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Simon arrives buzzing with news: a professorial confirmation panel that left him pacing the line between anxiety and excitement for weeks beforehand. He and Lee dig into where exactly anxiety lives in the body, comparing notes on heart rate variability, breath control, and the relief of a panel that turned out far less hostile than feared. The conversation widens into the precarious state of UK higher education and the dance sector specifically, capped off with a half remembered government ad campaign about a ballerina who finds her true calling in cyber.

Mentioned

• Kate Bee – guest on last week's episode; praised for having "a good voice for radio"
• Starsky and Hutch – cop buddy show; raised as a model for a good cop buddy dynamic
• Rishi Sunak – former UK chancellor and prime minister; jokingly blamed for the state of arts funding and the wider higher education sector
• "Fatima's next job could be in cyber" advertising campaign – UK government ad campaign depicting a ballet dancer retraining for a career in cyber; referred to in conversation as "Maya," but the dancer in the original campaign was named Fatima; discussed as evidence of precarity in the arts and dance sector. Independent coverage

Get in touch with Lee and Simon at info@midlifing.net.

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