Speaker 1: You're listening to Amma Mia podcast.
Speaker 2: Muma Mia acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters
Speaker 2: that this podcast is recorded on.
Speaker 3: Welcome to mummya out loud where women come to debrief.
Speaker 3: I am Jessie Stevens, I'm mea Friedman, and I'm m
Speaker 3: van Em And here's what's on our agenda for today, Friday,
Speaker 3: the eighteenth of July. We couldn't wait until hollywoods back.
Speaker 3: We tried, We really tried, but we desperately need to
Speaker 3: unpack the Salt Path memoir controversy. I have gone so deep,
Speaker 3: my friends.
Speaker 1: I have spent I reckon around twenty hours watching two
Speaker 1: shows last weekend. I was in binge mode and they
Speaker 1: are my recommendations. Plus we have two bits of podcast news.
Speaker 2: And therapy speak, mental health challenges and identity. Does anyone
Speaker 2: simply have a personality anymore?
Speaker 1: But first, in case you missed it, a couple in
Speaker 1: Taiwan have caused a bit of a stir by hiring
Speaker 1: pole dancers to perform outside their son's high school graduation
Speaker 1: ceremony last month. The event took place in mid June,
Speaker 1: just as students were emerging from the junior high school.
Speaker 1: Two female dancers began their routine on the street, and
Speaker 1: then this is very impressive. They moved onto the roofs
Speaker 1: of some SUVs that were rigged with poles for a
Speaker 1: full whole performance. The crowd was full of fairly shocked students,
Speaker 1: confused parents, and many many phones that were filming. The
Speaker 1: star of the show was the graduating student himself, who
Speaker 1: looked suitably mortified. I reckon he would have been about
Speaker 1: hard to say, maybe fourteen or so.
Speaker 2: I heard that he was also pulled into it a
Speaker 2: little bit between.
Speaker 1: It gets better because the star of the show was
Speaker 1: really his mum. She was not only unapologetic, but she
Speaker 1: choreographed the routine, and she said she wanted an unforgettable
Speaker 1: gift for her son, and she said a friend paid
Speaker 1: for a and she wanted it to be a more
Speaker 1: creative idea than some of the other parents' gifts for
Speaker 1: their kids. And it was it certainly what the police
Speaker 1: were called because the crowd gathered and if they're not
Speaker 1: have a permit, there was backlash. She'll be shocked to
Speaker 1: hear a school official said, we will be encouraging more
Speaker 1: rational celebrations moving forward.
Speaker 2: This is what happens when you give parents creative freedom
Speaker 2: to impress the other parents, because that's literally what she
Speaker 2: was doing, right. She was like, all these other parents
Speaker 2: get to do something fun for their kid. What's something
Speaker 2: I can do that shows my skills? And I did
Speaker 2: see a video of the dance. I didn't see the
Speaker 2: actual pole dancing, but I saw the dance. It's quite impressive,
Speaker 2: was it. Yeah, this isn't actually the first pole dancing
Speaker 2: incident in China. There was a kindergarten where a principal
Speaker 2: invited dancers to perform at the opening ceremony.
Speaker 3: Do you think she didn't know that they were sexy dancers?
Speaker 3: And maybe he thought that it was kind of a
Speaker 3: kind of legal.
Speaker 1: Pulled out, aren't. I mean sometimes Stupa's pole dance, But
Speaker 1: also there are people who pole dance for sport. I've
Speaker 1: done pole dancing classes. It's really hard. I think it
Speaker 1: was maybe not quite an Olympic sport, but I think
Speaker 1: it was, you know, it's a competitive sport.
Speaker 3: I think that we should all light a candle for
Speaker 3: the pole dancer in this situation, or any kind of
Speaker 3: exotic dancer who is hired to do a job by people,
Speaker 3: but the person that it's four hasn't actually opted in.
Speaker 3: Can you imagine sexily dancing to someone who's clearly deeply
Speaker 3: uncomfortable and doesn't want to be there. I think that
Speaker 3: often about Bucks parties. Yeah, when they go, oh, we're
Speaker 3: going to send you, and then you turn up as
Speaker 3: a worker who's like a really good dancer and he's
Speaker 3: very good at what you do, and you're there and
Speaker 3: you're like, I don't reckon, he's that into it.
Speaker 2: You're there for that one best man you really really wanted.
Speaker 3: It who wanted it a little too much.
Speaker 1: In the eighties, people used to send each other gorilla
Speaker 1: grams as a prank. What's that like? It was someone
Speaker 1: would turn up in a gorilla suit, usually to your
Speaker 1: place of business and do I don't know what they
Speaker 1: would actually do.
Speaker 2: This is an actual thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, gorilla grams. They were really big in the eighties,
Speaker 1: and they would I guess dance. I suppose that it
Speaker 1: wouldn't wasn't sexual, but it was just kind of what
Speaker 1: was that person signed were designed to. It's like hiring
Speaker 1: someone a surprise strooper, but without taking their clothes off there,
Speaker 1: which is just fur I.
Speaker 3: Want to hire you a gorilla for your birthday? Who
Speaker 3: sings you Happy birthday and.
Speaker 2: I want the gorilla to also pole dance.
Speaker 3: Oh yes, no, Maya would love that to.
Speaker 1: Actually like that?
Speaker 2: Is it true that nobody has a personality anymore? This week,
Speaker 2: freelance writer and author of Girls Newsletter Freyer India published
Speaker 2: a subtec post titled Nobody has a personality Anymore. In
Speaker 2: the piece, she explains how therapy speak and self diagnosis
Speaker 2: have taken over how we talk about ourselves and our relationships,
Speaker 2: turning every quirk, feeling, or decision into a symptom to
Speaker 2: be analyzed, and in trying to explain everything through a
Speaker 2: psychological framework, we've lost language, personality, mystery, and soul In it,
Speaker 2: she says, we have lost the sentimental ways we use
Speaker 2: to describe people. Not because you are lovably forgetful, not
Speaker 2: because you are scattered and interesting and secretly loved for
Speaker 2: never arriving on time, but because of ADHD.
Speaker 1: But maybe you're also late, just because you're useless or selfie, sure,
Speaker 1: all of those kinds of things.
Speaker 2: Maybe maybe, But also you are shy and stare at
Speaker 2: your feet when people talk to you, not because you
Speaker 2: are your mother's child, not because you are gentle and sweet,
Speaker 2: and blush the same way she does. But autism you
Speaker 2: are the way you are, not because you have a soul,
Speaker 2: but because of your symptoms and diagnosis. Every heartfelt, annoying,
Speaker 2: interesting piece of you categorized the fond way your family
Speaker 2: describe you medicalized. The pieces of us once written into
Speaker 2: wedding vows read out and eulogies remembered with the smile,
Speaker 2: now live on doctor's notes and mental health assessments and
Speaker 2: better help applications. We are not people anymore. We have
Speaker 2: been products for a long time, and these are our labels.
Speaker 3: I think this is hyperbolic. You can be someone with
Speaker 3: quirks and very specific characteristics, and you can also have
Speaker 3: an autism diagnosis like both of those things can be true.
Speaker 3: And if you do go to a wedding or a funeral,
Speaker 3: you'll notice that it is not a list of labels.
Speaker 3: The way that we remember people or characterize people are
Speaker 3: by their contradictions. That is how it happens. But as
Speaker 3: with a lot of writing, I think that this writer
Speaker 3: is reflecting to a phenomenon that's occurring on the Internet.
Speaker 3: And there is such a difference between therapy speak and
Speaker 3: therapy culture and sitting down with a psychologist. They're actually
Speaker 3: two completely different things. And if you sit down with
Speaker 3: a psychologist, they actually aren't trying to label you, and
Speaker 3: they're not trying to position every relationship you have as
Speaker 3: codependent or an attachment disorder or blah blah blah. They're
Speaker 3: trying to see your personality as this complex and always
Speaker 3: evolving thing. And what psychologists also will focus on and
Speaker 3: have you be more open to, is that personality is
Speaker 3: ever changing. Like that's maybe something that I have felt
Speaker 3: a little bit shift, is that the way that we're
Speaker 3: starting to talk about personality is as though it is
Speaker 3: set in stone and it doesn't evolve, but it's always changing.
Speaker 3: Of course it is. And that's why I realized reading
Speaker 3: this article that she put words around why I love
Speaker 3: fiction so much, and the reason I love reading fiction
Speaker 3: is because there is no character that has ADHD full stop.
Speaker 3: That's the end of their story. It is the contradictions
Speaker 3: and the mess and the complications of that person and
Speaker 3: then how their traits intersect with plot and have them grow.
Speaker 3: By the end of a book, someone's always a different person, Like,
Speaker 3: that's what we're watching, and it's that evolution that I'm
Speaker 3: invested in.
Speaker 1: How much do you think this is about categorizing other
Speaker 1: people as a way to understand them, and how much
Speaker 1: she is categorizing ourselves, Like, for example, this idea of narcissist.
Speaker 1: That's a word. People don't throw it around about themselves,
Speaker 1: but they certainly throw it around about other people. So
Speaker 1: you're not just selfish or self absorbed or going through
Speaker 1: a time of main character energy, You're a narcissist. And
Speaker 1: in the same way people don't feel anxious, they have anxiety.
Speaker 1: Now I have a couple of these diagnoses, and I've
Speaker 1: found it actually really helpful for understanding my own behavior
Speaker 1: and responses to things, like a lens through which I
Speaker 1: can see them, but I also can see how very
Speaker 1: quickly it becomes boring and a default to just flatten
Speaker 1: everything through that lens.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And there was actually a really interesting data point
Speaker 3: in that article, which was according to a twenty twenty
Speaker 3: four survey, seventy two percent of gen Z girls said
Speaker 3: that mental health challenges are an important part of my identity.
Speaker 3: And that worried me because I thought, well, it's the
Speaker 3: only way to have their pain validated. That's what it says,
Speaker 3: is like I'm pain or I'm feeling distress, and when
Speaker 3: I have a label, I remember feeling people will take.
Speaker 1: Me more stage.
Speaker 3: Yeah, people will actually listen to me. And we've always
Speaker 3: minimized the pain of young girls, so I can understand
Speaker 3: why that's happening. But that's not a recipe for happiness,
Speaker 3: I suppose.
Speaker 2: But I also feel like when it comes to diagnosis,
Speaker 2: and I was talking to a friend who works in
Speaker 2: that social policy space, but I think also when it
Speaker 2: comes to understanding why a person is as they are,
Speaker 2: For example, if I had a friend who was diagnosed
Speaker 2: with depression, Yeah, I think it also allows you, as
Speaker 2: a friend or as a family member to kind of
Speaker 2: form some sort of empathy around that rather than just
Speaker 2: thinking that they are just the way they are, or
Speaker 2: like putting a label on it, saying that they are
Speaker 2: a narcissist. I was reading a blog post by a
Speaker 2: psychotherapist named Musumi Saha, and she said being nervous before
Speaker 2: a big event is labeled as anxiety. A disagreement with
Speaker 2: someone might be called toxic. Using labels too loosely can
Speaker 2: make us see normal emotions as problems. It can make
Speaker 2: us feel like we're broken when really we're just human.
Speaker 2: And it just made me realize that I have done
Speaker 2: this so much where I use therapy speak in my
Speaker 2: everyday language to kind of make excuses for things, Like
Speaker 2: there's been times I've told friends like, hey, I can't
Speaker 2: come out to dinner. I need my depression nap. And
Speaker 2: I'm like, I just needed a nap, and I just
Speaker 2: happen to have depression. Like, and I think putting that
Speaker 2: word depression with everything I say about myself gives me
Speaker 2: the excuse to use it in a serious matter without
Speaker 2: being serious. And I also use it as a blocker
Speaker 2: to stop people from questioning it, Like my friends have
Speaker 2: every right to call me out and be like, just
Speaker 2: come to dinner.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're not going to nap. Yeah.
Speaker 3: And what what I've found through, you know, having the
Speaker 3: absolute privilege of at points in my life sitting down
Speaker 3: across from a psychologist is is how often they say
Speaker 3: to me, not that's normal, but they help explain why
Speaker 3: I might need that nap whatever. What they don't do
Speaker 3: is tell me I'm abnormal, put a label on it,
Speaker 3: and kind of go, that's the way you were built.
Speaker 3: Whereas the thing of like the classic TikTok, which is
Speaker 3: five things I thought were part of my personality, but
Speaker 3: are actually just my ADHD. I don't think that that's
Speaker 3: often that helpful. I think probably it's kind of both.
Speaker 1: It is both. I think that's exactly right. Having had
Speaker 1: that exact experience. My first reaction when I was diagnosed
Speaker 1: and had this label was I mean a million but
Speaker 1: there was some relief, going, oh, there's a reason for
Speaker 1: all of these things. But then there's also a sense
Speaker 1: of oh, I thought I had this unique, quirky personality,
Speaker 1: but I've just got all these textbook list of symptoms
Speaker 1: of this really common neurological condition, on neurodivergent condition.
Speaker 2: So there was actually a US government study done in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty one where researchers wanted to figure out what
Speaker 2: happens to people when they're given a diagnosis, not just medically,
Speaker 2: but also emotionally, socially, and practically, and they said there
Speaker 2: were those positive emotions like validation, as in like someone
Speaker 2: finally believes me, but it also changed people's self identity
Speaker 2: where they started seeing themselves as their condition.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I definitely found that that was something I had
Speaker 1: to become aware of and then avoid. It's almost like
Speaker 1: falling in love and you just want to say that
Speaker 1: person's name all the time, and you feel like you've
Speaker 1: been giving this roadmap to understanding yourself. But then does
Speaker 1: start to sound boring when you just keep going, Oh,
Speaker 1: that's my adhd oh, that's medhd, oh, that's my anxiety.
Speaker 3: I think it's an attempt to project order onto chaos
Speaker 3: as well, right, like, and have a roadmap, and have
Speaker 3: a roadmap and something as complex as personality and human relationships,
Speaker 3: like when I met my half brother and he was
Speaker 3: my mum had him when she was very young, and
Speaker 3: he was then adopted and he went and moved overseas
Speaker 3: and I met him when he was in his mid thirties,
Speaker 3: and having that expl experience exploded my view of what
Speaker 3: made personality. That's why there were brilliant moments in this essay. Wait,
Speaker 3: I mean it's not as simple as we are a
Speaker 3: product of our childhood. It's not as simple as we're
Speaker 3: a product of our genes.
Speaker 2: We are large behavior.
Speaker 3: And yes, it's this unexplained and the beauty is in
Speaker 3: the unexplained.
Speaker 1: So do you mean that there were aspects of him
Speaker 1: that were really similar to you, even though you were
Speaker 1: not raised together.
Speaker 3: Yes, and aspects that weren't exactly so sitting there, he
Speaker 3: had these certain gestures that he made that my mum said, oh,
Speaker 3: that was my father. It was like sitting there with
Speaker 3: my father, right. And then there were experiences he had
Speaker 3: in his twenties, thoughts or crisis he had that were
Speaker 3: nearly identical to things that I had gone through. And
Speaker 3: so as much as we like to think that we
Speaker 3: are the product of how we were parented, or we
Speaker 3: are exactly the product of you know, the low dopamine
Speaker 3: or serotonin in oup, like, it is this incredibly chaotic,
Speaker 3: beautiful mix. And that's why getting to know peace is
Speaker 3: so interesting.
Speaker 2: It's the getting to know people because I think this
Speaker 2: also comes up a lot in dating because I feel
Speaker 2: like when we have all these terms like gas lighting, toxic,
Speaker 2: it's so easy to chuck that label onto someone because
Speaker 2: it's much easier to say that instead of saying, oh,
Speaker 2: they just didn't like me. They were doing like all
Speaker 2: of these things. And it's even like attachment styles, right,
Speaker 2: like oh he was just avoidant and I'm anxious, so
Speaker 2: that's why we don't work out. I think it's like
Speaker 2: filtering down into the thing. Where as you said, me
Speaker 2: like it's a bit of both, and I think what
Speaker 2: you said about how you got that sense of relief,
Speaker 2: but also it's so hard to not kind of skew
Speaker 2: your identity to being that one thing where every single
Speaker 2: thing you do you're like, oh, was that because my ADHD.
Speaker 1: That's limiting, don't you. Yeah. So I think when it
Speaker 1: can become a bit of a prison or a cage
Speaker 1: is when you just think, oh, well, I'll never be
Speaker 1: able to be on time because I have ADHD, or
Speaker 1: I'll always interrupt because I have ADHD, and it can
Speaker 1: become cop out's the wrong word, bet limitation.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: The dating example is such a good one because it
Speaker 3: is such a time, like the creation of a dating profile,
Speaker 3: where we are forced to use labels. It's like, how
Speaker 3: do I present myself as a product to be consumed
Speaker 3: and liked? And you've kind of got to go, well,
Speaker 3: what are my hobbies? What do I do for a living?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 3: What are my personality traits? And there was this quote
Speaker 3: in the essay that said that happiness is about almost
Speaker 3: actually being able to forget yourself. And in a culture
Speaker 3: where we're constantly producing.
Speaker 1: And being perceived express.
Speaker 3: Identity, then we're not able to forget ourselves. We're always
Speaker 3: in the process of kind of labeling.
Speaker 1: It reminded me a little bit about you know how,
Speaker 1: in the last probably decade maybe less, there've been a
Speaker 1: whole lot of new names for different types of sexuality,
Speaker 1: so pan sexual, polysexual, and be sexual, and they all
Speaker 1: mean slightly different things. Instead of just being able to say, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm attracted to this person, so it's aboud identity. Like
Speaker 1: we're all retreating further and further and wanting to categorize
Speaker 1: ourselves more and more, and I need to want to
Speaker 1: understand and also belong to a community and which has
Speaker 1: been so important for it and not be ordinary. You know,
Speaker 1: I think that being able to say I'm this or
Speaker 1: I'm that, or I have it. But at a certain point,
Speaker 1: when are you just I guess that's the whole point
Speaker 1: of this story. When are you just you? When are
Speaker 1: you just the sum total of your experiences, your conditions,
Speaker 1: your mental health, your opinions, your upbringing, you know, your emotions.
Speaker 3: Yeah, something that can't be like, yeah.
Speaker 1: We sort of needing to put all these post it
Speaker 1: notes on everything and say, oh, it's my this and
Speaker 1: it's my that.
Speaker 2: After reading the sub sac were you able to identify
Speaker 2: qualities of your personality that you feel like are just
Speaker 2: your personality?
Speaker 1: Oh that's such a good question.
Speaker 3: I went really deep on the deaf personality after that
Speaker 3: because I was like, hang on, what even is personality?
Speaker 3: And of course it's the five traits that they talk about,
Speaker 3: and some are more stable than others. But we were
Speaker 3: talking about this on Parenting Out Loud the other week
Speaker 3: and I was saying, we're talking about deeply feeling kids.
Speaker 3: This is the term going around, and I was saying,
Speaker 3: I worry about labels like that because, particularly in childhood,
Speaker 3: personality is changing and you might look at your kid
Speaker 3: and go, you're shy and you're timid, and your risk averse.
Speaker 3: I have totally done this, and then the next day
Speaker 3: they surprise you. And that's how humans are. Yeah, Like,
Speaker 3: that's the beauty of a relationship with anyone is that
Speaker 3: they will change. And there are some traits like extra version,
Speaker 3: introversion apparently stays pretty stable. Others a life event will
Speaker 3: absolutely transform you. I feel as though I have a
Speaker 3: different personality, probably since having a baby, for a variety
Speaker 3: of reasons. And I know people have to profound grief
Speaker 3: or you know, experiencing a particular trauma or whatever, the
Speaker 3: personality changes.
Speaker 2: Because I am the type of person who like constantly
Speaker 2: uses therapy language in my every day. There's like a
Speaker 2: celebrity who I find myself quoting every single week. It's
Speaker 2: Jami mccirk. Yeah, you know, she played Jessa and Girls.
Speaker 3: I think I know this quo.
Speaker 2: Oh it's so good. So she does like I think
Speaker 2: once a year she does his big ask Me any
Speaker 2: Things on Instagram where she puts a question box up
Speaker 2: and the audience asked her question.
Speaker 3: And she's quite candid.
Speaker 2: She's so so candid. And one of the questions he
Speaker 2: got years ago someone wrote in and said any advice
Speaker 2: for unconfident young girls? And she just replied, I think
Speaker 2: you guys might be thinking about yourselves too much. And
Speaker 2: I say that to myself all the time.
Speaker 3: Out louders up. Next, does a memoir need to be
Speaker 3: vigorously fact checked? And whose job is that we discuss
Speaker 3: the Salt Path controversy. We have been desperate to talk
Speaker 3: about the Salt Path controversy, and we're gonna wait until
Speaker 3: Hollywood's back because we would like to put it on
Speaker 3: the record in this moment that one miss Hollywayn Wright
Speaker 3: recommended the Salt Path.
Speaker 1: Member what Holly recommended?
Speaker 3: I listened, Mia Friedman, I listened, and I wrote in
Speaker 3: my journal Hollywayin Wright just recommended the Salt Path so
Speaker 3: that I could bring it up today and say, haha,
Speaker 3: history will not be kind to hollid On No, because yes,
Speaker 3: this is very controversial. We got too impatient, though, and
Speaker 3: so today we want to start from the beginning. And
Speaker 3: I like that Holly has no right of reply.
Speaker 2: She's going to reply the match she gets back.
Speaker 1: I just know it. So.
Speaker 3: The soult Path is a memoir that was published in
Speaker 3: twenty eighteen and it was written by Rayner Wynn and
Speaker 3: it has since sold more than two million copies. That
Speaker 3: is a lot of copies. In twenty twenty four, was
Speaker 3: turned into a film. The main characters were Gillian Anderson
Speaker 3: and Jason Isaacs.
Speaker 1: It was white Lotus.
Speaker 3: Yeah. It was marketed as unflinchingly true. It tells a
Speaker 3: story of how Rayner, who was fifty five at the time,
Speaker 3: and her husband moth Win, lost their home after investing
Speaker 3: a substantial sum of money in a company owned by
Speaker 3: a friend that ultimately failed. It was kind of the
Speaker 3: gray nomad thing right, But it was also playing into
Speaker 3: something that impacts a lot of people in their fifties
Speaker 3: sixty seventies, particularly women of homelessness. Where you go, I've
Speaker 3: worked my whole life and I've ended up at this
Speaker 3: point where i have nothing but the things of my
Speaker 3: back pap.
Speaker 1: I've never heard of this book, so I've come to
Speaker 1: this like a lot of people reading about the controversy
Speaker 1: without any knowledge of the source text. It sounds like
Speaker 1: the Salt Path. The book was a little bit like
Speaker 1: Cheryl Strade's Wild Wild, Yes, someone going on is why
Speaker 1: I didn't hear of it? Someone going on a long
Speaker 1: walk in nature? Yeap, not by kind of book exactly.
Speaker 3: And on top of this, the reason why this book
Speaker 3: was so impactful is that Moth had been diagnosed with
Speaker 3: a rare neuro degenerative disease and they decide to then
Speaker 3: embark on this kind of a name is moth, Well,
Speaker 3: I think it comes from because his name is Tim,
Speaker 3: So Tim Moth. I've never heard moth. Yeah, as a
Speaker 3: little so.
Speaker 2: Instead of the nickname being Tim, it's moth like moth, shallow.
Speaker 3: Man, endearing pet name. They both decided they were going
Speaker 3: to walk along the Southwest Coast Path in southwest England.
Speaker 3: And look, that.
Speaker 1: Book's so horrendous. People love.
Speaker 2: It's like a self help kind of situation.
Speaker 1: I mean, I love to eat pray loves.
Speaker 2: So it's like eat pray love except a couple yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, on a long walk and this illness and
Speaker 3: the idea is as well that you know, he's been
Speaker 3: given certain things to expect from this illness, and the
Speaker 3: walking really helped and that was part of the story.
Speaker 1: My understanding is that the illness, the diagnosis is usually
Speaker 1: pretty terminal and not something that you can walk off.
Speaker 3: No, so you often have a life expectancy of about
Speaker 3: six to eight years. Okay, now, this is all well
Speaker 3: and good, except according to an article in The Observer
Speaker 3: which was published earlier this month, they were never homeless.
Speaker 3: They did lose one home, but that was a result
Speaker 3: of embezzling the equivalent of about eighty five thousand Australian dollars.
Speaker 3: There are also questions about Moth's illness. And that's not
Speaker 3: even his real name, and Rayner is not her real name.
Speaker 2: Wait, so he chose the name Moth.
Speaker 3: Well, They're real names are Sally and Tim. Sally and
Speaker 3: Tim Walker.
Speaker 2: That doesn't have the same ren it does it.
Speaker 3: I liked the Rainer and the moth that I can
Speaker 3: kind of forgive in a memoir if you want to
Speaker 3: have a kind of pen name situation. Yeah, fine, it's
Speaker 3: probably the other stuff that isn't so forgivable. Look Sally
Speaker 3: stole that substantial sum of money while working as a
Speaker 3: bookkeeper in the mid two thousands, but they settled the
Speaker 3: dispute privately. The details get really weedy here, but long
Speaker 3: story short, debt collectors took their home and Sally Walker
Speaker 3: has written a very long blog post where she's confirmed this.
Speaker 1: So interestingly, one reason for changing your name is that
Speaker 1: people can't then google you and find things out about you.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Also, the reason they were ever really homeless is because
Speaker 3: they did have a property technically in France that they
Speaker 3: still owned throughout all of this. The Observer then cast
Speaker 3: outs on Walker's illness. They interviewed multiple medical experts who
Speaker 3: said that, you know, the average life expectancy is six
Speaker 3: to eight years, and I think it's now eighteen years later,
Speaker 3: Tim Walker is still alive. What has Raina Win said?
Speaker 3: So she's written this big blog post and she says
Speaker 3: that the house in France was uninhabitable. It was just
Speaker 3: like basically stones like you couldn't live there and they
Speaker 3: couldn't sell it. Actually looks like she might be telling
Speaker 3: the truth about that, right. She has also shared documents
Speaker 3: that seem to confirm her husband's diagnosis, although some say
Speaker 3: you're a little bit vague on the details, and a
Speaker 3: lot of people with this specific illness. This is the
Speaker 3: issue with writing about health is that it became sort
Speaker 3: of prescriptive to them, and they had this hope that
Speaker 3: maybe if I just did a long walk, then I
Speaker 3: too could improve a lot of mon Yes, so there's
Speaker 3: a lot to unpack here. Mea what kind of responsibility
Speaker 3: do you think the publisher has here to fact check?
Speaker 1: I want to jump past the publisher and talk about
Speaker 1: the first right, because a lot of people who read
Speaker 1: this book, who loved this book, have said, I'm really
Speaker 1: really upset. We have a similar thing happened many years
Speaker 1: ago with an author called James Frey who wrote a
Speaker 1: memoir called A Million Little Pieces. He was not an
Speaker 1: Oprah's Book Club. It then turned out that his memoir
Speaker 1: most of it all, I think all of it wasn't true.
Speaker 1: That was a huge controversy. We've had these before. Helen
Speaker 1: de Medenko a long time ago. I think she said
Speaker 1: she was Yugoslavian, but she was just an Australian who
Speaker 1: was not Yugoslavian, and that was not her name. Her
Speaker 1: name is Helen Darvil. So my question about when you
Speaker 1: read something that you think is memoir, because I read
Speaker 1: a million little pieces I thought it was great. When
Speaker 1: I found out that a lot of it wasn't true,
Speaker 1: did I care or no? Because we have something called fiction,
Speaker 1: and I mean, I understand that it's storytelling. Is it
Speaker 1: not just as good?
Speaker 3: Oh, it's totally different. It's totally it's an element of
Speaker 3: absolute manipulation. And I think that what's an important point
Speaker 3: to make is that nonfiction is easier to sell. It's
Speaker 3: easy to market. The reason it's easy to market I
Speaker 3: was told this. I've written a nonfiction book and a
Speaker 3: fiction book. Nonfiction people want to interview because story. How
Speaker 3: many fiction writers, unless they're Leanne Moriarty, do you actually hear?
Speaker 3: It's really hard to get your fiction book in front
Speaker 3: of people's eyes.
Speaker 1: Because it's like, tell me about this made up story.
Speaker 3: It's like yeah, yeah, So if you say this is
Speaker 3: nonfiction this is a true story, the investment of a reader,
Speaker 3: and I think that a book is very different to
Speaker 3: any other type of media because of how long you
Speaker 3: spend with those people, the details that you absorb, the hope,
Speaker 3: the connections that you make, and then to find out
Speaker 3: that isn't true feels like such an enormous betrayal and
Speaker 3: I'm so surprised. I was listening to a podcast about
Speaker 3: this where they were saying that the way the contract
Speaker 3: works is that the publisher has Rayner signed something, where
Speaker 3: Rayner says this is all true. Basically, the onness is
Speaker 3: on the author, and Rayner got a very small book
Speaker 3: advance for this. I think it was maybe like ten
Speaker 3: pounds twenty thousand pounds. Since she's made millions and millions
Speaker 3: of dollars off royalties, but this keeps happening, it seems
Speaker 3: because legally, I don't think that the onus is on
Speaker 3: the publisher. I think it's on the writer.
Speaker 1: Well, I've written a couple of memoirs. I can't remember
Speaker 1: if I signed anything. I mean, they're always worried about
Speaker 1: anything legal, so anything where you talk about other people
Speaker 1: or make claims about other people.
Speaker 3: But it's not like they would have sat down with
Speaker 3: your mum and dad and gone, hey, this story that
Speaker 3: may have told about being four, was that true?
Speaker 1: No, And they don't ask for medical records. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: because that would be intrusive. Although in the case of
Speaker 1: something like Bell Gibson, there was a huge amount of
Speaker 1: backlash and criticism of the publisher, which I think was
Speaker 1: valid because if you know, in my memoir, I wrote
Speaker 1: about having a miscarriage, I wrote about anxiety, I wrote
Speaker 1: about various things, but I didn't write about curing myself
Speaker 1: of a particular.
Speaker 2: I think that's where the difference comes in because this book,
Speaker 2: although it's a memoir, like labeled as a memoir, it's
Speaker 2: more like a self help kind of book. Like that
Speaker 2: book would have had exactly what you said, so many
Speaker 2: people readers in like a chokehold of going this is
Speaker 2: the book that is going to help me through like
Speaker 2: my next stage. And I remember something so different, but
Speaker 2: I know the exact sense of betrayal because my favorite
Speaker 2: movie for the longest, longest time was The blind Side. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and that was based on a true story. Sandra Bullock
Speaker 2: wan Academy Awards for it. It was a massive movie.
Speaker 1: What was it about?
Speaker 2: Again, it was about this family, this really successful, rich
Speaker 2: family in Memphis who adopted a black kid and took
Speaker 2: them into his family and he became this massive football star.
Speaker 2: And the blindside was about how he became huge. He
Speaker 2: went into college and they funded all of that and
Speaker 2: he was just making a lot of money.
Speaker 3: And beautiful success story, beautiful but.
Speaker 1: True and how did it come out?
Speaker 2: So then after that we found out that the child
Speaker 2: that the movie was about, Michael Orr, was suing the
Speaker 2: Touwy family that was Sandra Bullock was suing that family
Speaker 2: saying that he actually wasn't adopted, he was under a
Speaker 2: conservatorship and the family was taking all the money that
Speaker 2: he was making and taking all the money that the
Speaker 2: movie was made from Hollywood. And it was one of
Speaker 2: those situations that was so so horrible. And then he
Speaker 2: said a lot of the stuff that happened in the
Speaker 2: movie was not true, Like he could actually read and
Speaker 2: write and he was well educated. The huge racial stereotypes
Speaker 2: are happening, and it just was one of those things
Speaker 2: whereas as someone who was so invested in that film,
Speaker 2: I was just digging and digging and digging to see
Speaker 2: if this could be unproven because there was just something
Speaker 2: that really watched when I was really young, and I
Speaker 2: just wanted it to be true so badly.
Speaker 3: I read a book when I was a teenager called
Speaker 3: Forbidden Love, and it was Alakuri a Norma Kouri, and
Speaker 3: it was about her growing up in Jordan and her
Speaker 3: best friend Dahlia, who fell in love with like a
Speaker 3: Christian soldier and ultimately died by an honor killing that
Speaker 3: her father was responsible for.
Speaker 1: She wrote, she told the story of her best friend, yes,
Speaker 1: he was killed, yes.
Speaker 3: And then she moved to the US and it was
Speaker 3: this phenomenon, this book, right, And then it was actually
Speaker 3: Australian journalists Malcolm Knox and I think Caroline Overington was
Speaker 3: really involved in the reporting. Where they went there was
Speaker 3: something like seventy two factual inaccuracies, really basic stuff like
Speaker 3: the border of Jordan was wrong, the banknotes were wrong,
Speaker 3: like all of these kind of and they were like,
Speaker 3: this is really really strange. And then people within Jordan
Speaker 3: started saying, this is not a big country. We would
Speaker 3: have heard. This is like a horrific thing to happen.
Speaker 3: We would have heard. And so they dig and they
Speaker 3: dig and they dig. Turns out this woman never existed,
Speaker 3: like Norma Kuri hadn't even been in Jordan at that time.
Speaker 3: There's a brilliant document called Forbidden Lies that Caroline Overington
Speaker 3: is in. It had to be pulled from shelves, like
Speaker 3: the book was totally fictional. And the reason why that
Speaker 3: was so bad was because it came out in two
Speaker 3: thousand and three, that is two years after September eleventh.
Speaker 3: The anti Muslim sentiment, the Islamophobia that was so prevalent
Speaker 3: at the time. People were so invested in having this
Speaker 3: vision of kind of the oppressed Muslim woman. And to
Speaker 3: write this, to have me so emotionally invested in that
Speaker 3: book and go, this is such a tragedy, look at
Speaker 3: how these cultures work. It just was a totally fictional story.
Speaker 1: I know it's hard to unscramble how you feel about something.
Speaker 1: But had that been categorized as fiction, you're saying it
Speaker 1: wouldn't have sold as well. No, but would you have
Speaker 1: enjoyed reading it as much? Or there's something and new
Speaker 1: for the blind side? Is there something about knowing that
Speaker 1: it's true that enhances your enjoyment of a sect?
Speaker 3: It totally changed a conversation when you're told it's true
Speaker 3: one hundred percent, And even with that book, it's also
Speaker 3: because those code be true.
Speaker 2: Stories like honor killings do happen. So I feel like
Speaker 2: making up a fake story about that and then making
Speaker 2: so much money and moving to the US when it
Speaker 2: actually is happening in the world is just another step
Speaker 2: way too fun.
Speaker 3: It's exploiting. It's totally exploiting a culture that you actually
Speaker 3: have no right to write about. And what's interesting too
Speaker 3: is a James Fray example. And I believe in this
Speaker 3: example there's a big question mark about what happens to
Speaker 3: the money. Yes, because James Frey, I'm pretty sure he's
Speaker 3: still a pretty rich dude, and a lot of the readers,
Speaker 3: because this is in the US, readers suit him like
Speaker 3: individual ratings for life. I want to be compensated.
Speaker 1: I think their publishers often allow people to refunds, get refunds,
Speaker 1: but did you get a refund?
Speaker 3: Well, what's funny is you might have a few refunds.
Speaker 3: Do you know how many people have bought The Salt
Speaker 3: Path in the last few weeks? Like the book, scan
Speaker 3: numbers would have just skyrocket and.
Speaker 1: Watched the movie.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So in terms of the money.
Speaker 1: There was an interview with Jillian Anderson. This is before
Speaker 1: all this came out and people are now going back
Speaker 1: and looking. When she was promoting the movie, someone said, oh,
Speaker 1: did you meet Rayner? How did you find her? And
Speaker 1: Jillian Anderson said, I found her guarded Jerry, Yeah, which
Speaker 1: was kind of cryptic.
Speaker 2: You know who I want to hear from Jason Isaacs
Speaker 2: because from White Loaders, we all know he's a messy bitch. Yeahs.
Speaker 2: Friendships are made, friendships are lost.
Speaker 1: The dad on White Lotus with his prosthetic penis co moth.
Speaker 2: What do you think?
Speaker 3: Tell us your opinion before we go into eCos. I
Speaker 3: wanted to share a low from the week that just passed.
Speaker 3: We talk a bit about sharing from a scar, not
Speaker 3: a wound, but I think sometimes there's a bit of
Speaker 3: utility in examining the wound while it's fresh. And while
Speaker 3: we were recording Wednesday Show last week, I was going
Speaker 3: through something privately, and that night I tried to put
Speaker 3: words around it. So here's what I wrote. I'm sitting
Speaker 3: in the hospital where I gave birth to my daughter
Speaker 3: almost exactly two years ago, but this time I'm not
Speaker 3: in a bed with a bassinette tucked in close beside it.
Speaker 3: I'm in emergency, handing over yarine samples with specks of blood,
Speaker 3: knowing in some part of me that I've just had
Speaker 3: or I'm having a miscarriage. It's so silly. I tested
Speaker 3: so ridiculously early. At first, I didn't even think I
Speaker 3: saw a line that. Then I looked closer. You know
Speaker 3: you're desperate when you take a photo and start adjusting
Speaker 3: the contrast. There was the faintest line, a whisper of
Speaker 3: a promise your life could be about to radically change, or,
Speaker 3: as the case may be, not at all. The next
Speaker 3: day the line was a bit darker than a bit
Speaker 3: darker visible to the naked eye. At least I told
Speaker 3: Luca and my sister. I was so excited. I worked
Speaker 3: out the jew date, the gap between my babies. I
Speaker 3: was asked about a work commitment slaid in for early
Speaker 3: next year, and meekly tried to pry my way out
Speaker 3: of it. They'd know soon enough. I thought about it
Speaker 3: every second of every day. It's like the knowledge existed
Speaker 3: in my pulse, and I suppose it literally did. I'd
Speaker 3: been afraid of how much I wanted this. It feels
Speaker 3: dangerous to want anything this much. Months have passed negative tests.
Speaker 3: I didn't know I could feel so much disdain for
Speaker 3: a pad, but then a positive test. No alcohol, no
Speaker 3: Quadrill pregnancy vitamins. The sore boobs were a giveaway. I
Speaker 3: remembered them from last time, but they're not sore anymore.
Speaker 3: I was at the doctor when it happened. Luna had
Speaker 3: a cold, and I darted to the bathroom as we
Speaker 3: finished up. I'd been spotting, but when I wiped there
Speaker 3: was blood, too much blood, and there were cramps like
Speaker 3: an ache in my lower stomach and back.
Speaker 1: It hurt.
Speaker 3: But where did the knowing come from? That night, as
Speaker 3: I laid in bed having taken panadole, which felt like
Speaker 3: a betrayal of some kind, like I was muting an alarm,
Speaker 3: I felt lonely. They were gone, disappeared. I'd liked so
Speaker 3: much knowing that they were there, and I wasn't grieving
Speaker 3: a baby. I can't imagine losing a baby further along,
Speaker 3: when they're a tiny thing your body has got to know,
Speaker 3: as familiar as your own shadow, a companion through everything.
Speaker 3: I was grieving hope, the future that i'd let unfold,
Speaker 3: the excitement, and for a moment other people's joy is
Speaker 3: all I see. She is pregnant, she has just had
Speaker 3: her third She's walking down the street with two little ones,
Speaker 3: so close in age, with no idea how lucky she is.
Speaker 3: I'm being assaulted by pregnant bellies and ultrasound pictures and
Speaker 3: family photos. And they're beautiful, but they're also brutal to
Speaker 3: the people I empathized with before this. I'm sorry that
Speaker 3: I didn't understand. I didn't understand the impatience, the frustration,
Speaker 3: the grief, the anger, the isolation that it can feel
Speaker 3: like you lost something you only ever really saw. I
Speaker 3: experienced early what so many women go through much later,
Speaker 3: and it is awful to experience a pregnancy you wanted
Speaker 3: more than anything leave your body. However more however, early
Speaker 3: leaves you with an emptiness, a silence, something that is
Speaker 3: over before it ever properly began. And I didn't want
Speaker 3: this story to be a footnote to a pregnancy announcement,
Speaker 3: hopefully someday down the track, a story of victory over
Speaker 3: struggle where it didn't matter so much because we got
Speaker 3: our healthy baby in the end. Because right now that's
Speaker 3: not where I am, or where so many people are.
Speaker 3: I'm sitting in the silence, the emptiness, and I hate
Speaker 3: it here. So I want to say it in case
Speaker 3: you've ever been here, or you're here now, or you
Speaker 3: find yourself here one day stunned by how much it hurts.
Speaker 1: Sweetheart, I'm so sorry that that happened to you, and
Speaker 1: I'm so glad that you wrote that, because that's beautiful.
Speaker 1: You've put words around something that so many women have
Speaker 1: gone through, and so many women will go through, and
Speaker 1: it's really hard thing to explain, even to partner, even
Speaker 1: to your closest friends. It's very unique. It's a weird
Speaker 1: type of grief.
Speaker 3: I've spoken to so many women working in this office,
Speaker 3: like who I've spoken about it, have been at work,
Speaker 3: been in a meeting, gone to the bathroom, and this
Speaker 3: kind of private tragedy has occurred, and I thought I
Speaker 3: knew it was bad. I don't think I ever understood
Speaker 3: the complicated and like embodied emotion of it. I was,
Speaker 3: of course, you just frantically google and one of the
Speaker 3: symptoms that you're losing a pregnancy is grief, like you
Speaker 3: actually do. It's like your body, like your cells feel
Speaker 3: like a changing. Oh, your hormones are changing and yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: and the palpable grief. I've never been so sure of anything.
Speaker 3: And I think when you go with symptoms like obviously
Speaker 3: bleeding is quite normal in early pregnancy, and so people
Speaker 3: are reassuring or trying to be reassuring.
Speaker 1: But it was you knew.
Speaker 3: I just absolutely absolutely.
Speaker 1: Knew, no matter how early it is. And like I
Speaker 1: so many women get conscious of like throat clearing going
Speaker 1: and it was early, and I just I can't imagine
Speaker 1: what it's like. There's no there's no leaderboard of who
Speaker 1: gets to be the most sad. It's a type of
Speaker 1: grief that transcends how many weeks.
Speaker 3: And I completely understand why people and I so appreciate
Speaker 3: people before me having talked about it. And even as
Speaker 3: it was happening, I kind of had a prism through
Speaker 3: which to understand what was happening because I'd heard other
Speaker 3: women talk about it, and I understand the vulnerability of
Speaker 3: being in the moment. Even saying like I'm trying really
Speaker 3: hard at this thing and it's not working.
Speaker 1: Is like do you feel like a failure? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Quite shameful, like that I.
Speaker 1: Had one job, my body had one job. Yeah.
Speaker 3: But then there's this awareness of like the privilege of
Speaker 3: having fallen pregnant accidentally and having a healthy pregnancy and
Speaker 3: a healthy baby.
Speaker 2: But also knowing that when you talked about your boobs
Speaker 2: and like you knew. Yeah, Like I think that would
Speaker 2: just feel like your betrayal.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like an embodied Like it's such an embodied experience.
Speaker 3: I suppose to be pregnant and you feel I've heard
Speaker 3: women talk about body.
Speaker 1: Yeah, embodied. It's so visceral, isn't it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And that's why it feels like a loss only
Speaker 3: you can see because no one else can feel it,
Speaker 3: and your partner can be. So it's a grief for
Speaker 3: the partner too, because you're so excited but they didn't
Speaker 3: know them.
Speaker 1: And it's also there's no proof that this person existed, Like, now,
Speaker 1: how do I honor this person? There's no I haven't
Speaker 1: even told people that I was pregnant, so how can I.
Speaker 3: I kept taking pregnancy tests and there's the saddest image.
Speaker 3: I said, I said to Luca, this is the saddest
Speaker 3: image I've ever seen. But it's a pregnancy test. It
Speaker 3: still so's positive, but on the urine stick there's blood
Speaker 3: because I knew that it was and I just had
Speaker 3: to keep checking and checking and checking, and then I
Speaker 3: had to keep that because I was like, it's the
Speaker 3: only evidence that this thing actually happened, because I feel
Speaker 3: a bit insane right now, Like I feel as though, oh, okay,
Speaker 3: I just had this health thing happened, and then I
Speaker 3: go home and we get on with things.
Speaker 1: And no one even knows this profound Like I saw
Speaker 1: you last week and yeah, I didn't know, like this
Speaker 1: profound thing was happening inside your body and women are
Speaker 1: extraordinary carry with it and get on with it, because
Speaker 1: what are the rituals as well? Like what are the
Speaker 1: rituals for miscarriage? Yeah?
Speaker 3: What are you meant to do? Other than go? And
Speaker 3: I'm sure that they, you know, must get asked this
Speaker 3: question all the time. But it's like, well, when can
Speaker 3: I try again? Can I? Yeah? When's it going to happen?
Speaker 3: Like they I've never felt impatience like this ever, Like
Speaker 3: it's yeah, it's such a bizarre mix of emotions. And
Speaker 3: I know that the stats that it's so so common,
Speaker 3: and there is something comforting in that knowing that it's
Speaker 3: not that you're defective. It's like it does happen a lot,
Speaker 3: but yeah, something only only women can understand and out Louders.
Speaker 3: If this brings things up for you, then there are
Speaker 3: resources in the show notes. We're thinking of you because
Speaker 3: we know how many of you will have been impacted by.
Speaker 1: This sort of thing. So many outlouders we'll want to
Speaker 1: reach out to you by DM are in the out
Speaker 1: Louders group or comments or whatever, and so many people
Speaker 1: will be moved and grateful and have big feelings. But
Speaker 1: you'll read what you can. You but you know you
Speaker 1: just need time to process it all. So in advance,
Speaker 1: thanks out louders for on Jesse's behalf or your love
Speaker 1: that we know that you'll have. After the break, We've
Speaker 1: got some recommendations for you, including the show Everyone's Talking About,
Speaker 1: a grouping World War two era novel, and a comedy
Speaker 1: gem starring Idris Elba and John Cena. Oh you about that?
Speaker 1: Do you want daily out loud access? Why wouldn't you?
Speaker 1: We drop episodes every Tuesday and Thursday exclusively for Mum
Speaker 1: and me. A subscribers follow the link in the show
Speaker 1: notes to get us in your ears five days a week,
Speaker 1: and a huge thank you if you're already a subscriber.
Speaker 2: Vibes ideas atmosphere, something casual, something fun.
Speaker 1: This is my best recommendation. It is Friday, so the
Speaker 1: show's not over. We want to help set your weekend
Speaker 1: up with some recommendations. And if you've got to spare
Speaker 1: ten hours, you don't have to watch all ten hours
Speaker 1: at once. I did so too much. We spoke about
Speaker 1: it on Monday's show. Well, we spoke about Lina Dunham,
Speaker 1: who is the writer, creator and director of this show.
Speaker 1: It's on Netflix, and Netflix don't space things out, they
Speaker 1: do let you binge. It's about ten hours worth. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I would say a little London.
Speaker 3: So I'm god actually about because I one hundred percent
Speaker 3: going to watch.
Speaker 1: It's her story. We're talking about memoir, but it's fictionalized memoir,
Speaker 1: so similar to parts of your book about depression, it
Speaker 1: can be a way for people to tell an aspect
Speaker 1: of their story without having to be faithful to every
Speaker 1: single detail, or like Strife with My story, where it
Speaker 1: actually gives you a lot more creative license. But anyway,
Speaker 1: so Lena Dunham, after the success of Girls and everything
Speaker 1: that happened in America, as we spoke about on Monday
Speaker 1: and go Back, We've had so many comments of people
Speaker 1: just loving that episode. It was such a great week.
Speaker 1: I'm glad you loved it because we love doing it.
Speaker 1: It was like a big, chunky, deep dive into Lena
Speaker 1: and the Girls phenomenon. But she ended up leaving America
Speaker 1: and going to the UK to direct. She had a
Speaker 1: couple of opportunities over there, and she decided that she
Speaker 1: just needed to get away. She had a bad break
Speaker 1: up after a long term relationship, and pretty early on
Speaker 1: after she arrived in the UK, she met this musician
Speaker 1: kind of unlikely match in a way, but they fell
Speaker 1: in love and she and he got married. It's not
Speaker 1: really a spoiler because this is well known. They got
Speaker 1: married I think a year after meeting each other, maybe
Speaker 1: seven months, And this just tells the story of you know,
Speaker 1: this Lena type character played by Megan Stalter. You might
Speaker 1: remember her from Hacks, and she's sort of like our
Speaker 1: unlikely protagonist in that she doesn't look the way a
Speaker 1: Hollywood protagonist looks into a twenty five or has really
Speaker 1: ever looked outside of Lena Dunham production. And that's not
Speaker 1: even the story that just you know is incidental, yeah, incidental, Jess.
Speaker 2: Something has shifted with you, Josh Hi, how are you girl?
Speaker 1: Are you good? You're unhappy living me. It's the worst
Speaker 1: thing that everyone's ever done. Change your life. Go to London, seriously,
Speaker 1: you love London.
Speaker 2: You saw a Spice World nine times in the theater.
Speaker 1: I could do it. I could go and find my
Speaker 1: English dream. You know, a state ground starting gardens, good luck,
Speaker 1: We don't love. I'm talking to a girlfriend about it
Speaker 1: who said it certainly wouldn't pass the Is it called the.
Speaker 3: Bechdel test, I'd say, bechetel.
Speaker 1: H d e L. It's a test by a cartoonist
Speaker 1: called Allison Bechell Look Bechdel. It looks at movies and
Speaker 1: TV shows and basically says, if the women in every
Speaker 1: sort of scene are talking about men more their relationships,
Speaker 1: that just sort of signifies that it's not really about
Speaker 1: female characters, and this would not pass that because it's
Speaker 1: very much a rom com. It's about the love story.
Speaker 1: And it also goes back and through a series of flashbacks,
Speaker 1: looks at these two sort of flawed characters who interrogate
Speaker 1: their past and how did they become sort of traumatized
Speaker 1: in different ways. It's bloody funny. It's written in just
Speaker 1: the most glorious way by Lena. It's got that great
Speaker 1: dialogue that's clever, but not like punishingly clever, you know,
Speaker 1: where it's just like, well, no one actually talks like that.
Speaker 2: It's really funny.
Speaker 3: What did you love about it?
Speaker 2: I love Okay. Firstly, I loved Will Sharp, who plays
Speaker 2: the romantic interest. He was in White Loadus season two. Yes,
Speaker 2: so good looking, he's really really good.
Speaker 1: He was married to Aubrey Plaza, Yes.
Speaker 2: And White Loats. What I loved about The Human is
Speaker 2: that it's very summer to Girls. It took me a while,
Speaker 2: if you're a big Girls fan, to not see this
Speaker 2: character as Hannah from Girls.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 2: I kept thinking they were meant to be the same
Speaker 2: person and then not. It's like two completely different characters.
Speaker 2: But it's like Lena Dunham's humor, which is very fast paced,
Speaker 2: very funny, that you have to constantly play catch up
Speaker 2: where you're like, oh my god, that was so funny,
Speaker 2: And then I found myself rewinding things to like rehear them.
Speaker 1: I wanted to go back and watch the whole season again,
Speaker 1: which I never do. Some of the most glorious cameos
Speaker 1: Naomi Watts. Yes, oh my god, she's In a few episodes,
Speaker 1: she plays just the most phenomenal character. Jennifer Saunders makes
Speaker 1: an appearance and Scott the hot priest from Fleabag.
Speaker 2: Jessica alba Ura.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's amazing. Oh yeah, it made me like him. Rada,
Speaker 1: I buried the lead. This actually made me like em.
Speaker 1: Rada plays a knitting influencer model that her ex boyfriend
Speaker 1: then gets together with, and she was really good.
Speaker 3: She was to watch this. That's gonna be my weekend one.
Speaker 1: I can't recommend it enough. The other show I watched,
Speaker 1: which I know I'm not allowed to recommend, well, it's
Speaker 1: against the rules because it's already been recommended. But I've
Speaker 1: just discovered Drive to Survive.
Speaker 3: Stop is ahead of us on this. She's the person
Speaker 3: I can talk to.
Speaker 1: Well. The good news about that is that if you
Speaker 1: go back to the beginning like I did, I've just
Speaker 1: got hours and hours an hour.
Speaker 2: You're talking to people who don't even exist.
Speaker 1: I know. I'm on out of season three. This is
Speaker 1: the behind the sense of Formula one. It's become a
Speaker 1: massive hit with women. Very clever marketing move by f one. Jesse,
Speaker 1: what are you recommending?
Speaker 3: I'm going to recommend a book. It is called The
Speaker 3: Nightingale by Kristen Hannah. It is not brand new, but
Speaker 3: I have been for the last few months struggling to
Speaker 3: get through anything same. I am picking up books that
Speaker 3: everyone says are amazing, like hits that everyone's talking about,
Speaker 3: and I'm like, I can't finish this.
Speaker 1: I've got a question, when do you make the call
Speaker 1: to keep pushing through or not? Are you a pusher througher?
Speaker 3: I'm a I'll read a chapter and go not for
Speaker 3: me one chapter, Yeah, but the last few I've read,
Speaker 3: I've gotten three quarters away through and I'm not actually
Speaker 3: invested in how.
Speaker 1: This finished it.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna push it through it even if I hate it.
Speaker 2: I have to finish it.
Speaker 3: Chapter is sure Jesse, Wow, I can tell by the
Speaker 3: writing and also like how much stock I've got the writer? Yeah,
Speaker 3: but this a few friends said to me. This is
Speaker 3: just super super readable, but also top of the New
Speaker 3: York Times bestseller list. This author has written a few
Speaker 3: really really good books.
Speaker 1: I've heard about it. What's it about? Because I also
Speaker 1: need a book that's going to push me out of
Speaker 1: my rut, so.
Speaker 3: This will one hundred percent do that. It is set
Speaker 3: in World War two France, and it follows two sisters
Speaker 3: and their resistance to the Nazis. That sounds like really heavy,
Speaker 3: but it's not like I'm just really invested in the
Speaker 3: day to day lives of these two women. And it's
Speaker 3: not like hectic historical fiction where it feels dense like it.
Speaker 3: It's very very readable.
Speaker 1: How does it compare to The Safe Keep, because that
Speaker 1: was the last historical fiction that you I couldn't get
Speaker 1: through it. You couldn't get through every week raving about.
Speaker 3: The Safety Oh I loved the Safe couldn't get through it.
Speaker 1: So how does it compare to that?
Speaker 3: I would say similar, And I would also put that
Speaker 3: in the same realm as The Bronze Horseman, which is.
Speaker 1: All I loved the Bronze Horsemen. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So it's about female war heroes broadly and the stories
Speaker 3: that we don't hear, and also how everyone's resistance looks different.
Speaker 3: So these two sisters resist the Nazis in very specific
Speaker 3: ways that might at point seem small, but are also
Speaker 3: grounded in like historical accuracy, Like what one of the
Speaker 3: sisters did is something that was done during the war
Speaker 3: and made me think about how you know the marches
Speaker 3: are for the men, the Anzac Day March, but broadly
Speaker 3: it's been mostly for the men who come back. But
Speaker 3: what happened in the four or five years when they
Speaker 3: were gone? What did these women do and what did
Speaker 3: they experience? And I didn't know that some of the
Speaker 3: Nazis in this French town were billeted to homes. And
Speaker 3: what that means is that, my god, I didn't know that. Yeah,
Speaker 3: so you would be living in a house and a
Speaker 3: Nazi would knock on the door and go, hey, I'm
Speaker 3: gonna need that room and just live in your house.
Speaker 3: You're a vulnerable woman, often with children like alone. And
Speaker 3: also I always find really interesting the details about rations
Speaker 3: and food and the cold and just the horrendous conditions
Speaker 3: that people lived through. I was deeply, deeply moved by it.
Speaker 3: So it's called The Nightingale. I'm going to go back
Speaker 3: and read read her others, but it's brilliant.
Speaker 2: Okay, I have a movie I want to recommend that
Speaker 2: I feel like I'll have to really convince you guys
Speaker 2: to watch. But if Holly was here, should be all around.
Speaker 3: Okay, all right, she's probably already saying.
Speaker 2: That it's called Heads of State, and it's on Prime
Speaker 2: Video and it stars Idris Elba, John Cena, yeah, and
Speaker 2: Preaka Chopra. But oh, I love all of them, all
Speaker 2: of them. So John Cena plays a Hollywood A list
Speaker 2: turned US President of the United States.
Speaker 1: Oh sounds for me. I love him so much.
Speaker 2: He's funny, he's really funny. And Idris Elba plays like
Speaker 2: a really tough, quiet military guy who's now the Prime
Speaker 2: Minister of the UK.
Speaker 1: It's the Prime Minister, it's the president.
Speaker 2: Debute duet do it? Yeah, it's like doctor Dre and
Speaker 2: your Eminem and we're taking that stage for the first
Speaker 2: time again.
Speaker 1: I'm Eminem. What is it you're walking around thinking you
Speaker 1: better than nobody else? You are the commander in chief?
Speaker 2: You know some DJ in Vegas.
Speaker 1: All right, I get it. You don't like my movies.
Speaker 1: I've never seen your movies. But the universe keeps telling
Speaker 1: me I look cool with a gun in my head.
Speaker 1: That's how I go.
Speaker 2: They both also start in did you have watch Suicide Squad? No,
Speaker 2: it's not like a massive, massive movie, but it's like
Speaker 2: Suicide Squad is like the Nuggo Robbie in that yes, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: So they would start in that together. Everyone really liked
Speaker 2: them together, so now they're doing this movie together. And
Speaker 2: it's actually a buddy comedy, so it's like comedy action pace,
Speaker 2: but it's about these two massive political figures who are
Speaker 2: getting hunted by these assassins, and the assassins are trying
Speaker 2: to destroy all these peace treaties that around the world
Speaker 2: and they're just chasing them around the world. And Pianka
Speaker 2: Chopa plays a CIA agent who's the only one who
Speaker 2: actually knows what's going on. It is really really funny.
Speaker 2: Your boomer dad or your twein son will love it.
Speaker 2: There's a big family exactly.
Speaker 3: Catch my dad watching at one pm on a Saturday.
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh my god, me and your dad.
Speaker 1: That's on. My criteria for that is no sex scenes.
Speaker 2: There's no sex scenes.
Speaker 1: Tick done.
Speaker 2: I think there might be one kissing scene. That's all right,
Speaker 2: that's fine, Okay. I'm also going to break the rules
Speaker 2: and do one more recommendation. And so you know how,
Speaker 2: I host The Spill, our daily entertainment podcast. Our little
Speaker 2: Spill family is growing. We have a new offering called
Speaker 2: Morning Tea. So you are now going to be getting
Speaker 2: two episodes of the Spill every day. So Morning Tea
Speaker 2: gets released at eight am. It's a five minute episode.
Speaker 2: It's hosted by Ash London, who's absolutely brilliant, and she
Speaker 2: gives you your entertainment, pop culture, celebrity news headlines of
Speaker 2: the day.
Speaker 1: I love this wiki.
Speaker 3: It's kind of like the quickie bit first entertainment.
Speaker 1: But for fluffy things. So I love this because it's
Speaker 1: interesting that research continues to show that women are increasingly
Speaker 1: experiencing news a version that they are wanting to turn
Speaker 1: away from the news. The quickie is a fantastic option
Speaker 1: for those people who want to get across the news
Speaker 1: in a non anxious, sensationalist way. But sometimes you just
Speaker 1: don't want that, or you want that and then you
Speaker 1: want you want to stuff. So this is always used
Speaker 1: to be my favorite part of the news or when
Speaker 1: in the old days of breakfast television, the bits that
Speaker 1: Richard Wilkins used to do, or whoever it was, and
Speaker 1: this is just all the celebrity news. So it's just
Speaker 1: like a catch up in the morning and then in
Speaker 1: the afternoon you and you're still a Rodney Spell episode. Yes,
Speaker 1: do a bit more of a deep dive on particular stories,
Speaker 1: but this just like covers you off with the headlines.
Speaker 2: It's all wonderful And this is all in the spill Feed,
Speaker 2: All in the spell Feed, host by Ashlandon, who's so brilliant.
Speaker 2: She knows so much about celebrity and pop culture.
Speaker 1: I love her. And the other bit of pod news
Speaker 1: we had for you is that I know a lot
Speaker 1: about ladders. Have really loved the six weeks of Parenting
Speaker 1: out Loud that we've done, Jesse you hosting with Emilia
Speaker 1: lest Andy Stacy Hicks. We sort of did that as
Speaker 1: a bit of an experiment and everyone has loved it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I love it. It's one of my favorite shows because
Speaker 1: I'm not on it so I can just listen as
Speaker 1: a listener. We weren't expecting to carry this show on,
Speaker 1: so it's taking a little bit of parental leave while
Speaker 1: we think about what's going to happen next. But if
Speaker 1: you are interested in being the first to know when
Speaker 1: Parenting out Loud and if it comes back, we will
Speaker 1: put a link in the show notes so that you
Speaker 1: can follow along in that feed and maybe go and
Speaker 1: have a listen to the six episodes that we've already done. Congratulations.
Speaker 3: That was such It was so so much fun and
Speaker 3: it was a lot of parenting podcasts, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think that our resistance as well was like, we
Speaker 3: don't want to get on and just talk about our
Speaker 3: kids and.
Speaker 2: Chiefs first, sleeping, life, stage, lifestyle.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's more the conversation that you have, all the
Speaker 3: things that you read or gravitate to. We wanted it
Speaker 3: to be thinkier, treat parents like adults instead of like, yeah.
Speaker 1: It's not actually about kids, it's about sort of heads out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it's kind of zeitguys, similar to out Loud, but
Speaker 1: through a parenting lens. It's just so great, and lots
Speaker 1: of people who aren't parents have said that they really
Speaker 1: really love it. Anyway, we'll put a link in the
Speaker 1: show notes if you want to follow that feed and
Speaker 1: catch up with it.
Speaker 3: That's all we have time for today. A big thank
Speaker 3: you to all of you the out louders for listening
Speaker 3: to today's show. We will be back in your ears
Speaker 3: on Monday, and we've got a little present for you
Speaker 3: because Hollywayne right been on her euro trip, which has
Speaker 3: been posting a lot about, which has been pissing me
Speaker 3: off because it looks very warm. Lots of app roles
Speaker 3: shall be back joining us behind the mic, so meet
Speaker 3: us there on Monday.
Speaker 1: Thank you to our team group executive producer Ruth Divine,
Speaker 1: our audio producer Leah Porges, video producer Josh Green, and
Speaker 1: our junior content producers co Co and Tessa. We will
Speaker 1: be back in your ears on Monday.
Speaker 3: And if you want something else to listen to, yesterday's
Speaker 3: subscriber episode, we tackled a bunch of very juicy dilemmas,
Speaker 3: from how to deal with a colleague's questionable cooking to
Speaker 3: a tricky parenting moral dilemma. A link will be in
Speaker 3: the show notes.
Speaker 1: Bye.
Speaker 3: Shout out to any Mom and Mia subscribers listening. If
Speaker 3: you love the show and you want to support us,
Speaker 3: subscribing to mom and Mia is the very best way
Speaker 3: to do so. There's a link in the episode description.