thatrattled them behind closed doors,
of course.
It is the bread riots throughoutthe Soviet Union when Soviet
workers are cursing openlythe Soviet leadership and
(06:40):
becoming more and More violent.
It's the bread riots,
national rifts thatare coming on surface and
of course the Western reaction to it.
And I mentioned in this casecertain Western publicist
(07:01):
that really touched rawnerve with the Soviets.
All of this coming togetherto rattle them and
almost forcing them to goback to certain Stalinist
ideas of the master plots,conspiratorial plots.
They were never away from it.
(07:23):
This is a conspiratorial organization.
If you just think abouthow they came to being.
The KGB is born in a conspiracyagainst its predecessor.
The demotion, and dismissal,and execution of Birya.
It's their own master plot in whichthey participate, took active roles.
(07:44):
So they are born in conspiracy and
they conspire very often againstother parts of the leadership.
They are the one behind the dismissalof Nikita Khrushchev in 1964.
Without them it couldn't happen.
Although they did not orchestrate it.
This is an organization that livesbreathe and its conspiracies and
(08:07):
when it looks around has a lotof reasons to be suspicious.
And I mentioned in my talk earlier,
1956 Hungary that startedfrom a minuscule protest and
turned into the toppling down of acommunist regime, if only for a few days.
But this is an alarming.
>> Niall Ferguson (08:27):
You talk about an obscure German op ed that
becomes a kind of seedof a conspiracy theory.
And I was surprised I hadn'teven heard of its author.
And talk a little bit about how they foundevidence of the conspiracy in of all
places, a German foreign policy magazine.
>> Amir Weiner (08:49):
Well. They do read the Western
literature constantly.
There are teams of people who werereading these foreign publications.
The interesting partwas the KGB colonel who
informs his colleaguesabout it himself was a spy.
Although at the time whenhe's writing the rebuttal and
(09:13):
the marching orders to his guys,he's in the Soviet Union.
But later we know that hewas a spy in a certain
capitalist country that theydon't specify years later.
So quite likely he also spoke andread the language.
I suspect that he was working in Germany.
(09:33):
But certainly his rebuttalto Allard von Schaeck
was based on very intimatefamiliarity with the essay.
But this is nothing rare toreact to Western publications.
But this one, I admit threw me offa little bit that they take something
(09:55):
that who on earth was readingthese publications at the time?
The House and Politik is beingread by experts in foreign policy,
but it's still in German,but they refer to it, and
this comes the slight absurdity asthe American magazine House and Politik.
(10:15):
So There's a certain parochialityside by side with the knowledge of
the familiarity of foreign languages.
>> Niall Ferguson (10:24):
Speaking of KGB operatives with good German,
Vladimir Putin has become the mostinfluential alumnus of the kgb.
Do you think your book helpsus better understand him?
Because he's become one of the greatpuzzles for Western policymakers
(10:45):
who even up until the eve of hisall out onslaught on Ukraine was,
I think,being misunderstood by supposed experts.
Can we learn a bit more about Putin fromunderstanding the world he came from in
your book?
>> Amir Weiner (11:00):
Yes, by the way, just as an anecdotal,
one of the intervieweesthat quite prominent
in my book was a classmateof Putin in the academy.
And as he remembers him as a short guywith whiskers who did not socialize
(11:21):
with non Russians and does it make forsomething I don't know,
but he doesn't rememberhim uniquely fondly and.
>> Niall Ferguson (11:30):
He volunteered at 16, walked into the KGB office and said,
where do I join?
And they said, that's not how it works.
>> Amir Weiner (11:37):
Studying Putin is a study of mythology that is very carefully built.
I don't know, I cannot vouch for.
That's what he said in his socalled autobiography,
Interviews in First Person, it's called,that came out when he came to power.
It's sort of self aggrandizing andhumanizing,
(11:58):
someone who the worlddid not know much about.
Certain things that he saysthere certainly resonate with
a lot of the things that we hear about and
learn about other KGB officers in termsof the training, in terms of the pride.
He wanted to be a spy.
So many of them wanted to be a spy.
(12:19):
They want to be a Soviet James Bond.
They had their own Soviet James Bond.
Here in the west we don't know much, buta guy named Stirly, it's a fictional
character that they created inone of the most popular books and
TV shows, 17 moments of spring.
So his aspirations, his dreams of beinga spy are shared by thousands and
(12:42):
thousands of people whowanted to become spies.
With one difference.
The story of volunteering to the KGBdoesn't resonate that well because the KGB
was not a volunteer organization.
You not offer your services to the KGB.
It is not the CIA or MI6.
They came to you.
(13:03):
So he says that he wanted to join atthe age of 16 and was sent home to study.
One of the people I worked with andstudied was much the same that also
called them, because he called them,he was under suspicion.
And so they studied him a long,long time before they allowed him.
And apparently there was reason to besuspicious because later on he's one
(13:27):
of those who lead the inside rebellionof Lithuanian KGB officers during
glasnost and towards independence.
So they have a reason not to takevolunteers or wannabe Soviet James Bonds.
>> Niall Ferguson (13:41):
One last question.
This was an organization that was ableto keep the Soviet population under
tight control, snuff outthe dissident movement of the 1970s,
and yet at the end it couldnot stop the Soviet collapse.
What's your explanation forits ultimate failure?
>> Amir Weiner (14:02):
A variety of reasons.
There's not a single one.
I would simply say thisis an organization that
relied on getting its ordersfrom the civilian bosses.
And when the party isbeginning to lose its grip and
beginning to lose its confidence,the KGB is asking for
orders, what to do, how to dealwith nationalist demonstrations,
(14:26):
rough them up,make peace with them, et cetera.
At the beginning they tell them,do what you think.
And at a certain point,they don't even answer.
So they lose their leadership.
And they don't know they are nottrained to operate on their own,
to take these cataclysmicdecision on their own.
Second, this is an organization thatbecomes, for lack of better word,
(14:49):
vegetarian.
They don't shed bloodduring the Soviet era and
this is not a recommendation to shedblood, but they forgot how to do it.
And the last time thatthey've done it was in 1962.
They participated in these bloodysuppression of Novocherkassk,
and they vowed never ever to repeat it.
(15:11):
So they are not used tosimply shedding blood.
And this is detrimental foran organization that is in charge
of rescuing,protecting a crumbling organization.
Third, they are being swampedby their own conspiratorial
thinking that deviates thatlead to deviation from
(15:34):
focusing on the core realissues that were taking place.
And finally, this is an organization thathas become bureaucratized more and more.
We rejoice now when we go to the archives.
And we don't even know how to handle thesemyriad of documents on this and that.
(15:55):
But the question that we have toask ourselves, was it too much?
Did they gather so much informationthat was beyond digestions?
What's good forhistorians was not good for operatives.
>> Niall Ferguson (16:06):
That's a good note on which to end this conversation.
Amir, your book will come out next yearat Home with the KGB A New History of
the Soviet Security Service.
We'll all look forwardvery much to reading that.
Thanks so much for joining us here atthe Applied History Working Group.
It was an absolutely fascinating talk andit's really whetted my appetite for
(16:26):
the book as a whole.
That's it.
From the Hoover History working.
Applied History working group from me,Niall Ferguson.
We look forward to inviting you backto our seminar series in the next
academic year.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!