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Lee arrives squinting at his phone, his many pairs of reading glasses having all washed up in one place, out of reach. After a detour through Reacher and its spin-off Neagley, Lee brings in an Alabama senator warning that airline pilots may secretly be furries, and Simon questions the maths. From there it's a stolen mint chocolate that turns out to be Simon's Proustian madeleine, a private tapestry tour at the V&A, a defence of experts, and an imagined Akram Khan statue that spins at the press of a button.

Mentioned

• Reacher (TV series) – the latest season is being watched; a friend texted to say they cried at the end
• Neagley (TV series) – Reacher spin-off, watched over the weekend and rated highly; the character was always a fascinating one in the books too
• Maria Sten – actor who plays Neagley in both shows; her name is only half-remembered in the episode
• Alan Ritchson – plays Reacher; noticeably smaller in season one than in season four
• Tommy Tuberville – Republican senator from Alabama; a press-conference clip in which he warns that aviation workers, pilots included, may be furries with a "deranged fetish"
• Furries – community of people who dress as cartoon animals, with a sexual and a non-sexual "stripe"
• Adidas – brand invoked in a joke about the two "stripes" of furries
• Mickey Mouse and Pluto – examples of the kind of cartoon animal furries dress as
• Pup play – mentioned as distinct from being a furry
• Dungeons & Dragons – floated as a niche hobby probably more common than being a furry
• YouTube – its new ads that shrink the video, even during a yoga session
• Marcel Proust – the madeleine, as the model for a mint chocolate that triggers memories of after-dinner mints at grandparents'
• The Meaning of Life (Monty Python) – the "wafer-thin" mint, alluded to and then dropped
• Elizabeth Shaw – after-dinner mint brand with an "interesting range"
• Bendicks Bittermints – the "bitter mint" style of after-dinner mint
• V&A – two days of meetings with access-all-areas tours of V&A East Storehouse, V&A East and South Kensington; Young V&A also mentioned
• David Bowie Centre, V&A East Storehouse – a room visited on the tour
• Boris Johnson and David Cameron – each suggested as the source of the anti-experts line (the "had enough of experts" remark is usually credited to Michael Gove)
• Dominic Cummings – "drove to Durham"; his name can't be recalled in the episode
• Wayne McGregor – choreographer, cited as the rare choreographer with money because of his work for ABBA
• ABBA – ABBA Voyage, via Wayne McGregor
• Akram Khan – choreographer with a large installation at V&A East, which prompts the joke about an "Angry Akram" statue
• Michael Jackson statue on the Thames – the giant statue floated down the river to promote HIStory in 1995, used for comparison

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)