Rachel Zoffness (on pain)
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Armchair Umbrella
4.6 • 69.9K Ratings
🗓️ 15 April 2026
⏱️ 125 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Rachel Zoffness (Tell Me Where It Hurts: The New Science of Pain and How to Heal) is a psychologist, pain scientist, and author. Rachel joins the Armchair Expert to discuss why she was drawn to pain in her early neuroscience studies, the most pressing question regarding pain being made in the brain, and how a pain psychologist is like a used car salesman. Rachel and Dax talk about the biopsychosocial factors that contribute to pain, definitive psychological origins of phantom limb syndrome, and the sensory map on our brain called the cortical homunculus. Rachel explains the tale of two nails, compelling evidence that pain and physical damage are not the same, and why data we give the brain that amplifies danger will also amplify pain.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome, welcome, welcome to armchair expert experts on expert. |
| 0:03.0 | I'm Dan Shepard. |
| 0:04.0 | I'm joined by Lily Padman. |
| 0:05.0 | Hi. |
| 0:06.0 | We have a guest today with the cutest last name perhaps we've ever had, Rachel Zoffness. |
| 0:12.0 | Yeah, this was a great episode. |
| 0:14.0 | I just love that last name. |
| 0:15.0 | It's a good last name. |
| 0:17.0 | It's a little misleading because this isn't a Zoff episode. |
| 0:21.8 | Although it is in also another way. |
| 0:24.1 | I guess. |
| 0:25.1 | She is a leading pain psychologist and neuroscientist. |
| 0:28.4 | You guys, this episode is so incredible. |
| 0:30.6 | I think it's one of the best of the year. |
| 0:32.9 | It's so many of us know, as you learn in here, there's 1.8 billion people in the world suffering |
| 0:38.8 | from chronic pain, and there's 100 million Americans, and we don't understand how we experience |
| 0:44.4 | pain, truly. |
| 0:45.5 | Yeah. |
| 0:45.8 | And this is an incredible explanation of how it actually works. |
| 0:50.0 | And it's quite an empowering take on it. |
| 0:52.2 | It is. |
| 0:52.9 | Yeah, so her book is called Tell Me Where It Hurts, The New Science of Pain and How to |
... |
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