ReThinking: Can you trust your gut? with GI doctor Trisha Pasricha
Worklife with Molly Graham
TED
4.8 • 9.4K Ratings
🗓️ 7 April 2026
⏱️ 38 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
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Summary
You’ve probably experienced a “gut feeling” before—that sense of uneasiness in your stomach that tells you something is off, but your brain hasn’t quite worked out what it is yet. But can you really trust what your gut tells you? In this episode, Adam is joined by Harvard gastroenterologist Trisha Pasricha to decode what’s really going on between your mind and your stomach. Trisha breaks down the science behind brain-gut communication and offers tips for when and how to listen to your gut when making decisions or assessing a new environment. She also seeks Adam’s advice on helping doctors empathize with patients’ pain and invites him to rethink his position on poop. Building on her book You’ve Been Pooping All Wrong, she explains what your bowel movements can tell you about your overall health, how to experience “poophoria,” and why you shouldn’t bring your smartphone to the bathroom.
Featured guest
- Follow Trisha Pasricha on Instagram, Tiktok, and at trishapasricha.com/
- Buy You've Been Pooping All Wrong
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- Follow Adam on Instagram, LinkedIn, and at adamgrant.net/
- Subscribe to Adam’s substack
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | A gut feeling has a true physiological basis. |
| 0:04.2 | I think the way we get it wrong, though, is that we take that gut feeling and then we say, |
| 0:08.5 | okay, this gut feeling is good, or this gut feeling is bad, and we assign some value to it. |
| 0:13.5 | But if you jump to label it too quickly, I think we can get this entirely backwards. |
| 0:19.9 | Hey, everyone, it's Adam Grant. |
| 0:21.7 | Welcome back to Rethinking, my podcast with Ted on the Science of What Makes |
| 0:25.2 | Us Take. |
| 0:26.3 | I'm an organizational psychologist, and I'm taking you inside the minds of fascinating |
| 0:29.8 | people to explore new thoughts and new ways of thinking. |
| 0:40.6 | Tricia Pusrecha is a gastroenterologist at Harvard, |
| 0:42.8 | and the writer behind the Washington Post, |
| 0:44.2 | Ask a Doctor, column. |
| 0:47.0 | She's been interested in the gut since she was a teenager. |
| 0:50.4 | Now she has a new book out called You've Been Pooping All Wrong. |
| 0:54.3 | I have to admit, this isn't the kind of topic we usually cover on this show. |
| 0:59.1 | Patricia and I had a fascinating conversation about the brain-gut connection, understanding what butterflies in your stomach might actually mean. And yes, some things you didn't know you |
| 1:03.5 | wanted to know about bowel movements. |
| 1:16.5 | So this is an unusual conversation for us and definitely for me. |
| 1:20.1 | And I can't believe that we're doing it without children present because this is a topic that every kid loves. |
| 1:23.5 | But I think there are some things that I need to rethink based on this conversation. |
| 1:27.7 | So let me just ask you to start at the top, Trisha. |
| 1:32.1 | Where does digestion actually begin? |
... |
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