They Can Do Nothing Wrong

Peter Kinderman If I see a group of people who appear to be football supporters walking down the road, I will definitely cross the road to avoid them. And I would really personally rather that they weren't fueled up on more alcohol.

Hilary Jeffs Hello and welcome to Experience, the weekly podcast where we get to do a big romp through the news headlines and talk about why humans behave the way they do. So if you are a human, I suspect you want to like and subscribe 'cause we're an independent podcast and that's how we can keep going. But also tell another human about it because this is a podcast about humans, for humans, by humans who would've figured. This week we're gonna be talking about a couple of headlines, which are quite interesting in lots of ways, and there's one that's a bit disturbing. So we'll put some links in the show notes in case you've been affected by the topics that we talk about. So we're gonna be discussing Burnham battling discrimination. Yeah, not racism, not sexism, but fanism, how football fans are discriminated against. We'll be talking about that. We'll also be talking about Andy Carroll, who has done a very brave thing and opened up about the sexual abuse that he experienced at the hand of a celebrity mate who then went to jail. And the importance of being able to give young men and boys a voice around these sorts of events as they happen because for a long time they did not have that voice. And we're also talking about how people are waiting longer before they get divorced, which is a very negative way of saying people are staying married for longer. Anyway, I could not do this on my own. Hey Peter, amazing outfit. I'm Hilary and I spread positivity and kindness on the internet. What is it that you do, Peter?

Peter Kinderman And I get grumpy about people who do staged interactions in public and then pass them off as being genuine.

Hilary Jeffs No, a hundred percent impromptu off the cuff unstaged. We're talking of course about the TikTok influencer, Feroz Khan and his interaction impromptu on the streets with our very own foreign secretary, Ed Miliband. And we'll put the link to that in the show notes just so that the joy can keep going, but you're not allowed to watch it until after you finish listening to us.

Peter Kinderman Yeah, it's all right. It look people, you watch TOWIE and Traitors and Strictly Come Dancing and there are people, and Big Brother and people are, they're scripted reality all over the place. And you know who, who thinks that a press conference hasn't been planned beforehand? And they know the running order of the journalists ev everything's got a bit of planning to it. That was a bit of fun. And they tried to, they weren't lying to us, it was just, it was just Ed Miliband being slightly less geeky than sometimes he is. And good luck to him. It's fine. But it certainly wasn't impromptu, was it?

Hilary Jeffs Through the course of this show, I'm hoping that like Miliband, you'll be able to share some challenges with us that you have faced Peter, but also give us some, some advice for the world in the form of our tip to try, which will be coming up later on the Triple T. But first, could you give us a concept of the week?

Peter Kinderman Well, the concept of the week is the halo effect, which is the halo effect is basically if somebody's done something good or you like 'em, or you have positive regard for them in one way, especially if you have a lot of positive regard for them, they can do nothing wrong. So their errors and their mistakes become things that can be easily be explained away. And their strengths are ones that you go for. And it's, it is a heuristic. It's a, it's a risk, it's a sloppy way of thinking, but we all fall into it from time to time.

Hilary Jeffs I had.

Peter Kinderman I like that person. Therefore, I think that they've on this occasion, done a good thing.

Hilary Jeffs Yeah, I had a chat with my eldest the other day, which was do not confuse someone's politics with someone's morals, because they're not necessarily the same thing at all, but

Peter Kinderman No, and very, very bad people can do good things and very, very good people can do bad things, and if a very, very good person does a bad thing, then call 'em out on it.

Hilary Jeffs Yeah, we are not as good as the best thing we've ever done or as bad as the worst thing we've ever done. That is definitely a truism in my book. But first I need from you, Peter, an update on how you're getting on with the Booker Prize shortlist nominee Black Bag by Luke Kennard. Where are you up to? Let's see where we are doing, shall we? 'cause we've both gotta read this.

Peter Kinderman Well, near total failure, on the grounds that I was persuaded that it would be more convenient to fit an audio book into a busy life, and I've completely failed to navigate the instructions for how to actually make the audio book kind of come alive in my headphones. I will get there, but at the moment it's all a bit kind of like scratchy. But I will get there and I will read it and,

Hilary Jeffs Or listen to it.

Peter Kinderman I will listen to it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'll listen to it and read the other books I'm reading and that'll be the way it'll be.

Hilary Jeffs I found, because Luke himself does do the recording for the audio book, and I was a bit like, it's very obvious you are a poet who has probably performed quite a lot in your past, but I've now got into it because there is a really nice, cheeky, cute misdirect at the end of chapter nine, which I'm hooked now because if he just gives me one more of those, then I'll be happy and we'll, it will have been all worth listening to the book. But no, I haven't got a chance to read it. I've got it in the car, I've got it when I'm hoovering, things like that. But you do need it in headphones. You'll

Peter Kinderman what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna sort out the audio book system today and start listening to it. That that's, well, the promise is that I will try. That's the promise.

Hilary Jeffs I think I can ask no more of you or any other mere mortal, Peter. That is just the way it goes. The reason I quite like Black Bag as well is that it's not full of visual imagery. 'cause over the weeks people will have noticed that I am slightly obsessed by the fact that I have aphantasia. Do you wanna explain what Aphantasia is, Peter?

Peter Kinderman So aphantasia is this supposed thing, phenomenon,

Hilary Jeffs Supposed it's a real thing.

Peter Kinderman Well, this is why I'm coming onto, it's a real thing. So this is, this is my personal take on it. So aphantasia is this phenomenon whereby after you've closed your eyes, you are unable to see a visual image of the thing that you've been looking at or imagining. So the way that it's sold to us is that, I mean if you look, yeah, I mean, if you look it up on kind of artificial intelligence, it says, I use lots of different ones. Your ChatGPT, your Grok and so forth. Say it's not a disorder, but you know, it is already an it and it's, it is not a disorder. The way it's sold to us is ordinary people. You show 'em an apple, you close your eyes, you ask them to imagine the apple, and in their mind's eye, they can see the apple and it's a visual image in their mind's eye. And I of course can't, I can remember the apple, and I can, I have a mental representation of the apple, but I don't see the apple.

Hilary Jeffs Then you have aphantasia

Peter Kinderman I do with my,

Hilary Jeffs as well.

Peter Kinderman My personal belief. This is not a scientific opinion, it is not a psychological conclusion. I think we all have aphantasia, and what I think I'm, I'm quite good at, well, one of the things I learned at high school was I'm quite good at 3D stuff. So I use a lathe to do woodworking. I, and I do model making. I'm quite good at 3D stuff. I

Hilary Jeffs Brilliant at it. I'm a mathematician. I can do all of that stuff.

Peter Kinderman But when I close my eyes,

Hilary Jeffs Blank.

Peter Kinderman Seeing things. Because seeing things

Hilary Jeffs have, okay, so I think you are where I was a few years ago when I first heard about this, is that I actually did not believe that other people see an

Peter Kinderman Yeah,

Hilary Jeffs image, but they

Peter Kinderman to imagine it.

Hilary Jeffs Do, and we have been missing out. If they shut their eyes, they can literally see a picture of their loved one. Whereas I know that I'm thinking of my loved one, but I cannot see them. Literally when they say they've got a photographic memory, they can take a picture of it and record it in their head. They mean it literally.

Peter Kinderman I'm sure they mean it. So if you show me a Rubik cube and then ask me to close my eyes and imagine the Rubik cube, I mean, I'm no good at Rubik cubes, but you know, I can, I can do the mental business of rotating the Rubik cube in my, in my mind's eye. I, if you ask me what's if you holding, hold up a box and then ask me to close my eyes and say, or dice or something, and you know what's on the obverse of the single dot

Hilary Jeffs we know they add up to seven.

Peter Kinderman And then we spin it round and there you go. But I'm not seeing

Hilary Jeffs know it adds up to seven. No, you people are literally singing. Okay. This

Peter Kinderman in that case that that thing that they've got where their occipital lobes continue to work, what after they've closed their eyes is a bit weird.

Hilary Jeffs Now in the show notes, we're gonna put up the aphantasia test from the aphantasia website, and we'll put all the links there so that you can check your level of aphantasia. Or you may be hyperphantasia. There are some people that have literal movies playing inside their head, but also there's a link, Peter, and I think you're gonna like this to an apple that you can look at and stare at it for a certain amount of time. And when you look away, it gives you a brief image in your mind of an apple. Did you see that? Did you

Peter Kinderman an after image. Yeah. That's, that's

Hilary Jeffs Yes. So, but literally other people see that all the time. They shut their eyes.

Peter Kinderman Well, I'm not saying that they're mistaken. I'm not, I'm certainly not saying they're lying. I'm sure that their experience is that in that case, their experience is different to mine. It's just, there you go. But it

Hilary Jeffs see we are the elite few who can't do it. We are like, and actually they wonder whether it was our brain shortcut way of making us process other information faster, and that would make sense to me.

Peter Kinderman But I'm quite good at like rotating things intellectually in 3D I'm quite good at, you know, when you've got this IQ test where they say which of these cutout bits of paper will fold up to make a kit? I'm really good at it.

Hilary Jeffs But you and I have scientific brains. We are good at that stuff, but we just don't see the actual pictures. I think that's hilarious. 'cause I think as you talk to more people now you are gonna have the same thing as me if like what you mean. You weren't just saying that you could see them inside your head. And we have really been missing out. Although maybe the darkness, it means that scary. Nightmares don't affect me so much. In fact, I rarely remember a dream and I wonder if it's because I haven't got that visual track playing in my head.

Peter Kinderman I'm sorry. I mean, I know I'm supposed to be a bringer of joy and happiness or whatever it is that podcaster kind of said, Ed Miliband. But the other part of me thinks it's just possible that my eyes are my visual organ and when I close my eyes, I don't see anything anymore.

Hilary Jeffs It is, but other people in their heads can conjure up those images. It's proven right. You and I we're gonna have to go

Peter Kinderman We'll have to look into

Hilary Jeffs of MRI machine or CT

Peter Kinderman Oh, that, well, that would be both. That would be, that would be, that would be a very interesting test of

Hilary Jeffs Yeah. So if anyone's got one lying around in their garage, please invite us over. We will come and have a go.

Peter Kinderman Or we go onto, Google Scholar and look for fMRI, functional MRI, imaging of aphantasia. There'll have been a study on it. There's a

Hilary Jeffs There is. There is, right. Okay. We'll check back in in a couple of weeks. All right. Fair enough. Okay, so we've done our concept of the week, the halo effect, which I think might come up through some of our headlines. We've talked about aphantasia. All the information is in the show notes. But again, wait till the end of the show before you go off looking for it, unless you can listen to us and search at the same time. I'm not that good at multitasking myself. Onto the first headline then of the week is when we talk about the fact that people are staying together for longer. Apparently now people spend 13 years with each other before they divorce, and there's been lots of theories hypothesise as to why it's up from the 8.9 or 9.8 or whatever it was in the mid eighties. They've been tracking this stuff since 1963, so we've got quite a lot of data. Now. We've got over 60 years of it. Is it what lots of people are saying is that we simply can't afford to split up, which is a bit of a depressing way. Or is it Peter, the fact that in the last 60 years, couples counselling and therapy may actually be working? What's going on?

Peter Kinderman It's more, well, o obviously because people are debating it. There are lots of possible explanations. My personal view is, and this is a kind of, again, a rather sort of like depressing sort of picture, I suspect it's a statistical consequence of the fact that there are two variables that we're looking at that are correlated because time runs only in one direction and this is it, which is over that period of time between 63 and now the age at the length of time between which people get married and get divorced has increased during that time. The age at which people get married has increased. So if there's gonna be a correlation between the age at which you get married and the length of time that you get divorced, then that's all it is. It's just that people are marrying later. And there's lots of good reason to suppose that if you get married later, you are likely to stay married for longer. So, for instance, back in the sixties, cohabiting before marriage wasn't so common and it is extremely common now. It's relatively common for people to have children before they get married. So what you're doing is, first of all, you're growing and older and getting wiser and older, wiser people getting married are probably likely to stay married for longer, whereas younger, less wise people getting married maybe. But also if you've lived together for a long period of time, then that's going to increase the probability that you'll stay together. And then finally, if what's happening is that you've had a period of time whereby, you know, you've tested out the possibility of being married, not being married, you've, you've investigated all of these things, and then you get married, then the chances of you realising you've made a dreadful mistake are gonna be much less. So I think it's all a consequence of the fact that people are marrying later and living together for longer before they get married. And that's a good thing, you know, it's just

Hilary Jeffs Well, one of the divorce solicitors that was interviewed about this said that they felt that because people were getting married later, they were more emotionally invested. Which I guess is that I thought that perhaps isn't the actual way because maybe people are just being smarter and less emotionally invested because you know, we all know what it's like when you have that heady first love and people throw themselves into a relationship early on. But I thought interesting that a solicitor would say that, and they have a different perspective to you as a therapist or me as an observer, don't they? Because they're at the absolute knife edge part of that horrible reality of divorce.

Peter Kinderman And also you gotta ask yourself, you know, when a solicitor says more emotionally invested, what do they mean by that? And they might actually mean more financially invested and invested in the shared upbringing of children and cleverer and have thought about the issues a bit more. And tho those sorts of non emotional things might be wrapped up in the Yeah, it's a nice term for radio, right? So you say more emotionally invested. What you actually mean is they thought about it a bit more. They've got a lot more going on. They've made sense, more sensible plans. And they've also realised, you know, the way the world works and how to cope with minor disappointments and the lack of everything being perfect in your life. And people are wiser when they're older. And, you know, a short term for that, I wouldn't choose emotionally invested, but it's useful enough.

Hilary Jeffs One of the other things that was suggested was the fact that because we are living longer now, that there's not the same rush to get divorced. So you can have that second lifestyle. And in fact, we know that divorce is on the increase amongst those, I think in their fifties and sixties and beyond for the first time where people then are thinking, no, I've now got to start the most important part of my life. And I thought that was quite an interesting take because if people are getting married older, then being married for longer means they're even more older. And therefore I didn't understand where that statement was coming from.

Peter Kinderman Yeah, I'm not sure about that. I think, you know, obviously intelligent and wise people are thinking, I wonder whether there's an explanation that I can think of for this one. One account I read suggested that in addition to people being older now when they get married, and in addition to people cohabiting for longer before they actually get married, so they have more actually invested in the emotionally invested but practically invested in a marriage. Also, the fact that divorce has become easier, paradoxically makes people divorce later. Because what you think is, well, I could get divorced if I went to a lawyer, then probably what would happen is that both the lawyer and my partner and a judge if we went to family court would have a pretty sensible division of the assets. Actually, I can go online, I could ask chat GPT to ask me what the likely sort of spoils from a divorce settlement would be. I could do that now. So, but I don't have to because it's not a desperate thing where, you know, I have to pack the bags and leave in the dead of night. It's a relatively straightforward thing that people relatively know about, so that's fine. I'll give it another few months and see how it goes. So the fact that divorce is more easy, more straightforward, there's low less social stigma, means that you factor it into your equation as one of the possible route forward, but not the one that you have to go for. And I think that's an interesting analysis.

Hilary Jeffs Yeah, absolutely. No, I'd agree with that. But I note that you're not actually saying that marriage guidance is responsible.

Peter Kinderman No, I would say that, so, I

Hilary Jeffs Does it work? Then marriage guidance.

Peter Kinderman I would have to look at the statistics in order to find out. But you see, this is, this is what I would say about therapy as well. I mean, you know, for 35 years I worked at, for the NHS as a therapist and I teach people therapy and I've published about therapy. But if you're in a miserable set of circumstances that are making you miserable, that are making you depressed and anxious, I would advise that you go to practical people who can solve all the practical problems that will take away the situation that's causing you misery. So I'm not sure that therapy and counselling is the way to solve problems in people's lives. So I remember a little while ago I said to you

Hilary Jeffs But they can suggest practical solutions, can't they? In guidance that couples can try in order to

Peter Kinderman well first of all, de depending on the nature of the counsellor or therapist you go to, there are people who would say, I would never, ever recommend it. No. But it's not my job to recommend or advise. No, I'm a counsellor. There are also people who dish out advice willy nilly and, you know, pray to Jesus Christ and your problems will be solved. So, yeah. But,

Hilary Jeffs That might be a vicar. And even then, my sister's one of those and she wouldn't necessarily say your problems would be

Peter Kinderman This is another phenomenon that we need to talk about, which is, which is why vicar no longer seem to believe in the sort of 39 tenets of the church anymore. It's quite, quite bizarre. You go to Vicar and you say, you believe in God, don't you? And they go, well, it depends on what God means. And I think, well, it shouldn't really 'cause there's like five Anyway,

Hilary Jeffs One time I'll swap in with my sister. She looks a bit like me anyway. You probably won't even notice and you can have that conversation. That would be great, but I just am not gonna be

Peter Kinderman back to counsellors, but going back to counsellors yeah, I, but I think solving practical problems is much better way to address dissatisfaction in your life than to, than to go to

Hilary Jeffs I would prefer to think that people were getting the help that they needed in their marriage and getting some guidance, and that's why they were staying together happily for longer rather than being locked into a torturous situation just because the finances are so terrible.

Peter Kinderman Like the apple. Let, let, let's believe that that's true and we'll be happy. Like, like Life of Pi, you know. Which account do you like best? I like the account with animals. Which account do you like best? I like the one where counsellors do a good job for the So for society.

Hilary Jeffs Yeah, I definitely like the one that it's animals and not the one where it's just scary people on the boat with them. That's just really horrible, from Life of Pi. Excellent book. By the way, I haven't seen the film and I haven't seen the stage show, but the book

Peter Kinderman show is amazing and wonderful, and definitely one of the sort of top five experiences I've had in my life. Extraordinary, yeah, just puppeteering and, yeah.

Hilary Jeffs Recommendations here as well of what you could be doing with your private life. Excellent stuff. I like it. Now if we move on to our second story, this is such a difficult topic, and as I said, there will be some links in the show notes if you've been affected by Andy Carroll. The footballer has made a brave admission in his autobiography that a celebrity mate staying over one time, he got a bit uncomfortable, didn't feel that it was a really nice evening. So after a couple of drinks, Andy Carroll took himself off to bed and woke up to find himself being abused by this person, threw them out the house. Apparently they came back in. I'm not sure how that happened. And he decked him and made him unconscious. And this man went to jail, was sentenced to three years imprisonment as a result of this. What I am really fascinated by is the importance of men bringing these stories out into the mainstream, into the wider world, because for a long time, men and boys did not have the words to describe the sexual assaults that had happened to them. And I remember listening to an account from a former child, you know, a young man now a footballer who had talked about Barry Bennell, the footballing coach who had molested so many children and went to jail for a long time before he died. And how important it was that young boys and men have a voice because they didn't have any words to express what was happening to them because it was never talked about. This is important, isn't it, for young people to help them be able to address what's happened to them.

Peter Kinderman Yeah, it's vitally important and we should absolutely celebrate and I think protect people who are brave enough to talk about these things. They're, they're inevitably hugely personal. They're inevitably discussions about times in our lives that have been very painful for us, and so very sensitive for people. And I think people need to be praised and celebrated and also protected, when they do this. And I think it's wonderful. I work a little bit sometimes with journalists and with members of the public who come forward for all sorts of stories. I, so I work, when I work in the media, I tend to work in sort of news and journalism and yeah, a lot of people, a lot of brave people are coming forward to talk about the things that have happened to them. And again, it is actually the same point, which is if you look at somebody and you don't understand what's happened in their lives, it looks as if their interactions with other people and their moods are driven by something inside them, either their personality or maybe there's some dysfunctioning of their brain. But it's my profound belief based on a great deal of evidence that people are distressed by the things that happen and the way that they responded, the things that happened to them. And so when we learn more about that, I think we learn more about ourselves. So absolutely, I think this is, it's really important that people speak and not, obviously not just about sexual assault, but also about physical assaults, about, about being mugged, about being bullied, about being humiliated. People should, not people should, we should celebrate and protect people, especially for, because we live in a gendered society. Men, when they talk about these things. Absolutely. Completely agree. And it's really common. And, you know, we all have stories and we all have experiences and yeah. We should, we should absolutely celebrate this. Yeah.

Hilary Jeffs And I felt such a weight of responsibility raising three children who were born males, who I was so conscious that I needed to raise them to be responsible themselves and their own behaviour towards other people, especially those more vulnerable. But actually it was one of the things that was really worrying to me was the fact that if something of that nature happened to them, how would they have the words to be able to describe that? We've for a long time, haven't we focused on women and their physical safety, but we know men get beaten up more than girls. And now we are hearing about the types of sexual assault that can happen even on the biggest, strongest, most physically sporty type of person. Obviously last week you shared the awful attack that happened on you and we are grateful for you doing that so that people can feel more confident about speaking out when something like that's happened. So thank you for sharing with us last week as well, Peter. You can find that episode if you'd like to in our history, when you go through on the platform that you listen to our podcast. Our final headline this week is Burnham battling discrimination against the football fans. Football fans are not able to drink whilst they're watching their game live on the most cases, and there's different laws and most, most parts of football in this country, you can't have a beer whilst you're watching it. You can, when you're watching women's games, that has just had a trial and that's happening. Now the problem we have is I'm old enough to remember the awful violence that used to happen in football matches, and that was one of the reasons why the law was brought in to stop people being able to drink in the stands, wasn't it?

Peter Kinderman Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I live, I live in South Manchester. You get on the tram and it says, don't drink alcohol on the tram. Well, fair enough. You know, if I went into the library was looking for a black bag and having an argument with the library about why I couldn't borrow it because it was already out on loan they'd probably asked me to put my vodka back in the bag. Right? It's there were places in society where it is not, I could, I could go to church and the vicar could talk about the fact that they're still a vicar and don't believe in God. But if I there

Hilary Jeffs They do serve alcohol in church though.

Peter Kinderman Do they?

Hilary Jeffs Yeah, in the form of the communion wine. I

Peter Kinderman Oh, yes, that's true.

Hilary Jeffs And all that, but I always thought it was just a symbolic thing. Not really an actual

Peter Kinderman not wine. It's, it's actually blood. Anyway yeah, but my point is there are lots of places in our society where, where we don't drink. And that's fine. I absolutely

Hilary Jeffs But we can drink on the terraces at a cricket match, and we can drink at rugby,

Peter Kinderman Fine.

Hilary Jeffs But we are not able to drink at football. So that isn't treating them with the same respect.

Peter Kinderman Yeah, it absolutely is basically the law is where historically there has been problems with mass violence by drunken hooligans, we've restricted the sale of alcohol that doesn't apply to women's soccer matches. It doesn't apply to cricket, it doesn't apply to rugby. It does apply to soccer. That's just the fact, you know, that's, so the rule isn't, we are discriminating against the working class game. The rule isn't we are discriminating against football. The rule is we reserve the right to restrict alcohol where there's been a history of massive violence. Yeah.

Hilary Jeffs But it's a long time ago now. Mid eighties is when that ban came in where, you know, four decades on Let, perhaps we need to see how it would go. Fans, there is much safe, more safety at a football match now than there

Peter Kinderman So let's, let's think about this scientifically. What evidence do we have that alcohol no longer has the same effect on the human brain that it did 40 years ago? Yeah, I think it probably has the same effect on the human brain that it did 40 years ago.

Hilary Jeffs But if it's managed correctly and there isn't the same culture around people going to, I mean there used to be football hooligans and I remember speaking to someone very high up in Coca-Cola one time and it was told to me that they actually used to go out on the weekend, loved a football match so they could have a bit of a scrap, which, you know, obviously Coca-Cola, I dunno if that's true. It had nothing to do with them drinking Coca-Cola. Probably more to do with drinking the beer or whatever else the substance might have been. So Coca-Cola please don't sue me.

Peter Kinderman to my view would be.

Hilary Jeffs Is if you, if you are watching cricket, you're watching foot rugby, which is a full contact sport, then there has to be a similar thing going on, doesn't there?

Peter Kinderman No, no. It so ha, hang on there. There has to be a similar thing going on. You know, if you are watching a game, if you are en, if you are engaged in a social activity, i.e. Going to football matches where there has been a long history of mainly racist, but in any case, extreme male violence and hooliganism fueled by

Hilary Jeffs racist. There is racism. It's not mainly.

Peter Kinderman Right. But if you are attending a social event, which historically has been associated with mass hooliganism, alcoholism and aggression, then we'll restrict the sale of alcohol. It's not discriminatory, it's

Hilary Jeffs 40 years.

Peter Kinderman Okay. Well look, you know, all, all things should be reviewed. So I mean, I guess what we could do is to say, let's see what happens. We'll do it on a trial basis and see what happens. Personally, I'm extremely sceptical when my experience of football generally is one of sort of group-based sublimation to a, to a very, very low level of behaviour. It is still the case that if I hear that there's a local football match, I will be worried about walking the streets because I will probably be confronted by aggressive young men trying to dominate the physical space in which I live. And I find it unpleasant and aggressive. If I see a group of people who appear to be football supporters walking down the road, I will definitely cross the road to avoid them. And I would really personally rather that they weren't fueled up on more alcohol. That's my personal, personal opinion.

Hilary Jeffs We know there is a connection between big sporting events and domestic violence, and whether that is fueled by the alcohol or the gambling or whatever else, but it does fuel it. And I noted that all of the research around this, whilst the headlines will say sporting events most of the research is on either UK football, American football, or Australian rugby. And they don't really focus, they a bit on ice hockey as well, and they're not really looking at other sporting events. And I wonder if that is also colouring people's opinions that perhaps we need to be looking at the impact of other sporting events more widely. Because A, we've got very white centric research based on a couple of developed countries, but b, we are, we are not really looking at the whole gamut. So maybe we just are unaware of the full implications of alcohol and sporting events more generally.

Peter Kinderman Well, yeah, definitely. I think it's also really interesting, which is, okay, so what what we've got is a culture where, you know, okay, admittedly, probably most strongly 40 years ago before the law was changed, in order to protect people from drunken, drunken violent rampaging mobs that, oh, yes, that's why it's changed from 40 years ago. It's changed from 40 years ago. 'cause they cracked down on this, you know, they moved away from, from open plan standing stadiums. They moved away from, they had ticket sales. They restricted alcohol sales. There was a big push on policing. They did lots of things in order to control drunken rampaging mobs. And strangely enough, because they did all of those things to control the scourge of drunken rampaging mobs on mobs on our street, we don't have so many. So now

Hilary Jeffs are other drunken rampaging mobs available in the country

Peter Kinderman you look at the success of these policies, you go, you go, look, Hilary, over the past 40 years, we've done really good work on controlling the scourge of football hooliganism. That's really brilliant work. Let's undo all those policies. I, that would be my view. The other point about this, which is why it's an interesting thing to include this week, is I really like Andy Burnham. I don't think this is a good idea.

Hilary Jeffs Well, I'm all for there being a bit more research and for things trying to be different going forward because I do think football fans have changed. I think the whole atmosphere has changed. I think there's more

Peter Kinderman course they've changed. They've changed because we've restricted alcohol sales and we've got rid of standing stadiums. And because we've got rigorous policing policies that actually work, they've changed because we've done things in order to affect their behaviour. Those things should probably not be reversed 'cause big Wow. Their behaviour will probably reverse

Hilary Jeffs What

Peter Kinderman then I'll get beaten up again.

Hilary Jeffs What I'm really interested in is some eagle eyed or sharp eared people to be able to listen through to our discussion today and see if there is a clearly not really moment going on. 'cause I suspect there's been a little bit of hyperbole and if I don't get you wearing your clearly not

Peter Kinderman I.

Hilary Jeffs Soon, I, you know, I'm gonna have to eat my own.

Peter Kinderman I will, I will certainly accept that I, that I'm guilty of rampant hyperbole and,

Hilary Jeffs Good. Call him out. We want to be

Peter Kinderman I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna wear the t-shirt though. Just not gonna wear the

Hilary Jeffs You can just purely from an ecological point of view, it is incumbent on you to wear the T-shirt at least once because otherwise it's a waste of the world's resources.

Peter Kinderman Okay, fair enough. All.

Hilary Jeffs We'll get a minute soon. You wait and see if it's the last thing I do. We are gonna get that man inside. The clearly not really t-shirt. We like to be factually accurate. Get in touch if we have been slightly unfactual in the course of our discussions today. Before we go, obviously with my role now is spending of spreading kindness and joy and positivity across the internet because I'm gonna be channelling Feroz Khan now for the rest of my days. Peter, could you share some advice for the world today please?

Peter Kinderman Well, the advice from the world, I thought it was quite an interesting thing. The online interaction, the scripted interaction. I thought it was quite fun. And I'm quite, I actually

Hilary Jeffs We don't know. It was scripted. It looks unscripted.

Peter Kinderman It looks a bit kind of post. But yeah, I think Ed Miliband's advice, which he probably thought about a bit, I really like do what you believe to be right, I think is really good advice.

Hilary Jeffs Okay. It is really good advice if like you are clearly having is a bit of the halo effect about other people and the advice that they would give to themselves. People don't give themselves good advice. We've just had that Tommo guy slashing a boat with a French aid worker on. I mean,

Peter Kinderman allegedly. Incidentally,

Hilary Jeffs that's true. AI does mean that any video evidence can be faked. You are right. It is going to court. So yes,

Peter Kinderman possibly, although I, so I'm not gonna comment on that apart from, I did notice with great glee that a lot of people have set up websites that purport to be support, whatever his name is, Tommo anyway, and then take you to the RNLI where you can donate to, and one of them, which was brilliant, was, that they've got nearly all the way towards 500,000 pounds for a new lifeboat called the Flying Farage, which I think would be just absolutely

Hilary Jeffs I don't wanna give that man any name recognition. But again, another example of why people who do things that are they think are right, are not necessarily right. We are outta the EU right now, aren't we?

Peter Kinderman Sure, sure, sure, sure. But it's still good advice. So, you know, if you believe that it's a wise idea to support right-wing parties, then then Ed Miliband's advice will be taken as I will support right-wing politics. But I think the idea of you should do what you believe to be right is actually really good advice. When I was working as a therapist, or indeed, now when I work as a therapist, people sometimes ask me advice and I genuinely, this is honest. I often used to reply, I think what you should do what you believe to be right. And then I followed it up with so,

Hilary Jeffs You know, we have overcrowded prisons. Right?

Peter Kinderman Sure. But.

Hilary Jeffs Me that not one of those people thought that they were doing, they must, some of them must have thought they were doing it for the right reasons or something.

Peter Kinderman Course. And they, and they were wrong. And then, then we,

Hilary Jeffs mostly they were thinking, they knew that they weren't doing the

Peter Kinderman Yeah, most. I think that's right. Mostly they thought, and, you know, if they thought that they were doing the right thing, but they weren't, then society takes sanctions against them. That's to be expected. But no, when people go, you know, what should I do? I didn't want to say, you should divorce your wife, or You should take that job. Or you should return the CD to the shop that you stole it from. I don't, didn't want to give any advice to people at all. It wasn't my job to give advice. So I would genuinely, legitimately say, I think you should do what you believe to be right. But I caveated it with the advice that I've said to you over previous weeks, which is all we can ever do is take the situation that we find ourselves in, appraise it as best we can, evaluate as many of the parameters that make sense to us, evaluate which possible courses of action fit best with our principles, and then do them. Now. Ed Miliband didn't say it in that kind of a little bit highfalutin way. He said, do what you believe to be right. You know, act now, act wisely, but act. So, I think the, I think his advice is actually genuinely very good advice. I would, like I said, and I suspect I've never met Ed Miliband, but I suspect if we had a conversation, he'd probably agree with the caveat of think carefully before you do. Do what you believe to be right. Consider all the parameters in weighing up what you believe to be right. And think about the ethical principles, like is it right for you, but would it harm other people? And then when you've considered all of those, then do what you believe to be.

Hilary Jeffs Now I'm just trying to work out if your approach of not giving advice or telling people what to do is the psychologist version of that doctor phrase, what would you like me to do for you today?

Peter Kinderman Is a little bit. Yeah.

Hilary Jeffs No, because I'm like, you're the doctor. Come on now.

Peter Kinderman Well, I'm not, I'm gonna give you a, I'm gonna give you a tip to try, which is, which is, I should reserve for another time. What you can do is you can set up a binary choice, right, with, especially with a [unclear]. So it's, I've got a 10p piece in my hand and I go Right heads, tails, and you go, heads is divorce, tails is stay in the marriage. I go, right, that's it. So heads divorce, 'cause heads head off. So we are clear heads is divorce, right? And then I tossed the coin and I go like that. And I go, which do you want it to be? And at that moment, you know which one you want it to be.

Hilary Jeffs You know you're not wrong. It is what I have to do with my children all the time when they're not making up their mind. I'm like, well, are you gonna do this soon enough? They'll tell me whether that's what they really want to do or not. Anyway, there you go. You solved all your problems. It is a coin flip

Peter Kinderman Two. Two

Hilary Jeffs whether to get divorced or not or any other big issue. If you really wanna know how you feel, toss that coin.

Peter Kinderman Yeah, no, no. So my bit, my tips of advice are obviously contradictory. 'cause I said one, do what you believe to be right after a careful and scientific analysis of the facts. Second, toss a coin. They can't both be right. So, you know,

Hilary Jeffs I am trying to trap you into that t-shirt wearing

Peter Kinderman third tip, take tips with a pinch of salt.

Hilary Jeffs As always, never yours though, Peter. We like your advice. Thank you very much. That is enough for this week. If you would like to join us next week, then find out when our next episode is coming out by subscribing on your podcast platform. All the details are in the show notes for any help that you might need, following on some of the discussions we've had today. Or if you want to find out whether you too, have aphantasia. The Experience Podcast is hosted by Hilary Jeffs and Peter Kinderman, produced by James Jones at Granary Digital. You can find us on social media and you can get in touch by email at hello@experiencepodco.com with any questions or comments or topics you'd like us to cover. And don't forget to leave us a review.