The first headline: the government's crackdown on people playing music and videos out loud on buses and trains, launched by Andy Burnham as Prime Minister. Hilary's own bugbear is the loud phone call. Peter's view is that the story is really about councils being given powers over their own networks, and that he is in favour, because the common thread is people imposing themselves on other people's space. It is, he says, why Europeans find American tourists so irritating. Hilary adds the serious side of noise: road noise is linked to heart disease, diabetes and depression. Peter explains from his own brain imaging research why closing your eyes, or putting on noise cancelling headphones, really does bring stress down.

The second headline is personalised number plates, after a Bentley that once carried Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor's DOY plate was sold this month. Sales have more than doubled in a decade, to about 1.2 million in 2024. Peter is a no, on balance. He admires the business idea of selling something that costs nothing, and understands the wish to make a mass produced object your own. Both of them would quite like to sit on the DVLA committee that decides which plates are too rude.

The third headline is prepping. Last week the head of MI5 set out the threats facing Britain, and hackers turned supermarket fridges into ovens across France. Hilary has the window tape, the water purifying tablets and the wind up radio, and is keeping her CDs for the world after Wi-Fi. Peter is a prepper intellectually and not practically: he keeps the everyday basics in order, but what he wants is to read the warning signs early, because history is full of people who waited too long.

The Triple T: if you are about to buy something that falls into conspicuous consumption, ask yourself whether you would still buy it if nobody, for the rest of human history, ever knew you owned it.

A note before you listen. This episode discusses the Nazi persecution of Jewish people, historical massacres and pogroms, and the threat of war and nuclear attack.

Mentioned in this episode

• The DVLA's banned 76 number plates: Auto Express
• The government's emergency preparedness campaign: Prepare
• Practical guides for everyday emergencies: UK Preppers
• Music without headphones on buses and trains: ITV News
• The French supermarket fridge attack: Al Jazeera
• Conspicuous consumption, from Thorstein Veblen's The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899): Wikipedia

Before that, Hilary is saving The Traitors for a birthday binge, a bit of deferred gratification. Peter thinks the show is Wink Murder for grown ups and that real life has better liars. And Oscar the cat wants out, cat flap or no cat flap.

The first headline: the Pentagon says the firing squad execution of Nidal Hasan, the army major who killed 13 people at Fort Hood in 2009, will be livestreamed. Hilary feels disgust rather than sadness and wants to know why. Peter's first feeling is fear. He hears echoes of the way states have always punished crimes against the state, and asks whether it is cruel and unusual. They talk about why people are drawn to the horrific, the last public execution in America 90 years ago, and Peter's view that the administration is deliberately playing to the worst in us. Then a detour through democracy as the least bad system, the ancient Greeks choosing leaders by lot, algorithms that only tell us what we already think, and Nietzsche on fighting monsters.

The second headline is Shannon Burns, a technology executive on £220,000 a year who has won a disability discrimination claim over her ADHD, in a case the headlines reduced to falling asleep in a sauna. Peter says plainly that his view of ADHD is disputed by many psychiatrists and psychologists. He sees attention as something all of us manage, some more scattergun and some more laser like, and not as an illness some people have. Hilary pushes back hard: without a diagnosis, how does anyone get the help, or the adjustments at work, they need? Peter is clear that people are struggling and need help, just the right help. His proposals start with education: start the school day later and teach children how to focus before you teach them the times tables. The new government review led by Peter Fonagy comes up too.

The final headline is the orange plague, a two and a half metre statue of a naked Donald Trump in 23 carat gold leaf, which stood outside the European Parliament in Strasbourg. Hilary laughed, then wondered whether this is really where we are now. Michelle Obama's "when they go low, we go high" feels like another era. Peter thinks ridicule might do what argument has not. He also has an art installation of his own in mind, involving robot lawnmowers and lances.

The Triple T: look again. When you are sure something is not there, your keys, an error, a gorilla, stop and look from a different angle. Not seeing it is not evidence that it is not there.

A note before you listen. This episode discusses a planned execution and its livestreaming, mass shootings, public executions and beheading videos, and ADHD, mental health diagnosis and discrimination at work.

If ADHD affects you or someone you work with. ADHD UK has information and support, and Acas explains your rights on disability discrimination at work, including reasonable adjustments.

Mentioned in this episode

• The gold Trump statue, "The Orange Plague" by the Danish artist Jens Galschiøt: Artforum
• Disability discrimination and reasonable adjustments at work: Acas
• ADHD UK, the charity: adhduk.co.uk
• The invisible gorilla: Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris, Gorillas in our midst, Perception, 1999. The original paper
• The Pentagon on the Hasan execution, set for 3 December at Fort Hood: AP
• Burns v Gitpod: the tribunal upheld disability discrimination and a failure to make reasonable adjustments. Compensation is still to be decided; the £76 million figure is her claim, not an award
• The government's independent review of mental health and neurodevelopmental diagnosis, chaired by Professor Peter Fonagy: ITV News
• Peter's blog, Me, My Brain and Baked Beans
• Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt's Oblique Strategies cards

Experience is hosted by Hilary Jeffs and Professor Peter Kinderman, and produced by James Jones at Granary Digital. Get in touch at hello@experiencepodco.com.

Before that, a progress report on Black Bag, Luke Kennard's Booker shortlisted novel. Hilary listened to the audiobook in the car with one of her teenagers, forgot that it gets a bit raunchy in places, and turned into a 1950s housewife. Peter is about as far through and enjoying it.

The first headline: a laboratory technician at the anti-plague research institute in Irkutsk has died of a suspected pneumonic plague infection, and about 200 of her contacts have been under observation. Peter is not a microbiologist, and says so. If he were in Andy Burnham's chair he would want a briefing twice a day until somebody knew what was going on. The reassurance is that plague is bacterial, so it can be treated with antibiotics, and Hilary has read that it does not pass easily from person to person. Then the bigger question: could we lock down again? Peter thinks the lockdown was horrible and far better than the alternative. Hilary thinks the decisions came too late and in the wrong order. They agree on one thing: follow the advice of people who know what they are talking about.

The Met Office has asked everyone to calm down about an El Niño winter from hell, and the British carry on talking about the weather anyway. Peter's explanation: we are animals living in an environment, and the weather is the one thing two strangers in a cafe know they share. Then crime. There is less of it when the weather is bad, and Peter's theory is practical. Hanging around an alley with a knife on a warm summer night is a pleasant enough job; in November it is not. Hilary remembers the one time she was nearly mugged, on a sunny day in Washington. On the way out of the weather: how often Christmas is really white, the eleven days Britain lost in 1752, and the leap second that may have to be taken away rather than added.

The final headline is Japan, where more than 100,000 people are now over 100 and some older people are reported to be committing small crimes so that they are sent to prison, where they are fed and looked after. Hilary went round care homes for her dad and was appalled; Peter went round them doing research and vowed to avoid them. He finds the story very sad, and wants to know whether it is a trend or an anecdote: ask the chief sociologist for the numbers before you act. It leads him to a wider worry about how a civilised society looks after its old, and to people who feel they are a burden on their family. Hilary gives a shout out to anyone who did not have good parents to look after.

The Triple T is the antidote to the spotlight effect. Next time you do something embarrassing, ask what you would do if it were someone else. You would glance over, maybe have a chuckle, and get on with your day. That is probably what everyone else is doing.

A note before you listen. This episode discusses the death of a laboratory worker from a suspected infection, a near mugging at knifepoint, and older people who feel a burden to their families, including in the context of assisted dying.

If you need to talk. Samaritans are on 116 123, day and night, free from any phone. Age UK's Advice Line is on 0800 678 1602 for older people and their families.

Mentioned in this episode

• The spotlight effect was named by Thomas Gilovich, Victoria Medvec and Kenneth Savitsky in 2000. Students sent into a room wearing a Barry Manilow T-shirt guessed that about half the people there would notice it. About a quarter did. The original paper
• Black Bag by Luke Kennard is on the 2026 Booker Prize shortlist. The winner is announced on 9 November
• The Irkutsk case: the technician worked at the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute of Siberia and the Far East and died on the night of 1 to 2 October. Russian health authorities gave the cause as pneumonia of unknown origin; regional officials and several outlets reported suspected pneumonic plague. 197 contacts were traced, and by 5 October most had been released. The Moscow Times
• Plague, what it is and how it is treated: the World Health Organization fact sheet
• The Met Office's own review of the El Niño winter headlines, 5 October: Met Office blog
• The weather talk survey reported by BBC Future in 2015 found 94 per cent of Britons had talked about the weather in the previous six hours, and 38 per cent in the previous hour
• The Met Office counts a white Christmas if one snowflake is seen falling anywhere in the UK on Christmas Day. On that measure, 38 of the last 54 Christmases were white. Snow lying widely on the ground is much rarer: four times since 1960. Met Office
• The calendar change: under the Calendar (New Style) Act 1750, Wednesday 2 September 1752 was followed by Thursday 14 September
• Japan counted 107,677 people aged 100 or over on 1 September 2026, the first time above 100,000. Nippon.com
• Human Rights Watch's work on Japan's criminal justice system: hostage justice

Experience is hosted by Hilary Jeffs and Professor Peter Kinderman, and produced by James Jones at Granary Digital. Get in touch at hello@experiencepodco.com.

Before the news, a progress report on Black Bag, Luke Kennard's Booker shortlisted novel. Hilary is listening to the author read it and is now hooked; Peter has been defeated by the audiobook app. She likes it because it is not full of visual imagery, which brings her to aphantasia. Hilary cannot see pictures in her mind's eye, and only found out a few years ago that other people really can. Peter can turn a Rubik's cube over in his head but does not see it either, and his own belief, which he is careful to call a belief, is that nobody really does. Hilary would like to settle it in a brain scanner.

The first headline: couples who divorced in 2025 had been married for a median of 13 years, the longest since records began in 1963. Is it the cost of splitting up, or is marriage guidance working? Peter's answer is less romantic. People marry later and live together first, and older, wiser couples who have tested the arrangement stay married for longer. He thinks divorce being easier also makes it less urgent. Hilary would rather believe couples are getting the help they need, and Peter offers her the choice from Life of Pi: pick the story you prefer.

Andy Carroll has written in his autobiography about being sexually assaulted in his own home by a celebrity friend, who was later jailed. Hilary remembers how long it took boys abused in youth football to find the words for what had happened to them, and talks about bringing up sons who would have those words if they ever needed them. Peter's view is that people who speak out should be praised, celebrated and protected, and that once we understand what has happened to someone, their distress stops looking like something wrong inside them.

The final headline: Prime Minister Andy Burnham says the 1985 ban on drinking in view of the pitch at men's football is discrimination, when fans can drink at cricket, at rugby, and now at the Women's Super League. Hilary calls it fanism and thinks four decades is long enough to try something different. Peter is not having it. The alcohol ban, all-seater grounds and policing are why football changed, he says, so why undo them? What evidence is there that alcohol has a different effect on the brain than it did forty years ago? Hilary raises the research linking big matches to domestic abuse. And Peter's verdict is the halo effect in reverse: he really likes Andy Burnham, and he does not think this is a good idea.

Peter's advice for the world borrows Ed Miliband's: do what you believe to be right, once you have weighed it up properly. It is what he used to say to clients who wanted him to decide for them. Then the Triple T: toss a coin. Set up the choice, heads one way and tails the other, and while it is in the air, ask yourself which way you want it to land. At that moment, you know. His third tip, take tips with a pinch of salt, comes free.

A note before you listen. This episode discusses Andy Carroll's account of being sexually assaulted, the abuse of boys in youth football, and the link between big sporting events and domestic abuse.

If you have been affected. SurvivorsUK supports men and non-binary people who have been sexually abused. The 24/7 Rape and Sexual Abuse Support Line, run by Rape Crisis England and Wales, is on 0808 500 2222 for anyone aged 16 or over. The National Domestic Abuse Helpline is on 0808 2000 247, day and night.

Mentioned in this episode

• Ed Miliband's interview with Feroz Khan was filmed in New York during the UN General Assembly and went up on Khan's account, the Foreign Office's and the UK mission to the UN's at the same time. A government source has since said it was planned. His advice for the world, as LBC reported it: "Do what you think is right. Stick to your beliefs." LBC's report, with the video
• The halo effect was named by the psychologist Edward Thorndike in 1920, after he found that officers who rated a soldier highly on one quality tended to rate him highly on all of them. In 1977 Richard Nisbett and Timothy Wilson showed that people swayed by it do not know they have been
• Black Bag by Luke Kennard is on the 2026 Booker Prize shortlist. The winner is announced on 9 November
• Aphantasia, having no mind's eye, was named in 2015 by the neurologist Adam Zeman and colleagues. Hyperphantasia is the other end of the scale. To check your own imagery, try the Aphantasia Network's visual imagery questionnaire, and the apple illusion Hilary mentions, once you have finished listening
• The ONS divorce figures were published on 23 September. Couples who divorced in England and Wales in 2025 had been married for a median of 13.0 years, the longest since records began in 1963 and up from a low of 8.9 years in 1985. ONS divorce statistics
• Life of Pi is Yann Martel's novel. The stage version Peter loved won the 2022 Olivier Award for Best New Play, and the seven puppeteers who played the tiger shared the award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role
• Andy Carroll's autobiography, Owning It, was published by Pan Macmillan on 24 September
• Andy Burnham spoke to reporters in New York on 23 September. The ban comes from the Sporting Events (Control of Alcohol etc.) Act 1985 and covers the top five tiers of men's football in England. Women's Super League fans can drink in view of the pitch this season after two trial seasons
• The research on football and domestic abuse includes Trendl, Stewart and Mullett (2021), which found alcohol related domestic abuse reports to West Midlands Police rose 47 per cent after an England win
• There is research behind the coin toss. Mariela Jaffé and colleagues found in 2019 that a coin flip sharpens how people feel about their options, and Steven Levitt found that people whose coin told them to make a change were happier six months later

Experience is hosted by Hilary Jeffs and Professor Peter Kinderman, and produced by James Jones at Granary Digital. Get in touch at hello@experiencepodco.com.

Then AI-mageddon. Trump told the UN that artificial intelligence should be called super intelligence and that the United States will not accept a global system to regulate it. Hilary listened to Rory Stewart and Yuval Noah Harari on the Aztecs and found herself psychologically inert. Peter's answer is about regulation, tigers and fences: if you were rich enough to keep a menagerie, you would spend some of the money on the enclosure. He has been reading about Lavender, the Israeli military's AI targeting system, and the operators who described their role as pressing yes. Hilary brings the 2023 mammography study in which radiologists went along with a wrong AI suggestion most of the time, and Peter matches it with a mental health tribunal chair who told him the panel had never once disagreed with the psychiatrist. No AI required.

Peter's way through the doom is Descartes by way of a video game. If it turned out you were a character in somebody else's game, what should you do? Play it to the best of your ability. Terrible situations do not change the job, which is to take what you know and make the best possible decision. He has a plan for Russian paratroopers landing near Manchester Airport, and he would rather people other than Donald Trump decided how AI is regulated.

Andy Burnham met Trump for the first time at the UN General Assembly. Peter's advice for negotiating with him: when he says something outrageous, say yes, then bury it in the long grass, because he will not remember and he is mostly interested in how he looks on television. Hilary rates Mark Carney as the first leader to get the measure of the man, and both admire the American TV pool for pulling coverage after CNN was thrown out. Which prompts the question Peter answers with unusual honesty: do you always stand up to a bully? No. He was once thumped in the street in Leeds, and his rule now is to read the situation and pick, and sometimes that means running away.

Finally, the new right to two weeks' bereavement leave, unpaid, for the loss of a partner, parent, adult child or sibling, and for pregnancy loss before 24 weeks, from April 2027. Hilary is dismayed it needed a law at all. Peter puts it alongside AI and migration: as a species we are plenty rich enough, and the problem is only ever how it is shared out.

The Triple T is make the first move. On the tube, in a bar, in the office: somebody has to go first, and it might as well be you. Peter's dating algorithm, aim high and work down, gets a swift rebuttal from Hilary about who actually punches up.

A note before you listen. Peter briefly describes being physically assaulted. The episode also discusses bereavement, pregnancy loss, and AI used to select military targets.

Mentioned in this episode

• The Booker Prize 2026 shortlist was announced on 22 September. Black Bag by Luke Kennard is on it. Mary Beard chairs the judges, and Jarvis Cocker is on the panel. The winner is announced on 9 November
• The novel riffs on a real experiment: in 1967 Charles Goetzinger had a student attend his Basic Persuasion class at Oregon State University inside a black bag, to see how the other students reacted. Hilary is right that it was late sixties and that it relates to Robert Zajonc's mere exposure effect
• Peter's cockroaches are real too, though they belong to a different Zajonc finding. Zajonc, Heingartner and Herman (1969) found cockroaches ran a simple runway faster with an audience. A 2020 attempt to replicate it did not find the effect
• The Kitty Genovese case is from 1964, and the story of 38 witnesses who did nothing has since been shown to be badly overstated, which is Peter's own caveat. The staged subway experiments are Piliavin, Rodin and Piliavin (1969), in New York
• Trump told the UN General Assembly on 22 September that AI should be called super intelligence and that the United States will not accept a global system to regulate it. Bigly intelligence is Hilary's
• The enfeeblement argument Hilary makes is set out in Could AI really kill all humans? Most scenarios require physical access, making AI armageddon unlikely, by Alessandro Di Nuovo and Samuele Vinanzi of Sheffield Hallam University, The Conversation, 21 September 2026. Their case is that bioweapon and power station scenarios need hands in a lab, and the real risk is people who stop thinking for themselves
• Rory Stewart's interview with Yuval Noah Harari went out on The Rest Is Politics on 18 September, with the second part for TRIP Plus members
• Lavender was reported by +972 Magazine and Local Call in April 2024: an AI system that marked around 37,000 Palestinians as suspected militants, with intelligence officers spending about 20 seconds on each target and one describing their role as a rubber stamp
• The mammography study is Dratsch and colleagues, Radiology, May 2023. 27 radiologists read 50 mammograms with suggestions they were told came from AI. When the suggestion was wrong, the least experienced readers' accuracy fell from about 80 per cent to under 20 per cent, and even those with 15 or more years' experience fell from 82 per cent to 45 per cent. Hilary says radiographers; they were radiologists
• Andy Burnham and Donald Trump met for the first time in New York on 22 September. Burnham argued for international principles and standards on AI with the UK as a bridge between America, Europe and China. Trump called the Chagos Islands agreement a terrible deal, and Burnham raised the Falklands to restate British sovereignty. Hilary's suggestion that one was traded for the other is her reading, not something either leader has said
• Mark Carney addressed the European Parliament on 17 September and said the Canada and EU relationship is not meant to be a rival to the United States with better manners
• The White House removed CNN from the television pool on 20 September. The pool suspended its coverage of Trump the next day, and CNN, Politico and MS NOW have sued
• Trump's ten billion dollar lawsuit against the BBC over the Panorama edit is still going, though in July he dropped the part aimed at BBC Studios
• The bereavement leave announcement was made on 22 September: up to two weeks' unpaid leave for the loss of a spouse, partner, parent, adult child or sibling, including step, half, foster and kinship relationships, and for pregnancy loss before 24 weeks, for the woman and her partner. It starts in April 2027
• Strictly Come Dancing's launch show was 19 September. Craig Revel Horwood is still on the judges' desk, and the Josh is Josh Widdicombe, one of the new hosts

Experience is hosted by Hilary Jeffs and Professor Peter Kinderman, and produced by James Jones at Granary Digital. Get in touch at hello@experiencepodco.com.

Two crypto billionaires have given Reform UK 72 million pounds in two days. Ben Delo gave 36 million on the Friday, and Christopher Harborne matched it to the pound on the Saturday, saying in the Telegraph that Delo had warned him it was coming and his competitive instinct did the rest. Both say they expect nothing back. Peter does not believe them, and Hilary pushes him on whether people can be rehabilitated. He says yes, absolutely, and that giving large sums to a political party is not how it is done.

That turns into the best passage in the episode, on what competitiveness is actually for. Compete with your friends over pot plants and you all end up with better pot plants. Decide that you need to beat them and the whole thing becomes a zero sum game, where your win requires my loss. Peter's argument is that a good deal of right wing politics runs on the second kind, and that people who describe themselves as wealth creators are usually moving money rather than making it.

Then the assisted dying bill, defeated in the Commons on Friday by sixteen votes, 286 to 270. Peter supports the principle and says so plainly, including for himself. He also thinks the Royal College of Psychiatrists has it about right, and that palliative care being less than perfect is a reason to be careful. The part that troubles him most is the one nobody legislates for: elderly people who say they do not want to be a burden to their children, and how much that would weigh on a decision that is supposed to be freely made.

Finally, the settlement measures. Ed Miliband banned imports from illegal West Bank settlements while talking about being a proud Jew, and the Chief Rabbi called it a dark day for British Jews. Peter's point is that the line the government drew is the right one and it should hold it: this is not a boycott of Israel, it is a ban on goods from illegally occupied land. He has a story from outside a Marks and Spencer fifteen years ago about what happens when that line gets blurred.

A note before you listen. The middle of this episode is about assisted dying, terminal illness, palliative care and bereavement. Both hosts speak about people close to them.

Mentioned in this episode

• Ben Delo gave Reform UK 36 million pounds on 11 September and Christopher Harborne matched it on 12 September, the largest single donation to a British political party on record
• A correction. Peter several times calls Ben Delo a convicted fraudster. He was not convicted of fraud. He pleaded guilty in February 2022 to a single US Bank Secrecy Act violation, failing to establish an anti money laundering programme at BitMEX, received 30 months' probation, and was pardoned by Donald Trump in March 2025. Hilary has it right in the very next answer
• Delo signed the Giving Pledge in 2019, committing at least half his wealth in his lifetime, which is Hilary's point about philanthropy
• The assisted dying bill was defeated on Friday 11 September by 286 votes to 270. Hilary says 269 and flags it as approximate at the time
• Oregon's Death with Dignity Act took effect in 1997. Through 2025, 5,520 people have received a prescription and 3,691 have died from taking the medication, both figures as Hilary gives them. The remaining third did not all decide against it: many died of their illness first
• Canada has postponed eligibility where mental illness is the sole underlying condition to 2027, rather than abandoning it as Hilary suggests
• Jersey's law received Royal Assent on 9 July 2026 and lets the person choose between taking the substance themselves and having a practitioner administer it. There is an 18 month implementation period, so nobody has had an assisted death there yet
• The Royal College of Psychiatrists, whose concerns about assessment time Peter largely shares
• Jacob Weisberg's Profiles in Cowardice, published 15 September 2026. Hilary calls him a psychologist. He is a journalist and media executive, formerly editor of Slate and co-founder of Pushkin Industries
• The settlement measures were announced on 8 September 2026 by Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband, with France and Canada following: an import ban on settlement goods, sanctions on those facilitating settlement expansion, and a ban on settlement advertising in the UK
• Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis called it a dark day for British Jews. Miliband publicly rejected the claim that British Jews had been put in danger by the measures
• The royal deathbed story is George V, 20 January 1936. Lord Dawson timed the morphine so the announcement would reach the morning edition of The Times rather than the evening papers. It only became public when his notes were published in 1986. Peter hedges between George V and George VI, and says Sunday papers
• Andy Burnham's father Roy died on 14 September, aged 86, after Alzheimer's
• Manchester United 0 Manchester City 1 at Old Trafford, Sunday 13 September, the 199th Manchester derby. Haaland scored on 60 minutes after a VAR check of nearly three minutes, and he is Norwegian
• Peter's wheat figure comes with his own caveat that he may have the numbers wrong, and he is right to give it. UK yields per hectare have risen roughly three to fourfold in a century, not fourteen or fifteen

Experience is hosted by Hilary Jeffs and Professor Peter Kinderman, and produced by James Jones at Granary Digital. Get in touch at hello@experiencepodco.com.

The AfD has won Saxony-Anhalt with 44 per cent of the vote and 39 of the 83 seats, three short of a majority, on a turnout of 76 per cent. They more than doubled their share in five years and the CDU lost more than half of its own. Hilary and Peter go at what was sold to get there: nostalgia for the East German regime, a manifesto line about how children should be taught, and a traditional family message Peter reads as code for undermining everybody else's. He is blunt about where this has gone before.

Which takes them to Galton, who coined the word eugenics, walked around Britain ticking off women he judged attractive, and invented statistical tools we still use every day. And to the paper in Stephen Jay Gould's book where a man packed shot into the skulls of black people and white people and shook them until the numbers came out the way he wanted.

Then the second headline. 96 per cent of emergency department staff have faced violence or aggression at work and only 4 per cent always feel safe. Hilary reads the timing of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine's report as a deliberate play to set the agenda before a BBC investigation landed. Peter asks who benefits from an underfunded health service and is cynical about the answer. He also takes apart Hilary's use of the word simply, and later pulls her up for saying that gangs are taking over the country, which they are not, and which is about as close as this programme gets to a fight.

Third, John Healey's first big speech as Chancellor, and what a Chancellor can actually change. Peter's answer involves six thousand civil servants and some very good computers.

The Triple T is go and look for the evidence, and Peter arrives with the receipts. ChatGPT told him about a Victorian mercury fountain in St Peter's Square lit by gas lamps. He asked for a source. It said it had made the whole thing up.

Mentioned in this episode

• The AfD won Saxony-Anhalt on 6 September with 44.1 per cent and 39 of 83 seats, three short of the 42 needed. Turnout was 76 per cent, up from 60 in 2021: the full result
• The Royal College of Emergency Medicine surveyed over 2,000 emergency department staff and published on 4 September. 96 per cent had experienced violence or aggression, 75 per cent see it weekly or daily, two thirds said incidents were discriminatory, and only 41 per cent of those who reported one said their trust took meaningful action
• Stephen Jay Gould, The Mismeasure of Man, 1981. Peter could not remember the title on air. The skull measuring is Samuel George Morton's
• Gould's reading of Morton has itself been challenged, which rather proves the episode's point about evidence: The Mismeasure of Science, PLOS Biology, 2011
• The lab coat study Hilary asks about is Adam and Galinsky, Enclothed Cognition, 2012. Worth knowing that it has repeatedly failed to replicate: the British Psychological Society's write up
• John Healey became Chancellor on 20 July. He read Social and Political Science at Cambridge and was a full time disability rights campaigner from 1984. The judicial review announcement came in his growth speech on 7 September
• The Brexit hit to productivity Peter refers to is the Office for Budget Responsibility's standing assumption of 4 per cent over the long run: their Brexit analysis
• The protests Hilary mentions were at Dover and Portsmouth over the weekend of 5 to 7 September
• Hilary went to the wrong hall for The Rest Is Politics at Goalhanger's festival. The Royal Festival Hall is on the South Bank. The Royal Albert Hall is not
• Clearly not really: Peter calls him Edward Galton. He means Francis Galton. Everything else he says about the man, including the beauty map, is correct

Experience is hosted by Hilary Jeffs and Professor Peter Kinderman, and produced by James Jones at Granary Digital. Get in touch at hello@experiencepodco.com.

Which turns out to be this week's story twice over. Keir Starmer stood down as an MP on 1 September, an hour before Andy Burnham's first big speech as Prime Minister. Vengeance, or a man who has simply changed his mind? Peter makes the case that a u-turn and an open mind look identical from the outside, and that if you want leaders with no emotions and no second thoughts, you need a different species running the country.

Then Hilary, whose actual job is teaching people how to hold a room, takes apart Burnham against Kemi Badenoch at the despatch box and asks Peter the question he says has been held against him his entire career. What is gravitas, and can you get it if you have not got it?

And France has gone to war on Black Friday. Not the sales, the words. Peter, a behavioural psychologist, points out that banning a word is close to the least effective thing you could possibly do, and that Wales worked out the answer years ago.

The Triple T comes from the new Prime Minister, and it is two words long.

Mentioned in this episode

• Hilary's list of the two letter Scrabble words, which Peter maintains is cheating: the official Collins list, all 127 of them
• The advice Peter is remembering about marking a role exit with a ceremony: Say Goodbye, Create a Ritual by Nancy K Schlossberg, which sets out Ebaugh's four stages
• Helen Rose Fuchs Ebaugh, Becoming an Ex: The Process of Role Exit, 1988, the study that gave us the term
• Keir Starmer stood down as MP for Holborn and St Pancras on 1 September. His majority there in 2024 was 11,572
• Zack Polanski is standing for the Greens in the by-election. Labour are still the bookmakers' favourites
• John Healey was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer on 20 July
• Reinhart and Rogoff, Growth in a Time of Debt, 2010, and the spreadsheet error found by Thomas Herndon in 2013
• The Toubon law of 1994, France's law on the use of the French language
• Vendredi fou, recommended in Quebec since 2014 as the French for Black Friday
• Globish, Jean-Paul Nerriere's 1,500 word subset of English for international business
• Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, 1974
• The Bayeux Tapestry opens at the British Museum on 10 September

Experience is hosted by Hilary Jeffs and Professor Peter Kinderman, and produced by James Jones at Granary Digital. Get in touch at hello@experiencepodco.com.

Full show notes and transcript: https://www.experiencepodco.com/episodes/ep7-i-just-handed-in-my-lanyard.html
Concept of the Week explained, Role exit: https://www.experiencepodco.com/concepts/role-exit.html

Then three stories that all turn out to be about the same thing: who gets to decide what holds your attention.

The Met Office is running a competition with Aardman to name a storm after Shaun the Sheep or his cousin Timmy. Peter explains why a silly name is doing serious work, and makes the case for naming heatwaves after the companies that caused them.

The two day weekend turns a hundred. Henry Ford gave it to his workers in 1926, having already doubled their pay, and not entirely out of kindness. Bertrand Russell thought we should have gone much further. Peter, a socialist with a lathe and a beehive, agrees.

And in a courtroom in Oakland, twenty nine US states are taking Meta to trial over exactly the mechanism Peter described in the first five minutes.

Timestamps

• 00:45 Concept of the Week: variable ratio reinforcement, the fox, the fruit machine and the feed
• 05:20 A look at the News: why the Met Office names storms, and why it should name heatwaves too
• 12:15 A look at the News: a hundred years of the weekend, Henry Ford and Bertrand Russell on doing better things than work
• 29:35 A look at the News: twenty nine states versus Meta, and what psychologists are telling the court
• 43:20 The Triple T: set limits, and Peter admits he needs them as much as anyone

Mentioned in this episode

• Bertrand Russell, In Praise of Idleness, 1932
• The Met Office and Aardman storm naming vote, which closed on 21 August. The full 2026/27 list is published on 1 September
• Seville has been naming and ranking heatwaves since 2022
• Arturo Bejar, the former Meta engineer giving evidence in Oakland
• West, Mogilner and DeVoe, Happiness From Treating the Weekend Like a Vacation, 2021

Experience is hosted by Hilary Jeffs and Professor Peter Kinderman, and produced by James Jones at Granary Digital. Get in touch at hello@experiencepodco.com.

Full show notes and transcript: https://www.experiencepodco.com/episodes/ep6-treat-em-mean-keep-em-scrolling.html
Concept of the Week explained, Variable ratio reinforcement: https://www.experiencepodco.com/concepts/variable-ratio-reinforcement.html

This episode discusses a recent death, online abuse and mental health. Please take care if that is difficult for you.

CONCEPT OF THE WEEK

INUS, from the philosopher J.L. Mackie, which is a formal way of saying that causes are almost always more tangled than they look. A fire needs a spark, but the spark could have been a match, a lighter or a dropped cigarette, and no single one of them is the whole story. It is a useful lens for everything from why a wildfire took hold to why the far right gains ground: there is rarely one simple cause, however much a headline wants there to be.

THE TRIPLE T

Wait a second before you respond. It sounds almost too obvious to say, but most of the harm we do, and most of the nonsense we spread, comes from reacting to a headline as though we already know the whole story. There is nearly always a backstory, a complication, a perspective you have not heard. So let investigations run their course, let the facts arrive, and above all do not send the tweet. It will almost certainly be wrong.

| IF YOU HAVE BEEN AFFECTED If you have been affected by any of the issues discussed on our podcast, please contact your doctor, local support services, or your emergency services if in crisis. If you are in the UK, this website will signpost you to other mental health services: https://www.meandmymind.nhs.uk/getting-help/mental-health-websites/

| LIKED THIS ONE? Please leave us a review wherever you are listening. It takes a minute and genuinely helps others find the show. Got a question, a comment, or a topic you would like us to put on the couch? Write to us at hello@experiencepodco.com. New episodes land every Tuesday.

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Full show notes and transcript: https://www.experiencepodco.com/episodes/ep5-its-more-complicated-than-the-headline.html
Concept of the Week explained, INUS conditions: https://www.experiencepodco.com/concepts/inus-conditions.html

CONCEPT OF THE WEEK
Attribution theory, the story you tell yourself about why something went well or
badly. We are all prone to a self-serving version: the good result was all me, the
bad one was someone else’s fault. It matters at results time because the
explanation shapes what you do next. Tell yourself you aced it purely because you
are cleverer than everyone, and you may coast and come unstuck later. Peter’s
honest version is that he did well at A-level mostly because he had nothing else to
do but revise, which turns out to be a far more useful thing to believe than being a
genius.

THE TRIPLE T
Do something you love. As Hilary puts it, if you do something you love you never
really work a day, which is exactly the long game to keep in mind when a single set
of grades feels like the whole story. The results are one stepping stone, not the
destination. Keep your eye on what you actually want your life to look like, and
there is almost always more than one route to it.

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Full show notes and transcript: https://www.experiencepodco.com/episodes/ep4-even-james-bond-steps-on-a-banana-skin.html
Concept of the Week explained, Attribution theory: https://www.experiencepodco.com/concepts/attribution-theory.html

Then the French wildfires take us somewhere bigger: why we find it so hard to care about people who are not born yet. Peter reaches for Camus and lands somewhere useful. You cannot really picture those future generations, so do not try. Ask instead what principles you want to live by now, and make each small decision one you can be proud of. Mia Mottley, the Barbadian Prime Minister, gets a well-earned mention as one of the great communicators on climate.

The Robert Bush case, the Hull funeral director jailed for what he did to hundreds of grieving families, leads into why death rituals matter so much, why there is no correct way to grieve, and why remembering that we are mortal can help us live better. Peter tells us about the cemetery chapel project he has just joined.

We finish with a tribute to Bill Oddie, who has died at 85. That takes in his openness about depression, Peter’s long argument with the idea of mental illness as a simple brain disease, and the science of laughter, which turns out to be far more about the people around us than the joke itself.

Our Concept of the Week is confirmation bias, sharpened by algorithms and chatbots that are only too happy to tell you that you were right. The Triple T is a single question: what do I actually want here?

Mia Mottley, Prime Minister of Barbados at the Opening of the #COP26 World Leaders Summit

A heads up: this episode covers death, grief and mental illness. Please take care if any of that is difficult for you.

LIKED THIS ONE?

Please leave us a review wherever you are listening. It takes a minute and it genuinely helps other people find the show.

Got a question, a comment, or a story you want us to put on the couch? Write to us at hello@experiencepodco.com. New episodes land every week.

Website: https://www.experiencepodco.com
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/033Qpocb5a1TC3KNyN7Ypt
Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/experience/id6791528666

Full show notes and transcript: https://www.experiencepodco.com/episodes/ep3-there-is-no-right-way-to-grieve.html
Concept of the Week explained, Confirmation bias: https://www.experiencepodco.com/concepts/confirmation-bias.html

THE TRIPLE T
When you are stuck or on the spot, ask a question. It is the move underneath the whole Ossoff interview, and it works just as well at a party as it does in a Senate hearing. If the conversation stalls or the nerves kick in, an open question hands the floor back to the other person and takes the pressure off you. And if someone puts you on the spot, you can always ask them why they are asking. One catch: it does not work in a media interview, which is exactly why Hegseth had nowhere to hide.

Please leave us a review wherever you are listening. It takes a minute and genuinely helps others find the show. Got a question, a topic, or a "clearly, not really" moment where we got carried away? Write to us at hello@experiencepodco.com.

Full show notes and transcript: https://www.experiencepodco.com/episodes/ep2-the-adult-in-the-room.html
Concept of the Week explained, Authenticity: https://www.experiencepodco.com/concepts/authenticity.html

CONCEPT OF THE WEEK

Mirror neurons. Peter is sceptical that there is one dedicated neuron sitting there copying other people, but the brain scan evidence is solid: watch someone do something and your own brain lights up in ways that echo what they are doing. It is a good part of why humans learn so well by watching, and a reminder that we are social animals whether we like it or not.

THE TRIPLE T

The 5-4-3-2-1 technique, for when you are stressed or overwhelmed. Sit still and work through your senses. Five things you can see, four you can feel, three you can hear, two you can smell, one you can taste. The point is the attention rather than the senses. We have very little conscious control over our heart rate or our breathing, but we can choose where to point our attention, and doing that on purpose settles everything else down. If you lose your place halfway through, start again at five. That is part of the exercise.

LIKED THIS ONE?

Please leave us a review wherever you are listening. It takes a minute and it genuinely helps other people find the show.

Got a question, a comment, or a story you want us to put on the couch? Write to us at hello@experiencepodco.com. New episodes land every week.

Website: https://www.experiencepodco.com
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/033Qpocb5a1TC3KNyN7Ypt
Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/experience/id6791528666

Full show notes and transcript: https://www.experiencepodco.com/episodes/ep1-what-number-10-does-to-you.html
Concept of the Week explained, Mirror neurons: https://www.experiencepodco.com/concepts/mirror-neurons.html

Links:
📖 Full show notes & more: experiencepodco.com
✉️ Get in touch: hello@experiencepodco.com