Education

Mind the Gap

by Michael Comyn

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Mind the Gap: Making Education Work Across the Globe

Latest episodes

What I Heard When I Listened Back

September 5, 2026 · 10 min

Episode 90 of Mind the Gap is a pause rather than a conclusion. Looking back through the archive, Michael listens again to the ideas, questions, certainties and contradictions that have shaped the first ninety episodes. What has changed?…
The Effect Nobody Read Properly

August 29, 2026 · 8 min

You know the Dunning-Kruger effect. "The dumbest people are the most confident." Except that's not what the 1999 study actually found — and the correction most people haven't heard is stranger than the myth itself. Michael Comyn traces…
Not That Kind of Family

August 22, 2026 · 6 min

"We're a family here." You've heard it, probably from someone who meant it warmly. This week, Michael Comyn takes the phrase more seriously than it usually gets taken — and asks the question nobody stops to ask first: which kind of family…
Nobody Noticed the Bend

August 15, 2026 · 7 min

The Space Shuttle Challenger disaster wasn't a surprise. Engineers had seen the same O-ring damage on earlier, successful flights — reviewed, discussed, waved through. Nobody hid it. Something quieter had happened first: sociologist…
The Shape of the Story You're In

August 8, 2026 · 8 min

You already know the voice. This week, a different kind of gap — the one between the life you're living and the plot you never actually chose. Michael Comyn draws on psychiatrist Eric Berne's idea of the life script — the unconscious plan…

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Can't You Take a Joke?

August 1, 2026 · 13 min

The sentence arrives about a second and a half after the remark, and it is always delivered lightly: I'm only joking. Notice where it sits. It doesn't withdraw what was said — it leaves the remark exactly where it is and changes what…
The Authority Gradient

July 25, 2026 · 11 min

Last week, Michael Comyn made the case for silence. This week, the exception — because there's a second kind of silence, the sentence that was formed, weighed, and then never said. Aviation has a name for the conditions that produce it…
Dead Air

July 18, 2026 · 8 min

The voice that tells Ireland to mind the gap spent thirty years being trained never to let silence happen. In radio, they call it dead air — eight seconds of quiet and alarms sound in rooms you'll never see. Then Michael found himself in…
Two Takes

July 11, 2026 · 8 min

Twenty-six years ago, a voice was recorded in a studio in Manchester. Two takes. The first was used. The second was a safety copy. Nobody thought it would matter. That voice now tells millions of people to mind the gap. Every day. Several…
Shut Up. Let It Land.

April 11, 2026 · 7 min

Sometimes the most intelligent thing in the room is the thing left unsaid. We had a friend called Bob. When someone was being foolish — not malicious, just foolish — Bob wouldn't argue, correct, or sigh. He would go quiet. And in that…
The Good Student Leaves

April 4, 2026 · 8 min

There’s a railway station in Ireland that exists for one purpose only, not to arrive, not to stay, but to move on. In this episode of Mind the Gap, Michael Comyn explores a moment that many of us recognise but rarely name. The point at…
When Conversation Stops Being Shared- When bores bore each other.

March 28, 2026 · 10 min

We’ve all met them. The person who can hold the floor without drawing breath. The one who doesn’t quite notice when someone else is trying to speak. The conversation that somehow becomes… one-sided. In this episode of Mind the Gap…

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About the show

You already know my voice. For twenty-five years, I've been telling you to mind the gap on trains across Ireland. This is the same instruction. The gap is just different now. Mind the Gap is a podcast about the space between what we think we're doing and what we're actually doing. Between intention and impact. Between the behaviour we display and the one we'd choose if we were paying attention. Each episode is a short reflection — drawn from psychology, philosophy, and the texture of everyday life — on one of those gaps. Why do we give advice nobody asked for? Why do we lie more after the mistake than during it? Why do we perform contentment, perform listening, perform strength? And what it costs us when we do. I'm Michael Comyn — coach, broadcaster, and the voice on the platform. New episodes weekly.