Speaker 1: You're listening to a MoMA Mia podcast.
Speaker 2: Mamma Mia acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters
Speaker 2: that this podcast is recorded on.
Speaker 3: Hello and welcome to Momma Mia. Out loud What women
Speaker 3: are actually talking about? On Monday, the twenty first of July,
Speaker 3: excuse me, I went on holiday and our tagline appears
Speaker 3: to have changed again.
Speaker 2: What's going on?
Speaker 3: Well?
Speaker 1: I was bored of the old one. And also sometimes
Speaker 1: people got upset because if we talked about something that
Speaker 1: they weren't talking about, they tried to say that they
Speaker 1: weren't talking about it. So I tried to make for
Speaker 1: gender happen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was like fetch.
Speaker 1: I couldn't make it happen. You know, one like to
Speaker 1: axing me.
Speaker 4: What women are talking about is the truest to out loud.
Speaker 4: I was saying before. I feel like we came into
Speaker 4: work with a loud hat on. We tried to see
Speaker 4: if it suited us and if people gave us compliments.
Speaker 4: Neither of those things happened, and now we're coming back
Speaker 4: to work the next day without the hat and we're
Speaker 4: not saying anything We tried to say.
Speaker 1: Women come to debrief that that just sounded a bit defeated.
Speaker 1: It sounded passive, and we're nothing if not inconsistent.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, look, I'm Holly Wainwright. I'm maist High Holidays,
Speaker 3: and I think we're thinking about ourselves a little too much.
Speaker 2: That's what I do.
Speaker 4: That'll be a thing true. I'm me A Friedman and
Speaker 4: I'm Jesse Stevens.
Speaker 2: And here is what is on our agenda for today.
Speaker 4: The moment that brought the Internet together we need to
Speaker 4: unpack in a revolting amount of detail, the Coldplay kiss
Speaker 4: Can discourse.
Speaker 1: I can't wait.
Speaker 3: Also, my imaginary friend Gwyneth Paltrow is the subject of
Speaker 3: a tea soaked new unauthorized biography or.
Speaker 1: Is she plus main character? Energy is ruining our public spaces.
Speaker 1: People are pooing in public pools and adams, yes, adults
Speaker 1: and newly returned europe correspondent has some stories to share.
Speaker 4: But first, I just wanted to thank me out louders
Speaker 4: for all their lovely messages. At the end of last week,
Speaker 4: after I shared a story about pregnancy loss, I was
Speaker 4: in undated with messages, all of them so kind like
Speaker 4: our out louder community is just remarkable. And I was
Speaker 4: listening to an episode of Ezracline recently and he was
Speaker 4: speaking to this person who's a Buddhist, and the Buddhist
Speaker 4: was saying that there's a story that they tell about
Speaker 4: a woman who's grieving, and the Buddha says, if you
Speaker 4: want to recover, you just have to go and find
Speaker 4: this mustard seed. But you have to find it, you
Speaker 4: have to go around and ask this whole village, find
Speaker 4: it from someone who has never experienced grief. And so
Speaker 4: she goes and tries to find this mustard seed, and
Speaker 4: of course every house that she enters, they too have
Speaker 4: their own story of grief. And why that story is
Speaker 4: so powerful is because it's in that connection and realizing
Speaker 4: that whatever pain you're in right now is being experienced
Speaker 4: by people all of the time. I think when we
Speaker 4: get stuck in pain, it's because we think no one
Speaker 4: else is feeling how we feel. Yeah, and I actually
Speaker 4: found it.
Speaker 1: It's the loneliness of it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I don't feel lonely. And there were people
Speaker 4: that I know who said to me, I had a
Speaker 4: miscarriage on the same day, like that's how common it is.
Speaker 4: But having people put words around it was just so
Speaker 4: so so comforting. So thank you to the out louders.
Speaker 4: And I also have a confession to add to that,
Speaker 4: which is, if you saw me with shopping bags over
Speaker 4: the weekend, it couldn't.
Speaker 1: Have been you because you're not buying.
Speaker 2: You're not. Twenty twenty five is don't buy anything year
Speaker 2: for Jesse friends.
Speaker 4: I was feeling pain.
Speaker 1: The year is thrift.
Speaker 4: I thought, what would Maya Friedman do?
Speaker 2: Should do? I should go and buy something.
Speaker 4: And the Maya it helped. I'm sorry, I'm sorry I've
Speaker 4: been thrifting, but trying to get secondhand jeans is too hard,
Speaker 4: and so I went, you know what, Jesse, be kind
Speaker 4: to yourself and go and buy some new things, and
Speaker 4: it did help. I'm not going to do it again,
Speaker 4: but I just have to confess because I'm sure out
Speaker 4: louders saw me, and I'm sure that they were going
Speaker 4: to write an unauthorized biography about the time Jesse broke
Speaker 4: her promise.
Speaker 1: I recommend it. Some people eat their feelings. I shop
Speaker 1: for my feelings. Help.
Speaker 3: It does help us, Ah, Jesse, I listened obviously to
Speaker 3: what you said, and like all those out louders who
Speaker 3: contacted you, I just thought it was brilliantly put and
Speaker 3: thank you for sharing it now they're making you feel
Speaker 3: the way you made them.
Speaker 5: Hmmm, we'd like to say hello to some of you
Speaker 5: in the crowd. How are we going to do that is,
Speaker 5: we're going to use our cameras and put some of
Speaker 5: the other big screen. So please, if you haven't done
Speaker 5: your makeup, do your makeup now.
Speaker 4: This time a week ago, very few people knew the
Speaker 4: name or were familiar with the face of CEO Andy Byron,
Speaker 4: a married man and father of two. Byron decided on
Speaker 4: Wednesday night to attend a Coldplay concert in Boston, which would,
Speaker 4: as it happens, blow up his entire life. So here's
Speaker 4: what actually happened. Coldplay was playing the Jumbo t So
Speaker 4: when a kiss cam landed on a man and a
Speaker 4: woman cuddling and they were watching the.
Speaker 3: Stage, is a kiss cam supposed to be? I know
Speaker 3: this is a really dumb question, but you know there
Speaker 3: are no dumb questions. When the camera lands on you.
Speaker 3: You're meant to like do a little performance for it,
Speaker 3: aren't you? Like do a kiss play to it?
Speaker 4: And this is a thing that happens at Coldplay concerts, right,
Speaker 4: and some football games. And yes, and they go and
Speaker 4: scout like the videographer who's there goes and scouts people
Speaker 4: and sort of says, okay, let's go to these these people.
Speaker 4: They look quite cuddly, and so went to this couple.
Speaker 4: But something really unusual happened, which was that they jumped
Speaker 4: apart and immediately attempted to hide their faces, and Chris Martin,
Speaker 4: who's the lead singer of Coldplay, said.
Speaker 5: Oh, what either having an affair or.
Speaker 4: I hope we didn't do something bad. Now we can
Speaker 4: argue about who might have done something bad, but something
Speaker 4: very bad did indeed happen. A twenty eight year old
Speaker 4: named Grace Springer filmed that moment and then she uploaded
Speaker 4: it to social media, and by the following day, the
Speaker 4: pair had been identified.
Speaker 1: Why did she do that? Out of interest? Like she
Speaker 1: actually interviews everybody involved made content.
Speaker 4: She says that she saw it and when all something
Speaker 4: tense has happened here, I'm not quite sure what it is.
Speaker 4: I'll upload it and let the internet figure it out.
Speaker 4: Because she thought if either of those partners are watching,
Speaker 4: like they have the right to know.
Speaker 1: So she thought she was doing God's work.
Speaker 3: She thought she was I think she showed it to
Speaker 3: her friends, and her friends all went, oh my god,
Speaker 3: you've got to upload about it, and it's.
Speaker 4: Going to go viral, viewed more than one hundred million times.
Speaker 4: I want to ask before we go any further, tell
Speaker 4: me what your initial reaction was when you saw this
Speaker 4: video at the end of last week.
Speaker 5: Ma'am.
Speaker 1: I thought this is incredible, Oh my god, and I
Speaker 1: sort of laughed a little bit. Yeah, but there, I
Speaker 1: guess because we work in the media and we're very
Speaker 1: familiar with, you know, public shaming and virality. I felt
Speaker 1: a bit sick from the beginning because I get very
Speaker 1: caught up in how people's lives can change in an instant.
Speaker 1: You know Lee's sales book Any Ordinary Day, where she
Speaker 1: talks to people who've suffered tragedies, usually accidents or the
Speaker 1: loss of a loved one very suddenly. And I know
Speaker 1: this isn't that, but that sense of even when you
Speaker 1: were just saying that they woke up and they went
Speaker 1: let's and you know, it turns out they were having
Speaker 1: an affair, but they went, let's go to this Coldplay concert,
Speaker 1: and you think about them, every step they took and
Speaker 1: every single decision that got to that point, and then oblivion.
Speaker 4: Holly, how about you? How did you respond when you
Speaker 4: first saw it, Well, I.
Speaker 3: Just thought it was really juicy. I was immediately like,
Speaker 3: what an idiot? Those were my first thoughts. It's like,
Speaker 3: and I don't know why, but of course I thought
Speaker 3: he was an idiot rather than her. That's my own
Speaker 3: personal prejudice. I thought, what absolute idiot, and then I
Speaker 3: went ha ha ha. And then of course I didn't
Speaker 3: necessarily keep thinking that.
Speaker 4: I do agree that I thought it was very funny
Speaker 4: and immediately wanted to send it to people because I
Speaker 4: was like, I think as well, there was this moment
Speaker 4: of like, doesn't everyone know a CEO or a CEO
Speaker 4: coded person who has or is currently cheating on their
Speaker 4: wife and appears to experience no repercussions as a result.
Speaker 3: And also that in that I mean and we didn't
Speaker 3: know this when we very first saw it, but when
Speaker 3: it became apparent the story of who they were, a
Speaker 3: lot of people cheat with people at work like that
Speaker 3: is a place that happens a lot, and if those
Speaker 3: people are particularly senior, often a lot of people within
Speaker 3: the business will know that that's happening, but it's just
Speaker 3: all accepted that we just don't talk about it, and
Speaker 3: all those kind of things. Originally, I thought, oh, imagine
Speaker 3: if they were all, like the whole team was there.
Speaker 2: You know, that isn't what turned out to have happened.
Speaker 3: But I told myself many stories, and then I started
Speaker 3: to see all those like letters to this man's wife
Speaker 3: and everything on the internet, and I was like, oh, dear,
Speaker 3: I sound.
Speaker 1: A bit sactimonious when I say that, like what I
Speaker 1: said before, because it's not like I also didn't go, yeah,
Speaker 1: that was jucy. And I wanted to know cause I
Speaker 1: wanted to know more. Who's she, Who's he? How that? What?
Speaker 1: You know? I wanted. I was hungry to know the story.
Speaker 4: So the more came, as happens with the internet. Byron
Speaker 4: is fifty. He was the CEO of Astronomers, which is
Speaker 4: a tech firm, and the woman he was with was
Speaker 4: revealed to be Kristen Cabot. She is the chief people
Speaker 4: officer the same company, and there's ambiguity about whether she
Speaker 4: is still married or recently separated. Right, we know that
Speaker 4: Byron married two kids. By Friday, both Byron and Cabot
Speaker 4: had been put on leave by their company, and by Saturday,
Speaker 4: Byron had resigned as CEO. She also has two kids, right,
Speaker 4: I believe, So what's that?
Speaker 3: Do you think that the put them on leave and
Speaker 3: resignation was inevitable? Like, is that how it would play
Speaker 3: in a corporate sense? You think me are always well?
Speaker 1: Before that, there was the statement that he allegedly made,
Speaker 1: which everybody shared and of people reacted to.
Speaker 4: So what's interesting is that this was one of the
Speaker 4: first viral moments in the age of AI, and so
Speaker 4: what happened was an influx of things where everyone sat
Speaker 4: there going is this real? Even I think the kiscam footage,
Speaker 4: it was sort of like is this real? So there
Speaker 4: was fake stak it a bit, yeah, fake tweets and
Speaker 4: this isn't AI related. But I was on TikTok watching
Speaker 4: his daughter post these tiktoks that said reconnecting with life
Speaker 4: after your dad's affair makes national news. I went deep
Speaker 4: on her. It turns out that was not his daughter.
Speaker 1: He doesn't have a daughter.
Speaker 4: He didn't have a daughter. So there was a coldplay
Speaker 4: tweet that read, starting with our next show, We're introducing
Speaker 4: camera free audience sections for people in their side pieces.
Speaker 2: Fake funny.
Speaker 4: Then the statement from Andy Byron. I believe that there
Speaker 4: were multiple ones, but there was one you might have
Speaker 4: seen where he expressed how troubling it was that a
Speaker 4: private moment became public without his consent.
Speaker 1: And the reason that I thought that was interesting is
Speaker 1: because that spoke to you know, we often talk about
Speaker 1: the second idea or the third idea, which is everybody
Speaker 1: reacts in one way, but then what's the bigger issue?
Speaker 1: Right if you zoom out? And I think that the
Speaker 1: reason that so many people were fooled by that statement.
Speaker 1: The only time I got a bit sus is when
Speaker 1: he quoted a culture.
Speaker 4: How it ended.
Speaker 1: But before that I was on board because it followed
Speaker 1: the template of public statements, public apologies, because we know
Speaker 1: that in a vacuum people will make stuff up, right,
Speaker 1: so you've got to you know that the first rule
Speaker 1: of crisis pr is that you've got to try and
Speaker 1: take control of the situation, to try and corterize the wound.
Speaker 1: And what he said about a private situation became public
Speaker 1: that way and taking time to think and learn and reflect.
Speaker 1: All of that was like tick tick tick tick, but
Speaker 1: then it was fake.
Speaker 4: It also reminded us. I think of how if any
Speaker 4: of us were to go viral in an hour, what
Speaker 4: can be found from LinkedIn profiles from the dig online
Speaker 4: what they were able to find all of his family.
Speaker 4: His wife had to, you know, go super private in
Speaker 4: order to not have their detail shared.
Speaker 1: She took down her surname from her profile. Then she
Speaker 1: deleted family photos. Because we've got our journalistic hats on.
Speaker 1: The first place, this is the biggest story in the world.
Speaker 1: The first place you go is what's on Instagram. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because that's publicly usable, right.
Speaker 2: But how ridiculous this is the biggest story in the world. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and we'll get to why that executives. Yeah, cheating at
Speaker 2: a Coldplay concert?
Speaker 1: Why do you think? Because as an example of that, Jesse,
Speaker 1: I was on Reddit yesterday and I was doing a
Speaker 1: search because you're right. By last night it became really
Speaker 1: confusing about what was real and what was real. And
Speaker 1: I follow lots of different threads on Reddit. And what
Speaker 1: was interesting about why this was such a huge story
Speaker 1: is that the tech threads were about it, the work
Speaker 1: threads were about it, the gossip threads were about it,
Speaker 1: the news threads were about it. Like the ven diagram
Speaker 1: of all the different places at time.
Speaker 4: The reason that happened, I reckon, is because the Internet
Speaker 4: is so divided and so contented, amptuous, and we are
Speaker 4: constantly at each other, probably in the last few years
Speaker 4: more than ever before. And for the last four days,
Speaker 4: the internet has had a common enemy. We have all
Speaker 4: been united and even the means I don't know find
Speaker 4: that's true.
Speaker 1: Do you think we have a common enemy? I don't see.
Speaker 4: Well, everyone almost looked at it. It was like everyone's
Speaker 4: laugh immediately was like sucked in, You're having an affair.
Speaker 4: And isn't that calma like.
Speaker 1: Real shaden for it?
Speaker 3: Yes, exactly for women whose husbands have cheated on them
Speaker 3: and they have found out but humiliated. There's no question
Speaker 3: that he in particular was an instant villain. But unfortunately
Speaker 3: what has happened, which is always what happens, is that then,
Speaker 3: as you've said, you know, his wife gets her privacy
Speaker 3: horrifically invaded. Her picture is all over the internet. Here
Speaker 3: are five things you didn't know about the CEO's wife,
Speaker 3: you know, and then the woman in question also obviously
Speaker 3: the twenty five things you didn't know about her, and
Speaker 3: before you know it, the shit really is smeared everywhere
Speaker 3: all over everybody involved. So if it started with an
Speaker 3: almost like oh, this is quite satisfying watching this powerful
Speaker 3: man being sort of humiliated.
Speaker 2: That isn't really what happened.
Speaker 4: And the dig then happened. We're recording this on you know,
Speaker 4: Monday morning. He has made no statement yet, but his
Speaker 4: salary has since been revealed as being in the ballpark
Speaker 4: of about a million Australian dollars a year, and a
Speaker 4: LinkedIn post that relevant. Well, I think that it adds
Speaker 4: to the idea that this is an entitled.
Speaker 2: One hundred percent.
Speaker 3: I think if he was a teacher and she was
Speaker 3: a nurse, this story is not as good.
Speaker 4: Yeah, no question, because then there's also this thing of like,
Speaker 4: if he's having an affair with someone at work, what
Speaker 4: are the power dynamics there? That's interesting. Then a post
Speaker 4: on LinkedIn by the editor in chief of Forbes Australia
Speaker 4: was about how there's barely any gender diversity. It looks
Speaker 4: like she might be the only one kind of in
Speaker 4: the higher in the leadership teams that's a female.
Speaker 1: Don't you think it's become I mean in the age
Speaker 1: of the hot take, where everybody needs to have a
Speaker 1: hot take to get engagement, to get traffic. I mean, look,
Speaker 1: we're talking about it today, right but everybody then projecting
Speaker 1: their lens onto it. So is it about diversity in
Speaker 1: the leadership team? Is it about the cheated wife? Is
Speaker 1: it about public spaces and what's private? Is it about AI?
Speaker 1: Now all the pieces are running out about AI and
Speaker 1: what's so hard? You know that thing about lives make
Speaker 1: their way around the world three times before the truth
Speaker 1: can do up at shoes. We were talking in our
Speaker 1: slack journal last night, and a lot of us were
Speaker 1: at very different parts of the story. Like some of
Speaker 1: us really believed that the other woman in the video
Speaker 1: was their head of HR and that she'd recently been promoted,
Speaker 1: and other people knew that wasn't true. And then some
Speaker 1: of us thought his daughter's on TikTok, and others knew
Speaker 1: that it wasn't true. So most people got little bits
Speaker 1: of the story.
Speaker 4: And I think most people are just at the memes, right,
Speaker 4: Like most people are just consuming this as a series
Speaker 4: of funny memes and they see as it is, here
Speaker 4: is this kind of ideologue that represents the Master of
Speaker 4: the universe, a particular type of man, as we said,
Speaker 4: which maybe he is that.
Speaker 1: But it also maybe he isn't.
Speaker 4: Yeah exactly, And facing the wrath of the potentially tens
Speaker 4: of millions of women who have either experienced this or
Speaker 4: seen it happen, who then have somewhere to project their
Speaker 4: fury and their anger at the dishonesty of some men.
Speaker 4: That irks me, like, I'm starting to feel a bit
Speaker 4: sick about this whole thing. And then I saw Grace Springer,
Speaker 4: the woman who shared the video, right, and she's been
Speaker 4: interviewed and everything. Her most recent or one of her
Speaker 4: most recent Instagram stories was, you're so welcome for today's entertainment.
Speaker 4: Want to show your gratitude? Help me who is just
Speaker 4: a girl payoff eighty thousand dollars in student lines? And
Speaker 4: now she's got a link and you can go and
Speaker 4: help her pay off their student lins. So everyone who
Speaker 4: can is capitalizing off this viral moment.
Speaker 2: It's just a desperate need for distraction.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: The world is a scary place.
Speaker 3: We could spend forty eight hours obsessing over this story
Speaker 3: and making celebrities out of all of the people in
Speaker 3: it for five minutes, and no one will remember this
Speaker 3: in twenty four hours, and those people's lives are ruined.
Speaker 3: Is it their fault or not? Is a bit of
Speaker 3: a matter of opinion. But there's interesting.
Speaker 1: On that for one second, because I'm interested in the
Speaker 1: idea of the punishment in the crime, right, So I
Speaker 1: think we can all agree that what they did was
Speaker 1: not good.
Speaker 2: It doesn't appear to be good.
Speaker 3: He and his wife were separated and have been operated
Speaker 3: for a long time. She has not spoken on the record, dography,
Speaker 3: We have no idea, so a lot of assumptions are
Speaker 3: being made.
Speaker 1: Right, So if we all agree cheating is not good,
Speaker 1: if that's in fact what happened, but what should the
Speaker 1: punishment for that be? Should it be that you your
Speaker 1: reputation is forever destroyed, that the entire world is united
Speaker 1: in laughing at you, that you lose your career, that
Speaker 1: you lose your means to feed your family, that you're utterly, utterly,
Speaker 1: abjectly humiliated.
Speaker 4: Is that totally like that's disproportionate. Yeah, because the affair,
Speaker 4: whether the affair goes against company policy is even a question,
Speaker 4: right because it's like, if that had just been discovered,
Speaker 4: would that have been an issue or a conflict of interest?
Speaker 4: But the kiss cam element, what I like to think
Speaker 4: about is what if they just kissed, and they just kissed,
Speaker 4: and this would never.
Speaker 2: Have gone viral. That's true, it wouldn't have got anything.
Speaker 4: It was the reaction, which I completely understand why they
Speaker 4: reacted like that, but it was that that kind of
Speaker 4: suggested some guilt. I understand why Chris Martin kind of went.
Speaker 3: Oh, if he hadn't have said what he said, it
Speaker 3: probably which is I'm not saying we should be blaming
Speaker 3: Chris Martin. Yeah, but like if he hadn't have said
Speaker 3: what he said about either you're cheating or you're just
Speaker 3: very shy, then Grace the young woman posted this probably
Speaker 3: wouldn't have thought twice about it.
Speaker 2: No one would have thought twice about it.
Speaker 3: You're right, their guilty reaction to it started the story
Speaker 3: in point about what they deserve for that. Me, you're
Speaker 3: so right to be honest. I mean, again, this is assumption,
Speaker 3: just as much as it's an assumption to pretend we
Speaker 3: know the inner workings of either of their marriages.
Speaker 2: Life probably isn't going to be ruined.
Speaker 3: Like high profile CEOs have gone away with all kinds
Speaker 3: of affairs for a very long time, and they get
Speaker 3: another job and another job, and it might just be
Speaker 3: acquired a job, but you know, no one knew who
Speaker 3: he was a week ago, and no one will know
Speaker 3: who he is in a couple of months. The collateral
Speaker 3: damage around him, I don't agree.
Speaker 1: I actually don't agree with that, because I mean, he's
Speaker 1: not Jeff Bezos, right, So yes, you're right, someone like
Speaker 1: Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg or Donald Trump, nothing's going
Speaker 1: to touch them.
Speaker 4: But he doesn't feeding even the feeding his family point,
Speaker 4: it's like when you see the salary, there's a world
Speaker 4: in which we all kind of got to kilby.
Speaker 3: I think that the he'll be fine thing is why
Speaker 3: people feel comfortable laughing about it. You know how I
Speaker 3: said before, this is a different story if he's not him.
Speaker 3: I'm not saying that's right, but that's why, because we
Speaker 3: don't really feel like he's going to be a victim.
Speaker 3: We've all read a million stories about men who've harassed
Speaker 3: women at work, never mind had affairs, but still go
Speaker 3: on to get another good job, and another good job,
Speaker 3: another good job. What's also interesting about this, though, and
Speaker 3: we're going to talk in a minute about how we
Speaker 3: all want to be main characters now, is this is
Speaker 3: the sort of stuff that only used to happen to
Speaker 3: famous people like who could forget those paparazzi pictures of
Speaker 3: Kristin Stewart pashing her director Rupert Sanders when she was
Speaker 3: still with Robert Pattinson, and there were these paparazzi pictures.
Speaker 3: They're some of the most famous ones of all time
Speaker 3: of them canoodling somewhere in a canyon in.
Speaker 2: La or whatever, and it.
Speaker 3: Went around the world in an instant, his wife, her relationship.
Speaker 3: But this used to be that's what happens when you're
Speaker 3: famous and you've corded the attention and you've asked for it,
Speaker 3: and then you have no privacy. Now, because the Internet
Speaker 3: can turn any of us into a celebrity, amenable celebrity
Speaker 3: within three minutes. All of us have that level of
Speaker 3: scrutiny around the corner.
Speaker 4: And we're treating each other like interactive reality shows. And
Speaker 4: we're at a show on Saturday night. Nicki Glazer, who
Speaker 4: is a comedian, she hosted the Oscars this year, and
Speaker 4: she made a joke about this, which I thought was
Speaker 4: actually quite funny, where she went around and showed people
Speaker 4: on the screen and even if she was doing that,
Speaker 4: I went, that's my worst nightmare to be broadcast in
Speaker 4: front of all these people. Five thousand and six thousand people.
Speaker 4: But then the idea that you could then be broadcast
Speaker 4: to whoever chooses to film it is a whole other ballgame.
Speaker 4: But then they eventually the last one that they got
Speaker 4: to was Lisa Wilkinson being embraced by Hamish Blake, which
Speaker 4: was the joke, which was actually very funny. But then
Speaker 4: of course someone to film that and then that's gone
Speaker 4: viral as well. So the platform of it, I think
Speaker 4: is just terrified, the.
Speaker 1: Saturation, like there's no one of any generation presumably. I've
Speaker 1: got a friend whose overseas at the moment, and she
Speaker 1: was in an aerobi in an uber and the uber
Speaker 1: driver who didn't speak English, was laughing with her about
Speaker 1: it and about coldplay. It's the scale that's hard to
Speaker 1: get your head around.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it ends up being connective tissue between people. It's
Speaker 4: small talk, it's fodder, it's stuff for a comedy show.
Speaker 1: And everyone wants the next instrument. So yeah, my question
Speaker 1: is when will we walk away from this story? What
Speaker 1: will satis by our appetite for resolution of this narrative.
Speaker 3: It probably depends what happens next, right, because there's a
Speaker 3: world where the woman in the video decides to come
Speaker 3: out and tell a story and do an interview, or
Speaker 3: the wife comes out and does that, or you know,
Speaker 3: they perpetuate the story in whatever way that will keep
Speaker 3: it going. But there's also a very strong likelihood that
Speaker 3: this will die away very quickly, like all our memorable
Speaker 3: Internet obsessions do, and in a couple of months we'll
Speaker 3: all be going, can you remember that time when we
Speaker 3: were all obsessed with that CEO? Whatever happened to him?
Speaker 3: Like it kind of depends what happens next.
Speaker 1: In a moment. From Polarate's classes to cafes, concerts to
Speaker 1: tourist destinations, public spaces have been overtaken by main character Syndrome.
Speaker 1: Holly is going to tell us what it's like in
Speaker 1: Rome and Paris and London right now.
Speaker 3: Sixteen year olds will be voting in the next UK election.
Speaker 3: When the Labor Party won government in Britain last year,
Speaker 3: one of their key manifesto promises is that they would
Speaker 3: lower the voting age from eighteen to sixteen, and they're
Speaker 3: doing it.
Speaker 1: I have a question, yes, why because the people who
Speaker 1: would maybe be excited about that have not been allowed
Speaker 1: to vote in that election.
Speaker 4: Now, why is it so popular so yes, Why.
Speaker 1: Is it so popular? Why would you go, yeah, you
Speaker 1: know what, my children need to be able to vote.
Speaker 3: Well, when you think about it, it sounds kind of wild.
Speaker 3: But even here in Australia, it was only in nineteen
Speaker 3: seventy three that they lowered the voting age from twenty
Speaker 3: one to eighteen, So it used to be seen as
Speaker 3: ridiculous that you would let anyone between eighteen and twenty
Speaker 3: one vote. That adults were twenty one and that was it.
Speaker 4: And whether it's true or not, there is a sense
Speaker 4: that young people will vote more progressively.
Speaker 3: So often it is popular with left wing parties, but
Speaker 3: that doesn't actually turn out to be true. But the
Speaker 3: argument is that at sixteen years old, you can work,
Speaker 3: you can pay tax, and you can fight for your country,
Speaker 3: so why can't you vote, And that seems to be
Speaker 3: you have a lot of resonance.
Speaker 1: You can make a baby.
Speaker 3: Here in Australia, Independent MP Manique Ryan is going to
Speaker 3: table the bill here too. It was last tabled here
Speaker 3: in twenty eighteen by the Greens and it was chucked
Speaker 3: out because one of the arguments here is but we
Speaker 3: have compulsory voting and can you make a.
Speaker 2: Sixteen year old vote.
Speaker 3: But Manique Ryan's bringing it back in light of the
Speaker 3: UK thing and saying, well, why don't we make it
Speaker 3: so that you it is compulsory, but you won't find
Speaker 3: them if they don't do it, So it's kind of
Speaker 3: like soft compulsory. So it looks like it might happen
Speaker 3: here too. What do we think about it?
Speaker 4: I feel surprisingly not that passionate about allowing sixteen year
Speaker 4: olds to vote. I feel as though, as someone who
Speaker 4: considers myself progressive, it is something that I should be
Speaker 4: fighting for. But I keep hearing the argument young people,
Speaker 4: they're the ones who these policies are going to impact
Speaker 4: the most. And I find that kind of a weak
Speaker 4: argument because it's like, yeah, you could say that about
Speaker 4: five year olds. I don't think five year olds should vote.
Speaker 4: Like there is something about civic understanding and comprehension and
Speaker 4: political knowledge and all that kind of stuff that I
Speaker 4: think comes with voting. And they say sixteen year olds
Speaker 4: can be taxed, right.
Speaker 3: That seems to me to be a sensible argument. If
Speaker 3: I have to pay tax, I should have a say yes.
Speaker 4: But isn't it that if you earn less than about
Speaker 4: eighteen five hundred dollars then you don't pay tax. So
Speaker 4: most sixteen year olds aren't paying tax, they're not paying rent,
Speaker 4: they're not like not that they're not impacted by policies,
Speaker 4: but I think of myself at sixteen and my level
Speaker 4: of engagement, even myself at eighteen and my level of engagement,
Speaker 4: and I think I didn't know what I was doing. Mayo,
Speaker 4: what do you think I'm.
Speaker 1: Stuck on the idea of five year olds voting. I
Speaker 1: just put up your hand. Plus, I really like wrestling
Speaker 1: with this issue because I think the idea, if it's
Speaker 1: not compulsory, the people who will vote will be the
Speaker 1: ones who are really engaged. The reason I love compulsory
Speaker 1: voting is that you know.
Speaker 4: It's good for moderation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's good to sort of get a bit of
Speaker 1: a common denominator, not necessarily the lowest, but a common denominator.
Speaker 1: I'm also really interested in this idea of all the things.
Speaker 1: As you say, Ohole, that you can do sixteen, but
Speaker 1: you can't drink alcohol until you're eighteen, and I'm interested
Speaker 1: in that.
Speaker 4: I was really interested that you could join the army
Speaker 4: at sixteen. I fact checked that because I wouldn't get
Speaker 4: you and you came sixteen and six months.
Speaker 3: And also, you know you said not that many sixteen
Speaker 3: year olds are working, but plenty do. You can have
Speaker 3: an apprenticeship, you can train.
Speaker 4: That's a really good point.
Speaker 2: Sixteen year olds are at school.
Speaker 4: Oh, that's a good point.
Speaker 2: I think I'm all.
Speaker 3: For it if the policies of the country impact you
Speaker 3: and you're of that age. What's interesting to me about
Speaker 3: it is that in so many other areas of our
Speaker 3: culture now we're extending childhood. We're very much about infantilizing
Speaker 3: people until they're about twenty five. These days, it seems
Speaker 3: so this sort of almost seems countercultural to say, yeah,
Speaker 3: but sixteen year olds are savvy enough to be able
Speaker 3: to vote, But personally I think they are.
Speaker 2: I know that when I was young, I felt.
Speaker 3: Very passionately that I should be able to vote before
Speaker 3: I was eighteen, and I think I probably knew what
Speaker 3: I was talking about.
Speaker 4: Austria, Germany, Brazil, they've all changed their voting age sixteen.
Speaker 4: It does look like we're going that way.
Speaker 3: And in Britain and also in terms of numbers, and
Speaker 3: they think this is going to add another one and
Speaker 3: a half million people to the electoral role. But it's
Speaker 3: not compulsory there here, it wouldn't be anything like that
Speaker 3: number because our population is a lot smaller, so it
Speaker 3: probably wouldn't be the decider, but it would definitely make
Speaker 3: campaigns more interesting.
Speaker 1: Main character syndrome is ruining public spaces. That's the title
Speaker 1: of a piece I read this week by the writer
Speaker 1: Molly Bath on Substack, and before we unpack it, I
Speaker 1: want to do a quick glossary of what main character
Speaker 1: syndrome actually is. It's the delusion that you are the
Speaker 1: center of the universe like a toddler.
Speaker 4: Is it a delusion?
Speaker 1: Well, you're right, actually, because we all are literally all
Speaker 1: the center of.
Speaker 2: Our own universe.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but it's one thing to feel it or know
Speaker 1: it and another to pay yeah, act as if everybody
Speaker 1: else in the world is a NPC non playing character
Speaker 1: in the story of your life. You can kind of
Speaker 1: trace it back to the introduction of the front facing
Speaker 1: camera on the iPhone four back in twenty ten. That
Speaker 1: was kind of ground zero, the cultural tipping point, because
Speaker 1: that's when the world stopped being something that you looked
Speaker 1: at and started being something that looked back at you
Speaker 1: as the main character, with you in the middle of it.
Speaker 1: And in this piece, Molly Bath says that it's kind
Speaker 1: of made us all seemingly oblivious to just how annoying
Speaker 1: we are in public. So she starts from a good place.
Speaker 1: You know, this idea of main character syndrome. It's a
Speaker 1: sort of self empowerment. It's like, here are my boundaries,
Speaker 1: and I'm going to put myself first. I'm not going
Speaker 1: to be a martyr. But it can really mutate quite
Speaker 1: quickly into a type of oblivious narcissism. And she gives
Speaker 1: some examples of things like, you know, talking loudly on
Speaker 1: the phone in public at the movies or on public
Speaker 1: transporter and cafes.
Speaker 4: Or playing your YouTube video on a train.
Speaker 1: Yes, or someone's phone pinging in a yoga class. This
Speaker 1: also fairly extreme example. It's been a while since I've
Speaker 1: been to a public pool, but in the UK and
Speaker 1: in parts of the US, they've been reports that they've
Speaker 1: had to empty and close public pools because people have
Speaker 1: been pooing in them. Not children, adults who justdn't be
Speaker 1: bothered to get out and go to the bathroom.
Speaker 4: Do we know couldn't be bothered? I immediately, and maybe
Speaker 4: this is my own context, but I look at that,
Speaker 4: and I think of whether it's people with disabilities, people
Speaker 4: who are older, like, are there instances where adults? I
Speaker 4: would want more details on that.
Speaker 1: It seems to be something that's rising.
Speaker 4: What is rising is things like public urination. Like public
Speaker 4: urination to me is the idea that you're in their
Speaker 4: home and you're winging on the streets as a terroist.
Speaker 2: Yeah, not cool.
Speaker 1: Don't pop a squat, yeah in the middle of Rome
Speaker 1: like Holly did. Yes, she didn't really. But it also
Speaker 1: has had an impact on tourism. And I want to
Speaker 1: just link to a story that I've been reading about
Speaker 1: and haven't really understood until now. There's been a lot
Speaker 1: of protests in some of the big European cities over
Speaker 1: summer about over tourism. You know, we saw some in
Speaker 1: Venice being some in Rome the Louver closed for a
Speaker 1: day because the staff just said, it's just too many people,
Speaker 1: we can't take it whole. You have returned from the
Speaker 1: frontline of main characters Syndrome, which is Europe in summer, right,
Speaker 1: what did you see?
Speaker 4: Were you an MPC and other people's holiday.
Speaker 3: It's so funny because I've just come back from holiday
Speaker 3: where I went to all those tourist hotspots with my family,
Speaker 3: and that is not something that we do every year,
Speaker 3: certainly not. But we went to London, Paris, Rome, and
Speaker 3: then we spent a week in Italy with my family
Speaker 3: and Manchester. But funnily enough that I don't have to
Speaker 3: fight off that many influences in Manchester. I don't know
Speaker 3: where they were, no viral restaurants. I haven't been to
Speaker 3: Paris since I was twenty one, right, So like this
Speaker 3: is a long time. Things have changed, friends, things have
Speaker 3: changed a great deal. So here's one of the things.
Speaker 3: My daughter's fifteen, and I don't want to embarrass it,
Speaker 3: but I'm going to you ever so slightly. She knew
Speaker 3: she was going to these cities, and she had a
Speaker 3: shot list prepared for pictures that she wanted. And I
Speaker 3: in my head, I thought, isn't that cute that my
Speaker 3: daughter has done a bit of research and she's excited
Speaker 3: that when we go to London, she knows that there's
Speaker 3: this thing called Big Ben, she knows she wants a
Speaker 3: picture with it. When we go to Paris, she knows
Speaker 3: there's this thing called the Affatage.
Speaker 2: She knows pa with it. That's real cute.
Speaker 1: Which change.
Speaker 4: When I went overseas for the first time, I was
Speaker 4: doing the same thing, like I went, I don't wait
Speaker 4: to get a photo with the Eiffel Tower.
Speaker 3: But no, she has saved to Pinterest, and as I
Speaker 3: found out, she is not alone this particular shot that
Speaker 3: you've got to get when you go to London and
Speaker 3: you go to Big Ben and there's a phone box
Speaker 3: in a certain place and whatever. And I'm obviously an
Speaker 3: indulgent mum who's excited that my daughter's excited. So I'm like,
Speaker 3: let's go there, Let's go and get you this picture.
Speaker 1: What's so special about it?
Speaker 2: Like, it's just a really good view.
Speaker 3: So you get a London phone box and Big Ben
Speaker 3: in the background and probably a London bus.
Speaker 2: It's like iconic composition.
Speaker 3: So you turn up to this phone box and there
Speaker 3: is a que Like I'm not joking, this is not
Speaker 3: a official sight seeing anything. There is a Q twenty
Speaker 3: minutes long of other people, mostly young people, mostly female
Speaker 3: older than fifteen, but like, who are all also taking
Speaker 3: this particular picture in this particular place. You go to
Speaker 3: Paris and the amount of time you have to wait
Speaker 3: for again mostly young women, to get the shot that
Speaker 3: they want in front of the tower at this particular time,
Speaker 3: in this particular place, looking this particular way, head down,
Speaker 3: maybe looking away, maybe looking off to the side. Then
Speaker 3: the queue and the one in London, the poor Internet boyfriends,
Speaker 3: and is going to generalize, but it's true of like
Speaker 3: the girls posing for the picture and then taking the
Speaker 3: phone back going through them.
Speaker 2: No no, no, not that one.
Speaker 3: Let's do it again, like reshooting everybody doing these content
Speaker 3: creator shots. It is very different. That is new, new energy.
Speaker 3: Everywhere we went. We went to when we were in Rome,
Speaker 3: we went to the Trevy Fountain very very early. I'm
Speaker 3: not that bothered about the Trevy Fountain. Obviously, all of
Speaker 3: that stuff's gorgeous. There were women at six am who
Speaker 3: looked like they had been in full glam for an hour,
Speaker 3: and they were there in evening dresses with heels and
Speaker 3: head to get this iconic to.
Speaker 2: Get these shots.
Speaker 3: And it made me really not I mean, I wasn't.
Speaker 3: I know, I sound like I'm being a grumpy old
Speaker 3: woman about it.
Speaker 1: I just found it so.
Speaker 3: Interesting because it is so different. It's true that we've
Speaker 3: always taken pictures of things, and we've always taken pictures
Speaker 3: of ourselves in places that we've always wanted to go,
Speaker 3: and it's like a prove I was there, look back
Speaker 3: at it and remember that I was really there because
Speaker 3: the fleeting nature of travelers. You know, then you're back
Speaker 3: home and you're in your office job and you're like,
Speaker 3: was I ever even at the Eiffel Tower?
Speaker 2: And you can look at these pictures.
Speaker 3: But it's a very specific I'm going to use the
Speaker 3: word I would say wrong esthetic. It's a very specific
Speaker 3: type of person and there are so many of them,
Speaker 3: and it's really something new, and I could only think
Speaker 3: of it as main character.
Speaker 4: I think there are a few different things that are
Speaker 4: like coalescing at the same time. The first is that
Speaker 4: when my mum went to Europe for the first time,
Speaker 4: when you took a photo and you got it developed,
Speaker 4: you could only really have one. There wasn't unlimited right,
Speaker 4: and now you've got unlimited data. It's not even like
Speaker 4: a memory stick. It's like you can take three hundred
Speaker 4: photos if you want to get the right one. The
Speaker 4: second is video is that often from what as a
Speaker 4: consumer who is seeing a lot of people in Europe,
Speaker 4: I'm seeing people in all gowns doing almost runway walks.
Speaker 2: In front of the trap fashion show. Right, it's like
Speaker 2: a fashion show, a fashion shoot, and I.
Speaker 4: Always think, imagine how that felt a film. I'd be
Speaker 4: so because everyone would be would be watching you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what do you do in your You're holding everybody in.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no offense to them, but they are holding everybody
Speaker 3: up because they're hogging that spot and that view while
Speaker 3: they do their fourteen takes so back to the idea
Speaker 3: of everybody's main character and whether it's irritating that the
Speaker 3: phone's pinging in the yoga studio or the whatever is
Speaker 3: that your bespoke photo shoot at one of whatever place
Speaker 3: you're at, everybody else is waiting. And it's changing cities
Speaker 3: in a way that I can understand is you go
Speaker 3: to places that are very Instagram famous. There's a particular
Speaker 3: market in London that has this strawberry stand. It's just
Speaker 3: chocolate covered strawberries, right, but it is so viral that
Speaker 3: place that it has changed the entire nature of this market.
Speaker 3: On a Tuesday lunchtime wasn't even school holidays. It is
Speaker 3: so mobbed you can't get near it. All the stalls
Speaker 3: around are getting no custom. The conques are like zig
Speaker 3: zag backwards on each other. And they've got a system
Speaker 3: in place, and it's all for the gram.
Speaker 4: There used to be a lonely planet or whatever, and
Speaker 4: it's saying, oh, this cafe is good or whatever. But
Speaker 4: the idea that, as we were saying before, overnight, you
Speaker 4: can go from being a little known cafe to being
Speaker 4: entirely viral. And that's not just happening to the little bakery.
Speaker 4: It can happen to certain spots. There's always a new
Speaker 4: spot that's blowing up in terms of interest. And the
Speaker 4: other thing that they talk about with over tourism, because
Speaker 4: this was a discussion before COVID. The Internet's made it
Speaker 4: really easy to book things, and the cost of air
Speaker 4: travel being lower than it was a few generations ago,
Speaker 4: means it's more accessible and you've got more and more
Speaker 4: people going and then having this sense of entitlement which
Speaker 4: begins on the plane. It's like I get on the plane,
Speaker 4: I go, this is my holiday, and this country exists
Speaker 4: for me, and this air hostess exists for me, and
Speaker 4: nothing will ruin my holiday. And so even the behavior,
Speaker 4: we're all.
Speaker 1: The main character of our own holidays.
Speaker 4: Yes, but it's almost.
Speaker 1: Like locations have become famous. I mean, I know that
Speaker 1: sounds funny because we've always had famous places like the
Speaker 1: Harmbridge or Big Bear or the Empire State Building. But
Speaker 1: it's more than that now because like the strawberry stand,
Speaker 1: like it's no longer enough to go and take a
Speaker 1: picture of that. It's so funny the different generations and
Speaker 1: what they film, because I've got a number of friends
Speaker 1: gen X's who are in Europe at the moment, and
Speaker 1: the photos they take are still old school. Here's some strawberries,
Speaker 1: or here's my dinner, or here's a view, or here's
Speaker 1: a sunset or here's an interesting thing I can see.
Speaker 1: So they're still looking out at the world. And I
Speaker 1: don't mean to say that we're better than the people
Speaker 1: who are looking back at themselves, but the people looking
Speaker 1: back at themselves the currencies that they were there needing
Speaker 1: to insert themselves in there, because what you say about
Speaker 1: your daughter, hole, she's not an influencer, she's just a me.
Speaker 1: So it's not just the people who were monetizing this content.
Speaker 1: It's the idea that almost like when you go to Disneyland,
Speaker 1: you want the photo in front of the Disney Castle
Speaker 1: because you've seen that and it's iconic and it's like, look,
Speaker 1: I'm inside this iconic theme.
Speaker 3: It's also that you know, our social media platforms have
Speaker 3: done the art direction for us, right, so they're like,
Speaker 3: if you stand in this place and you look a
Speaker 3: certain way at this certain time, you'll get this amazing
Speaker 3: shot that used to be just the sort of privilege
Speaker 3: of a certain kind of person who had an eye
Speaker 3: for that. So in some ways it's democratizing. But the
Speaker 3: other thing is that our fomo, I think, has just
Speaker 3: reached new levels with it. When you walk around a
Speaker 3: city like London or or Paris, and this did actually
Speaker 3: happen in Manchester too, you'll suddenly see a big queue
Speaker 3: for something and immediately human nature, what are they quing for?
Speaker 3: What do they know that I don't know that I
Speaker 3: should join that queue? And in Paris you'd walk past
Speaker 3: and it would be a particular petiserie. There'd be four
Speaker 3: other bakeries on the street, but this particular one has
Speaker 3: this cake that is particularly instagrammable. So the queue is
Speaker 3: out the door, you can join a virtual way list
Speaker 3: for it. You could do all these things, and so
Speaker 3: everywhere we'd go there'd be a queue and we'd all
Speaker 3: be like, what are they queuing for? What are they
Speaker 3: cuing for? And then, horrifyingly, on the last day we
Speaker 3: were there, we were walking around in the evening and
Speaker 3: we'd been, as I say, seeing these cues for days
Speaker 3: and kind of.
Speaker 2: What's that about?
Speaker 3: That must be something viral, that must be something exciting,
Speaker 3: And then we saw this queue outside this place on
Speaker 3: a side street in Paris, and we were like, what's that?
Speaker 2: What's that?
Speaker 3: And we realized this was a literal queue for a
Speaker 3: souper kitchen, like a queue for people who are hungry
Speaker 3: trying to get themselves fed, next to the tourists in
Speaker 3: their long line trying to get a picture of their cake.
Speaker 3: I'm not saying that with any moral judgment. They're like, oh,
Speaker 3: I would never like, you know, I totally was buying
Speaker 3: the macarons that looked really pretty. But it's kind of
Speaker 3: really interesting how it's messed with our heads.
Speaker 4: I think the irony is that the beauty of travel
Speaker 4: is the opposite of the main character syndrome is it
Speaker 4: you often feel anonymous, You feel like no one knows you.
Speaker 4: You feel like on the main stage is the culture
Speaker 4: and the people, and you're like this viewer rather than
Speaker 4: this person who the world it makes you feel small.
Speaker 4: That's the beauty of it. We're not just saying this.
Speaker 4: There's all this research and all of these countries that
Speaker 4: have come out and said people are etching their names
Speaker 4: on the Colosseum, like all these countries have come out
Speaker 4: from Amsterdam to Kyoto. They literally have new codes of conduct.
Speaker 4: Some countries are getting people to sign it when they
Speaker 4: get there to go this is how you have to
Speaker 4: behave in our country. Because we're having all of these
Speaker 4: issues with tourists that there is this entitlement. I also
Speaker 4: wonder I think it is a Western thing. I think
Speaker 4: that it's a Western entitlement to like you just come
Speaker 4: to this country. You see it in Bali, where it's
Speaker 4: like this total disregard for cultural sensitivity is about things
Speaker 4: and posing or you know, being really insensitive to cultural
Speaker 4: or religious sites. Like that kind of stuff is all
Speaker 4: over Europe.
Speaker 3: It makes you realize you're We were in some beautiful
Speaker 3: for churches in Italy and some people are literally lying
Speaker 3: on the floor in the middle of a cathedral trying
Speaker 3: to get a photo of the well. Their friend leans
Speaker 3: over them to get the shot of them doing the
Speaker 3: peace sign underneath the amazing fresco or whatever. And I'm
Speaker 3: not a religious person, but I found that insensitive, insensitive
Speaker 3: and a bit ick. And the problem is is you
Speaker 3: see it though, and the other little thought in the
Speaker 3: back of your head, And certainly if you're I mean,
Speaker 3: I didn't, but you're like.
Speaker 2: Oh, that would be a good shot.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Before you know it, you're probably joining the queue to
Speaker 3: lie on the floor in this century's old cathedral and
Speaker 3: do a peace sign in front of the Virgin Mary
Speaker 3: after the break? What happens when someone writes an unauthorized
Speaker 3: biography of you and you kind of like it? All
Speaker 3: the signs are that maybe the new Gwyneth Paltrow book
Speaker 3: might be an inside job.
Speaker 1: Do you want daily outloud access? Why wouldn't you? We
Speaker 1: dropped besides every Tuesday and Thursday exclusively for Muma MEA.
Speaker 2: Subscribers.
Speaker 1: Follow the link in the show notes to get us
Speaker 1: in your ears five days a week, and a huge
Speaker 1: thank you if you're already a subscriber. Look, I might have.
Speaker 3: Been on holiday, but don't believe for one second that
Speaker 3: when my imaginary friend Gwyneth Paltrow was on the gram
Speaker 3: making paleo lobster benedict for her husband the other day.
Speaker 2: I wasn't right there with her. What a relatable queen
Speaker 2: she is.
Speaker 1: I saw making a tuna salad for him. Gosh, she's been.
Speaker 2: Cooking for tuna saldy guy is easy, look, tasty, paleo lobster.
Speaker 2: Bless her.
Speaker 3: Anyway, while she was doing that, I like to imagine
Speaker 3: that her lawyers were likely on the phone to People
Speaker 3: magazine because they were about to publish a cover proclaiming
Speaker 3: all the juicy gossip about Gwyneth from a new unauthorized biography.
Speaker 3: This book is written by this woman called Amy Odell,
Speaker 3: and it's being tagged as a bombshell book, bombshell, big letters, Mia,
Speaker 3: what's an unauthorized biography?
Speaker 2: And is Amy O'Dell like sheer? Big name jehoe have
Speaker 2: been worried about this?
Speaker 1: She's people in the industry know who she is, and
Speaker 1: by that I sort of mean media fashion, that sort
Speaker 1: of adjacent world. She is an author and a journalist.
Speaker 1: She wrote the very very well received and successful also
Speaker 1: unauthorised biography of Anna Wintour in twenty twenty two.
Speaker 4: What does unauthorized rey unauthorized means?
Speaker 1: It's not with the overt cooperation of the subject, and
Speaker 1: they don't have any power over what you do publish,
Speaker 1: who you do talk to. And there are different versions
Speaker 1: of authorized and unauthorized, right, and the opposite of that
Speaker 1: is an autobiography, which is you have complete control because.
Speaker 2: You're writing it all.
Speaker 1: A ghostwriter writes it with you. People often prefer unauthorized
Speaker 1: because it means that you get the full story. But
Speaker 1: then there are some that are really salacious and trying
Speaker 1: to tell a particular juicy story, and then there are
Speaker 1: others that have the you know. For example, with the Ana
Speaker 1: Winter book, she didn't try to shut it down. Now,
Speaker 1: if Anna winto hadn't wanted that book to happen, she
Speaker 1: would have told everybody, do not speak to amy Odell.
Speaker 1: She didn't do that. Now. Gwyneth Paltry didn't do that
Speaker 1: to Amyodell either.
Speaker 2: With her book.
Speaker 4: Was Anna Wintre's flattering.
Speaker 1: I read it and it's the definitive biography of her.
Speaker 1: And Anna probably won't ever write a book about herself,
Speaker 1: but it was well done. She interviewed over two hundred
Speaker 1: and twenty people for that book. I think about the
Speaker 1: same for the Gwyneth book, and it was very comprehensive,
Speaker 1: so it wasn't you know some unauthorised biographies or just
Speaker 1: have an unnamed source and read like the Daily Mail.
Speaker 1: But these books are extraordinary pieces of journalism.
Speaker 4: Can you tell me what we know? What did the people?
Speaker 3: So there's say what I'm interested about this is about
Speaker 3: whether or not this book, whether or not Gwyneth is
Speaker 3: in on it, right because it's described as a bombshell book.
Speaker 3: It's not actually out yet and there's an NDA on it.
Speaker 3: But People had an exclusive. Now, People magazine is still
Speaker 3: widely regarded as the celebrity's mouthpiece if any gossip magazine,
Speaker 3: as it were, has any credibility anymore and forever, really
Speaker 3: it's People magazine. It's where celebrities go to confirm or
Speaker 3: deny certain stories, to do exclusives back in the day
Speaker 3: when that was a big thing. And so the fact
Speaker 3: that they have the first extracts of this book is meaningful.
Speaker 3: The other thing that might mean that gwynethsineon is, as
Speaker 3: far as we can tell, despite it being called bombshell,
Speaker 3: there doesn't seem to be a smoking gun here right.
Speaker 3: Things that we know so far, she considered Brad Pitt
Speaker 3: to be a bit of a dullard and she says
Speaker 3: things like we came from very different backgrounds. I had
Speaker 3: to teach him about the different types of caviat in restaurants.
Speaker 4: And didn't she say he's dumber shit or something.
Speaker 3: She is alleged to have told her friends that she
Speaker 3: thought he was dumb as shit. There's a suggestion that
Speaker 3: maybe she cheated on him, and there's a suggestion that
Speaker 3: maybe ben Affleck cheated on her. There's some stuff in
Speaker 3: there about why her and Madonna's friendship ended. I liked
Speaker 3: that ye which was that Madonna and Lord es Gate
Speaker 3: crashed a family holiday of Gwyneth and Chris Martin's back
Speaker 3: to our friend who likes to out married cheating couples,
Speaker 3: and that Madonna was so awful and so awful to
Speaker 3: her daughter that Chris was like, we can't hang around
Speaker 3: with that woman anymore.
Speaker 2: She's awful. So there's stuff like that.
Speaker 1: I don't think my daughter would be a very good hang.
Speaker 2: I reckon she'd be quite a good I also read.
Speaker 1: In that excerpt that Gwyneth said that ben Affleck is
Speaker 1: very good at kindly. Yes, she really liked having sex
Speaker 1: with him because he gives such good hand yeap.
Speaker 3: So there's that kind of juice, but there doesn't seem
Speaker 3: to be like a really really awful thing. But here's
Speaker 3: my question is if you were turning a blind eye
Speaker 3: to a biography about yourself, because as me as already said,
Speaker 3: it looks like Anna Wintour. Amy Odell has said this herself.
Speaker 3: She was working on that book for two years and
Speaker 3: she was kind of getting nowhere. And then Anna Wintour
Speaker 3: heard obviously that she was doing it, and agreed to
Speaker 3: hand over a list of contacts, not to talk to her,
Speaker 3: but to say these people will talk to you. Because say,
Speaker 3: if someone called you, Jesse and said I'm writing a
Speaker 3: selicious book about Holly, You'd say, I will tell you nothing,
Speaker 3: because I am a loyal and honest friend. But if
Speaker 3: I said to you it's all right, babe, talk to them.
Speaker 3: It'll be okay, then you would right. More likely obviously
Speaker 3: they'd be writing books because let's play along. So but
Speaker 3: would I do that if I knew you were going
Speaker 3: to make me sound like a snobby idiot?
Speaker 4: Well, what's interesting, right is that I think the context
Speaker 4: of this being us is libel laws. Right, So this
Speaker 4: is going to be written regardless. There is nothing that
Speaker 4: is going to stop that book being published. There was
Speaker 4: an unauthorized biography written about Tom Cruise, and it's different
Speaker 4: in Australia. Even that Tom Cruise biography wasn't published here
Speaker 4: for a long while because of we have very very
Speaker 4: strict defamation laws. So for Gwyneth, it's like Amy O'Dell
Speaker 4: can kind of say what she wants. So you would
Speaker 4: want some kind of involvement.
Speaker 3: Mia, Do you think there's a world in which Anana
Speaker 3: Wintour or Gwyneth Peltrow goes, Okay, I'm going to give
Speaker 3: you access to some of my people. So some of
Speaker 3: the what the only really named source I've seen much
Speaker 3: in this because a lot of it's dug up from
Speaker 3: old interviews is Kevin o'quon, who's the famous celebrity makeupartist
Speaker 3: who has that mascara that everybody was Yeah.
Speaker 1: But he's dead.
Speaker 2: Oh of course he is.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, so that's easy he could give permission. I
Speaker 1: think what's interesting these books are important in the important
Speaker 1: cultural figures, and she is certainly from Goop to Conscious
Speaker 1: Uncoupling to Shakespeare in Love, she's certainly got a footprint
Speaker 1: on our culture. It's important, or it's a worthwhile exercise
Speaker 1: to have one sort of place where all of that
Speaker 1: is examined, the influence that person has on the culture.
Speaker 1: There are examples where like an unauthorised biography Andrew Morton
Speaker 1: and Princess Diana, right, we found out after she died
Speaker 1: that she actually was the source of that and she
Speaker 1: was literally sending him notes. And then there are others.
Speaker 1: It very much depends who the writer is. Kitty Kelly
Speaker 1: was a very famous biographer in the eighties and nineties,
Speaker 1: and she would write like trashy, pretty trashy, like sensationalist ones.
Speaker 1: I think when a respected journalist wants to write a
Speaker 1: biography of you, first of all, it's a way to
Speaker 1: slightly control it because they are a decent journalist who
Speaker 1: have got a lot of connections in the industry, who
Speaker 1: aren't going to want to make enemies of you or
Speaker 1: of everybody else. And so it kind of plants the
Speaker 1: flag in the ground and stops more salacious books from
Speaker 1: having any credibility. And also from everything I've read about
Speaker 1: Gwyneth's approach to this book is that people have talked
Speaker 1: about her and gossiped about her since she first came
Speaker 1: on the scene. There's no point in shutting it down.
Speaker 1: I think she's changed her view of that because back
Speaker 1: in the nineties, Grenon Carter was working on a cover
Speaker 1: story for Vanity Fair about Gwyneth Paltrow and she moved
Speaker 1: Heaven and Nurse to try and get that shut down,
Speaker 1: and she was successful for many, many years. It ended
Speaker 1: up coming out years later in a much watered down form.
Speaker 1: But it's also flattering, so not necessarily the book, but
Speaker 1: the idea that someone would write.
Speaker 3: She's doing a lot of interviews and stuff lately, so
Speaker 3: she's obviously prepared to be more public than she was,
Speaker 3: as you say. But I heard her say on one
Speaker 3: of the podcasts recently, when someone said, what's the worst
Speaker 3: misconception out there about you? She said that I'm a
Speaker 3: snob who's out of touch. Now, everything I've read in
Speaker 3: this of this book, from the caveat to the you know,
Speaker 3: Ben Affleck was too much of a guy's guy and
Speaker 3: all that kind of stuff certainly doesn't help that view
Speaker 3: of her. But do you think there's a world where
Speaker 3: you go if you don't write the worst things, I'll
Speaker 3: let you have access to not.
Speaker 2: So bad flattering And I.
Speaker 1: Saw that it keeps her culturally relevant.
Speaker 4: The headline going around which was that maybe at the
Speaker 4: end of school or something, she said her biggest fear
Speaker 4: was obesity. Like things like that can do a lot.
Speaker 3: Of yeah's a lot of stuff in there that makes it. Well,
Speaker 3: that's what was written about her in the yearbook. Yes,
Speaker 3: that it would be her worst nightmare. So it certainly
Speaker 3: reinforces everything about privileged, waspy, skinny, white lady who breezes
Speaker 3: through life, NEPO baby, all that stuff.
Speaker 2: It's all seems.
Speaker 3: To be in here, But there isn't anything in there
Speaker 3: so far that we didn't all already know.
Speaker 4: I couldn't. I couldn't of anything worse. I could not
Speaker 4: think of anything worse than having two hundred people go
Speaker 4: on the record to bitch about you to a strangers,
Speaker 4: to then be read by millions and millions of people,
Speaker 4: and there is not a single thing you can do
Speaker 4: about it like that.
Speaker 1: But you just said they were bitching about her. They
Speaker 1: won't know a bitch about her, like a lot of people
Speaker 1: sully things about her.
Speaker 4: The thing about a source, right is that like, yes, Holly,
Speaker 4: I'm loyal, and so I probably wouldn't say anything. A
Speaker 4: source often has to feel something quite strongly about the subject.
Speaker 2: You kissed off at work.
Speaker 4: Yeah, if someone asked me about someone I felt kind
Speaker 4: of neutral about, I'd be like, I don't really have
Speaker 4: anything to say. They work out and whatever, Right, But
Speaker 4: it's people with an axe to grind or like. And
Speaker 4: there is not a single person on the planet who
Speaker 4: wouldn't have someone they've come across who doesn't have a
Speaker 4: terrible story to tell about you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but the choice of journalists or that knowing who
Speaker 1: the journalist is. Amy Odell's not interested in writing either
Speaker 1: a hagiography which is just a puff piece, or a
Speaker 1: trash book. She's not. And I think I've been asked
Speaker 1: to contribute to profiles about particular high profile people before,
Speaker 1: and it's actually after you check with them that they
Speaker 1: are okay with you talking to the journalist. And often
Speaker 1: I've had them done of me before and they say, oh,
Speaker 1: who could we talk to? And you give them a
Speaker 1: few people who you know will say something really nice
Speaker 1: about you, and then they go and find people who
Speaker 1: will say full things about you. I had to do
Speaker 1: one of Zoe Foster Blake for a profile that the
Speaker 1: Stradling Financial Review we're doing, and I really enjoyed the
Speaker 1: process of thinking what I wanted to say about her,
Speaker 1: like what I could offer to a profile that would
Speaker 1: give the reader some insight into her. Obviously, you don't
Speaker 1: just say, oh, she's really great and she's cool, like
Speaker 1: I had to actually and be spa yeah. And for her,
Speaker 1: I was like, Zoe really knows what she wants to
Speaker 1: do and what she doesn't want to do. And even
Speaker 1: though there's a lot of pressure to be an influencer
Speaker 1: and be this, and she pioneered a voice that a
Speaker 1: generation of young writers in Australia have tried to copy.
Speaker 1: And she was also the first one in Australia that
Speaker 1: gave a brand of voice. And all of these things
Speaker 1: are very specific things. But that profile was not just
Speaker 1: a suck up puff piece. But it was interesting to
Speaker 1: read and it was interesting to contribute to. So I've
Speaker 1: ordered the book of your pre.
Speaker 2: Ordered of course, I have you heard it here first.
Speaker 3: Ben Affleck gives good head and everything in this book
Speaker 3: is true.
Speaker 2: That is all we have time for out louders. It's
Speaker 2: very good to be back with you.
Speaker 3: Thank you to wonderful em and Amelia for filling my
Speaker 3: seat while I was gone, and thank you to our
Speaker 3: wonderful team for putting this show together as they always do.
Speaker 3: We're going to be back in your ears tomorrow.
Speaker 1: Bye bye bye.
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