The LIVING Room Podcast | Inside The WNDR Lab

Is the room you're sitting in quietly aging you? Dr. Esther Sternberg, the Research Director of the Andrew Weil Center for Integrative Medicine and Professor of Medicine at the University of Arizona, says the answer is yes. The numbers are stark: Americans spend over 98% of their time indoors. People working in well-designed open offices move 32% more during the day than people in private offices, and are 14% less stressed at night. Chronic stress can leave your telomeres looking 10 to ...

Are stem cells used for ‘better aging’ a fairytale future or a near reality? This conversation lays out what stem cell therapies actually are, where today’s methods stand, and where the legitimate research is actually headed. Our guest Dr. Darcie Moore, PhD, studies neural stem cells in the adult brain at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, a lab internationally known for stem cell research. Stem cells are what keep tissue regenerating throughout life, replenishing it, repairing it, and kee...

In this conversation our host, Chris Wharton, does a deep dive on the media phenomenon Chris Williamson who hosts the billion-view YT channel Modern Wisdom where he has interviewed over 1,100 guests. In this honest conversation, Williamson opens up about how he, despite having gained insights from experts from around the world, for two years was at a loss when his own body started falling apart. Chris Williamson runs the world's largest interview and self-improvement podcasts, with over 4...

Why do two people on the exact same exercise program end up with completely different results — and what does that mean for the roughly 80 percent of American adults who aren't getting enough exercise in the first place? Professor John Hawley is the Director of the Centre for Human Metabolism & Performance at Australian Catholic University in Melbourne and has published more than 300 scientific papers on the interaction between exercise and nutrition. This conversation keeps coming back...

What if the device on your wrist could warn you that you have a life-threatening illness before you feel a single symptom? That's exactly what happened to our guest — twice. Dr. Michael Snyder is the Director of the Center for Genomics and Personalized Medicine at Stanford University. Nicknamed “medicine's most measured man,” he pioneered the Integrative Personal Omics Profiling (iPOP) study by turning himself into the first subject — tracking his genome, blood, urine, and even his gut ...

What is aging? Why is it the single biggest predictor of disease? And which of the most talked-about anti-aging interventions — telomere extension, biological age tests, supplements — actually hold up? In this conversation we talk to Dr. Vera Gorbunova and Dr. Andrei Seluanov who run a research lab together at the University of Rochester where they study the biology of aging across dozens of long-lived species — from naked mole rats to bowhead whales. A naked mole rat is roughly the s...

Why do women spend the last 5–6 years of life in worse health than men — and what does it have to do with your ovaries? Only 8–9% of NIH research funding goes to women’s health research, and by some estimates as little as 4% of private R&D investment goes to anything outside female cancers, fertility, and maternal-fetal health combined. Meanwhile, cardiovascular disease risk can rise 2–4x almost overnight at menopause — a shift most women are never warned about. In this episode, Chris is ...

What's actually in the syringe when you buy a peptide off the black market? Now that the FDA regulation around 6 of these black market peptides is changing, should you be taking them? Should you be concerned about the link between GLP-1 use and lean tissue loss? Dr. Pinchas Cohen, PhD, is the scientist who co-discovered humanin and MOTS-c — two of the mitochondrial-derived peptides now driving the biggest wave of interest in longevity science — and he currently serves as Dean of the USC Leona...

She oversees nutrition for Olympic swimmers, pro footballers, and some of the all-time greats in both Cycling and Tennis. Her biggest lesson? Rigid diet rules cause more harm than good. Dr. Louise Burke spent three decades as Head of Nutrition at the Australian Institute of Sport, overseeing the diets of Olympic gold medalists across swimming, track and field, and professional football. Her work has shaped how elite athletes fuel for performance — yet her most urgent message has nothing to d...

Which anti-aging skincare products actually work according to science, and which are just hype? Board-certified dermatologist and Clinical Associate Professor of Dermatology at George Washington University, Dr. Noëlle Sherber cuts through the noise with an evidence-based breakdown of sunscreen, retinoids, peptides, injectables, and more. Anti-aging skincare has become so crowded with products, procedures, and conflicting advice that building an effective routine feels nearly impossible. Dr. N...

What if everything you're doing for your health — the diet, the exercise, the supplements — depends on something you may be overlooking every night? Matthew Walker, PhD, neuroscientist, sleep expert, and professor of neuroscience and biomedical engineering at UT Dallas, founder of the Center for Human Sleep Science, and author of the New York Times bestseller Why We Sleep joins The LIVING Room Podcast to reveal why sleep is not the third pillar of health — it's the foundation on which everyt...

What if the real reason millions of women struggle with desire isn't hormones, and the solution isn't a pill? For decades, the conversation around women's sexual health has been shaped by the male model: desire first, then arousal. But what if that model is fundamentally wrong for most women? Dr. Lori Brotto, PhD, a UBC professor, Canada Research Chair in Women's Sexual Health, and registered psychologist joins The LIVING Room Podcast to share why female sexual desire remains one of the most ...

On The LIVING Room, host Chris Wharton sits down with Brad Schoenfeld, PhD, Professor of Exercise Science at Lehman College and one of the world's most influential resistance training researchers, to unpack what decades of evidence actually say about building muscle, maintaining strength, and aging well. They explore the minimum effective dose of strength training, why effort matters more than volume, the truth about protein timing and daily protein intake, why cold plunges immediately after ...

Gene Bowman, ND, MPH, explains why nutrition, blood-based biomarkers, and personalized testing could change how we think about protecting brain health, and that people with suboptimal levels of just three blood markers may have a four-to-five-fold higher risk of dementia. Brain health is often treated as something to worry about only after memory, focus, or processing speed begins to decline. But Gene Bowman explains that the biological changes associated with cognitive decline begin d...

The peptide space is exploding. Claims are everywhere. But for most peptides, the human evidence is still surprisingly limited. Dr. Myles Spar is a board-certified Internal Medicine physician, Integrative Medicine physician, and Clinical Translator at The WNDR Lab. He has spent his career helping translate longevity science into practical medicine, and in this conversation, he breaks down one of the most talked-about topics in health today: peptide therapy. From BPC-157 and TB-500 to MOTS-c a...

What if the greatest opportunity to prevent cancer, Alzheimer's disease, frailty, and many of the chronic conditions that shorten our lives isn't treating them one by one, but addressing the biology of aging itself? Harvard researchers Raiany Romanni-Klein, PhD and William Mair, PhD join The LIVING Room Podcast to explore why biological aging may be one of the most consequential, and most overlooked, modifiable risk factors in modern medicine, and why rethinking how we age could fundamentally...

What if one of the strongest predictors of a longer, healthier life isn't hiding in your bloodwork, but in the quality of your relationships? After following 724 people for 87 years, the world's longest-running study of adult development uncovered a finding that continues to reshape how we think about longevity. Description Robert Waldinger, MD—Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, Director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development, Director of the Center for Psychodynam...

Your brain starts changing earlier than most people realize. A Stanford neuroscientist explains how emerging technology could reshape the future of cognitive health. What if protecting your brain has less to do with chasing the next breakthrough, and more to do with taking action on the science we already know. In this episode of The LIVING Room Podcast, host Chris Wharton sits down with Walter Greenleaf, PhD—behavioral neuroscientist and medical technology developer at Stanford University's...

Before she made the world laugh, Tiffany Haddish had to use humor just to survive. Growing up, Tiffany navigated homelessness and childhood trauma that would have broken most people. But it didn't break her, it built her. In this episode of The LIVING Room Podcast, Chris Wharton sits down with one of Hollywood's most fearless voices for a conversation that goes far beyond the punchlines, and headlines… Tiffany opens up about how comedy became a coping mechanism before it ever became a career,...

“The sleep people are getting in the real world predicts how long they live better than almost anything else.” According to Dr. Michael Grandner, sleep isn't just rest. It's one of the strongest predictors of how long you'll live. Yet most people fundamentally misunderstand what sleep is, why we need it, and what happens when we don't get enough of it. The consequences reach far beyond feeling tired, influencing everything from your brain function and metabolism to your immune system, long-t...

In this episode of The LIVING Room Podcast, host Chris Wharton sits down with Dr. Paul Mischel for a fascinating exploration of what causes cancer, and the future of preventive medicine. A pioneer in precision oncology, Dr. Mischel's groundbreaking research revealed how extrachromosomal DNA (ecDNA)—small circles of DNA that exist outside our chromosomes—can fuel tumor growth, accelerate evolution, and help cancers evade treatment. His discoveries have transformed our understanding of some of ...

Why is losing weight—and keeping it off—so difficult? A leading neuroscientist explains the biology of hunger, the rise of GLP-1 medications, and what science is revealing about the brain's role in body weight regulation. In this episode of The LIVING Room Podcast, Chris Wharton sits down with Dr. Zachary A. Knight, PhD — Professor of Physiology at UC San Francisco, Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator, and one of the world's leading researchers studying the neural circuits that regul...

Most anti-aging skincare is focused on the surface — but the real story of skin aging starts much deeper. Mayo Clinic dermatologist Dr. Saranya Wyles breaks down what’s actually happening beneath your skin, why up to 75% of skin aging may be modifiable, and what science really says about retinol, SPF, red light therapy, collagen, peptides, GLP-1s, and more. Saranya Wyles, MD, PhD, is the Director of the Regenerative Dermatology and the Skin Longevity Laboratory at Mayo Clinic whose work focus...

What does it really look like to evolve into the best version of yourself? Robert Downey Jr. sits down with Chris Wharton for an honest conversation about discipline, self-awareness, taking control of one’s health, and what happiness truly means after living one of Hollywood’s most extraordinary lives. In this episode, Robert Downey Jr. opens up about the daily rituals that keep him grounded, why he was the very first "patient zero" for Chris's wellness program, and what he learned from year...

Dr. Courtney Peterson runs one of the world's largest labs studying intermittent fasting in humans at Harvard, and her research shows most people are fasting at the wrong time of day. Here's what the clinical data actually says. Chris Wharton sits down with Dr. Peterson — Harvard researcher and member of the international scientific committee that formally defined intermittent fasting — to break down what rigorous clinical trial data actually says about fasting, meal timing, blood...

Can your environment cause more disease than your genes? Columbia University exposome researcher Gary Miller, PhD, has spent his career answering exactly that — and his findings will change how you live your daily life… As founder of the first exposome center in the United States, Dr. Miller studies how toxins, air quality, plastics, food, and stress silently accumulate in the body over a lifetime — and how they're driving diseases like Parkinson's and Alzheimer's in ways that genetics alone ...

Most people focus on living longer. Stanford geriatrician Deborah Kado says that’s the wrong goal — the real goal is living well for longer by protecting strength, mobility, and independence, and the research helps explain why. Deborah Kado is a professor at Stanford University School of Medicine, co-director of the Stanford Longevity Center, and board-certified geriatrician, specializing in bone health, osteoporosis, and aging-related syndromes. In this episode of The LIVING Room Podcast, sh...

Everything you think you know about weight loss may be wrong — and one of the world’s leading Nutrition professors has the science to prove it. Dariush Mozaffarian, MD, PhD — Dean Emeritus at the Tufts University School of Nutrition and Director of the Food Is Medicine Institute — has spent decades studying why we get sick, why we gain weight, and why so much of what we've been told about food is overcomplicated at best, and actively harmful at worst. In this conversation, he dismantles...

What if the way you live today is (scientifically) changing how fast you age? In this episode, Chris Wharton sits down with Dr. William Mair, PhD — Professor at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health — to break down the real science of aging, what actually works, and how to truly live better, longer. Most of us think of aging as something that just happens to us. Dr. William Mair thinks differently — and after 30 years studying the biology of aging at Harvard, he doesn’t deal in theory – h...