The Meaningful Life with Andrew G. Marshall

Venus O’Hara plans to change the world, one orgasm at a time. She believes women are equally as sexual as men, and should have the time and space to embrace their multi-orgasmic potential. Venus is a British orgasm activist, author and feminist based in Barcelona. She has a hugely popular YouTube channel on which she discusses the female orgasm and leading a healthy and authentic orgasmic lifestyl...

Who is your favourite literary character? According to Dr Josh Cohen, an academic working in literary theory and also a psychoanalyst, this can be a very important question. Josh Cohen’s new book is How to Live. What To Do: In search of ourselves in life and literature . He believes that there are major similarities between psychoanalysis and great literature. For one thing, neither offers simple...

“Think globally, act joyfully” is Isabel Losada’s motto. Her most recent book is The Joyful Environmentalist, which shows how one person can make a huge difference to the health of the planet. Few of us these days are strangers to climate anxiety, and Isabel’s approach is the ideal medicine: her aim is to show her reader every single way that we can take care of our natural environment: how we liv...

“Midlife is when those dreams we had when we were young but put aside to earn a living or raise a family can finally be revisited; it’s never too late to be what you wanted to be”.  This is the philosophy of Noon, a community for women in midlife created by Eleanor Mills. Eleanor experienced her own reckoning with midlife after leaving her job with the Sunday Times, confronting an empty nest and d...

So many of us have experienced depression, and if not, we’re likely to have seen the people we love battle it. This week’s guest, Kate Lucey, specialises in writing about mental health. She talks candidly with Andrew  about her own depression and the six-year journey she’s been on since her diagnosis: including physical symptoms and the effects on her personal relationships.  Kate and Andrew also...

If the thought of cooking another family dinner is making you tired, this week’s episode might bring joy back to your kitchen. After all, at its best, cooking for friends and family is a powerful way to express love. Food can also help to create a sense of adventure and cultural curiosity in our children. In difficult times, eating together can be healing and rejuvenating. This week’s guest is Cla...

Do you struggle to sleep, your mind buzzing with worries about the future? Do you compare yourself to others and find yourself always coming up short? This week’s episode is all about ditching overthinking and seeking happiness that isn’t determined by external circumstances.  Richard Paterson, my guest this week, has trained throughout his life to quiet the thinking mind and unearth “ a treasure...

How can we learn to be at ease in our bodies so that we can be fully “in the moment” during sex? Anxiety about body image is one of the biggest obstacles to a happy, fulfilled sex life. Many people seek therapy to help them relax and enjoy sex with their partner, others struggle on in low-sex or no-sex relationships.  This week Andrew talks to Kate Moyle, Psychosexual and Relationship Therapist, a...

Are you one of the many people who end up shocked by the ultimate similarity of romantic relationships that felt very different starting out? Why is it that we find the same patterns repeating, the same problems coming up over and over? In this episode, Andrew talks to author and attachment theory specialist Tara Blair-Ball. Tara explains how attachment theory - which is grounded in analysis of ho...

Are you a prisoner of your own way of thinking about life? If we step back and reframe our thoughts about work, relationships or family, we can find that there is more meaning and happiness in our life than we ever expected. In this episode, Andrew talks to Elaine Dundon of the Global Meaning Institute about being a prisoner of our thoughts and about finding meaning at work, even if we see our job...

So many mothers have found the world of work a hostile environment after they have children. The jobs they once loved just don’t work with babies, school runs and Christmas plays, and it can feel like everything suffers.  Hannah Martin of the Talented Ladies Club has dedicated herself to helping women find the courage and inspiration to create careers that work for them and their families. She has...

How do we live knowing that we will die? How can we face death, and how should we prepare for it? Dr Kathryn Mannix has spent her professional life working in palliative care, and the teams she has worked on have been involved in 10-15 thousand deaths. In this episode, Kathryn shares her insights into what it’s like to die and how we can love and support someone approaching the end of their life....

Too often we treat mind and body as completely separate: fear and anxiety belong to the mind, and then there are physical disorders. In fact, mind and body are parts of the same system. The road to calm and joy is much faster if we make sure to take care of both.  Henry Emmons MD looks at mental health problems like depression and anxiety by weaving together mind-body and natural therapies, mindfu...

A diagnosis of bipolar disorder can be devastating: it is an extremely serious and debilitating mental illness. Family and friends may not understand what you’re going through, and can be full of unhelpful misconceptions. John Poehler is an award-winning blogger and mental health advocate who has developed an impressive range of tools to help people with bipolar. Andrew and John talk about how the...

Parents like to feel they are independent individuals making their own decisions, but in reality parenting is hugely influenced by our own experiences of childhood. In this episode, Andrew and Philippa talk about how we are “links in a chain", and why it is really important for parents to recognise that and to make sure that their own links are shaped to the needs of their children.  Philippa Perr...

As well as producing weekly episodes of The Meaningful Life, our podcast engineer Michael Dooney is a brand new dad. This week, Michael and his wife Christy talk to Andrew about their life-changing and at times traumatic journey to parenthood.  Michael and Christy battled infertility and grieved the loss of several pregnancies. When they finally conceived their daughter Elsie, they effectively hel...

It isn’t hard as a parent to find advice on breastfeeding, your child’s education or managing their behaviour. What’s rarer is insight into how the parenting journey changes us as a person. Yet, becoming a mother is a unique opportunity for self-realisation. In this episode Lisa Marchiano and Andrew take a deep dive into motherhood: how it connects us to previous and next generations, how easy it...

The relationship between a man and his penis is rarely discussed except as a joke. Men don’t often talk to each other about erection issues, and women are left in the dark. Angus Barge took the plunge and spoke to his cousin about the problems he was having getting an erection at the age of 27. His cousin was also brave enough to break the silence, and this led them to create Mojo, a pill-free sol...

Our parents’ divorce can have so many ramifications, some of which don’t become apparent until well into adulthood. How do we face up to and understand the unprocessed pain of divorce? How do we build more successful relationships of our own? Terry Gaspard specialises in helping clients overcome the legacy of their parents’ breakups in order to build strong, happy relationships. Terry is also an e...

When did you last learn to do something totally and utterly new? Tom Vanderbilt, author of Beginners: the Joy and Transformative Power of Lifelong Learning, was awestruck by his young daughter’s insatiable need to know how to do almost everything. He was inspired to embark on a year of learning purely for its own sake. Tom had a truly unique year - a circuitous journey of learning, in which he att...

Are you living a life you really believe in, or are you filling in time until your “real life” begins? Are you waiting on marriage, a better job, a new exercise regime or a beautiful house to create an authentic life?  Humans do need to have goals and plans, but it is also destructive to ignore those inner voices telling us what would bring us individual meaning. Instead of putting off developing...

Fenella Hansen brings her own life experiences of grief, loss, mental health and trauma to her counselling work. After losing her mother to cancer, she made a dramatic career change from IT into counselling, and has since worked extensively with survivors of various forms of trauma.  Fenella has herself also suffered medical PTSD and family violence, which she believes gives her a unique perspecti...

We all think of infidelity as something that happens to someone else. When betrayal enters our own safe universe, it comes as a terrible shock. Many couples confronting infidelity end up re-examining just about everything in their lives: not just their marriage, but their work, their relationships with family and friends, and how they find meaning and fulfilment. Sometimes it can even be these cou...

Dena Justice’s lifelong interest in mentoring and coaching began at age seven, when she took her first social-emotional training program. At 15, she taught her first personal development course. She has undertaken years of training in conflict management and mediation, leadership, communication, facilitation, and has two Master’s degrees. Despite loving her career, Dena hit a point where she felt...

What is it like to step away from individual freedom and enter into a life of submission and domination? This week’s witness is Slave Phil, a writer, blogger and podcaster at Master Slave Lifestyle.  From early childhood, Phil was drawn to being controlled and dominated by others. At the age of eighteen, he began exploring the master slave lifestyle. For Phil, this was “part of his soul”, not just...