say, are you expecting any shocks, Phil? Have you been hearing in the little network of agents, is there one going to come out of left field that's going to shock us all before 11 o'clock?

I'm not so sure that there are going to be any shocks, but there will be players of a decent level, a high level, that might well make a last-minute move, probably as a knock-on effect for the players that are coming in and they just don't want to necessarily be there and just want to go and play football.

And that's effectively what's happened with Alvarez.

He didn't really want to go to Arsenal.

He wanted to go to Barcelona.

But when push comes to shove it, He can't not commit to Arsenal and I'm sure they felt the same way.

So it's interesting they haven't got somebody else lined up.

Yeah, I mean, the Vinicius deal was never a go.

How much credit do they deserve for the fact that we're even talking about Europe having nights like this, plays like that? How much honour have they built up and respect because of what they've done?

Yeah, absolutely incredible.

And I think that especially when you look at Dan Neill in particular, if we go back a little bit to that kind of COVID era, we were used to academy players leaving.

And to be honest, we would never have judged any player for that, for where Sunderland was and the money that was offered on the table for the clubs.

And lads like Neil and Patterson were the ones who, A, to be fair, were smart enough to say, well, actually, because of where the club's at, we might get a chance in the team here.

But also to say, actually, it doesn't sit right with me to leave.

I want to put the club back where it belongs.

Can I just ask you, as a really jealous journalist that supports Sunderland but works in Glasgow, how fucking excited are you for just pissing about Europe for the next sort of time? Yeah.

Um, you know, h- how strong was that message about Mundal, do you think?

Yeah, I suppose it w- it w- it was strong, and it was also consistent, and I think you guys, like, know how I operate.

I wouldn't, um, pretend to know something that I don't.

And I was a bit taken by surprise when the Mundal news broke.

Um, my assumption was that with the competition for places in the team, with the way, you know, entering the last two years of his contract, it probably made sense for him to move on and for Sunderland to cash in.

That was kind of how I saw it going.

So I was a little bit surprised initially, but then once I'd kind of sat with the news for a little bit, I thought, well, you know, LaBryce has backed Mundal at every single opportunity he's had since he arrived at the club to replace Jack Clarke, um, to bring him back for the playoffs when obviously there was that question over his injuries at the time.

It's great to have that variety, even if not one of them stands out as a, a, you know, that is our guy on that part of the pitch.

Yeah, thanks for having me back on.

But I'll begin by looking at some of the latest trends in stockpiling that you mentioned at the onset.

With the global level in June, we saw manufacturers raise their purchasing activity solidly again, with the rate of growth slowing only slightly really from May's recent high.

But of course, what we're really interested in with stockpiling is how much of that buying activity actually reflects deliberate stockpiling efforts.

We can get a view on that by looking at our panel comment tracker data.

So reports of companies raising their buying activity to deliberately increase their safety stocks.

We've seen those numbers actually fall in the last couple of months from April's peak.

So definitely signs there, I think, that global trade conditions are quite subdued at the Probably a range of factors at play here, but the tariff environment is definitely still one of them.

[laughs]

I, I think, I think it's, I think it's this, is that I learned this from...

I've been, I've had two rodeos in my life, I call it.

So on my, my first, uh, my first marriage, my ex-wife ran a rodeo company with her family down in Texas, and I lived in Texas for 10 years.

I'm a city boy, right? So I didn't know about cowboy boots and big belt buckles and rodeos and all this.

But they had a very successful rodeo company that was actually sponsored by Anheuser-Busch, and one thing she taught me, and I learned from it, and I've used it to this day, is m- find something personal.

Find some, show some interest in another individual versus, "Let me just talk to you about spee- speed, speeds, features, functionality," and do a show throw up.

I know the DevOps space pretty well.

[laughs]

I, I think it, I think it's, I think it's this, is that I learned this from, I've been, I've had two rodeos in my life, I call it.

So on my, my first, uh, my first marriage, my ex-wife ran a rodeo company with her family down in Texas, and I lived in Texas for 10 years.

I'm a city boy, right? So I didn't know about cowboy boots and big belt buckles and rodeos and all this.

But they had a very successful rodeo company that was actually sponsored by Anheuser-Busch, and one thing she taught me, and I learned from it, and I've used it to this day, is m- find something personal.

Find some, show some interest in another individual versus, "Let me just talk to you about spee- speeds, feeds, features, functionality," and do a show throw up.

It's, "Hey, um, hey, I, I, hey, you live in Texas.

I know the DevOps space pretty well.

Any thoughts? Where are we with championship goal and boot thoughts?

Well, I do agree with you on Castellanos.

I think this drop down in level could be massive for him.

It would not surprise me at all if he stays at West Ham next season and wins this market.

Will he potentially share the goals with Bowen if Bowen stays? I think it sounds like Bowen's staying, but that's obviously not fully confirmed yet.

But yeah, I actually had him on my shortlist for Serie A top goalscorer at the beginning of the last season.

And it was more of like an each way angle.

I do like Stokes after reading a good spot for him.

I couldn't be strong about any of them, to be honest.

Nice.

Phil, what were you thinking? Anything? Just been having a look at this this afternoon, and this market seems to cause me problems every season.

It's so competitive.

Last season, I didn't manage to get on Bromley until they were 9-4, so I didn't get a proper price on them.

It's just really complex.

I've had a few hackers with Salford, like 10-1, 11-1.

Yeah, no, just to cut it a little bit short, I've got a view on relegation, but nothing on the winner.

and how often have you done this with the Wildlife Medical Clinic at Vet Med on campus?

This is my second time doing this.

Last year we worked together on some owl babies out by Philo and a pretty good success story there.

Not rehoming them to their parents but they ended up at a rescue facility and so we're happy with the results there.

It's interesting that you just like to do it.

Yeah, I love it.

To me, this is part of not only the community, but the ecosystem and growing up, protecting trees, keeping them healthy.

This is why you keep trees healthy for all of the environment.

Um, as a tertiary specialist, what sort of things are useful for you to, uh, know in a referral? What things are you looking for? And in terms of investigation, is this something you'd work up from the start, or, or would you go based on what you've received?

Yeah, thanks.

No, I, I think that th- this case is unusual because, uh, she had very bad epilepsy, taking previously 10 anti-seizure medications, had a, had a, had a lesion.

Um, and the, you know, one would think at face value that that is someone, uh, who might not be appropriate for epilepsy surgery because of the site of the lesion in such eloquent cortex.

And I think she must have been considered along the lines many times for surgery, and each time someone has said, "Oh, it's right.

You know, if we do a operation there, we're going to cause her more damage." The point about this case is that by involving the patient and talking about her priorities, her priorities, uh, are, are that she hates the epilepsy for the uncertainty that it gives her life.

She's got -- She can never plan her day at all because she's likely to have many seizures a day, and many of them are going to be completely disrupting.

So do you wanna, yeah, first tell us why you chose it, and then, then, then what, what struck out to you, and, uh, then go into it.

Where are your thoughts in this space?

No, so it's great to be here again, Lindsay, and it's good to have this kind of continuity as we talk about these things on a more continuous basis, because I think having the conversation is really important.

So the report, you know, really important that we have this report on a periodic basis for Skills England, try and give a bit of a sense of state of the nation, the landscape, where it is and so on.

As you say, some big themes out of it, but particularly coincidentally, or maybe, you know, brilliant planning.

You know, the Milburn Interim Report comes out in a similar sort of time.

And of course, it's addressing this extremely challenging issue of, you know, young people who can't get onto the ladder, can't get onto the employment ladder.

And yet we see in the report itself, the fact that there are significant skill shortages in the system and that, you know, in the priority sectors, there's 1.8 million jobs, 25% of jobs over the next 10 years, which are going to need filled.

No, I

And then now they feel like they have some autonomy in the decision making as well, which I think is super important.

Yeah, I actually teach MI.

MI through the OARS process.

I teach that.

Yeah, I've got a whole like two hour talk on that that I teach for people.

Yeah.

It's a really fascinating, and it's a very effective concept too, looking through things like open-ended questions, affirmations, reflective listening, and obviously then summarization.

Yeah, there's too many ways to order shit online.

So what can you tell us? What have you learned?

Well, you know, a lot.

I mean, some of it's been, you know...

We've been talking about some of it, what we just we talked about now, you know, the fact that the skills is really a key issue for people and particularly for growth and for opportunity.

And, you know, we've seen if you look specifically at areas like small businesses who...

Again, you continue to see them feeling that the system is kind of overly complex or certainly obtuse and not able to get access to it.

You know, I've looked at it.

And what are they going to get from all of this? Like, what's it going to look like and how is it going to feed into what they want? Yeah,

And nowadays, someone comes to you where you see an opportunity, how much is it, well, is this market going to be sustainable for me? How much of that comes across your thinking?

Yeah, absolutely.

For me, I was betting on league tables and outrights and just found it very complex predicting what's going to happen in all these different leagues across Europe.

So I switched over to goal scorers this season and had a lot more productivity and a lot more profit from it.

And I think there's just more clear value there.

With the league table stuff, we've seen some massive shocks this season.

AC Milan and Juventus not making top four at super short prices this And then with goal scorers, I just managed to land consistently and then using any time goal scorer as well to link in my combinations.

What

Right

... are taking research and either just butchering it or not applying context, and this goes across the board.

And, you know, um, we mentioned, we talked about the protein conversation a little bit earlier, but there's other ones as well, and the, the example which I'm talking about this Friday in the lab, which I'll just, we're gonna be talking about it here, um, is the conversation around eating repetitively.

So, eating repetitively, eating the same meals every day to get the best weight loss result.

Um, that has been, it, it hasn't been oversh- over-spoken about, but it's been misunderstood.

Uh, so looking at how that's been portrayed in the populace, 'cause most people get their information from social media, whether it be a good, a good source or a bad source.

And I suppose my current interest is really breaking down, I don't, I don't wanna say being a science communicator.

Yeah

[laughs]

Unfortunate phrase now.

But he- if he e- ever had a problem, he w- wouldn't fax people or ring them, he would demand face time with them, get them in to use his charisma to convince them as to what he wanted.

And, and this book was all about you gotta, you know, do face time to get to the big time.

So I was at TVNZ producing away, and I thought, "I'll meet all of the bosses at TVNZ.

I'll go and meet them," because we weren't allowed to go up to the fifth floor.

So I made appointments to meet all the bosses, and went and met one, and it was Mike Latten.

Yeah.

Well, I'd be hoping now in your situation you'd be able to shine some light on that, Phil, you know, and reassure us.

Well, the fact of the matter is, this is called the Doomsday Fish.

It's from mythology, Japanese mythology, or fish.

mad looking yokes.

They're long, they're silvery, two and a half meters.

Some can get up to over eight meters long.

So this is not something that, you know, you want to meet in a dark ocean somewhere.

When you say giant, how big exactly?

Did you have any main takeaways from the defensive performance?

Yeah, I, I don't agree with the McKelvie in the middle thing.

I think he's one of our biggest threats at right back.

Um, that for me, you start with McKelvie at right back and work the rest of the back four out from there, from there for me.

I think like Alderete, I definitely thought that was one of his worst games of the season the other night, but I thought, uh, he was really good against Spurs, which was only a fortnight ago.

I think the one for me is like, I love Trey Hume and I can see why he's real difficult to leave out, but I think Rayan Aildo's got to be starting left back whenever possible.

I think, as Gareth alluded to there, I think Rayan Aildo's possibly one of the players who had been impacted by that illness last week, and he did look well off the pace at Villa Park.

I'll, I'll come to you and put you on the spot with it.

Yes

... because that's where we are, but we were over 40% representation by females in our summer team.

And so I think that we are working really closely towards gender parity from a summer perspective, and I think some of that challenge therefore is, is quite specific here to the Winter Games for one or two of those reasons that we've talked about.

But you've said there visibility, perhaps the history of the Games was male dominated, but actually, from a ParalympicsGB perspective, the medals we've won over the last three Games, over 90% have been won by female athletes.

And we've got athletes on this team now who have been inspired by seeing those athletes, and that's made them want to go out, want to learn how to ski.

As Kate said, we don't have many mountains.

It's not very easy.

Aw.

So the righties were more likely to avoid competition and the lefties recorded the higher levels of competitiveness.

Yeah, and looking it out, and I suppose what's interesting is with only about 10% of people being left-handed, you know, like, why would evolution kind of keep this kind of...

People being left-handed was more repressed.

You know, it would have been the work of the devil to be left-handed in some ways.

There was always that right-handed people were more dominant in terms of the amount of people that they have.

And I suppose being rare is an advantage in lots of different ways.

And I suppose if most people are right-handed, then movements, attacks... play styles all these kind of things are predicted and predictable so a left-hander becomes harder to anticipate even you see in old castles like in trim or other places where there's stairwells they're always in a certain direction to be preferable for the defender to be right-handed you know chopping down from above so it's something that's historically ingrained in us as well

such a rarity for the left handed people my group of close friends eight of us are left handed only one is right handed also my partner and child are left handed I know more left handed people than I do right says this listener Phil

Come on.

I was there for that, and I met her, and, um, I thought she was really hot.

W- she is really hot.

She's way out of my league.

And I, um, we just started small talking.

It was going great.

I bought her a drink, and it got to the point where we sat, watched the show.

Uh-huh.