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Simon's secondhand iPhone and Lee's flirtation with a folding one get things going, but the episode turns on a last-minute invitation to Lisbon Fashion Week that Lee almost turned down over pizza. Saying yes, he points out, isn't a marriage, because you can always leave. That leads them to ask who actually gets to be that open: the socially anxious, parents on pick-up duty, anyone whose evening isn't already their own.

Mentioned

• iPhone 13 Pro – the secondhand phone the episode is recorded on; the discovery that its speakers sit at the top opens the conversation
• The Luddites – 19th-century textile workers who smashed machinery; prompted by the question of when an early adopter turns Luddite, followed by a brief and uncertain detour into cotton presses and weaving
• Apple Watch and iPad – recalled as examples of early adoption, including an iPad snatched by a passing cyclist
• iPhone X – the last model bought new on release, before a switch to secondhand phones over the cost of keeping up and the environmental impact of rare earth materials
• Kodak – shorthand for a point-and-shoot approach to cameras: interested in images, not in how they're made
• iPhone Duo – a phone that unfolds into a screen for watching television on trains and planes; being considered, but only after a couple of months of reviews
• Leaning Tower of Pisa – punchline to "leaning is not the same as falling"
• ChatGPT virtual try-on – feature for trying on clothes digitally; set as homework for the coming week
• Google wardrobe – Google's equivalent clothes try-on service; reportedly looks like a face pasted onto a model's body
• Lisbon Fashion Week – the event a last-minute invitation led to, which became an example of being open to saying yes
• Aperol spritz – being drunk at the pizzeria when the invitation arrived (transcript reads "April spritz")
• Ammo – a local Lisbon pizzeria run by Luciano from Naples, serving 24-hour sourdough pizza
• Rick Owens – American fashion designer known for dark, avant-garde clothing; a pair of his shorts, bought in a charity shop, was worn to the fashion event
• Michèle Lamy – octogenarian fashion icon and Rick Owens's wife and collaborator
• Six degrees of separation – used to describe following the interesting people who turn up in a well-connected friend's wake
• Shayo by Nnamdi – a new Nigerian slow-fashion label just launched in Lisbon, working with young Nigerian designers; met outside the event, leading to some accidental networking
• Waiter press – kettlebell exercise, held overhead like a waiter's tray, recommended for the newly delivered 16 kg kettlebell

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)

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Lee reveals that giving a colleague a lift home exposed a further, unsuspected layer of "unfiltered Lee", which prompts Simon to suggest a set of age-rated cardboard signs to hang around his neck. Simon finds real pleasure in treating a knotty work situation as a giant puzzle made of human pieces. He also reports that this week's raid on the office chocolate cupboard turned up only waxy, orange-foiled Halloween balls. Then Simon brings in a line from Annie Duke about crediting ourselves for good luck and blaming bad luck, which leads them to effort, privilege, and what large language models might be doing to a young person's sense of agency.

Mentioned

• Microsoft Teams – the platform for a work meeting earlier in the week, which opened with a podcast-style countdown out of pure habit
• Cher – "If I Could Turn Back Time" quoted after realising 1930 is nearly a century ago, not 60 or 70 years
• 1930s BBC nativity play broadcast – a technically ambitious live broadcast from near the tip of Cornwall, now being re-performed as an immersive piece in a church by a local theatre company with research centre support; the on-air bulb blew mid-broadcast and the cast carried on regardless
• Forced Entertainment – Sheffield-based experimental theatre company; the idea of wearing cardboard signs around the neck is called "very early Forced Entertainment"
• Falmouth University – cited as the third biggest employer in Cornwall, in a discussion of universities being too important locally to fail (transcribed as "foundless")
• Marlene Dietrich – conjured as the image of the old-time nightclub where "vamping" (filling time on stage) might come from
• Coventry University – domain for an imagined "quality control" email address to complain about the downgrade in stolen office chocolates
• Annie Duke, How to Decide – book on decision-making; its line about blaming bad luck for bad outcomes while crediting ourselves for good ones prompts a conversation about effort, luck and agency at different stages of life
• Large language models – discussed as a "seismic" wildcard for students' sense of agency, compared with older forms of privilege

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)

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Lee arrives squinting at his phone, his many pairs of reading glasses having all washed up in one place, out of reach. After a detour through Reacher and its spin-off Neagley, Lee brings in an Alabama senator warning that airline pilots may secretly be furries, and Simon questions the maths. From there it's a stolen mint chocolate that turns out to be Simon's Proustian madeleine, a private tapestry tour at the V&A, a defence of experts, and an imagined Akram Khan statue that spins at the press of a button.

Mentioned

• Reacher (TV series) – the latest season is being watched; a friend texted to say they cried at the end
• Neagley (TV series) – Reacher spin-off, watched over the weekend and rated highly; the character was always a fascinating one in the books too
• Maria Sten – actor who plays Neagley in both shows; her name is only half-remembered in the episode
• Alan Ritchson – plays Reacher; noticeably smaller in season one than in season four
• Tommy Tuberville – Republican senator from Alabama; a press-conference clip in which he warns that aviation workers, pilots included, may be furries with a "deranged fetish"
• Furries – community of people who dress as cartoon animals, with a sexual and a non-sexual "stripe"
• Adidas – brand invoked in a joke about the two "stripes" of furries
• Mickey Mouse and Pluto – examples of the kind of cartoon animal furries dress as
• Pup play – mentioned as distinct from being a furry
• Dungeons & Dragons – floated as a niche hobby probably more common than being a furry
• YouTube – its new ads that shrink the video, even during a yoga session
• Marcel Proust – the madeleine, as the model for a mint chocolate that triggers memories of after-dinner mints at grandparents'
• The Meaning of Life (Monty Python) – the "wafer-thin" mint, alluded to and then dropped
• Elizabeth Shaw – after-dinner mint brand with an "interesting range"
• Bendicks Bittermints – the "bitter mint" style of after-dinner mint
• V&A – two days of meetings with access-all-areas tours of V&A East Storehouse, V&A East and South Kensington; Young V&A also mentioned
• David Bowie Centre, V&A East Storehouse – a room visited on the tour
• Boris Johnson and David Cameron – each suggested as the source of the anti-experts line (the "had enough of experts" remark is usually credited to Michael Gove)
• Dominic Cummings – "drove to Durham"; his name can't be recalled in the episode
• Wayne McGregor – choreographer, cited as the rare choreographer with money because of his work for ABBA
• ABBA – ABBA Voyage, via Wayne McGregor
• Akram Khan – choreographer with a large installation at V&A East, which prompts the joke about an "Angry Akram" statue
• Michael Jackson statue on the Thames – the giant statue floated down the river to promote HIStory in 1995, used for comparison

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)