Speaker 1: You're listening to a MoMA Mea podcast.
Speaker 2: Mamma Mea acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters
Speaker 2: that this podcast is recorded on Hello and welcome to
Speaker 2: MoMA Mia out Loud. It's what women are actually talking about.
Speaker 2: On Monday, the third of June. I'm Holly Wainwright, I'm.
Speaker 3: MEA Friedman and I'm Jemma Bath filling in for Jesse Stevens.
Speaker 4: I usually host one of our other podcasts.
Speaker 2: Through Crime Conversations. Welcome Jane you, thanks for having me.
Speaker 2: We're going to be hearing you a few times while
Speaker 2: Jesse's away. Yes on the show today, the uninvited guests
Speaker 2: at Britney Higgins's.
Speaker 5: Wedding were the paparazzi helicopters.
Speaker 2: Also why you're seeing embarrassing teen photos of very famous
Speaker 2: Australians all over your Instagram and why we love women
Speaker 2: supporting women until that.
Speaker 5: Woman is Angelina Jolie. But first, mea Friedman. In case
Speaker 5: you missed it, on this podcast, we like to stay
Speaker 5: across what's happening with very old men, and in the
Speaker 5: past few days there is some exciting breaking old news,
Speaker 5: both happy and sad for the old men in question.
Speaker 5: First of all, ninety three year old Rupert Murdoch got
Speaker 5: married for the fifth time, and seventy seven year old
Speaker 5: Donald Trump is officially a criminal, having been found guilty
Speaker 5: on all thirty four charges in one of several criminal
Speaker 5: cases that could send him to prison. Thank God, Jemma
Speaker 5: Barth is here to break this down, because jam you
Speaker 5: are also the news editor at Mama Mia. Who is
Speaker 5: the lucky lady who will get to be stepmother to
Speaker 5: children almost her own age? And will Donald Trump go
Speaker 5: to jail? Please God say yes? And can he still
Speaker 5: become president? Please God say no.
Speaker 3: Elena Zukhova is the lucky lady who has married into
Speaker 3: the Murdoch family. She is sixty seven. She is a
Speaker 3: retired Russian molecular biologist, which I think is pretty damn cool.
Speaker 2: Well, that's impressive, but I'm not buying that she's lucky
Speaker 2: to be marrying into the has nobody watched succession around
Speaker 2: this date.
Speaker 3: She met Murdoch at a party hosted by one of
Speaker 3: his ex wives and they've been together since last year,
Speaker 3: short engagement, happily married.
Speaker 5: Why does he have a better social life than me?
Speaker 5: And he's ninety three? I can't remember the last time
Speaker 5: I went to a party, i'd met someone new and excited.
Speaker 5: I met a new spouse.
Speaker 2: The number one question or people always ask is what's
Speaker 2: with the weddings? Group like, we're all very happy that
Speaker 2: you still have a vital and interesting love life.
Speaker 5: We're fine with.
Speaker 4: That, but what's with the weddings?
Speaker 2: The kids must be all the time just being like, dad,
Speaker 2: do you have to put a ring on it?
Speaker 5: Don't you think? I was quite shocked by the photos
Speaker 5: in how old he looked. He went through a phase
Speaker 5: when a couple of wives ago with Wendy Deng where
Speaker 5: she made him dye his hair like mahogany, that funny
Speaker 5: color that men dye their hair sometimes a hole. You
Speaker 5: were the one that suggested a few wives ago also
Speaker 5: that the reason he keeps getting engaged and getting married
Speaker 5: is because it means that you can put really clear
Speaker 5: parameters around the money. So no doubt there's a strict
Speaker 5: prenuptial whereas if he's just you know, having one night
Speaker 5: stands and having a complication situationship, it can get very
Speaker 5: complicated financially.
Speaker 2: I think that's probably exactly it, and it would be
Speaker 2: keeping lawyers very busy.
Speaker 1: I just think the man likes a party.
Speaker 5: He loves love guys, he loves love. What about that
Speaker 5: Trump man? H Trump?
Speaker 3: Okay, so last week we found out that Trump was
Speaker 3: guilty of thirty four counts of so many, so many
Speaker 3: counts of falsifying business records.
Speaker 1: What that actually means.
Speaker 4: Is he covered up the affair he had.
Speaker 3: With Stormy Daniels. It wasn't that he had an affair.
Speaker 3: It wasn't that he gave her hush money. It was
Speaker 3: the fact that he hid the hush money and falsified records.
Speaker 2: We had an affair, paid her off to be quiet,
Speaker 2: and then tried to cover it up.
Speaker 3: And then it was to cover up that got him
Speaker 3: exactly because he only paid her off when he was
Speaker 3: running for president. It's not like after they slept together.
Speaker 3: If your eyes are glazing about all these court cases
Speaker 3: and convictions and charges, the other time he was found
Speaker 3: guilty was a few months ago, and that was in
Speaker 3: a case about being a rapist, a civil case brought
Speaker 3: by Jen Carroll, who she says Trump raped.
Speaker 5: Her in a change room at Bergdoff's. I think it was.
Speaker 3: Many years ago. So it's quite interesting when you think
Speaker 3: about of all the things he's done wrong. The two
Speaker 3: cases where he's been convicted, Stormy Daniels and Agene Carroll,
Speaker 3: Like it's two women who have I would love to
Speaker 3: say brought him down, But he's not going to go
Speaker 3: Is he going to go to jail? No, I mean
Speaker 3: they're saying he could. With each count, you can face
Speaker 3: up to four years in prison. I highly doubt that's
Speaker 3: going to happen.
Speaker 2: Everybody says it's not there, so that if he wasn't
Speaker 2: Donald Trump, he wouldn't be going to jail because it's,
Speaker 2: you know, it's his first conviction. Ironic as that might seem.
Speaker 2: He's got the best lawyers in the world. It's a
Speaker 2: nonviolent offense. He's not going to go to jail. And
Speaker 2: disappointingly because on Friday when this news came through, for
Speaker 2: a while there was this sort of euphoria almost for
Speaker 2: a moment.
Speaker 5: Of like ding Dong l Witch's day, guilty. Guilty.
Speaker 2: There's never been a convicted felon running for president before.
Speaker 2: But as has been shown in the days since, I mean,
Speaker 2: Trump always overturns political norms, like he can prove a
Speaker 2: thing wrong, and his popularity is in fact searched and
Speaker 2: so he probably is not going to prison and is
Speaker 2: still going to run, and he probably will win.
Speaker 3: And I in fact think that if he went to prison,
Speaker 3: his followers would quite like that because it would make
Speaker 3: him look really good in there.
Speaker 2: Off well, it buys into the conspiracy theory. So he
Speaker 2: says it's a fix.
Speaker 6: This was a disgrace. This was a rigged trial by
Speaker 6: a conflicted judge who was corrupted. There's a riged trial
Speaker 6: and disgrace. They wouldn't give us a venue change. We
Speaker 6: were at five percent or six percent in this district,
Speaker 6: in this area.
Speaker 2: This was a.
Speaker 6: Rigged, disgraceful trial. That the real verdict is going to
Speaker 6: be November fifth by the people, and they know what
Speaker 6: happened here, and everybody knows what happened here.
Speaker 2: It plays very clearly into the people who believe that
Speaker 2: this is all part of a conspiracy claim.
Speaker 5: If you from the Quickie did a brilliant episode on
Speaker 5: the Trump verdict, you can listen to that via the
Speaker 5: link in the show notes.
Speaker 1: There was another wedding over the weekend.
Speaker 3: Britney Higgins got married on the Gold Coast to her
Speaker 3: partner David Schiraz. She wore ature gown by an Australian designer.
Speaker 3: She said, I do at a loveliest station in the
Speaker 3: Corimbin Valley. She had everything you can imagine at a
Speaker 3: beautiful Australian wedding except perhaps paparazzi photos. She basically got
Speaker 3: the celebrity treatment. There were photos in the papers over
Speaker 3: the weekend of her vendors coming in, her cake being delivered.
Speaker 3: She was using umbrellas to shield her dress. To jog
Speaker 3: your memory. Britney Higgins is famous in quotation marks in
Speaker 3: Australia because she alleges that she was raped in Parliament
Speaker 3: House in twenty nineteen by a colleague. That is her
Speaker 3: claim to fame.
Speaker 5: Yeah. I was reading about how the Daily Mail paid
Speaker 5: fifteen hundred dollars to hire a helicopter to get aerial
Speaker 5: shots of the wedding, and I was like, that's a
Speaker 5: pretty interesting thing that we are but sending tabloid and
Speaker 5: paparazzi photographers to photograph the wedding of a rape victim.
Speaker 5: I understand that she is now for better and worse worse,
Speaker 5: she would say, a public figure, and that there is interest.
Speaker 5: What I'm interested to understand is do you think that
Speaker 5: interest is everybody wants a good thing to happen to her,
Speaker 5: and everybody wants to cheer on hopefully this new chapter
Speaker 5: in her life. Or do you think there's something a
Speaker 5: bit more malevolent about the interest.
Speaker 3: I think it's a bit of column a bit of
Speaker 3: colum b. I mean, I know, I was excited to
Speaker 3: see her name in a headline for a good reason,
Speaker 3: for a change. I was like, oh, lovely, Britney got married,
Speaker 3: and that's honestly all I thought about it. Then I
Speaker 3: looked at the headlines a bit closer, and I noticed
Speaker 3: that there seems to be a bit of snark behind
Speaker 3: the way some people are covering this news in their
Speaker 3: headlines and in their articles themselves.
Speaker 2: The snark that I noticed because agreed, I saw the
Speaker 2: picture shed on her official channels, and then by as
Speaker 2: is obviously traditional millennial weddings, everybody waits for her to
Speaker 2: post and then they can all post it. So Brittany
Speaker 2: and David posted her husband David beautiful pictures, and then
Speaker 2: various people who are at the wedding posted too.
Speaker 5: And I was like, oh, who was there? I married
Speaker 5: my best friend. She did and it was glorious.
Speaker 2: But one of the things that I noticed immediately in
Speaker 2: all the coverage, and it's obviously clicking really well if
Speaker 2: you ever want to see, Like obviously we work in
Speaker 2: digital media, we understand this, but I'm sure you all
Speaker 2: do too. If Britney Higgins's wedding is still at the
Speaker 2: top of the Daily Mail and still at the top
Speaker 2: of all the news sites a couple of days after
Speaker 2: it's happened, it means that people are interested and they're clicking.
Speaker 2: And one of the things that you'll see in particularly
Speaker 2: the Mail and the Australian coverage, I have to say,
Speaker 2: is a lot of mention of how much everything costs.
Speaker 2: So there's lots of use of the word lavish in everything.
Speaker 2: There are quotes about how much the dress must have been.
Speaker 2: There are quotes about how much it costs to hire
Speaker 2: that vineyard, there are quotes about how much it costs
Speaker 2: to hire you know, the cars and the secure.
Speaker 5: Because every wedding is expensive, and every celebrity wedding.
Speaker 2: Is well she is it a celebrity, That's the question.
Speaker 2: I think that the people who are big supporters of
Speaker 2: Brittany and let's not pretend that this news story and
Speaker 2: all its various twists and turns and court cases and
Speaker 2: countercourt cases and libel actions and defamation trials and civil suits.
Speaker 2: Has not consumed the news media for the past or
Speaker 2: five years. Almost she has become a public figure, and
Speaker 2: I think that those who have always supported and rooted
Speaker 2: for her, like you Jem, were like, this is gorgeous.
Speaker 2: She's just living a life, getting on with her life.
Speaker 2: This is an important milestone, Hurrah. I hate to give
Speaker 2: credence to the commenters, but you can see the tone
Speaker 2: that's leading to the snark about the money.
Speaker 5: The dog whistle is about. What it is about the fact.
Speaker 2: That she famously got settlements from the Australian government after
Speaker 2: her trial collapsed, and that she's spending this money on
Speaker 2: this lavish wedding and this lavish lifestyle that she and
Speaker 2: David are leading. And I think that is what's behind
Speaker 2: the snarky tone out.
Speaker 3: Like she's this incredibly rich woman that has taken millions
Speaker 3: upon millions from the Australian government.
Speaker 1: I want to just tell you what she received. She
Speaker 1: had a two.
Speaker 3: Point four million dollar settlement, which does sound like a
Speaker 3: lot of money, but when you actually break that down,
Speaker 3: it's four hundred thousand dollars for hurt distress, humiliation. It's
Speaker 3: one point four to eight million in earning capacity.
Speaker 5: Two hundred lost earning.
Speaker 3: Capacity, earning capacity, a bunch of money for medical, past
Speaker 3: and future domestic assistance, and then two hundred and forty
Speaker 3: five thousand in legal costs. So when you actually break
Speaker 3: it all down, like, yes, she received a big payment,
Speaker 3: but why shouldn't.
Speaker 2: She have well, And also it's worth noting that this
Speaker 2: is still going on. There's a claim from Linda Reynolds,
Speaker 2: her former boss, to try and get some of that
Speaker 2: money back as far as I understand it, right, so
Speaker 2: it's still not settled. What's interesting is I was examining
Speaker 2: my own response to this, right, and I was, as
Speaker 2: I say, it was all over my feed from these
Speaker 2: beautiful pictures, and I thought, how lovely. But there was
Speaker 2: a bit of me when I then saw the pap
Speaker 2: shots of them having to shield themselves under umbrellas, which
Speaker 2: is very what soap stars and movie stars do.
Speaker 5: Interestingly, though, whole we are very familiar with seeing those
Speaker 5: pictures from the days when women's magazines like Women's Day
Speaker 5: and Women's Weekly or People magazine would get exclusives. So
Speaker 5: I think we need to just check our muscle memory,
Speaker 5: because it used to be that those umbrellas signified was
Speaker 5: and fair enough that they have been paid and they
Speaker 5: need to protect the exclusive of the media channel that
Speaker 5: they've sold their wedding to. Now that's not as far
Speaker 5: as we know, No, it could be. I don't think
Speaker 5: that's what's happening here. This is more just about literally
Speaker 5: the privacy of a woman whose privacy has been I mean,
Speaker 5: my god, not only the things that we've heard in
Speaker 5: court and heard her have to recount under evidence, but
Speaker 5: also the leaking of text messages, phone records. It's quite
Speaker 5: extraordinary what's happened to her.
Speaker 2: You're write me that when I see the black umbrellas
Speaker 2: and I see all that stuff, I think, oh, celebrity treatment.
Speaker 2: You're absolutely right, it's not that. But there was a
Speaker 2: bit of me examining my own reaction that was like,
Speaker 2: I wonder, why, when you've been subject to all of
Speaker 2: that scrutiny that you just explained, you might not choose
Speaker 2: to sneak off in inverted commas and have some kind
Speaker 2: of very private, quiet wedding, because surely the last thing
Speaker 2: you'd want was all that attention.
Speaker 5: But then I kind of had to check myself and
Speaker 5: I the same thing.
Speaker 2: But I had to check myself, which I often do
Speaker 2: when I feel myself feeling, you know, one of those
Speaker 2: kind of judgy little knots that you get sometimes when
Speaker 2: you're scrolling social media, And I was like, why the
Speaker 2: fuck should she Why shouldn't she get what every young
Speaker 2: woman who wants that kind of wedding wants, which is
Speaker 2: to be able to celebrate it with everybody and exactly
Speaker 2: the way she wants it to do, and celebrate her
Speaker 2: love publicly. And in a way it's a radical act
Speaker 2: because we'd like to define Britney Higgins and maybe other
Speaker 2: rape victims too, by their worst day, by the worst
Speaker 2: thing that happened to them, by what we used to
Speaker 2: love to shame women for. You know that there's some
Speaker 2: kind of shame attached to what she should hide away
Speaker 2: happened to her. So when I was examining my reaction,
Speaker 2: I was like, this is actually brilliant that she's She's
Speaker 2: just living her life. And it's the same with this
Speaker 2: move to France, which is also weaponized by the press
Speaker 2: that don't like her as being like.
Speaker 5: They've run away to a lavish chateau. If you say
Speaker 5: the word chateau. It always sounds very lavish.
Speaker 2: Actually looks more like a crumbling farmhouse in the country,
Speaker 2: but still chateau. And she, you know, has posted about
Speaker 2: that and about their life and what it looks like now.
Speaker 2: And it's such a positive thing really to be able
Speaker 2: to go, you know what, I survived all that shit.
Speaker 2: I survived it and now I'm living my life and
Speaker 2: I will not be defined by it.
Speaker 4: She has lived the last few years.
Speaker 1: Only doing things like.
Speaker 3: Cork cases, appearing in the media, doing all this stuff.
Speaker 3: Why on earth would she not have a big wedding.
Speaker 3: I actually think it would have been a bit sad
Speaker 3: or if she had a small wedding in heat Away,
Speaker 3: because this is her moment.
Speaker 1: To actually celebrate herself.
Speaker 4: Why wouldn't Shell.
Speaker 5: Thirty six months now? If you've seen this number on
Speaker 5: your socials this week shared by a lot of influential
Speaker 5: parents like Zoe Foster, Blake, Guy Sbastian, Kate Richie, Steph,
Speaker 5: Claire Smith, and Megan Gail, which I haven't to be honest,
Speaker 5: which shows that my algorithm knows I don't consume much
Speaker 5: parenting content. But after our conversation this morning, a lot
Speaker 5: of people were talking about it, so we wanted to
Speaker 5: cover it on the show today. You might, like me,
Speaker 5: be wondering what it's all about, And there was a
Speaker 5: Muma Mere story about this over the weekend which explained it.
Speaker 5: All of these people are sharing throwback photos of themselves
Speaker 5: around the age of thirteen to throw their support behind
Speaker 5: a new campaign to raise the age at which kids
Speaker 5: can legally access social media. At the moment, the age
Speaker 5: that you can get social media is thirteen, although it's
Speaker 5: not like applying for a driver's license or trying to
Speaker 5: get into a pub. You don't need any proof of
Speaker 5: your age. You just have to say when your birthday is.
Speaker 5: So that seems a little problematic and a little bit
Speaker 5: porous as far as boundaries go. But the campaign aims
Speaker 5: to buy teens thirty six months or three more years
Speaker 5: away from social media to help safeguard their digital future.
Speaker 5: So it would raise the minimum age to have a
Speaker 5: social media account up to sixteen, which is interestingly the
Speaker 5: same age that you can legally start having sex. The
Speaker 5: new movement is called thirty six months, as I said,
Speaker 5: and it believes that kids need more time to develop
Speaker 5: healthy and secure identities before they're exposed to the minefield
Speaker 5: of social media. I've signed this petition. I saw it
Speaker 5: of you, yeah, I did. My kids are out the
Speaker 5: other side of it. Like for me, the horse has
Speaker 5: bolted very much. And my kids are you know, twenty six,
Speaker 5: eighteen and almost sixteen. But my eldest children were not
Speaker 5: on social when they were really young, and they really
Speaker 5: benefited from not is that because you stopped them or
Speaker 5: they weren't interesting. It just didn't really exist. I was
Speaker 5: more I mean, as anyone, but obviously not Luca because
Speaker 5: he's twenty six. He wasn't very interested because he was
Speaker 5: a boy and he was twenty six, and it was
Speaker 5: pre Instagram pretty much, or Instagram was just kind of
Speaker 5: starting back then. Certainly Instagram wasn't a very interesting place
Speaker 5: for boys anyway. And then my daughter there's also Snapchat,
Speaker 5: and of course there is Instagram. She's definitely been affected
Speaker 5: by Instagram and the people who are most passionate about
Speaker 5: the need for the age to be lifted. Interestingly, as
Speaker 5: a lot of teenagers who are older and who've said, oh, yeah,
Speaker 5: you know, it's really bad because it's not just the
Speaker 5: imagery that you're exposed to, it's also the you know,
Speaker 5: every time you put a photo up or someone puts
Speaker 5: a photo up of you, it's all the commentary that
Speaker 5: happens underneath that. And for girls, it's this incredible emphasis
Speaker 5: on appearance. It's the use of face tune and what
Speaker 5: that does, scrolling and scrolling and scrolling and looking at
Speaker 5: images of people that don't exist. And then there's really
Speaker 5: insidious things like on Snapchat there's a feature called snapmaps,
Speaker 5: which I've talked about lots of times, which a lot
Speaker 5: of parents would have no idea about, because most teenagers
Speaker 5: use Snapchat as just their form of messaging. The way
Speaker 5: snap maps works, everybody that you follow you can see
Speaker 5: where they are on a map of your area. So
Speaker 5: you can see when everybody's at someone's house and you
Speaker 5: didn't get invited. You can see when everybody's at a party.
Speaker 5: You've got situations where girls will be like, oh no,
Speaker 5: I can't come over. Mom says I've got to stay
Speaker 5: at home, and then you see everybody's over at Sophie's
Speaker 5: house on snap maps. And the idea of this campaign
Speaker 5: is that kids at age thirteen just aren't equipped to
Speaker 5: deal with all of that. I mean, adults aren't equipped
Speaker 5: to deal with it. Holly you've got kids in the
Speaker 5: crosshairs of this age. Why are you surprised that I
Speaker 5: signed the petition and will use it. I thought that
Speaker 5: you were on my team. Maybe I've switched teams. Tell me.
Speaker 2: A bit facetious, because so my daughter's fourteen. She got
Speaker 2: her first phone when she went to high school. I
Speaker 2: was relatively proud of myself for holding out to high
Speaker 2: school because in the particularly when we lived in Sydney,
Speaker 2: it was certainly the case. There are lots of primary
Speaker 2: school kids who had phones. And where all this is
Speaker 2: coming from, well not where it's coming from. But part
Speaker 2: of the movement for this change is to do with
Speaker 2: that Jonathan Hype book. He's written a book called The
Speaker 2: Anxious Generation, and we talked about an essay that he'd
Speaker 2: written in The Atlantic called end the Phone based Childhood Now,
Speaker 2: which was about how basically smartphones of ruined degeneration right,
Speaker 2: and one of his calls to action in there is
Speaker 2: that parents need to band together. That's a lot of
Speaker 2: what this campaign is about. It's about normalizing and mobilizing
Speaker 2: parental groups to be able to go because what happens
Speaker 2: is your kid says I want a phone, I want snapchat, whatever,
Speaker 2: and you say no, and they say everybody's got it,
Speaker 2: and if I don't have it, I'll be ostracized. And
Speaker 2: in often cases that's relatively true. But what Height argues
Speaker 2: is the only way to change that apart from these
Speaker 2: systemic changes that we're talking about, like proper age gating
Speaker 2: and raising the age and tech companies taking responsibility for
Speaker 2: their irresponsible algorithms and all those things. But he's saying,
Speaker 2: at a grassroots level, you have to convince other parents
Speaker 2: to get on board with you and be like, Okay, none.
Speaker 5: Of us will buy a phone. It's not fair. And
Speaker 5: that's why i'm parents.
Speaker 2: And that's interesting because when I joke and say I
Speaker 2: thought you're on my team, it's not because I don't agree.
Speaker 2: I think smartphones have ruined all of us to be
Speaker 2: honest and politics and democracy and social discourse and many
Speaker 2: many things. There's a bit of me that riles against
Speaker 2: the parent pressure. And maybe that's because I gave in.
Speaker 2: I guess, if we want to look at it that way.
Speaker 2: But also I think it's hard to generalize about what
Speaker 2: everybody eats.
Speaker 5: That's what this is about, and that's why I signed it.
Speaker 5: Because I agree with you. I don't think it's fair
Speaker 5: to ask parents to do this. And you know, Jim
Speaker 5: all I can compare this to is imagine if there
Speaker 5: was no age restrict on alcohol and people said, oh, parents,
Speaker 5: you just decide, And same with driving a car. You
Speaker 5: know the age restriction, but you don't have to prove
Speaker 5: that you're a certain age. It's just really a guideline
Speaker 5: and we all know it's kind of just a loose recommendation.
Speaker 5: So what parents asking for is for there to be
Speaker 5: legislation that we don't have to be responsible for deciding
Speaker 5: whether our children can drink, whether they can be on
Speaker 5: social media. And some people might say that's outsourcing to
Speaker 5: the government and to big tech, but we do this
Speaker 5: with other important things like sex and alcohol and voting.
Speaker 5: We don't just say here's a loose guideline, what do
Speaker 5: you think.
Speaker 3: But with something like sex you can say that there's
Speaker 3: a legal limit, it doesn't mean that kids are going to.
Speaker 4: Actually abide by it. With alcohol, you.
Speaker 3: To walk into a liquor store, show them a fake
Speaker 3: ID and they can go, yeah, no out you go
Speaker 3: and yeah, buy it.
Speaker 1: But this is the internet. You can do whatever you
Speaker 1: want on me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but it's true that you can circumnavigate any rule
Speaker 2: or law if you want to, but there is no
Speaker 2: doubt that that law is a terror right. So yeah,
Speaker 2: of course it's true that thirteen year olds will still
Speaker 2: find a way onto social media. But if tech companies
Speaker 2: were really serious about it, they could make their age
Speaker 2: getting really sophisticated. I mean, AARI is supposed to be
Speaker 2: able to do anything, but apparently it can't tell how
Speaker 2: old somebody is is looking at their phone. I'm like, really,
Speaker 2: but what I'd love to it? Yeah, exactly. I'd love
Speaker 2: to know from you, Jem. So you're a relatively new parent,
Speaker 2: your little boys one one.
Speaker 5: And a half.
Speaker 2: I'd love to know if your generation of parents, like
Speaker 2: Jesse obviously to watching all this, have a very different
Speaker 2: attitude to technology.
Speaker 5: You like, my child will never see a screen. What
Speaker 5: do you think.
Speaker 1: There's no doubt.
Speaker 3: It's at the forefront of my mind because I'm addicted
Speaker 3: to my phone, and my son knows that if he
Speaker 3: sees my phone unattended in my house, he goes and.
Speaker 1: Gets it and gives it to me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he doesn't want to use it, he gives it
Speaker 3: to me because he knows my mom's phone.
Speaker 1: So I know that it's bad.
Speaker 3: I think part of me feels and no, no, this
Speaker 3: is horrible, but a little bit protected because I have
Speaker 3: a boy, and I know that he's probably not going
Speaker 3: to be as obsessed as I want, or as a
Speaker 3: lot of the young girls I see are. I don't
Speaker 3: think I will be stopping him from having a phone
Speaker 3: at a certain age. Obviously I'm not at that point.
Speaker 3: Just have a little micro chap hovocrafts. But for the
Speaker 3: safety reasons, I like the idea of him having a phone.
Speaker 3: For the stranger danger, for the being on the buses.
Speaker 5: It's the phone. It's the social media and social media.
Speaker 5: That's the lie that we were sold that giving your
Speaker 5: child a phone means giving them social media and access
Speaker 5: to a completely unregulated internet. And that's where I think
Speaker 5: we are learning through trial and error, And unfortunately, there's
Speaker 5: a generation that is going to be error and we're
Speaker 5: seeing shocking things in terms of mental health and body
Speaker 5: image and all of that bullying and all of these
Speaker 5: issues that we couldn't have well maybe we could have foreseen,
Speaker 5: but that nobody did foresee the long term effects of
Speaker 5: social media.
Speaker 2: Well, lots of people argue that the tech companies, you know,
Speaker 2: they did foresee it, and that they encourage it because
Speaker 2: their number one and only priority is to keep you
Speaker 2: on your phone as long as possible, however old you are.
Speaker 2: And I mean I'm being a bit facetious when I
Speaker 2: say I'm being defensive about it. I do support the
Speaker 2: idea of social media and having the age limit raise.
Speaker 5: I really do, so I may well go and sign.
Speaker 2: But I find the pressure to make parents group together
Speaker 2: to push on these things like phone ages and stuff
Speaker 2: hard because different families have really different circumstances. And you'll
Speaker 2: often know that some of the kids who will get
Speaker 2: phones earlier than others, and phones are the start of it,
Speaker 2: all right, But what's a whole what's the.
Speaker 5: User case for a kid having social media at thirteen?
Speaker 5: The only one is that all my friends do exactly. Yes,
Speaker 5: So if that was taken out of the parents' hands
Speaker 5: in terms of having to push against the tide of
Speaker 5: peer pressure, great peer pressure, that would be great, right, yeah,
Speaker 5: one hundred percent. Let's give that responsibility back to the technology.
Speaker 3: I know.
Speaker 5: I like that.
Speaker 2: So what I'm saying is I like this push to
Speaker 2: raise the age. But the thing that irks me a
Speaker 2: little bit is the idea that all parents need to
Speaker 2: get together and to agree on these things when our
Speaker 2: situation is really different. If you are a single parent,
Speaker 2: you have very different reasons for needing your kid to
Speaker 2: have a phone and be able to be contactable than
Speaker 2: some other parents. If your kid has to travel a
Speaker 2: long way to school, you have different reasons. If you
Speaker 2: work funny hours and your shifts might change at any time,
Speaker 2: you have different reasons. So I guess what I'm saying
Speaker 2: is I agree with this campaign, but there's a bit
Speaker 2: of me that's like, we have to stop saying that
Speaker 2: parents have to deal with it.
Speaker 3: You know, do you think that thirty six months will
Speaker 3: actually have an impact on children?
Speaker 2: Yes, because the age difference between thirteen and sixteen is huge.
Speaker 2: It's so funny how quickly social norms have shifted that
Speaker 2: I cannot actually imagine kids not being allowed to be
Speaker 2: on social media till they're sixteen. But that's just like
Speaker 2: I used to never be able to imagine that you
Speaker 2: weren't allowed to smoke in a restaurant, you know what
Speaker 2: I mean? Like very quickly if and when, and I
Speaker 2: think it probably is a when these kind of age
Speaker 2: gating rules come in, will probably very quickly, as you
Speaker 2: said me are about alcohol be I can't believe that
Speaker 2: my fourteen year old was on Instagram.
Speaker 3: I really do think that we need more in schools,
Speaker 3: though I always think with this stuff it's about education.
Speaker 3: I think what this thirty six month campaign recognizes is
Speaker 3: that those ages between thirteen and sixteen are absolutely unlike
Speaker 3: any other three years of a person's life in terms
Speaker 3: of how vulnerable you are, how much you're changing, how
Speaker 3: much your body's changing, how much understanding where you are
Speaker 3: in the world changes, how much your friendship groups change.
Speaker 3: You know, they say to you when you start high school,
Speaker 3: it's when as a parent you go from being your
Speaker 3: child's manager to being a consultant around the age of thirteen,
Speaker 3: and so suddenly we're going away from being our child's
Speaker 3: manager to handing that over to the unregulated Internet, and
Speaker 3: that I think we're only really realizing now the consequences
Speaker 3: of that. I think that the idea of oh, the
Speaker 3: journey's out of theottle.
Speaker 5: It's too late. I'm glad that people are thinking it's
Speaker 5: not too late.
Speaker 2: My son obviously has gone to high school in January.
Speaker 2: Of the rules that we had for my daughter, which
Speaker 2: was that she got her phone when she went high school.
Speaker 2: That's exactly what everyone is expecting to happen, and in
Speaker 2: large part because of Jonathan Ate and these campaigns, I'm
Speaker 2: like having a lot of angxety conversations about whether or
Speaker 2: not that's going to happen, and should it be a
Speaker 2: dumb phone? Should it only have texting on it? Like
Speaker 2: it's changing everybody's opinion.
Speaker 5: Out Louders, We'll put a link if you're interested to
Speaker 5: that petition in the show notes. Of course, like any petition,
Speaker 5: read a bit about it before you sign. Out Louders.
Speaker 2: If you want to listen to us every day of
Speaker 2: the week, and why wouldn't you, you can get access
Speaker 2: to exclusive segments on Tuesdays and Thursdays by becoming a
Speaker 2: MoMA mea subscriber. Follow the link in the show notes
Speaker 2: to subscribe, and a big thank you to all our
Speaker 2: current subscribers. On May the twenty seventh, one of the
Speaker 2: most famous of all celebrity offspring changed her name. Now
Speaker 2: it might be because I worked in gossip magazines at
Speaker 2: the time and we were literally on the phone to
Speaker 2: a photographer who was dressed in camo and hiding behind
Speaker 2: a sand dune in the Namibian desert when it happened.
Speaker 5: But I remember very.
Speaker 2: Clearly the day that Shiloh Jolly Pitt, as she was
Speaker 2: then called, was born. Now she's eighteen, which makes me
Speaker 2: one hundred and five. But funnily enough, the way that
Speaker 2: Shiloh marked that day was not to send me a
Speaker 2: thank you card for my creepy and unethical interest in
Speaker 2: her life, but by filing a court order to drop
Speaker 2: the word pit from her name. Shiloh is now Shiloh Jolly,
Speaker 2: or at least she will be if this court order
Speaker 2: goes through, like her sister before her, Zahara, who introduced
Speaker 2: herself recently in a recent college video as Zahara Marley Jolie. Now,
Speaker 2: if you, unlike me, are not deeply steeped in the
Speaker 2: mythology and law of this family, just very very quick
Speaker 2: top line, because jem, you're probably a little bit young
Speaker 2: to be as obsessed with the Joy Pitt situation.
Speaker 5: As I am. I have the basics, you have the basics.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie for almost fifteen years
Speaker 2: were the pinnacle of fabulous celebrity couples. We were obsessed
Speaker 2: with them in a way that seems yes creepy indeed.
Speaker 2: And during that time they had six kids, three adopted kids,
Speaker 2: three biological kids, and they were very famous for traveling
Speaker 2: the world as a big, gorgeous group, right. They were
Speaker 2: always off running humanitarian missions for the UN and making
Speaker 2: movies and living in a gorgeous French chateau that really
Speaker 2: was a chateau andlke Britney Higgins's farmhouse on a vineyard
Speaker 2: called Miraval, which makes really nice rose but is now
Speaker 2: one of their many battlefields. Not allowed to buy it anymore.
Speaker 2: They've been separated for almost ten years, which is wild, right,
Speaker 2: But all that time, that whole time, the most bitter
Speaker 2: of court battles has been going on about money, about custody,
Speaker 2: about divorce settlement, and most of this hangs on the
Speaker 2: fact that Jolie says that when she knew that marriage
Speaker 2: was over, it was after an incident on a private
Speaker 2: jet that was flying from France to the US where
Speaker 2: brad It drunkenly assaulted her and the children, and ever
Speaker 2: since then she and the children have had very little
Speaker 2: to do with him, even though he officially has shared custody,
Speaker 2: any statement that he's ever made about it publicly, he
Speaker 2: said that he immediately went to rehab, that he's completely
Speaker 2: cleaned himself up, and he and his camp deny all
Speaker 2: the Jolly allegations, or most of them anyway.
Speaker 5: Right, But it's clear that.
Speaker 2: Obviously the kids are team Angelina so much so they
Speaker 2: probably have the sort of T shirts that we used
Speaker 2: to wear back in the naughties when it was Team
Speaker 2: gener or Team An. They're definitely team n But here's
Speaker 2: the thing, right, after all that Pitt is not canceled,
Speaker 2: despite those allegations that he's an abusive alcoholic or he
Speaker 2: was an abusive alcoholic during their marriage, and the fact
Speaker 2: that none of his children want anything to do with him,
Speaker 2: and some of them have spoken out about that relatively publicly.
Speaker 2: He is still the one who is in a multimillion
Speaker 2: dollar body movie with George Clooney that's coming to a cinema.
Speaker 5: Near us soon.
Speaker 2: And every time you write about this story or talk
Speaker 2: about this story, the vitriol that comes from it is
Speaker 2: directed at Angelina Jolly always, always so, even on Mama Mia.
Speaker 2: And we have a very you know, female inclusive, wonderful audience,
Speaker 2: many of whom obviously they want to read about this stuff,
Speaker 2: But they'll often say, well, it's Angelina, you know, it's Angelina.
Speaker 5: That's she's She's turned the kids against him. She's just
Speaker 5: turned the kids against him.
Speaker 2: Certainly in other parts of the mainstream media, that's very
Speaker 2: much the vibe is it's kind of poor Brad. He
Speaker 2: was wrestling with demons, but that piece of work has
Speaker 2: taken him down. Why do women love to hate Angelina
Speaker 2: Jolly because of Jennifer?
Speaker 5: Do you think really? Still? I do? I think that
Speaker 5: stuff sticks, which is so strange given how much longer
Speaker 5: Brad and Angelina were married. I think so much of
Speaker 5: it comes down to, you know, going back to the
Speaker 5: sort of nineties celebrity canon, Jennifer Aniston going out with
Speaker 5: Brad Pitt with such a big deal in our culture
Speaker 5: because she was incredibly famous, but she was very girl
Speaker 5: next door, whereas he was like heart throb, whole other level,
Speaker 5: and it was seen that him choosing to date her
Speaker 5: was a victory for every girl who wasn't a sexy bombshell.
Speaker 5: And then along came Angelina and that relationship clearly did
Speaker 5: start while he was still married to Jennifer Andiston. They
Speaker 5: were co starring in that movie Mister and Missus Smith
Speaker 5: together and look, that kind of thing happens all the time.
Speaker 5: It's not the first relationship or marriage that's been ended
Speaker 5: by an affair. But there was something about it that
Speaker 5: people turned against. I think because Jennifer Inniston's heartbreak was
Speaker 5: so public, everybody identified with her, and even though Brad
Speaker 5: Pitt was forgiven, Angelina kind of never was. That's the
Speaker 5: thing that's wild about it.
Speaker 2: I bet your generation thinks it's wild gem in particular
Speaker 2: because Brad Pitt got through all that Team gen t
Speaker 2: managed stuff scott free, even though he was the one
Speaker 2: who cheated on America's sweetheart, and the villain of the
Speaker 2: piece was Angelina. And it's interesting that all these years
Speaker 2: later and in the interim, let's be clear about it.
Speaker 2: Angelina Jolie is a humanitarian who is often recognized by
Speaker 2: international organizations as having really moved the dial on a
Speaker 2: whole lot of causes, particularly refugees. She has clearly been
Speaker 2: a very devoted parent to those kids. She's always with them.
Speaker 2: I know there are some cynics who are like, well, yeah,
Speaker 2: she wheels them out, but I don't think that's true.
Speaker 5: I just think that's bullshit. That's what I'm saying, Katie Holmes,
Speaker 5: wheels out tzuri. It's called parenting exactly.
Speaker 2: Those kids are now aged between fifteen and twenty two,
Speaker 2: and they're choosing how public or not they want to be. Obviously,
Speaker 2: when they were little kids, they had no choice. They
Speaker 2: were hounded by the paparazzi. It was disturbing.
Speaker 5: So in twenty twenty, Pax wrote on his social media,
Speaker 5: which was private at the time that has since come out,
Speaker 5: Happy Father's Day to this world class asshole with a
Speaker 5: picture of Brad Pitt. You time and time again prove
Speaker 5: yourself to be a terrible and despicable person. You have
Speaker 5: no consideration or empathy towards your four youngest children, who
Speaker 5: tremble in fear, when in your presence you've made the
Speaker 5: lives of those closest to me a constant hell. You
Speaker 5: may tell yourself and the world whatever you want, but
Speaker 5: the truth will come to light someday. So Happy Father's Day,
Speaker 5: you fucking awful human being. They're at the age now
Speaker 5: where they can choose where they want to be and
Speaker 5: who want to spend time with. And even though this
Speaker 5: case has gone on and on and on, drawn out
Speaker 5: by Brad Pitt, it must be noted who feeds the
Speaker 5: press and manipulates the press constantly and feeds this narrative
Speaker 5: of what a witch Angelina Jolie is the fact that
Speaker 5: Shiloh's done this is a real clapback. It's a real
Speaker 5: statement without making a statement.
Speaker 2: Why do you think Brad Pitt hasn't been canceled, Jim, I.
Speaker 3: Don't think my generation and the generations below me care
Speaker 3: about Brad and Angela as much as your generation.
Speaker 2: She said, Angela Angelina Angelena see.
Speaker 1: Perfect illustration what I mean.
Speaker 4: They've moved on Bob and Angela.
Speaker 5: No one really care about them.
Speaker 3: So back when I was a teenager, I was keeping
Speaker 3: on top of them blah blah blah.
Speaker 4: But I did feel that they were the celebrities.
Speaker 1: Of your generation.
Speaker 3: And your generation is still in this kind of cycle
Speaker 3: of looking at what happened on that plane and Angelina.
Speaker 1: We're not even.
Speaker 3: Talking about them, like really, they're talking about the Bridgeton
Speaker 3: stars and whether they're together.
Speaker 1: Like I don't.
Speaker 3: Remember the last movie that Angelina was in. It's very
Speaker 3: much a gen X obsession, but.
Speaker 5: I do, of course, I didn't got an icon. I'm
Speaker 5: not saying like, is he this is. My issue is.
Speaker 2: Whether you like him or not is an icon. It's
Speaker 2: not your opinion whether he's an icon. He is one
Speaker 2: of the richest defensive It's not Holly.
Speaker 5: You can't tell someone who an icon is, but why
Speaker 5: Hollywood icon like he is. He's definitely a Holly dot
Speaker 5: com icon.
Speaker 3: But the reason he hasn't been canceled is, and I
Speaker 3: was thinking about this, their words on a page.
Speaker 4: So only a few weeks ago we saw literal footage.
Speaker 3: Of Cassie Ventura being physically assaulted by Sean Diddy Coombs.
Speaker 3: We watched it, we saw it, and we all got outraged.
Speaker 3: Many years after the fact, I read the details of
Speaker 3: what happened on that plane allegedly and they are insane.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's disturbing, and if there was a video of it,
Speaker 2: everyone everyone would care.
Speaker 5: But because it is.
Speaker 2: Words on a page, even though those words have been
Speaker 2: submitted to court and aren't really contested. I mean, I
Speaker 2: think obviously pits people think they're overblown, but they haven't
Speaker 2: completely denied that it all happened. Somehow, there's still room
Speaker 2: there for us to not believe a woman.
Speaker 3: But I think it's also Angelina is a very private person. Nowadays,
Speaker 3: we don't know a lot about her personal life. We
Speaker 3: don't see what she's drinking in the morning, we don't
Speaker 3: see any of that.
Speaker 5: She doesn't play the Hollywood No.
Speaker 2: Social media is wall to wall refugee advocacy. She does
Speaker 2: not do outfit of the day.
Speaker 4: She does not, especially your narration. They're struggling to get
Speaker 4: to know her because she's not that personal.
Speaker 5: On social I feel like I know her. I feel,
Speaker 5: you know what, I think this story has got a
Speaker 5: long way to play, because I think Angelina is playing
Speaker 5: the long game. I think that one day in the future,
Speaker 5: those children will talk about what happened on that plane,
Speaker 5: and for all we know, they do have footage of it,
Speaker 5: but they're choosing not to, you know, reveal it. I
Speaker 5: get the sense that Angelina Julie is a phenomenal mother,
Speaker 5: and I feel like she would disadvantage herself if it
Speaker 5: meant protecting her children. I don't get that same sense
Speaker 5: about Brad Pitt. No.
Speaker 2: I have to be on the record that I have
Speaker 2: finally in my heart canceled him Mia After.
Speaker 5: All this what does that look like? Though? So it
Speaker 5: looks like taking the posters off your wall, because here's
Speaker 5: the thing about cancelation.
Speaker 2: MEA and I argue about cancelation quite a lot. But
Speaker 2: if you really like somebody's work and you've admired them
Speaker 2: and then the shit comes out about them, sometimes it
Speaker 2: can take some time for that to sink in and
Speaker 2: then you're like, Oh, the way that I know I've
Speaker 2: canceled him in my heart now is that when I
Speaker 2: see him now in things, and I'm on the record
Speaker 2: of being a big brad Pit fan out loud is
Speaker 2: always sending me brad Pit videos when I see him now,
Speaker 2: particularly this version of him, not the young version of him.
Speaker 2: I watched the trailer of the movie that he and
Speaker 2: Cludey are in. It's called Wolves, and I bet it's good, Like,
Speaker 2: I bet it is, I bet they're funny. I bet
Speaker 2: it's all that stuff. It's like a Buddy movie, hit Man,
Speaker 2: Buddy movie, whatever. But I was like, I got the
Speaker 2: ick and that happened. Similarly, there's a musician I used
Speaker 2: to love called Ryan Adams. I've seen him in concert
Speaker 2: a million times, and when he was canceled, I was like, Oh,
Speaker 2: I shouldn't listen anymore. But the thing is is that
Speaker 2: I still love the music. But then it sort of
Speaker 2: seeps in and you're like, I can't listen anymore because
Speaker 2: the person who I thought was writing those songs and
Speaker 2: singing those songs, it's not who I thought you were.
Speaker 2: And now I can't listen without going So when the
Speaker 2: it comes, you can't do the IgG. If you want
Speaker 2: to listen to some more on this story, The Spill
Speaker 2: our entertainment podcast, our daily entertainment podcast, is covering it too.
Speaker 5: Question for the group, is it too soon to joke
Speaker 5: about COVID? And also, if you've got COVID, do you
Speaker 5: still stay home? Yes, well, my parents are on the road.
Speaker 5: Well they're in like some outback place with COVID. No
Speaker 5: one really cares about their COVID. I mean, I care
Speaker 5: about their COVID, but they're, you know, renting this little
Speaker 5: hut somewhere. They were leaving and they were like, oh,
Speaker 5: but we've had COVID and do you need And they're like, oh, no,
Speaker 5: I don't worry. We just wipe it down, like you
Speaker 5: remember when there were people in hazmat suits. Anyway, we
Speaker 5: had a conversation about this on a segment on our
Speaker 5: subs episode because Lady Gaga made a very scandalous admission. Well,
Speaker 5: some people were just like, that's long, that's funny. Other
Speaker 5: people were very upset about it. Here's a little sneak peak.
Speaker 7: I think she was being cavalier about it, and I
Speaker 7: think that.
Speaker 5: Do you think it was, Alex. Do you think she
Speaker 5: said it like a flex?
Speaker 7: The look on her face was can you believe I
Speaker 7: did a quarter of these concerts with COVID. It's the
Speaker 7: one thing. Whether or not she literally transmitted COVID. I
Speaker 7: mean maybe they had incredible constraints, which meant that she
Speaker 7: didn't whatever normalizing it. And that's what she really did,
Speaker 7: was she went I was able to get up and
Speaker 7: do a concept and do all of that with COVID.
Speaker 7: I don't know if that's like a great message to normalize.
Speaker 5: We're going back to the soldier soldier runs, and I
Speaker 5: think that we're also judgmental, whether we admit it or not,
Speaker 5: of people who take COVID more seriously or who are
Speaker 5: harder hit by COVID than other people. A link to
Speaker 5: that episode and our conversation will be in the show notes.
Speaker 2: Java bas thank you, thank you, thank you for filling
Speaker 2: in for our Jesse Stevens. My pleasure and thank you
Speaker 2: to all out louders who've listened to us today and
Speaker 2: our brilliant production team for.
Speaker 5: Helping us put this show together. We will see you
Speaker 5: all tomorrow. Why shout out to any Mum of Mes
Speaker 5: drivers listening. If you love the show and want to
Speaker 5: support us as well, subscribing to Mom and Miya is
Speaker 5: the very best way to do so. There is a
Speaker 5: link in the episode description. Do you know as we're
Speaker 5: recording this, Jesse is taking off at the beginning of
Speaker 5: I think it's like a forty five hour stop journey
Speaker 5: with a ten month old.
Speaker 2: That's hell hell on wheels, literally, hell on wings. I
Speaker 2: bet she's done that thing where she's got lollibags for
Speaker 2: the other people to be like.
Speaker 5: I'm sorry about that. Sounds like something Jesse said, I
Speaker 5: might do it.
Speaker 1: I'm about to do a six hour flight and I'm
Speaker 1: dreading that. Yes, let alone a forty four hour flight.
Speaker 5: Apparently what they say is don't start walking up and
Speaker 5: down the aisles, because once you start, you have to
Speaker 5: you're going to do. You have wants to be suffer.
Speaker 2: You have to leave that till towards the end.
Speaker 5: Oh well, thoughts I pressed with Jesse