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Experience: Analysing Newsmakers

Experience: Analysing Newsmakers

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Each week, psychologist Peter Kinderman and communications expert Hilary Jeffs pick a news story and work out what's actually going on underneath it.2026 Experience Podcast Co Politique et gouvernement Science Sciences sociales
Épisodes
  • Would You Still Buy It? | Conspicuous consumption, Burnham's headphone crackdown and prepping

    Would You Still Buy It? | Conspicuous consumption, Burnham's headphone crackdown and prepping
    Oct 21 2026

    The Concept of the Week is conspicuous consumption: buying things to show other people you have the means to buy them. It is an economics idea that has bled into psychology, and Peter confesses to owning quite a nice watch, which he is now too nervous to wear. Hilary opens the show in a Claudia Winkleman wig after last week's talk about The Traitors. Peter rates it a semi Winkleman.

    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
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    42 min
  • The Gorilla in the Room | Attentional blindness, a livestreamed execution and ADHD at work

    The Gorilla in the Room | Attentional blindness, a livestreamed execution and ADHD at work
    Oct 13 2026
    The Concept of the Week is attentional blindness. In the famous experiment, people counting basketball passes fail to notice a man in a gorilla suit walking through the middle of the game. Peter's explanation: the brain builds a picture of reality, and the thing you are not attending to is simply never painted in. Hilary suspects a man ran the study, because every woman already knows a man can stare into a fridge and not see the butter. Peter's view is that most of academic psychology is taking what people already knew and giving it a name. 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: ArtforumDisability discrimination and reasonable adjustments at work: AcasADHD UK, the charity: adhduk.co.ukThe invisible gorilla: Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris, Gorillas in our midst, Perception, 1999. The original paperThe Pentagon on the Hasan execution, set for 3 December at Fort Hood: APBurns 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 awardThe government's independent review of mental health and neurodevelopmental diagnosis, chaired by Professor Peter Fonagy: ITV NewsPeter's blog, Me, My Brain and Baked BeansBrian 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.
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    1 h et 1 min
  • You Are Not the Main Story | The spotlight effect, a plague scare and Japan's older prisoners

    You Are Not the Main Story | The spotlight effect, a plague scare and Japan's older prisoners
    Oct 7 2026
    The Concept of the Week is the spotlight effect. Do something embarrassing and it feels as if everyone is watching, when most people barely noticed. Peter puts it down to being self focused, which we need to be to get through the day, and Hilary has a line she uses on her teenagers: you are not the main story of anyone else's movie. Her husband once got stung by a bee in a bank queue and made no sound at all. Peter once came to a halt at a crossroads in a small French town, could not get his feet out of his cycling pedals, and fell over to a ripple of applause from two cafes. 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 paperBlack Bag by Luke Kennard is on the 2026 Booker Prize shortlist. The winner is announced on 9 NovemberThe 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 TimesPlague, what it is and how it is treated: the World Health Organization fact sheetThe Met Office's own review of the El Niño winter headlines, 5 October: Met Office blogThe 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 hourThe Met Office counts a white Christmas if one snowflake is seen falling anywhere in the UK on Christmas Day. On that ...
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    34 min
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