On the Wednesday, September 16, 2026, episode of The Excerpt podcast: Oprah Winfrey opens up about trusting her intuition and embracing reinvention as she promotes a new immersive event in Las Vegas April 2-4. In a wide-ranging conversation with USA TODAY Executive Editor of Entertainment Wendy Naugle, she shares why she’s still focused on helping people change their lives.
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This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.
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Dana Taylor:
She's one of the most well-known
people on the planet, Oprah Winfrey. She's a journalist, an author, an entrepreneur, a media mogul, the whole nine. And now she's heading to Vegas, April 2nd through 4th, to host an immersive experience at the Sphere. Hello, I'm Dana Taylor. Welcome to The Excerpt. USA TODAY's Executive Editor of Entertainment Wendy Naugle, sat down with Oprah in New York. Here's their conversation.
Wendy Naugle:
You have created television, films, a magazine, an entire network. What is it about this experience at the Sphere that allows you to do something that none of those were able to do?
Oprah Winfrey:
It's the culmination of all those things. I've said it and said it and said it and said it and said it and said it and then said it in another platform and said it another way, other ways. This allows for an opportunity to say it with some of the world's great collaborators who are the best in their field and also bringing in the people who are at the top of their game and their best to help me elevate it in a way. So this is how it came about. I was at the Sphere. I was at Sphere. I'm not supposed to say "the." I was at Sphere, Las Vegas, September 29th, going to see Bono and U2 and just excited to be a part of that. Loved the concert, had a great time. And at one point during the concert, I turned ... I was seated next to Jim Dolan actually, who built the thing. And at one point I turned and I said, "What is happening? Are we now outside? Are we outside?" And I said, "Oh my God, I thought it was dark outside, but is that the sun coming through the dome?" I couldn't figure out what was going on and I could smell the sea.
So we're not just outside looking at the sea. I could smell it. And he was just like, "Calm down. It's going to be okay." But really I was really a little disoriented because I couldn't understand what was happening and I wasn't prepared for it. An immersive experience. At the end of the concert, everybody was high-fiving each other because this was the first one. And I was just standing there alone and I just looked ... I was like, "Oh, it's a bunch of speakers. There isn't even a stage. I thought there was a stage. What happened?" And I had this feeling as I stood there in silence, just taking it all in that what if you could take people to the edge of space and allow us to see our relationship to earth and the stars, the galaxies, how enormous it is, and yet how small we are and yet how miraculous it is that we have come from that. What if you could do that? What if you could transform the way we saw ourselves in the greater vision of what it means to be born and to be here on the planet earth and be connected to other human beings who are feeling the same thing? What if we could use this as a space of bringing people together to see that and feel that and experience that? It was just a feeling that I had.
It was very much like the first feeling I remember having like that. The very first one was on my grandmother's porch, Watching her hang clothes on a line. She was a domestic worker and she brought the clothes home from her client's homes to our house to boil in the backyard because we didn't even have a washing machine, no running water, no electricity. And I remember seeing her through the screen door saying, "Oprah Gail, you better pay attention and watch me now because one day you're going to have to learn how to do this for yourself." And she's showing me how to get the clothes and hold it up and the clothespin. And I just watched and I had that feeling, "No, I'm not. This will not be my life." So that feeling said to me, "Don't tell her because you're going to get a whipping if you say that out loud." That same feeling, that same calm, that same kind of, "You could use this for something really out of this world that allows people to feel transformed in a way." That's what it felt like.
Wendy Naugle:
Why do you think people need that sense of wonder, that sense of community right now?
Oprah Winfrey:
Because that's how you are able to move yourself from confusion, exhaustion, being overwhelmed, being stuck, being not just unhappy, but not actually feeling alive. So people need awe, they need wonder, they need joy to feel more alive. And I think a lot of people are numbed. I think they're numb from their phones, they're numb from their work, they're numb from what's going on in the world, in the news. They're numbed in their relationships. I see them, they're numb. They're walking across the street. They're looking at their phones. They don't even know what the traffic is. Everybody's just shut down. They're shut down. So this is an opportunity to bring a sense of vibrancy and aliveness, not to preach to you or to tell you anything that you don't already know. That's why it's called aha, because every aha moment I've ever had or you've ever had has only been a reminder of what you already knew. I just forgot it. I knew that. So it stirs something inside you to remind you of what you already knew.
And what I'm trying to remind people is that there is a light that we all carry, that each of us has a calling to do the work that we've come to do and not to be overwhelmed, but to be about the business that is truly your life and not get sucked into all the things that tell you that they're a part of your life. Most of the stuff you have no control over so why don't you control the things that you can? Why don't you live presently for the children that are in your house? Why don't you live presently for the people whom you actually have contact and connection with? Why don't you fulfill the calling of your life by giving of your life to those people who most deserve it by being fully present and not checked out? And so that's what it's all about.
I know because I talk to people, I see people, I've used my platforms as a way of connecting to people who are not connected. And it's really not saying anything I haven't been trying to say through 4,561 shows on the Oprah Show, through 20 years of the Oprah Magazine and Oprah Daily and the podcast and all the things. The difference is I never ever called together other people to say, "Help me with this message. Help me let people see. How do I let people see that there is something that we all carry, the spark that was within us?"
Wendy Naugle:
And of course your show debuted 40 years ago.
Oprah Winfrey:
I know.
Wendy Naugle:
And in that very first episode, you said your mission was to show people that they have the power to change their own life.
Oprah Winfrey:
I know, and I'm still doing it.
Wendy Naugle:
That's an incredible through line.
Oprah Winfrey:
Isn't that an incredible through line?
Wendy Naugle:
It's really incredible. How did you always have that certainty of vision? It seems like it came up even when you watched your grandmother hanging the laundry on the line, you knew that. How did you protect and preserve that?
Oprah Winfrey:
That feeling that I had watching my grandmother on the back porch was so strong, even at five years old, I knew it was real. And I started listening to it for other things. "Don't go there, go there. You should do this, you shouldn't do that. No, you shouldn't join them after school. You're going to get yourself in trouble." Because it was so strong, I could feel it. I mean, I knew it was just like saying, "This is not going to be your life. "And I was like, "Well, I like that idea." And so I have to say that I have been listening to that feeling or that voice, that sense of intuition, that spark. I've listened to that my whole life and it has led me from one thing to the next. It was the thing that when my father said," No daughter mine's going to be an extra." And the thing that I said," Okay, then I'll be a teacher." And then instead I ended up getting a job in radio.
It's a thing that said when I got the first call to be on television, because the news director had heard me on radio, I was scared because I'd never done TV before. It's a thing that said, "You got to do it. You should make that move." It was a thing that said," You've been in Baltimore long enough, and even though everybody said when you go into Chicago, you're going to fail. Everybody said, I was going to fail because you're stepping into a landmine. They all said that to me. The only person that said I wasn't was my friend Gail, but I just thought you're my best friend. She goes, "I think you can beat Donahue." I go, "It's impossible." Even I thought that was impossible, but I listened to the voice that said, "Go." Even when the station that I was at at the time, WJZ in Baltimore, offered me double the money ... "We'll give you an apartment, we'll give you a new car, we'll give you this, we'll do the thing." I still felt that feeling, that same feeling said, "You should go no matter what they offer you."
Wendy Naugle:
And of course, whenever you innovate or change or do something different, people react. And so you've faced criticism in your life. Have you felt misunderstood or how did you push through that?
Oprah Winfrey:
Many times, many times. Many times. And even just getting people to understand what this is, literally when we started ... Let me share this with you. In the '90s, I started to notice, because I was talking to the audience after every show, women would share with me, coming from all over the country, that there was something missing in their lives because I would just sit and talk to the audience. That became my focus group. It started because I didn't want to sign autographs anymore. And I thought, well, what do I want to do? I just want to talk to people about why they came and what's going on in their lives. And that's where we got all of our show ideas for the remaining 15 years of the show. I started at the 10th year of just talking to the audience. And women were sharing with me that they had done all the things. They'd gone to college and they'd had the kids and they'd had the white picket fence and they'd done all the things and they got the Volvo and the car and the whole thing, but they felt like something was missing. And I started to say to the producers, there's a thread here. What is that thing that everybody's talking about but cannot articulate?
And I thought it was people had lost their sense of self, that you've given everything to everybody else and now you've lost your own sense of self. How do you get yourself back and what is yourself? Yourself is the spirit of you, the soul of you. How do you get people to connect to the spirit and soul of themselves and understand that there's something bigger than your job and bigger even than just mothering your children, that yourself is the thing that's guiding that?
And we started a little segment called Remembering Your Spirit. Remembering your spirit. It's a tiny little thing. And it was the most misunderstood, misinterpreted. All the critics at the time said I was trying to start my own church, that I was trying to preach to people and tell them what they're supposed to do with their lives. It wasn't that. It was just trying to stir the thing that I had been hearing to get people to question within themselves when they're asking that question, is this all there is? Is this it? I'm just supposed to do this and work and never think about what are my dreams? What do I want? Why am I really here? What am I supposed to do? It's the first time we started talking about purpose, a purpose.
Wendy Naugle:
You're doing this at a point where a lot of people start to slow down in life.
Oprah Winfrey:
Yeah.
Wendy Naugle:
What do you say to people who think that it's too late for reinvention or that the window has closed in the second, third or fourth act?
Oprah Winfrey:
Until the last breath you get to get it right. Until the last breath you keep trying. It's harder to transform when you're 72 and 82. It's harder because you're so set and stuck in your ways, but it's never too late to have an aha moment.
Wendy Naugle:
Of course, we've recently lost Dolly and Gloria, and I think a lot of people are taking stock of their own lives and thinking about their legacy. And I'm just wondering when people eventually describe your legacy, what do you hope they understand that can't be captured by the ratings or the awards or the influence, but what do you hope they remember most?
Oprah Winfrey:
I am not the least bit worried about legacy because I learned the lesson from Maya Angelou when I opened my school in South Africa and I came back to her house to tell her, "Maya, this school's going to be my greatest legacy. It's unbelievable. Mandela was there. All the people we had." I took so many celebrities over and opened ... And this is going to be the greatest. And Maya said, "You have no idea what your legacy's going to be because your legacy is not your name on a building and it may be what you do with the lives of these girls, what becomes of these girls, but it's actually every life you have touched.
So how will I be remembered? I already know how I'm going to be remembered because there is not a place or a space, a restaurant or a beach or a desert or a cave that I have ever gone to where I don't meet someone who either watched the show, their mother watched the show, their grandmother watched the show, they came home from school, they were a latchkey kid. There's nowhere I have been on this planet where somebody hasn't come up to me and said, "I watched you. You did this for me. I watched you." I was in a restaurant in Capri and a woman was leaving and passed my table and said, "I'm here with my daughter and I have a daughter because of you." She goes, "I am 55 and when I was 18, I was watching with my 16-year-old sister when you were talking about abuse." And I started crying and then my sister started crying and I said, "Why are you crying?" She said, "No, why are you crying?" It was the first time either of us shared that we were being sexually molested by our stepfather, and together we had the courage to speak up after watching that show.
So now I'm standing in the restaurant and we're both crying and she said, "I have to thank you for that because it didn't just change my life. It saved my life because I became a different human being after that." I hear that over and over. This was Anna from Boston. I hear that over and over and over again, no matter where I am. So I am very clear that what that show did is unparalleled.
Wendy Naugle:
It must bow you over.
Oprah Winfrey:
It's just unparalleled. It's unmatched what we were able to do. I looked at a show recently where during 9/11, everybody was afraid of Muslims and we did a whole show with Muslim women in the audience and people saying, "Why do you have to wear that on your head and what is that called?" And by the end of that show, the people who were accusing them were hugging them. So I am very clear that the legacy is real, that it's not one thing, it's every life you've touched. And Maya said that to me in that moment. She said, "It's everybody who's ever watched a show and decided they're going to get up and leave an abusive relationship. They're going to no longer hit their kids. They're going to no longer put off going back to school. They're going to get a better bra. They're going to take up exercising. They're going to run a marathon." It's every life you've touched.
So if you think of it in terms of the big thing that you're going to do, the money that you're going to leave, the building that's going to be named after you, means nothing compared to every life you've touched. So no, I don't think about it. I know I've done that. I have done that thing. The gift that I have been given to obey the call of my life is everybody's gift, and you are only off track when you were obeying somebody else's call and not your own. But when you get to live in the calling that is your life, when you're able to follow that, lean into that and surrender to that, you get to live out the fullest expression of yourself as a human being. And that's what I'm here to remind people of.
Wendy Naugle:
Thank you.
Oprah Winfrey:
Thank you.
Wendy Naugle:
Appreciate it.
Dana Taylor:
And that's The Excerpt for today. I'm Dana Taylor. I hope you'll like and subscribe to stay connected.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Oprah Winfrey reveals how intuition has guided her career and life | The Excerpt
