Hormones, fertility, career confidence, relationships, body image, and building a life on your own terms. The episodes DOAC's female audience rates highest.
The Diary of a CEO has a massive female audience — roughly 40% of listeners are women, which is unusual for a podcast hosted by a male entrepreneur. The reason? Steven Bartlett consistently books female experts, asks questions that matter to women, and treats topics like hormones, fertility, and body image with the same seriousness he gives to business strategy.
But with 400+ episodes, finding the ones most relevant to you isn't easy. This guide curates the 25 best DOAC episodes for women, organized by category. Whether you're interested in understanding your hormones, navigating your career, improving your relationships, or just hearing powerful women tell their stories — there's something here for you.
Some of DOAC's most viral episodes are about female health — topics that have been underfunded, under-researched, and under-discussed for decades. These episodes have genuinely changed how millions of women understand their own bodies.
This episode changed the conversation about intermittent fasting for women. Dr. Pelz explains why the standard 16:8 fasting protocol — designed based on research done almost exclusively on men — can actually disrupt female hormones. She introduces cycle-based fasting, where women adjust their eating windows based on where they are in their menstrual cycle.
Key insight: During the luteal phase (days 16-28), women's cortisol sensitivity increases significantly. Extended fasting during this phase can spike cortisol, disrupt progesterone production, and worsen PMS symptoms. Shorter eating windows (12-13 hours) work better here.
Dr. Haver's episode became one of the most shared DOAC episodes of all time. She dismantles decades of misinformation about hormone replacement therapy (HRT), explains why the Women's Health Initiative study was fundamentally flawed, and makes a compelling case that most women going through perimenopause and menopause are dramatically under-treated.
Key insight: Perimenopause can start as early as age 35 — a decade before most women expect it. Symptoms like brain fog, anxiety, weight gain around the midsection, and disrupted sleep are often misdiagnosed as depression or stress when they're actually hormonal.
Dr. Amati connects the dots between ultra-processed food consumption and conditions that disproportionately affect women: PCOS, endometriosis, autoimmune conditions, and hormonal imbalances. She provides practical frameworks for reducing UPF intake without becoming obsessive about food purity.
Key insight: Women metabolize ultra-processed foods differently than men due to estrogen's interaction with gut bacteria. The gut microbiome contains an "estrobolome" — a collection of bacteria that directly influences estrogen levels. UPF disrupts this, creating a cascade of hormonal effects.
While Dr. Chatterjee's advice applies to everyone, this episode specifically addresses why women experience stress differently and why standard stress-management advice often fails them. He discusses the "mental load" — the invisible project management that women disproportionately carry in relationships and families.
Key insight: Women's cortisol patterns differ from men's, peaking earlier in the morning and taking longer to return to baseline. This means high-intensity morning workouts — often recommended by male fitness influencers — can be counterproductive for women who are already stressed.
This is the episode every woman in her late twenties and thirties should listen to. Dr. Crawford strips away the marketing and emotion around fertility to present clear, data-driven information. She covers the real success rates of egg freezing (they're lower than clinics advertise), the optimal age window, and what actually affects fertility.
Key insight: Egg quality, not quantity, is the primary determinant of fertility after 35. AMH tests (which measure egg quantity) can give false reassurance. A woman with a high AMH at 38 still has significantly lower egg quality than a woman with low AMH at 28.
Anna Mathur's honest conversation about the identity crisis that motherhood triggers resonated deeply with DOAC's audience. She discusses "matrescence" — the developmental transition of becoming a mother, which is as significant as adolescence but receives almost no cultural recognition.
Key insight: The pressure to "bounce back" — physically, professionally, and emotionally — after having a baby is not just unrealistic but actively harmful. Matrescence involves a fundamental rewiring of the brain that takes 2-3 years to complete. Expecting to feel like your "old self" after 6 weeks is a recipe for self-blame.
DOAC has featured some of the most accomplished women in business, and their conversations with Bartlett often reveal the specific challenges women face in building careers and the strategies they've developed to overcome them.
Sara Davies built Crafter's Companion from her university bedroom into a global craft supplies empire. Her conversation with Bartlett is particularly valuable for women considering entrepreneurship because she addresses the specific obstacles she faced: not being taken seriously by male investors, balancing business growth with starting a family, and dealing with imposter syndrome in male-dominated boardrooms.
Key insight: Davies credits her success partly to what she calls "naive confidence" — starting before she fully understood how hard it would be. "If I'd known what I was getting into, I might not have started. Sometimes ignorance is the best business plan."
Emma Grede's story is extraordinary — she co-founded SKIMS (valued at $4 billion) and Good American, making her one of the most successful Black female entrepreneurs in fashion. Her episode covers the art of identifying market gaps, the power of inclusive sizing, and how to partner with celebrities without losing control of the business.
Key insight: Grede identified that the shapewear market was dominated by products designed for one body type and one skin tone. By solving this obvious but ignored problem — making nude shapewear in nine skin tones and extended sizes — SKIMS captured a market that incumbents had left wide open.
Mel Robbins' DOAC episode broke viewership records because it tackled the universal (but especially female) tendency to manage other people's emotions at the expense of your own wellbeing. Her "Let Them" theory is simple: when someone does something that upsets you, instead of trying to change their behavior, say "let them" — and redirect your energy to what you can control.
Key insight: Women are socialized to be emotional caretakers — to smooth over conflict, manage everyone's feelings, and maintain harmony. This conditioning creates a pattern where women expend enormous energy trying to control things they can't. "Let Them" is a permission slip to stop.
Lisa Ling's decades-long career in journalism — from Channel One to The View to CNN — makes her uniquely positioned to discuss navigating male-dominated industries. She shares how being constantly underestimated as a young Asian-American woman actually became her advantage: people revealed more to her because they didn't see her as a threat.
Key insight: "Being underestimated is a superpower if you know how to use it. The most powerful position in any room is the one where people don't realize how much you understand."
Matthew Hussey's DOAC episode is the most-watched dating advice content on the channel. He challenges the "high value woman" narrative that dominates social media dating advice, arguing that it creates a transactional approach to relationships that ultimately sabotages connection.
Key insight: The biggest dating mistake Hussey sees in his female clients is "auditioning" — performing a version of yourself designed to win someone's approval rather than showing up authentically and seeing if there's genuine compatibility. "You're not trying to win the role. You're the casting director."
Esther Perel brings a perspective to DOAC that no other guest has: she's spent 35 years studying the erotic and emotional dynamics of long-term relationships across cultures. Her conversation with Bartlett is unflinching about the gaps between romantic ideals and relationship realities.
Key insight: Modern relationships are expected to provide everything: passion, security, companionship, intellectual stimulation, co-parenting partnership, and spiritual connection. No single relationship in human history has been expected to fulfill all these roles simultaneously. This impossible standard is why so many relationships feel like they're failing even when they're functioning well.
Dr. LePera's episode on attachment styles and childhood conditioning is essential listening for anyone who keeps finding themselves in the same relationship patterns. She explains how anxious attachment — more common in women — creates a cycle of pursuing emotionally unavailable partners.
Key insight: "If you feel instant, intense chemistry with someone, that's often not love — it's pattern recognition. Your nervous system is recognizing the familiar feeling of emotional unavailability from childhood and calling it 'spark.'"
"The relationships that last aren't the ones with the most passion. They're the ones where both people feel safe enough to be fully themselves — including the messy, imperfect parts." — Esther Perel on DOAC
Jameela Jamil's raw conversation about her history with eating disorders, diet culture, and the harmful impact of social media on women's body image is one of DOAC's most emotionally powerful episodes. She founded the I Weigh movement to counter the reduction of women's worth to their physical appearance.
Key insight: The diet industry generates $250 billion annually by creating a problem (body dissatisfaction) and selling the solution (diets, supplements, procedures). Women are the primary target. Understanding this economic incentive helps you see diet messaging for what it is: advertising, not health advice.
Dr. Perry's gentle but profound episode addresses how childhood experiences shape adult behavior — particularly relevant for women who carry guilt about not being "good enough" as mothers, partners, or daughters. She argues that understanding your own upbringing is the single most important thing you can do for your children.
Key insight: "You don't have to be a perfect parent. You have to be a 'good enough' parent — one who repairs ruptures. Children don't need you to never make mistakes. They need you to acknowledge when you do and show them that relationships can survive conflict."
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Beyond the detailed breakdowns above, here are additional episodes that DOAC's female audience consistently rates among the best:
With over 25 episodes recommended here, jumping in can feel overwhelming. Here's how to approach this list:
The Diary of a CEO continues to release episodes weekly, and Bartlett has shown a consistent commitment to featuring female voices and covering topics that matter to women. This list will be updated as new essential episodes are released.