Better sex, building a stronger connection with your partner, coping with anxiety, and dealing with shame and fear: these were some of the big themes that resonated on The Meaningful Life in 2022.

Tracey Cox, international sex therapist, author and Daily Mail columnist, was the very first guest on episode one of The Meaningful Life. She joins Andrew again this week to discuss their stand-out episodes from last year.

Tracey and Andrew talk about how their favourite guests influenced their thinking, and what they’ll be taking forward into 2023.

Subscriber Content This Week

If you’re a subscriber to The Meaningful Life (via Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Patreon), this week you’ll be hearing:

⭐️ Lessons in compassion

⭐️ Sex in long term relationships

⭐️Dealing with adult children

⭐️AND subscribers also access all of our previous bonus content - a rich trove of insight on love, life and meaning created by Andrew and his interviewees.

Follow Up

Read Andrew’s new Substack newsletter The Meaningful Life, and join the community there.

Buy Great Sex Starts at 50: How to Age-Proof Your Libido by Tracey Cox

Get advice on your sex life from Tracey Cox at www.traceycox.com 

Listen to Tracey Cox’s podcast SexTok with Tracey and Kelsey 

Follow Tracey Cox on Facebook @TraceyCoxSexpert, on Instagram @traceycoxsexauthor and on Twitter @TraceyCox

Read Andrew’s books on relationships and self-development

Listen to some of the 2022 episodes discussed by Tracey and Andrew:

⭐️Terry Real on the Five Traps that Undermine Your Love

⭐️Frederic Luskin on Forgiveness: What It Is and Isn’t

⭐️Cheryl Fraser on How to Stay in Love

⭐️Thom Rutledge on Embracing Fear in Four Steps

⭐️Kathleen Smith on Making Anxiety Your Friend

Join our Supporters Club to access exclusive behind-the-scenes content, fan requests and the chance to ask Andrew your own questions. Membership starts at just £4.50.

Andrew offers regular advice on love, marriage and finding meaning in your life via his social channels. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube @andrewgmarshall 

Do you experience regular bad headaches, or a stomach upset that won’t go away? Do you have nagging aches you put down to getting older?

Mind and body are two parts of the same system: problems like depression and anxiety almost always manifest in the physical body as well as the mind. 

The road to calm and joy is much faster if we can ensure to take care of mind AND body. 

Author and integrative psychiatrist Dr Henry Emmons looks at mental health problems like depression and anxiety by weaving together mind-body and natural therapies, mindfulness teachings and other holistic approaches. 

Dr Emmons is also a sought-after presenter and consultant on integrating natural and mindfulness therapies in psychiatry, the interface between spirituality and mental health, and personal and professional renewal. 

We hope you enjoy this very early The Meaningful Life episode we’ve reissued for Christmas 2023: what better topic to get you through the holiday season than “the road to calm and joy”?

Follow Up

Read Andrew’s new Substack newsletter The Meaningful Life, and join the community there.

Visit Dr Henry Emmons’ website to find out more about his books:

The Chemistry of Joy

The Chemistry of Calm

The Chemistry of Joy Workbook

Staying Sharp: 9 Keys to a Youthful Brain Through Modern Science and Ancient Wisdom 

Visit https://www.naturalmentalhealth.com  a website co-founded by Henry Emmons to help people of all ages optimise their mental health and build resilience in mind, body, and spirit. 

You might also be interested in Andrew’s interview with Dr Kathleen Smith on How to Make Anxiety Your Friend

Read Andrew’s book Wake Up and Change Your Life: How to Survive a Crisis and be Stronger, Wiser and Happier 

Join our Supporters Club to access exclusive behind-the-scenes content, fan requests and the chance to ask Andrew your own questions. Membership starts at just £4.50.

Andrew offers regular advice on love, marriage and finding meaning in your life via his social channels. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube @andrewgmarshall 

“Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact.”

Philosopher William James (brother of the novelist Henry James) seems way ahead of his time with this insight. 

Our guest this week is author and philosopher John Kaag. John credits William James with helping him through several existential crises, including bouts of despair as a young man, and two divorces. 

Andrew and John discuss:

⭐️The pressing choice in modern life of where to put our attention

⭐️How philosophy helps parents

⭐️The ways daily habits and routines entrap us

⭐️The problem of empathy and the challenge of honouring the inner lives of others.

Subscriber Content This Week

If you’re a subscriber to The Meaningful Life (via Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Patreon), this week you’ll be hearing:

⭐️When is it justified to believe?

⭐️3 things John Kaag knows to be true.

⭐️AND subscribers also access all of our previous bonus content - a rich trove of insight on love, life and meaning created by Andrew and his interviewees.

Follow Up

Read Andrew’s new Substack newsletter The Meaningful Life, and join the community there. 

Buy John Kaag’s new book Be Not Afraid of Life: In the Words of William James

Buy John Kaag’s other books:

• American Philosophy: A Love Story

Follow John Kaag on Twitter @JohnKaag 

Read Andrew’s book Wake Up and Change Your Life: How to Survive a Crisis and be Stronger, Wiser and Happier

You might also enjoy Andrew’s interview with Andy West on Inherited Guilt: How Philosophy Helped Me Heal 

Join our Supporters Club to access exclusive behind-the-scenes content, fan requests and the chance to ask Andrew your own questions. Membership starts at just £4.50. 

Andrew offers regular advice on love, marriage and finding meaning in your life via his social channels. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube @andrewgmarshall 

Leaving a toxic relationship is really just the beginning: how do you then pick up the pieces and build a new life? 

Certified relationship coach Tara Blair Ball is a second-time guest on The Meaningful Life - her first interview on attachment theory was so popular that we invited her back to discuss her new book on surviving toxic relationships. 

According to Tara, 

⭐️Personal responsibility is the key to change

⭐️Healthy relationships are built, not found

⭐️Whether you’re single or partnered, you can recover from toxic relationship patterns and learn a healthier way to relate.

Tara draws on her personal experience of life with a toxic partner to help others learn how to create healthy relationships. In this episode, she and Andrew talk through her 7-step healing process.

Tara Blair Ball is the author of several books on love and relationships. Her content on relationships and dating has been viewed more than 6 million times.  Tara’s latest book is Reclaim & Recover: Heal from Toxic Relationships with a 7-Step Guided Journal. 

Subscriber Content This Week

If you’re a subscriber to The Meaningful Life (via Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Patreon), this week you’ll be hearing:

⭐️How to overcome victim mentality. 

⭐️3 things Tara Blair Ball knows to be true.

⭐️AND subscribers also access all of our previous bonus content - a rich trove of insight on love, life and meaning created by Andrew and his interviewees.

Follow Up

Read Andrew’s new Substack newsletter The Meaningful Life, and join the community there.

Buy Tara Blair Ball’s new book Reclaim & Recover: Heal from Toxic Relationships with a 7-Step Guided Journal 

Read Tara’s other books The Beginning of the End: A memoir about a broken relationship, addiction, and human frailty AND Stop Wasting Your Time on Women Who Don’t Want You.

Take a look at Tara Blair Ball’s website 

Listen to Andrew’s previous interview with Tara Blair Ball on Attachment Theory 

Follow Tara on TikTok @tara.relationshipcoach or on Twitter @tarablairball

Read Co-parenting with a Toxic Ex by Amy Baker

Read Andrew’s books I Can’t Get Over My Partner’s Affair and I Love You But I’m Not In Love With You

Join our Supporters Club to access exclusive behind-the-scenes content, fan requests and the chance to ask Andrew your own questions. Membership starts at just £4.50. 

Andrew offers regular advice on love, marriage and finding meaning in your life via his social channels. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube @andrewgmarshall 

⭐️What is something you could do right now to help your future self?

⭐️What is the most dangerous thing you have survived?

⭐️Who is a person you’re glad exists?

These are the kinds of questions writer Amanda Deibert asks her Twitter followers everyday, and which she has now gathered into a beautiful gratitude journal called You Already Have the Answers.

In this episode, Andrew and Amanda discuss the ways in which our lives are full of insight and wisdom, if we can only slow down and find a meaningful route inward. Most of us are much stronger and braver than we think. 

Andrew also explains how he came to get his first tattoo in his sixties, and Amanda shares some eye-opening stories illustrating how her early life experiences shaped her grounded, real-life approach to self-love and self-care. 

AND - we have our first listener competition. US and UK based listeners can win a copy of You Already Have the Answers by going to our podcast page and using our “Get Involved” form to submit an answer to the question “What Have You Learned and Put Into Action After Listening to The Meaningful Life?  Entries due by close of day Thursday 15th December.

Subscriber Content This Week

If you’re a subscriber to The Meaningful Life (via Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Patreon), this week you’ll be hearing:

⭐️How to take a leap of faith

⭐️3 things Amanda Deibert knows to be true.

⭐️AND subscribers also access all of our previous bonus content - a rich trove of insight on love, life and meaning created by Andrew and his interviewees.

Follow Up

Read Andrew’s new Substack newsletter The Meaningful Life, and join the community there

Buy Amanda Deibert’s book You Already Have the Answers 

Follow Amanda Deibert on Twitter @amandadeibert

You might also like to listen to Andrew’s interview with Chester Elton on How Gratitude Could Revolutionise Your Life 

Join our Supporters Club to access exclusive behind-the-scenes content, fan requests and the chance to ask Andrew your own questions. Membership starts at just £4.50.

Andrew offers regular advice on love, marriage and finding meaning in your life via his social channels. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube @andrewgmarshall 

Family secrets can live on for generations, shaping our lives in ways we may not recognise or fully understand.

In this episode Andrew talks to Dr Galit Atlas, author of Emotional Inheritance: A Therapist, Her Patients, and the Legacy of Trauma about how our struggles in life are linked to the emotional inheritance we receive from our families.

Dr Atlas is a psychoanalyst and clinical supervisor in private practice in Manhattan.She is a clinical assistant professor on the faculty of the New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy & Psychoanalysis and faculty at the National Training Program (NTP) and the Four-Year Adult training program at the National Institute for the Psychotherapies (NIP) in New York City. 

Dr. Atlas has published three books for clinicians and numerous articles and book chapters that focus primarily on gender and sexuality. Her New York Times publication “A Tale of Two Twins” was the winner of a 2016 Gradiva Award

Subscriber Content This Week

If you’re a subscriber to The Meaningful Life (via Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Patreon), this week you’ll be hearing:

⭐️How to repair a relationship with an estranged family member

⭐️3 things Galit Atlas knows to be true.

⭐️AND subscribers also access all of our previous bonus content - a rich trove of insight on love, life and meaning created by Andrew and his interviewees.

Follow Up

Read Andrew’s new Substack newsletter The Meaningful Life, and join the community there. 

Read Dr Galit Atlas’ new book Emotional Inheritance: A Therapist, Her Patients, and the Legacy of Trauma 

Visit Dr Galit Atlas’ website

Follow Dr Galit Atlas on Facebook @GalitAtlas and on Instagram @galit_atlas

If you’re interested in the drama triangle discussed in this episode, you might also enjoy Andrew’s interview with therapist Chris Partridge on Being a Rescuer

You might also like to listen to Andrew’s interview with Julia Samuel MBE on Inherited Pain

Join our Supporters Club to access exclusive behind-the-scenes content, fan requests and the chance to ask Andrew your own questions. Membership starts at just £4.50.

Andrew offers regular advice on love, marriage and finding meaning in your life via his social channels. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube @andrewgmarshall 

Prison makes a lot of life's big questions feel extremely urgent.

Author Andy West explores such questions  in his work teaching philosophy to prisoners - some of whom have minimal education; some of whom have acquired PhDs.

Andy has also experienced the shadow of prison in his own life - witnessing the incarceration of his father, brother and uncle.

We discuss prison and ideas of freedom, and use the story of Ulysses and the Sirens to test out ideas of who it is in our world who is the most free.

Andy West is a London-based author and philosopher. His new book is The Life Inside: A Memoir of Prison, Family and Learning to Be Free

Subscriber Content This Week

If you’re a subscriber to The Meaningful Life (via Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Patreon), this week you’ll be hearing:

⭐️Shame and Pandora’s Box: the lessons for today from an ancient myth.

⭐️3 things Andy West knows to be true.

⭐️AND subscribers also access all of our previous bonus content - a rich trove of insight on love, life and meaning created by Andrew and his interviewees.

Follow Up

Read Andrew’s new Substack newsletter The Meaningful Life, and join the community there.

Buy Andy West’s book The Life Inside: A Memoir of Prison, Family and Learning to Be Free

Follow Andy West on Twitter @AndyWPhilosophy 

You might also enjoy Andrew’s interviews with Julia Samuel MBE on Inherited Pain, or with Joanna LaPrade on Surviving Dark Times.

Join our Supporters Club to access exclusive behind-the-scenes content, fan requests and the chance to ask Andrew your own questions. Membership starts at just £4.50: https://www.patreon.com/andrewgmarshall 

Andrew offers regular advice on love, marriage and finding meaning in your life via his social channels. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube @andrewgmarshall 

The end of life isn’t always a time of fear and suffering. Dr Christopher Kerr has cared for thousands of patients who, in the face of imminent death, speak of love and grace. 

Dr Kerr is the author of Death is But a Dream, in which he shares dying patients’ experiences of pre-death dreams and vision. These end-of-life dreams humanise the dying process and can also comfort the bereaved, who see their loved ones dying with a sense of calm closure.

Andrew and Dr Kerr discuss how end-of-life dreams can bring love and forgiveness, restore meaning to suffering and mark a transition from distress to comfort and acceptance.

Christopher Kerr, MD, PhD, is the Chief Medical Officer and Chief Executive Officer for Hospice & Palliative Care Buffalo. Dr. Kerr comes from a long line of physicians, of which he is now the fifth generation. His TedX Buffalo Talk, “I See Dead People: Dreams and Visions of the Dying” has three million views and was reported on by the BBC, The Atlantic, The New York Times and The Washington Post. 

Subscriber Content This Week

If you’re a subscriber to The Meaningful Life (via Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Patreon), this week you’ll be hearing:

⭐️How to have a good death.

⭐️3 things Dr Kerr knows to be true.

⭐️AND subscribers also access all of our previous bonus content - a rich trove of insight on love, life and meaning created by Andrew and his interviewees.

Follow Up

Read Andrew’s new Substack newsletter The Meaningful Life, and join the community there.

Buy Death is But a Dream: Finding Hope and Meaning at Life’s End by Dr Christopher Kerr.

Visit Dr Christopher Kerr’s website

Watch Dr Christopher Kerr’s TEDx Talk “I See Dead People: Dreams and Visions of the Dying". 

Read My Mourning Year, Andrew’s memoir about the loss of his partner.

You might also be interested in Andrew’s interviews with Dr Kathryn Mannix on “What You’ve Been Told About Death Might Be Wrong”, with Georgina Scull on “Regrets of the Dying” or with David Kessler on “The Sixth Stage of Grief”.

Join our Supporters Club to access exclusive behind-the-scenes content, fan requests and the chance to ask Andrew your own questions. Membership starts at just £4.50.

Andrew offers regular advice on love, marriage and finding meaning in your life via his social channels. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube @andrewgmarshall 

If work leaves you feeling tense, unfulfilled or anxious, then it’s definitely time to make some kind of change. You probably know that already - but this week’s episode helps you think through where to start. 

This week’s guest is Phil Poole, a Berlin-based coach, entrepreneur, writer and leader. Phil and Andrew discuss:

⭐️Phil’s journey through burnout to finding a meaningful, joyful career

⭐️How to know if it’s really the job that’s the problem.

⭐️Making big life changes with the support of your partner/family.

⭐️Narrowing down your passion and building it into your work life. 

⭐️Breaking the cycle of overthinking/rumination and taking positive action.

Subscriber Content This Week

If you’re a subscriber to The Meaningful Life (via Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Patreon), this week you’ll be hearing:

⭐️How to discover who you really are and what you really want. 

⭐️3 things Phil knows to be true.

⭐️AND subscribers also access all of our previous bonus content - a rich trove of insight on love, life and meaning created by Andrew and his interviewees.

Follow Up

Read Andrew’s new Substack newsletter The Meaningful Life, and join the community there.

Take the character survey Phil Poole discusses here (the option to take the survey will appear as a popup).

Visit Phil Poole’s Coaching for a Different Life website

Andrew also discusses burnout in the context of this interview with author and coach Dawn Kohler: When the Call to Be Yourself Can No Longer Be Ignored.

Read Andrew’s book Wake Up and Change Your Life: How to Survive a Crisis and be Stronger, Wiser and Happier

Join our Supporters Club to access exclusive behind-the-scenes content, fan requests and the chance to ask Andrew your own questions. Membership starts at just £4.50.

Andrew offers regular advice on love, marriage and finding meaning in your life via his social channels. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube @andrewgmarshall 

Parenting adult children might not involve sleepless nights or dealing with detentions, but it can be highly challenging.

Often, the balance of power shifts and parents find themselves walking on eggshells, anxious about preserving a close relationship.

In this week’s episode Andrew talks to author and journalist Celia Dodd about the challenges and rewards of parenting later in life. They discuss:

- Dealing with conflict with your adult children

- What to do if you don’t get on with their partner

- Supporting adult children through periods of suffering and change.

- The sometimes thorny issue of how much you are involved with  grandchildren.

- Adult siblings who don’t get on.

Subscriber Content This Week

If you’re a subscriber to The Meaningful Life (via Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Patreon), this week you’ll be hearing:

⭐️How to keep conflict to a minimum but still talk about difficult things. 

⭐️3 things Celia knows to be true.

⭐️AND subscribers also access all of our previous bonus content - a rich trove of insight on love, life and meaning created by Andrew and his interviewees.

Follow Up

Read Andrew’s new Substack newsletter The Meaningful Life, and join the community there. 

Read Celia Dodd’s latest book All Grown Up: Nurturing Relationships with Adult Children. 

Read Celia Dodd’s other books, The Empty Nest: Your Changing Family, Your New Direction and Not Fade Away: How to Thrive in Retirement 

Visit Celia Dodd’s website www.celiadodd.co.uk

Follow Celia Dodd on Twitter @celia_dodd and on Instagram @celiaruthdodd

You might also enjoy our episodes on Healing the Mother/Daughter Wound with author Itoro Bassey, What You Wish Your Parents Knew with therapist/author Philippa Perry or How to Reinvent Yourself at 50 with journalist Eleanor Mills. 

Read Andrew’s book Wake Up and Change Your Life: How to Survive a Crisis and be Stronger, Wiser and Happier

Join our Supporters Club to access exclusive behind-the-scenes content, fan requests and the chance to ask Andrew your own questions. Membership starts at just £4.50.

Andrew offers regular advice on love, marriage and finding meaning in your life via his social channels. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube @andrewgmarshall