S01:E23
Tuesday, nine in the morning, the kitchen. An iPhone buzzes on the worktop: the name of an ointment nobody in the house remembered having, and one line — the saved expiry date is 30 days away. The ointment had been sitting since the summer in a travel wash bag on the top shelf of the wardrobe.
In the last episode we did a walk through the medicine cabinet before the season. This one is about what happens between walk-throughs: expiry dates pass on a Wednesday, a Thursday, in the middle of half-term — not on the day you check. So who remembers for you?
How the expiry date alerts work:
Honestly: when there won’t be an alert (iPhone). We say it plainly rather than promising “always”:
That’s why the “Expiring medications” screen (tabs “Soon” and “Expired”) remains the main source, and the walk-through still makes sense. A notification is a nudge, not a guarantee.
What to do after an alert — three steps, none of them medical: decide whether you want to keep it (if so, you can add it to the shopping list by hand from the medicine card; the alert itself doesn’t put it there — when planning, check how much time is left to the saved date); once the date has passed, take the expired medicine to a collection point, following its rules, never the bin (this is described as it works in Poland, where we are: the most reliable list of points is on the local council’s website — wherever you live, find out locally where unwanted medicines go); and delete it from the app (“Delete medication” on the card), so the cabinet on your phone doesn’t tell you lies.
What the app does NOT do: it doesn’t judge whether a medicine can still be used the day after its date, doesn’t work out doses, and doesn’t replace a pharmacist or GP. The app remembers the saved date — the decision sits with someone who actually knows.
Who remembers for you. You can share a medicine cabinet: whoever has access sees the same expiring list and doesn’t have to ask what’s about to run out of date. Grandparents included — not to keep tabs on anyone, just so that over Sunday lunch you know what to ask.
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About AI in this episode. The dialogue was written by Tomasz Szuster. The voices you hear are not ours — they are AI-generated synthetic voices. Full details are in the show description and in the episode outro. We say this plainly, because we think it should be the standard for any podcast made this way.
