Episodes

  • Who Runs Towards Danger? | Social comparison, Bryan Johnson and a £1.5m Pokémon attic

    Who Runs Towards Danger? | Social comparison, Bryan Johnson and a £1.5m Pokémon attic
    28 Oct 2026

    The Concept of the Week is social comparison theory: the idea, from Leon Festinger, that we judge much of what matters to us against other people. Peter explains the games in which people would rather take £10 while their opponent gets £5 than take £10 while their opponent gets £20, and suggests the real question is where we get our goals from. It also gives the show a new name for its tip segment: the Psych Hack. Before that, Hilary and Peter compare notes on the clock change, William Willett's angry pamphlet The Waste of Daylight, and the spelling reformers who wanted "wot" and "hoo".

    The first headline: the father who shot dead the 16 year old gunman at Silver Rail Elementary School in Bend, Oregon, where three children and a teacher were killed, has spoken about the moment he called his mum. Hilary asks what makes someone run towards danger. Peter's answer is that we are social animals, and cooperation is built into us. They talk about survivor's guilt, about Jacinda Ardern's refusal to name the Christchurch killer, and about notoriety as a motive. Peter's view is that disaffection, revenge and a wish for notoriety exist in every society, and the variable that decides how many people die is easy access to guns. Hilary brings in the history of the NRA and research from Columbia University on the reasons behind mass shootings, and asks what can be done to help boys and young men.

    The second headline is Bryan Johnson, the tech multimillionaire who is trying to live forever, and The Telegraph's line that he isn't entirely sure why. Hilary asks whether he is adding years to his life but not meaning. Peter talks about memento mori, whether he would want to be a vampire, why the brain is the part of the body least likely to keep up, and why he'd rather bet on a pension than on Bryan Johnson's secret of eternal life. Hilary recalls the myth of Tithonus, granted eternal life without eternal youth.

    The third headline is cash in the attic: a retired decorator's Pokémon cards, bought for his son and left in the loft for about fifteen years, sold for £1.56 million. Peter thinks collecting for profit is a lottery, and tells a story that doesn't show him in a good light about a painting in a friend's flat. Hilary takes in Logan Paul's Pikachu Illustrator, sold to AJ Scaramucci in February, and asks whether buying something for its future value gives the same reward as collecting for love. Peter remembers holding a copy of the Malleus Maleficarum in the library at Liverpool, and describes his box of small things worth nothing to anyone else.

    The Psych Hack: before you do something, ask whether you would do it just for you. Try doing something nice and telling nobody. No photo, no post.

    To finish, a look ahead to this week's Budget: Hilary on India's rural work guarantee, Peter on universal basic income and social care.

    A note before you listen. This episode discusses a school shooting in which three children and a teacher were killed, gun violence, survivor's guilt, depression and abuse.

    Mentioned in this episode

    • Social comparison theory, from Leon Festinger (1954): Wikipedia
    • The Columbia Mass Murder Database and mental illness: Columbia Psychiatry
    • Bryan Johnson's Telegraph interview, reported: ThePrint
    • The Surrey attic Pokémon collection: Malay Mail
    • Logan Paul's Pikachu Illustrator sale: ABC7
    • Confessions, anonymously: Fesshole
    • Universal basic income: Wikipedia
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    1 hr
  • 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
    21 Oct 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
    13 Oct 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 hr and 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
    7 Oct 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
  • They Can Do Nothing Wrong | The halo effect, Ed Miliband and Burnham on beer at the football

    They Can Do Nothing Wrong | The halo effect, Ed Miliband and Burnham on beer at the football
    29 Sep 2026
    The Concept of the Week is the halo effect. Once you think well of someone, their mistakes get explained away and their strengths get all the credit. Peter calls it a heuristic, and a sloppy way of thinking that everyone falls into from time to time. His rule: very good people can do bad things, and when they do, call them out. It turns up all week, starting with Ed Miliband's street interview with the TikTok creator Feroz Khan in New York. Peter is sure it was not impromptu. Hilary is less sure it was scripted. 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 videoThe 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 beenBlack Bag by Luke Kennard is on the 2026 Booker Prize shortlist. The winner is announced on 9 NovemberAphantasia, 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 listeningThe ONS ...
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    41 min
  • Make the First Move | The bystander effect, AI-mageddon and Burnham meets Trump

    Make the First Move | The bystander effect, AI-mageddon and Burnham meets Trump
    23 Sep 2026
    The Concept of the Week is the bystander effect: the more people watching something go wrong, the less likely any one of them is to step in. Peter traces it from the Kitty Genovese story through the staged subway experiments to the advice he was given as a new lecturer. If the fire alarm goes off, every student in the room will wait to see what you do, so leave the bloody room. Hilary has a Brighton story about a homeless woman punched in the face and a crowd that did not look. The finding that follows is the useful one: people are waiting for a cue, and if somebody steps forward, the chances are the rest will follow. 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 NovemberThe 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 effectPeter'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 effectThe 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 YorkTrump 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'sThe 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 themselvesRory Stewart's ...
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    48 min
  • I Want To Live In The Real World | Reform's £72m, assisted dying and Miliband's settlement ban

    I Want To Live In The Real World | Reform's £72m, assisted dying and Miliband's settlement ban
    15 Sep 2026
    The Concept of the Week is motivated reasoning: judging an argument by whether it gets you the answer you already wanted. Peter's version is unsparing. His well motivated donation is a bid to improve the life of the nation, hers is shameless self promotion. His climate pledge is aspirational, hers is a downright lie. People do it all the time, and the week's three headlines are three chances to catch yourself at it. 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 recordA 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 answerDelo signed the Giving Pledge in 2019, committing at least half his wealth in his lifetime, which is Hilary's point about philanthropyThe assisted dying bill was defeated on Friday 11 September by 286 votes to 270. Hilary says 269 and flags it as approximate at the timeOregon'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 firstCanada has postponed eligibility where mental illness is the sole underlying condition to 2027, rather than abandoning it as Hilary suggestsJersey'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 yetThe Royal College of Psychiatrists, whose concerns about assessment time Peter largely sharesJacob 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 IndustriesThe 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 UKChief 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 measuresThe 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 ...
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    46 min
  • Repeat A Lie Often Enough | the AfD landslide, violence in A&E, and AI's invented facts

    Repeat A Lie Often Enough | the AfD landslide, violence in A&E, and AI's invented facts
    8 Sep 2026

    The Concept of the Week is the illusory truth effect. Repeat a lie often enough, Peter says, and it stops being something you have heard and becomes something you know. The news then obliges with three demonstrations.

    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.
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    51 min