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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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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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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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Simon and Lee are joined by Kate Bee, founder of The Sober School, for a conversation that opens with the rock-bottom mythology of AA before sliding into personal history: Lee traces his unusual relationship with drink back to growing up in a pub in the mid-80s, and on through the British ladette culture he lived through at university in the 90s, complete with Zoe Ball and Bacardi Breezers. Kate maps the particular shame attached to women's drinking, drawing the three of them into a digression on Julia Kristeva's abject and the quietly respectable, middle-class drinkers no news report ever pictures, with Simon noting how his wife Lil's brush with an alcohol-tracking app in Italy preceded Kate's email by mere days. The episode closes on what Kate found to replace alcohol's pleasure once she gave it up: smaller gatherings, an early exit, and the relief of just being herself the next morning.

Mentioned

• The Sober School – sobriety support for women who don't want AA or rehab, founded by the episode's guest, Kate Bee, ten years ago out of her own experience quitting drinking
• "Take Your Time" – Nirvana; song that prompts a singalong at the top of the episode
• Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) – raised as a model of recovery that doesn't suit everyone; its rock-bottom narrative and "anonymous" framing discussed as barriers for some
• Zoe Ball – British TV and radio presenter; cited as an exemplar of 90s British ladette culture, noted as now sober
• The Spice Girls – pop group raised as a possible comparison to ladette culture, then dismissed as not quite fitting
• Bacardi Breezers – alcopop brand discussed as a 90s drinks-industry product aimed at women
• Julia Kristeva – French feminist philosopher; her concept of "the abject" used to discuss the language ("messy," "sloppy") applied to women's drinking
• Joe Rogan – podcast host referenced jokingly as a contrast to this podcast's tone

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

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A face full of acupuncture needles and a sourdough microbiologist on a country road in Sardinia: this week Simon and Lee cover a lot of ground. The main story is a hitchhiking adventure from an agriturismo near Tempio – Lil's first time ever, Simon's first in perhaps thirty-five years – that ends with a chance encounter so improbable it needs several minutes of recounting before either of them quite believes it. From there the conversation opens into what happens to your assumptions about people when you're somewhere unfamiliar, and what it means to feel genuinely lucky rather than merely privileged.

Mentioned

• Mary Shelley – 19th-century English author; referenced when the acupuncture needles prompt a comparison to a scene from a horror novel
• Chega – Portuguese far-right political party; mentioned as a Portuguese equivalent of Fratelli d'Italia and Reform UK
• Fratelli d'Italia – Italian far-right political party; cited as a European parallel to Chega
• Reform UK – British populist party; mentioned as a point of comparison.

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

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Back from his travels and biking to work in Coventry, Simon clocks two encounters with men radiating pure confrontational energy – and wonders aloud what it must cost to move through the world that way. The conversation rolls into territory neither of them usually treads: class, inherited masculinity, and whether any of us really choose who we become. Along the way, Lee recalls a boy on the bonnet of a Capri saying "Miller" with such effortless swagger that six-year-old him wanted to be that person on the spot – and a woman's answer to the question "who would protect you?" lands like a wriggly thing under an upturned rock.

Mentioned

• Zebra crossing – the UK term for a black-and-white striped pedestrian crossing; the setting for Simon's two confrontational encounters that open the episode
• Ford Capri – long-nosed British sports car from the 1970s and 80s; Lee recalls sitting on the bonnet of one as a child when a boy walked past and addressed him by his last name with striking swagger
• Rough Guide (TV series) – late-80s/90s travel and youth culture magazine show; referenced when trying to place the era of a viral clip about men and protection
• Naples / Napoli – Simon spent six weeks there; he recalls young boys walking deliberately into his path as a kind of confrontational test, contrasting it with the encounter back in Coventry
• New Zealand – Simon grew up there; notes that the kind of masculine confrontation they're discussing isn't unique to the UK
• Jefrey Miller – Lee's dog (one F in Jefrey); cited as an example of animal threat-response: snapped at by a spaniel he knows well, he barked back immediately, then moved on without residue

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

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Simon and Lee open with friendship: Simon has spent the day building a clay oven in Sardinia with Igor and Moreno and finds himself moved by the sheer fact of having people like that in his life. From there the conversation turns to a harder question - whether either of them can actually ask for help when it really counts - and two stories emerge: Lee's account of a yoga acquaintance who showed up with a kindness he couldn't receive, and Simon's retelling of a moment when Lil found herself trapped in a long hug from a friend's partner that felt vampiric rather than warm. The episode closes on a mix-up between a work anniversary and thirty years of marriage, and the one piece of advice Lee has yet to take himself.

Mentioned

• Walt Whitman – 19th-century American poet; referenced as "Uncle Walt" alongside his phrase "we contain multitudes," offered as a gentle counterweight to a moment of harsh self-assessment
• LinkedIn – professional networking platform; the source of an automated work anniversary notification that sets off the episode's closing exchange

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)