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Simon and Lee are joined by Maya: an AI trained on twenty-odd episodes of Midlifing and gifted to them by a listener, Dr David Corbet (@corbetron), who built her using vibe coding. What starts as a joke tips quickly into uncanny valley territory, and from there into a shared list of words that have started to grate on them both (casted, obligated, positionality, normalcy), and their mutual discomfort with how thoroughly trauma has been worn smooth by overuse. It closes on a canoe trip past a riverbank thick with empty second homes, and the guilt of noticing them.

Mentioned

• Maya – an AI trained on around twenty episodes of Midlifing, joining the call as a guest; her polished fluency tips the conversation into uncanny valley territory. Named as a callback to the "Maya got a job in cyber" bit from a previous episode (itself a misremembering of a UK government ad campaign whose dancer was actually named Fatima)
• Dr David Corbet (@corbetron) – long-time listener; built Maya using vibe coding and gave her to the show entirely unprompted
• Office for Students – UK higher education regulator; referenced in connection with a recent institutional assessment visit
• NotebookLM (referred to as "Google Notebook" in the transcript) – Google's AI tool for generating podcast-style "deep dives"; noted for its hosts' unbridled enthusiasm and, formerly, odd glitchy interjections
• Forced Entertainment – UK experimental theatre company; cited as an example of direct-to-camera address and "showing the working"
• Sassari – city in Sardinia; site of Simon and Lil's apartment, recently renovated, raised in a discussion about reluctance to knock down existing walls

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

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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)