Send us Fan Mail

Simon and Lee open with birthday banter that spirals into scientists launching an OnlyFans-style subscription service to replace cut research funding, then a viral clip of bonobos defusing a fight with cuddles instead of violence. The real conversation catches fire when Simon reads out an AI-generated reply from a prospective PhD student, and the two dig into what gives it away (that telltale word "specifically"), whether he owes the applicant honest feedback, and how wanting AI to skip the reading is really no different from wanting it to do your weights for you at the gym. Simon closes things out nursing a sprained wrist from coming off his bike on Thursday, with a shout-out to the NHS staff who patched him up.

Mentioned

• OnlyFans – subscription platform typically associated with adult content; raised as a tongue-in-cheek pitch after hearing scientists had lost funding
• Marmosets – small primates; the animal whose research funding was cut, prompting the joke about launching an OnlyFans-style site instead
• Instagram – social media platform; where a viral bonobo video turned up in the feed
• Bonobo monkeys – primate species known for resolving conflict through physical affection rather than aggression; a clip of an older bonobo defusing a fight between two younger males prompts a wider discussion of animal behaviour versus internet content
• TikTok – video platform; cited for algorithmic content moderation, including euphemisms that have replaced certain censored words
• Alice – addressed directly mid-conversation ("I wonder if Alice is thinking, go back to the bonobos")
• Daily Mail – UK tabloid; invoked as the kind of outlet that wouldn't report favourably on NHS staff
• NHS – National Health Service; A&E staff praised for handling a high volume of patients with care and professionalism

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

---
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)

Send us Fan Mail

Simon announces two big life events on the same Saturday morning: the first day of his new role as Director of the Centre for Dance Research at Coventry University, and an offer just put in on a flat. Lee's praise for the decision (steered by Annie Duke's How to Decide) tips into a riff on downsizing, industrial ovens, and buyers' markets, before Lee's own account of a solitary seal in the river at Totnes prompts a longer meditation on living double lives and how much of the self is performance. They close on inherited wisdom: Lee's mother's mantra that a bit of advice is worth a lot of sympathy, and whether either of them would actually want to hear it.

Mentioned

• How to Decide (Annie Duke) – book on decision-making; argues a decision's quality is separate from its outcome, cited while weighing up buying a flat

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

---
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)

Send us Fan Mail

Simon opens with a difficult conversation from a trip to Italy, about care and dementia, and what it means to owe someone your future self – discomfort sparked by Lil telling him plainly and rightly that she'd carry on living her own life, not simply become his carer. Lee counters with the story of a friend whose husband planned his own decline with startling clarity before dementia fully took him, and admits he and Bob have made each other the same promise. They end up watching aging parents ration their energy like a strategic resource, before a stray thought about a dance-and-AI panel pulls the conversation sideways into exponential change and the folly of deciding anything for the next ten years.

Mentioned

• Italy (Sardegna) – place Simon was visiting when he had the conversation about care, aging and dementia that opens the episode
• Corbitron – a companion (not literally) present during recording, audibly prompting with the word "exponential" partway through

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

---
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)