the goop lab

Want to know what it’s like to be on mushrooms or have 100 needles in your face? The Goop Lab on Netflix takes a deep dive into unconventional wellness practices and unpacks topics that will have you and your girlfriends texting back and forth at lightning speed. Gwyneth Paltrow is host and executive producer of the six-part miniseries, that in the trailer is described as ‘[exploring] ideas that may seem out there or too scary’: think psychedelics, female pleasure, cold therapy, energy healing and more.

‘When I started Goop in 2008, I was like, “My calling has to be something else than making out with Matt Damon onscreen”,’ she quips at the beginning of the show. The Goop Lab looks at ways to reach your ‘optimisation of self’, says Gwyneth. ‘We’re all here one time, one life… how can we really milk the sh*t out of this?’ Many of the practices explored in the series, she says, ‘[have] been happening for thousands of years’.

The standout episode has to be the one about female orgasms, where Gwyn encourages viewers to ‘have a healthy sexual relationship with yourself so that [you can come] to your sexual partner as an active participant in your sexual experiences’. Sex educator Betty Dodson, who’s been teaching women how to orgasm since the ’70s, takes the lead. At 90, she still hosts workshops of this nature. It’s no wonder Gwyneth created a candle afterwards called This Smells Like My Vagina. (Don’t worry – it smells like everything her vagina represents!)

– Caroline Petersen