Alonement

Season 7 finale! How did that happen?! We are, however, going out with a bang... This week, I have the pleasure of chatting to friendship expert & psychologist Dr Marisa G. Franco, whose new book Platonic: How Understanding Your Attachment Style Can Help You Make and Keep Friends combines two of the most zeitgeist-y lifestyle topics of the moment: attachment theory and the value of friendship....

In this clip, we hear from psychologist and Instagram sensation Dr Emma Hepburn – with one of my favourite pieces of wisdom from our original recording, released in April 2021. Emma Hepburn’s book,  A Toolkit For Modern Life , discussed in this episode, is available to order now. * My book,  Alonement: How To Be Alone & Absolutely Own It , is available to order on  Amazon ,...

This week my interviewee is radio and TV presenter Nihal Arthanayake. While I’ll be asking the questions today, Nihal is most used to playing the other role, having interviewed countless household names, including Minnie Driver, Ricky Gervais & Benedict Cumberbatch on his regular BBC 5 Live show. He’s recently written a book, Let’s Talk: How To Have Better Conversations - based on what he’s le...

Another week, another bitesize mini-episode from Alonement archives. This conversation with journalist and author Daisy Buchanan comes from the first season of Alonement, recorded in person at my flat in November 2019. Before pivoting towards writing books, Daisy worked as an agony aunt for Grazia magazine, answering reader questions around everything from work to relationships. We discuss the phi...

This week I have the absolute pleasure of speaking to one of my favourite authors, Holly Bourne. After beginning her novel-writing career in the young adult genre, Holly has released three brilliant titles for adults over the past few years, which are full of wise reflections on relationships, navigating social pressure and recovering from trauma. She’s influenced, in part, by the five years she s...

Erling Kagge, one of the greatest living polar explorers – and the first in history to reach the 'three poles' – is the guest that we hear from in this week’s mini episode, taken from our longer conversation released in February 2022. Speaking to me from his home in Norway, Erling shares touchingly in this clip how the time he spent living in London in early adulthood was more lonely than the...

In this week’s episode, I interview poet, BBC radio presenter and author Salma El-Wardany. Salma’s debut novel, These Impossible Things, has been a breakout international hit. It’s a novel about three British Muslim women whose close friendship falls apart one devastating night, and covers the themes of platonic bonds, identity and growing up.    We discuss, among other things:   Sa...

Journalist and novelist Sophia Money-Coutts is the star of this week’s mini-episode, first released in a longer form in August 2020. In this clip, we discuss a really important, timely topic of egg-freezing – undoubtedly one of the most important advances in fertility medicine like, ever. Sophia is wonderfully honest about her decision to freeze her eggs in her thirties, and discusses the ups...

Ever wondered about the relationship between sleep and ‘alone time’? That’s the topic of this week’s episode with Dr Kat Lederle, a sleep scientist and chronobiologist (read: ‘body clock scientist’). I don’t know about you, but as someone who occasionally sits up for hours in the early morning with insomnia, I’d never considered how a lack of ‘me-time’ in the day might turn into a sleepless night…...

Talk about an alonement icon – radio DJ & broadcaster Vick Hope is a woman who radiates everything this podcast is about, as a sunny, ambitious, beautiful soul with an infectious passion for life, or as she puts it 'a gratitude for being alive'. This episode was recorded in September 2020, and in the full episode Vick talks about living alone, being single and building a relationship with hers...

As political protests go, a four-year vow of celibacy is on the extreme side. And that’s what this week’s guest, British-American film director & writer Emma Forrest, decided to do following her divorce from actor Ben Mendelsohn, a period of her life which coincided with Donald Trump serving as the 45th US President from 2017 to 2021. ‘Looking at him makes me not want to have sex,’ Emma reason...

Mo Gawdat, bestselling author, podcaster & former chief business officer of Google X, is the star of this week's minisode, taken from our conversation first recorded in September 2021. In this clip from the archives, Mo shares his unique advice for learning to be alone comfortably with our thoughts, ie the gold standard of alonement. With a background in engineering, Mo is one of the most orig...

This week’s guest is Phoebe Fox, aka Marial from The Great , who acts alongside Elle Fanning and Nicholas Hoult in Hulu’s deliciously irreverent ‘anti-historical’ comedy-drama. I interviewed Phoebe, a RADA-trained actor who's been nominated both an Olivier and a SAG, earlier this year for GLAMOUR magazine, and I enjoyed our conversation so much that I begged her to come on the podcast so we could...

For this week's mini-episode, I'm revisiting my conversation with Dr Julie Smith, a clinical psychologist turned bestselling author known better by her Instagram handle, Dr Julie, or simply as that therapist off TikTok. In this clip, we take a deep dive into what it means to journal well. Of course, we see a lot on Instagram about journalling, but as inspiring as that can sometimes be, I wanted to...

Described by close friend Bear Grylls as ‘stronger than 99% of the men I know’, Megan Hine is a survival expert and TV presenter who works on and off camera to make some of the most extreme adventure shows on television happen. She also holds a degree in psychology – just another string to her already-very-loaded bow. I managed to catch Megan during one of the rare occasions she wasn’t on location...

As Florence Given tops the fiction bestseller charts with her debut novel, Girlcrush , I decided now would be a brilliant time to revisit this episode – first released in July 2020, after the release of her non-fiction book, Women Don't Owe You Pretty. In this clip, the writer, illustrator & podcast host shares how she learnt a crucial lesson about alone time at the age of 14, when she was 'ou...

I’m delighted to welcome Sunday Times bestselling author Owen O’Kane on to the show this week. Previously an NHS Clinical Lead for mental health, Owen is now a psychotherapist and bestselling author. His books have all sorts of intriguing names, like Ten Times Happier and Ten To Zen. But when I saw the title of his latest book, How To Be Your Own Therapist , my ears pricked up. This is a podcast a...

Welcome to ‘Me Time’, Alonement’s new, weekly series of 10-minute mini episodes from the archives. We’ll be showcasing the very best wisdom from some of our favourite former guests, in bitesize episodes designed for those smaller pockets of Alonement that you get throughout your day.           I'm kicking off with a slice of Alonement history: an e...

Iona Bain is a personal finance expert who appears regularly on BBC Morning Live and writes a weekly column for the i Paper. She’s written two books, her second is Own It – a millennial guide to investing. On a personal level, she’s also recently made the big step of buying her first flat as a solo   buyer – a process she described to me in an email as a ‘learning curve’. In this ep...

Welcome to the tenth and final episode of season 6. This week’s episode is the second of two live recordings I did back to back at Kings Place in London – which was recorded in front of an audience. My guest is Abigail Bergstrom, the literary agent behind some of the biggest bestselling books in the past few years. More recently, at the beginning of this year, Abigail published her own debut...

This week, I have something very special for you – it’s the first ever live recording of Alonement, which was recorded in front of an audience at Kings Place in London. In what was a fairly ambitious move, I decided to record not one but two episodes back to back – which I’ll be releasing this week and next. The first guest to join me on stage was Olivia Petter, the author of Millennial Love, a br...

My very special guest this week is Emma Gannon, host of the Ctrl Alt Delete podcast, one of my absolute favourite shows and the first I ever listened to. Now a prolific author of both fiction and non-fiction, Emma is a true career inspiration – and well as an example of how to live a varied, creative life. Her latest book is Disconnected: How To Stay Human In An Online World , a practical guide to...

Become the author of your own story – that's the promise from this week's guest, Roxie Nafousi, a self-development coach and bestselling author of Manifest: 7 Steps To Living Your Best Life , who champions the power of manifesting to bring about positive transformation in your life. Manifesting is a deceivingly simple concept; in a nutshell, it means changing your thought patterns in ord...

This week's guest is Isy Suttie! The comedian, author and actor best known (among Peep Show fanatics) for playing the character of Dobby on the hit British sitcom. We discuss Isy Suttie's debut novel, Jane Is Trying, together with her stand-up comedy career and relationship with fellow comedian (and alone time fan, by the sounds of things!) Elis James. What follows is a gorgeous chat about the val...

This week’s guest is author and journalist Angelica Malin, who recently published Unattached: Empowering Essays on Singlehood, a curated anthology of 30 writers (including me!) exploring the experience of being single, which was published by Square Peg earlier this year. Angelica, or Jelly as I know her, just so happens to be one of my closest friends. During our conversation, we discuss how our c...