Caught in Take That traffic

0:07So you were saying you don't like wearing a trainer with a skirt. So Fi's wearing some absolutely beautiful, what would you call them, a platform sandal? They are. They call that. I was just going to say that they're just like a great big wedge. Yeah. Enormous cork wedge. They are, they're really, really beautiful. And I asked Fi if she's ever feels like she's going to roll her ankle. But you're... No, I'm quite, they're quite nice and solid. Sometimes if I'm wearing an espadrille, which has got a heightened wedge, but this is basically just, just kind of elevating me off the ground all at once.

0:45Might I say it's also elevating your outfit. Well, darling, that's very kind of you. But you were saying that you can't wear trainers with a skirt. I'm just not into it as much. And I'm wearing a lot of longer skirts at the moment because of the heat. And it just doesn't really feel right then to stick a pair of trainers on the end of that. No, I'm with you. So I'm on the lookout for some more comfortable but slightly smarter or prettier shoes than just a trainer. I think it's very complicated, what to wear, especially to the office. And actually, we've got some fantastic emails about this. Oh, yeah.

1:19I was going to send them your way because we're just very unused to hot, hot, hot summers. And I think actually we're quite unused to making that distinction between hot outside and air conditioning inside. Other countries have just got an awful lot better at it. I think the footwear is incredibly troublesome. I just have an absolute ick about men's feet. Full stop. It doesn't matter if they've been pedicured. It doesn't matter if they've been buffed. I don't, I do not want to see my male colleagues' toes on display in the office eve. And I'm ashamed of my prejudice. You know, all those people who, you know, write comments under Times articles, they will come for me with my terrible hypocrisy.

2:10But this is one you're standing by. I'm going to stand by it. I don't mind women's feet. and actually I don't really mind an unruly female foot, but an unruly male foot will make me feel queasy for a long time after I've witnessed it. It does feel a bit odd in an office setting. Is this a beach in Australia? Yeah, it's just, I don't know, it really, it just curdles my mind. But then I also have a thing more generally because a couple of years ago the flip-flop really had a big resurgence and it kind of became... With the Havianas. Yes, Havianas, Model Off Duty. What did you say? Model Off Duty?

2:45Model Off Duty. you know, where they're just papped around and they look very casual. Oh, is that a term? Yeah, they're in their flip-flops and jeans. It's like model of duty look. I love this, love this, right? I have a bit of a thing about people wearing flip-flops around London. I just think the ground is so dirty. Yeah. You're on the tube and stuff and you get home and the edges of your feet are black because the flip-flop is not providing enough protection. I'm with you, girlfriend. I'm with you and I see people attempting a line bike with a flip-flop I just think that's dangerous something's going to get caught it's going to fall off you're just not going to be able to apply the right amount of purchase to your pedal so I am with you shall we do some we haven't got to any solutions in this let me just ask you one final thing I just spoke around in circles would you favour the very very ugly sandal that seems to have come into fashion over the last couple of years.

3:46Well, I mean, they look a little, you know, squint a bit and it's like an orthopaedic boot, isn't it? Yes. So they've got a massively thick sole that's kind of bigger than your foot and then great big straps across it. And a lot of people are wearing that and I don't understand it. It doesn't seem to be aesthetically appealing at all, Eve. No, I don't understand it either, but I do find myself looking at them longingly because they look so comfortable. It's kind of like a mattress for your foot. But I don't think I would personally ever don one. No. Would you? No, I wouldn't. And you and I... Well, you know, you're in a cork platform.

4:24Yeah, we can carry on working together, save for the knowledge that neither of us are going to be incredibly disturbed by other people's shoes. Oh, I've left the one that I wanted you to read out on my desk. Do you want me to go and get it? Yes, I've done the wrong piles. We were distracted, weren't we? because of the very sad death of Penelope Keith. So we were going to run. Shall I talk amongst myself? So we were very sad. We were very sad because all of these greats of comedy have reached, you know, their 80s and 90s. Patricia Routledge died, didn't she, I think, only a couple of months ago.

5:00And Penelope Keith, I think, to the manner born in particular, for those of us of a certain age, it just was funny. I think if we watched it now, it would be very odd. The thing that I really remember was the set was incredibly obviously a set. So they would always have a picture of the car coming up the drive to the great big country house. But then it was very clear that it wasn't filmed in a great big country house. It really was the wobbly kind of acorn antiques set design. So we were talking about that and I got distracted and I put my things in the wrong pile. Here we go. Hot weather dress.

5:40Could you read that out, please? I'm trying not to pant. Well, I think some people would like it. Sprinted down the office. Pant away. This comes from Susie in North Yorkshire. Hearing you speak about dress codes, i.e. skirts, not trousers for gals, it reminded me of a time in 1976 when I worked on a post office counter. Very hot, as you remember. I wore summer dresses. Fine. so far but some were halter neck and low-backed which caused a problem the boss asked me to pop into his office and told me i couldn't wear the low-back dress as it showed i wasn't wearing a bra i'd had a major operation leaving me with a nasty scar just under my bust did i grab that excuse and run with it no the spiky young 23 year old woman i was i pointed out that my 38 double a boobs were a lot smaller than all of the male clerks get them to wear a bra and i will end of chat stills bike at 73 love susie absolutely brilliant that is brilliant absolutely brilliant response and because sometimes uh you know the the moves uh on display at the moment are are quite terrifying this comes in from judith in the lakes uh just listening to thursday's pod and the subject of trousers in the workplace i started working in 1980 at a building society where females in trousers were absolutely not approved of being slightly rebellious and physically awkward.

6:59I hated wearing skirts, so one day I wore trousers. Within an hour, I was hauled into a side office, told that my trousers were not suitable attire. I would have been sent home to change, but I lived 10 miles away, so told that I could continue the day, but to wear something more suitable in future. I was mortified, but also internally raging. I later learned that the CEO was a legs man. oh i know sicky emoji and that's why it was a skirt's preferred environment thankfully i outstayed the sexist ceo and ended my career there 30 years later at executive level having overseen the introduction of a uniform which included trousers little wins can have big impact well well done you judith and isn't that just it's just so funny that phrase legs man because you for for a long time you could be defined as either a legs man or a breast man and probably the term wasn't breast it was something else but i've yet to hear in my 57 and a half years on the planet a woman ever say to another woman you know are you a are you a bicep girl or are you a butt girl you know we just haven't defined the male body in the same way have me and and the idea that you're you're a legs man and therefore you want to see a lot of your employees legs on display just to keep just to keep you feeling happy throughout the day there's another pair of legs and i dread to think how it even came to light that he was oh i know that's why is that common knowledge you know professional setting yes it's just revolting isn't it so judith well done you say it's a little win but i think it's quite a big win actually we've got a rebellious listenership we've got a lovely rebellious listenership and claire from hertfordshire has sent us a photograph of harry style sporting a very natty pair of shorts as part of a suit claire went to see harry styles at wembley last week and they are very very short shorts and it's a bright blue suit and he's wearing the pop socks and the brogues and bearing in mind it was 37 or 38 degrees in london last week i mean i don't know how harry managed to do it and i don't know how the crowd managed to do it i think there were quite a lot of passings out weren't there and there was i think there was a video of harry styles himself he's like swigged some water and then sort of started to cough and choke on it a bit and had to lie down on the stage yeah so yeah i think it was a lot for everyone but huge huge heat to contend with uh take that we're playing as well in uh stratford in the in the london stadium the West Ham Stadium, which West Ham got because it was a premiership stadium.

9:40And I just point out, absolutely no relish at all. Absolutely no relish at all. That they're not in the premiership anymore. So what happens? Take That performs in their stadiums. We got caught in some Take That traffic. Oh, my God. I was quite jealous of the people who wanted to Take That. Oh, my God. So I was just trying to get back from the end of school. Actually, I just want to say a tiny thing about that in a moment. Back to my home in East London. And we got caught in the Take That traffic. What is Take That traffic? Take That traffic is a fantastic dad or husband driving 14 women in a minibus to Take That.

10:24So we got to the edge of Olympic Park. and it was obvious it was going to take people about 40 minutes to get in the traffic was just completely static and car after car after car opened with you know beautiful women and actually loads and loads of of uh 40 something 50 something women with their daughters as well which is absolutely lovely to see all the cars being driven by the husband or the dad nobody got angry nobody got annoyed uh it was it was quite wonderful so i mean all hail all hail to the boys i think they're better off without Robbie. The Take That documentary I can highly highly recommend even if you aren't particularly interested in Take That or you think that all of those documentaries are hagiographies because they they are all exec produced by the people who are featured in them but it's actually really brilliant and Gary Barlow talks about himself in an incredibly honest and you know quite difficult way about all of the problems that he had with his managing his ego managing his depression managing his eating i mean he's really bold actually about laying it all down on the table i thought it was a cracking cracking watch yeah i reminded myself something i wanted to say and i've forgotten it now eve school school my daughter has left school so that is the the last in our household to be in school and i just wanted to say such a massive massive thank you my two have met along the way teachers who undoubtedly their lives are better through having known them they've just been so full of beans energy insightful tuition uh they've made school fun i mean honestly i was standing on the playing field uh looking around at all of the the young ones going to their prom they just look so beautiful these days so so beautiful and uh all of the teachers who were there too and i just you know sometimes in life you do just have that slight overwhelm of emotion and i'm not expressing it very well now but i just wanted to say such a huge huge thank you and kse uh who does sometimes listen to this podcast can you see what they've done there with her initials thank you god oh monkey took a while didn't it's monday come on come on it is a monday yeah uh who who possibly won't thank me for actually getting a name check in this i think you're just one of the most remarkable educationalists uh in the business so i'd like to thank you uh for being part of my kids lives and that ends the adulation of teachers section but they do make such a huge difference certainly oh god the energy i mean how you manage to keep that going for years and years and years in the classroom i just don't know and the the knock that teachers sometimes get for the long holidays and decent pensions uh god they deserve absolutely every single second of relaxation outside of the classroom yeah and their retirement should be incredibly uh well padded sorry my You're actually dodgy.

13:35As a student, I think when you get to that end point where you're saying goodbye to your school and all the build-up of the exams and stuff, it all kind of falls away. And you do just have this unbelievable relief and gratitude left for the teachers who sometimes manage to drag you there kicking and screaming to the end. And you are only, I was trying to work this out, coming into work this morning, you're only, what, eight or nine years out of school, correct? How old are you? Yes, I'm 27. Yes. Yeah. So it's good that you can recognise that already. Yeah, well, I think... Sorry, that sounded incredible.

14:09No, no, I think that's perfectly... I think that's quite right, but I think because it maybe really was touch and go there a little bit. And I just remember my teacher, like, really looking me in the eye and being like, just get on with it. And then me being like, mm. And then at the end, just being like, thank you so much. That's... Well, good on you for being able to recognise that, actually. and for responding to the, maybe you want to pull your finger out now, Salisbury. Do you go back to your school? Do your school know how much you've achieved? Thank you. I don't quite know how to answer that.

14:48I have been in touch with my school actually previously because I have booked them as a teacher's voice for news shows that I've worked on. So I've been in touch with them so they know that I work here. But not loads and loads. And would you be one of those students happy to go back and talk to other kids? Yes, definitely. I actually had a very positive school experience. But I think something that's amazing about teachers, you have only so many teachers in your life, so you remember them really, really poignantly. And I'm sure teachers remember so many of their students. But I just find it amazing that they do what they did for me, round and round and round for so many students every single year.

15:29yep and and i completely agree with you on that and and then that's exactly what i was thinking looking around the playing fields that there's so much energy that's come from all of the teaching stuff in my kids lives for the last 15 years or so and yet these teachers will literally pack it up for the summer come back in and do it all again for another cohort and i just think it's remarkable absolutely remarkable and especially these days because you are also tasked with this massive emotional responsibility for your pupils for informing them about the geopolitics of the world um absolutely everything from you know keeping yourself alive with first aid to spotting the early signs of sexually transmitted diseases everything seems to be lumped to the teacher's door and the fact that you're also managing to uh you know send out into the world people who know something about physics or geography or chemistry or whatever it just seems absolutely remarkable too.

16:25So we love the teachers, don't we? Not all of them though, because I had some right old shits, as did I. So we won't name them, but the ones that we love, we absolutely love them. I should also just say a quick hello to Mr Ling. Less of a teacher, more of a way of life. Paddington Bear Stairs and Tupperware Trials. This is incoming from Katrina. You know, now, Katrina, I'm a little bit worried about your household. Here we go. I had musings on a couple of Wednesday's meteor topics, but while sweltering all night in a suboptimal south-facing London extension, you're going to regret that, aren't you, I've tackled nothing more demanding than the Paddington Bear stare.

17:08Our cat Biscuit reserves these icy, withering reproaches for occasions when the human race has particularly disappointed him, such as last week, when not only had my early teenage boys foiled his attempt to sneak a dead robin upstairs that's very sad the robins are beautiful and slung him out in the garden but i was apparently inexcusably slow in realizing that he wanted to come in again five minutes later we've been trying to foster the boys mastery of life skills particularly in the housework hygiene and cooking arenas having identified that these were not their natural strengths so i was pleased that they dealt with the robin situation themselves it was a couple of days before i discovered that the boys had gone slightly rogue in their animal undertaker services and rather than benefiting from a simple eco-burial in a flower bed, the robin had been neatly sealed in a plastic takeaway container and placed in the sunniest corner of the patio, where it had been stewing way ever since.

18:01A gentle inquiry revealed that there had been a thought process behind this. They'd wanted the robin to rest in peace undisturbed by Biscuit or any other cat. Do you like for that? We discussed the natural cycle of life and I left them to it again. Yesterday, the elders mentioned that the burial had been adjusted to an eco-one. they'd lob the robin over the neighbour's fence. Oh, Katrina. Once I'd done due diligence and confirmed that Robin's final destination had been the overgrown, currently uninhabited garden on one side of us rather than the neat lawn and large ornamental pond on the other and that they'd even remembered to take it out of the box first, I relaxed.

18:36It wasn't until the evening that I remembered to check whether they'd put that container in with the plastic recycling. Oh, no, replied the youngest proudly. It wasn't broken, so I rinsed it and put it back in the kitchen cupboard. the tension is very much there yes and i admire your honesty as well and i mean it's a difficult thing isn't it if we keep cats they are definitely killers in the local natural environment and there is a conflict there definitely definitely a conflict melanie who is one of our regular correspondents from chichester sometimes to be found in a chateau eve she is a bit fed up with football being on all the time.

19:17And there is something about this World Cup because it goes on for a very long time. It's in so many different destinations. Even though it is very, very far away and a lot of it is happening at night while we're asleep, it does feel a bit more overwhelming than others. Would you agree? What, because it is in so many places? Yes, because it's in so many places. Because you wake up in the morning, there's just a lot, just a lot to get your head round. Yeah. And I mean, I'm sounding like a commander of the British Empire here, that everything should be in our time zone, painted pale pink. And I think because of that as well, I'm not really following the schedule quite so closely.

19:50So then you don't really know when you're going to be caught unaware because there is a football game going on shortly and you weren't really, you didn't know. Yeah, totally. Suddenly you're sat in a natural wine bar and there's loads of men in football shirts around you because they're going on to a game. That's what I found myself in Brighton. Are they not watching it in the natural wine bar? Are they not watching it with a bit of skin contact? Orange wine and a scream. thankfully do you know what when the World Cup makes it to the organic wine bars of Hove, Brighton and Worthing we know that it's a spent force and we all need to try and find another sport to watch I think or I don't know maybe that's I mean that's a lot of people say that's what's happened to Arsenal anyway isn't it?

20:34yes the tap-ass club of North London I'm not complaining so Melanie I'm sorry there are quite a few people who feel the same way as you and you know you've just got to hang on in there, find some other things on Netflix and try and distract yourself. And Wimbledon comes along. If you like the tennis, then that's great. If you don't like the tennis, you really are absolutely stuffed for the next couple of weeks. Maybe try to take that documentary. Yes, one very good idea. Now, why I've scrawled in a great big highlighter pen across Kath's email, because Jane was saying that she wanted to know whether anybody else had indulged in Big Dunk, which is the autobiography of Duncan Ferguson that she's very, very much enjoyed.

21:19And I think it's been in, you know, the kind of top 40 books for about the last 265 years. And Kath comes in and says, I thought you might enjoy this section of our mad bookcase where Big Dunk is lying casually on top of Hilary Mantel. I promise I haven't moved anything. Yes, it's total chaos and the books are too deep. It takes forever to find the one you want. I'm currently working my way through the Lucy Barton series by the amazing Elizabeth Strout and might dive into Big Dunk just for the hell of it. The alternative is my first foray into Ken Follett, Circle of Days, so either way I'd be channeling Jane.

22:00Thank you so much for the pod, which keeps me sane and cheers me up through all life throws at me. I'm about to start chemotherapy after some ill health shenanigans this year. We are sending you all our love, Kath. And obviously, we hope that we can keep you company as well in what's going to just be such a horrible, sick-making, nasty way to be spending your time. But we really, really hope that things get brighter. And Kath wanted to say as well that she had a similar reaction as Jane to Disclosure Day. My partner loved it. I just felt I'd missed the point somehow and it was too long. And following Eve's experience of going to the wrong Greek island, I'm never going to live that town, are you?

22:42I wanted to tell you about a holiday experience where I let a friend book everything, and only on arrival did I find out we were on a Club 8 into 30 holiday. Not my scene at all. I was 32 and felt like everybody's mum. I decided to just embrace it there in the end and had a lovely holiday fling with a young man called Fergus. I still think about it every now and again. It was wonderful. uh cath well i mean think about it as often as you like how absolutely fantastic i always thought with club 18 to 30 was was there a strict age limit check you know where when you booked and on your passport details you revealed that you were 32 you'd actually be banned from coming in because surely there would have been quite a few pervs sort of begs the question what's the point of it if you go and you're 38 yes yeah and you definitely shouldn't be no no maybe it is a kind of indicator but then yeah there would have been a couple of parts yeah chose to ignore it but just also the 18 to 30 limit is weird and would i want my 18 year old teenagers either gender going on a holiday where there were lots of 30 year olds no yeah no and as a 30 year old you've got to look at your friends a bit funny if they want to go on or no no definitely definitely definitely but But Kath, the reason why I've put why on this is because you've got so many books twice.

24:01So you've got two copies and... Oh, OK. No, I've been foolish there. You've got two copies of Philip Pullman's The Book of Dust, but one's volume two and the other's volume three. So we'll let you have that. But you do have two exact copies of Harper Lee, Go Set a Watchman. I mean, like exact copies right next to each other. So why has that happened? and do they both mean something to you? And you are incredibly well read. There are so many Hilary Mantel's in that. It's a very good mix. And then you've also got Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds. I didn't realise that was a book. Is it a book, a film?

24:37Did you not? And a TV show. Is it? That's passed me by. And you've also got, I think it must be an autobiography of Huey Morgan, the fun-loving criminal, which is right next to Barack Obama. A Promised Land. So these are all great. And we'd like more of those, actually, if you've got something funny standing against something funny. I can feel a little bit of an Instagram hit coming on. Yes, me too. I think if you were to rent out Kath's house as a holiday home, you'd be quite well set if that was the bookshelf on offer. Wouldn't you just? You'd be delighted. There are about ten books in here that I just never even realised have been published.

25:17And I would absolutely love to read them. You've got Thirst by John Robbins up against Stephen Fry, Odyssey. I don't like that because Stephen Fry hasn't written The Odyssey. Somebody else got there first. It's not Stephen Fry's Odyssey. I can see how that would grope you. It's just really, it's not right, Stephen. Back off, love, back off. And you've also got Death in a Strange Country, which is my favourite Don Liam book of all time. So, Kath, good luck, my lovely. we are with you every step of the way a fantastic suggestion we were talking about cold books weren't we to read in case you just got a little bit too hot Imogen says Woman in the Polar Night by Christine Ritter have you come across that?

26:04I have not no, ok, it was published in the 30s in Germany and hasn't been out of print since, my daughter bought it for me for my birthday, it was absolutely brilliant, such an interesting woman and story the descriptions of life in a hunting cabin in Svalbard through the winter have stayed with me absolutely magical and Imogen signs off by saying at the risk of sounding like a twat we've also been planning our new ski trip and that's helped that sounds good sounds good anything that takes your mind off hot hot hot hot hot hot uh final one and then we'll explain what our guesting situation is over the last couple of day's eve if that's okay oh i tell you what actually could we just ask sarah to send her picture of the katana mar sarah sends the email i thought you might like to see the katana mar my son set up the other night please excuse the state of the facility we're mid-building project but the walls are serving as a great screen mittens and fluffy were delighted at their front row seats so i so this is obviously a cinema for cats isn't it but i couldn't but i clicked on it and i couldn't open it uh dead dog from a plane is the last one uh nikki says i've come back from holiday i'm catching up on the podcast but the dead dog in a suitcase story reminded me of my brother who's a pilot in south africa at the time he was a flight instructor at a small airfield on the coast and was approaching the car park by an upset old lady.

27:35She explained her beloved dog had died and wanted his final resting place to be in the sea that he loved so much. My brother is a kind soul and agreed to take the remains up, thinking he was going to scatter some ashes as he flew over the sea, so they went to her car. Bear in mind, he mainly flew in small two-seater Cessnas, similar in size to the original Mini. So imagine his shop when she opened the boot and there was a dead full-size Alsatian dog. I still don't know how he did it, but the dog is now somewhere in the Indian Ocean enjoying his afterlife in the waves. Now, Nikki, I mean, how...

28:10So you just... So many questions. Should you be opening the door on a small plane and shoving out... Looks so suspicious. A big dead dog? I mean, I just don't think... Is that safe? Did the dog eventually wash up somewhere? Yes. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, just what, but also, what a horrible way to go. It's really dark. It's really dark. So, Nikki, we're with you on that. That's just really bonkers. And, I mean, I'm sure that she wanted her beloved dog, you know, to obviously have a significant final resting place, but I think better to cremate first. It's just going to hit the waves with such an impact.

28:54And how do you even get it onto the plane in the first place? It must have literally been like carrying a dead body. Yes, yeah. No, very, very strange. No, it's quite strange. Very, very strange indeed. Can I just put something out there? And I don't mean to be too macabre, but when various pets have died over the years, and they've all been cremated, and some of them have been scattered, some of them have been buried, some have stood in the cupboard. But why does the body become heavier after it's died? or is that just I imagine it to be heavier? Is there a thing that happens? We're back into bad taxidermy, aren't we?

29:30I feel like it does get heavier, but I don't know why either. Why would that be? It's a bit weird, isn't it? Right, we leave you with that thought. Like I say, I'm very, very sorry. Enjoy, happy Monday. We didn't think that that's what we were going to end on. Let's think again about lovely teachers.

29:47Now, we're doing something a little bit different. We're not having two big guests for today and tomorrow because we wanted to talk about AI on the podcast. It's part of our ongoing small middle-aged female campaign to just stay in it, understand it, not be frightened by it and kind of get a bit more on board. So today we are talking about finance and how AI can really, really help us and also some of the things that we should be a bit wary of. So we hope you can feast your mind over this and find something informative, educational and entertaining, which was a slogan of a previous corporation that we worked at that then decided it didn't need us working there anymore.

30:30We're going to talk about AI and money now. We're going to do it in the company of Lawrence White, who is UK banking correspondent at Reuters, and Harriet Rees, who's group CIO at Starling, both in the studio with me. You're both very welcome. We've got so much to pack into this time, So let's get going. Harriet, what can I do now that is produced by AI or governed by AI that I just couldn't even have dreamt about doing, let's say, five years ago? Well, we all remember the days of having to print off one's bank statement and get the highlighter pen out so that you could review your spending last month.

31:10And of course, digital banking brought that to the mobile and we were able to then see what we'd spent in our applications. But AI has now enabled us to really break down the sort of the barrier that was there for consumers when it comes to understanding their spending. So in the Starling app, for example, you can now go in and say, how much should I spend on coffee last month? Or how much should I spend on my bills last year? And these are questions that really lower the barrier to entry for people to actually understand where their money is going. And then hopefully adopt and evolve their habits so that they can be much more healthy and financially savvy.

31:45so effectively AI is acting as the sensible voice that we should always have had in our head about money but quite a few of us have just completely ignored I think it's about just having having the knowledge I think ultimately for a lot of people it was too easy for understanding your finances to be something that was considered too difficult too abstract because it required several steps before you could get that level of information but today with the power of conversational AI and I'm talking about using LLMs under the hood, we can really break that down and help people to have the power and the knowledge that they need within their hands.

32:20You're also doing an awful lot of work to help us avoid scams, aren't you? How does that work? Yeah, we really are. So I'm sure your listeners will be aware that there is an epidemic in the UK at the moment when it comes to fraud and UK consumers in particular are really struggling with this. So the banks at large have been trying behind the scenes to improve their fraud detection capabilities over the last few years but ultimately the fraudsters are still winning and the losses from a volume and value perspective are increasing. So at Starling, we chose to use AI and again, to put the power of AI into the hands of our customers.

32:53And we've launched something called Scam Intelligence, which allows people to upload images of Facebook marketplace listings or other online listings and simply to have a conversation with an AI tool about what the risks may be with regards to this payment. So we We might say, this price looks a little too good to be true. We might say, have you met the seller? We might say, why don't you ask a few more questions about this? And then recently, with the help of Cecilia, who was the victim of the Tinder swindler scam, some of you might have seen this on Netflix, we've actually evolved the capability of the tool to cover a number of other scams, including investment scams and romance scams, so that our consumers can actually have a conversation with the application about payments that they might be making.

33:34and we will prompt them to say, OK, have you met the person who's asking you for this money? Why are they rushing you to send this money? Again, just to bring those sort of red flags to the customer's attention and hopefully stop them making those fraudulent payments. So all of that sounds absolutely lovely. AI is creating guardrails that make us safer in terms of how our money is handled. But, Lawrence, everybody's big fear with AI and we're right to be fearful because people who've made AI tell us we should be fearful of when it goes rogue and starts doing something that is completely unforeseen.

34:09And when that's with our money, that is terrifying. Scary, yes. And I think obviously a lot of the work we've been doing recently in Reuters is looking into some of the risks associated with AI. The big one that was in the news recently was around Mythos, Anthropics' latest release, which has the potential, we've been told, to detect vulnerabilities, so-called zero-day exploits, in bank systems. much faster than had previously been possible. So the fraudsters and scammers who are out there can use these programs to find vulnerabilities in bank systems. And someone at a bank recently told me it's gone from weeks and days from these vulnerabilities being found to when the attack will come to minutes.

34:51So that's one big area where AI is sort of accelerating the risks as well as the systemic risks building up, which a lot of people worry about. If banks and traders start using this stuff and they're all using the same models, you can see the potential risks there. Very much so. So, Harriet, how do you mitigate against exactly those kind of things happening at a bank? Well, I think there's two things to say. The first is to, of course, acknowledge the risk in the short term, but actually to acknowledge the opportunity in what Lawrence has just outlined. Because actually with tools like Mythos, if within the development cycle, we are able to spot and identify those vulnerabilities earlier, where there are patches to those vulnerabilities, they can be implemented sooner.

35:32So actually the future state is that we will identify these before these products and softwares are even shipped to production. I think what we're in now is an interim state where we know that there are vulnerabilities out there that we have not yet caught through traditional methods. And therefore we need to expedite patching those and mitigating those vulnerabilities in this moment, which the sector at large has responded to. There's been a huge movement from regulators and banks alike to really expedite the activity in this space. And with the inception of that understanding about these vulnerabilities being out there, I think that there's a positive movement for the industry when it comes to security.

36:05So you talked about AI keeping us safer because it's making us more aware of scams. But what happens if AI actually starts scamming us? Yeah, I think we need to be really cognizant about where the line is when it comes to the autonomy that we give to, in particular, agentic systems. What do you mean by agentic systems? Agentic systems would be an AI system that has the ability to take an action on your behalf. And this is the direction of travel that we're seeing in the industry and more broadly in AI. And I think that, again, there is a lot of potential here for consumers. But we have to think very carefully about how we protect consumers and ensure that consumers understand and are comfortable with the actions that any AI assistant or agent would be taking on their behalf.

36:48So at Starling, we've actually been experimenting with this. We were the first UK bank to launch an AI assistant with agentic capability. Through the assistant, you can set up spaces, which are individual partitions within your account, to transfer money and start saving, etc. And we have required that for every agentic action, the human is required to approve each single action so that we can prove that our customers really understand what the AI system is carrying out. If you did a survey, Lawrence, of, let's say, 100 banking customers for any high street bank or online bank across a wide age range.

37:23How many people do you think would say, that all sounds whizzy woo and remarkable, but I'd like to go into a bank and still be able to talk to somebody. Why is that taking the opportunity for human interaction and confidence away from me? Yes, and of course you probably can't because there aren't many branches left for a lot of these banks anymore. And that's one risk of this AI that it increases this trend of banking becoming more remote everything's online everything through is through the app which is fine when it works but not when it doesn't I think what we're seeing with the agentic AI stuff that that Harriet's just been talking about so far is I think a lot of people are willing to use AI to help them search you know if you could imagine what mortgage should I get you put a prompt into an AI model and it'll spit out some answers what banks are also worried about is that's you want to be discoverable in that process so my bank gets recommended but also what are the risks if I'm then being seen to have given advice as a bank to for somebody to buy this mortgage or that financial product and it then goes wrong whose fault is that is it chat gpt's fault or is it this bank's fault so i think that's another thing at the moment i think most of your listeners will have tinkered with ai to try and recommend you know it's brilliant at planning a holiday and then you go and actually check it and all the train times are wrong and it actually doesn't work so i think we're at that stage now where people are tinkering and they're using it to help them search for things but not necessarily trusting it yet but there'll come a time where the whole transaction could in theory be done within the AI model and that obviously has huge potential to disintermediate marketplaces like Amazon or whatever if all of your transaction is done within an AI platform.

39:00Yeah so you just ask one simple question and the whole thing is done for you. Some of the language is a little bit confusing isn't it to first-time users and in fact Jerry says what's the LMN under the hood I think it was LLM which stands for large language model and this is the capability that has been evolving over the course of the last couple of years which which we term generally as generative AI so examples of models in this space would be chat GPT, Gemini, Claude for example and these are the models that are often used under the hood and then trained either on specific data sets or on specific applications by banks in the UK to carry out these specific applications.

39:40So to Lawrence's point, if something is wrong within that system, it's been wrong within the scrape of information and your bank allows it to go ahead. Is it your fault? Is it my fault? Is it Gemini's fault? Whose fault is it? I think we need to be very careful about thinking about the sort of layers of liability here. As a regulated bank, it's obviously very important that anything that we put into our application has been vetted by us. So before we put anything to production. We do rigorous testing, control testing, sample testing to make sure we're comfortable with the outputs. But we accept that on occasion, LLMs do hallucinate.

40:17And hence, as I spoke about earlier with the agentic capability that we have built in, we require our customers to approve themselves any action that an LLM is carrying out so that we know that the customer themselves has confirmed that action is the correct action. And I think that given where the capability of these models is today, it's really important that we put those protections in place so that we've got as much confidence in each stage of the process as we go through this journey. But the regulation hasn't changed, has it? And surely that's the problem too? So the regulation that's in place today requires Manx to ensure that the technology or the products that we put out there for consumers is there for the good of the consumer, ultimately does not harm the consumer.

41:03and that wrapper is around anything that we put out there to consumers and therefore applies to AI. The regulation also requires us to understand model constructs, requires us to be able to explain what models are doing and requires us to have audit trails across all stages of what a model applies. So the regulation per se doesn't need to change because we do already have model governance and model risk management in place. but I would absolutely expect us to be having to think more carefully about where regulation goes in a world of agentic payments, in a world of agentic commerce, in a world where agentic and autonomous systems start to emerge more rapidly across the industry.

41:40Now you see I feel strangely discomforted by all of that Lawrence. Am I alone in that? No and of course the piece we haven't talked about at all is I think everyone's biggest fear with AI that it's going to steal our jobs and I think a change that we've seen in the last few months really is that banks have become a little bit more honest or a little bit more blunt about the impact that all this stuff is going to have on jobs within the bank, which is obviously a huge employer in Britain. I think a few years ago, banks would have said, oh, this is all just freeing up capability so our staff have more time on their hands to do more things that aren't mundane tasks that AI is now doing.

42:15I think you've seen the likes of standard chartered CEO Bill Winters, HSBC's boss, come out and say, look, we are going to cut jobs because this stuff is making it much more efficient to do all the boring back office stuff in banks, processing documents, reading documents, logging customer interactions, all of that kind of stuff. So I think we are going to see in the next few years a real transformation of the banking industry. No one knows how big that is, but there was a Morgan Stanley report last year saying 200 ,000 jobs gone in European banking in the next five years. And a lot of your listeners may say, oh, boo-hoo, poor bankers.

42:47But these are often not people earning millions and millions of pounds, but people slaving away in the back office, doing routine work. a lot of those jobs are likely to go over the next few years. And obviously that makes the bank more efficient. But just like any area of employment, this is something that is going to be a concern, I think, for a lot of people over the next few years, just how many jobs will go. And do you think, going right back to Harriet's original point, that we are going to become more financially literate because we simply have an ability now to ask questions about our money of people who we might not have actually booked an appointment with down at Barclays on a Saturday afternoon at 3.30, gone along, talked about our finances?

43:28That's certainly the hope. I mean, in a sense, it's democratising access to all of this advice, but it's only democratising access to it for people who are sort of already quite online. So I think that's the concern. Is it going to bring in lots of people who aren't already comfortable using the internet, using online search platforms? So perhaps very young and very older customers will still face that barrier, I think, even if the tools are there and they're a bit sharper than they used to be. Do you think it might change the gender barrier? Because there definitely is one in terms of female investing and in terms of female wealth, actually.

44:02Do you think this changes that? Yeah, to Lawrence's point, I think there's absolutely the potential to break down some of the barriers, be it for genders, social economic backgrounds, age, etc. Actually, from our own experience launching our assistant, our agentic assistant, we expected our most tech-savvy users to be the ones that became the heaviest users sort of straight up after launch. And actually, it really wasn't. It was customers who were perhaps new to the bank and didn't know their way around it or perhaps had quite basic questions about sort of how the app worked, what support there was.

44:32They found using this assistant and being able to type or speak in natural language a much more user-friendly interface than navigating across an app. So I think it's really important when we talk about sort of the perhaps discomfort about the direction that the industry as a whole accepts that we will have a spectrum in society for the next five, ten years even of people who maybe don't want to explore banking with AI and people who do. And I think it's important that it's not a binary choice, actually, that we keep the options there for people who don't want to use it, but also allow people to explore and get the benefits when they would like to.

45:06So I think many customers feel that that choice has already been taken away from them, though. I mean, they can't physically go to a bank anymore. That is the thin end of quite a big wedge, isn't it? Yes. For banks like Starland, of course, we were born digitally and born remotely. But we've always lent into the juxtaposition of being a digital bank, but also requiring human input when it comes to banking and finances. And hence, here in the UK, we have a 24-7 call centre operation, which is completely human manned. We think it's really important. I find that very interesting. You have recognised something that is so important to people.

45:38When you get into difficulty, I do not want to have an online chat with a bot. I really, really need to talk to either Brian or Eileen, a person, actually in my own time zone as well, who understands my frustration. Can you commit to keeping that workforce, though? We have absolutely no plans to replace that human call centre workforce that's based here in the UK with AI. The challenge for us is to build something with AI that's always there and even better and has all the answers in a way that's even more intuitive to customers. And of course, we'll try to rise to that challenge. But today, we know this is really important to our customers.

46:13And we know that that's something that people come to Starling for. Here's a great big bombshell to end on, Lawrence. Isn't all of this making it really much more possible for bad actors to take us all down? If a foreign bad actor wanted to take out all of our money from our savings accounts in the UK, it would leave us going to the FSA to try and get the money back and that would bankrupt a government, wouldn't it? Yeah, that risk has always been there, though. I don't think that's an AI-specific risk and people in Harriet's job at other banks have sort of echoed her. There are teams of bankers, people working in these institutions, sat there every day finding these vulnerabilities, patching them up, spending billions of pounds every year trying to avoid that.

47:01I don't think AI has unlocked some great new capability to attack these banks. It's just made it easier and faster for certain bad actors to find vulnerabilities in bank systems and then try and exploit them. So in a sense, those risks were always there. But, yeah, it's definitely something to worry about. And because you look across this big horizon, Lawrence, I will leave the final word to you. Are you optimistic that actually we enter a different age of our relationship with money through AI or are you pessimistic?

47:35Probably pessimistic. If we look through the history of banking, I think these new technologies, they've never really changed the fundamentals, which is banks pay out 3 % on deposits, they charge 5 % on deposits, none of that's going to change. And I think my biggest worry, if I leave with one message, is it's just going to accelerate this trend for banking to be a little bit more remote and more impersonal, that it's great when everything's working and your app is recommending all these products to you. But to your point earlier, when things go wrong and you want to call and you want to speak to a human, I worry that banks are going to find ways to cut that capacity or move it elsewhere and it's all going to be more impersonal.

48:12Well, we heard a guarantee from Harriet that Herb Banks Starling has no intention of doing that at the moment. We'll keep that clip. It's lovely of you both to come into the studio. We really appreciate it. Thank you very much indeed for your time. Harriet Rees and Lawrence White. Any things that come out of that that are bothering you, they'll probably be bothering us as well. So it's Jane and Fee at times.radio. Jane is away for this week. I'm away for next week. but Eve is absolutely superb at filling in for both of us. I'm sure you will agree. And also she remains the brains behind all of the threads in the podcast.

48:50So don't think you can't send something in now because it's for Jane or for me next week because just send it in and Eve puts it all in these very special little boxes. I don't. Just pretend you do, darling. Pretend you do. Bye. Bye.

49:21Congratulations. You've staggered somehow to the end of another Off Air with Jane and Fee. Thank you. If you'd like to hear us do this live, and we do do it live every day, Monday to Thursday, 2 till 4 on Times Radio. The jeopardy is off the scale. And if you listen to this, you'll understand exactly why that's the case. So you can get the radio online on DAB or on the free Times Radio app. Off Air is produced by Eve Salisbury and the executive producer is Rosie Cutler.