‘We Can Do Hard Things’ Podcast Rebrands, Inks Multiyear Extension at Audacy (Exclusive)

Ashley Cullins
·14 min read
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The We Can Do Hard Things podcast — hosted by bestselling author Glennon Doyle, her wife Abby Wambach and her sister Amanda Doyle — has reached a multiyear extension with Audacy.

The podcast was initially conceived as a solo project for Glennon Doyle following the success of her 2020 memoir Untamed, but talking to a microphone alone in the closet where she writes just felt “boring.” So, after listening to a few recommended podcasts, a lightbulb went off — “Oh, podcasts are conversations!” — and she asked Amanda, who is also vp and general counsel of their non-profit Together Rising, to come on board. Wambach, a now-retired Olympic soccer player, appeared as a guest before becoming an official co-host.

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They’re also rebranding — it’s now called We Can Do Hard Things (dropping the “with Glennon Doyle” to reflect that it’s a group effort) — and has new cover art that shows all three of them. The podcast, which releases two episodes each week, is available on all the major platforms. As part of the new pact, select episodes will drop early exclusively on the Audacy App. The show is produced by Allison Schott, Dynna Cabana and Lauren LoGrasso.

“To break through the noise of the crowded podcast landscape, we look to partner with authentic voices with diverse opinions and platforms,” Jenna Weiss-Berman, evp of podcasts at Audacy, tells The Hollywood Reporter. “This is the epitome of Glennon, Abby and Amanda — their authenticity is their calling card and superpower, and they’re a bright, inspiring light in these dark and difficult times.”

Dolly Parton is featured in the Oct. 30 episode and other guests include Vice President Kamala Harris, former First Lady Michelle Obama, Tracee Ellis Ross, Oprah Winfrey, Jane Fonda, Megan Rapinoe, Dr. Becky Kennedy, Suzanne Stabile, Billie Jean King and Reese Witherspoon.

“One little Easter egg,” Glennon says with a smile, “is we’ve never had a straight white man on. We didn’t do that intentionally. For the first 100 episodes, we just were choosing the most interesting people to us. Then we realized a hundred in, ‘Oh my God.’ It was an accident, but we’ve got our eye on a couple.”

Some of their favorite episodes, and the ones that have resonated most with fans, have just been the three of them — “we call them ‘tripods,'” Wambach notes — getting personal and digging deep into their own hard things.

The trio spoke with THR about helping listeners realize they’re not alone, publicly confronting their own personal challenges and their dream guests.

For people who have not heard the podcast, how did it get started and how would you describe it?

Glennon Doyle: We started during COVID. Allison [Schott], who is our producer and our best friend, had started going on these walks with friends. They would meet on a path and they had to be six feet apart from each other. They called them “the hard things” walks because they realized was life was so impossible during COVID that when they got together with this group, they said “let’s just cut the bullshit and talk about what’s really hard” because this time is so sacred that we have together.

“We can do hard things” was our tagline forever. I used to have a sign in my classroom when I taught third grade that said “We can do hard things.” It helped me through sobriety. We just thought why don’t we basically make the equivalent of the hard things walk where we’re talking about the real hard stuff. When people stay on the surface of things, I end up feeling very isolated and lonely and blech. The more we delve into the hard and heavy stuff, the lighter and more connected I end up feeling. We were like what are all the hard things in life? Relationships, mental health, divorce, losing people, friendship, breakups, being involved civically, justice. Let’s make a show about all of them and bring lightness and bring humor, and that’s what we do.

Abby Wambach: At first we were looking out into the world asking “What are the hard things?” Over time what has actually landed, and been our biggest episodes, are the times where we’ve told our own stories. I think that that’s been, for me, the most profound thing. I have the best job in the world because I get to work on myself and then tell this little microphone about it, and millions of people listen to that and that’s amazing.

Amanda Doyle: The other thing that I think is healing about it is having the safety to share shamelessly in an environment where you are loved and heard and where that story is held. I think people come to our conversations to feel that too. I think there’s a healing power in that. It certainly has been for me to be able to share my stuff and have it not questioned and not judged, and that is something I did not know how much people were hungry for.

We have all of these lists of topics and people we want to talk to. When we put out calls to folks to ask who do you want to hear from? What do you want to talk about? What’s most important to you right now? We get thousands of responses back and the Venn diagram of our list that we were already planning and the list of what our listeners want is like a 90 percent overlap. It’s wild. I think that shows that we’re all on a journey together and we’re all thinking about the same things.

Why was the rebrand important for you to do at this point in the podcast?

Glennon: I have two reasons. My first reason was that when I started this podcast, I was starting a podcast. I did not listen to any other podcasts before. So, I went into my little closet where I write, and just started talking into the microphone. I kept thinking, “This is so boring. This sucks. I can’t believe people listen to these things.” My whole team, no one was arguing with me. They were like, “Yeah, it’s pretty bad.” And I just kept thinking, “I can’t imagine people are going to want to listen to this.” And my team kept saying, “I can’t imagine it either.”

Somebody on the team sent me some podcasts and I finally listened, and I thought, “Oh, podcasts are conversations! That’s why I’m missing the mark.” So, I begged my sister who had been working with me since I was born but had been back at the house, please come forward. She’s the most brilliant conversationalist and thinker in the world. We started talking to each other and then Abby came on as a guest one day.

Abby: I was a guest host. It was exciting. I got called up.

Glennon: There’s no one more lovable on Earth, and the listeners just said, “Please keep her!” The point being, all of the art only had my face on it, which has been embarrassing for me for the last year and a half. It’s just my face, but I’m only a third of the thing.

Also, this is a year into my anorexia recovery and every time I look at old pictures of myself I feel like it’s not me. I feel like for the first time I’m in my body, and I’m in this important time of recovery where I just wanted a newness that felt more like me in this moment. So we had our best friend, Alex Hedison, come and take pictures of the three of us in our house and it was really magical. It felt exactly right to have new art of the three of us as we go into this new chapter.

What have been some of the highlights for you so far?

Glennon: My favorites recently are my sister’s, where she’s doing her deepest work on not being an over-functioner and finding joy and fun and humanity in her life. We just recently did a couple of therapy sessions with Martha Beck where she got so freaking vulnerable I almost died. I felt like I was going to die during those episodes. And then Abby …  I went into my anorexia recovery and I think what often happens in relationship is when one person does a lot of work and the other person stops having to take care of that person, then the other partner becomes free to do their work. So, Abby has been in therapy and she just did a couple update episodes on her journey that I think are going to break the interwebs. It’s just so good.

Amanda: Those are coming up later this month. Those are going to be episodes 258 and 259. The amazing thing is how deep she’s getting there because, like [Glennon] said, Abby’s the most lovable person on the planet, but what she is going through right now stemmed out of our Suzanne Stabile Enneagram episodes. That connected to Abby so much. It’s like she is learning to have the courage to show the parts of herself that historically she has thought people will all run away and leave me if I show these parts of myself. It’s just so amazing. She is committed to showing up for herself as her whole self, even if she ends up by herself. Like, holy macaroni. That to me is really wild and beautiful and those are my favorites.

Abby: There’s a little bit of accountability, I think, of this whole process for the three of us. For me personally, coming from the sports world, you had to in some ways pretend that you were the superhero, that you were impenetrable and completely perfect. Over the last six, seven years of my retirement, I’ve been uncovering and growing aware of these parts that I shoved away so many years ago. It feels amazing to me that I’m able to actually experience this stuff and want to talk about it — because athletes aren’t as open with all that’s going on in their internal world. I know that this podcast keeps me sober, keeps me at peace, because it’s my job to do personal work on myself and I think we’re pushing each other to be our best selves in a way.

Amanda: I think the reason that we’re able to be shameless about this is everyone is struggling. There is no one who is not struggling. So, it doesn’t feel brave just to say it. It feels like it’s just honest. This whole thing has allowed us to ask the questions: Why are we the way we are? Why do we keep doing the same shit over and over when we really don’t want to? We learn things from really smart people and from really honest conversations that help us to both make peace with who we are and also make space for doing things differently. What could be more important work? I love this and could do it forever because I feel like it’s what I need and, when I look at the world, I think it’s what we all need.

If you could pick one dream person to have on the show, who would it be?

Glennon: Taylor Swift. I just really want Taylor Swift. Our girls are the Swiftest Swifties that ever Swifted, and Abby spent two months studying Taylor Swift lyrics so that we could all go to the concert together. She brought her stack of printed out lyrics. She nailed the “Cruel Summer” bridge. So yeah, I just want to talk to Taylor about all the goings ons. I want to talk to her about her.

Abby: I might have to Piggyback on that. We do have a portion of our podcast called Double Dates, right?

Glennon: Oh! Travis and Taylor.

Abby: Let’s get T-Swift and Travis Kelce on. We’ll get on your podcast, Travis. We’ll swap. … I’ll also throw in Beyonce.

Glennon: Oh God, that’s the double date. It’s not Travis and Taylor. It’s Beyonce and Taylor.

Abby: Beyonce and Taylor. That’s good. That would be the most fucking epic situation for our family.

If there was one reason why somebody should listen to the podcast, what is it?

Abby: I have been obsessed with the question of “What am I doing here?” You can go down a lot of different roads with that question, but I do think that what at the heart of what we’re trying to do on this show is figure out what we’re doing. What are we doing in parenting? What are we doing in adulting? How are we dealing with all of the relationships in our life? What does it mean to have been raised in certain ways and now I’m an adult and what is trauma? What are we doing? There is no real answer to any of the questions. Sometimes we do A Q&A with our pod squad. They call in and leave these awesome voicemails and we always say we don’t really have any answers, but we’ll respond. We have responses, but we don’t have answers. That’s what this for me feels like.

Glennon: We have this thing that I didn’t make up — whenever I say “I read it somewhere,” I’m sure that I saw it in a meme on Instagram. So, I’ll just say I probably saw it in a meme on Instagram — but it was this picture that said “the thing that screws us up the most is the idea we have in our heads of how it’s supposed to be.” There’s something about the show that I think takes the picture away of how it’s supposed to be. It shows you the real. No, marriage isn’t hard because you’re doing it wrong. This is what it looks like for all of us. The picture that’s been put in your head of what it looks like, that’s the problem.

That’s what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to say, “You’re not doing it wrong.” Life is hard because it’s supposed to be hard. It’s often hardest for the people who are really doing it well, who are trying and failing and being vulnerable and getting knocked down and getting up again. That was what was so important to me about that “we can do hard things” sign. When I was getting sober, it was like it’s not, “I can do hard things.” There’s something about the “we” that makes it doable.

That’s why people come to listen. It’s a removal of this shiny idea of what things are supposed to be and an invitation into community in the way things actually are, which is messy and gritty and funny and imperfect and nuanced and gray and never going to end.

Abby: I like her answer better.

Amanda: Yeah, I agree a hundred percent with that. It’s exactly what it is. It’s like, listen, join us in our community because we are here for the reality that isn’t shared anywhere else on your social feed. It’s not hard because you’re doing it wrong. It’s hard because this is the way it was designed and this is how all of us are experiencing it. The only way to make it less hard is to talk with trusted people, honestly, who are willing to hear you and to share our experiences with each other. That’s the only thing that makes it any easier, and that is what we’re doing.

Interview edited for length and clarity.

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