Episode 15: Why Trying Harder to Sleep Is Keeping You Awake, with Sleep Psychologist Dr. Amelia Scott.

This week’s guest could not be more fitting. Dr. Amelia Scott is a clinical psychologist, sleep researcher, and the founder of Circa Sleep, and she walks Lee and Irene through something both hosts have lived but never had language for: the cycle of insomnia and sleep anxiety. There is a deep dive into CBTI, the gold standard treatment that almost nobody outside the field has heard of, a fairly memorable conversation about Irene’s Oura ring, and a genuinely useful explanation of why trying harder to sleep is usually the very thing that stops it from happening.

In Womansplain, Justin returns with a question prompted by a mate’s offhand comment about low testosterone, and gets the full lifestyle-first rundown before anyone mentions a prescription.

And Lee has a rave. For walking. Yes, walking. She makes a very good case.

✨ In this episode we chat about:

• Why the show is now officially The Lee and Irene Show.

• Dr. Amelia Scott’s path into sleep psychology, and why insomnia is barely covered in clinical training despite being the second most common mental health condition.

• What insomnia actually is, clinically, and why it is rarely a standalone problem.

• The anxiety-sleeplessness cycle, and the behavioural loops that quietly keep it going.

• Why waking at 3am is normal, and what is actually happening in the brain when it happens.

• Sleep trackers, the Oura ring, and the nocebo effect of a bad sleep score.

• CBTI (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for Insomnia) and the counterintuitive logic of sleep restriction therapy.

• Tired versus sleepy, a distinction that reframes a lot of chronic fatigue conversations.