The doctor and author’s top titles to help improve your health and lifestyle in 2026
Rangan Chatterjee is a physician and author who sprang into public consciousness in the reality documentary series Doctor in the House in 2015. He then became the resident doctor on BBC Breakfast and a regular contributor to BBC Radio in 2017, before launching his podcast Feel Better, Live More in 2018. It is now Europe’s No 1 health podcast and in 2024 it was in the top 10 most listened to podcasts in the UK.
The mission of all his work – from the podcasts to his seven books including the recently reissued Happy Mind, Happy Life – is to help simplify health noise into clear advice about how we can all live happier, healthier lives.
So which are the books that have taught him the most? Here, he picks the five books that could help boost your well-being this year.
Fear Less by Dr Pippa Grange
“Remember when Gareth Southgate took over the England football team and he revolutionised their whole mindset and approach? He hired Pippa to do that. She was the England football team psychologist for a number of years. To be clear, the book is not about football, but I like the way Pippa thinks.
“Fear Less gets to the heart of what holds so many of us back in our lives: fear. That book had a really profound impact on me. It helped me understand the various places that fear tends to show up in our lives and taught me how to move beyond it. It’s a great book, and an easy read too.”
Silence: In the Age of Noise by Erling Kagge
“Norwegian explorer Kagge is an incredible guy. He’s one of the first humans to walk to the South Pole completely unaided, and he did that maybe 20 years ago. So he spent over 50 days in complete silence. In the book he talks about the power of silence, and how in the modern world silence has been stolen from us. Silence, he argues, is where we learn about ourselves and gain perspective on our life: it’s where we learn what it is we really want to do with our lives.
“Kagge’s writing is beautiful, very minimalist. It’s the sort of book you can have next to your bed and dip in for a few pages every night.”
The Ageless Brain by Dr Dale Bredesen
“Neurologist Dr Dale Bredesen has boldly claimed that you can reverse the symptoms of Alzheimer’s – and he did that back in 2014. He’s written a few books on this subject but what I really like about The Ageless Brain (which comes with the subtitle, How To Sharpen and Protect Your Mind for a Lifetime) is that it’s really well written but, crucially, there are lots of simple, practical things in there that we can all do to keep our mind healthy. This is for people who are interested in reducing the risk of getting Alzheimer’s in the future.”
Original Love by Henry Shukman
“Henry Shukman grew up in Oxford but for 30 years now he’s lived in New Mexico teaching meditation and becoming a Zen master. This book gets to the heart of what meditation is really about. Too often we think about what the science tells us about meditation. ‘It’s good for my focus, this part of my brain gets bigger’ and so on. That’s all great, and I love that stuff, but that’s a very Western, reductionist way of looking at something like meditation.
“Instead, here he probes the essence of meditation. Why are we better human beings when we meditate? Why are we even here in the first place? And how does meditation help us become kinder and more compassionate people? I really love it – and it’s helped me look at the world through different eyes.”
Awe by Dacher Keltner
“What I love about this book is that it puts words to something we all intuitively know: that there’s more to life than just getting up each morning, getting the kids to school, getting to work on time, doing our emails, earning enough to take a holiday and so on. Great, all those things are great. But this, life, is all about awe.
“Keltner breaks down the eight sources of awe in life – among them nature, birth and death. We’re so busy these days. I love books like this that help us step outside of that and make us reflect that we maybe do have 10 minutes for, say, nature each day.”
‘Happy Mind, Happy Life’ by Dr Rangan Chatterjee is published by Penguin Life, £10.99
