On New Year’s Eve, we experience feelings of joy, sadness, thankfulness, regret, and nostalgia, as our brains recall episodic moments from the past 12 months. Surges of dopamine mix with our aspirations, forming resolutions. As we count down to the new year, we’re full of excitement and hope.

But most of us don’t manage to stick to our new year’s resolutions beyond January.

In this episode of Your Brain On, we discuss the neuroscience and psychology of:

• Why new year’s resolutions so often fail
• How we can keep our new year’s resolutions, with science-backed techniques
• Whether new years are good starting points for forming new habits

We’re joined by Dr. Phillippa Lally, a Senior Lecturer of Psychology at the University of Surrey in the UK, and our friend Howard Jacobson, an expert in the mechanics of behavior change.