Chelsea Handler, the 50-year-old comedian and bestselling author, reminisced about her earlier career during a Q&A session at the 2025 PHM Healthfront Conference in New York City on May 1.
The former Chelsea Lately host explained that at one point in her career, she felt “tapped out” by the constant celebrity interviews she was conducting.
“When they said I would want you to do a podcast. I was like, yeah, I know, but everyone has a podcast,” Chelsea began, recalling her initial foray into podcasting in her 40s.
“And I had just come out of a two-year, serious stint in therapy and I thought, ‘How can I do something where I’m talking to real people, not celebrities?’ ”
She continued, “I’m tapped out with that. I need to talk to real people. And then I thought, ‘God, I’ve learned so much from this therapist,’” she added. “His name was Dan Siegel, that I went to. His name still is Dan Siegel.”
“He was very expensive, and I know not everybody has access to that,” she acknowledged. “I treated therapy like I was getting my master’s degree. I was so serious about learning about myself and learning about the mind.”
Siegel first appeared on Handler’s Life Will Be the Death of Me iHeartRadio podcast in 2019, and later on Dear Chelsea in 2022.
Handler’s latest comedy special, Chelsea Handler: The Feeling, is currently available for streaming on Netflix.
