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A week of storms, one of which sent a tree into Bob's train, plus government advice to stockpile water, leaves Simon and Lee wondering whether embodied practice might be the last thing standing after AI. But the conversation keeps turning towards hope. Lee wakes up giddy despite the headlines, and Simon finds himself weeping at a stranger's goodbye at an Italian bus station. That leads to a question about what tears actually do, and who they are for.

Mentioned

• Wes Streeting – UK government minister; cited for the advice that households keep three litres of water per person per day for at least three days, as national preparedness against storms, cyber attacks and war
• Sting – musician; a friend's observation in the 1990s about how relentlessly his songs rhyme comes up during a riff on poets and rhyming
• Roxanne (The Police) – Sting song briefly sung as an example of the rhyming
• Fields of Gold – Sting song; mentioned in passing as later Sting
• RoboCop – the line "Dead or alive, you're coming with me" quoted during a riff on robots going wrong
• Hitler's bunker – invoked as the image of end-of-the-world giddiness, which the optimism discussed here is not
• Flipboard – news aggregator where a story about a 14-year-old boy attacked in the street prompts a reflection on how media report cruelty but not everyday kindness
• Riverford Organic Farmers – Devon veg box company; its founder's weekly letter to customers made the same point about the generosity of ordinary people
• Guy Singh-Watson – Riverford founder and author of the weekly letter; his brother Ben is also mentioned
• Sassari – a bus station on the way to the airport, where a family's tearful goodbye prompts thoughts on compassion and empathy
• J. L. Austin – philosopher whose idea of the performative (saying as doing, as in a promise or a wedding vow) is used to think about tears as something that does something, and about the need for grief to be witnessed
• Steve Irwin and Robert Irwin – the late "Crocodile Hunter" and his son, recently seen on The Graham Norton Show; leads into the question of where "crocodile tears" comes from
• The Graham Norton Show – BBC chat show where Robert Irwin appeared
• Devon – where a nephew photographed a front door on the street
• Sky burial – funerary practice of leaving a body on a mountaintop to be picked clean by vultures and the weather; offered as a closing curiosity
• Primrose Hill – London hill jokingly proposed as the UK's nearest equivalent to a sky burial mountain

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)