The Meaningful Life with Andrew G. Marshall – Details, episodes & analysis

Guardian columnist Tim Dowling has spent decades chronicling his marriage and family life for the Weekend magazine. His self-deprecating humour and determinedly cynical approach have made him hugely popular with readers. 

In this classic episode, Tim and Andrew discuss the layers that go into a joke. What exactly is it that we’re doing when we laugh at ourselves and our own life? Humour can be about storytelling, making sense of the past, finding honesty and creating meaning. It can be a defence mechanism, and a form of self-protection for the intensely shy. 

Tim’s readers have watched him move from the chaos of working and parenting younger children to a different stage of midlife. The column has changed, and so has everyone featured in it. Andrew and Tim discuss new hobbies, the relaxation that can come with being older, and the boundaries that need to go up when writing about family for so long. 

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: 

• Three things Tim Dowling 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

Get Andrew’s free guide to difficult conversations with your partner: How to Tell Your Partner Difficult Things 

Take a look at Andrew’s new online relationship course: My Best Relationship Tools

Listen to Tim Dowling’s audiobook How To Be Happy All The Time: The Unexpected Joys of Being a Cynic: Everything Bad Is Good for You

Find out more about dealing with midlife and the relationship issues it can cause in Andrew’s book It’s Not a Midlife Crisis, It’s an Opportunity.

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 

As children we were probably taught that being selfish was a great evil, to be avoided at all costs. Jungian analyst and author Bud Harris, however, feels that “sacred selfishness” can be a path to genuine self-love, forgiveness and the wholeness we crave.

In this episode, Andrew and Bud discuss

• How to value ourselves and live meaningful lives we love.

• How to become authentic humans, who give back vitality and hope to others.

• How to love others without losing ourselves.

• What true self-love and self-forgiveness mean.

Bud Harris, PhD, is one of the most prolific Jungian authors of our time. He has authored and co-authored over 20 books, and has been in the field of Jungian psychology for more than 40 years. After an early career in business, he experienced a call to become a Jungian analyst, and moved to Zurich, Switzerland, for his training. Now in his 80s, he lives and practices in North Carolina.

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: 

• The Transforming Power of Suffering.
• Three things Bud Harris 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

Get Andrew’s free guide to difficult conversations with your partner: How to Tell Your Partner Difficult Things 

Take a look at Andrew’s new online relationship course: My Best Relationship Tools 

Read Bud Harris’s book Sacred Selfishness 

Visit Bud Harris’ website 

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 

The Meaningful Life Classic Episode: TRACEY COX on Great Sex After 50

No-one would deny sex is important to a meaningful life, but what that looks like changes as we age. In this first episode of The Meaningful Life, international sex therapist and Daily Mail columnist Tracey Cox discusses her book Great Sex Starts at 50: How to Age-Proof Your Libido. 

While wild, lustful sex can certainly be a unique and special life experience, the sex that brings us meaning is different. It’s the sex that lasts past the orgasm, to include that afterglow as you lie together or even just make each other a post-coital cup of tea. It’s about building a sexual relationship that is not solely focused on orgasm. 

Meaningful sex is also sex that the two of you work on - after twenty years you probably won’t want to rip each other’s clothes off, but you CAN plan time to devote to each other, to try new things and create desire. Trying new things is something the majority of couples never do - but it’s a simple recipe for exciting, meaningful sex, and Tracey and Andrew have plenty of tips on where to start.

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:

• Three things Tracey Cox 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

Get Andrew’s free guide to difficult conversations with your partner: How to Tell Your Partner Difficult Things.

Take a look at Andrew’s new online relationship course: My Best Relationship Tools.

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

Get the advice you need on your sex life from Tracey Cox.

Listen to Tracey Cox and Kelsey Chittick’s SexTok podcast 

Follow Tracey Cox on social media: Instagram, Facebook and Twitter/X.

Put the spark back in your relationship with Andrew’s book Have The Sex You Want

https://andrewgmarshall.com/book/have-the-sex-you-want-a-couples-guide-to-getting-back-the-spark/

Read Andrew’s advice on what to do if your partner says the passion is gone

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 and on Substack at The Meaningful Life. 

If you’re feeling stuck in your life, could the way forward be found in your dreams? Your dreams are direct messages from your subconscious, and can tell you a huge amount if you pay them a little attention.

This week’s guest, Machiel Klerk, is a Jungian analyst and the founder of the Jung Platform. He is also the author of Dream Guidance, a guide to connecting with and finding guidance from the soul through your dreams.

Andrew and Machiel discuss Machiel’s dream incubation techniques: Machiel provides guidance on how to ask your subconscious a question relating to a specific situation in your life, and have the answer offered by your dreams. 

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:

⭐️Four techniques to better interpret your dreams.

⭐️3 things Machiel 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 Machiel Klerk’s book Dream Guidance 

Visit Machiel Klerk’s website 

Visit the Jung Platform

Follow Machiel Klerk on Facebook and Instagram

Listen to some of our other episodes featuring Jungian analysts, including James Hollis on Resilience, Lisa Marchiano on Motherhood, Susan Schwartz on Fathers and Daughters and Robert Hopcke on Meaningful Coincidence.

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.

If we know anything for sure about love, it’s that our beloved will change as time passes. They will look different, believe new things and feel new sorrows and joys.

Psychologist and author Dr Matthew McKay has written a new book on how we can keep love alive in an age of impermanence. He talks with Andrew about five ways to keep loving in the face of change, loss or disappointment:

⭐️Truly knowing the people we love

⭐️Actively caring for loved ones

⭐️Cultivating compassion

⭐️Setting a daily intention to act with love

⭐️Turning toward the pain of impermanence, not away from it.

Matthew has a strong belief that the power of love continues after life is over, and he and Andrew also discuss how to keep loving and communicating with those who are gone.

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:

⭐️Matthew discussing his “navigation principle” - a way to see more clearly how we approach life’s big decisions.

⭐️Matthew’s gratitude meditation to help you clean out the wounds of life.

⭐️3 things Matthew 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 Dr Matthew McKay’s new book Love in the Time of Impermanence 

Read Dr Matthew McKay’s book on the transition to the afterlife: The Luminous Landscape of the Afterlife 

Take a look at Dr Matthew McKay’s author page on the Inner Traditions website.

Read some of Dr Matthew McKay’s other books 

You might also enjoy Andrew’s interviews with Paul Gilbert on Compassion and Self-Acceptance and with Terry Real on the Five Traps that Undermine Your Love. 

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 

How can we cope when life turns very dark? The culture tends to suggest we fix ourselves, work through the grief, and get back to normal as quickly as possible.

If we accept the challenge to go deeper, though, getting up close with the darkness of life can be enriching and freeing. 

Ancient and non-Western cultures tend to offer more routes into the “underworld”. Jungian psychotherapist Dr Joanna LaPrade is the author of a new book called Forged In Darkness, in which she explores how myth and stories can help us navigate our way through the shadows.

In this episode Joanna shares stories and real-life examples to help you understand your own darkness. She and Andrew discuss:

• Creating your own rituals to deal with darkness
• Generational darkness: millennials and failure, babyboomers and shame.
• The transformative experience of suffering

Dr Joanna LaPrade is an author, educator and Jungian psychotherapist. She has a private practice in Colorado U.S.A.

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:

⭐️The mythical gods and heroes who can best help us understand suffering.

⭐️3 things Joanna 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 Joanna LaPrade’s book Forged In Darkness 

Visit Dr Joanna LaPrade’s website 

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

Listen to some of our other episodes on grief, such as David Kessler on the Sixth Stage of Grief, or to other Jungian guests such as James Hollis on Resilience.

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.

Is it possible to fall in love with your partner over and over again? Can you hope to hold onto passionate sex as you grow older together?

This week Andrew is joined by Dr Cheryl Fraser, an author, Buddhist teacher, psychologist and sex therapist. They explore the nature and longevity of passion, including:

⭐️Libido and why it can wane over time

⭐️How mindfulness works in the bedroom

⭐️The “passion triangle” - intimacy, thrill, sensuality.

Dr Cheryl Fraser is the author of Buddha’s Bedroom, and the host of the Sex, Love and Elephants podcast. She also runs an online programme for couples, Become Passion.

Dr Cheryl has helped thousands of couples jump-start their love life and create passion that lasts a lifetime. She lives in Vancouver, where she has a thriving private practice in sex and couples therapy. She is regularly featured in Mindful and Best Health magazines. Dr Cheryl was also a Fulbright scholar, and has studied meditation and Buddhism for twenty-five years, in both the Tibetan and Theravaden traditions.

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:

⭐️Cheryl & Andrew on 3 big relationship myths

⭐️How Buddhism’s 4 Noble Truths can lead to a more loving, connected relationships. 

⭐️3 things Cheryl 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 publication, The Meaningful Life

Learn more about Dr Cheryl’s online immersion program for couples, Become Passion. It will be offered only once in 2022, in October. Join the waitlist here. 

Sign up to receive Lovebytes, Dr Cheryl’s tips and techniques to help you create love that lasts a lifetime.

Read Dr Cheryl’s book, Buddha’s Bedroom 

Listen to Dr Cheryl’s podcast Sex, Love and Elephants 

Follow Dr Cheryl on Facebook and YouTube 

Read Andrew’s book I Love You But I’m Not In Love With You 

Read Andrew’s blog Seven Secrets for Making Marriage Last 

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.

This week we are celebrating our 100th episode. To mark the occasion, we have a very special guest: Julia Samuel MBE, who is one of the UK’s foremost psychotherapists, as well as an author and an expert on grief. 

Julia and Andrew discuss:

⭐️How grief and loss pass from generation to generation

⭐️How you can protect your own children from generational trauma

⭐️Using boundaries, rituals and positive conflict techniques to help your family heal.

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:

⭐️Julia’s 12 touchstones for the wellbeing of a family.

⭐️3 things Julia 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 and join the community there

Read Julia Samuel’s book Every Family has a Story: How We Inherit Love and Loss

Read Julia Samuel’s other books This Too Shall Pass : Stories of Change, Crisis and Hopeful Beginnings and Grief Works : Stories of Life, Death and Surviving

Take a look at Julia Samuel’s website  

Follow Julia Samuel on Facebook and Instagram @JuliaSamuelMBE

Listen to other episodes dealing with generational inheritances: Terry Real on Five Traps that Undermine Your Love, Jed Diamond on Your Personal Creation Story and Philippa Perry on What You Wish Your Parents Knew.

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 

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.

Some of us spend years having the same arguments with our partner, on repeat. Others drift into a state of lonely togetherness where we don’t bother to talk about discontents, because it just feels pointless.

Joanna Harrison is a marital therapist who has identified five arguments that all couples need to have. If you can work through these issues, your chances of building a healthy, happy relationship are much stronger.

In this week’s episode, Andrew and Joanna discuss basic skills for productive conflict, why we try to avoid arguments, and how therapy can help.

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:

⭐️Joanna’s examples of practical strategies that have worked best for the couples she sees. 

⭐️Andrew and Joanna’s best piece of advice for couples struggling to disagree productively.

⭐️3 things Joanna KNOWS to be true.

⭐️AND subscribers can also explore a rich trove of bonus material on love, life and meaning created by Andrew and all his previous guests.

Follow Up

Read Andrew’s new Substack newsletter and join the community there 

Get Joanna Harrison’s book Five Arguments All Couples (Need to) Have and Why the Washing-Up Matters 

Take a look at Joanna Harrison’s website https://joannaharrison.co.uk 

Follow Joanna Harrison on Twitter @JoCoupleTherapy and on Instagram @joannaharrisoncoupletherapist 

Listen to other The Meaningful Life episodes on marriage and relationships: Dr Terry Real on Five Traps that Undermine Your Love and Matthew Fray on How Good People Mess Up Their Marriages

 Read Andrew’s book I Love You But I’m Not In Love With You: Seven Steps to Saving Your Relationship 

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. 

Society encourages us to focus hard on “doing, achieving and having”. According to Professor Paul Gilbert, though, we would likely be much happier if we instead worked on being more compassionate to ourselves and others.

In this episode Andrew and Paul discuss:

⭐️Why being compassionate ISN’T being weak

⭐️Three key pillars of compassion: assertiveness, forgiveness & apology

⭐️Why compassion increases feelings of contentment and wellbeing. 

⭐️Exercises you can do to become more compassionate

⭐️The vagus nerve and its role in regulating anxiety and moods.

Professor Paul Gilbert Paul Gilbert FBPsS, PhD, OBE is the Founder and President of The Compassionate Mind Foundation. He is also Professor of Clinical Psychology at the University of Derby and honorary visiting Prof at the University of Queensland. Paul was made a Fellow of the British Psychological Society in 1993, president of the BABCP for 2002-2004, and was a member of the first British Government’s NICE guidelines for depression. He has written/edited 23 books and over 300 papers and book chapters. He was awarded an OBE by the Queen in March 2011 for services to mental health.

Follow Up

Read Andrew’s new Substack newsletter and join the community there. 

Read Paul Gilbert’s book The Compassionate Mind

See Paul Gilbert’s other books  

Paul Gilbert is the Founder and President of The Compassionate Mind Foundation 

Follow the Compassionate Mind Foundation on Facebook @CompMindFound, on Twitter @CompMindFound, on Instagram @compassionatemind_foundation and on LinkedIn. 

Learn more about the vagus nerve - “Everything you need to know about the vagus nerve” in Medical News Today and “This Nerve Influences Nearly Every Internal Organ. Can It Improve Our Mental State, Too?” in The New York Times.

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 

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.