There Is No Right Way to Grieve

Hilary Jeffs Hello and welcome to experience our new weekly podcast that aims to demystify human behaviour, one use headline at a time. Luckily, you do not need to put up with my cod psychology because we are joined each week by a genuine doctor of psychology. His name is Peter Kinderman., This week we've got some difficult topics that we're gonna be, discussing. So we're gonna start off relatively gently by talking about some identity change, and also about where you are from and the importance of that. We are gonna talk about our resistance as a species to address climate change. when we discuss the wildfires that are happening in France. We're also gonna talk about the awful story, that has been coming from the courts, the sentencing of Robert Bush over his shonky funeral practises. and we're gonna be talking about the importance of death rituals and, and why as a species we need them so much. and lastly, we are gonna be playing tribute to Bill Oddie, whose death was announced after last week's episode. And Peter, you're gonna be doing a rendition of the Funky Gibbon.

Peter Kinderman Thank you for that. I wasn't aware of that, but obviously that's, on my repertoire. Yeah. Great.

Hilary Jeffs Brilliant. I look forward to it. this week, whilst I had a good week, it was a really busy week. Each year, about 20 of my in-laws descend on us and they camp in the garden. And we have a joll old time with lots of guitars and we invite our neighbours in as well, which sounds a bit like a Tom Lear, the Irish Ballad, which is a very macabre song. but when our neighbours came over, one in particular also thinks that she is a mancunian. My in-laws, hail from where you are. And I thought you could adjudicate Peter being a mancunian yourself. And my neighbour, she is from Wilmslow, Manc or no Manc.

Peter Kinderman As in, if you hail from Wilms though.

Hilary Jeffs Yes. They were adamant that she did not qualify.

Peter Kinderman Well, so when I moved up to Manchester, 'cause I wasn't born here, it, it took me probably about 25 years to come to terms with the fact that what I regard as Manchester contains a place called Sulford in a place called Rafford. And if you speak to people who are definitely mancunians, they say that Sulford isn't Manchester. And then it relates to Manchester City and Manchester United and then the Manchester City people say that it's Manchester City because they're from Sulford, which makes no logical sense at all. So I find the idea of Mancunian identity particularly confusing 'cause you can step across the road and apparently you're in a different, I dunno, planet. I think it all

Hilary Jeffs my in-laws are self audience.

Peter Kinderman Right. Well, there's, that's another wrinkle in the complexity and the answer, of course, is it's up to each individual person to define their own identity. And if she thinks that she's a man commun, then that's what she is. And also, if she thinks she's a man union, and in fact she's not, it would be rude to tell her the facts. So just let her continue to believe that she's a man union and say, yes, that would be my solution. In fact, he's saying yes is usually the best solution to most questions.

Hilary Jeffs What I ended up doing was, extensive, Google searches to try and find different bits of evidence that made everyone right. it, it almost, almost calmed the,

Peter Kinderman does? Does she have a vote? Does she have a vote in the forthcoming mayoral election? If she does, she's a manco. If she doesn't, she isn't. There you go.

Hilary Jeffs Okay. I'm not telling her that. Thanks though. Anyway.

Peter Kinderman go. Go with my first answer. Say yes to any question that you asked. If she thinks she's a man, she's a mancunian, and it is a shame that true man unions like her are denied their rightful chance to vote in the election that clearly she should be entitled to. I think.

Hilary Jeffs Okay, brilliant. I've got my answer. Thank you for that. I knew you'd come up with the right one. also when they were here, one of my nephews, his girlfriend is expecting a baby in quite short order. So it's quite exciting because next year we are gonna go back to having three generations, which we haven't had for a number of years now. now there was a bit of a debate about names, but not the baby's name about what the grandparents are gonna be called because I hadn't realised just kind of what a hot potato that actually can be. I know that my stepson's grandmother calls herself Mimi, and one of my best friends at school, her grandfather was ogre. But actually some people are really resistant to that kind of grand anything, aren't they?

Peter Kinderman Yeah. And you know, this is, this is about what, what names, what words mean in terms of your identity and the whole shtick of, of grandparents comes with some sort of cha or mediaeval idea of doddery old folk with, with sticks. So the minute you say, I'm gonna attach a word to your identity, that means doddery, old bloke with stick, then you don't like it.I mean, the truth is that thanks to modern science people in their fifties, sixties, and seventies can go skydiving if they want to. And so they don't fit the mediaeval image of somebody just waiting for death to tap 'em on the shoulder with the side. But it comes with that image. And if it does and you don't like that image, then sure, choose a different, choose a different name. personally, I don't have anything against children and grandchildren calling you by your name. So just use your name and that's it. And,

Hilary Jeffs Ooh, controversial. When my children have the temerity to use my name, I'm like, you've only got one mother. There are a million Hillarys in the world.

Peter Kinderman Again, identity. You see, it's about the, the identity that it signals for you. But my, my point is, if the concept of grandparent or grandfather or grandmother conveys old, frail, not really with it in the world, not really going to gigs at the Aviva anymore, then then you would reject that identity. I mean, the other point of view, I suppose, would be absolutely accept that identity and go to, you know, go to a fat boy slim concert with grandfather on the T-shirt. That'd be the other way to do it because most of the people at Fat Boy Slim concerts are grandfathers in my personal experience. But

Hilary Jeffs I have to say pretty much every gig I go to, which tells you quite a lot about my choice of music and every festival, most people are wearing grandfather gig, t-shirts, that's for sure. so will you grandfather it up or will you be Peter?

Peter Kinderman I will leave it enigmatic and wait for people to ask, and then I will choose how to reply on the basis of what impression I want to give them. That's, that's the way to do it. But be subtle and be reserv. And then when they say, Peter, are you, are you a grandfather? I'll think, Hmm. And then I'll say, that's an interesting question. Why do you want to know? And they'll go, whoa, it's just a blah, blah, blah. And I'll go, what difference would it make to your understanding of me? And by then, hopefully I've diverted them away from the question.

Hilary Jeffs This is why psychologists get a bad name. You know this, don't you?

Peter Kinderman yeah, yeah, yeah. But you do it with a charming smile at the same time, and then you get away with it.

Hilary Jeffs Well, you do have a particularly charming smile, so that was good. they also all were talking about the wildfires that are raging across France whilst they were here, my in-laws, and one of them raised quite an interesting concept, which I don't know whether it is indeed true because it's widely known that the wildfires raging across France are climate change induced. and there's been another wave of them with yet more 40 degree temperatures, which have found those flames., And one of my in-laws said, why is it that humans cannot care about people who have yet to be born? And is that right? I mean, what's going on there psychologically? Why can't we get to grips with this?

Peter Kinderman Well, that's a very interesting question and it's something that I've thought about, both going back in time and going forward in time. So, on a little bit of research that, that I've been involved with, we were looking at, records of people in psychiatric asylums in the Victorian period. And, and the rule is it's a hundred years. So you can look at private records of people that are a hundred years old and you think, well, you know, that's maybe four generations and, but you, you can kind of imagine people that you sort of know about from them, but the, the, the sort of intensity of looking at their personal details and invading their privacy as faded a hundred years in past, and of course we can dig up which of the third's bones and we can, although we should do it delicately, we can go and look at mummified Egyptians. And so the sensitivity to people in the past fades a little bit. And yes, it's difficult to imagine, you know, in, in eight, is it 8 billion years time when the earth gets swallowed up by the sun? Whatever humans have evolved into, I, I don't have a great deal of worry about those entities. I do worry about, for instance, my children after my death. So, so you're right there. There's a almost a bell curve of consideration, and I think that, that they're right. It, it does fade as we look into the future and we kind of go, oh, it'll get sorted, and I can't really engage with the humanity of these people. and I think that that's, I think that that's a problem. yes, I think, I think that it means that our, our, our capacity to invest in sacrifices now for things that will only benefit people whose parents haven't yet been conceived is, is quite a challenge. And that's what we have to do. Clearly. I, I think there's a potential solution, and I think not only scientists, but I think politicians are moving towards this sort of solution. And I'm afraid it doesn't fit well with the plutocrats and, and right-wing politicians, which is, it's about principles, which instead of saying, should I buy this bottle of fizzy water and then throw it away, should I make this chat GPT search? Or should I not? The question is, what sort of principles do I want to live by and do I want to live according to principles that has no consideration for the future? And I think it's much easier to answer that second question than to think about how is my decision now impacting on the life of somebody who has not yet been born? I can act according to my principles now, and I can always act according to my principles now. So in a way, you don't have to think about those people who are not yet born. What you have to do is think, how do I want to live my life? What's, what's a reasonable way to conduct myself right now? What's the right thing to do about this decision at this moment?

Hilary Jeffs But what I hear time again, and not just from older people, but even from younger people these days, is just how futile it is to even bother doing anything on a personal level to affect climate change. What could governments do to try and convince people that yes, their actions do make a difference?

Peter Kinderman So, so I think, I think that's right. I think people do often feel futile. People feel futile in the face of all sorts of things, like, like climate change and, and, and other big sort of political decisions. it brings me back just, just as a diversion, it brings me back to, to somebody who's writings I think genuinely changed my life, which is Albert Camus, the existential philosopher. And one of the things that, to try to be very, very brief about him, his basic argument was the whole of life is absurd. There's absolutely no point to anything. And the, the question that probably was central to him getting the Nobel Prize was, why don't we just kill ourselves now? There's no absolutely no point to anything. And his answer to that was, we make the point. So the answer to climate change is that you could look at it, it's not exactly a glass half full, glass, half empty thing. It's again, acting to your principles. It's again, saying in the realisation that we live in a universe that fundamentally doesn't care. We have to do the caring. So it comes down to at every point, at every moment, as much as you can make the decisions that are the ones that you believe to be right, that, that meet your goals and meet the goals of making other people safe and content. And so the thing that you can do about climate change, yes, you can look at climate change and think, you know, Elon Musk is controlling the, the, the political agenda. And Donald Trump has his, I was going to be rude, but he has whatever digit, sort of serves him in the roll of a finger on the buttons. But what we can do is we can make sure that the decisions that we make right now are the decisions that we are proud of. So I think the government should, and I think they do. I think this is part of what the Nudge Unit does, and it uses psychology, principles. Psychology to this end is to remind people that what they can do is make the right decision every time. You know, when you, when you have a bottle of water in your hand, put it in the recycling bin and not in the, not, not dump it on the street. When you are faced with two objects of reasonable equivalence by the one which has a lower carbon footprint, when you are thinking, should I leave the central heating on and open a window, or should I turn the central heating off if I'm gonna open the window and then turn the central heating off and open the window and we can make all of these decisions, ones that we can make. And that turns it around from saying we are utterly futile in the face of climate change to saying absolutely not. You can literally make every decision you make one that is one that you can be proud of.

Hilary Jeffs I think that's a really good approach and it really is an entirely good antidote to the man who I'm going to describe as the octogenarian in the White House. I've been thinking about this and I think that's possibly the biggest insult I can give him. 'cause we know he doesn't like getting old. So the octogenarian and his whole, you know, drill, baby drill agenda, the crassness of it all and just the bombast is unbelievable. have you heard Mia Motley, the Barbadian Prime Minister speak on climate? She is so erudite. She spoke to Cochran six. In fact, we're gonna put the link in our show notes. She is fire this woman, she's like a rockstar, prime Minister. Unbelievable. She holds people to account and I actually find her really inspirational. In fact, actually we'll give you an extra treat as well. She took Zena Bwe, the BBC journalist to task once as well over, investment from China in Barbados. So they're both brilliant clips. But Mia Motley, she's an absolute inspiration. Absolutely. So moving on then, as a nation, we are not really very good at talking about death and we find it really hard. And there was an absolutely disgusting story last week. It was a sentencing hearing of Robert Bush. He's the funeral director in the, caught up in the awful story where he had to plead guilty to 67 criminal charges, 30 of which I think were around the improper burial and treatment of dead bodies. It's a really despicable story. and when you heard the victims and their families, you know, speaking at the trial, they talked about being in a black hole, about being under a black cloud, about feeling just violated and enraged. It was such a visceral test testimony that we were getting from these people. why are, death rituals and the sort of the treatment of people who have passed, why is that so important to our culture and to society? Peter.

Peter Kinderman Well, first of all, it always has been important, and when archaeologists look back at, you know, the trace remains of, of humans and pre-humans back in history, one of the clear, markers that they talk about is the way in which bodies are treated. and when there is some care and attention, when there are grave goods, when the, when the graves are prepared, that's a sign of increasing sophistication, increasing civilization. But I think also an increasing recognition of the identity of the individual and their relationship with the people in their clan and their, their, their, their, their group and their family. And of course, the idea that some, a person's physical identity and their physical body is the, the marker and the, in a sense, the, the well is literally the embodiment of their identity. So to mark that and to, recognise that person's role in your life and the respect that you show to them as an individual is reflected in the respect that you show to their, to their body. And it's universal. And the, the contempt that we have for people who themselves treat bodies with contempt to sit, you see in, in war and war crimes and mutilation of bodies, you see it in, people discarded. You see it in the horror that we feel when we see a dead body abandoned. And yes, the idea of treating loved ones disrespectfully is horrific. I think in this particular case, it's, there's a little ad in nuance, which is that he went through the pretence of treating people respectfully and, and that also was a lie. and so the, you know, the idea of handing somebody respectfully, an urn respectfully and a beautiful urn with what is apparently their dead child's ashes in it, and it turned out that he hadn't even picked up the ashes yet from, from the crematorium. that, that shows, it shows a disrespect for the person who is still living. So, yeah, yeah, con contemptible. and like I say, all cultures have death rituals. we all as individuals need death rituals. And when the people close to me die, I, I don't want to just go, oh yeah, oh, I've forgotten about 'em, and let's move on. That, that doesn't reflect the importance that person has in my life.

Hilary Jeffs And people go through different processes, don't they? So for me, when my mom died, I didn't want to think about the date that she died to the point where I went through my entire pregnancy of my third child, not realising that their due date was my mother's death date until my sister texted me on that morning to see how I was in light of my mother, at which point I had a massive meltdown and thought I was very stupid. but it's continued. It's not something I want to hold onto. I, I try and think about my mom all the time and my dad, but I don't go and visit their grave. Whereas my husband's family, they're very different. They do make those ritualised trips to see where their, loved ones are laid and, and memorialised. So we do have different processes, don't we?

Peter Kinderman we, we do. And one of the thing, the reason why I was kind of frowning and humming and interrupting you, sorry, was that I think one of the things that, sociologists, ethnographers, and of course psychologists do, is they start to talk about these stages of grief and, you know, the proper way to grieve. and I don't think that that's terribly useful. I, I think people grieve in their own way and some people would genuinely find it morbid to have reminders of, of somebody. But nevertheless, they love the person very much and they're constantly thinking about them, and they're reminded of them when they choose to remind themselves of them rather than, due dates. And, and I, I think that due dates, you see it slipped in, the Victorians of, I went to a Dunham Massey I think I went to, and where there were, there was quite a beautiful, quite large about, I don't know, 30 centimetre square sort of raised sculpture made from, hair. And it didn't really specify whether it was hair of a dead loved one or just hair. But you think, to my eyes, that seems a little bit morbid. Maybe it was then, but maybe it was just the way that they were. Anyway, my point is I don't think we should impose our expectations of how other people should grieve onto them. I think people grieve in the way that makes sense for them.

Hilary Jeffs there are some cultures where they mummify the bodies and they dress them up each year and parade them around. I mean, it, we don't tend to have particularly good outward, grieving. Do we, we are not known as a nation for those that sort of embrace talking about death and.

Peter Kinderman And I, I do, I mean, it's related to the climate change thing. I, I do myself personally, quite like the idea of remembering that I'm mortal. I, I think my arrogance especially 'cause as I think we've established, I, I fit the profile of the people who should be arrogant, or shouldn't be arrogant, but ah, it's easy to imagine I'll live forever and, you know, insent and all this sort of stuff. But of course I do need to remind myself I'm gonna die and I need it. It would be sensible of me to arrange my affairs in the knowledge of the truth. So to be reminded that I'm going to die to be reminded that my lifespan is finite is probably a good thing. I don't think that's morbid. I don't think it leads to sadness or, crazy responses. I think it leads to exactly the same as I said over climate change. Make sure that every decision I make is an appropriate one, given that, you know, I mean, I don't happen to have a death's head ring on me, but if I was a, if I was a Victorian gentleman I might have, or a skull on the top of my cane or whatever, and that would help me walk into a pastry shop and think, ah, yes, watch out for the old heart. Maybe I won't have a chocolate declare. It would actually help me make good decisions right now. In the light of what. So I think reminding ourselves of, of people who've been before us, reminding ourselves of the fragility of life, reminding ourselves of, where we are in the natural world is probably a good thing. And therefore, the rituals of grieving and death are important. I think the people that I love, I love those people are real human beings with real bodies. And no, I don't want them treated disrespectfully when they die.

Hilary Jeffs There are a growing number of billionaires, and may I say men who are trying to live forever. It, it absolutely is astonishing to me because, like you said, we kind of need to dive, we are going to let the next generation flourish, don't we? I mean, there is something fundamental about coming to terms with our own, finite end. what do you think is going on psychologically with the billionaires who are trying to just keep living for as long as possible?

Peter Kinderman I don't, I don't gamble because, maybe I'm a little bit kind of, you know, a bit weird, but it looks to me that, that if lots of people are making lots of profit out, scamming off 5% over every bet made, then chances are I'm just gonna give them 5% of whatever the turnover is. So I don't want to do that. It seems highly unlikely that I'm gonna win a bet. It seems even more unlikely that somehow I'm gonna be the first person to beat this dying thing. 'cause plenty of people haven't thus far, I think. And I think if I'm gonna put my effort in anything, I'm gonna put my effort into having a good life rather than a miserable, everlasting life. If I was wealthier, then I would use my wealth to try to, well, actually, I wouldn't use my wealth to try to make me have a particularly happier life. 'cause I don't think money would gonna make much difference to me. Now, I'd use my money to help other people have a happier life, but I'd probably do that in

Hilary Jeffs why we like you.

Peter Kinderman Yeah, well, people could have happier lives, but they probably can't have everlasting lives. So I think they're investing their, their money in the wrong place. I think their chances of success are so blindingly close to zero as to be not worth investing in, I think is a stupid investment. But then I look at these people and I look at how their PR companies have said, this man is a genius. And I think, well, I've, I'm only basing my opinion on what he says and what he does. And neither of those things make me think he's a genius. And if he's

Hilary Jeffs I think we all

Peter Kinderman that's not very genius.

Hilary Jeffs Yes. Well, we all know who you might have been thinking about just then about the genius, the, trillionaire perhaps, which is a, a scary situation. But you work, don't you, with the, a cemetery in Manchester, don't you, on a project around, people's passing and the ceremonies and, and what

Peter Kinderman Yeah. So we, we, yeah, I've just been invited to join a little project. It's, it's just starting up one of, so Manchester Southern Cemetery is very large. It's, it's not the largest in Britain, but it's huge. Victorian growth of Manchester, blah, blah. And so they, they, they set out a massive cemetery just very near where I live. And, it, it was built Victorian style with a number of chapels, which have not fallen into disrepair, but they've fallen into disuse. so, I've joined a group of, of local residents who are planning to revivify the chapel and think about, think about, death rituals, and not exactly religious, but, but the spiritual aspect of death and thinking about what we can do to make the chapels on the, cemetery, useful for people in terms of those death rituals, but also the history and also the art, and also the nature. Manchester Southern Cemetery has won awards for being a nature reserve because with the exception of a few sticking up bits of stone, which birds like to sit on, it's a beautiful, open, natural space. So, yes, I'm getting involved in that early days, but the city council seemed to be positive and basically saying, we have these beautiful chapels. Tell us what you would like to do with them. So that's what we're going to do.

Hilary Jeffs So about 20 years ago when my mom died, a few days later, my best friend's mom also died. which was, you know, for us at least, we had each other. Who knew what the other one was going through? I think, 'cause we were a bit younger then. And my mom had a full Catholic ceremony. There were, she worked ecumenically in the community quite a lot. And there, I think there were like seven or eight celebrants on the altar. It was a full on service, whereas my friend's mom was not religious. And what they did was for their sort of ceremony, because she'd donated her body to science as well. So they had a gathering in the pub where they brought, a guitar and they had a photo wall and people sang songs and told stories about her, which was really amazing. And actually it really opened my eyes to how you can create your own tribute. I mean, following on from that, you have a ceremony, in the cathedral in London, the one on south, I think it's South Cathedral, where all the doctors go as well to, celebrate the life of those whose bodies have been donated. And then your body is then released about a year later and you go for a second, funeral there where you've actually got the body present. So it was quite a drawn out process by donating your body, but just the fact that you could still do a service at that sort of, quite soon after the death and make it relevant without a body and also without all the trappings of religion, I found really interesting at the time.

Peter Kinderman Yes. Yeah. I, I mean, when, when I was younger, I, I be, because my parents, parents were very religious and because I'm not, I thought that these things in our lives, which have become ritualised and memorialised, because from my parents' perspective, they were always imbued with religion and specifically in their case, you know, a theistic religion. I, I think for many, many years I kind of assumed that ceremony and meaning, and even spirituality and religion were kind of the same thing. So I rejected it. But I've come to realise that the understanding that this person's identity is more than their physical remains and was more than their physical remains. And that their identity and their impact on other people as an abstract concept is worthy of commemoration and celebration is just simply true. And you, you don't, in in that humanistic perspective, you don't have to say yes what you are. Well, of course, my, my father would, would've done at this point is to say yes. And that's exactly what I mean by the immortal soul. And no, you go, no, no. It's just this person who was meaningful to other people. Their existence mattered. Their, their, their identity was their identity. And, you know, we can celebrate that without it invoking people with beards who look suspiciously white and middle class sitting on clouds.

Hilary Jeffs Indeed. Okay. So that brings us to our final headline this week. It is the fact that Bill Oddie has died age 85. He started off as a comedian. He went to Cambridge University, to Pembroke College, just down the road from your old, college yourself. Peter, he was a member of Footlights. Were you a member of Footlights?

Peter Kinderman no, no, no, no. Far too far, too socially anxious for that sort of

Hilary Jeffs Okay. Alright. And, he wrote lots of songs before joining The Goodies and then obviously became in everyone's, mind a, a loved one because he hosted Spring Watch and brought us great good feelings, not only from laughter and communication in that way, but also through our shared love of nature. but he was very open. He was one of the first people to really come out and be open about his mental health struggles. So he had, depression and bipolar, I think was his diagnosis. And he talked about the disconnect he had with his mum. He was brought up by his dad and a grandmother, I think, because she had schizophrenia. Now, is there a genetic link to those sorts of illnesses?

Peter Kinderman Almost certainly not really. And trivially. So this is a whole big thing. And we could have many, many podcasts about both the naming of people's distress and our theories of genetics. my personal view is that these names, so, so there there are, there are experiences that we have. So people sometimes have hallucinations. People sometimes find themselves losing touch with reality. People certainly very often get anxious, and people certainly from time to time, become depressed. So these phenomena that we experience, that we all experience, they're very real. I think, as a, as a society, we've struggled with a number of things. We've struggled to give names to these things, and we've struggled to understand them. And I think it genuinely is a profound sadness in my life that the framework that we've used to understand human suffering has been the framework of illness. Because what then happens is two things happen. We take these experiences and instead of saying, tell me about your episodes, of sadness, tell me why you are becoming sa. there's a bloke I won't name because I'm, I'm gonna ridicule him, but he's in the House of Lords, and he was talking about how 80% of human misery can be explained by depression. Well, that, that, that, that doesn't even make sense if you're a linguist, let alone, if you're a behavioural scientist trying to explain, you know, a word for misery. It can be explained by the existence of another word for misery. It's, it's not, the only way that you can possibly understand that statement is to say, we understand the, the feelings of depression to be a biological illness. Called that we will call major depressive episode, major depressive disorder or schizophrenia, or bipolar disorder, whatever, which is in itself some sort of abnormality of the physical structure of your brain causing it. And I don't think there's any evidence for that at all. I think the ev, what I did in my career, I think the evidence that the names that we use to describe so-called mental illness, relate, coherently to discrete entities that can be identified in different people or in the same person across time is, is almost totally lacking. It just seems to be a heterogeneous mix of distress that bubbles up for different people, for different reasons in different circumstances. And we genuinely struggle to name these experiences. The second layer of it, which is that these experiences should fall into the medical realm as opposed to the spiritual realm or the sociological realm or the realm, in my case of psychology, of things have happened to me in my life that have caused me to become very depressed. Things have happened to me in my life that have caused me to doubt myself as a human being. Things have happened to me in my life that have caused me to lose touch with the way that I understand the reality of the world outside. I've gone into myself, things have happened to me in my life that have caused me to rely on substances that have taken me away from engaging with the world, in the way that evolution has intended my eyes and brain to engage with it. Those questions are lost. And instead the question, the question become which diagnosis bets best fits your presentation of symptoms? Can we attach a label to it? Can we assume without evidence that there's an illness behind it? And then treat that, that illness with drugs, all of that I'm basically contemptible about.

Hilary Jeffs But there is

Peter Kinderman is it, so, so the question of it as in does que schizophrenia exist? Is it, is it's a loose collection of experiences that many people have. So even if it existed, then the question is genetics. I don't think genetics code for illnesses, they code for proteins. Is there any evidence that some genetic differences between us make us more or less vulnerable to problems that affect our mental health? Several thousand genes have been identified, each of which might convey a tiny, tiny risk. But that's about as far as the science has got. And I think that puts us plumb back in. Yeah, everybody's a bit different and we all have our vulnerabilities.

Hilary Jeffs I found learning about schizophrenia when I started doing my master's conversion to psychology. Really interesting. the thought of hearing voices, the thought of things, you know, seeing things that weren't there actually as a child. I found that the thought of that happening to me to be very scary, and I think in this country we've really approached that kind of experience of one of, oh, keep back. Is it contagious? I'm scared of that. I don't want that. Nope. Nope. They must be ill. But in other cultures, people celebrate hearing voices or they talk about people helping them with the voices that they hear.

Peter Kinderman Absolutely. So,

Hilary Jeffs not feared.

Peter Kinderman so when, when I was active in the British Psychological Society, we wrote a, very good, let me edit it and did it again. Very good. Report on schizophrenia or on when people lose touch with reality and when people hear voices and have other problems. And, and it's excellent and people should look it up. And I think it's great, and I think it's still honest and true and is a, I think a is both honest and true and scientifically valid and is a counterpoint to the mental illnesses and illness kind of narrative. We launched it in the Quaker meeting House just opposite Houston station and one of the other speakers, not me, commented on the fact that in religion, of course, you spend quite a lot of time trying to hear the word of God. And then we were writing a, a, a, a report on, hearing voices. just as a note, one of the things that I did last weekend was I went to, a festival, a little urban festival called Green Island Festival. It was great fun, community garden centre in, in Manchester. And I can tell you that there are a lot of people in the world, probably partly because of the narrative of schizophrenia being a terrible illness, who were really scared of, of, of seeing things and hearing things that aren't real. There's a whole load of people who are quite prepared to eat magic mushrooms and really enjoy, hearing things, seeing things, and then give long and complicated explanations for how brilliant it is when you're trying to concentrate on 8 0 8 state.

Hilary Jeffs Well, there we go. do you want to comment on your own partaking of those mushrooms? Did you have a mushroom re

Peter Kinderman I did not.

Hilary Jeffs Okay, lovely.

Peter Kinderman I kept my brain pure.

Hilary Jeffs it brings us back to Bill odi. He made us laugh. There's great evidence, isn't there, about just how beneficial laughter is, but not just to us in terms of all the endorphins it releases, but actually it's really important for social cohesion. Can you tell us a bit about that?

Peter Kinderman It, it absolutely is. One of the fascinating things about laughter is that when psychologists have played, very, very funny clips to people, in groups, they laugh when they played, the clips to people on their own, absolutely no facial expressions whatsoever. They just sit there and watch it. And when you ask 'em afterwards, how funny was it? They go, absolutely hilarious. But you don't move. So laughter is clearly a social signal to other people. People just simply don't laugh on that. I mean, they do. This is a kind of like, like hyperbole, but you know, the frequency of

Hilary Jeffs Clearly not really.

Peter Kinderman the let's do it scientifically. you are massively more likely to laugh, smile, and make other social interactions with people when watching or engaging with something funny when you're in company that if you're not, this is why they put canned laughter on, on on comedy series. When people see comedy shows without canned laughter, people don't find it as funny. When they're watching those shows on their own, they don't then reciprocate back with the laughter. 'cause there's no point. There's nobody to listen to you. So laughter and the knowledge that other people are finding it funny is, is part of it. I mean, that's also of course why, for if you miss the joke and you don't get it and everybody is laughing and you're sat there going, I don't get it because I was trying to say Infantini, but then I forgot the name of the bloody football manager. 'cause

Hilary Jeffs I'm trying to forget him all the time.

Peter Kinderman go out for drinks with my mates and they're making jokes about football and I'm sitting there thinking, right, I have to time carefully when I'm gonna do the laughter thing 'cause I need to, yeah. Laughter is a, is a, is a social signal to other people. It it's thing and, you know, you'll, you're loving that the, the bearing of the teeth. It's, it's kind of, it, it's a, it, it's a social thing. So what good comedians do is they, you know, they slightly anticipate what you're going to be thinking and they subvert it and they just ahead of you and they do it in a way that's friendly and containing rather than nasty and abusive. And, yeah. I, one of the things I, I don't want to name comedians that I don't like, but I think one of the things about the goodies and closely related to the goodies was the, the Monty Python people that, that membership was closely related is, very little of their humour was nasty and attacking and making fun of other people. So they were taking you with, with the humour and you were sort of embraced in the humour. but yeah,

Hilary Jeffs absurdity, wasn't there? It was just a wonderful childish humour, which yeah, absolutely. But equally, isn't it true that the dog's tail wagging, they don't do that if they're not in front of humans. They only do that as a signal to humans to say they're happy.

Peter Kinderman But that's,

Hilary Jeffs And there you go. So it must be a similar thing, laughter and tail wagging must have something in common.

Peter Kinderman And do you know that this comes back to our ber cammo and the kind of fundamental, you know, the, the bio biological rootedness of it all we're doing? And what we're doing now in a sophisticated form is we're we're just playing out our biological and evolutionary destiny. That's all we're doing.

Hilary Jeffs Great. Lovely. Well, we can condense it all down into that. in honour of Bill odi. we also need to just make sure that we have you doing the funky gibbon,

Peter Kinderman Yeah, I'll put that onto the agenda for, for, for a future podcast.

Hilary Jeffs Okay. we'll come back to that, the concept of the week then, Peter, each week we like to give people, a little bit of knowledge about psychology. What concept can you tell us about this week?

Peter Kinderman So the concept that we, is confirmation bias is, is pretty simple and a lot of people know about it. And I'm just gonna add a political point to it, I suppose, which is, so what, what happens, and it is almost certainly again, rooted in a evolutionary past, is once we believe something, we search for evidence that confirms our bias. And if you think about bees, if a bee goes and finds some honey, the logical thing to do is to go back to the honey, not to think. I wonder if there's something else somewhere else. You go back to where you've come from. So once you've, once you've come up with an answer to a question, you are likely to look for evidence to confirm it. And that probably has many evolutionary advantages, but it leads us into, you know, all sorts of blind alleys. I think that that relates to climate change and wildfires, and it's particularly bad right now. We are particularly prone to a combination of confirmation bias where we are pre-programmed to search for evidence that, reinforces our prejudices and algorithms on social media that make it very, very easy to find evidence that supports our prejudice. And of course, things like chat GPT make it even worse because you come up with something which is wrong and unhelpful and prejudicial. And then you type into chat. GPT, could you please find some evidence to support my prejudice, please And chap GBT says, what a wise and sensible person you are. Hillary, I have searched the internet and I have found outta the 400 million pieces of evidence that proves you wrong in order to wag my tail. And please, you, I'll find a three bits of evidence on some obscure mad website to prove you right. And they were convinced climate change. There will be people out there who've been to some mad ass website, which shows that we really don't have to worry about it despite what we could see if we just look out of our

Hilary Jeffs it's those echo chambers coming back to haunt us over and over again. Thank

Peter Kinderman So confirmation bias, be careful about it. It it'll kill you.

Hilary Jeffs Literally, triple T please. Then the tip to try what bite-sized chunk of wellbeing can you help us with this week?

Peter Kinderman Okay, so this is, this, this is a bit of a big concept, but it's an easy thing to do, which is just ask yourself, why am I doing this? What, what goal is this? Is this serving? What, what is the what, what am I, what am I I aiming for here? So you can find yourself, you can find yourself at a party and think, is there any reason for me to stay? Or maybe I'll go early night and law of diminishing returns and, you know, should I have another, if everybody's getting around, should I have another drink? And what do I want outta this? So asking, what is it that I genuinely want here? When you're in a conversation with people, and like I was saying before, if you're in a conversation with people and you're a bit anxious, then you think to yourself, what is it that I want out of this conversation? Do I want to look clever? when, when somebody's telling an anecdote, do you think, oh, I want to beat them with an anecdote. Want I do, I want to show how clever I am. Do I want to point out that I'm more intelligent or richer than them? So you just ask yourself, what is it that I want here? And if you want the other person to feel good about the afternoon, you, you might make a slightly different decision. So what, what do I want here? do I want to burn my skin? Do I want to sit in the shade and enjoy? Do I want to just watch and have a pleasant afternoon? Do it? Do I want to eat so much that I feel uncomfortable? What, what is it that I wanted out of this

Hilary Jeffs I often want that. but it is something I also recommend to people that I train as well before they go into a meeting. instead of just saying what you think you need to be saying, you should sit down and think, what do I want to achieve out of this? And then that really helps clarify what information you impart because you've actually got a reason for being there and you actually end up being much more influential as a result. So I wholeheartedly agree with your tip to try this week from a wellbeing perspective, but also from a business perspective you'll end up being a lot more efficient. Definitely.

Peter Kinderman If you focus on what your goals are, you're more likely to achieve your goals.

Hilary Jeffs Absolutely. if you have liked what we've been discussing this week, then perhaps you could give us a review. We'd like that very much and get in touch with us and, and ask us what else is going on and give us some ideas about what we should be covering. We will be back next week, Peter, with more handy hints and concepts and news headlines to psychoanalyse. I hope you have a lovely week. Thank you very much.. 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.