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This week runs from the heavy to the daft. We start with the emergency alert and the wildfire risk behind it, which leads Peter into the Concept of the Week. Then the hard part: the death of Professor Jason Arday, the Cambridge academic who faced a sustained campaign of online abuse, and what public shaming actually does to a person. We talk proportionality, the presumption of innocence that social media has quietly erased, and why a pile-on so often says more about the people holding the torches than the person they are aimed at. After that we lighten up, with why a partial eclipse left Peter cold while eclipse-chasers cross the planet for the full thing, and Count Binface giving Nigel Farage a run for his money in Clacton.

This episode discusses a recent death, online abuse and mental health. Please take care if that is difficult for you.

CONCEPT OF THE WEEK

INUS, from the philosopher J.L. Mackie, which is a formal way of saying that causes are almost always more tangled than they look. A fire needs a spark, but the spark could have been a match, a lighter or a dropped cigarette, and no single one of them is the whole story. It is a useful lens for everything from why a wildfire took hold to why the far right gains ground: there is rarely one simple cause, however much a headline wants there to be.

THE TRIPLE T

Wait a second before you respond. It sounds almost too obvious to say, but most of the harm we do, and most of the nonsense we spread, comes from reacting to a headline as though we already know the whole story. There is nearly always a backstory, a complication, a perspective you have not heard. So let investigations run their course, let the facts arrive, and above all do not send the tweet. It will almost certainly be wrong.

| IF YOU HAVE BEEN AFFECTED If you have been affected by any of the issues discussed on our podcast, please contact your doctor, local support services, or your emergency services if in crisis. If you are in the UK, this website will signpost you to other mental health services: https://www.meandmymind.nhs.uk/getting-help/mental-health-websites/

| LIKED THIS ONE? Please leave us a review wherever you are listening. It takes a minute and genuinely helps others find the show. Got a question, a comment, or a topic you would like us to put on the couch? Write to us at hello@experiencepodco.com. New episodes land every Tuesday.

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This week is a practical one: a guide to A-level results day and the leap to
university, for anyone with a teenager in the house and for the teenagers
themselves. We start with the teenage brain, which is not fully built until around
23, and why that means your teenager genuinely cannot wake early or yet see
things from your side. Then the days before: the conversation to have now (in an
ideal world, what would you love to study?), banking some sleep, and quietly
building a Plan B and C so a disappointing envelope has somewhere to go. On the
day, we get into loving them through it, dropping the I-told-you-so, and treating the
result as information rather than a verdict, because even James Bond steps on a
banana skin. And we range across whether university is still worth it, the trades AI
will not touch, and how to make friends in Freshers’ Week without ending up in an
ambulance.

CONCEPT OF THE WEEK
Attribution theory, the story you tell yourself about why something went well or
badly. We are all prone to a self-serving version: the good result was all me, the
bad one was someone else’s fault. It matters at results time because the
explanation shapes what you do next. Tell yourself you aced it purely because you
are cleverer than everyone, and you may coast and come unstuck later. Peter’s
honest version is that he did well at A-level mostly because he had nothing else to
do but revise, which turns out to be a far more useful thing to believe than being a
genius.

THE TRIPLE T
Do something you love. As Hilary puts it, if you do something you love you never
really work a day, which is exactly the long game to keep in mind when a single set
of grades feels like the whole story. The results are one stepping stone, not the
destination. Keep your eye on what you actually want your life to look like, and
there is almost always more than one route to it.

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We start light this week, with identity and where you are from: Peter refereeing whether someone from Wilmslow really counts as a Mancunian (his ruling is that if she thinks she is, she is, and it would be rude to say otherwise), and the surprisingly touchy question of what grandparents want to be called.

Then the French wildfires take us somewhere bigger: why we find it so hard to care about people who are not born yet. Peter reaches for Camus and lands somewhere useful. You cannot really picture those future generations, so do not try. Ask instead what principles you want to live by now, and make each small decision one you can be proud of. Mia Mottley, the Barbadian Prime Minister, gets a well-earned mention as one of the great communicators on climate.

The Robert Bush case, the Hull funeral director jailed for what he did to hundreds of grieving families, leads into why death rituals matter so much, why there is no correct way to grieve, and why remembering that we are mortal can help us live better. Peter tells us about the cemetery chapel project he has just joined.

We finish with a tribute to Bill Oddie, who has died at 85. That takes in his openness about depression, Peter’s long argument with the idea of mental illness as a simple brain disease, and the science of laughter, which turns out to be far more about the people around us than the joke itself.

Our Concept of the Week is confirmation bias, sharpened by algorithms and chatbots that are only too happy to tell you that you were right. The Triple T is a single question: what do I actually want here?

Mia Mottley, Prime Minister of Barbados at the Opening of the #COP26 World Leaders Summit

A heads up: this episode covers death, grief and mental illness. Please take care if any of that is difficult for you.

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This week is all about names, and how much they give away before you have said a word. Peter takes us through what a name signals about class and background, and why a gender-neutral one quietly helps women at the CV stage. Then three headlines: Senator Jon Ossoff questioning Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, a masterclass in staying calm and letting the facts do the damage; Natalie Fleet stepping down as safeguarding minister, and what being "triggered" really means; and Andy Burnham letting Trump use UK bases to strike Iran, which turns into a conversation about standing up to a bully without making everyone else pay for it. New this week: the "clearly, not really" klaxon, for when one of us reaches for a bit too much hyperbole. Thanks to Dylan for spotting the first one.
This episode discusses sexual violence and trauma. Please take care if that is hard for you.

CONCEPT OF THE WEEK
Authenticity, and the trust that grows out of it. There is a line, usually put on Groucho Marx, that if you can fake sincerity you have got it made. It lands because we rely on reading other people honestly. We build trust by working out what someone is really like and then acting on it, whether that is trusting a Prime Minister to negotiate in our interest or trusting a friend to get your daughter home safely from a festival. Being yourself is how other people learn they can count on you, and as Hilary puts it, you are the best possible you and a rubbish version of anyone else.

THE TRIPLE T
When you are stuck or on the spot, ask a question. It is the move underneath the whole Ossoff interview, and it works just as well at a party as it does in a Senate hearing. If the conversation stalls or the nerves kick in, an open question hands the floor back to the other person and takes the pressure off you. And if someone puts you on the spot, you can always ask them why they are asking. One catch: it does not work in a media interview, which is exactly why Hegseth had nowhere to hide.

Please leave us a review wherever you are listening. It takes a minute and genuinely helps others find the show. Got a question, a topic, or a "clearly, not really" moment where we got carried away? Write to us at hello@experiencepodco.com.

We recorded this one at nine o'clock on a Monday morning, a few hours before Andy Burnham walked into Number 10 as the country's fifth Prime Minister in five years. So we spent most of it asking what that job actually does to a person: whether you can stay yourself once you are in it, how you build a cabinet that will argue with you rather than nod along, and why so much of the answer sits with the team and the civil service around you. Along the way we get to Josh Kerr's mile world record and whether visualising a result really works, Claudia Winkleman admitting she was too nervous to enjoy her own chat show, FTSE 100 bosses on 130 times the average wage, and the rather uncomfortable evidence about money and happiness. We finish on hope, and why it works better than fear when you are trying to talk to people.

CONCEPT OF THE WEEK

Mirror neurons. Peter is sceptical that there is one dedicated neuron sitting there copying other people, but the brain scan evidence is solid: watch someone do something and your own brain lights up in ways that echo what they are doing. It is a good part of why humans learn so well by watching, and a reminder that we are social animals whether we like it or not.

THE TRIPLE T

The 5-4-3-2-1 technique, for when you are stressed or overwhelmed. Sit still and work through your senses. Five things you can see, four you can feel, three you can hear, two you can smell, one you can taste. The point is the attention rather than the senses. We have very little conscious control over our heart rate or our breathing, but we can choose where to point our attention, and doing that on purpose settles everything else down. If you lose your place halfway through, start again at five. That is part of the exercise.

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Please leave us a review wherever you are listening. It takes a minute and it genuinely helps other people find the show.

Got a question, a comment, or a story you want us to put on the couch? Write to us at hello@experiencepodco.com. New episodes land every week.

Website: https://www.experiencepodco.com
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/033Qpocb5a1TC3KNyN7Ypt
Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/experience/id6791528666

A taste of what Experience sounds like: Hilary Jeffs and Peter Kinderman taking a headline and working out what's really driving it. Hilary's from communications, Peter's a clinical psychologist, and they don't always agree, which is the whole point.

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