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© 2026 Midlifing
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Two friends Lee and Simon have serious conversations about silly things, and silly conversations about serious things. Together they dig into the pleasures, absurdities and imperfections of being human.
286 Episodes
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Send us Fan Mail Simon is recording from Sassari, where the barn doors have just gone in and the pace of life feels unrecognisably slow. A conversation about loitering with intent – a legal phrase that turns out to be untranslatable into Portuguese – opens into a wide-ranging examination of third spaces, billionaires, and the frictionlessness of modern commerce: what the UK has lost, and why. Lee's account of an unplanned evening in Lisbon, ending with the three of them eavesdropping on an ...
Send us Fan Mail Simon opens with a psychology experiment about misattributed arousal -- cross a rickety bridge feeling anxious, and you might mistake that adrenaline for attraction to whoever meets you on the other side -- and uses it as a prompt to ask Lee what emotions he feels most commonly. Lee lands on shame and guilt as uniquely useless (false friends that teach nothing, unlike anxiety or joy), then describes the untrammeled, leg-kicking happiness that sometimes overtakes him on a tr...
Send us Fan Mail Lee has developed a habit he can't fully explain: he spends his walks listening to AI-generated voices read Reddit's most morally contested family disputes, swiping through them pocket-blind on his phone while his wife Bob removes herself from the room entirely. Simon has been watching The Pittt and finding himself deep in the YouTube rabbit hole of Dr. Mike, a physician with eight million followers who spent an episode patiently holding his ground in a room full of anti-vaxx...
Send us Fan Mail Simon opens with news: a colleague complimented his secondhand trousers, though he fails to mention he'd just sat through an important meeting with the fly jammed open. A digression via Sort Your Life Out – a decluttering show that leaves him reaching for the language of the divine – opens into a conversation about whether the body ever forgets its training, sparked by Lee's account of a Vera Montero solo and Bob's observation that ballet doesn't fully let you go. By the en...
Send us Fan Mail What do you do when someone asks if you liked something and the honest answer is "it's just not for me"? Simon and Lee explore how taste works – how it forms, how it shifts depending on who's in the room, and why saying something is "shit" is often just laziness dressed up as confidence. Along the way: sharks on planes, Pina Bausch via Tilda Swinton, Coldplay's complicated legacy, and a standing ovation nobody stood for. Mentioned - "Thrash" -- shark/hurricane disaster fi...
Send us Fan Mail A chance remark in a New York bar in 1991 — "you're an idealist" — lands differently than expected. Simon and Lee trace that moment through the topsy-turviness of political labels, from Antifa on a Lisbon rooftop to the day idealism became an insult. Along the way: growing up under IRA bombs and Cold War dread, algorithmically sorted fear, and whether a badly-timed fart rules out the simulation. Mentioned - Wall Street (1987, dir. Oliver Stone) — discussed as cautionary ta...
Send us Fan Mail Simon finds himself crying for multiple things at once. Lee reflects on being largely inoculated from grief since childhood, always the supporter, never quite allowed his own response. An honest conversation about mortality, what we carry, and Swedish death cleaning. Mentions Touch by Ashley Montague — cited for the observation that "touch" has the longest entry in the Oxford English Dictionary, longer even than "love"Concentric circles of grief — diagram showing inner/oute...
Send us Fan Mail Lee and Simon move from the absurd grind of international transit and the ways money buys freedom from friction into a sharper reflection on systems, meritocracy and the stories we tell about fairness. The episode lands somewhere quieter and more human, with transhumanism and techno-hope set against goodbye, touch, family and the fragile consolation of ordinary love. Get in touch with Lee and Simon at info@midlifing.net. --- The Midlifing logo is adapted from an original ...
Send us Fan Mail Lee and Simon reflect on certainty, persuasion and the strange dead-end of “that’s just a fact,” moving from Louis Theroux’s Inside the Manosphere to questions of shininess, inherited politics and why some surfaces feel impossible to trust. They then swing into a wedding report from Lake Wānaka, where being firmly in the oldies camp still ends with a dance-off, a Virginian falsetto and the instruction to dance like you’ve got no hair. Get in touch with Lee and Simon at info...
Send us Fan Mail Lee and Simon reflect on waking up feeling anxious amid talk of global conflict, distance from home, and the strange experience of feeling both safe and unsettled while travelling. The conversation moves between geopolitical dread and everyday life – trousers, weddings, beauty and awe – arriving at a fragile commitment to grace, kindness and continuing on anyway. Get in touch with Lee and Simon at info@midlifing.net. --- The Midlifing logo is adapted from an original imag...
Send us Fan Mail Lee and Simon find themselves time-travelling: through a tennis racket that returns a 57-year-old body to its 15-year-old instincts (apart from the inconvenient eyes), and through faces from 1980s school corridors flickering inside present-day skin. They circle the pleasure and awkwardness of reunion – what it means to want connection, to resist it, and to recognise the same gesture surviving four decades. Get in touch with Lee and Simon at info@midlifing.net. --- The Mid...
Send us Fan Mail Lee and Simon explore Simon’s return to New Zealand and the deep, embodied sense of “home” he feels there, distinct from the buildings or habits that mark belonging elsewhere. They circle the gradations of alienness across places – London, Lisbon, Italy, the US – and reflect on privilege, inequality, and the uneasy freedom to move between worlds. Get in touch with Lee and Simon at info@midlifing.net. --- The Midlifing logo is adapted from an original image by H.L.I.T: htt...
Send us Fan Mail Simon and Lee discuss how “the slop” of online discourse warps attention, community, and even basic ways of being with other people, then land on the uneasy idea that conversation can be as much a mirror (to feel real and worthy) as a window (to actually learn and connect). A second thread is the double-truth of social life: feeling useful and coherent while simultaneously hearing the inner heckler saying “you’re a fraud,” and how that vulnerability can push people toward b...
Send us Fan Mail Lee and Simon talk about ageing, visibility and bodily maintenance, moving from Tai Chi scams and ripped male bodies to the uneven cultural tolerance of ageing faces, especially women’s. The thread tightens around choosing how to age – attitude over appearance – while catching themselves mid-slide into weather-moaning, grammar-policing crotchetiness. Get in touch with Lee and Simon at info@midlifing.net. --- The Midlifing logo is adapted from an original image b...
Send us Fan Mail Simon and Lee reflect on how “it’s just history” can function as a shield, contrasting nostalgia and certainty with the messier ethics of speaking up, particularly around homophobia and memory. The episode widens this to a mistrust of technological truth-claims, arguing for caution, empathy and interrogation over easy laughter or false neutrality. Get in touch with Lee and Simon at info@midlifing.net. --- The Midlifing logo is adapted from an original image by H.L.I.T: ht...
Send us Fan Mail Lee and Simon talk about Heated Rivalry as hockey smut, using it to think about bonkbusters, fan fiction, masculinity and the manosphere, and why gay male romance written by and for straight women feels culturally charged. They contrast escapist fantasy with realism, testing where disbelief breaks (coming out in elite sport, hockey culture) and where emotional truth still lands. Get in touch with Lee and Simon at info@midlifing.net. --- The Midlifing logo is adapted from ...
Send us Fan Mail Lee and Simon move from bread, travel and pensions into a sharper conversation about advertising, sustainability and how language quietly manipulates trust. What starts as midlife logistics ends in unease about media ethics and the stories we are trained to accept. Get in touch with Lee and Simon at info@midlifing.net. --- The Midlifing logo is adapted from an original image by H.L.I.T: https://www.flickr.com/photos/29311691@N05/8571921679 (CC BY 2.0)
Send us Fan Mail Lee and Simon discuss overload: storms, sickness, media saturation, and a growing sense that attention itself is the battleground. They land on “what we ignore” as a survival skill, using sport, news, and desire as case studies for selective blindness and unexpected meaning. Get in touch with Lee and Simon at info@midlifing.net. --- The Midlifing logo is adapted from an original image by H.L.I.T: https://www.flickr.com/photos/29311691@N05/8571921679 (CC BY 2.0)
Send us Fan Mail Lee and Simon reflect on ageing through ordinary shocks – driving at night, learning languages badly in public, and realising your social stamina has quietly changed. The episode circles the relief of opting out (sleep, simple food, cinema marathons) versus the effort of keeping up, without pretending either choice is noble. Get in touch with Lee and Simon at info@midlifing.net. --- The Midlifing logo is adapted from an original image by H.L.I.T: https://www.flickr.com/ph...
Send us Fan Mail Lee and Simon reflect on the turn of the year not through resolutions but through attention to time, labour, and value – what feels worth doing, and what quietly drains energy. The conversation circles embodied work, intergenerational thinking, and the midlife urge to spend less time reacting and more time building things that outlast you. Get in touch with Lee and Simon at info@midlifing.net. --- The Midlifing logo is adapted from an original image by H.L.I.T: https://ww...
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