The Skinny Confidential Him & Her Show

Martha Stewart On Staying Powerful, Youthful, & Relevant For 40+ Years - & Her Take On Trad Wives

February 16, 2026

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  • Martha Stewart views boredom as useless and considers discipline and curiosity essential to avoiding it, dedicating her free time to activities like farming and cooking for her staff. 
  • Martha Stewart is the original 'Trad Wife,' having engaged in self-sufficiency activities like raising animals, milking goats, and making cheese long before the modern trend emerged. 
  • Martha Stewart and Dr. Dhaval Bhanusali collaborated on ELM Biosciences, prioritizing science, efficacy, and avoiding unpleasant sensory attributes (smell, stickiness) as non-negotiables for their skincare line. 
  • HERS offers convenient, online healthcare for women focusing on holistic lab testing and personalized treatment plans for issues like weight management and menopause. 
  • FRE Nicotine is positioned as a tool for consistent focus for professionals, offering various strengths to suit individual needs, reframing nicotine as a potential 'superpower' rather than just a bad habit. 
  • Martha Stewart's morning routine involves applying a face and chest mask upon waking early, reading, and then washing her face before applying a serum mixed with tinted sunscreen before heading to the gym. 

Segments

Martha’s Bucket List & Discipline
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(00:01:45)
  • Key Takeaway: Martha Stewart’s unfulfilled bucket list item is flying eagles in Mongolia due to her affinity for birds of prey.
  • Summary: Martha Stewart maintains a mile-long bucket list, currently featuring flying eagles in Mongolia, stemming from her passion for nurturing injured birds of prey like red-tail and Cooper’s hawks on her farm. She emphasizes that boredom is useless and views continuous activity and learning as a necessary discipline. Her free time is often spent on farm tasks or spontaneously cooking large meals, such as frittatas made from her chickens’ abundant eggs, for her farm staff.
Career Highlights and Evolution
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(00:05:55)
  • Key Takeaway: Martha Stewart’s initial entrepreneurial vision was to elevate homemaking into an art form through her magazine, Martha Stewart Living.
  • Summary: Martha Stewart prioritizes exciting opportunities, such as reporting on figure skating with Snoop Dogg at the Olympics, which previously earned them an Emmy award. Her original business concept was to treat homemaking as a subject matter to be taught beautifully, covering gardening, entertaining, and crafting. She observed that consumers, while enjoying learning the techniques, ultimately preferred to buy the finished products, leading to thousands of product lines.
Interactions with Music Icons
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(00:07:21)
  • Key Takeaway: Martha Stewart first connected with Snoop Dogg in the 90s after Eminem declined an invitation to appear on her show.
  • Summary: Martha Stewart met Snoop Dogg years ago when she began inviting rappers like Usher and Buster Rhymes onto her show in the 1990s. She recounted presenting an award alongside Buster Rhymes, who was notably wearing a dress at the time. She recently attended the Clive Davis pre-Grammy party, where Clive Davis, a long-time friend, publicly acknowledged her contribution to the lifestyle space.
Taste, Efficiency, and Upbringing
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(00:10:15)
  • Key Takeaway: Martha Stewart attributes her refined taste to being born with it, contrasting it with popular trends she finds lacking in taste, such as certain AI voices online.
  • Summary: Martha Stewart believes her taste is innate, citing winning a blue ribbon for a flower arrangement as an early recognition of her aesthetic sense. She learns new techniques by watching great chefs globally, often turning off the garish music accompanying online videos to focus on the methods. Her efficiency stems from growing up as the second oldest of six children in a modest home where hard work and resourcefulness were mandatory.
Family Life and Bedtime Habits
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(00:18:35)
  • Key Takeaway: Martha Stewart’s mother was an ultra-efficient school teacher who sewed all the children’s clothes, while her father was a pharmaceutical salesman.
  • Summary: Martha Stewart’s parents instilled the value of hard work; her mother was ultra-efficient, and her father sold pharmaceuticals, a connection that later led to a Pfizer commercial opportunity. She prefers living outside the city in Bedford but maintains a city apartment for convenience, often picking up her granddaughter from dance to avoid the subway. Martha does not eat in bed, contrasting with Lauren, who admitted to sneaking food in, though Martha once intentionally ate a pomegranate in bed to test if she could avoid staining the sheets.
Business Systems and Memos
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(00:38:03)
  • Key Takeaway: Martha Stewart maintains operational efficiency through detailed Sunday night memos distributed via ‘Direct Lists’ (DLs) to specific staff groups like housekeepers and drivers.
  • Summary: Martha Stewart dictates notes on Sunday nights regarding property tasks, such as pruning catalpa trees, which are then formalized into typed memos. These memos are distributed to specific ‘Direct Lists’ (DLs) for different staff roles, ensuring everyone knows their weekly tasks. She is currently writing her 103rd book, ‘The Martha Way,’ which will detail her specific systems for various tasks.
Trad Wives and Entrepreneurial Evolution
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(00:41:01)
  • Key Takeaway: Martha Stewart views herself as the original ‘Trad Wife’ whose early self-sufficiency efforts naturally evolved into entrepreneurship, unlike modern trends that rely on social media attention.
  • Summary: Martha Stewart admires modern ‘Trad Wives’ like Nara Aziza and Ballerina Farm, noting that their initial focus on home life also evolves into selling products. She contrasts this with her own start, where she relied on public relations articles rather than social media to gain attention for her farm activities. Her early success with Kmart, selling a billion dollars in merchandise in the first year with no initial advertising spend, was driven by her established reputation.
Skincare Science and Product Development
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(00:43:35)
  • Key Takeaway: The partnership between Martha Stewart and Dr. Dhaval Bhanusali is rooted in a shared passion for science-backed skincare, leading to products tested by hundreds of dermatologists.
  • Summary: Martha and Dr. Bhanusali connected over shared interests in skincare science, lasers, and ingredients like saffron, leading to the development of ELM Biosciences. Their non-negotiables for the product line included zero unpleasant sensory attributes (smell, stickiness) and proven ineffectiveness. The line was guided by a large advisory board of dermatologists, ensuring the products, including a serum and night cream, were scientifically validated.
Sponsor Read: HERS Healthcare
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(00:50:12)
  • Key Takeaway: HERS is rethinking women’s healthcare by offering online support, holistic lab testing, and personalized treatment plans for issues like menopause.
  • Summary: Traditional healthcare often rushes appointments, failing to account for context or follow-up, which HERS addresses by meeting women where they are. Their service includes personalized treatment plans that extend beyond medication to include lifestyle guidance. Listeners can start their free intake at ForHers.com.
Sponsor Read: FRE Nicotine Focus
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(00:51:29)
  • Key Takeaway: FRE Nicotine pouches provide a consistent focus for high performers and are designed to be discreet where smoking or vaping is not appropriate.
  • Summary: The speaker uses FRE Nicotine for consistent focus when needing an extra push, noting the product offers strengths from three to 15 milligrams to find the right dosage. The brand emphasizes that ‘real excellence doesn’t require a TED Talk,’ positioning nicotine as a tool for competence. New customers can use code SKINNY for 25% off at frepouch.com.
Sponsor Read: Ice Roller Redesign
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(00:53:05)
  • Key Takeaway: The iconic Skinny Confidential Ice Roller has been redesigned with sleeker lines, a silver roller, and a buttery dust bag to evolve with user standards.
  • Summary: The updated Ice Roller maintains its core functions of reducing puffiness, redness, and boosting circulation for tighter, more radiant skin. The host emphasizes combining cold therapy with facial massage provides a better foundation before applying skincare. The redesigned tool is presented as a full-circle moment, updated to meet current aesthetic standards.
Martha’s Skincare Morning Routine
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(00:55:35)
  • Key Takeaway: Martha Stewart applies a face and chest mask upon waking at (4:30) AM, leaving it on while reading until her (5:45) AM alarm for the gym.
  • Summary: If she has a TV appearance, Martha applies a mask (like the Clay DePose gold mask) and leaves it on until she gets up for her (6:30) AM gym session. After showering, she applies serum mixed with a tinted EltaMD sunscreen before leaving. She maintains this routine because she does not want to ’embarrass’ herself by looking like a slob in public.
Skincare Mistakes and Longevity
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(01:00:16)
  • Key Takeaway: Men often neglect neck-up care due to feeling ‘creepy’ about skincare, while women are often misled by unrealistic, filtered online images.
  • Summary: Dr. Bhanusali notes that men are becoming more active in skincare as they see themselves aging on social media, moving past the initial discomfort. For women, the focus is shifting back toward natural looks as the pendulum swings away from heavily filtered appearances. ELM Biosciences focuses on longevity, using epigenetic studies to show their ingredients can slow down the aging process.
ELM Biosciences Product Tease
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(01:03:03)
  • Key Takeaway: ELM Biosciences plans to roll out a full, curated line of skincare products, not a hundred items, focusing on quality and botanical accuracy.
  • Summary: The line will include essential products to cover all skincare needs, and users can start with the serum and night cream immediately, applying them at night on clean skin. The night cream, A30RX, is a fourth-generation retinoid designed to provide benefits without the irritation and dryness typically associated with retinoids. The product performed exceptionally well for those with sensitive skin, like Mika Brzezinski.
Martha’s Extraterrestrial Interest
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(01:07:36)
  • Key Takeaway: Martha Stewart believes extraterrestrial travel is approaching and has visited the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan where spaceships launch.
  • Summary: She visited the launch site with a former boyfriend who was an astronaut heading to the International Space Station (ISS), which she compares to a short trip like going from New York to Connecticut. Martha expressed a desire to travel further out than the ISS, recalling watching the original moon landing as a child.
Contact Information and Final Thoughts
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(01:09:57)
  • Key Takeaway: ELM Biosciences products can be purchased online using code SKINNY for a discount, and Martha Stewart is active on Instagram as Martha Stewart48.
  • Summary: Dr. Bhanusali’s handle is typically Dr. Dhaval Bhanusali on social media, where he focuses on educating the public about dermatology. Martha Stewart’s Instagram handle, Martha Stewart48, references the number 48, which is the address of all the houses she has ever lived in.