What happens when you remove the most popular social lubricant and fully meet yourself in your thirties?

In this episode, I’m joined by Emily Syphas, founder of Sober & Social and one of the UK’s leading voices on sober curiosity, hangover-free living and rethinking alcohol in your 30s.

Emily shares her personal journey from heavy drinking in hospitality, to years of full sobriety, to finding a hangover-free relationship with alcohol.

Together, we explore what actually changes when you question the social rules we’ve inherited around drinking, and what clarity replaces the blur.

We get into:

🧠 Sobriety as a journey, not a destination

🧠 Whether hangover-free living is a 30s cheat code

🧠 How alcohol, anxiety and confidence interact

🧠 The clarity that comes to dating and friendships without alcohol

This episode isn’t about quitting drinking. It’s about outgrowing versions of yourself that relied on numbing, distraction or validation and stepping into what comes next.

🎙️ Follow us: @theweirdyearspodcast

🚀 New episodes every Tuesday — hit subscribe to navigate the weirdness together.

What if trying to be our best, healthiest, most beautiful selves is actually… stressing us out?

In this episode, I’m joined by Emilie Lavinia, Fitness and Wellbeing Editor at The Independent, to make sense of the ever-expanding world of health, wellbeing and beauty in our thirties.

This is not yet another podcast episode with a list of everything you need to be doing — it's Emilie's stripped-back, honest perspective shaped by years inside the beauty industry.

We get into:

✨ How to spot products with actual research behind them

✨ Why women are ageing under a microscope while men get to call their facelifts “biohacking”

✨ The difference between doing wellness and feeling well

✨ Why going back to basics might be the best wellness glow-up you have

If you’ve ever felt like beauty and wellness is a treadmill where you can't keep up, this episode is your reset.

📲 Follow Emilie Lavinia: @emilielaviniauk

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🚀 New episodes every Tuesday — hit subscribe to navigate the weirdness together.

What if the arguments you’re avoiding/repeating/stuck in… are the exact ones that could make your life better?

In this week’s Weirdly Personal, I’m getting into the fights we should be having in our thirties — and the ones we can finally stop wasting energy on.

After spending way too much time arguing with men on the internet (productive? questionable), I realised just how much of our energy goes into the wrong conflicts - and how powerful the right arguments can be.

Arguments aren’t about winning; they’re about understanding, clarity and connection.

In this episode, I break down:

✨ The five arguments you never need to have again

✨ The fights that actually improve your life - values, alignment, accountability and equality

✨ How to spot the real issue underneath a conflict

✨ How to argue in a way that brings you closer, not further apart

If you’ve ever replayed a conversation 47 times, avoided a necessary conflict, or found yourself knee-deep in a pointless debate, this one will shift how you think about arguing in your thirties.

Listen, reflect, and maybe send this to someone you’ve been avoiding a conversation with.

🙏 Follow us at @theweirdyearspodcast

What if you built your career through your own sucessful business… only to realise you’d quietly outgrown it?

That’s exactly what Chloë Downes found herself facing and right at the peak of her success.

Chloë is the recently exited founder of the multi-million-pound talent agency SHFT, a Forbes 30 Under 30 alum, and one of the few women of colour in her industry. From the outside she was thriving, but inside she knew this wasn’t her dream.

We talk about:

✨ How success doesn’t always feel like success

✨ What it’s really like to walk away from a career when you’re on top

✨ The pressure of being a visible female founder

✨ How the combination of ADHD and autism shapes her approach to the world

This episode is for anyone who’s ever hit a level of success and then realised… this doesn’t fit me anymore.

✨ Follow Chloë: @frkle & @chloe.dwns

📲 Follow us: @theweirdyearspodcast

🚀 New episodes every Tuesday — hit subscribe to navigate the weirdness together.

What if your self-worth has quietly been outsourced?

In this Weirdly Personal episode, I’m unpacking the validation loop - that exhausting cycle of chasing approval, likes, or praise even when we know it’s making us miserable.

I get into how our need for validation isn’t a personality flaw, but a learned pattern shaped by our childhood and reinforced by a culture that rewards traditional progress at one of the stickiest times of our lives.

From the dopamine hit of social media to the performance of dating and work success, I explore why our thirties can feel like a constant test of “am I doing enough?”

We’ll cover:

🔁 How the need for external validation is a learned

🔁 Why it feels so heavy in our thirties

🔁 The cost of living for likes, promotions, or praise

🔁 Research-backed ways to shift from external to internal validation

This one’s for anyone who’s ever found themselves looking to everyone else for answers or playing for the applause instead of their own joy.

🎧 New episode every Tuesday

🙏 Follow us at @theweirdyearspodcast

📲 Share it with someone who’s struggling to escape the validation loop.

We know that losing people we love is inevitable - but why does grief still feel so awkward?

Freddie lost both of his parents by the age of 23, an experience he didn’t face head-on. The first time, he buried it in childhood distractions; the second, he numbed it through socialising and alcohol.

Now in his thirties, he’s learned that grief doesn’t end — it evolves. And at some point, it has to be faced.Through running, reflection, and opening up about loss online, Freddie has found peace in the power of conversation.

In this episode, we talk about:

🌀 The non-linear journey of grief

🌀 Navigating your twenties and thirties without parents

🌀 The questions Freddie wishes he’d asked while they were still here

🌀 How to prepare for the practical side of loss

This episode is for anyone who’s lost someone, fears losing someone, or wants to better understand how to show up for those who have.

✨ Follow Freddie: @f_oscar_r

📲 Follow us: @theweirdyearspodcast

🚀 New episodes every Tuesday — hit subscribe to navigate the weirdness together.

What if your hormones had ruled your life for as long as you could remember?

After years of emotional crashes and misdiagnoses, Kristina finally discovered she was living with PMDD — premenstrual dysphoric disorder, a hormone condition that debilitates her for two weeks of every month.

In this raw and brave conversation, Kristina opens up about:

🌀 What living with PMDD is really like

🌀 How it impacts her dating, career, and big life decisions

🌀 Her decision to choose a hysterectomy in her early 30s

This is a story about hormones, yes — but also about taking back control when your body feels like it’s working against you, and the courage it takes to make decisions others might never understand.

✨ Follow Kristina: @kristinagoodsell

📲 Follow us: @theweirdyearspodcast

🚀 New episodes every Tuesday — hit subscribe to navigate the weirdness together.

What if identity shifts aren’t breakdowns but breakthroughs?

This week, we’re getting weirdly personal about identity - that quiet, disorienting shift that creeps in when who you were stops fitting, but who you’re becoming isn’t clear yet. Suddenly, the things that once defined you, your job, your habits, your goals, might not feel like you anymore.

From grieving old versions of ourselves to realising how much of our “personality” was performance, we’re getting into it all.

I'm riffing on...

🌀 Why our thirties are such a turbulent time for identity

🦋 The difference between your core self and your shell self

🥀 Why shedding old versions of yourself can feel like grief (and why that’s okay)

📦 How to find peace in your identity through new stories and small actions

If you’ve ever caught yourself thinking, “I don’t even recognise myself anymore,” then you’re not lost, you’re just shedding and this one is for you.

🎧 New episode every Tuesday

🙏 Follow us at @theweirdyearspodcast

📲 Share it with someone who’s in their own shedding era.