The Richard Nicholls Podcast Richard Nicholls

Matt Rudd is a senior writer at the Sunday Times, he's a published author of both fiction and non fiction. His latest book Man Down: Why Men Are Unhappy and What We Can Do About It, is out now. I read it the day it came out and thought he had some great things to share with you and so I invited him onto the show for a chat.

There can be many reasons why we get blocked from achieving our goals. Today I'm going to explore a few of them.

Continuing the trend of a bonus episode in the middle of the month. This month I chatted with Professor Sophie Scott CBE. Sophie is a neuroscientist working at University College London. She's a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, has presented the Royal Institutions Christmas Lectures and has been on multiple TV and Radio programs over the years talking about the neuroscience of laughter. I hope you enjoy what she has to say.

Avoiding conflict can influence the big things in life as well as the small things. It's why people split up over text rather than actually deal with a relationship problem face to face. And if you've ever had a huge sense of relief if you ring someone about a problem and their phone goes to voicemail, you'll know what I mean.

Recently I had the pleasure of chatting with the broadcaster and author Rhada Modgil. As well as being a familiar face and voice on various BBC TV and radio shows Rhada is also a practising GP with a very special interest in emotional wellbeing.

With some enthusiasm we can go from dragging our feet and saying how tired we are to suddenly being alert and awake. But whether it's about scripting a podcast episode or going for a run, it's really easy to say to ourselves "I don't feel like it" and if your energy levels have dropped it's definitely worth looking into why.