Series 1 · Episode 6 · 25 August 2026
50 mins
Treat 'Em Mean, Keep 'Em Scrolling
Meta on trial, named storms and the weekend at 100
The psychology that keeps a fox in your garden is the psychology on trial in Oakland, with named storms and a hundred years of the weekend in between.
Peter opens with the Concept of the Week this time rather than saving it, and it ends up explaining almost everything else. Variable ratio reinforcement is why the fox keeps coming back to his garden, why the arcade machine keeps your pound, and why you are still scrolling. Reward a behaviour every time and it stops registering. Reward it never and it dies out. Reward it roughly one time in three, unpredictably, and it becomes very hard to shake.
Then three stories that all turn out to be about who decides what holds your attention. The Met Office is running a competition with Aardman to name a storm after Shaun the Sheep, and Peter explains why a daft name does serious work: it gets people to clear the gutters before the water comes in. He would extend the idea to heatwaves, on the condition that they are named after politicians who deny climate change. Hilary raises him the fossil fuel companies, and then the data centres.
After that, a hundred years of the two day weekend. Henry Ford introduced it in 1926, having already doubled his workers' pay, and not out of kindness. Bertrand Russell thought we should have gone considerably further, and Peter, now retired with a lathe and rather too many beehives, agrees. Being freed from work, he argues, is not the same as being left without a purpose.
And finally the courtroom. Twenty nine US states are suing Meta in Oakland, with a worst case claim of 1.4 trillion dollars against a company worth about 1.5 trillion. The case turns on the exact mechanism Peter described in the first five minutes.
Concept of the Week and The Triple T
Concept of the Week
Variable ratio reinforcement. Reward a behaviour every single time and the reward stops registering. Stop rewarding it and the behaviour dies out. Reward it unpredictably, on average about one time in three, and you get the most persistent behaviour psychology has managed to produce. It is how you keep a fox coming to your garden, how a fruit machine works, and, Peter argues, how a feed is designed. The uncomfortable part is that knowing all this confers no protection whatsoever.
The Triple T
Set limits. Turn on the screen time report, look at the number honestly, and then decide the rules rather than letting the app decide them for you. Thirty minutes. Nothing after a certain hour. No phones at the dinner table. Peter is careful to say this is not advice aimed downwards: his own screen time is not great, and understanding addictive design has not made him immune to it. And limits are not only for phones. Being able to say no to people is the same muscle.
Series 1 · Episode 5 · 18 August 2026
43 mins
It's More Complicated Than the Headline
Public shaming, an eclipse and Count Binface
Public shaming and the Arday tragedy, the awe of an eclipse, and Farage versus a bin, tied together by one idea: it is always more complicated than the headline.
This week runs from the heavy to the daft. We start with the emergency alert and the wildfire risk that prompted it, which leads Peter into the Concept of the Week and the idea that the causes of things are almost always more tangled than a headline suggests.
Then the difficult 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. There is a clear line, we think, between raising a concern properly and setting out to shame someone.
After that we lighten the mood. Peter confesses he found the partial eclipse thoroughly underwhelming, which leads into why other people chase total eclipses across the planet, the awe of the night sky, and the fact that the people who built Stonehenge were every bit as clever as we are. And we finish with Count Binface giving Nigel Farage a run for his money in Clacton, and the strange charm of a democracy that lets a man campaign against a bin.
A heads up: this episode discusses a recent death, online abuse and mental health. Please take care if that is difficult for you.
Concept of the Week and The Triple T
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 in this episode, please contact your doctor, local support services, or your emergency services if in crisis. If you are in the UK, this NHS page signposts a range of mental health services.
Series 1 · Episode 4 · 10 August 2026
64 mins
Even James Bond Steps on a Banana Skin
Results day, disappointment and Freshers' Week
A practical guide to A-level results day and the leap to university, for anyone with a teenager in the house and for the teenagers themselves.
This week is a practical one. 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, which is 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 and The Triple T
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.
Series 1 · Episode 3 · 4 August 2026
45 mins
There Is No Right Way to Grieve
Death rituals, the Bush case and farewell to Bill Oddie
Why death rituals matter, why there is no correct way to grieve, and why remembering that we are mortal can help us live better.
We start light this week, with identity and where you are from: Peter refereeing whether someone from Wilmslow really counts as a Mancunian, 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.
A heads up: this episode covers death, grief and mental illness. Please take care if any of that is difficult for you.
Concept of the Week and The Triple T
Concept of the Week
Confirmation bias, sharpened by algorithms and chatbots that are only too happy to tell you that you were right.
The Triple T
A single question: what do I actually want here?
Series 1 · Episode 2 · 27 July 2026
46 mins
The Adult in the Room
Ossoff vs Hegseth, Natalie Fleet and Burnham's Trump problem
Names and what they give away before you say a word, an Ossoff masterclass in staying calm, and how to stand up to a bully without making everyone else pay for it.
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 and The Triple T
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.
Series 1 · Episode 1 · 20 July 2026
54 mins
What Number 10 Does to You
Burnham's first day, Kerr's record and the money myth
Recorded hours before a new Prime Minister takes office: a conversation about leadership, money, attention, and why hope works better than fear.
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 and The Triple T
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.
Trailer · 16 July 2026
50 seconds
Coming Soon...
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.
Social clips
Short moments, worth passing on
The sharpest moments from each episode. The full set also goes out on YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels and TikTok.
Ask why am I doing this, and make better decisions
Clip · Ep 3 · The Triple T
Why death rituals shape our culture
Clip · Ep 3 · Grief
Life's absurd: Camus says we make the point
Clip · Ep 3 · Philosophy
Future thinking: principles over individual choices
Clip · Ep 3 · Climate
Remembering we are mortal helps us live now
Clip · Ep 3 · Grief
Grandparent names, and shedding the stereotypes
Clip · Ep 3 · Identity
Billionaires chasing immortality
Clip · Ep 3 · The news
Your choices matter, one decision at a time
Clip · Ep 3 · Climate
Names reveal your secrets: gender, class and more
Clip · Ep 2 · The theme
Ossoff traps Hegseth with military facts
Clip · Ep 2 · The news
Ossoff's tactic: forensic questions, calm control
Clip · Ep 2 · Communication
Be yourself: authenticity is your superpower
Clip · Ep 2 · Concept of the Week
Stuck in a conversation? Ask this
Clip · Ep 2 · The Triple T
Trauma triggers: how your brain reacts
Clip · Ep 2 · Psychology
I lied about being the Kinder egg heir for six years
Clip · Ep 2 · Names
Politics isn't fantasy football, it's reality
Clip · Ep 2 · The news
Psychoanalysing the news: the podcast, explained
Clip · Ep 1 · The show
New PM alert! Andy Burnham is the big story
Clip · Ep 1 · The news
Can Andy Burnham be his authentic self as PM?
Clip · Ep 1 · Leadership
Mirror neurons: how watching makes you learn and feel
Clip · Ep 1 · Concept of the Week
Stressed? Use this 5-4-3-2-1 grounding hack
Clip · Ep 1 · The Triple T
Income vs happiness: money can't buy joy
Clip · Ep 1 · Wellbeing
27-year record shattered! Kerr's ice bath secret
Clip · Ep 1 · Sport
Why hope messages work despite constant threats
Clip · Ep 1 · Communication
The story changes every week. The question underneath it never does: why do people do what they do?
Got a question, a comment, or a story you want us to put on the couch? Write to us at hello@experiencepodco.com.