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: And I just wanted to point out that you should
Speaker 3: always wear underparents if you're regardless of the length of
Speaker 3: your LaBier when you were wearing taigi.
Speaker 4: Yeah, because it would shave.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Mama Mia Out Loud, our first show of
Speaker 2: twenty twenty five, and if you want to know what
Speaker 2: the hell Miya was just talking about, you're going to
Speaker 2: have to keep listening.
Speaker 1: I'm Holly Wayne Wright, I'm Mea Friedman.
Speaker 4: And I'm Jesse Stevens.
Speaker 2: And on the show today, We're back. We are back.
Speaker 4: I am busting to be back. I'm so excited to
Speaker 4: be back. There are so many chats that we've been
Speaker 4: kind of half having in our WhatsApp group. We're like, no, no, no,
Speaker 4: we save it for the show. That's the rule.
Speaker 1: What about how many out louders?
Speaker 3: Because we had our emergency episode with Justin Baldonian Black
Speaker 3: Lively and then it was like, should we have another
Speaker 3: emergency episode?
Speaker 4: They were like, metas made this announcement, how about this Megan?
Speaker 4: This that Megan? She did a post and we're like, look,
Speaker 4: we got to save something for the first show back.
Speaker 4: This is going to be a cracker of an.
Speaker 2: Episode, so we have got lots of that coming up.
Speaker 2: But also in the subscriber episodes on Tuesday and Thursday
Speaker 2: this week, we're going to be saying all the things
Speaker 2: we were dying to say to each other about all
Speaker 2: the news stories that have happened over the break, So make.
Speaker 4: Sure you subscribe Golden Glow ready. Justin Baldoni update and
Speaker 4: I am des stopped to talk about I can't believe
Speaker 4: they did this, but there was an essay that dropped
Speaker 4: in the cut by doctor Lily j. She is the
Speaker 4: woman whose husband left her for Ariana Grande and it
Speaker 4: is the most stunning ess I can't wait to dissect
Speaker 4: her with you both.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was amazing. Did you all have a good holiday?
Speaker 2: Really good holiday. It's a push, Paul, because I missed
Speaker 2: you both and our team, and I wanted to talk
Speaker 2: about all these things. But also I just love doing nothing.
Speaker 2: Me too. I did three weeks of nothing. I'm sorry everybody,
Speaker 2: as much nothing as you can do when you've got
Speaker 2: children and family and friends visit. But like it was glory.
Speaker 4: I got to last night. I thought I could do
Speaker 4: enough three week Todt get me wrong.
Speaker 2: I could keep holiday, except we had to come back
Speaker 2: to talk about Meghan, because that lad has kept.
Speaker 1: To costing us in the streets.
Speaker 2: I was literally I was in Sydney last week and
Speaker 2: I was out and a lady came up to me,
Speaker 2: a very nice person, but she said.
Speaker 1: When are you going back to work?
Speaker 2: I was like, it's okay, Monday. She's like God anyway.
Speaker 2: On today's show, the celebrities being scolded over their California
Speaker 2: wildfire tears and the eerily familiar blame game playing out
Speaker 2: across the devastation. Also why we love to argue about
Speaker 2: Australia's most popular beach accessory, the Little Cabana, and with
Speaker 2: love Megan, with the announcement of the Duchess's cooking show,
Speaker 2: is our weight for jam. Finally over, I'm afraid not friends,
Speaker 2: but first Mia.
Speaker 3: In case you missed it, if you noticed a guy
Speaker 3: appearing across your feeds talking about how fats are so
Speaker 3: twenty twenty four and it's now going to be the
Speaker 3: wild Western meta, you weren't hallucinating. That was actually Mark Zuckerberg,
Speaker 3: the CEO of Meta, which of course includes Facebook and
Speaker 3: Instagram and WhatsApp.
Speaker 1: Here's a little bit of what he had to say.
Speaker 5: Here's what we're going to do. First, We're going to
Speaker 5: get rid of fact checkers and replace them with community
Speaker 5: notes similar to X. Starting in the US, after Trump
Speaker 5: first got elected in twenty sixteen, the legacy media wrote
Speaker 5: NonStop about how misinformation was a threat to democracy. We tried,
Speaker 5: in good faith to address those concerns without becoming the
Speaker 5: arbiters of truth. But the fact checkers have just been
Speaker 5: too politically biased and have destroyed more trusts than they've created,
Speaker 5: especially in the US.
Speaker 2: You know what, no one ever says I'd like things
Speaker 2: to be more like they are on X except for Mark.
Speaker 3: He says that, so look, what could possibly go wrong.
Speaker 3: The subtext of this, of course, is that Donald Trump
Speaker 3: is in power, and over the last few weeks all
Speaker 3: the tech billionaires have gone to kiss the ring. The
Speaker 3: other thing that Mark Zuckerberg announced is that the head
Speaker 3: of World Wrestling Federation, a guy called Dana White, is
Speaker 3: now on the board of Meta, and it's basically saying
Speaker 3: all bets are off.
Speaker 4: This is now bastling match. Correct, Because I read that
Speaker 4: Mark Zuckerberg donated one million US dollars to Trump's inauguration fund,
Speaker 4: Correct and.
Speaker 3: Jeff Bezos paid forty million dollars to make a documentary
Speaker 3: about Millennia Trump.
Speaker 4: Right, So my issue here, I actually think fact checking
Speaker 4: is really really complicated. And free speech and how you
Speaker 4: allow conversations to happen that need to happen without projecting
Speaker 4: your politics onto it. I think that is a really
Speaker 4: complicated discussion. But I reckon it's fair to say that
Speaker 4: we don't want our platforms, whether it's X, whether it's Facebook,
Speaker 4: whether it's Instagram, being aligned with any political party. I
Speaker 4: don't want them to be pro Biden, and I don't
Speaker 4: want them to be pro Trump. They might be, but
Speaker 4: I don't need to know that because I think a
Speaker 4: platform needs to be bipartisan. Is that a fair thing?
Speaker 3: Well, the problem is he's not talking about being partisan
Speaker 3: now factor is considered partisans.
Speaker 4: Yes, But what I'm saying is that knowing his relationship
Speaker 4: with Trump, now, knowing that he's kissing the ring, knowing
Speaker 4: that Musk is in the inner sanctum, what we're really
Speaker 4: seeing is all of these companies go, well, our facts
Speaker 4: are going to be determined or at the very least
Speaker 4: influenced by the current candidate, who we all endorsed.
Speaker 2: Now, I don't want to spread conspiracy theories because that's
Speaker 2: the kind of thing that happens on X. But also
Speaker 2: when Trump was in power last time, at one point
Speaker 2: he threatened to throw Zuckerberg in jail. He has also
Speaker 2: at different times threatened to try and work out how
Speaker 2: to dismantle Amazon because he didn't like bees os and
Speaker 2: what was going on at the Washington Post. So it's
Speaker 2: quite fair to say or so that these guys are
Speaker 2: protecting themselves.
Speaker 4: They're protecting themselves because regulation in Silicon Valley is a
Speaker 4: big thing, especially for like AI, like open Ai and
Speaker 4: all of those. They don't want to be regulated. So
Speaker 4: the more that you suck up to try, the more
Speaker 4: he'll say, do what you like. We're not watching finger
Speaker 4: in ow. He is la la la la lah.
Speaker 3: It's interesting the way it's been framed, and it's you know,
Speaker 3: very calculated obviously, and very clever and very smart from
Speaker 3: a you know, the CEO of a publicly listed company
Speaker 3: worth billions and billions of dollars and that potentially the
Speaker 3: most powerful person on the planet. He's framed it quite literally.
Speaker 3: He said the words there will be less mistakes, meaning
Speaker 3: that some posts were taken down that shouldn't have been
Speaker 3: taken down because fact checkers were overzealous. Less mistakes and
Speaker 3: more free speech.
Speaker 4: Does that mean I can put my nipple up?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 1: No, not no.
Speaker 2: Can we just very quickly mention that.
Speaker 3: But you can't say that gay people are mentally ill now?
Speaker 3: And that's fine, but no go it.
Speaker 2: As you mentioned, Maya, he also has a startling new look,
Speaker 2: so Zuckerberg. He also went on Rogan. Did you see that?
Speaker 2: He did a whole three hours on Rogan again in
Speaker 2: his new In England, they call it a road man.
Speaker 2: Look like he's got a chain and his hair's all scraggy,
Speaker 2: and he like he looks he's all jacked because he's
Speaker 2: so into his fighting now. And it's very interesting. The
Speaker 2: midlife crisis is looking very interesting in Silicon Valley.
Speaker 4: Since January seven, a series of wildfires have burned through
Speaker 4: Los Angeles, so far, claiming sixteen lives. Experts believe they
Speaker 4: are likely to be the most destructive natural disaster in
Speaker 4: modern US history, forcing nearly one hundred and eighty thousand
Speaker 4: people to evacuate their homes. Damaging or destroying more than
Speaker 4: twelve thousand structures, with the cost estimated to be at
Speaker 4: around one hundred and thirty five billion dollars. A fire
Speaker 4: intensified by a windstorm burned through the Pacific Palisades at
Speaker 4: the speed of three football fields a minute. Entire suburbs
Speaker 4: have been decimated. So why and how? It's winter in LA.
Speaker 4: This is not a time of year when fires are
Speaker 4: even expected. Usually, A number of factors have conspired in
Speaker 4: including severe drought. Parts of southern California have had the
Speaker 4: driest start to the rainy season on record. Hotter weather
Speaker 4: coupled with extreme wing conditions means the risk was unprecedented.
Speaker 4: Of course, meteorologists environmental analysts could explain the conditions far
Speaker 4: more comprehensively than I can. But what's interesting is how
Speaker 4: political the discussion around these fires has quickly.
Speaker 1: Become while they're still burning. Right.
Speaker 4: Yeah. On the one hand, broadly speaking, the left want
Speaker 4: to talk about climate change. This happened in Australia as well.
Speaker 4: We were warned about extreme weather events and here they are.
Speaker 4: On the other hand, the right want to talk about
Speaker 4: government incompetence. Billionaire Elon Musk tweeted they prioritized dei over
Speaker 4: saving lives and homes, which he's suggesting that the Democrat
Speaker 4: propensity to focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion has distracted
Speaker 4: fire departments and left a state woefully unprepared for this
Speaker 4: kind of desire. There's been this ridiculous focus on how
Speaker 4: the three people in the fire department that are running
Speaker 4: it all happen to be gay women, as though that's
Speaker 4: all relevant.
Speaker 1: That's clearly why the fire started.
Speaker 4: Get yeah, exactly, I read it on XT.
Speaker 2: California obviously is a blue state that's a Democrat state,
Speaker 2: has been for a very long time and was the
Speaker 2: focus of a lot of the Trump Musque Rogan rhetoric
Speaker 2: even way before this leading up to the election, that
Speaker 2: the Democrats had ruined California, etc.
Speaker 4: Yes, so a clip has gone viral of the leader
Speaker 4: of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power saying
Speaker 4: that their number one priority is equity, and that probably
Speaker 4: hasn't aged well because it is now being criticized. Alongside
Speaker 4: the knowledge that fire hydrants were empty, there were serious
Speaker 4: issues with water systems, putting the diversity point to the side.
Speaker 4: The reality is, as was outlined by Claire Limb and
Speaker 4: over the weekend, both climate change and government in competence
Speaker 4: are to blame. Environmentalists and fire departments of been saying
Speaker 4: for years that we need to prevent climate change, but
Speaker 4: we also need to be prepared for it. She quotes
Speaker 4: an Australian volunteer firefighter named Joel Shepherd, who said, when
Speaker 4: conditions are bad enough, no amount of firefighters can stop it,
Speaker 4: and that's what we've seen in LA. The other discussion has,
Speaker 4: of course been the celebrities who have lost their homes
Speaker 4: at the time of recording. Paris Hilton, Adam Brody and
Speaker 4: Layton Meister, Spencer and Heidi Pratt, Mel Gibson, Anthony Hopkins
Speaker 4: and a Faris, Tina Knowles, Rebel Wilson, Mandy Moore, Jamie Lee, Curtis,
Speaker 4: Billy Crystal, Eugene Levy. They are just a handful. Some
Speaker 4: say they're rich. We don't want to hear the stories.
Speaker 4: It's a distraction. They can afford to replace everything. Here's
Speaker 4: Spencer Pratt. He used to be on a show in
Speaker 4: the twenty tens called The Hills. Here's him responding to
Speaker 4: the commentary in the wake of losing his home.
Speaker 6: Funny thinking about the Internet is most times people are
Speaker 6: always trying me, like saying how broke we are, and like, oh,
Speaker 6: you're so broke. You TikTok battle like you're broke and
Speaker 6: our house burns and everyone's like, oh, you're a millionaire.
Speaker 6: You're a millionaire, You're so rich. Like which is it?
Speaker 6: Are we broke or are we millionaires? Trolls got to
Speaker 6: figure it out.
Speaker 4: Holly, where do you sit in terms of whether we
Speaker 4: should have compassion for the celebrities.
Speaker 2: Well, I think we should have compassion for everybody. Like,
Speaker 2: broadly speaking, I mean the thing that's really confronting and
Speaker 2: different about this. So Australians broadly we know about fire, right,
Speaker 2: we absolutely do. The twenty nineteen twenty twenty fires here
Speaker 2: were world news for their ferocity, for their scale, for
Speaker 2: their loss. Right. In fact, listening to the Quickie this morning,
Speaker 2: there was a woman, an Australian in La who says
Speaker 2: that walking around La at the minute is absolutely like
Speaker 2: walking around Sydney. Then, in terms of the black skies,
Speaker 2: the air quality, the masks, remember when our kids were
Speaker 2: allowed to play outside at school. It's that, but it's
Speaker 2: on steroids because of the urban setting of this. Right,
Speaker 2: So we're used to seeing fire devastation, but we're not
Speaker 2: really used to seeing entire cities, suburbs wipe down and
Speaker 2: city buildings burned, took the ground. So that's really different.
Speaker 2: The other thing that's really different is these fires are
Speaker 2: happening in basically the center of our culture, our pop culture.
Speaker 2: I mean, so where a lot of our news and
Speaker 2: our content creators and our high profile people are is
Speaker 2: on fire. So my daughter, for example, knows everything about
Speaker 2: this because it's just her TikTok feed and every creator
Speaker 2: that she follows is posting about it, and not everything
Speaker 2: on there is true. So she came to me very
Speaker 2: confidently saying, I've seen the Hollywood Sign burning down. It's gone.
Speaker 2: It isn't gone. There was just a very good AI
Speaker 2: video of that. And equally with the politicization, as with everything,
Speaker 2: as we were just talking about with Facebook, there are
Speaker 2: lots of different sets of facts. So Donald Trump immediately
Speaker 2: posted about the empty fire hydrants. That sounds terrible. There
Speaker 2: wasn't enough order in the fire hydrants. When you read
Speaker 2: a little deeper, Just like with everything, there are a
Speaker 2: million reasons why there weren't. At that time, it was
Speaker 2: keeping up with the unbelievable demand. It's about the fact
Speaker 2: they turn the power off to stop fires. There's a
Speaker 2: million different reasons of why. But this natural disaster is
Speaker 2: playing out in a place that we are always watching,
Speaker 2: so now we get to watch this. And in terms
Speaker 2: of the celebrities, what I'm mostly seeing is celebrities doing
Speaker 2: really good stuff. I'm seeing lots of celebrities volunteering and
Speaker 2: shining a light on what needs to be done, like
Speaker 2: volunteering down, folding up clothes, sending money and then saying
Speaker 2: you should send money to and again that's Australians did
Speaker 2: the same thing in the fires. Remember Celest Barber raising
Speaker 2: all that money for the firefighters that then became controversial
Speaker 2: within itself. Remember lots of high profile people going and
Speaker 2: packing essentials boxes to send down the New South Wales
Speaker 2: coast or down to Victoria and then encouraging other people
Speaker 2: to do that. I'm generally seeing high profile people using
Speaker 2: their profile for good in this in the middle of
Speaker 2: losing everything themselves.
Speaker 4: So I think probably LA has a sort of a
Speaker 4: brand problem in that people do associate it with celebrity,
Speaker 4: and of course people who live there. The vast majority
Speaker 4: of people who have lost their homes. Are not celebrities
Speaker 4: and are not rich necessarily, and I also think there's
Speaker 4: a difference between being famous and rich, and that's what
Speaker 4: Spencer Pratt was sort of getting at. Losing your home
Speaker 4: is losing your home. It's so unimaginable, it's so devastating,
Speaker 4: and Australians know that better than most. There was a great,
Speaker 4: really affecting post by John Mayer who posted an image
Speaker 4: of it was like a photo album, and he said
Speaker 4: that what's lost in fire is you can talk about
Speaker 4: stuff and possessions, but sometimes it's proof of life. It's
Speaker 4: proof that people even existed. In this album where pictures
Speaker 4: and documents related to his father in this incredible life
Speaker 4: he lived. When that's gone, there's no proof your mother
Speaker 4: or your grandmother even existed, and that is something that
Speaker 4: people are grappling with in this town, famous or not.
Speaker 4: I've found the rhetoric of just like boohoo, celebrities losing
Speaker 4: their homes really confronting because it's like we think compassion
Speaker 4: is a pie something and you there's a finite amount.
Speaker 4: Rather than going, oh, that's really sad. I feel also
Speaker 4: really really horrible for the people whose insurance lapsed so
Speaker 4: the insurance premiums. Either insurance went, we're not going to
Speaker 4: ensure your home this was last year, or we're gonna
Speaker 4: make it, you know, three times the cost. So a
Speaker 4: lot of people went can't afford it, and people who
Speaker 4: have had homes for thirty years just burned down. What
Speaker 4: do you do then, like, oh, my goodness, But I
Speaker 4: think you can feel sorry for everyone.
Speaker 3: At the same time, I'm reminded that we're very uncomfortable
Speaker 3: with feeling sad or scared or despairing, and it's much
Speaker 3: more energizing to feel angry. And we see this again
Speaker 3: and again and again when something you know, unavoidable, larger
Speaker 3: than anyone can control, something that's arguably nobody's actual fault.
Speaker 4: I understand natural disaster. Right.
Speaker 3: It's almost like the beginning of COVID where everybody he
Speaker 3: was singing in the balconies and it was all like, wow,
Speaker 3: it's so combaya on the internet. This is so weird.
Speaker 3: No one's angry. And then straightaway, when it went on
Speaker 3: for too long and we didn't like feeling sad and scared,
Speaker 3: we became angry. And then it became wildly politicized, and
Speaker 3: we see this happening earlier and earlier in the news cycle.
Speaker 3: I think you made a really good point, Jesse, about
Speaker 3: the difference between fame and wealth, and I think that
Speaker 3: what fires do are beyond measure of just money, you know.
Speaker 3: I was just talking to Michelle Battersby, who's in the
Speaker 3: office working on something for us, and she lives in
Speaker 3: LA and she's out here with her son and her baby.
Speaker 3: She said, three women in her mother's group who've just
Speaker 3: had new babies, they've all lost their homes.
Speaker 1: And I keep.
Speaker 3: Thinking about what happens when literally everything's gone where you've
Speaker 3: got nowhere to go back.
Speaker 1: To, Like, literally, what do you do?
Speaker 3: You've got no clothes, you've got no documents, your children
Speaker 3: have nothing. You might be ensured, you might be not.
Speaker 3: But even if you are insured, even if you're wealthy,
Speaker 3: literally what do you do. You don't have a toothbrush,
Speaker 3: you don't have a face cream, you don't have your
Speaker 3: birth control, like your medication, you script, like all of
Speaker 3: those things. Where do you even begin? And it feels
Speaker 3: like there's just no space for that. Mandy Moore, the
Speaker 3: actress who's married to a guy in a band, her
Speaker 3: house burnt down, her brother in law and sister in
Speaker 3: law who lived next door. Their house burnt down too,
Speaker 3: and they'reabout to have a baby. And she posted a
Speaker 3: go fund me for them that someone had made and
Speaker 3: got slammed for you've got all these millions of dollars,
Speaker 3: why don't you just buy them a new house.
Speaker 4: I'm sure she's what she can.
Speaker 3: She did, and she rightly pushed back, and she actually said,
Speaker 3: fuck off. You can't just google what you think someone
Speaker 3: is worth. Believe that, and then, of course we are helping,
Speaker 3: but I'm sharing a go fund me and you have
Speaker 3: no idea. Everybody has lost everything. And when people are
Speaker 3: looking at what they can do. I saw Jean Smart
Speaker 3: just one of Golden Globe for her work on hacks.
Speaker 3: She posted on Instagram saying, I hope that we are
Speaker 3: going to cancel all the awards shows that are coming up,
Speaker 3: and there are so many, from the Grammys to the SAgs,
Speaker 3: to the Oscars of course.
Speaker 1: And many more.
Speaker 3: I hope all of them will be canceled and all
Speaker 3: that money will go to fire relief and supporting the victims.
Speaker 3: Now people feel very conflicted about that, as they should.
Speaker 3: In one hand, it seems obscene to be let's go
Speaker 3: and put on one hundred thousand dollar dress and wear
Speaker 3: diamonds and walk on a red carpet and talk about
Speaker 3: who did our hair while people literally sitting in rubble.
Speaker 3: But on the other hand, it is a work in
Speaker 3: town la and it's not just the people on the
Speaker 3: red carpet. It is the stylus, the cater is the
Speaker 3: people who supply everything the way stuff. So if you
Speaker 3: do cancel all of that, you're crippling those communities even more.
Speaker 2: As you say, Jesse, compassion has no limits. I feel
Speaker 2: terrible for anybody. There is no doubt that if you
Speaker 2: have the means to get out of the fire zone,
Speaker 2: be staying somewhere else, and you know you've got people
Speaker 2: with you, and you at the Beverly Hilton or whatever,
Speaker 2: you're doing better than lots of people who can't do that. Right,
Speaker 2: There's no question that there are degrees of devastation. But
Speaker 2: the thing is, as you've said, me about what natural
Speaker 2: disasters do. And plenty of people in Australia know a
Speaker 2: lot about this. If you've been in the flood zones
Speaker 2: in Lismore, if you were in the burnt out towns
Speaker 2: in southern New South Wales, in those years. You know
Speaker 2: the amount that the emergency services have to do to
Speaker 2: help you when you have literally lost everything. That's a
Speaker 2: massive operation that costs a lot of money too. And
Speaker 2: one of the things is, I mean, I think we
Speaker 2: all remember very well that after those fires when Scomo
Speaker 2: Scott Morrison, the Prime Minster of the time, probably the
Speaker 2: thing that put the biggest nail in his political coffin
Speaker 2: was that I don't hold a hosemte comment that he
Speaker 2: made after that when he was on holiday when that happened.
Speaker 2: And a similar thing has happened here where the mayor
Speaker 2: of California she wasn't on holiday, but she was on
Speaker 2: a trip overseas when this happened. And everybody needs somewhere
Speaker 2: to put their anger, as you've said, Mia, and some
Speaker 2: of those places are valid because it is true that
Speaker 2: now we do live in a time of climate catastrophe,
Speaker 2: whether all sides of politics want to admit it or not.
Speaker 2: We've got to think much harder about where people live,
Speaker 2: where people rebuild, what you do in these circumstances. But
Speaker 2: Scomo said I don't hold a hose, and then he
Speaker 2: went and turned up at some of these places and
Speaker 2: people refused to shake his hand. They were furious with him,
Speaker 2: because when you have lost everything, you need to feel
Speaker 2: like everybody thinks that that is the most important and
Speaker 2: terrible disaster as it is.
Speaker 3: I'm also reminded that we live in the era where
Speaker 3: everybody has to have a hot take. It's like, quick,
Speaker 3: what's your opinion, what's your hot take on this situation?
Speaker 4: Or I see everything through the prism of ex world events,
Speaker 4: which a world event needs to be seen on its
Speaker 4: own terms.
Speaker 2: I think, yeah, the other thing is and this is
Speaker 2: not true of course for all of the celebrities and
Speaker 2: the wealthy people in those neighborhoods. But one of the
Speaker 2: other things that is increasing the anger are the stories
Speaker 2: around things like private firefighters. Can you explain that this
Speaker 2: first came up in the last round of well not
Speaker 2: the last round, but another round of fires in twenty nineteen,
Speaker 2: where Kim Kardashian and her then husband Kanye West were
Speaker 2: found to have employed a private team of firefighters to
Speaker 2: protect their home during the blazes. Now, at the time,
Speaker 2: she came out and said, yes, but they also put
Speaker 2: out fires all around us and help my neighbors and whatever.
Speaker 2: But private firefighters are a big thing in wealthy communities
Speaker 2: in fire zones, because if you can afford to pay
Speaker 2: somebody to come and sit outside your house in these
Speaker 2: special white fans I've seen the imagery and fight your fire,
Speaker 2: then you might do that if you are as rich
Speaker 2: as Kim Kardashian is. Oprah Winfrey famously did this in Hawaii.
Speaker 2: She got absolutely smashed for it. The arguments are obviously
Speaker 2: that that takes resources away from the public resource and
Speaker 2: that you know, we're playing a game of whose house
Speaker 2: is worth saving who isn't. So I understand some of
Speaker 2: that frustration, and there is no question that the people
Speaker 2: who are always worst off in any natural disaster are
Speaker 2: the most vulnerable people. But it does just seem very
Speaker 2: ungenerous to be in any way sneery or smug about
Speaker 2: seeing what we term privileged people suffering.
Speaker 3: In a moment slipslop and slap downs at the beach,
Speaker 3: we're dusting off the sand from Summer's beach Kabana drama
Speaker 3: after the break.
Speaker 7: Well, that's not on one of the great things about Australia.
Speaker 7: Unlike some parts of the world. You go and you've
Speaker 7: got to pay to go to the beach. Here, everyone
Speaker 7: owns the beach everyone. It's a place where every Australian
Speaker 7: is equal, and that's a breach of that principle really,
Speaker 7: to think that you can reserve a little spot as
Speaker 7: just yours.
Speaker 3: If you had one eye on the news over summer,
Speaker 3: you might have been a little bit confused to see
Speaker 3: our PM Anthony Arbernezi wade into a war that broke
Speaker 3: out over beach cabanas. It was a pretty compelling piece
Speaker 3: of summer drama when Australian beaches became this battleground for
Speaker 3: what locals are calling cabanagate, which is this turf war
Speaker 3: over beach real estate. That caught everybody's attention, including our
Speaker 3: beloved m Vernon, who wrote about it for Mamma Maya.
Speaker 3: She said, the sound of calming waves she was talking
Speaker 3: about being at the beach has been replaced by the loud,
Speaker 3: slapping noise of fabric against wind. I could hear a
Speaker 3: man yelling, oh, we need more sound for the weights.
Speaker 3: I could also hear a kid yelling can I help.
Speaker 3: I could hear a girl around my age again yelling,
Speaker 3: I reckon, we'll fit into this spot. Annoyed and curious,
Speaker 3: I opened my eyes to see what this sudden commotion
Speaker 3: was about. And that was my first experience with a gang,
Speaker 3: a gang of cabanas. She talks about how the cabana
Speaker 3: gang come in herds of two to ten people. They're
Speaker 3: lined up side by side, not just shielding them from
Speaker 3: the sun, but also building the view from everybody else.
Speaker 3: There's this big drama about it, which I hadn't realized
Speaker 3: was happening. I don't spend a lot of time on
Speaker 3: the beach. I don't mind being near the beach going
Speaker 3: like literally, I walk across the sand, jump in the water,
Speaker 3: and then leave. I don't linger on the beach. But
Speaker 3: I did notice these little mini cities were at the
Speaker 3: beach for a little while. Jesse and I up the
Speaker 3: north coast of New South Wales, and it was like
Speaker 3: a mini city of all these stripe cabarnets.
Speaker 4: I have such strong feelings about this. I have always
Speaker 4: sensed that there is hear me out something slightly classiest
Speaker 4: about this discussion. So I grew up in the outer
Speaker 4: suburbs of Sydney. Right, if I were going to the
Speaker 4: beach as a kid, yeah, it was taking us an
Speaker 4: hour at least, right, especially on a hot summer's day.
Speaker 4: It's taking you a really long time. This can to
Speaker 4: take you an hour to get to the beach. Yeah,
Speaker 4: you do something called a beach day. I've had this
Speaker 4: discussion with my husband before because he grew up close
Speaker 4: to the beach and he doesn't have a concept of
Speaker 4: a beach day for him. You go to the beach,
Speaker 4: you duck in, and you get out because the beach
Speaker 4: has always been something close to you. If you're someone
Speaker 4: who is not close to a beach, you have a
Speaker 4: beach day. And a beach day requires you to bring
Speaker 4: an eski with food in it. Yeah, all of your things,
Speaker 4: save up for parking because that's going to cost you
Speaker 4: three hundred bucks. And you need shade. You need shade
Speaker 4: because you are going to sit on a beach, probably
Speaker 4: with kids, for a really long time. And I love
Speaker 4: Australian beach so I think they're the best beaches in
Speaker 4: the world. Don't have a lot of shade. A lot
Speaker 4: of them really really don't. You have lots of sand
Speaker 4: and no shade.
Speaker 3: But what I don't understand is why this is new,
Speaker 3: because I remember growing up in the seventies and eighties
Speaker 3: we had igloos, so they were like these little dome
Speaker 3: things new because it were the same.
Speaker 2: Because if you look at these cities, they're all the
Speaker 2: same thing. It's one brand of cabana. They are not cheap.
Speaker 2: So although I agree with you about the classest thing
Speaker 2: there about proximity to the beach Jesse, they're also a
Speaker 2: bit of a state of symbol because they're very lovely
Speaker 2: to look at their color.
Speaker 1: They're black, a few hundred bucks.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're all cool cabana. They were designed by a
Speaker 2: guy in the Sunshine Coast who is now richer than
Speaker 2: God because.
Speaker 4: They needed to invest in it.
Speaker 2: They are one hundred percent of state of symbol.
Speaker 3: Safer than umbrellas because that we also used to have umbrellas, right,
Speaker 3: and then they would impale people when the wind.
Speaker 4: Gets Yes, that's safer than umbrellas. And as a thirty
Speaker 4: four year old who has two sizeable scars from skin cancer,
Speaker 4: I don't care what you're doing if you're under some
Speaker 4: sort of shade, and then these families often you know
Speaker 4: you've got rashes, you've got the sunnies, you've got sunscreen on.
Speaker 4: That's how Australians need to be going to the peach.
Speaker 2: I agree with that, but I also instinctively agree with
Speaker 2: Albo right, because the thing about the cabana is they're big,
Speaker 2: much bigger than an umbrella. The way that shade works
Speaker 2: is you put it up. The shade is not directly
Speaker 2: under your cabana. Very often the shade is behind it,
Speaker 2: or to the left or the right, depend on where
Speaker 2: the sod is. So you have now bought your a
Speaker 2: three meter square part of the beach and all the
Speaker 2: surrounding shade because you own that shit, because you turned
Speaker 2: up and pitched your tent. So you are pushing everybody
Speaker 2: else out of your zone. And although I agree with
Speaker 2: you Jesse, you're a one hundred percent right about the
Speaker 2: fact that if you live further from the beach, it's
Speaker 2: a mission to get there. And therefore the great Australian
Speaker 2: dream of being able to just grab your towel, a book,
Speaker 2: your sonny's, some sunscreen and walking to the beach or
Speaker 2: jumping on a bus and going to the beach is
Speaker 2: kind of dependent on distance. We are making every outing
Speaker 2: and everything we do so high maintenance. Now that you
Speaker 2: have to have a cabana and the eski with three
Speaker 2: frozen water bottles and the sandproof beach towels and inflatables
Speaker 2: for the kids and beach cricket, and it's like everything
Speaker 2: doesn't have to be such a big deal. And also
Speaker 2: you don't get to own that bit of the beach.
Speaker 2: It causes tension every time.
Speaker 4: I reckon that we don't know how to share public
Speaker 4: spaces anymore.
Speaker 2: Well we do. What you do is you don't steal
Speaker 2: shade from the person sitting next to.
Speaker 4: Even steal shade, steal mean some of the beach. You
Speaker 4: put up a cabana.
Speaker 2: Do you feel if you put your cabana up and
Speaker 2: someone you don't know comes and sits under it, you
Speaker 2: would not like that a second.
Speaker 4: I'm putting a picnic rug down on a pack and
Speaker 4: someone comes and sits on.
Speaker 2: But beach is two. It's like taking up six.
Speaker 4: This is the thing, even like I see images of Bondai,
Speaker 4: a woman in the North Coast Australian beaches very big,
Speaker 4: very big. I was at one over the break where
Speaker 4: I looked and I went, oh, there's no more room
Speaker 4: for a cabana. There really isn't. But that's how public
Speaker 4: space means. That strangers annoy you. That's what going outside.
Speaker 2: Of your home is your beach cabana. That's meaning I
Speaker 2: can't sit there.
Speaker 4: You can sit there to my right, to my legs, because.
Speaker 2: I'll get there earlier of them. So although I totally
Speaker 2: get it right, I've seen the fight in the out
Speaker 2: louders group. I'm someone with children. Loads of my friends
Speaker 2: have these. We go to the beach and we put
Speaker 2: them up and the kids. I get it, But do
Speaker 2: I like them? No? I don't because I don't want
Speaker 2: to go to a beach and just see a whole
Speaker 2: load of basically building.
Speaker 1: What about skin cancer?
Speaker 2: Go sit in the shed, or don't spend on the
Speaker 2: beech shade at the beach. Go and find a tree,
Speaker 2: sit under a tree, or don't spend the whole day
Speaker 2: at the beach.
Speaker 4: I have found this. I'd look cover up t shirt
Speaker 4: since I've had a baby as well, and you need
Speaker 4: a different level because you're so conscious when it's a baby.
Speaker 4: I have not been able to find any shade on
Speaker 4: a beach pretty much. I've always had to bring like
Speaker 4: even if it's a I don't have one because I
Speaker 4: wouldn't know how to put it up. But I've got
Speaker 4: like a little thing that I sometimes use with her.
Speaker 4: I actually reckon that a lot of this, and I
Speaker 4: think this was in how you're introducing it. Maya. You
Speaker 4: said something about the word locals. I think in Australia
Speaker 4: there is this tension between my beach my local. I
Speaker 4: hate it when tourists. I hear it in Bondi, where
Speaker 4: I like the time, and people hate the idea that
Speaker 4: people from that suburb is coming over to my place
Speaker 4: with their ten This is.
Speaker 2: Sorry, but there are plenty of Bondai people who have
Speaker 2: cabanas like they are quite a cool chee chee thing
Speaker 2: to have that posh people have, so I don't Although
Speaker 2: I agree with you to a point, I also think
Speaker 2: that it's not that simple. My question is, as the
Speaker 2: sun moves, because that's how the world works, and your
Speaker 2: shade moves around, do I have to keep moving so
Speaker 2: that I don't steal your shade?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I don't understand how that works either. But what
Speaker 3: it is like is when I lived in Italy, my
Speaker 3: boyfriend at the time was so excited to take me
Speaker 3: to the beach one day and we drove after we'd
Speaker 3: been clubbing, and we slept in the car and we
Speaker 3: woke up in the morning and it was just like,
Speaker 3: you have to pay first of all, and it's just
Speaker 3: all these structures that you rent and beach chairs and
Speaker 3: to this sad little trickle of gray water. And I
Speaker 3: was like, guys, come on, this is not a beach.
Speaker 2: This is pathetic. It's true, and I think that that's
Speaker 2: one of the things that people are reacting to.
Speaker 1: Isn't it about bags?
Speaker 2: Rightly or wrongly, people are reacting to you are de
Speaker 2: australianizing the beach.
Speaker 4: As long as a beach is free, it is Australian.
Speaker 3: My understanding of what Albow was saying is that what
Speaker 3: people are really objecting to are people who go and
Speaker 3: bags a bit of sand. Like they go and they
Speaker 3: squat and they.
Speaker 2: Put it up, but all the same surrounding it.
Speaker 4: But what I will say about that is that they
Speaker 4: put their thing down and maybe they go and dip
Speaker 4: into the water. But people aren't putting up their kabana
Speaker 4: and then going on the bus home like people are
Speaker 4: around the beach. They're also allowed to go into the water.
Speaker 4: It's not like you can't leave your capara.
Speaker 2: The thing is one more thing. See how hated. This
Speaker 2: is the reason people are upset is because it's changed.
Speaker 2: You know, how you were saying, is it different. It
Speaker 2: is different because it's like looks different if you consistently
Speaker 2: go to the beach, whether it's for a day or
Speaker 2: for a dip. In the last three years, this is
Speaker 2: a new thing, and I think that we're like what
Speaker 2: I didn't think that's what we did. I think that's
Speaker 2: what people are reacting to.
Speaker 4: In case you missed it, actress and model Brookshields was
Speaker 4: given a vaginal medical procedure without her consent. In her
Speaker 4: upcoming memoir called Brookshields is Not Allowed to get old
Speaker 4: thoughts on aging as a woman, the fifty nine year
Speaker 4: old shared a story about consulting a gynecologist because she'd
Speaker 4: been having ongoing dis comfort with her labia since her
Speaker 4: teenage years, which included bleeding and chafing.
Speaker 1: She wanted a reduction reduction.
Speaker 4: Yes, so her doctor recommended that surgery. She then underwent
Speaker 4: that surgery, but when she returned for her post operative checkup,
Speaker 4: her male surgeon told her very proudly that he'd performed
Speaker 4: an additional procedure without her knowledge, called vaginal rejuvenation, also
Speaker 4: known as vagina plasty, which tightens the vagina. She felt
Speaker 4: she couldn't sue the doctor because it would have been
Speaker 4: on the front page of every newspaper. Wowowow why would
Speaker 4: the assumption be that a woman would want this?
Speaker 3: She said she felt really ashamed and she didn't want
Speaker 3: to tell even her husband about it.
Speaker 1: Fun fact, you might remember.
Speaker 3: That Brookshield's one of the things she first became famous
Speaker 3: for after Blue Lagoon, was an ad she did with
Speaker 3: cumclin jeans and it was her sort of with her
Speaker 3: legs spread in a pair of jeans, and the line
Speaker 3: was what comes between me and my calvins?
Speaker 1: Nothing? And I just wanted to point out that you
Speaker 1: should always wear.
Speaker 3: Underparents if you're regardless of the length of your LaBier
Speaker 3: when you were wearing Taigian.
Speaker 4: Yeah, because it would shafe out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that seems irrelevant. But I don't even understand. Is
Speaker 2: this Like we've run stories on Mama Maya before of
Speaker 2: people saying, after they've given birth, they've torn. Yeah, and
Speaker 2: they've torn that the doctor said, I've given you what
Speaker 2: we call husband's stitch. We've run stories on a Mare
Speaker 2: about that.
Speaker 1: Do you want an extra stitch for the husband?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 2: Which is this horrible idea of exactly this? But of
Speaker 2: course you would want me to tighten that thing up.
Speaker 2: So that's what happened to Brookshields without her asking. That
Speaker 2: is shocking. Do you think that he thought, oh, she's
Speaker 2: getting labiaplasti, So she obviously is concerned about the region, like.
Speaker 3: Because some women get labiaplasty for aesthetic reasons because they
Speaker 3: just don't visually like the way it looks. Because, for example,
Speaker 3: most vaginas that women see in labias that volvers that
Speaker 3: women see are in either pawn or you know, we
Speaker 3: don't realize that flaps come in all shapes and sizes.
Speaker 3: Quick plug for Ellie said toix book, she's a volver photographer.
Speaker 3: I interviewed her on No Filter. She has just released
Speaker 3: a coffee table book which is at my house now,
Speaker 3: which I keep making my children look at God.
Speaker 4: It's just of photographs of volvers. They come in so
Speaker 4: many different shapes, so many.
Speaker 3: And that's what someone should have sent Brook. Although no,
Speaker 3: Brook did have actual chafing reasons because of perhaps the genes,
Speaker 3: and he was.
Speaker 2: Sent it to her doctor. But like, it's okay for
Speaker 2: everybody's vagina to be a bit different.
Speaker 1: But then this is this, this is the inside.
Speaker 4: This is the inside, and I think what it really
Speaker 4: is is that the doctor wasn't concerned about what Brook
Speaker 4: wanted and the husband's stitch. You're not concerned about what
Speaker 4: the woman wants.
Speaker 1: It's about how it feels for anyone going in there. Sacually.
Speaker 4: It's the epitome of misogyny and medical misogyny.
Speaker 2: After the break, you knew we were going to go there.
Speaker 2: Megan Mirkale's big news show has been delayed. We're getting
Speaker 2: you up to speed with with Love Megan.
Speaker 3: Every Tuesday and Thursday, we drop new segments of Mama
Speaker 3: and Me Are Out Loud. Just remember me as subscribers
Speaker 3: follow the link in the show notes to get your
Speaker 3: daily dose out Loud and a big thank you to
Speaker 3: everyone who is already subscribed.
Speaker 2: The California fires are a tragedy on an enormous human
Speaker 2: and environmental scale, but they have also robbed us of
Speaker 2: one of the little glimmers of delight. For January twenty
Speaker 2: twenty five, Megan the Duchess of Sussex's long awaited TV show,
Speaker 2: Let's Go.
Speaker 8: I've always loved taking something pretty ordinary and elevating it,
Speaker 8: surprising people with moments that let them know I was
Speaker 8: really thinking of them.
Speaker 4: What this is probably one of the most glamorous moments
Speaker 4: of my life's m I've been.
Speaker 2: Waiting for Megan's jam now for ten months. I don't
Speaker 2: know it's with me wait for jam. That's how long
Speaker 2: it's been since her company, American Riviera Orchard Now came
Speaker 2: on to Instagram and said they were going to make jam.
Speaker 2: They never did, But what happened in the first week
Speaker 2: of twenty twenty five was movement. It was exciting. Meghan
Speaker 2: came back to Instagram. She first of all, sure you
Speaker 2: all saw it. If not, what have you been doing
Speaker 2: with your year so far, just released a black and
Speaker 2: white video of her running onto a beach. There were
Speaker 2: no cabanas there, Jesse, No, that's probably your own and
Speaker 2: riding twenty twenty five in the sund And.
Speaker 3: It was also her own Instagram account. Yeah, Megan, wonder
Speaker 3: how she got that. That's a true crime conversation story.
Speaker 3: I don't know who she how much she had to
Speaker 3: pay to get that handle anyway.
Speaker 2: And then she announced her return to the public kitchen. Finally,
Speaker 2: fucking finally, I thought, here we go. Meghan's back. Her
Speaker 2: Netflix show is happening. We've been hearing about this Netflix
Speaker 2: show for a long time and people said there was
Speaker 2: a film crew, and they said it was going to
Speaker 2: be live, but none of us really believed in its
Speaker 2: existence until Now With Love. Megan was meant to be
Speaker 2: launching on Wednesday this week, dropping eight episodes of Judging
Speaker 2: by the trailer, delightful, kitchen, pawn diaries were cleared, diaries,
Speaker 2: work schedule, We already, we booked the studios, we're convened.
Speaker 2: It's safe to say it looks like this show is
Speaker 2: her making food, picking vegetables and freezing tiny flowers into
Speaker 2: ice cubes with her famous and fabulous friends.
Speaker 1: Now, Mindy Kayling was there.
Speaker 2: She announced today as we're recording this that she is
Speaker 2: going to postpone it. The launch has been postponed to
Speaker 2: March out of respect for the devastation of the fires.
Speaker 1: I'm very relieved about that.
Speaker 2: Well, it would have been a bad look. Oh the
Speaker 2: weight goes on. Mia. What do you make of Meghan's
Speaker 2: actual real life show.
Speaker 3: I'm just so excited to be back and talking about
Speaker 3: it because I think that my overall impression with the
Speaker 3: New Year's Day black and white Instagram video on the
Speaker 3: each and all I could think was how many times
Speaker 3: did you have to do it? To get that right,
Speaker 3: and the perfect blow dry and everything, and then the
Speaker 3: dropping of the trailer and then sadly her dog Guy died.
Speaker 1: Why do I earn the name of a dog? I
Speaker 1: need have to stepupsetting anyway.
Speaker 3: My overall impression is that the esthetic and the vibe
Speaker 3: is very kind of twenty fifteen, twenty sixteen. It's that,
Speaker 3: you know, drawing things in the sand, highly produced, very
Speaker 3: reminiscent in fact, of the Kate's cancer video.
Speaker 4: So I disagree. I think it's reminiscent of a formal
Speaker 4: lifestyle brand called The Tig, which is twelve years old.
Speaker 4: I saw it.
Speaker 1: No, but that was just a blog.
Speaker 3: To be clear, that was a blog that wasn't really
Speaker 3: video and it was just a nothing little Everyone had
Speaker 3: blogs back there.
Speaker 4: No, it wasn't a nothing little. It was big, yes
Speaker 4: it was, and it had its own Instagram, and she
Speaker 4: produced content. It was lifestyle content, it was food, it
Speaker 4: was travel, it was all of it. This is how
Speaker 4: Megan started. This is kind of what she did with.
Speaker 1: Those a little hobby projects.
Speaker 4: Oh that is you are so dismissive of Meghan. I
Speaker 4: won't have it. I simply won't.
Speaker 2: Say what we're arguing about here is whether this is
Speaker 2: true to her brand right, because you have said me
Speaker 2: interesting pivot. I think it is going back to her roots. Yeah.
Speaker 4: And the first thing I thought when I watched the
Speaker 4: trailer was I wish I'd been in the Netflix strategy
Speaker 4: meeting when they decided that they would do the Martha
Speaker 4: Stewart documentary at the tail end of twenty twenty four
Speaker 4: to kind of nostalgically have everyone reminisce about the Martha
Speaker 4: Stewart days, to then release Meghan Markle with Love Meghan
Speaker 4: as almost position her as the new Martha Stewart, because
Speaker 4: I think that's exactly what they're doing.
Speaker 1: Do you think that there's an appetite for a Martha's Stewart? Absolutely? Absolutely, Look,
Speaker 1: it's like Ballerina Farm.
Speaker 4: The biggest, well, the biggest argument I had over the
Speaker 4: holidays was exactly that someone saying this is a nod
Speaker 4: to the tradwife phenomenon. We've got women baking cakes. There
Speaker 4: was an article in the Sydney Morning Herald where the
Speaker 4: writer basically said, you know, most people baking cakes aren't
Speaker 4: doing it in front of a camera crew with their
Speaker 4: famous friends. That's like saying most people to drive cars
Speaker 4: aren't on formula one like it's television. Of course, it's
Speaker 4: more beautiful, flamorous, of course. But whether or not you work,
Speaker 4: or you have kids, or you're rich or you're poor,
Speaker 4: you've got to put dinner on the table, so most people.
Speaker 1: But do you have to put teeny little flowers in
Speaker 1: ice cubes?
Speaker 4: No, you don't. But I think that when I watched
Speaker 4: the Martha Stuart documentary, I thought my grandmothers, who didn't
Speaker 4: have all the resources in the world, cared about their
Speaker 4: home gardening. Men and women for since the beginning of
Speaker 4: time have been doing these things, and I think that
Speaker 4: the way we pooh pooh them, or we turn our
Speaker 4: nose up is actually is a new way of us
Speaker 4: denigrating anything that we see as feminine.
Speaker 2: I agree, not everyone who make the salad as a
Speaker 2: trad wife. Let's be honest, right, it's not a trad
Speaker 2: wife thing to make some food like that. Most women
Speaker 2: are doing it every day, baked.
Speaker 1: Biscuits, exactly right, And you're.
Speaker 2: Not a trad wife yet. But I think that there
Speaker 2: is definitely a bit of a shift at the moment
Speaker 2: back to the home, and I think that that's something
Speaker 2: that often happens in uncertain times, and there is no
Speaker 2: question that we live in those, right, And the idea
Speaker 2: of what you can control is within your four walls,
Speaker 2: and you can make things lovely there, and you can.
Speaker 2: She talks in the trailer about you know, moments of
Speaker 2: joy in your life, right, and if you are the
Speaker 2: kind of person who gets joy out of having a
Speaker 2: flower in your ice cube, then here we go. Megan's
Speaker 2: here for us.
Speaker 3: I think the Internet's going to really take that on board.
Speaker 3: I was thinking about the difficulty back in Martha Stewart's day,
Speaker 3: like you either liked Martha Stewart or you weren't into
Speaker 3: Martha Stewart. If you weren't into Martha Stewart, you didn't
Speaker 3: buy a magazine, you didn't watch your shows. She kind
Speaker 3: of you knew she was, but she didn't really affect
Speaker 3: your life. Now it's like everything is a referendum on
Speaker 3: what it is to be a woman. Like the fact
Speaker 3: that some people are saying, well, Megan very big pivot
Speaker 3: from archetypes her podcast and all her talk about being
Speaker 3: a feminist, and now she's being a homemaker. And I
Speaker 3: think two things can be true.
Speaker 4: I saw a tweet which I thought was actually very true.
Speaker 4: It said, we're criticizing Meghan for being out of touch
Speaker 4: for baking, and then it had an image of Kate
Speaker 4: and Will on thrones being held up by colonized people,
Speaker 4: and I was like, yeah, the woman can't win.
Speaker 2: Also, it's not anti feminist to make a cake like
Speaker 2: that's ridiculous one of the things that I have because
Speaker 2: you're right, Mare, she's going to get slammed for it, etc.
Speaker 2: But the thing is that she is going to get
Speaker 2: slammed whatever she does. There is no world in which
Speaker 2: whatever Meghan's TV show or Next Business or project or
Speaker 2: Instagram account or not Instagram account is not going to
Speaker 2: attract an enormous amount of conversation and criticism. So you
Speaker 2: might as well do something that you want to do
Speaker 2: and you like doing. And that is probably smart and savvy,
Speaker 2: because all of these threads will start to come together
Speaker 2: if the jam ever fricking drops, which is that we've
Speaker 2: already heard that we've trademarked under American reverer Orchard and
Speaker 2: Duchess of Sussex. Tea towels, jars, candles, like all kinds
Speaker 2: of things which will presumably all be in her show
Speaker 2: product placement. You can buy this stuff. That's clever, clever, clever.
Speaker 2: You could argue that if you were going to do it,
Speaker 2: what's the least controversial thing you could do? Make a
Speaker 2: few cakes. Yes, except that one of the other things
Speaker 2: that people get upset about about the Martha Stuart vibe
Speaker 2: and now the Gwyneth vibe and the Megan vibers, it's
Speaker 2: putting a lot of pressure on ordinary women who are
Speaker 2: putting flowers in their ice cubes. But you know, again,
Speaker 2: whatever she does, she's going to cop that. One of
Speaker 2: the things that perturbed me the most is that she
Speaker 2: came back to Instagram book with all comments switched off.
Speaker 2: Now I entirely understand why, because she's one of the
Speaker 2: most trolled humans on the planet right, Absolutely no question,
Speaker 2: she is trolled more than possibly any other high profile person.
Speaker 2: But what that does declare to me, and we talked
Speaker 2: about this in a subscriber episode at the end of
Speaker 2: last year, is saying the quiet part out loud about
Speaker 2: what social media is for now is this is not
Speaker 2: about community building. This is not about having a conversation,
Speaker 2: This is not about doing anything that's two way. This
Speaker 2: is a billboard for me to sell by Wares. I
Speaker 2: entirely understand why she's done it business. She's come back.
Speaker 2: She's made three posts, including the Lovely Dog one. I
Speaker 2: wanted to comment on the Dog one. I wanted to
Speaker 2: share my condolences about guy whose name I also knew
Speaker 2: about having to do and.
Speaker 4: Looked at it and I was just told Wainwright Holly
Speaker 4: liked this, and I was like, Holly, Megan, it's not
Speaker 4: your friend.
Speaker 2: I couldn't have liked it more times. I know how
Speaker 2: it feels to lose a dog. Anyway, The point is,
Speaker 2: what do you think about that? What do you think
Speaker 2: about the return? But under very controlled circumstances, and really,
Speaker 2: is there any other way she was ever going to
Speaker 2: do it?
Speaker 3: Well, you know what I was saying about the esthetic
Speaker 3: and the vibe felt very sort of twenty fifteen. I
Speaker 3: don't mean that in a derogatory way, because I think
Speaker 3: that's what everybody was doing back then.
Speaker 1: But the current.
Speaker 3: Vibe, which is good news for us, is very low fi.
Speaker 3: It's very hot mess. And that's been brought about in
Speaker 3: no large part because of TikTok, which was very different
Speaker 3: to the Instagram aesthetic. The Instagram asthetic was always perfect
Speaker 3: TikTok came along and it was much more you know, undone,
Speaker 3: and that is kind of the Internet's vibe.
Speaker 1: At the moment.
Speaker 3: You know, you look at the top podcast in the
Speaker 3: world for women, Alex Cooper's call her Daddy. She wears
Speaker 3: a hoodie while she's interviewing and track. I know she's
Speaker 3: uncommonly beautiful, but it's still that's an affected version.
Speaker 2: But it's still aspiration. It's just like, I don't think
Speaker 2: aspiration has gone anywhere. I just think it looks different.
Speaker 2: I think that Alex Cooper is still as you say, skinny, gorgeous,
Speaker 2: white botox, with an inch of her life, no criticism,
Speaker 2: but like it's just she's perfect. So it's not really undone.
Speaker 1: It's almost like so undone.
Speaker 2: It's kind of like how everybody said last year about
Speaker 2: the Brat summer, like how cool. The Charlie xx Is
Speaker 2: vibe is just this green with some like black let
Speaker 2: us thrown at it, and then you find out that
Speaker 2: they went through two hundred and sixty five shades of green,
Speaker 2: so it's bullshit. The non aspirational vibe is also very created, curated, fake,
Speaker 2: so really manufactured author inter.
Speaker 4: I think this year the snark about Megan. It's got
Speaker 4: to go. It's got to go. She's not hurting anyone.
Speaker 4: You go make a cake and you go do your gardening,
Speaker 4: and I'll tell you who will like that?
Speaker 2: Is Wayne right? Holly? Well, except I'm gonna get real
Speaker 2: jealous of a gud. This is going to be the
Speaker 2: first time I'm really going to turn on her.
Speaker 4: Oh well, maybe Maya will finally let you have a
Speaker 4: gardening podcast if you luck eat.
Speaker 1: Horrific more gardening contents the world needs.
Speaker 2: Have you loved having us back out loud as? That's
Speaker 2: the ques fun? If you have, you've got a chance
Speaker 2: to buy tickets to our shows? Is that correct?
Speaker 4: As your students you do. Every ticket for Perth is gone,
Speaker 4: but more tickets have just been released for Brisbane, Sydney
Speaker 4: and Melbourne. I know that a few people were worried
Speaker 4: because I couldn't get them.
Speaker 3: Who's going to be top of the leader board? I mean,
Speaker 3: Perth already smashed everybody out of the path. My money's
Speaker 3: on Brisbane.
Speaker 1: We've got some very social out louders there. They had a.
Speaker 3: Catch up there on the weekend organized by Champion out
Speaker 3: louder Zoe Robbins, which was all about laughter and wine,
Speaker 3: which is very on brand for us.
Speaker 4: I loved the fight Oheit. It brought me so much joy.
Speaker 2: Thank you to all of you out louders who are
Speaker 2: coming to the show, who are planning to come to
Speaker 2: the show. There's a link in the show notes of
Speaker 2: where you ca and buy tickets, and thank you for
Speaker 2: being here with us today. We're going to be back
Speaker 2: in your airs tomorrow. Happy twenty twenty five.
Speaker 4: Bye bye bye.
Speaker 2: Shout out to any Mamma Mia subscribers listening. If you
Speaker 2: love the show and you want to support us, subscribing
Speaker 2: to Mama Mia is the very best way to do it.
Speaker 2: There's a link in the episode description.