New Podcast Release: Ellen Langer

Ellen Langer is a pioneering figure in psychology, often described as the "mother of mindfulness." For decades, her research has challenged conventional thinking about health, ageing, and the power of the mind to influence the body. In our conversation, Ellen explains why she believes the mind and body are not separate entities, but a single, unified system and how this insight can dramatically reshape our understanding of illness, healing, and even longevity.

We discuss her landmark studies, including the “Counterclockwise” experiment, in which elderly men appeared to reverse the effects of ageing by mentally placing themselves in the past, and the hotel cleaner study, where simply reframing routine work as exercise produced measurable physical benefits. But psychology has been going through a “replication crisis” – in recent years, attempts to rerun some the most famous psychological studies have failed to find the same striking results. Isn’t that also true, we ask Ellen, of her hotel cleaner study? And what happened to a proposed re-creation of the Counterclockwise experiment?

Ellen responds to these challenges, and also shares her thoughts on the placebo effect, the dangers of medical fatalism, and why active noticing, not meditation, is the key to true mindfulness.

Below are some highlights from our conversation, edited for clarity. You can listen to the full episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your preferred platform.

Mindfulness (No Meditation Required)

KASIA DE LAZARI RADEK: Okay, Ellen. I’d love to get to the heart of it, what exactly do you mean by mindfulness, and how can we practise it?

ELLEN LANGER: Sure. When people hear the word “mindful,” they often mistakenly associate it with meditation, which is great, but it's very different from what I’m talking about. I actually did some of the early research on meditation. It’s a practice you engage in, ideally to reach a post-meditative state of mindfulness.

But the mindfulness I study is more immediate, and you can access it in one of two ways: top-down or bottom-up.

Top-down means recognising that everything is constantly changing. Everything looks different from different perspectives, which means, we never really know. Yet we’re taught in school to treat so many things as fixed facts.

Let me tell you how that changed for me. I was a straight-A student, one of those kids who memorised everything, even what was under the pictures in the textbook. One day, I was at a horse