Men's things XXXII: For the Boys in the Room: Why Your PSA Matters

Life After Radiotherapy

Much as I have not been giving frequent updates about life after prostate cancer radiotherapy treatment, I can say that life continues with gratitude.

The usual side effects persist; the urinary symptoms are not as concerning and remain quite manageable, there is no discernible bowel issue, and weekday nocturnal insomnia gets some respite with weekend lie-ins.

My voice still vacillates between a weak, hoarse whisper and the normal timbre I am known to have. It does need checking out. When my mother first heard the weaker end of my vocal spectrum, she started casting and binding in the name of Jesus on the phone, with no exchange of pleasantries; it literally freaked me out.

Monitoring My Progress

I have a biannual consultation at the Christie Hospital with an Oncology and Urology nurse, as part of the aftercare monitoring, which may continue for another couple of years. This means that within two weeks of that appointment, I must obtain a Prostate-Specific Antigen (PSA) test, usually from my GP.

My most recent PSA level has now fallen to the lowest reading recorded since that first test in February 2024, which began the journey to an aggressive prostate cancer diagnosis.

I have written quite a bit about what this has involved, but may I suggest that you also listen to the AI Podcast for November 2025, where each of the terms related to a prostate cancer diagnosis is explained in detail.

An AI discussion podcast
on blogs published in
November 2025

Sharing the Good News

Meanwhile, I am doing fine, happy with the progress and thankful for the support and encouragement I get from my partner, Brian, my friends, and my colleagues. Upon receiving the result, I posted a comment in a wider Microsoft Teams chat, where I addressed them thus, with a link for them to assess their prostate cancer risk:

For the boys in the room.

I got some good news earlier today. Having undergone prostate cancer radiotherapy treatment about 18 months ago, my PSA is now the lowest it has ever been. Obviously, there is a hospital visit to review the situation.

Please, take some time to check your risk.

Thanks

Check your risk in 30 seconds | Prostate Cancer UK

Take That First Test

I take every opportunity to advocate for checking your prostate cancer health and going for at least that very first PSA test.

Beyond that, I try to address the concerns and fears that attend having your delicate bits inspected by medical personnel, as I have been through the whole gamut of touches and feel-ups. My verdict: nothing to fear and everything to gain, catching issues early and dealing with them promptly.

I hope you all find this helpful. Until the next update on men's things.

Blog - Men's things XXXI: Can Intimacy Be Reclaimed After Prostate Cancer?

Blog - Photons on the Prostate - Three Things I Wish I'd Known

Blog – Photons on the Prostate - A year from starting radiotherapy

Blog - A prostate cancer diagnosis, one year on

Blog - Men's things - Prostate Cancer blogs

A Google NotebookLM AI Podcast on this blog

AI Serving My Blogs in New Light - Q4 2025

Discovering Audio Overviews

One of the most fascinating things I have found in my use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the Audio Overviews feature of Google NotebookLM. For the year 2026, I have created a medium-length podcast of about 15 to 20 minutes on each blog post.

What intrigues me about it is the way AI reviews the source blog and weaves a narrative, whilst taking the time to explain or define obscure terms and bringing to light interesting insights that I may never have considered when writing the blog.

Finding Common Threads

I appreciate that some of these podcasts can get certain facts wrong, but overall, the thrust of each podcast is informative, reflective, and educational.

An extension to this has involved asking Google NotebookLM to produce a longer deep dive into all the blogs published in a month. This is where it truly comes into its own.

In my situation, each blog stands on its own ideas and merits, yet AI seems to find a common thread between them; that is something I could never have done, or if I did, the links would be tenuous at best.

Looking Ahead

This tool will only get better; the quality of the podcasts is based on how well you can tailor the prompts to centre the discussion. I would think that, with time, there will be a choice of accents and the ability to bring in more discussants, and though I have rarely used the interactive feature, that would be fun to explore.

Here, I present the monthly podcasts for Q4 2025.

An AI discussion podcast
on blogs published in
October 2025

An AI discussion podcast
on blogs published in
November 2025

An AI discussion podcast
on blogs published in
December 2025

Blog - Augmenting Humanity with AI Tools - Q1 2026 - Monthly AI Podcasts for Q1 2026

Love, Distance, and a City Called Home

A Month On

Today marks a calendar month since I boarded the flight for the 13-hour, 25-minute journey back from Cape Town to Manchester, and yet the scenes from that visit still run through my mind as though the credits have not quite rolled. Already, I am planning the next one.

Cape Town represents more than a destination; the story began barely seven years ago, when Brian and I had our second rendezvous in South Africa. Soon after we met in Johannesburg in December 2018, I resolved to spend the next Easter with him.

It was a stroke of good fortune that in late February 2019, work dried up and, rather than loiter aimlessly waiting for a new posting, I took a next-day flight to Johannesburg. It was entirely unscripted, and yet it became the scene that changed everything. Brian joined me for ten days, which became the consummation of our relationship.

From Joburg to Cape Town

I did not cancel the planned Easter meeting. Some scenes, it seems, are written regardless of what comes before them. We were going to meet up in Johannesburg, fly together to Cape Town, and then return to Joburg for the end slice of our holiday.

Now, we just meet up in Cape Town and make home in apartments around the city and suburbs. It is the kind of story you return to willingly, knowing the setting well but always finding something in it you had not quite seen before. Each stay brings unforgettable memories as we work towards being together a lot more than being apart.

What Love Brings

What Brian brings into my life is immeasurable: love, care, companionship, laughter, shared experiences, and stories that make our uniquely special bond everything that matters to both of us. These are not trivial things. They are the substance of a story worth telling, and more importantly, worth living.

My heart is full, and I am blessed with such unconditional love that I pray daily to be worthy of the affection that someone expresses so wholly, freely, sincerely, and unashamedly.

Never a Dull Moment

There is never a dull moment. The way we seek out adventure, revisiting old haunts or discovering new places, gives the story its texture, the kind of detail that stops a narrative from flattening into something predictable.

So, Cape Town is a place transforming into a reality what is the stuff of impossible dreams coming true. Love transcends distance, endures difficulty, ekes out the best, and writes the stories we could never have imagined.

Cape Town, Our Home

Our minds walk through places we have registered so well that each recollection feels like more than words. It is like a film playing back, slowing just enough for us to keep up with everything, with no need to rewind or fast-forward; it is always at the right pace. Perhaps that is what love does to memory. It becomes the editor, keeping only what matters.

That is why we know Cape Town will be our home, our sanctuary, our nest, and our place. The story is far from over. We cannot wait to be together again in the Mother City; even time folds for the purpose of real love.

A Google NotebookLM AI Podcast on this blog

Borstal Wednesdays on Teams

The Wednesday Dread

Wednesday mornings do not deliver the kind of impetus and encouragement needed to see the day through with a sense of purpose and an aim for achievement.

One is reminded of being in a secondary school morning assembly with all the trappings of a borstal; the headmaster traipsing across the platform, slapping the birch into his hand, and speaking in a booming voice of quarrelsome displeasure and pique.

Diktat Over Dialogue

For a gathering of professionals, where the distinction is more one of corporate hierarchy than any other gift or ability, the patriarchal and patronising tone of diktat over conversation rubs everyone up the wrong way.

One might want to consider that this manager is perhaps oblivious to the fact that those who report to him are indeed professionals. Besides, whilst there may be a case for certain colleagues needing some hand-holding, guidance, direction, or instruction, the broad-brush approach to generalisation over the particular and specific creates a rather toxic environment.

Morale and the Pulpit

It can be said that a majority do not leave the Wednesday powwow thinking they have been edified; it is moral-sapping, pulpit-thumping vituperation that easily slips into uncouth language, betraying both discourtesy and disrespect.

In the same vein, I appreciate that the higher-ups are under pressure to deliver results, but ruling by fear, deeming us stupid, or questioning our intelligence will get you nowhere.

We are here to do a job, not to be corralled like sheep or donkeys into some subservient role, subject to constant and unwarranted opprobrium. The borstal comparison becomes all the more telling when you wonder whether they once presided over some regimented setting and held sway over unskilled labour.

The Reckoning Ahead

In other words, in my decades-long experience of dealing with management, this one ranks, in every sense of the word, as the least commendable and capable when it comes to managing talent, and would be far better suited to commandeering a chain gang.

Heck, some of us are way past slithering up a greasy pole of obsequiousness for favours; we have had roles of greater responsibility and remuneration, and are here for nothing other than the joy of doing and giving back.

If there is room for improvement, I cannot say, because this appears to be learned behaviour from a former leader who barely earned my respect, their brusqueness unbecoming of anyone cultured. The headiness of office is becoming an aggrandisement of self, not far removed from bullying. Many will tolerate this for just long enough before the blowback makes heads roll.

A Google NotebookLM AI Podcast on this blog

Hajrá Magyarország!

A Nation Saves Itself

On my mind from early Monday morning, I saw a nation that saved itself rather than sacrifice itself to the poverty in the promise of a leadership that had been in power for so long it had run out of ideas.

Hungary was hungry for change, and they went out to get it. The scale of the victory was telling: from the opposition Tisza Party not even contesting parliament at the last election, when the ruling Fidesz Party gained a super-majority and a fourth term for Viktor Orban, to the ruling party suffering such a catastrophic defeat that Mr Orban conceded within minutes of the polls closing.

Power and Its Costs

There are many analyses of these results, and they will probably continue for years with different angles and postulations to the point of exhaustion; it is irrelevant. Mr Orban, a long-serving Prime Minister who had modelled the country after a fashion, could have taken the opportunity, after any one of his electoral victories, to bow out in a blaze of glory, handing the baton to a protégé. But power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely; many men fall prey to that lure.

You could look into the history of Viktor Orban, the people who helped and mentored him, and the exposure he had to liberal democracy before he turned towards illiberal democracy, supporting such conservative causes that antagonised broader Western European values, and wonder how the quest for power and the desire to retain it made the man seem more villainous than respectable.

Hope Over Fear

That reputation for villainy over respectability, however, is precisely what made Peter Magyar's campaign such a masterclass in political messaging. Religious zealotry and Christian nationalism can only do so much when a government has run out of answers to the questions that most urgently trouble ordinary people: the cost of living, wages that do not stretch to the end of the month, a healthcare system groaning under neglect, hospitals short-staffed as doctors and nurses leave for better prospects elsewhere, and the everyday concerns of communities that had long felt invisible to those in power. These were the realities that Magyar took seriously, and that Orban could not convincingly address.

What Orban could offer instead was fear. Enemies were conjured beyond the borders: Brussels encroaching on sovereignty, migrants threatening the national character, foreign financiers orchestrating Hungary's undoing. But fear of the outsider offers little comfort to people struggling inside their own homes, pitted against each other, whilst the ruling party tilts on patronage and patrimonialism, favouring partisans and acolytes against others.

Hope and expectation over fear and trepidation, over the foreign influences of a similar nationalist ilk; an unwillingness to compromise on the fight against corruption; taking Hungary from the isolation and recalcitrance that Europe saw as backsliding to the promise of situating Hungary back in the West for advantage and prosperity, whilst building back the institutions that had lost their independence to cronyism; this was what won the people.

Democracy Always Matters

Those people, and especially the youth among them, saw in Magyar a hope and a future that, had Viktor Orban won again, would have seemed even bleaker. For Viktor Orban to have been electorally humiliated after appearing unassailable and invincible for more than a decade is a message that populism can totally run out of road and find itself at the precipice of a cliff edge, without any possibility of recovery.

Beyond the jubilation for Hungarians and the evidently hard work of fixing things that lies ahead, we all celebrate with them the realisation that democracy matters and that everyone needs to get out to vote, if they really do desire change.

Hajrá Magyarország!

A Google NotebookLM AI Podcast on this blog

Three Degrees: Hailstones, Shorts, and Slippers

A Nation's Favourite Topic

If there is anything the English can always make conversation about, it is the weather; there is always something to say about it.

I looked at my mobile phone this morning before leaving home and noticed it was just three degrees Celsius, in the middle of April. I had turned off my heating a couple of weeks ago, as we eased into British Summer Time, which is everything British, but nothing like summer, and barely feeling like spring.

One good thing: there was no forecast of rain, a reputation some people are keen to attach to Manchester more than reality suggests. It does not always rain in Manchester; it just happens to coincide with when those observers visit.

Pelted by Hailstones

Yesterday, I thought of going out for a walk. It was pleasant enough, though I had only anticipated a drizzle. When the heavens opened, I was pelted with hailstones the size of opaque tapioca pearls. Come to think of it, I have never been caught in a hailstorm before; the most I have experienced of it is watching from indoors.

Lest I forget, we also had a hailstorm a couple of weeks ago. I hope it is not becoming a regular occurrence. Then imagine my surprise, knowing how cold it was, to see someone about fifty yards ahead of me in shorts. Are you crazy? I cannot complain, though, because when I am in South Africa, my tolerance of the cold makes others think I am crazy.

Sights on the Street

Hardly had I put that out of my mind when a lady of a certain age, a sexagenarian at the very least, stepped out of her hotel for a cigarette in a white cardigan, just long enough to cover the detail. You might have to lop off three to four decades to raise any interest.

She was wearing those disposable hotel guest slippers. You want to say to her, “Oh, darling, you should never have stepped out of your hotel room like that.”

Then again, if you have a nicotine addiction, what is the cold or decency, when you need to light up and feel the warmth of your lungs filled with smoke? The sun is shining, we are in double figures, and from everything I can see on the street, there is another man in shorts whilst everyone else is behaving.

A Google NotebookLM AI Podcast on this blog

Augmenting Humanity with AI Tools - Q1 2026

AI as a Productive Tool

I hope my use of AI reveals some of the beneficial elements of technology against the concerns that this development might deplete, displace, or delete the significance of our humanity in the daily narrative of human living.

For me, AI is a tool, helping my productivity at work and augmenting other skill areas as a timesaving resource that can be deployed for various activities. For instance, I would explain an issue or a scenario to an AI chatbot and ask if it had any ideas towards troubleshooting an incident or a problem.

AI would provide knowledge and background on the issue before suggesting several steps to follow towards a resolution. The kind of engagement I have, which is known as prompt engineering, is casually conversational and iterative.

At times, I might even ask AI to combine all my previous prompts in a conversation thread into a comprehensive prompt, whilst taking cognisance of other factors I may not have considered before.

Refining My Writing Voice

Besides that, I use AI as a proofreader of my blogs, adjusting for punctuation, spelling, grammar, structure, and flow of thought processes without losing my voice, the context, or the intent.

All this includes asking for feedback and ideas to extend the conversation in future writings.

AI-Generated Podcasts: A Revelation

However, where I have gained the most fascination with AI is in the use of AI-generated podcasts based on the blogs I have written in 2026. Using the Audio Overview of Google's NotebookLM, I have created podcasts discussing each individual blog with an in-depth conversation between two agents.

To garner a more thematic review, I have also had podcasts made covering the range of blogs written in each month of 2026. For the 21 blogs published in January, there is a one-hour podcast discussion, and for the 13 blogs written in each of February and March, the podcasts are under 45 minutes.

I am impressed by how AI creates a narrative arc that connects the dots between my blogs in ways I never realised were linked. It can only help me understand how to better express myself.

Whilst there are minor, aesthetic errors of comprehension (such as AI thinking I had radiotherapy in Cape Town or tea with my mother in Pinelands, from the January and March podcasts respectively), I see no need to redo them to eliminate those infractions.

Acknowledging AI's Limitations

AI can be inaccurate, and what we must not do is ignore these errors but address them through review, acknowledgement, then notification or correction where possible.

There are many other ends to which I deploy AI mechanics, but the ones mentioned here are the standout attributions for which I am grateful.

AI is giving my staid two-decade-old blog a stake in multimedia interaction; I can only hope there are readers and listeners with a long enough attention span to enjoy the experience and comment with their views.

Thank you.

An AI discussion podcast
on blogs published in January 2026
Chronicles of Resilience and Reflection

An AI discussion podcast
on blogs published in February 2026
Dignity, Deserts, and the Prostate Chronicles

An AI discussion podcast
on blogs published in March 2026 
Observations on Identity, Transit, and Digital Modernisation