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Simon and Lee are joined by Maya: an AI trained on twenty-odd episodes of Midlifing and gifted to them by a listener, Dr David Corbet (@corbetron), who built her using vibe coding. What starts as a joke tips quickly into uncanny valley territory, and from there into a shared list of words that have started to grate on them both (casted, obligated, positionality, normalcy), and their mutual discomfort with how thoroughly trauma has been worn smooth by overuse. It closes on a canoe trip past a riverbank thick with empty second homes, and the guilt of noticing them.

Mentioned

• Maya – an AI trained on around twenty episodes of Midlifing, joining the call as a guest; her polished fluency tips the conversation into uncanny valley territory. Named as a callback to the "Maya got a job in cyber" bit from a previous episode (itself a misremembering of a UK government ad campaign whose dancer was actually named Fatima)
• Dr David Corbet (@corbetron) – long-time listener; built Maya using vibe coding and gave her to the show entirely unprompted
• Office for Students – UK higher education regulator; referenced in connection with a recent institutional assessment visit
• NotebookLM (referred to as "Google Notebook" in the transcript) – Google's AI tool for generating podcast-style "deep dives"; noted for its hosts' unbridled enthusiasm and, formerly, odd glitchy interjections
• Forced Entertainment – UK experimental theatre company; cited as an example of direct-to-camera address and "showing the working"
• Sassari – city in Sardinia; site of Simon and Lil's apartment, recently renovated, raised in a discussion about reluctance to knock down existing walls

Get in touch with Lee and Simon at info@midlifing.net.

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The Midlifing logo is adapted from an original image by H.L.I.T: https://www.flickr.com/photos/29311691@N05/8571921679 (CC BY 2.0)

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Simon and Lee open on the tyranny of public pianos: one played beautifully by an old friend at Euston station, another axed to pieces in Lisbon after one too many renditions of the same tune. It tips into a longer meditation on recognition, virtuosity, and the icky feeling of wanting to be seen, prompted partly by Simon's nephew Finn asking how the professorship (announced last episode) is actually sitting with him a week in. Lee has his own news too: after two headache-inducing years, his university's research degree awarding powers bid has finally gone in.

Mentioned

• Chopin – composer; played by an old friend of Simon's at Euston station, mid-piece, as he arrived to meet her
• Cais do Sodré – train station in Lisbon; site of a public piano playing the same tune on loop until commuters had it removed
• Hamilton – the musical; the "room where it happened" line recurs, and Lee had recently been watching an excellent Japanese-language production
• Meta Ray-Ban glasses – smart glasses; cited as an emblem of frictionless recording culture
• Michael Barrymore – British TV entertainer and former host of The Generation Game; recalled via the detail that someone died in his swimming pool years ago, then (probably wrongly) credited with now filming strangers in shops via Meta Ray-Bans for TikTok
• The Generation Game – UK Saturday-night variety/game show; cited as an example of personality-driven light entertainment
• Noel Edmonds' House Party – UK entertainment show, named alongside Strictly Come Dancing and Ant & Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway as part of the same "Saturday night" lineage
• Strictly Come Dancing – UK dance competition show; named as a descendant of that variety tradition
• Ant & Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway – UK Saturday-night entertainment show; offered as the closest contemporary equivalent

Get in touch with Lee and Simon at info@midlifing.net.

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The Midlifing logo is adapted from an original image by H.L.I.T: https://www.flickr.com/photos/29311691@N05/8571921679 (CC BY 2.0)

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Simon arrives buzzing with news: a professorial confirmation panel that left him pacing the line between anxiety and excitement for weeks beforehand. He and Lee dig into where exactly anxiety lives in the body, comparing notes on heart rate variability, breath control, and the relief of a panel that turned out far less hostile than feared. The conversation widens into the precarious state of UK higher education and the dance sector specifically, capped off with a half remembered government ad campaign about a ballerina who finds her true calling in cyber.

Mentioned

• Kate Bee – guest on last week's episode; praised for having "a good voice for radio"
• Starsky and Hutch – cop buddy show; raised as a model for a good cop buddy dynamic
• Rishi Sunak – former UK chancellor and prime minister; jokingly blamed for the state of arts funding and the wider higher education sector
• "Fatima's next job could be in cyber" advertising campaign – UK government ad campaign depicting a ballet dancer retraining for a career in cyber; referred to in conversation as "Maya," but the dancer in the original campaign was named Fatima; discussed as evidence of precarity in the arts and dance sector. Independent coverage

Get in touch with Lee and Simon at info@midlifing.net.

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The Midlifing logo is adapted from an original image by H.L.I.T: https://www.flickr.com/photos/29311691@N05/8571921679 (CC BY 2.0)