UnF*ck Your Brain: Feminist Self-Help for Everyone

Kara Loewentheil is a Harvard-trained lawyer turned master coach, and her show tackles a question most confidence podcasts skip: where does your self-doubt actually come from? Her answer, backed by 546 episodes and a 4.6 rating from over 5,000 reviews, is that much of it traces back to sexist socialization. Women are taught from childhood to seek external validation, minimize themselves, and prioritize others' comfort over their own ambitions. Loewentheil teaches thought work, a structured method for identifying the beliefs running your brain and deliberately choosing different ones. The subtitle says "feminist self-help for everyone," and she means it. The framework applies regardless of gender, though the examples and cultural analysis center women's experiences. Episodes run 20 to 40 minutes and cover specific patterns: people-pleasing, body image anxiety, overthinking before making decisions, staying in situations you've outgrown because you're afraid of judgment. Loewentheil released her book Take Back Your Brain through Penguin in 2024, which expanded on the podcast's core concepts. Her style is intellectual and precise, not soft and soothing. She names the problem clearly and then walks you through the cognitive work to address it. The show is strong for anyone who's tried affirmations and vision boards and found them hollow, because Loewentheil's approach works at the belief level rather than the surface. Not everyone connects with the feminist framing, but the underlying tools are universally applicable.