Best Health & Wellness Podcasts [2026 Ranking]

2. Feel Better, Live More with Dr. Rangan Chatterjee

Host: Dr. Rangan Chatterjee | Frequency: 2x/week | Avg Length: 50-70 minutes

Dr. Chatterjee, a practicing physician in the UK and bestselling author, brings a refreshingly holistic perspective rooted in conventional medical training. His framework emphasizes four pillars—food, movement, sleep, and relaxation—and every episode explores how these elements intersect to create or undermine health.

The show excels at making complex health topics feel manageable. Chatterjee's interviewing style draws out nuanced insights from guests ranging from psychiatrists to sleep researchers to mindfulness teachers. His willingness to discuss mental health, loneliness, and life purpose alongside physical health creates a genuinely comprehensive wellness resource.

Why it's essential: Bridges conventional medicine and lifestyle medicine beautifully, offering evidence-based guidance with empathy and cultural awareness.

3. The Doctor's Farmacy with Dr. Mark Hyman

Host: Dr. Mark Hyman | Frequency: 2x/week | Avg Length: 45-60 minutes

Dr. Mark Hyman, a leading functional medicine practitioner and bestselling author, has created a podcast that explores the root causes of chronic disease rather than just managing symptoms. The Doctor's Farmacy (a clever play on "food as medicine") features conversations with pioneering researchers, clinicians, and thought leaders in functional health.

Hyman's strength lies in connecting seemingly disparate health issues—gut dysfunction, inflammation, metabolic disease, mental health—into coherent frameworks. While functional medicine can sometimes veer toward overcomplicated protocols, Hyman maintains focus on fundamentals: whole foods, metabolic health, reducing toxic exposure, and addressing nutritional deficiencies.

Why it stands out: Best resource for understanding functional medicine approaches, with practical protocols that go beyond conventional medical advice.

4. The Rich Roll Podcast

Host: Rich Roll | Frequency: Weekly | Avg Length: 90-120 minutes

Rich Roll, a former entertainment lawyer turned ultra-endurance athlete and plant-based advocate, hosts one of the most thoughtful long-form health podcasts available. While plant-based nutrition features prominently, the show's scope extends far beyond diet to explore peak performance, mental resilience, addiction recovery, and life transformation.

What makes this podcast compelling is Roll's intellectual curiosity and willingness to explore uncomfortable topics. He's as comfortable discussing the neuroscience of meditation with Sam Harris as he is exploring nutritional biochemistry with researchers or examining creative processes with artists and musicians. The result is a show that treats health as inseparable from personal growth and meaning.

Why it's valuable: Perfect for listeners who view health as a component of personal development rather than an isolated pursuit, with exceptional production quality.

5. Maintenance Phase

Hosts: Aubrey Gordon & Michael Hobbes | Frequency: Bi-weekly | Avg Length: 60-75 minutes

Maintenance Phase occupies a unique position in health podcasting: it's dedicated to debunking wellness myths and examining the cultural forces behind health fads. Journalists Aubrey Gordon and Michael Hobbes bring rigorous research and sharp wit to topics like the Body Mass Index, detox cleanses, celebrity wellness trends, and moral panics around food.

This podcast serves as essential counterbalance to the optimization culture that dominates much of wellness media. Gordon and Hobbes examine the actual evidence (or lack thereof) behind popular health claims, revealing how profit motives, cultural biases, and pseudoscience often masquerade as health advice. It's both entertaining and genuinely educational.

Why it matters: Critical thinking applied to health media, helping listeners distinguish evidence-based guidance from wellness industry marketing.

7. On Purpose with Jay Shetty

Host: Jay Shetty | Frequency: 2x/week | Avg Length: 40-60 minutes

Jay Shetty, a former monk turned purpose coach and bestselling author, has built one of the most popular mental wellness podcasts by focusing on practical wisdom for navigating modern life. On Purpose combines ancient philosophy with contemporary psychology, offering frameworks for finding meaning, building relationships, and managing stress.

The show alternates between solo episodes where Shetty shares teaching and frameworks, and interview episodes with thought leaders, researchers, and celebrities. While some critics find Shetty's style overly polished, there's no denying his ability to distill complex psychological concepts into accessible insights. His emphasis on intentionality and self-awareness resonates with millions seeking purpose beyond productivity.

Why it resonates: Bridges Eastern wisdom traditions and Western psychology, with actionable frameworks for living with greater intention and meaning.

8. Unlocking Us with Brené Brown

Host: Brené Brown | Frequency: Weekly | Avg Length: 30-50 minutes

Brené Brown, research professor and bestselling author on vulnerability, courage, and shame, brings two decades of qualitative research to intimate conversations about what it means to be human. Unlocking Us explores emotions, experiences, and ideas that often get sanitized out of wellness discussions—grief, failure, comparison, perfectionism.

Brown's strength is her ability to hold space for complexity and discomfort. She doesn't offer quick fixes for emotional pain but instead provides frameworks for understanding our experiences and responding with self-compassion. Episodes feel like conversations with an exceptionally wise friend who happens to have rigorous research backing up her insights.

Why it's powerful: Unmatched depth on vulnerability, shame, and courage, grounded in research but deeply human in application.

9. Terrible, Thanks for Asking

Host: Nora McInerny | Frequency: Weekly | Avg Length: 25-40 minutes

Nora McInerny's Terrible, Thanks for Asking takes a radically different approach to mental health podcasting: instead of expert interviews or self-help frameworks, it features real people sharing honest stories about the hardest parts of life. Grief, chronic illness, divorce, trauma, mental illness—nothing is off limits.

What makes this podcast valuable isn't advice but recognition. In a wellness culture that emphasizes optimization and positive thinking, McInerny creates space for acknowledging that life is sometimes genuinely terrible—and that's okay. The show's power lies in helping listeners feel less alone in their struggles and normalizing the full spectrum of human experience.

Why it matters: Counterbalance to toxic positivity, offering validation and community rather than solutions to unsolvable problems.

11. ZOE Science & Nutrition

Host: Jonathan Wolf with Prof. Tim Spector | Frequency: 2x/week | Avg Length: 30-45 minutes

ZOE Science & Nutrition, hosted by ZOE co-founder Jonathan Wolf and featuring epidemiologist Prof. Tim Spector, translates cutting-edge nutrition research into practical guidance. The podcast draws heavily from ZOE's massive research studies on gut microbiome, blood sugar responses, and personalized nutrition.

Episodes typically focus on specific topics—polyphenols, gut health, blood sugar management, fermented foods—with clear explanations of the underlying science and actionable takeaways. The show excels at explaining why personalized nutrition matters and how the same foods can affect different people dramatically differently based on their microbiome composition.

Why it's valuable: Best resource for understanding gut microbiome and personalized nutrition, backed by massive research datasets and presented accessibly.

12. The Proof with Simon Hill

Host: Simon Hill | Frequency: Weekly | Avg Length: 45-60 minutes

Physiotherapist and nutritionist Simon Hill created The Proof to explore the evidence behind nutrition claims with scientific rigor. While Hill follows a plant-based diet, the podcast maintains intellectual honesty by examining research on all dietary approaches, from Mediterranean to low-carb to omnivorous patterns.

The show's strength is Hill's interviewing preparation and follow-up questions. He engages leading nutrition researchers, physicians, and other experts in detailed discussions that go beyond surface-level claims to examine study methodology, potential confounders, and areas of uncertainty. Episodes feel like graduate-level nutrition education made accessible.

Why it stands out: Most rigorous examination of nutrition science in podcast form, with balanced coverage despite host's plant-based perspective.

13. The Nutrition Diva's Quick and Dirty Tips

Host: Monica Reinagel, MS, LDN | Frequency: Weekly | Avg Length: 10-15 minutes

For listeners overwhelmed by 90-minute deep-dives, The Nutrition Diva offers a refreshing alternative: bite-sized episodes that tackle specific nutrition questions with clarity and evidence. Licensed nutritionist Monica Reinagel addresses practical concerns—is organic worth it, how to reduce inflammation, vitamin D supplementation—without unnecessary complexity.

Reinagel's strength is distilling complex nutritional science into practical guidance within 10-15 minutes. She acknowledges nuance and uncertainty while still providing clear recommendations based on current evidence. The quick format makes it easy to build consistent listening habits and gradually accumulate nutrition knowledge without significant time investment.

Why it's practical: Perfect for busy listeners who want evidence-based nutrition guidance without long-form commitment, with consistently high-quality information density.

15. The Peter Attia Drive

Host: Dr. Peter Attia | Frequency: Weekly | Avg Length: 90-150 minutes

Dr. Peter Attia, a physician focused on longevity and healthspan, hosts marathon conversations that explore the science of living longer and better. The Drive covers exercise physiology, nutritional biochemistry, sleep science, emotional health, cardiovascular disease, cancer prevention, neurodegenerative disease, and metabolic health with extraordinary sophistication.

Attia's background in mechanical engineering, medical training, and years studying longevity science creates a unique analytical framework. He's equally comfortable discussing VO2 max training protocols, continuous glucose monitoring data interpretation, or the nuances of lipoprotein metabolism. Episodes with repeat guests often build on previous conversations, creating a serialized education in longevity medicine.

Fair warning: this podcast is dense. Attia doesn't simplify unnecessarily, and guests are often leading researchers discussing their specialized fields. But for listeners willing to engage deeply, The Drive offers unmatched insights into optimizing healthspan and lifespan.

Why it's exceptional: Most comprehensive resource on longevity science and healthspan optimization, with no dumbing-down for listeners committed to understanding complexity.

16. Found My Fitness with Dr. Rhonda Patrick

Host: Dr. Rhonda Patrick | Frequency: Monthly | Avg Length: 60-90 minutes

Dr. Rhonda Patrick, biomedical scientist with expertise in aging, cancer, and nutrition, creates exceptionally detailed episodes that explore specific health topics and interview leading researchers. Found My Fitness is less frequent than other shows on this list, but each episode offers remarkable depth on its chosen subject.

Patrick's solo episodes are masterclasses in synthesizing complex research. She'll spend 90 minutes unpacking the mechanisms of autophagy, examining omega-3 fatty acids' role in brain health, or explaining how heat stress from sauna use affects longevity pathways. Every claim is meticulously referenced, with show notes that rival academic papers in their thoroughness.

Why it's invaluable: Deepest dives into specific health mechanisms, with extraordinary attention to research detail and practical application for biohackers and health enthusiasts.

17. The Drive (Deep Dives)

Host: Dr. Peter Attia | Frequency: Monthly | Avg Length: 120+ minutes

While technically part of The Peter Attia Drive, the "Deep Dive" episodes deserve separate recognition. These ultra-long-form episodes tackle single topics—cardiovascular disease, strength training, sleep, preventing Alzheimer's—with exhaustive depth over two to three hours.

Deep Dives represent health podcasting at its most ambitious. Attia and expert guests explore topics from multiple angles, examine conflicting research, discuss clinical applications, and provide detailed protocols. A single Deep Dive episode contains more actionable information than most health books, presented with greater nuance and acknowledgment of complexity.

Why it's extraordinary: Most comprehensive single episodes available on critical health topics, worth the significant time investment for serious health optimization.

18. The Mindful Movement

Host: Sara Raymond | Frequency: Daily | Avg Length: 10-20 minutes

The Mindful Movement takes a different approach from other science-based shows: instead of long interviews or deep research dives, it offers brief daily guided meditations and mindfulness practices. Psychotherapist Sara Raymond provides practical mental wellness tools that listeners can implement immediately.

What makes this podcast valuable is its accessibility and consistency. Rather than intellectualizing mindfulness, Raymond guides listeners through specific practices—body scans, breathing exercises, loving-kindness meditations, sleep visualizations. The daily cadence helps build sustainable meditation habits without overwhelming beginners with theory.

Why it's essential: Perfect complement to information-heavy podcasts, providing practical mindfulness tools with professional guidance in digestible daily doses.