Dr Andy Cope is a best-selling author and keynote speaker. His weekly podcast provides wisdom, advice, top tips, tears and laughter. His mantra; If you’re gonna rise, you may as well SHINE. Treat yourself to some wellbeing TLC
Is social media the devil's work? Andy assembles an unlikely panel to fight it out - and referees from the middle.
In the blue corner: his son, AoB trainer Ollie Cope, who deleted all his social media accounts and is now doing a PhD on what they do to your brain. In the red corner: AoB's marketing manager Amy Bradley, the creative force behind the Art of Brilliance posts that land in your feed at 6am and the messages that follow - "I really needed to see that today."
What follows is a properly good-natured scrap about the most divisive tool of our age. Ollie argues social media has tipped from neutral to net-harmful - hate sells faster, the algorithms learn your biases and feed them back to you, and nobody's incentivised to show you the other side. Amy makes the case that the same tools, used with love, genuinely change people's days. They're both right, which is what makes it interesting.
In this episode:
Why Ollie loves screens but deleted social media - and the difference between the two
Amy on the "scroll hole," the Mel Robbins 5-second rule, and training your own algorithm
The TikTok experiment that should worry every parent
Andy's tongue-in-cheek phone stats (84% have texted someone in the same room... and the one that gets the biggest laugh at conferences)
Hate sells faster: how the engagement economy rewards the worst of us
The opportunity cost nobody talks about: 42 days a year, and what you're not doing while you're scrolling
How to mute, guard and curate your way to a feed that's actually good for you
No moral panic. No "delete everything." Just an honest look at the little black rectangles we're all looking at 150 times a day - and how to take responsibility for how we use them.
Take what works, leave what doesn't, have a play.
20 May 2026
Could You Be Happier... Even If Nothing Around You Changed?
Could you be happier, even if nothing in the world around you changed?
Andy puts the question to two of the Art of Brilliance trainers, Nikki Ayles and Kev House, in Episode 2 of the new series - and what follows is the most honest 25 minutes you'll spend this week.
All three of them, by their own admission, would have said no a few years ago. The thinking went... my happiness is out there somewhere - in the next promotion, the holiday, the perfect Tuesday - and when life finally bends itself into the right shape, I'll catch up with it. Robert Holden calls this the WAIT problem. Most of us call it normal.
But somewhere along the way, all three of them changed their minds. And that's what this episode is really about.
How they did it. What it cost. And the very ordinary moments - pushing a trolley round Tesco's in Ashby-de-la-Zouch, sitting down for tea with your kids, going for a walk and not looking at your phone - that turned out to be the turning points.
In this episode:
Andy's epiphany in the cereal aisle: "everywhere I go, I'm there"
Nikki on Three Good Things, and what changed when she started doing it on purpose with her kids at the dinner table
Kev on the active process - and why he stopped waiting for life to happen to him
Why even the best advice won't land until you're ready to hear it
Barbara Fredrickson's broaden-and-build: how happiness right now changes how you see your past and your future
Andy's question that we couldn't stop thinking about: Are we all suffering from human zoochosis?
Three different definitions of "happy" - including the calm, contented version that doesn't get a podcast deal
Three top tips for getting a bit more of the good stuff (one of which is: get comfortable feeling uncomfortable)
If Episode 1 was about whether wellbeing tips actually work, this one goes a layer deeper... whether happiness itself is something you're waiting for or something you're doing.
Take what works, leave what doesn't, enjoy.
1 May 2026
Top Wellbeing Tips You Haven't Heard Before
Andy is back - and this time he's not in his car.
After two seasons of recording on his iPhone in a layby, Andy has finally splashed out on a proper studio.
To mark the occasion, Andy has roped in two of his Art of Being Brilliant co-conspirators, Will Hussey and Hannah Knowles, for a riff on something deceptively simple: top wellbeing tips you haven't heard before.
Spoiler: Will's first tip is to stop listening to wellbeing tips. Andy's a little bit thrown. Things go from there.
What follows is three trainers who actually know each other thinking out loud about what works, what stops working, and the gap between knowing the stuff and doing it.
In this episode:
Why other people's tips will only ever get you 75% of the way there
Hannah's case for a non-self-improvement day (yes, including a day off from the self-help books)
Will on rebranding "wellbeing" as "human-being" - and why eat, move, sleep is still doing most of the heavy lifting
The Olympian's rule that's rewired Hannah's mornings: I'll go first
Andy on habituation, déjà moo, and why his 2008 toothache trick eventually stopped working
Reasons vs excuses - and why Will is on day 1,411 of running
No big claims. No four-step framework. Just three people having a proper conversation about how to be a bit more brilliant on a Monday.
Take what works, leave what doesn't, have a play.
Reach and audience
Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.
YouTube views
1,113,528
Score snapshot 15 Sept 2025
Apple Podcasts (US)
5.0 / 5
3 ratings
Spotify
5.0 / 5
28 ratings
Podcast Authority Score: 80 / 100
A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.
Quality
90
Social presence
0
YouTube
86
Engagement
92
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