Peter has retired. Not from being a psychologist, but from the university, and the Concept of the Week is the term for precisely that. Role exit. The original paper says you should mark the moment with some sort of ceremony. Peter handed in his lanyard and went. Which turns out to be this week's story twice over. Keir Starmer stood down as an MP on 1 September, an hour before Andy Burnham's first big speech as Prime Minister. Vengeance, or a man who has simply changed his mind? Peter makes the case that a u-turn and an open mind look identical from the outside, and that if you want leaders with no emotions and no second thoughts, you need a different species running the country. Then Hilary, whose actual job is teaching people how to hold a room, takes apart Burnham against Kemi Badenoch at the despatch box and asks Peter the question he says has been held against him his entire career. What is gravitas, and can you get it if you have not got it? And France has gone to war on Black Friday. Not the sales, the words. Peter, a behavioural psychologist, points out that banning a word is close to the least effective thing you could possibly do, and that Wales worked out the answer years ago. The Triple T comes from the new Prime Minister, and it is two words long. Mentioned in this episode Hilary's list of the two letter Scrabble words, which Peter maintains is cheating: the official Collins list, all 127 of themThe advice Peter is remembering about marking a role exit with a ceremony: Say Goodbye, Create a Ritual by Nancy K Schlossberg, which sets out Ebaugh's four stagesHelen Rose Fuchs Ebaugh, Becoming an Ex: The Process of Role Exit, 1988, the study that gave us the termKeir Starmer stood down as MP for Holborn and St Pancras on 1 September. His majority there in 2024 was 11,572Zack Polanski is standing for the Greens in the by-election. Labour are still the bookmakers' favouritesJohn Healey was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer on 20 JulyReinhart and Rogoff, Growth in a Time of Debt, 2010, and the spreadsheet error found by Thomas Herndon in 2013The Toubon law of 1994, France's law on the use of the French languageVendredi fou, recommended in Quebec since 2014 as the French for Black FridayGlobish, Jean-Paul Nerriere's 1,500 word subset of English for international businessRobert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, 1974The Bayeux Tapestry opens at the British Museum on 10 SeptemberExperience is hosted by Hilary Jeffs and Professor Peter Kinderman, and produced by James Jones at Granary Digital. Get in touch at hello@experiencepodco.com.
