Who Runs Towards Danger?

Hilary Jeffs We talked a lot recently about the bystander effect, but what on earth is it inside someone who disregards their own safety to go in and do what they think is necessary? Hello, and welcome to Experience, the weekly podcast where we get to psychoanalyse the news. I'm Hilary Jeffs, and each week I'm joined by the wonderful Professor Peter Kinderman as we run up through the headlines and give you a rundown about why people behave the way they do. So if you're obsessed with the news and you also are really quite fascinated why your next-door neighbor does what they do, this is definitely the podcast for you. Coming up, we're gonna be having also the concept of the week and the triple T. What do you reckon? Shall we, before we do the concept of the week, Peter, why don't you just tell me how the clock change went in your household this week?

Peter Kinderman It, well, partly it's seamless these days because everything's kind of Wi-Fi, and so you don't have to change anything. You just wake up in the morning bleary-eyed, you look at whatever device it is that you look at, and the things have changed. That's just... It's, it's kind of easy. There's nobody missing trains or turning up at the wrong time, any of that nonsense that I remember from when I was younger and having to go around the house changing... Everything changes. So, you know, better life through technology. That's quite

Hilary Jeffs You have got a more connected household than me. I'm obviously still a Luddite. I was actually away for the night with a friend and had drunk a bit too much red wine, I think we can safely say. And I was relying on her the next morning, 'cause we were in a hotel room about what times w- was going on, and she was using her watch. Not a phone, no. So of course, you're quite right. None of us expect that. And then we get in my car, which still tells me it is the wrong time. And it wasn't until about three hours later that I realised I had missed the opportunity for a wonderful lie-in, which with the hangover, would have actually stood me in good stead

Peter Kinderman Well, yeah, see now you've drawn that to my attention. Yeah, I've got a car that's connected to the internet. Yeah, you're right. I didn't change the time on it. The only thing that happened is that I've got some lights in the garden which were on one of those slightly old-fashioned clock timers where you plug it in and turn it to a clock. And for a few days I've been thinking, hasn't been coming on at the right time of an evening. But I didn't even need to change that because the clock change worked exactly for it, so it's now coming on at the right time in the evening just because of the way that we orbit round the sun. It's great

Hilary Jeffs Right. Well, there you go. I'm glad that you're perfectly sorted for that, yeah. But I'm surprised at how recent in history it has been since we had unified time across the country. People were, were... Yeah, it was the railways that brought that in, which is kind of amazing. And the Br- whole British Summer Time thing, I was an adult before I realised that it changed at British Summer Time. You would think that the name British Summer Time and GMT would have given me a clue, 'cause everyone complains about GMT. But we have had times in our history where we did go to double BST, and we had BST at GMT time in the winter

Peter Kinderman We did. We also had times in our history where they reformed the calendars, as in the months of the year, and there were riots when we lost 16 days, 'cause people actually thought they were losing 16 days of their lives. And yeah, it was all quite, it was all quite tricky. It's because, you know, it's because rotating around the sun isn't exactly aligned with, you know, mechanical devices, so things slip. That's just the way it is

Hilary Jeffs If people don't like it's Germany's fault anyway, 'cause they introduced it during World War I, and we couldn't bear for them to be out-producing us. So that's when we switched over to BST. Yeah, apparently before that there'd been a guy, William Willett, who'd been lobbying the government since the early 1900s to do it. He wrote an angry self-published pamphlet called The Waste of Daylight.

Peter Kinderman N- yeah. Th- these people are just, on a tangent, these people are brilliant. There's the Rational English Society in there. The, because we should reverse William de, de Worde, Wynkyn de Worde, and, Chaucer and so forth, and return to proper spelling like what is W-O-T, and, who is H-O-O, and th- they're br- they're brilliant. Absolutely eccentric.

Hilary Jeffs And actually they're loving right now because let's face it, I don't think kids even use any vowels anymore. I get whole text messages that are, whole texts that are just letters, streams of them. Yeah

Peter Kinderman Well, yeah, I think it's yeah, it's amusing to see people of my age fulminating about the fact that everything changes and you think, well, you know, you could, you could read a little bit of literature to realise that change is inevitable. Just go with it.

Hilary Jeffs Ever thus. Okay, so our concept of the week, Peter, what have you got for us today?

Peter Kinderman Yeah. Well, it's a sort of a big and generic one, but it's kind of important. A little bit controversial for some people. It's social comparison theory. So back in the '60s, this guy called Festinger was saying that, you know, what we do is we compare ourselves to other people. So the things that matter to us are at least in part judged by social comparison. So, you know, we want the genes that are either the same as or sort of the same as, but better than our neighbors, and we want a house that's shinier than our neighbors. And we look at the car, and we look at their lifestyle, and we compare ourselves to them, and it generally-- Well, I mean, it motivates us, but also it leads to all sorts of problems. So people get either, I suppose smug and unbearable to live with or resentful and bitter. And also people chase the wrong things because if you're aiming to keep up with the Joneses, blah, blah, blah. So social comparison theory,

Hilary Jeffs But

Peter Kinderman it's what we do, but it's a bit of a nightmare

Hilary Jeffs They've, haven't they proved that if you are in the biggest house on your street, you are happier than if you move to the next street along that's a bit more chichi, but you've got the smallest house in the street

Peter Kinderman Yeah. So yeah, so there's quite a lot of evidence in favor of social comparison theory. I think the-- some of the cleverer psychologists are thinking that, there's slightly different ways to look at it, such as, you know, what are your reference points? What are you taking as your reference points rather than are you comparing with other people? Which is a slightly different take on it. So we're all doing the same thing, which is we're, we're working towards our goals, but the question is: where are you getting your goals from?

Hilary Jeffs Mm-hmm. Yeah. I mean, we all like to win a race, but you've just got to enter in the races that you actually want to win rather than just try and win

Peter Kinderman yeah. Oh, well, I mean, this should have been tip of the week, but only have topics of conversation about things you know about, and generally avoid having topics of conversation about things you don't know about, and then everybody thinks you're a genius. I

Hilary Jeffs Yeah, just be quiet instead of opening your mouth and proving... Wasn't there a Winston Churchill quote about opening your mouth and proving that you're an idiot? Something like

Peter Kinderman the one. Yeah, yeah, be- yeah, better to, et cetera. There's, there's an interesting thing to, about the sort of m- moving to the street along where you haven't got the biggest house. So there's been quite a lot of games that psychologists have done where, you know, you play some game and you get £10, but you might get £10 and your opponent gets £5, or you get £10 and your opponent gets £20, and people routinely choose, "I'll have the £10 and £5 please," rather than £10 and £20, because I don't want them to do better than me. And you think, "Well, that's a bit crazy really,"

Hilary Jeffs It is really crazy. We should try and get away from that kind of ideas. And I don't know how you do it. I don't know if it's something you can teach. Can you

Peter Kinderman maybe we could call it psych hacking. 'Cause you know the biohacking thing, which is we can move beyond our bodies, maybe we could move beyond our lizard brains. That's the thing. There was a guy called, Chris Peters, who I think rather, rather, rather cheekily, being as what he was, a psychiatrist kind of was stealing the sort of CBT ideas and talking about our chimp brain and sort of u- using, using being a bit more rational to kind of move above behaving like a chimpanzee and suffering as a, as a consequence. Maybe we could do the whole psych hacking thing, and we could just move beyond the psychological consequences of evolution into a, into a higher consciousness

Hilary Jeffs I think Triple T, Tips to Try, has certainly turned into psyche hacking. I think that is definitely getting, hitting the zeitgeist of the day

Peter Kinderman we need to, we need to trademark that word immediately.

Hilary Jeffs Okay, I'm getting onto the web domain. We're fine. Right, if we move on to our first headline. It's a couple of weeks ago just under, since the child really, 16-year-old, went on a rampage in a school. And unfortunately three children and a teacher and another child and another teacher, so three children and a teacher died, and then another child and another teacher was actually injured. And I do not want to be sort of dwelling so much on that, although we will cover off the shooter, but that will become clear in a, in a, in a bit. But actually, we also last week, not only did the kids go back to school, which has its own difficulties in itself, but the guy who shot the perpetrator dead gave an interview. And in that interview he said that he phoned his mum and said, "I think I've just shot a child." It's so tragic, isn't it? We talked a lot recently about the bystander effect, but what on earth is it inside someone who disregards their own safety to go in and do what they think is necessary?

Peter Kinderman Whoa, that's a big question. Yeah. So, I mean, that touches a little bit on sort of selfishness and altruism again, and I think that there's... You know, I've said before that I'm personally of the opinion that the cooperation and competition are part of how we're built, and that balance between the two is important. And there are people who, for instance, if there's a major conflict that's drawing on, you know, the ethical challenges would invent bone spurs and get themselves out of the draft for Vietnam, and there are people who, who run towards danger. And we say that about police officers all the time, and, I think there's a truth to it. I mean, I-- One of the... So when I contemplate the big questions in life, one of the things that I personally do is think about the sort of physical parameters. And we were talking just a second ago about change is inevitable, so you just got to accept the fact that change is inevitable. And I think we have to accept that human beings are social animals. We're, we live in groups. We live in family groups. We need grandmothers to look after children. We have to cooperate in, just in order to get the nutrients we need, we have to cooperate with our neighbors in order to get the food source. So cooperation is inbuilt into us. It's not, it's not selflessness or altruism that drives that sort of behavior, it's the fact that we're social animals and yeah, we should welcome it. So fathers and mothers step in to rescue children that aren't their own children because we're social animals, and great, I think that's good. Of course, there are conflicts because, you know, for one thing you don't want to put yourself in danger, and obviously killing a child is a, is a dreadful thing, and police officers experience that too when they're, they're involved in armed incidents as well. So yeah, I think it's this spirit of not just of altruism and cooperation, I think it just reflects the fact that we're social animals, and we have to act that way in order for the species to have survived.

Hilary Jeffs He also spoke a bit about the survivor's guilt, about the kids and the teacher who he couldn't save. How common is survivor's guilt, and how do we get beyond it?

Peter Kinderman Yeah, I mean, I've spoken to veterans of wars who've, who've experienced that. And also anger as well. The, I mean, just furious anger that al-although they've done their best, they haven't done enough to rescue everybody, and so forth. Survivor's guilt is often talked about. It's clearly a phenomenon. Yes, I think that's right. And comparing yourself and thinking, "What is it that I did? Why has this happened? What does it mean about me that I'm in this position?" yeah. I mean, in a, in a very... I don't want this to be in any way a comparison to shooters, but some of my friends who've had quite fortunate lives sometimes say, " What have I done to be so lucky here? You know, I'm-- I've got a lovely husband, and I've got lovely children, and all my children seem to be safe, and all of them are working, and they've all got through university without traumas. What have I done to be so lucky?" so I think that question of, you know, "Why has this happened to me?" it, yeah, I think is a very common question, and yes, it does lead some people to survivor guilt. My personal view is that, well, again, you just have to take the situation that you find yourself in. So if it is the case that, you know, the terrorist, the mass shooter kills three people and not you, that's the position that you found yourself in, and then you have to take that fact and live with it.

Hilary Jeffs Yeah, I've heard people say, "Do you think the squirrel who's just been, you know, quick enough to get across the road and not get under your wheel of your car is thinking, 'Ooh, wow. Oh, I must be really worried about that for the rest of my life.'" That, no, they're not thinking about it. They're going, "Woo-hoo, I'm alive." But luckily we, our brains are slightly more complex than a squirrel. Well, some of us are anyway. Yeah, absolutely. We're still quite chimp-like. The reason why I'm slightly conflicted about talking about the perpetrator is I remember how powerful it was when Jacinda Ardern, the former pr- Prime Minister of New Zealand, refused to say the name of the perpetrator of the Christchurch mosque killings because she didn't want the emphasis to be on that person. She wanted the emphasis to be on those who had died, and any survivors as well, which is really powerful. And certainly when you look at the drivers behind these kinds of attacks, one of them is notoriety, or one of them can be to fill a void, and therefore by giving weight, giving attention, it's a bit like that Trump thing, you know, giving attention to bad behavior actually perhaps sends out the wrong message that this is a way to achieve something, even if it's such an awful thing

Peter Kinderman Yeah. I mean, it's, it's so often talked about and people, you know, especially the Americanized mass shooter type idea, the idea of, you know, leaving behind a manifesto, sometimes now video manifestos. I mean, that does speak to the idea that at least some people think that notoriety and, you know, have- having a, having a life that has made an impact on the world is something to be aspire towards, and even if you achieve it in evil ways, then that's something to be, to be achieved. Yes, I think that that's true. And you know, the reason why I talked about social comparison theory is that this idea of bitterness and revenge and, you know, some of those psychological issues, you know, they do crop up. But I think that there's, you know... So I used to work with people who worked in public health, and so they were talking about the drivers of people's behavior, people's health, people's wellbeing, and it's the fundamental things that matter. So in all societies, there are disaffected youths. In all societies, there are people who've been abused. In all societies, there are people who've been abused by their teachers. The... In all societies, there are people who sit in the classroom and think, "Everybody in this classroom deserves to die." What's important is that in some cultures, they have ready access to automatic weapons.

Hilary Jeffs Uhm

Peter Kinderman So the idea that this behavior is driven by revenge or driven by a need for notoriety or the a desire for social comparison so they become the big person in the room, that they dominate others, all of that's true, but kind of irrelevant. It's easy access to automatic weapons.

Hilary Jeffs And

Peter Kinderman that's the variable that makes the difference

Hilary Jeffs in America it's, it's o- often just an ordinary handgun that is the weapon that they're using. And of course it does mean that they end up having very often suicide by cop or

Peter Kinderman Yeah. And so that's

Hilary Jeffs so it's over and they don't have to face the consequences

Peter Kinderman So y- when you, when you look at a situation like the most recent shooting and you think, well, you know, for the people involved in that shooting, I think it seems to be at least arguable that it's a good thing that the passerby with the gun was there to put an end to the shooting.

Hilary Jeffs Up

Peter Kinderman But if the message that's taken is what we need in order to address this crisis, and it is a crisis in American culture. It, the, I mean, it's, it... There's huge numbers of people who die in basically armed conflict within America. It's a massive cause of death. How, how... You know, so if you're sitting there thinking, "How do we address this issue?" And you say, "Well, in that particular shooting, the issue was resolved by having armed civilians close to the incident, therefore we need more armed civilians dotted around America," then that clearly flies in the face of science. Yeah, because the science says it's access to weapons that it seems to be Well, no, I mean, without doubt is the variable that means that children die. If you want more, more children to die, have more access to guns. So it sends the wrong, the wrong message. I mean, I'm glad... I think, I don't know. I don't know the details of it, so I need to be a little bit reserved, but it seems to me that if I was in his situation, I would hope that I would do what he did because it's a terrible

Hilary Jeffs of those conflicts. But you're right,

Peter Kinderman But I, but fewer, fewer guns, fewer guns is a good thing

Hilary Jeffs Yeah, and the NRA's history actually, 'cause I was thinking about how they would be looking at this and just saying how, you know, how important it was that that citizen had that concealed weapon, license to do it, and look at the outcome. I mean, it's worth bearing in mind the police actually were on the scene within a minute of that guy getting there. Now, a lot can happen in a minute. Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that, you know, he was wrong in what he did, to be honest with you. However, the NRA started its history as actually being a proponent for change insofar as to actually get gun control in. And it was only after the rise of what they felt to be sort of, you know, Black Panther armed conflict in

Peter Kinderman There's a surprise, innit?

Hilary Jeffs That all of a sudden they were really gunning for there to be less gun control and were against the gun control laws that were brought in in the late '60s. So it's had a complete volte-face about what it's, it is all about, you know what I mean? In terms of its raison d'être. It used to be to have responsible, sensible gun ownership, and now it's like, "Have guns. Buy guns."

Peter Kinderman I mean, again, scientifically, it's, it's crazy. So, you know, there is a single dominant variable that seems to influence, well, doesn't seem, massively influences the outcome, but we move away from that variable. So, you know, gun ownership is the variable, and you move away from it. The other thing is you go, well, you know, could... And I'm not, I'm not criticizing you for asking the question. I think it leads, in my mind, to an in-interesting debate. But yeah, things like, you know, revenge or abuse or social comparison or a need for notoriety or the rise of the internet and, you know, putting your manifesto out there, things that couldn't happen before Jacinda Ardern and keeping publicity low. Yeah, absolutely. But it, but to coin our phrase again, you know, that would be psych hacking. You know, it's very, very, very, very difficult to get a comfortably off middle-class person with a decent job to stop being depressed. You know, to say what, right, because of this, our analysis is there's lots of disaffected youths in America. In fact, there are lots of disaffected youths around the world. Let's, let's psych hack all of them to make them ideal model citizens. It's not gonna work. But you could ban guns

Hilary Jeffs Mm-hmm. Well, and that would be a very effective case because America by far outstrips any other of the sort of the, how would you like to put it, the First World countries that have got, you know, sort of established law and order. They far outstrip anyone else, and it is because of their access to guns. There was an interesting report out, I think it was penned by Columbia University, which was looking at the reasons behind these mass shooting events. And yes, young men are by far the biggest perpetrators for school-based shootings, but across the board it's, it's usually middle-aged men. And they were saying that it wasn't down predominantly to mental- serious mental health disorders. So they thought that it was about a quarter was down to serious mental health disorders, a quarter down to substance abuse, abuse, and then the rest of it was kind of those things you said, you know, the disaffected youth, those people who are feeling empty and have something to prove. But to my mind, and I'm really pleased that because I think it's important to not stigmatize people who have poor mental health because of course you have poor mental health doesn't mean you're gonna go and shoot anyone. But if they're talking about how these people don't have red flags, there isn't an easy way of being able to spot them. I thought, aren't they looking in the wrong places? I mean, we know that our society at the moment is built on very much inequality. You know, we're not helping society build a society where there aren't gonna be people who experience red flags. Surely if we just looked harder or smarter, we would find those red flags for people who might go on to perpetrate these awful crimes.

Peter Kinderman Well, well, yes, yes, in lots of ways. So first of all, what are the red flags? Well, the red flags at a population level is do you live in a country which has easy access to automatic weapons? Right? That's a red flag. Then, you know, the second red flag is are you, are you of the male gender? That's another red flag. So, you know, we do have red flags, it's just they're not red flags that people like to look at. What they tend to do... Well, I've had this conversation. I once had this conversation in a bar in Denver, Colorado, and the bloke actually showed me his gun because I think he was losing the argument, to be perfectly honest. He was a bit annoyed at it, and I skedaddled extremely quickly. But y- you know, you... What you do is you raise these red flags, and then you say, "These are red flags." They go, "No, not those red flags. I want to look at the other ones." Then comes the issue of... And I read the Columbia paper, and, I think again, it's asking the wrong question with respect. Which, which is there are some human experiences which in my professional and academic opinion wrongly, people since about 100 years ago or so, have decided to classify as medical diseases. And then they ask, of those subset of human experiences which we have decided to call medical diseases, are those experiences related to the phenomenon that we're talking about? And the answer is probably not very. Well, no, because you're going about classifying human experiences as in a completely bizarre way. So I think the whole, is this a medical illness? Well, hang on, I don't think any of them are medical illnesses, and so what if they were? Let's talk about why somebody is feeling motivated to murder other people. They're, they're different sorts of concepts, so I just don't think that's the right way, way to look. I think that yeah, we should look at what's happening in our society to make people so disaffected. I mean, there have been murders like this for a long time. We need to,... And I can't answer these questions, and I certainly can't answer these questions today, but questions like, you know, are we, are we seeing a rise in this sort of violence as society becomes more alienated and individualistic? And is that indeed happening? So, you know, are we less connected to our neighbors than we used to be? The bowling alone idea. And we could ask those sorts of questions, and I think that's where we should be looking. I think we should also be thinking about these things in a slightly more group, society, community-based questions, which is, you know, if there is going to be an act of that sort of violence, it is probably going to be made by, again, I'll emphasise the point, a man with access to weapons who feels particularly alienated and aggrieved. So are we looking out for people who feel alienated and aggrieved, and what are we doing to draw them in?

Hilary Jeffs This whole thing about male perpetrators and how by far and away it is more men that behave like this, and there's this whole debate about, you know, should women ever go to prison because usually they're doing things at the behest of a man. You know, as a mother of boys, I do understand where there is a real problem, because we do not talk about the problems that men have in society. They're much more likely to get beaten up and assaulted aren't they? They're, they're much more likely to have those sorts of experiences. And now we know more about the fact that they are, I think, equally vulnerable, if not more so, than girls are growing up to sort of sexual abuse. Why, what can we do to help men? Is it sort of that testosterone? Is it inbuilt in men to be more violent, or is this actually a collection of experiences? When you look at 80% of young men in, like, who are locked up in those borstals as were they've got head injuries, you know, serious head injuries. Often they've got experience of concussion. What, how do we unpick all that, and how do we help

Peter Kinderman Okay. So that, I mean, that, I mean that's, that's a very big question and in part I'm gonna be a little bit kind of like professionalist here, which is, so the profession that I come from, clinical psychology or more generally applied psychology, the way that we do this is to say, again, the science of this differs slightly in terms of the general picture and then the individual. So we know of many of the variables that impact on people, and if you have had repeated head injuries, then scientifically that will raise the likelihood that there's some minimal brain damage. You'd have to look at the nature of the inju- injuries, and you'd maybe do CT scans on the brain. And if you've got minimal brain damage, we know that that's associated, for instance, with impulsivity anger control. So that would be a variable that you would put into your hypothesis, 'cause we're scientist practitioners, when you're formulating. So why did that man commit that violent act? Well, it's not we know that head injuries cause violence. It's we know that head injuries can increase people's impulsivity. Is that something to fit, fit into that mix? The problem is, it's, well, it's not a problem, it's just a fact of science, is you have to do that individually. Again, I think I mentioned to you a while ago about INUS, you know, insufficient and unnecessary. So why did that fire start? Because a bloke threw a Molotov cocktail through the window. That's what causes fires. No. In- inappropriately wired electrical plugs cause fires. Well, which is it then? Are you saying it's Molotov cocktails, or are you saying it's inappropriately wired electrical equipment? The answer is, we know some of the causes of fires. So I think there are lots and lots of reasons why people end up in jail for violence, and I think part of it is in our culture interpersonal violence is something that's expected of men more in the various meanings of the word more. So more than, more than girls, more than not, et cetera, et cetera. And again, evolutionary psychologists who are usually people who make up just so stories, but they've talked about this in terms of, you know, if men are physically more powerful than their female companion, are they more likely to be the aggressive one? Are they likely then to be the one sent downstairs if there's a strange noise in the night, night and X, Y, and Z? So I think there are lots of pressures pushing boys towards that sort of physical expression of violence, yes.

Hilary Jeffs It'd be interesting to look at sort of the violence rate amongst males in the matriarch societies. There aren't many of them, but there are some, and I don't know how they compare, but that

Peter Kinderman be a very interesting

Hilary Jeffs Yeah, absolutely. And last, before we move on the whole revenge thing, because it seems to me that it's very unlikely the perpetrator got revenge on directly the people that whatever was causing his things. So it's sort of misplaced revenge. D- what happens there? Do people just get beyond being able to rationalize it and they're just angry with everyone?

Peter Kinderman I think people... The stor- the... I'm slightly speculating, I don't know the sort of sociological science on this, but the stories that I hear are consistent with the idea that what we do, and it's probably, again, it's, it's inevitable we need to talk at some point about, about heuristics, about simple-minded s- simple approaches. Yeah, so, you know, all conservative voters are dot, dot, dot. All, all,

Hilary Jeffs I don't like that

Peter Kinderman all leaders of organized religious groups are dot, dot, dot. Yeah, all women are, all men are, all boys are, all adolescent boys are, all those other sorts of questions. So I think there's an element of grouping together and, you know, if you've been, if you feel yourself to have been victimized by the entire class, then all kids are terrible, and that could, you know, lead to the whole society is broken, everybody is worthless, and I think that's the direction that people go. When people become depressed, and I'm, I'm aware of the Columbia University issue and the mental illness issue and blah, blah, blah, but when people become depressed, one of the things that can happen to us when we get very depressed is a sense of global nihilism. There's no point in anything. Nothing is good. Nobody likes me. Everything is terrible. And it, I think it's pretty easy to imagine that happening about, you know, are any of these people decent? No, they're all terrible people. They're all abusive. They all care only about themselves, leading on to they all, they all deserve to

Hilary Jeffs yeah, not, not true at all. Okay. Well, thank you for that, Peter. That's raised some really interesting concepts and some really interesting thoughts around human behavior. Moving forward onto headline two. Bryan Johnson, he is a former tech billionaire. He is constantly in the news for biohacking, trying to live forever. That's what he wants to do. But I laughed out loud at the first line of the interview that's just happened with him in The Telegraph. And it goes, "He wants to live forever, but he isn't entirely sure why." I mean, it raises an important point, doesn't it? He's adding years to his life, but not meaning, and surely that is something that perhaps in the past isn't the case, is it? People were often adding meaning because they couldn't add years

Peter Kinderman Yeah. In fact I was having a conversation yesterday about, it was a friend of mine, and we were just talking about inappropriate clothing that we might, might want to buy. And we were looking at websites where, to be perfectly honest, the stuff we were looking at was basically, 20-something gay fetish wear. And we go, "Ooh, yeah, I like that shirt. Ooh, that's very good. Could I get away with it? Probably not."

Hilary Jeffs Absolutely could. We wanna see it

Peter Kinderman No, no, no. No, no, we're not gonna go down that route." I mean, lovely, but no. Anyway, and then we was talking, yeah, he goes, "I really, really wanted to get a memento mori ring." You know, so med- medieval kind of we're always in the presence of death. And I've, I've strongly attracted to that. I like, I like the idea of, you know, live every day as if it's your last. You know, the way to have no regrets is to do exactly what you think you should be doing at any moment, and then, you know. The only problem with that is I don't wanna leave the party too early. That's, that's great. So yeah, I absolutely think that this idea of yeah, being aware of our mortality is a good thing. And I like the idea that if, as in sort of earlier times, if you are aware of your imminent death, then you... It might motivate you to lead therefore a better life. I think that's a good philosophical stance. The Boris Johnson thing I f- I find fascinating because it also, again, I don't wanna be too solipsistic about it, but it also reflects conversations I've had about d- would you wanna be a vampire? And me being a little bit kind of veering towards to...

Hilary Jeffs But no

Peter Kinderman Yeah, well, exactly. So then, then, then there's all that about murdering people and then, then my favorite joke in the world, which I am not gonna repeat, but anyway, moving about, about why do vampires attack virgins. Anyway,

Hilary Jeffs Don't get AI to finish that because you know it will be terrible

Peter Kinderman very, very terrible, and it comes from a TV program I think called "What We Do in the Shadows" about vampires living in Australia. Anyway, so the question is, do you wanna be a vampire? And then the question is, okay, so you don't age, but does your brain age? S- and for Bryan Johnson, the-- we generate most of our body parts, so literally most of our body parts i- in our physical body get regenerated, but not our nervous system. My understanding of the medicine behind it is our nervous system is one of the least regenerative parts of our body. When you lose a brain cell, you've lost it. It does not grow back, whereas skin cells do, at least a bit more. So it strikes me that if he were right, Bryan Johnson, then the most likely scenario was that he would preferentially keep his non-brain body alive, but effectively the preferential damage would be to his brain and, you

Hilary Jeffs they're thinking

Peter Kinderman brain is one of my favorite organs,

Hilary Jeffs Absolutely, mine too. But they are thinking that that brain's gonna be able to be downloaded, and I'm sure that's what they're thinking, is that they will be able to sort of give a computer all of their previous decisions almost, all of their memories, all of their life, and then it will recreate that. But it reminded me, because there is a, is it pronounced Tithonus? It's basically it was a myth and a legend where Eros, the lover of Tithonus, asked Zeus, I think it was, to get Tithonus to live forever, but then forgot to ask for eternal youth. So of course, this

Peter Kinderman continually aging

Hilary Jeffs yeah, continually aging on and on and on. And there were lots and lots of legends at that time to sort of guard against people trying to live for too long. And of course, there was perhaps more meaning put about what you will need to do in this life for preparation for the following life. And of course, you know, it used to be, and to still, we have Trump trying to do it as well. People try and live on through statues or through good

Peter Kinderman Yeah, that never

Hilary Jeffs able to remembered in words. But yeah, to live

Peter Kinderman Yeah, I

Hilary Jeffs taking it to a new level

Peter Kinderman No, I like looking at statues of people. You know, good statue, have a look at it. You, "Ooh, that's an interesting statue." But I like statues 'cause I'm alive. I mean, but I'm dead, I won't enjoy being a statue 'cause I'll be dead. That always strikes me

Hilary Jeffs We're not stuffing you and putting you on a plinth, Peter

Peter Kinderman the other thing is, you know, okay, I g- kind of like, I, yeah, I get the idea of downloading your brain, and I suppose the idea of would I... If I, if I were a vampire and I were to live on this planet for another 800 million years, is this planet ex- sufficiently exciting, and will it be sufficiently exciting in the future, because it will change, to sustain my, you know, attention to stave off boredom for 800 million years? I think, yeah, probably it would. Yeah, if I was downloaded into a robot, I think that'd be

Hilary Jeffs quite a lot that I'd be able to do over that

Peter Kinderman But in eight, i- in 800 million years' time, the sun is going to envelop the Earth. Now, I suspect that Bryan Johnson and his colleagues are thinking not only about downloading their brains into a machine. Is that really me still? I'm not entirely convinced it's me. I think it might be something other than me at

Hilary Jeffs think we'll be having to give AI rights possibly before we die

Peter Kinderman And then that AI or some sort of computerized thing of me...

Hilary Jeffs To live wherever, won't it?

Peter Kinderman And then presumably the idea is that in 800 million ti- years' time, the train arrives, it pops on it, and it goes off to another planet, which is then terraformed in order to... And then I'm starting to

Hilary Jeffs But does it even need a planet if it's not

Peter Kinderman you know, it could just drift in space. Yeah. And then I'm thinking...

Hilary Jeffs Going on? You need interaction surely

Peter Kinderman But I'm-- It comes back to, what am I? And what I am is I'm the physical embodiment of a social animal that has a brain that can make meaning out of life. It's back to Albert Camus, and this is what I am. And by the time we've got onto what I am is a digitally rendered avatar of myself living in a disembodied state, traveling the universe i- in a way where I'm reliant on data and energy and the supply of raw materials in order to construct the substance that contains me, I'm not sure I'm me, in which case I have died.

Hilary Jeffs Yes. I understand

Peter Kinderman The other, the most important thing, however, is, you know... So money, I'd quite like some more money. Money's useful. Money's useful 'cause it's a means of exchange for things that are nice, like good quality coffee, right? So that's good. Would I like more money? Well, I'd like more money than less. That seems reasonable. Should I then invest in a pension or should I do the lottery? I think I'll choose a pension. Yeah, but the lottery is really exciting. Yeah, but I think I'll choose pension because it's more likely to achieve happiness. Is Bryan Johnson likely to achieve what he's aiming for? I think no. I mean, so no that I would rather bet on the lottery rather than my pension than Bryan Johnson's secret of eternal life. I think Bryan Johnson is almost certainly going to die, and he's almost certainly going to die within the normal human lifespan. So I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna buy his, his lottery. I mean yeah, I think he's also... You know, it's a great algorithm, which is, you know, especially 'cause you've got lots of money. Let's get, let's get some junior research assistants, go troll the internet, find reasonable evidence for reasonable bits of ad- advice that will extend your health and then follow them. Yeah, great. But it's not, it's not a guaranteed... That's an algorithm that if you apply it, you're probably gonna be quite healthy, probably. But it's not an algorithm that guarantees eternal life. It's an algorithm that guarantees you're probably going to be reasonably healthy

Hilary Jeffs I like that whole idea about, you know, the woman on a hillside in Greece, you know, who is living very happily surrounded by family eating food with other people doing the same rituals that she's done forever, enjoying having that lovely coffee or a glass of wine looking out across the hills. That seems to me a life full of quality as well as quantity. There was a, an article about a woman who's still driving in America, who's like 106 and isn't at all seemingly sort of too troubled by her older body. Now, that is a quality life. No one wants to be there if it just means they're miserable and in pain, and that's why I think lots of people don't want to live forever

Peter Kinderman Yeah. I mean, you hear about people who've done terrible crimes and then, they're hauled off and put in jail. And you think, "God." I mean, even with access to books, can I imagine spending the next 25 years of my life in a small cell? It'd just, just be horrible. I wanna be on the hillside. I wanna be... I wanna be scaring off the neighbor's goats. I wanna be... I mean, I'm not gonna go into details, but I want to do other things that require the physical embodiment of life,

Hilary Jeffs Can you please do some selfie videos of your scaring goats? That's what I want to see. What is your best goat-scaring face?

Peter Kinderman I- I'm just thinking being, being British. No, I don't wanna make v- I don't wanna make videos of anything about the conversation that we're talking about. But the point is, if you say to them, "Right, you have committed a terrible crime." "Oh, shit, I've got caught." Like, "What's the galactic superpower tribunal of justice gonna do to me?" What they're gonna do to you is they're gonna extract your consciousness and put it in a tin can, and then leave that tin can to drift around the universe for all eternity. You go, "That's a terrible punishment." And Bryan Johnson go, "Yeah, that's what I want." It's crazy

Hilary Jeffs Well, you know, who knows? We may not be alive long enough to be able to see the fruits of his labor. But

Peter Kinderman Hey, look, he's very rich. He'll probably outlive me, but you know, there you go

Hilary Jeffs Yeah, but I mean, what a life. What a life. Those extreme ages when they sort of measure out every grape that they have in the day, and they're stick thin, and you just think, "Really?"

Peter Kinderman Breaking Bad? Right. The guy in the wheelchair. Yeah, I don't want that life

Hilary Jeffs No. Well, indeed. Right. Third headline then, the last one for today, is about cash in the attic. 1.3, I think it was, 1.5 million pounds for a Pokémon card collection that was in someone's attic. Basically, he saw, this guy, this retired guy who reaped the rewards of this Pokémon card, saw an article where a particular card had sold for 6,000 pounds, and he thought, "Ooh, I've got that." Apparently, his son had collected them whilst he was at school, and so I think obviously trying to be a really good dad, efficiently bought lots of them for this kid to trade at school, and then some just got put in the attic. And I thought, well, that's quite nice, because obviously the kid still did have the joy of playing with it. But for my mind, those people who buy toys or buy things to keep them pristine and stick them in the attic in the hope that one thing of that is gonna be worth a fortune, that's like a lottery, isn't it?

Peter Kinderman Yeah. It's, it's just a lottery. And yeah, Pokémon cards, I mean, so I remember quite... Well, I went, went on holiday a few, few years ago and I bumped into this guy who was a millionaire, and he was talking about how successful he was. And his basic story was, "Me, like everybody else, bought a small business, and me, like everybody else, built that small business up, and then I sold it at exactly the right time, so I've got a few quid in the bank." And I'm thinking, "Well, absolutely, but you think that you're brilliant, but actually you're just lucky 'cause all of your neighbors thought the right thing to do was to hang on another year and they were incorrect." Well, they were incorrect. You were correct to sell, but it's just luck, you know? So we could collect Pokémon cards and we miss it because instead it's Tamagotchi, and then we collect Pokémon and Tamagotchi, and then it's not Pokémon and Tamagotchi, it's, it's oh, Cabbage Patch dolls. There's all of these things, and we miss them because we miss them. So I think it's just a lottery. What I would

Hilary Jeffs To be honest

Peter Kinderman it's a good idea not to throw away things that are kind of might, might be valuable later. Stick them on eBay

Hilary Jeffs don't tell me that sort of thing because I do like a big hoarding. But I have had a big push in my life to start trying to use things rather than them just sitting in a cupboard. Both my parents have died. You know, you have the house cleared out. I had a number of drawers that clearly needed filling and cupboards that need to be absolutely crammed full to the point where you open them and it all falls out. So I have, I've done the familial duty of taking on board that collection of crap from my family. And but now I've started using them, and I've realised that actually the joy of using that same cup that Dad is even better now we have eBay because if I do break said cup, I can go and get another one.

Peter Kinderman But it, I mean, it's, it's the same as the, Bryan Johnson thing, which is, yeah, great. What would I advise somebody to do if I, if they said, you know, there are many domains of your life. This is part of my work, you know, kind of thinking about on what domains do you assess your life? And one of them is, you know, because it's means of exchange and because we live in a community, so we exchange with our neighbors, money's a thing. So again, yeah, are you financially secure? It's kind of important that you're financial- financially secure in order to have genuine wellbeing in your life. So they go, "Yeah, Pete, you know, you're a genius, so will you..." 'Cause I am, obviously. Would... There's a T-shirt in that. Would-- how would you advise me to approach my finances? And you wouldn't say, "Buy random stuff in junk shops 'cause they might possibly be worth a fortune later." You'd say, "Take out a pension."

Hilary Jeffs Yeah, it's true.

Peter Kinderman Keep-- If you acquire stuff, keep it and it might be valuable later, but don't see that as your, your secret for happiness. I've got to tell you a story which probably doesn't show me in a, in a good light, but does illustrate... I went round to a friend's, it was about a week ago, and she had up on her wall what I thought was a very beautiful Modigliani painting. And it was obviously wait, I need, I need not to use the words original, ' cause that's the point of it. But it was obviously a- an object on which actual paint had been painted actually by a person in order to create the object that was hanging on her wall. And I thought, "That's a really, really beautiful painting." So I said, "Where did you get it?" And she goes, "Oh, I found it in a junk shop." And I thought, "I will just check." And so I looked at it very-- When she was in the kitchen, I looked at, underneath the table, and then I went to ChatGPT to... And it goes, "No, absolutely, definitely it's a modern reproduction. Don't even get your hopes up." And I thought, "Well, you know, at least I checked."

Hilary Jeffs Well, but of course there was a story of a guy who had a genuine grandmaster in his attic, and it sold for millions and millions because he'd always thought that it was just a fake and it actually wasn't. So you don't know. You need to tell your friend that maybe she should take it over to the local auctioneers and see what happens

Peter Kinderman Well, so if it had been remotely possible it was genuine, I would've said,

Hilary Jeffs You'd have been running out of there with it under your arm.

Peter Kinderman No, I wouldn't have done that. No, I would've told her exactly that. But I didn't tell her that on the grounds that it would be hugely embarrassing to do that, and I think the chance of it being a hidden masterpiece are so low that I don't even want to expose her to that embarrassment.

Hilary Jeffs Oh, no. You see, I'm, I would be Teflon coated about that embarrassment. I'd be quite happy. This whole Pokémon story, 'cause of course Pokémon has exploded, and part of it is apparently cultural scarcity. Because they were,... They have become a cultural phenomenon. They, and these pat- there was a particular card sold in the first part of this year, in February I think it was, that was sold by, is it Logan Paul? He had bought one for a few million quid, four million I think he'd, he'd bought this card for, and then sold it at auction in February to Anthony Scaramucci's son no less, from The Rest Is Politics USA, a bit of [unclear]. And he bought it. He's a hedge fund manager, obviously. Bought it for 12 million quid. And in fact, I think he might have even been longer. No, 12 million, 'cause I think the profit to Logan Paul was eight million. This is nuts money to me. But it's prompted AJ Scaramucci, Scaramucci's son, he's become basically a treasure hunter, and he wants to create this whole panoply of stuff that he wants to be able to have. And he set up a website called The Treasure Trove. So he wants a T. Rex fossil and a copy of the Declaration of Independence, but he's also started a podcast, like father, like son. And I had a little listen so that you don't have to, Peter. I took that one on the chin. It's called Treasure Hunters, the podcast, if you're interested. But he said on this, there's a little clip at the beginning where he said that is saying about the actual card, why he bought it, there was market demand.

Peter Kinderman No.

Hilary Jeffs So he's buying it not because of the genuine joy of the collection. He's buying it because he thinks that it'll be worth money in the future. Now, crucially, psychologically, is he getting the same benefit as a genuine collector? Is it still firing the same neurotransmitters? You know, does it matter what motivation is? Are you still getting the same reward coming back?

Peter Kinderman Sadly, and this is a sad reflection that the universe is not aligned on the principles that it should be in order to, for things to be right. He probably is. But this is the thing. It, you know, it's like if you're waiting at the traffic lights and some flash bugger in a posh car decides to cut you i- off, and then just decides that they're going to be aggressive as a driver and nudge in front of you think, "Ah, do you feel good about that?" And the answer is, yeah, he probably does. He probably feels really good about it, and he probably looks at you and go, "Yeah, you're, you're, you're not a very masculine... You're a non-assertive. You're basically-- I've just proved to one notch that you're more scum-like than I am, and I feel good about that." And I think it would be nice if it wasn't genuine happiness, but it probably is real genuine happiness. I don't value it, though. So as you were talking about Declaration of Independence and T. Rex skeleton. So one of the things that I really, really appreciate, when I was doing my PhD, I found a copy in the university library of a book called "The Malleus Maleficarum," which is a book on how to torture witches, and it was there listed

Hilary Jeffs Hang on, but they were calling ordinary people witches, so is it actually about torturing humans who are, you know

Peter Kinderman Well, mainly women, yeah. Yeah, yeah. And it's all about psychological stuff, and it's all laid out about how to terrify people and how to get confessions and all of that. And it was there, and it had, had a little code number next to it. So I wrote down the code number and took it to the librarian. She goes, "Yeah, hang on a minute." And then went and she got it, and she gave it to me. And there's six of them in existence, and this really was a book that really was in the knapsack of a real priest who went round with... It was before the Spanish Inquisition, but he went round Europe. This is probably a Euro- a German copy, and, it's in University of Liverpool's special collections, and there it is, and it's how to torture witches, and there's only six of them handwritten in Latin. Couldn't read it 'cause I don't read Latin. And I was handling this book, and I was thinking, "My God, you know, I've got my hands on history." And then I handed it back. And that was a seminal moment. Do I wanna own it? No, I'd rather have new windows because, you know, costs money. And when you were talking about T. Rex skeleton and all of this, I was thinking, "Yeah, brilliant, brilliant." A Dec-Declaration of Independence 'cause... Oh, I'm not sure I've got it in here. No, there's, it's missing. I've got a box somewhere. I've now lost my box, but I've got a box somewhere with things in it. Like I was about 20 years ago, I wa- I was scattering some beautiful stones around a little ornamental pond that I was making in the garden and noticed that there was a little, little fossil in one of the stones. So I took it out and put it in my box. I've got a lump of the Berlin Wall. I've got, I've got little things that I've collected. Now I like them. They're not inherently valuable, but I like them. I would like to have a T.

Hilary Jeffs Moon rock I'm thinking as well.

Peter Kinderman I'd like to have an original copy of, Magna Carta. I'd love those things. I'd, but I'd love those things

Hilary Jeffs copy of the Bank of England complete with the gold vaults, please

Peter Kinderman Yeah. All of those things are nice. But then it's when you go, "Because of the intrinsic cash value of them." And I think, no, because they're amazing things. And because they're amazing things, they might be valuable. I'm not liking them because they're valuable. So I think the Scaramucci thing is, no, that's not why I like him.

Hilary Jeffs For about 20 years, I've come up with what I think is the most genius thing to collect ever, because you necessarily put them away for, or are meant to, sometimes I'm a bit slack for at least 11 months of the year, hopefully 11 and a half months of the year. Christmas decorations. Everyone's always got one to give you 'cause they like finding you a really stupid one. I don't care about my Christmas tree matching. In fact, the most discordant, the better it can be. And so I've found that's quite a nice thing, ' cause

Peter Kinderman It would be quite nice to have Napoleon Bonaparte's Christmas tree decorations, wouldn't it? That'd be quite a good thing. If he, if he hung a little kind of like, like,

Hilary Jeffs Why Napoleon Bonaparte? Was he

Peter Kinderman I think he was pre, pre-Dickens, but yeah. Well, all right, not Napoleon Bonaparte. Oscar Wilde. Did Oscar Wilde have a Christmas tree? Oscar Wilde's Christmas tree decorations would be a

Hilary Jeffs Well, who knows where he was hanging those decorations. Right

Peter Kinderman Probably very conventional

Hilary Jeffs Before we finish for the day, we are gonna have our psych hack, not a triple T, rebranded from now on, and then we'll have a quick catch-up about the budget. So what is our psych hack this

Peter Kinderman Well, yeah. Well, it's, it's basically, I mean, it's, it's probably both sort of simple and impossible, but, it's to avoid the social comparison thing, which is if you're doing something, think to yourself, "Would I do this just for me?" So try doing something where you do it and don't tell anybody about it. So even if you have just a cup of coffee and you think this is a nice cup of coffee, instead of going, "Ooh, I found this lovely coffee shop," so just do it

Hilary Jeffs and not just tell, you're not allowed to take a picture of it

Peter Kinderman No pictures, no social media, no, just, just, just for you. And then it raises the question of, you know to what extent am I buying into the social comparison thing? And to what extent am I choosing to surround myself with objects and activities that I value intrinsically rather than catching up with the Joneses?

Hilary Jeffs And that is a really good point about people who feel that, you know, everyone else is living a better life. No one is putting on Instagram or on Facebook a picture of them looking horrific, you know, arguing with their partner, you know, with an ingrowing hair. No one's doing that. Everyone is curating their life so that you're getting to see this little perfect snapshot of what a holiday ideal is like. You know, we all know that a family holiday is not just one amazing day after another where the sun's always shining and everyone's happily eating their food. We know at least half of the days are blighted by somebody losing their crap, and it's usually me

Peter Kinderman Yeah, there is a website that I quite like called Fesshole where people put their confessions, which is kind of inching towards that. I

Hilary Jeffs we'll have to put that in the show notes, I reckon. Fesshole

Peter Kinderman Myrubbishlife.com. It's like, yeah, a photograph of the bottom of your trouser, your sock and your shoe covered in mud 'cause you stepped in a puddle, that kind of thing. That's, but

Hilary Jeffs at least it's mud and not something else. On a French beach once changing a nappy, I got more than I bargained for

Peter Kinderman so you've got another task which is to register mylifeisworsethanyours.com.

Hilary Jeffs My life. Right, I'm making notes. We gotta, we'll, James, producing, you're on it, I hope, getting us those things sorted out. Right, before we go, we must just have a little chat about the budget. It's happening this week. Obviously it's very tempting to say that if I was choosing what was going in the budget it would be Count Binface's 99 pence for a 99 ice cream. But there's quite a number of things that I'd think about doing, and I know that he wants to achieve, him and Healey, they want to achieve good things for young people. So I've been thinking about India, about 20 years ago, brought about a very simple concept that actually transformed a lot of people's lives. And they, I think it was 100 days that if you were in a rural farm you could go and say you wanted 100 days worth of work, and it's now 125 days of work, and you would get paid a minimum wage. And I wondered whether we need something as radical as that to get these young people back to work. You know, and I'm not talking about them being horrible jobs. I'm just saying, you know, every young person has a right to try a job. We know we can't even get to serve a coffee in a coffee shop.

Peter Kinderman We,

Hilary Jeffs don't we just do that?

Peter Kinderman We need something more radical than that, and this is a real idea. It's certainly not mine, and it's basic universal basic income. So the treasury, the state, the our turnover as a country is trillions, and the amount of the sort of GDP of the country that is reflected in individual salaries is relatively low compared to the actual churn of the economy. And the universal basic income idea is that at a certain point in time, and there are slightly different models in different places, but it might be 18, it might be 16, it might be slightly graduated. But basically, everybody gets paid £1,000 a month or an equivalent sum. And the point is that what you do is you calculate a sum which would allow people to lead a decent life, and that's that. And then the point is that we all get it. It doesn't matter what you do, it doesn't matter who you are, it doesn't matter what you contribute and what you don't contribute. You simply get enough money to lead a decent life.

Hilary Jeffs Well, do you know,

Peter Kinderman A- and then if you, if you say, "Well, why on earth should people get that?" You go, "Well, look, it's up to them really. But if you want more money, go out and get a job." So what you've got is a teenager and you're going, "For God's sake, get a job." I mean, how are you gonna sustain yourself if you get a job? And they go, "Mm," and they don't really have a plan. If people had a ba- a universal basic income, you would not worry because what would happen is if they really wanted to just stay in bed, then they'd get £1,000 a month. And at the age of 18, then off they toddle, and with £1,000 a month they could rent a shoebox in... And I'm not gonna name a city, but I don't know, Grimsby. You could, you could... I did

Hilary Jeffs said naming a city. Now, there's a lot of people against this,

Peter Kinderman but if you wanna do more than that, then you work harder." That's

Hilary Jeffs But I don't think Burnham's going anywhere near that, 'cause he's already been talking about the fact that benefits should be a backstop and they shouldn't be sort of like the starting point. But Iceland have done a universal basic income, and I don't know how that's fared. But I always remember, there was a trial, I think, done in Canada where they gave homeless people something like $9,000 so that they could get off the streets, get a flat, and do you know, it was transformative. Loads of them suddenly could access healthcare, access rehab. You know, they went on and had a job and it completely changed society. So yeah, there is a lot to be said for just switching things on their head and seeing where we go. But it's not happening in this budget, that's for sure. There's no universal basic

Peter Kinderman The universal basic income. And yeah, so yeah, that's... And I hope that Burnham does something about, you know, something a little bit sort of in that direction, which would be sorting out social care. So the difference between, you know, nationally provided medical care and social care and the idea of people selling their houses and funding care homes and not funding care homes, and tricks that people play, and the postcode lottery. And, you know, if you have a lower back pain that means you have to move out of your house into a smaller house, then you lose it all on capital gains tax, but not if they say it's a medical... And it just, the whole thing's a nightmare. So I think sorting out social care in terms of budget. So even if it means paying for us in terms of taxes, I think proper social care provision would be something I would

Hilary Jeffs we will find out later this week what the budget plans actually are, and, then you and I can have a chat about it next week

Peter Kinderman Mm-hmm. And then we can, we can tax high tech firms and then, then maybe, Bryan Johnson won't have quite as much money to spend on

Hilary Jeffs And to be honest, whilst I do use the website a lot, I'd be really quite happy for Amazon to be taxed quite a lot and for things to be slightly more expensive so perhaps I'm not using it so often and I might be walking down my high street more. There's lots of wins to be had for that as well

Peter Kinderman But also we'd probably save money if they made sure that the things that were sold on Amazon were delivered as described. And saving money on not buying stuff that turns out to be badly mislabeled on websites,

Hilary Jeffs Or just where they're chucked over the fence to get completely soaking wet in the rain as well. Right. Lovely. Right, well, have a good week