Happy Place

Our body’s stress response is cleverly designed to keep us safe, but the trouble now is that it’s being triggered by every day life – emails, caring commitments, social media, loneliness. Dr Rangan Chatterjee explains what the stress response is, and how using your physically body can often be the best way to calm your mind. In this chat, Fearne and Rangan also talk in great detail about the impor...

DJ Fat Tony has spent time actively learning what love is after being in abusive relationships and being an addict. Having done trauma therapy, he’s not only begun to understand what healthy relationships with others look like, but also how it feels to love himself, to have self-worth and self-compassion, and not be forced into silence by shame. In this chat, Fearne and Tony talk about the power a...

What happens when busy people stop being busy? Like everyone else, singer songwriter Tom Walker was forced to pause during the pandemic, and he’s clear that it did affect both his songwriting and the pace he lives at day to day. In this chat with Fearne, Tom explains how despite the music industry wanting to measure success by numbers, he’s able to measure his success by his own inner satisfaction...

Fail fast. That’s the advice entrepreneur Steven Bartlett has for those who ultimately want to be successful, because the biggest risk isn’t failing, it’s procrastinating. In this chat with Fearne, Steven talks about how he’s seen first hand the damage being paralysed by decision making can do both in business and on a personal level. They also chat about why you’re already enough, that no matter...

Time, money, and attention turned out to be a difficult combination for Jordan Stephens to cope with at the height of his Rizzle Kicks fame. In this chat with Fearne, Jordan opens up about his social anxiety, body dysmorphia, and the way he used to self-medicate ADHD. They also discuss when anger can be an incredibly useful emotion, and discover they have a shared core fear of getting things wrong...

This episode of Happy Place is made in partnership with The National Lottery. We’re in the midst of The Commonwealth Games, and thanks to National Lottery Players over £40million has been raised to support the 2022 Games. To mark the event, The National Lottery have launched a campaign celebrating some of the incredible athletes, including wheelchair racer Melanie Woods. In this chat wit...

Your spirit is fully equipped to take care of you. Your brain and your body might struggle but spiritual teacher and intuitive guide Sonia Choquette is clear that your sixth sense – your spirit, your intuition – can take care of you no matter what. In this chat with Fearne, Sonia explains how to tune into and trust your intuition, which will in turn open you up to a more fun, loving, and spontaneo...

Constantly being subjected to micro-aggressions can feel like death by a thousand paper cuts; Samantha Renke is an actor, broadcaster, writer, and disability rights campaigner who has the confidence to call out ableism. In this chat, Fearne and Samantha explore where her innate sense of self-worth comes from, how we can all learn to become more confident, and how we can’t talk about an individual’...

Patience is a bit of a lost art, but it’s something that ‘Birdgirl’ Mya-Rose Craig is well practiced in. Mya-Rose is an ornithologist, an environmentalist, a diversity activist as well as a writer, speaker and broadcaster. Having been a twitcher – someone who travels to specific locations to spot birds – since she was days old, she revels in patiently waiting to see the next beautiful bird on her...

Olympian Dame Kelly Holmes recently announced publicly that she is gay. Although she’s acknowledged this truth privately for a number of decades, it’s only now that she’s felt able to begin living publicly her authentic self. Having served in the British military at a time when homosexuality was banned, Kelly had always feared serious repercussions, which only intensified when she became a celebra...

If you tend to doubt yourself, do you know why? Psychotherapist, best-selling author, and former NHS lead for Mental Health Owen O’Kane has spent a lifetime unpicking his own past as a gay Irish Catholic child who was bullied and surrounded by bombs and bullets in the hope of understanding where his fear and shame in adulthood came from. In this chat, he and Fearne talk about why therapy isn’t jus...

Do you have open conversations at work when you’re in pain emotionally or physically? After going through numerous rounds of IVF, as well as having a miscarriage, broadcaster, writer, and author Emma Barnett wants to re-brand pain as weakness into pain as strength, especially at work. In this chat with Fearne, she talks through the worries she had that she might be seen as greedy for wanting a sec...

Broadcaster and author Sara Cox joins Fearne for a special live episode of Happy Place at The Podcast Show in Islington. A brilliant storyteller, Sara talks about the process of finding her own voice and becoming a confident raconteur both on the radio and in her personal life. In this chat, Fearne and Sara also explore friendships – how our friends heavily influence who we are as individuals, how...

Heartbreak is a universal feeling, but everyone copes with it differently. Presenter, actor and singer Denise Van Outen tends to throw herself into work, keeping busy with exciting professional opportunities, to distract from any pain. In this chat with Fearne, Denise talks about how she’s learnt to accept being alone after heartbreak and acknowledge the stillness without constantly trying to fill...

We can all feel paralysed by the guilt that we might not be doing enough to combat climate change, but actor, director, and environmental activist Bonnie Wright feels we should celebrate imperfect and in-process actions. A little can go a long way. In this chat with Fearne, Bonnie explains why it might be helpful to stop thinking about how we can make ourselves and our impact on the planet smaller...

Fearne is a Goodwill Ambassador for Mental Health and Wellbeing for The Prince’s Trust, a brilliant charity that helps people who have faced disadvantage and adversity to get their lives on track, supporting them into education, training, and jobs. In this special episode, Fearne chats to Emma-May about the role The Prince’s Trust has played in helping her grow in confidence, both practi...

Who gets to decide who and what you are? Amanda de Cadenet quit the fame she’d found on British TV after being hounded by the press. She was seen through the eyes of others – journalists, photographers, and viewers – so she chose to reclaim her image by becoming a photographer herself, and reclaimed her voice by starting her own chat shows. In this chat with Fearne, Amanda talks about speaking up...

What do you feel the meaning of life is? Purpose? Happiness? Does it matter if we’re not sure? In this chat, Fearne and actor Minnie Driver explore how it might gently fluctuate as we go through different stages of our lives. Minnie also talks about her innate ability to articulate emotion, something that was often agony during her childhood, but has now allowed her to parent her own son in a deep...

Rugby player Jonny Wilkinson was once driven by a quest for perfection, and an obsession with becoming the best player in the world. Now though, he’s learning to be content with who he is in the present. In this chat, Jonny and Fearne explore the idea that sometimes our own imagination is what’s limiting our idea of success before we’ve even begun, and they wonder if our understanding of ‘ambition...

It’s been thirty years since brothers Isaac, Taylor, and Zac Hanson started making music together, but despite growing up under the spotlight they’ve retained an incredibly strong sense of self. In this chat with Fearne, they talk about the role their parents and faith played in helping them stay grounded in a turbulent world. They also give an insight into the unique role each of them plays in th...

We’ve been encouraged to suppress our intuition, to look to others for answers instead of trusting that we already have the answers within ourselves. Spiritual guide and teacher Giselle La Pompe Moore is determined to help us return to our authentic selves. In this chat, Fearne and Giselle share their belief that spirituality isn’t an elite club that centres around buying stuff. Physical items lik...

You might feel aware that the internet makes you feel strangely disconnected from others, but writer and podcaster Emma Gannon feels it makes us disconnect from ourselves too. In this chat, Emma and Fearne dissect cancel culture and why we’ve got to allow each other the space to learn and grow, as well as why our offline activity should take precedence, because actions speak louder than token word...

If you’re a high achiever, do you ever wonder if you sometimes use success to mask pain? Performer Will Young recognises this is something he did for many years. Now though, he’s discovered the importance of actively connecting to others and physically moving trauma out of his body when he finds himself in a low place. In this chat with Fearne he explains how he spent much of his career comparing...

Does being happy make us healthier, not only mentally, but physically too? Dr Rangan Chatterjee explains the very real effect chronic mental stress can have on our bodies. 80% of ailments he sees as a GP are due to our collective modern lifestyle – that’s not to shame anyone, it’s to help us understand the lifestyle changes we can all make to alleviate both mental and physical symptoms. In this ch...

Actor Ruth Wilson feels she can’t help but bring the essence of herself to all the characters she plays. She’s learnt that in both her professional and personal life the most rewarding moments come from being the most authentic version of herself. In this chat with Fearne, Ruth wonders whether embodying so many different characters has helped her be less judgemental of other people and herself in...