Not This…

"Think of it as an introduction into a more joyful, balanced, beautiful life," Hoda Kotb said in a statement about her new...wellness app, Joy 101. "Let’s goooooo!”

By Audra Heinrichs | May 28, 2025 | 1:41pm

Screenshot: Today

Well, the rumors were false. Hoda Kotb is not taking over for Kelly Clarkson. Phew. There could be no worse news than the end of Kellyoke…except for how the former Today anchor is spending her retirement.

On Wednesday, Hotb announced that she’s taking a cue from scores of other celebrities and launching a wellness brand entitled Joy 1o1. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Joy 101 is an amalgam of an app, online courses and practices, and in-person retreats and other events. Advised by the likes of Maria Shriver, “happiness expert” Professor Arthur Brooks, Magnolia co-founder and designer Joanna Gaines, and WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert, Joy 101 offers breath work, meditation, movement, gratitude, and sleep hacks and courses on subjects like purpose, happiness, and curiosity, taught by college professors. Because who better to lecture on purpose, happiness, and curiosity than a college professor???

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“You know when you find something so special, so life-changing that you just have to share it? That’s me, and that’s Joy 101,” Kotb said in a statement to the publication. “It’s a place to pass on the light, the lessons and the healing I’ve been lucky enough to receive from the very best in wellness. Think of it as an introduction into a more joyful, balanced, beautiful life. Let’s goooooo!”

In addition to retreats, which will reportedly start in the fall, members will also get access to live Zoom meet-ups called “Hoda’s Happiness Hours” with Kotb’s friends and more “experts” beginning on June 11. On the docket? Her former co-hosts, Savannah Guthrie and Jenna Bush Hager. Christ. Can it get more bleak? Yes, indeed it can.

The membership reportedly costs $16.99 a month with a 14-day free trial, or $99 a year, with a 30-day free trial. This, of course, doesn’t include what it would cost a member to go on one of its promised IRL retreats. I’m sorry, but $99 a year (or $203.88, if you went with the first plan) for a year’s worth of Zoom meet-ups with two people you can watch on TV every weekday morning, meditations you can surely find on any other wellness app, and vague courses taught by an HGTV star is a bit much, no? Not according to Kotb.

“It is a community,” she told Today.com of the app’s offering. “It’s a retreat in your pocket.”

Kotb left Today in January, citing a desire to spend more time with her two young children and her loved ones. In a new interview with People, she revealed her daughter, Hope, was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes in 2023. “It’s kind of constant care for Hope,” she said. “We’re monitoring her 24/7.”

Frankly, while I wish she had taken over for Clarkson, I get it. If I were in Kotb’s position, I wouldn’t commit to a full-time hosting job either—ailing child or not. Even still, did we really need yet another elitist wellness brand???

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