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Today, I’m talking with Richard Robinson, who is the cofounder and CEO of Robin AI. Richard has a fascinating resume: he was a corporate lawyer for high-profile firms in London before founding Robin in 2019 to bring AI tools to the legal profession, using a mix of human lawyers and automated software expertise. That means Robin predates the big generative AI boom that kicked off when ChatGPT launched in 2022.

As you’ll hear Richard say, the tools his company was building early on were based on fairly traditional AI technology — what we would have just called “machine learning” a few years ago. But as more powerful models and the chatbot explosion have transformed industries of all types, Robin AI is expanding its ambitions. It’s moving beyond just using AI to parse legal contracts into what Richard is envisioning as an entire AI-powered legal services business.AI can be unreliable, though, and when you’re working in law, unreliable doesn’t really cut it. It’s impossible to keep count of how many headlines we’ve already seen about lawyers using ChatGPT when they shouldn’t, citing nonexistent cases and law in their filings. Those attorneys have faced not only scathing rebukes from judges but also, in some cases, even fines and sanctions.

Naturally, I had to ask Richard about hallucinations, how he thinks the industry could move forward here, and how he’s working to make sure Robin’s AI products don’t land any law firms in hot water.

But Richard’s background also includes professional debate. Richard was the head debate coach at Eton College. So much of his expertise here, right down to how he structures his answers to some of my questions, can be traced back to just how experienced he is with the art of argumentation.

So, I really wanted to spend time talking through Richard’s history with debate, how it ties into both the AI and legal industries, and how these new technologies are making us reevaluate the difference between facts and truth in unprecedented ways.

Okay: Robin AI CEO Richard Robinson. Here we go.

Richard Robinson, founder and CEO of Robin AI. Great to have you here on Decoder.

Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it. It’s great to be here. I’m a big listener of the show.

We’ve spoken before. I’m going to be all over the place here, but I want to start off with Robin AI. We’re talking about AI in a lot of different ways nowadays. I started off my Decoder run with former Google employee Cassie Kozyrkov, talking to her about decision science.

But this is a specific application of artificial intelligence in an industry where there’s a lot of thinking going on, and there ought to be — the legal industry. Tell me, what is Robin AI? What’s the latest?

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Image: The Verge / Photo: Robin AI

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Representative April McClain Delaney warned that President Donald Trump’s cuts to programs like Medicaid, as well as NPR and PBS, are going to hit rural America like a “tsunami” in an interview with Newsweek.

Delaney’s Maryland congressional district contains some of the areas that could be hit hardest by Trump’s policies. It spans from the state’s rural western panhandle, which she says could bear the brunt of new rescission cuts, to the Washington, D.C., suburbs, home to federal workers who have lost their jobs amid the mass firings of federal workers.

She first won election to the Sixth District last November, defeating Republican Neil Parrott by about 6 percentage points in a light-blue district that has been competitive in recent elections.

Delaney spoke with Newsweek about how she believes cuts in the Republican rescission package and the One Big Beautiful Bill Act would affect constituents in rural areas in the district and across the country.

“When you look at all of these funding freezes on our government employees on our national parks, but also Medicaid, SNAP, and then start looking at some of the other rescissions that it’s just a tsunami that’s about to hit rural America,” Delaney said.

How PBS, NPR Cuts Will Affect Rural America

Funding cuts for public media, such as PBS and NPR, which were included in a rescissions package passed by Congress earlier in July, could have devastating impacts on rural Americans, Delaney said.

Republicans argued that funding for these programs was a waste of taxpayer dollars and have accused the networks of pushing left-leaning programming. Critics, however, say public funding was a lifeline to communities that relied on their local NPR affiliates for news or PBS for free children’s programming.

When you look at the community that really relies on trusted news, one of the last trusted bastions of news is local news,” Delaney said. These cuts may have an impact on Amber Alerts and Emergency Broadcast System alerts, she said.

Recent flooding in Western Maryland’s Allegany County—a rural, conservative county inside Delaney’s district—underscores the importance of having robust local radio news, she said.

“We had floods in Allegany County, and luckily, because of the emergency alerts, they kept the kids in the school. They didn’t release them early. And as the rising waters went, I think, nine feet in 45 minutes, the kids went from the first floor, the second floor to the third floor, luckily were rescued and no one was hurt,” she said. “When you think about how alerts are really facilitated by our broadcast stations, particularly these rural communities, it’s a pretty big deal.”

Delaney, who spent much of her career advocating for children in media at nonprofits like Common Sense Media, said cuts to PBS will have consequences for children across the country.

“I really look at how this funding will impact rural America in terms of broadcast stations and, in particular, educational programming for our kids. PBS is really the only free programming, educational programming that these kids receive,” she said. “While you might hear some of my GOP colleagues [say] you can stream Sesame Street. Well, I hate to say this, our most disadvantaged kids in rural America, they can’t afford to have a streaming Netflix account, much less have rural broadband.”

Delaney predicted there would be a “significant outcry” from rural Americans if their local stations go under as a result of the cuts and that Democrats would eye the restoration of this funding if they retake control of Congress in the midterms.

The loss of these local stations would be a “loss of our community heart,” she said, noting that they have historically had community obligations and public interest standards.

“I still think there’s that residue reporting on the games from the football game at the high school or talking about the local fairs or the rodeo that’s going to be in town or what have you,” she said. “There is something that’s a big community builder. In these smaller stations in rural and even bigger suburban America.”

Cuts to Medicaid are another challenge facing rural America, she said, noting that one in seven families in her district relies on the program for health care.

What are you going to do in the long term in terms of rural health care and rural hospitals potentially closing? she said. “But also, you know, are all these premiums going to go up? Right, and what’s the impact?”

How Trump’s Agenda Is Affecting Federal Workers

Maryland’s Sixth District also encompasses parts of the D.C. suburbs and is home to more than 35,000 government workers who may be affected by cuts to the federal bureaucracy as part of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

So far, at least 260,000 federal workers have left their jobs since Trump returned to office in January, whether they were fired, retired early, or took a buyout, according to Reuters.

Delaney said many of them are still looking for jobs and have reached out to her office.

Health care is a key concern for these federal workers, she said.

“Many of them are concerned about the long-term, how they’re going to have health care, in addition to being able to find new jobs,” she said.

There are concerns that these “well-educated and well-adjusted” workers may be taken to the private sector or even leave the country as they seek new employment, she said.

“There are other big concerns about workforce development, and how are we going to look at maybe figuring out ways that they can retool some of their skills. I do think that many of our state governments might be able to fill in the gap for some of these workers. But, their concerns are, of course affordability, figuring out their next step, and interestingly enough, I’ve started hear more about AI,” she said.

Delaney Slams ‘Foolish’ Foreign Aid Cuts

Foreign aid cuts have been “one of the most foolish acts” of the Trump administration, Delaney said.

“Our world is on fire right now, and we have traditionally always been the one that has stepped in to help, whether it’s vaccinations, whether it is feeding women and children, whether it was displacement during times of war. But there is something in soft diplomacy,” she said. “What that means is that you are a trusted beacon of light. You are a source that people can depend upon around the world. And you do have more stability and peace when you have that.”

She warned that there is a “lack of trust” in the United States on the global stage right now, and that other countries, such as China, are “zooming in to fill that void.”

She described this foreign aid as the “cheapest part of our defense budget.”

“It is probably some of the most foolish cuts I’ve ever seen in my life, and it’s going to impact us globally, but that’s going to come to haunt us domestically as well,” she said.

Delaney on Trust in Government

Delaney also said her work in Congress is focused on restoring trust in the government amid a period of heightened “anger.”

“It’s really impacting the trust that people have in if our country can function and if our county can feel like the people who are elected officials are trustworthy,” she said.

Elected officials need to take the time to “understand why there’s anger” and why people feel like they have not been heard or met in the moment.

“My biggest concern and my biggest priority in Congress is to find ways to reestablish that trust, that trust with the American people, that trust on a community level,” she said. “And I don’t think it is a top-down—I think it’s going to be a bottom-up within our communities building back, you know, across our communities and understanding in our elected officials.“

She said she plans to ask her constituents for their views on the issues so that her vote can reflect their thoughts.

“Our world is crazy, but the last thing I’m going to say is I believe that we’re going be OK. It’s going to be choppy, it’s going to be hard, but that we are going to swim through this; but it’s a difficult ride at the moment,” she said.

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How does your brain wake up from sleep? A study of more than 1,000 arousals from slumber has revealed precisely how the brain bestirs itself during the transition to alertness — a finding that might help to manage sleep inertia, the grogginess that many people feel when hitting the snooze button.

Recordings of people as they woke from the dream-laden phase of sleep showed that the first brain regions to rouse are those associated with executive function and decision-making, located at the front of the head. A wave of wakefulness then spreads to the back, ending with an area associated with vision.

The findings could change how we think of waking up, says Rachel Rowe, a neuroscientist at the University of Colorado Boulder, who was not involved with the work. The results emphasize that “falling asleep and waking up aren’t simply reverse processes, but really waking up is this ordered wave of activation that moves from the front to the back of the brain”, whereas falling asleep seems to be less linear and more gradual.

The study was published today in Current Biology.

Sleeping-brain signature

The wide-awake brain shows a characteristic pattern of electrical activity, recorded by sensors on the scalp — it looks like a jagged line made up of small, tightly packed peaks and valleys. Although the pattern looks similar during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, when vivid dreams occur, this stage features a lack of skeletal-muscle movement. The peaks are taller during most stages of non-REM sleep, which ranges from light to very deep slumber.

Scientists already knew that the ‘awakened’ signature occurs at different times in different brain regions, but common imaging techniques did not allow these patterns to be explored on a precise timescale.

To refine the understanding of awakening, Francesca Siclari, a neuroscientist at the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience in Amsterdam, and her colleagues studied 20 people as they woke from sleep. Each participant’s brain activity was recorded using 256 sensors on their scalps. Some awakenings were spontaneous; in other cases, participants were jolted awake by an alarm.

The sensors allowed the scientists to analyse brain activity at a second-to-second timescale. Using mathematical algorithms and modelling, the team then reconstructed where this activity happens on the surface of the brain.

Hitting snooze

The researchers found that the neural awakened signature spreads from front to back when a person rouses from REM sleep. However, during non-REM sleep, the pattern first appears at a central “hotspot” deep in the brain and then progresses through the same front to back pattern seen during REM sleep. This variation might explain why participants reported feeling less sleepy when waking up from non-REM sleep than from REM sleep, Rowe says, although it’s not clear why this pattern would have that effect.

“The surprise is how consistent [this pattern] was across every awakening and also how it related to the subjective measures”, including sleep stage and method of awakening, says Siclari.

Siclari hopes this research can be used to combat sleep disorders such as insomnia. “Knowing exactly how brain activity is characterized during a normal awakening [means] we can better compare it to these abnormal awakenings,” she says. Rowe agrees that the results could help people who struggle with sleep. “The way that a person wakes up might be impaired, as opposed to the way they fall asleep,” she says. Finding out more about the awakening brain could provide “a whole new avenue of looking at ways to treat people”, she adds.

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President Donald Trump rode to reelection last fall on voter concerns about prices. But as his administration pares back federal rules and programs designed to protect patients from the high cost of health care, Trump risks pushing more Americans into debt, further straining family budgets already stressed by medical bills.

Millions of people are expected to lose health insurance in the coming years as a result of the tax cut legislation Trump signed this month, leaving them with fewer protections from large bills if they get sick or suffer an accident.

At the same time, significant increases in health plan premiums on state insurance marketplaces next year will likely push more Americans to either drop coverage or switch to higher-deductible plans that will require them to pay more out-of-pocket before their insurance kicks in.

Smaller changes to federal rules are poised to bump up patients’ bills, as well. New federal guidelines for COVID-19 vaccines, for example, will allow health insurers to stop covering the shots for millions, so if patients want the protection, some may have to pay out-of-pocket.

The new tax cut legislation will also raise the cost of certain doctor visits, requiring copays of up to $35 for some Medicaid enrollees.

And for those who do end up in debt, there will be fewer protections. This month, the Trump administration secured permission from a federal court to roll back regulations that would have removed medical debt from consumer credit reports.

That puts Americans who cannot pay their medical bills at risk of lower credit scores, hindering their ability to get a loan or forcing them to pay higher interest rates.

“For tens of millions of Americans, balancing the budget is like walking a tightrope,” said Chi Chi Wu, a staff attorney at the National Consumer Law Center. “The Trump administration is just throwing them off.”

White House spokesperson Kush Desai did not respond to questions about how the administration’s health care policies will affect Americans’ medical bills.

The president and his Republican congressional allies have brushed off the health care cuts, including hundreds of billions of dollars in Medicaid retrenchment in the mammoth tax law. “You won’t even notice it,” Trump said at the White House after the bill signing July 4. “Just waste, fraud, and abuse.”

But consumer and patient advocates around the country warn that the erosion of federal health care protections since Trump took office in January threatens to significantly undermine Americans’ financial security.

“These changes will hit our communities hard,” said Arika Sánchez, who oversees health care policy at the nonprofit New Mexico Center on Law and Poverty.

Sánchez predicted many more people the center works with will end up with medical debt. “When families get stuck with medical debt, it hurts their credit scores, makes it harder to get a car, a home, or even a job,” she said. “Medical debt wrecks people’s lives.”

For Americans with serious illnesses such as cancer, weakened federal protections from medical debt pose yet one more risk, said Elizabeth Darnall, senior director of federal advocacy at the American Cancer Society’s Cancer Action Network. “People will not seek out the treatment they need,” she said.

Trump promised a rosier future while campaigning last year, pledging to “make America affordable again” and “expand access to new Affordable Healthcare.”

Polls suggest voters were looking for relief.

About 6 in 10 adults — Democrats and Republicans — say they are worried about being able to afford health care, according to one recent survey, outpacing concerns about the cost of food or housing. And medical debt remains a widespread problem: As many as 100 million adults in the U.S. are burdened by some kind of health care debt.

Despite this, key tools that have helped prevent even more Americans from sinking into debt are now on the chopping block.

Medicaid and other government health insurance programs, in particular, have proved to be a powerful economic backstop for low-income patients and their families, said Kyle Caswell, an economist at the Urban Institute, a think tank in Washington, D.C.

Caswell and other researchers found, for example, that Medicaid expansion made possible by the 2010 Affordable Care Act led to measurable declines in medical debt and improvements in consumers’ credit scores in states that implemented the expansion.

“We’ve seen that these programs have a meaningful impact on people’s financial well-being,” Caswell said.

Trump’s tax law — which will slash more than $1 trillion in federal health spending over the next decade, mostly through Medicaid cuts — is expected to leave 10 million more people without health coverage by 2034, according to the latest estimates from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. The tax cuts, which primarily benefit wealthy Americans, will add $3.4 trillion to U.S. deficits over a decade, the office calculated.

The number of uninsured could spike further if Trump and his congressional allies don’t renew additional federal subsidies for low- and moderate-income Americans who buy health coverage on state insurance marketplaces.

This aid — enacted under former President Joe Biden — lowers insurance premiums and reduces medical bills enrollees face when they go to the doctor or the hospital. But unless congressional Republicans act, those subsidies will expire later this year, leaving many with bigger bills.

Federal debt regulations developed by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau under the Biden administration would have protected these people and others if they couldn’t pay their medical bills.

The agency issued rules in January that would have removed medical debts from consumer credit reports. That would have helped an estimated 15 million people.

But the Trump administration chose not to defend the new regulations when they were challenged in court by debt collectors and the credit bureaus, who argued the federal agency had exceeded its authority in issuing the rules. A federal judge in Texas appointed by Trump ruled that the regulation should be scrapped.

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CLIMATEWIRE | The sweeping budget bill signed by President Donald Trump will lead to higher electricity bills, fewer renewable installations, and more planet-warming pollution, according to modeling released Friday by the Rhodium Group.

The economic consulting firm’s results are among the bevy of energy models put out in the wake of the law’s passage earlier this month.

Rhodium predicts average household energy expenditures will increase between $78-$192 by 2035, largely due to fewer electric vehicles on the road and consumers paying more for gasoline. Installations of new clean electricity projects, such as wind and solar, are expected to fall 57-62 percent over the next decade. The result is an increase in the country’s greenhouse gas emissions.

When Rhodium estimated America’s emissions trajectory last year, it predicted the U.S. was on track to cut emissions between 38-56 percent by 2035 compared to 2005 levels. Now, it thinks the U.S. is on pace to reduce emissions 27-44 percent below 2005 levels. For context, U.S. emissions were 20 percent below 2005 levels last year. The broad ranges reflect scenarios that assume differences in economic factors, such as the price of natural gas, renewables or electricity demand growth.

“This has a meaningful slowing effect on the deployment of of clean technology across the economy,” said Ben King, a director in Rhodium’s Climate and Energy practice.

Rhodium’s modeling is one of a series of analyses that have come out in the aftermath of the law’s passage.

FTI, a consulting group, reckons new gas plant construction in the Eastern Interconnection will surge as a result of the measure, prompting an 8 percent increase in natural gas demand for power compared to the group’s reference case scenario. The Eastern Interconnection is the power grid covering two-thirds of the country.

FTI also thinks renewable installations will plunge, leading to renewables’ share of total electricity generation to fall in the 2030s. The group’s initial modeling results did not report changes in costs or emissions.

“The accelerated phase out of clean energy tax credits results in slower growth in wind and solar capacity and leads to gas capacity picking up a greater share, with the majority of new gas builds projected to come online in the 2030’s,” Dan Goodwin, a senior director at FTI, wrote in an email.

The Repeat Project, an academic group led by Princeton University professor Jesse Jenkins, echoed many of Rhodium’s findings.

It estimates the law will increase household energy bills by $280 annually through 2035.

Repeat had expected solar installations to average 44 gigawatts annually through 2035, but that figure falls to 23 GW following the law’s passage. Wind falls from 25 GW annually to 9 GW.

As a result of such changes, it expects greenhouse gas emissions will be 7 percent higher in 2035.

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Magic Johnson is dedicated to his annual yacht trips in Europe, which typically begin with friends and conclude with family. This year is no different—the former point guard is currently vacationing with his wife Cookie, kids, and grandkids.

“Today we enjoyed lunch at the famous beach club Juan y Andrea on the island Formentera in Spain – just outside of Ibiza! I want everyone to see how beautiful the turquoise water is in Formentera😍,” Johnson wrote in the caption.

In the pictures shared, Johnson, 65, and his family enjoyed lunch on a beach, and it appears fresh lobster was on the menu.

In one of the images, the former NBA star’s daughter, Elisa, 30, posed next to him in a black dress. Johnson’s grandson, Avery, sat next to Elisa. EJ, 33, was also present and posed next to his mom, Cookie.

Additionally, Johnson’s son, Andre, 44, and his wife, Lisa, in addition to their daughter, Gigi were on the trip too.

Magic shares EJ and Elisa with Cookie and has Andre with ex-girlfriend Melissa Mitchell.

In addition to having a bite on the beach, the Johnson family also had a fun disco night, and of course, costumes were involved.

“Welcome to Club 32 disco night on the yacht with the Johnson family! Instead of the famous Studio 54 in NY, this is Club 32 in the med 😂” the former athlete wrote. 

Johnson shared an image from the disco party, showing all family members dressed in sparkly, 70s-inspired disco outfits and Afro wigs.

In 2024, the longtime couple also had their kids join them on their yacht trip, which primarily happened on their chartered boat, the Phoenix II, in mid-July. Some of the best memories are made during family vacations, and we hope to see this lavish family tradition continue!

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Even Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) — who has consistently remained one of President Donald Trump’s biggest supporters in Congress — isn’t a fan of his latest policy.

In a lengthy Thursday night post to her congressional account on X, Greene came out swinging against Trump’s latest executive order (EO) on artificial intelligence (AI). The Georgia Republican said she had “many concerns” about both the danger AI poses to the environment as well as Trump’s position against states regulating it.

My deep concerns are that the EO demands rapid AI expansion with little to no guardrails and breaks,” she wrote. “It also contains the threat of withholding federal funds from states who regulate AI, which is an absolute threat to federalism and why I strongly opposed the AI state moratorium originally in the BBB [Big Beautiful Bill].”Rushed AI expansion and data centers being built all over the country from state to state with no plan in regards to environmental and critical water supply impact has massive future implications and problems,” Greene continued. “… When you build something that requires a HIGH water demand, it will always take water away from others – that means people, cities, businesses, and surrounding counties and states.”

Greene’s assessment of AI’s impact on local water supplies is accurate, with Bloomberg reporting in May that AI data centers “consume immense amounts of water” in order to meet demand. According to Bloomberg, many of those data centers are in areas where freshwater resources are quickly drying up, like southern Arizona and central Texas. The outlet further reported that local communities may soon have to “compete with data center operators to access clean water.”

“Data centers are like a black holes when it comes to water requirements. They consume massive amounts of water for cooling, literally millions of gallons per day,” Greene tweeted. “… Just wait and see how bad lawsuits will become when counties are competing for data centers, in order to get rid of county property taxes, and the unintended results is new data centers that steal the water from surrounding homes and neighboring counties and states.”

As the Georgia congresswoman mentioned, the original version of the BBB imposed a 10-year moratorium on states regulating AI (Greene admitted she made a mistake in voting for the original bill that included the provision). That language was later stripped out after 17 Republican governors sent Trump a letter railing against the moratorium.

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Keith Krehbiel lived with Parkinson’s disease for nearly 25 years before agreeing to try a brain implant that might alleviate his symptoms. He had long been reluctant to submit to the surgery. “It was a big move,” he says. But by 2020, his symptoms had become so severe that he grudgingly agreed to go ahead.

Deep-brain stimulation involves inserting thin wires through two small holes in the skull into a region of the brain associated with movement. The hope is that by delivering electrical pulses to the region, the implant can normalize aberrant brain activity and reduce symptoms. Since the devices were first approved almost three decades ago, some 200,000 people have had them fitted to help calm the tremors and rigidity caused by Parkinson’s disease. But about 40,000 of those who received devices made after 2020 got them with a special feature that has largely not yet been turned on. The devices can read brain waves and then adapt and tailor the rhythm of their output, in much the same way as a pacemaker monitors and corrects the heart’s electrical rhythms, says Helen Bronte-Stewart, a neurologist at Stanford University in California.

Bronte-Stewart received approval to start a clinical trial of this new technology, known as adaptive deep-brain stimulation (aDBS), the same week that Krehbiel was preparing for surgery. He recalls the phone call in which she asked him if he wanted to be her first participant: “I said, ‘Boy, do I!’”

Five years on, the results of this 68-person trial, called ADAPT-PD, are under review for publication. Although the exact details are still under wraps, they were convincing enough to earn approval for the technology earlier this year from both US and European regulators.

The results of this study could be a boon for the estimated one million people in the United States and 1.2 million people in Europe who now live with Parkinson’s disease — and for Medtronic, the health-care technology company based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, that manufactures the implants. The seeming success also clears a path for other companies around the world that are racing for approval on advanced devices, says Martijn Beudel, a neurologist at Amsterdam University Medical Center who worked on the trial.

The approaching wave of therapies promises to level up DBS for Parkinson’s and other motor conditions. The technology might even help to treat neurological disorders such as Tourette’s syndrome and psychiatric conditions, including obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD) and depression. Several clinicians suggest that the new technology could have even more profound health implications — that is, if funding for US brain-implant research isn’t cut.

Deep trade-offs

Since DBS was first approved in Europe and the United States in the late-1990s, the vast majority of devices have been given to people with Parkinson’s disease. Parkinson’s is a progressive disorder, typified by the death of neurons that produce the neurotransmitter dopamine, which is key to controlling movements.

Existing drugs that aim to increase dopamine levels can only manage the symptoms. They can’t match the constant dopamine production of a healthy brain. “No matter how clever we are with it, we have never been able to exactly mimic the way the brain supplies it,” says Bronte-Stewart. This means that symptoms vary throughout the day — from the unwanted involuntary movements induced by the morning flood of dopamine-mimicking drugs to increased rigidity later in the day as the drugs wear off. The medication also comes with other side effects that vary from person to person. For Krehbiel, it was nausea so severe he had to lie down multiple times a day.

When these become overwhelming, a neurologist might recommend DBS. Implants typically dispense pulses of electrical energy deep into the brain 24 hours a day to regulate aberrant brain signals associated with uncontrollable body movements. Before this year, this always-on approach was the only commercially available form of the therapy.

But continuous DBS can sometimes amplify the drugs’ effects — or generate new symptoms. Some of these are harmless: one man with OCD developed a passion for the music of Johnny Cash when his stimulator was turned on, but was uninterested in the artist when it was off. Other symptoms are cause for more concern, including sudden-onset gambling disorders and other temporary changes in impulse control. More frequently, the addition of stimulation can induce speech impairments, such as slurring, raise the risk of falling, and cause some involuntary movements.

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Poor sleeper? Sleep expert and hypnotherapist Malminder Gill was the same until she managed to turn it all around. Here, she shares the four changes that made a difference. 

It seems like everyone has some sort of sleep-related problem these days, whether it takes you hours to get to sleep or you wake up in the night and feel groggy the next day. And sleep expert Malminder Gill was no different.

Gill, 43, who’s also a clinical hypnotherapist, was once like many of us, tossing and turning at night. Insomnia disrupted her life during a transitional period around 20 years ago while she was studying for exams at university, and it took a series of changes for her to get a handle on it.

“I was under a lot of pressure, not only worrying about performing well but what the future held for me,” Gill says. “I was totally unaware of how to care for myself and my mental health.” 

She wanted to perform well, but without sufficient sleep, it was difficult. “One anxiety led to another, which led to insomnia, which disrupted my day-to-day life,” she says. Many of us will know stress loops like this all too well. There’s the wanting to get to sleep, then feeling stressed because you know you need to go to sleep, but the stress is preventing you from getting to sleep. And thus, the cycle continues.

It wasn’t until Gill took a trip to India that everything changed, and she was able to completely reset. She was off on a long holiday, looking for an adventure, but it was getting out of her routine that solved everything for her. Around the same time, she uncovered triggers that were stopping her from sleeping and learned new, healthier habits.

Since then, Gill has not only become a much better sleeper but has also made a career out of it, working as a sleep expert and hypnotherapist on Harley Street. Below, she shares the four simple changes that helped her to get the sleep she craved. 

1. Getting out of a routine 

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