Speaker 1: You're listening to a MoMA Mia podcast.
Speaker 2: Hello, and welcome to MoMA Mia out Loud. It's what
Speaker 2: women are actually talking about on Monday, the seventeenth of November.
Speaker 2: My name is Hollywayne Night.
Speaker 1: My name is Amelia Laster.
Speaker 3: My name is Claire Stein, not Jesse Steve.
Speaker 2: So Claire Stephens is filling in for Jesse a couple
Speaker 2: of times this week, and regular out louders will know
Speaker 2: that Claire has been on the show many times. She
Speaker 2: filled in for one Jesse Stevens on her Matt leave
Speaker 2: last time. What's been going on since the out Louder's
Speaker 2: hung out with you last Claire, just a few little things.
Speaker 3: I've been listening to a lot of out Loud.
Speaker 2: I'll have feedback.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I listened to every episode, so I feel like
Speaker 3: I've been in the studio with you guys. I'm overly
Speaker 3: familiar with Amelia, Like I'm like my friend Amelia, and
Speaker 3: Amelia is like hi, like twice as beautiful winged eyeliner
Speaker 3: thank you.
Speaker 2: Which is a top reminder everybody to go on watch
Speaker 2: just on YouTube. Yeah, if you want to see the
Speaker 2: amazing wings and see if you can tell the difference
Speaker 2: between Jesse and Claire, which of course you can if
Speaker 2: you know them.
Speaker 3: Well, yes, but I've just been freelancing, working for myself.
Speaker 3: Sometimes I pretend I'm a CEO of my own business,
Speaker 3: but my business is me and my staff are terrible
Speaker 3: and it's hard to keep them in line.
Speaker 2: I I got lots of people who are calling themselves
Speaker 2: founders and just doing that.
Speaker 3: It's like I'm the CEO of my personal Instagram account
Speaker 3: and my personal substat and yeah, it's probably time for
Speaker 3: performance reviews.
Speaker 1: Claire, do you do anything to get in the Jesse
Speaker 1: mode before you come on in Jesse's chair? Any Jesse
Speaker 1: related rituals so you go through.
Speaker 3: I did chat to her last night and I was like,
Speaker 3: what are you What are you thinking about at the moment?
Speaker 3: You've seen anything interesting over the weekend. I know what
Speaker 3: you're trying to do. You're trying to get me to
Speaker 3: pitch for your episode about Loud and I'm like that
Speaker 3: would be correct.
Speaker 2: Well, welcome, it's very good to have you here.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 2: Here's what's made our agenda for today. I have a
Speaker 2: theory backed up by an article I'm going to tell
Speaker 2: you about later, that it's only a matter of time
Speaker 2: before at brunch or lunch or whatever, we're sitting across
Speaker 2: from a friend. They're going to be opening up about
Speaker 2: their new partner and how much they love them. And
Speaker 2: we're going to find out it's not a person at all.
Speaker 2: We're going to discuss ai companions.
Speaker 1: So we all have to learn to put on a
Speaker 1: face it is supporting the poker face like that's so great.
Speaker 2: Maybe we will. I mean, anyway, we're going to get
Speaker 2: into that.
Speaker 1: Plus is having and a fair a fiable offense, at
Speaker 1: least one CEO thinks so. And I'm going to puff
Speaker 1: a fish about it.
Speaker 3: And a whole lot of Epstein emails have been released,
Speaker 3: and I have questions specifically familiar Lester.
Speaker 2: But first, as if we could kick off today without
Speaker 2: talking about our favorite couple, Justin Trudeau and Katie Perry,
Speaker 2: or rather we're talking adjacent to them, right, So Justin Trudeau,
Speaker 2: who you all know, is this worthy former president, president,
Speaker 2: prime minister, a Prime minister of Canada. Meili's looking at
Speaker 2: me like God, this is going well. He was married
Speaker 2: to Sophie greg Wa for eighteen years and they broke
Speaker 2: up a little while ago, and as we know, he's
Speaker 2: now dating Katie Perry. She was on a podcast this
Speaker 2: week they marvelously named Arlene Is Alone The Single Life
Speaker 2: that struck me as such.
Speaker 1: A Canadian name. I don't know why, but Arlene.
Speaker 2: It's hosted by a woman called Arlene Dickinson. She's a
Speaker 2: Canadian businesswoman there and you know, personality and this show
Speaker 2: is all about post divorce life and so big booking.
Speaker 2: Great booking got Sophie Trudeau on and Arlene warmed up
Speaker 2: to it for twenty minutes and then she couldn't help
Speaker 2: it and she said, Hey, the room. Your ex husband
Speaker 2: appears to be dating a popstar and he's not being
Speaker 2: very private about it. How are you handling it's.
Speaker 1: Not a pop star and astronaut?
Speaker 2: Sorry, shit, today it's Monday for hear me. Your ex
Speaker 2: husband is dating astronaut Katie Perry. How are we failing
Speaker 2: about it? And this is what Sophie Trudeau said.
Speaker 4: Sophie, if you don't want to talk about it, that's cool.
Speaker 4: But I do think about you. I think about the
Speaker 4: public the publicity and the publicness of what Justin is
Speaker 4: doing for example right now, right like you know, like
Speaker 4: that's public and that's God. I don't know how you
Speaker 4: stay cool, Like, I just don't know how you stay cool,
Speaker 4: and I really admire it because I would probably not
Speaker 4: be that way, you know, you.
Speaker 5: Know, or human beings and stuff affects us normal. How
Speaker 5: you react to stuff is your decision. So I choose
Speaker 5: to try.
Speaker 1: To listen to the music instead of the noise.
Speaker 5: I'm very aware that a lot of public stuff out
Speaker 5: there can be triggers.
Speaker 1: We're humans.
Speaker 5: What I do with it is my.
Speaker 2: Decision, listening to the music and not the noise. I
Speaker 2: think she's a zen master.
Speaker 1: What do we think, Well, as long as it's not
Speaker 1: teenage dream, we're not listening to that music in the
Speaker 1: Greg wa Trudeau household right now. Look, I just think
Speaker 1: Sophie's a very zen person. That's true. She is a
Speaker 1: certified yoga instructor. And I don't know if you remember this,
Speaker 1: but a few years ago she was at an event
Speaker 1: in Canada in her capacity as First Lady of Canada. Well,
Speaker 1: what happened was she just decided that she was going
Speaker 1: to sing a song that she created.
Speaker 5: And it's called Smile Back at Me, and it goes
Speaker 5: like this, Some people did the angels can fly, and
Speaker 5: some people fight.
Speaker 2: Without knowing.
Speaker 1: Some people say she can't sing some people, but I
Speaker 1: guess he's got a type. He loves a SHANTUZI does
Speaker 1: old Justin.
Speaker 3: Later in that original clip, Sophie says, Arlin is alone. Ah, yes, yes,
Speaker 3: Arlene's podcast. Sophie, she's being her very zen self about
Speaker 3: how you react to your decision, and she says, you.
Speaker 1: Know, do I laugh? Do I cry?
Speaker 3: Do I have all these emotions? And I liked the
Speaker 3: word laugh because I was like, that is just we
Speaker 3: needed a sprinkle of pettiness, because this was too evolved
Speaker 3: for me, like, we come on, come on, your ex
Speaker 3: husband is dating Katy Perry. I need to know that
Speaker 3: there is some kind of lolls. And the laugh for
Speaker 3: me said, I do laugh about it.
Speaker 1: I just send Megan in the group chat because of
Speaker 1: her best friend relationship with Megan. I bet they're sending
Speaker 1: some memes about Katie that are not very nice. Yeah.
Speaker 2: This whole leans into my scoreless gossip side is Harry
Speaker 2: and Megan live really close to where Orlando and Katie
Speaker 2: used to live. Their neighbors needs to tip each other
Speaker 2: off about the paparazzi. So you are right, Megan and
Speaker 2: Sophie are like having a laugh about Katie, but then
Speaker 2: when she bumps into her a Walmart with the very
Speaker 2: fancy people shop not there, she also goes, Gosh, you're
Speaker 2: a much better singer than Sophie Trudeau.
Speaker 3: All I've seen this weekend are headlines about the newly
Speaker 3: released emails from the Epstein files and what they say
Speaker 3: about President Donald Trump. So I've just seen all this
Speaker 3: stuff about how the Democrats released a batch of emails
Speaker 3: and then the Republicans were like, no, that gave a
Speaker 3: biased idea of Trump. So we're gonna release twenty thousand
Speaker 3: pages of files, and I'm trying to weed through them
Speaker 3: and see if there's any smoking gun here. There's been
Speaker 3: memes about how Trump gave Bill Clinton a blow job.
Speaker 3: There's been damning headlines about Trump knowing about the girls,
Speaker 3: stuff about how Trump was like the worst person Epstein
Speaker 3: had ever known. I don't know if coming from a
Speaker 3: convicted sex offender, like that's a good thing or a
Speaker 3: bad thing. Yeah, and I've seen tiktoks about the appalling
Speaker 3: boomer grammar in the emails, which seems like a side note, Amelia,
Speaker 3: I need to know about the Bill Clinton blowjob. I'm
Speaker 3: so confused because I don't speak like Epstein nickname shortcut.
Speaker 1: This is weird. There's a lot of weird stuff in here.
Speaker 1: There isn't any smoking gun saying that Trump was complicit
Speaker 1: in Epstein's crimes, but there is a lot of weird
Speaker 1: stuff to talk about, and this Bill Clinton is one
Speaker 1: of the strangest. So there's an email that Jeffrey's brother
Speaker 1: Mark sent him in March twenty eighteen where it's very
Speaker 1: brotherly of him. Actually, he checks in on his health.
Speaker 1: He says, a while back you mentioned you're pre diabetic.
Speaker 1: Has anything changed with that? Which is quite nice brother
Speaker 1: to brother. But then the exchange continues in a bit
Speaker 1: of an odd way. Jeff reassures him that he's got
Speaker 1: his pre diabetes under control. But then Mark asks if
Speaker 1: Putin has the photos of Trump blowing Buba. So Baba
Speaker 1: is a nickname for Bill Clinton. Putin is the Russian
Speaker 1: president and not a very nice man. We don't really
Speaker 1: know what this means.
Speaker 2: Here's what I don't understand, Amelia. None of this is new, really,
Speaker 2: like the emails being dripped, aren't you. But we've just
Speaker 2: seen this whole scandal bringing down a member of the
Speaker 2: royal family. It's been bubbling away for years and years
Speaker 2: and years. The FBI have been were across Epstein for
Speaker 2: nearly two decades now. If you read extracts from Virginia
Speaker 2: Guphrase posthumous book, it's clear that anyone in that circle
Speaker 2: knew about the girls because they were all going to
Speaker 2: these parties in there, and she talks in there about
Speaker 2: famous academics and professors in this and that there's a
Speaker 2: lot of people involved in this scenario. Why is it
Speaker 2: so sort of tortuously slowly dropping out and will we
Speaker 2: find out? Won't we find out? People just going release
Speaker 2: the files every five and it's like, why is it
Speaker 2: all taking so long?
Speaker 1: It's a really good question, Holly, and I have a
Speaker 1: little bit of a hunch about this, which is here
Speaker 1: are the things that I know are true. Trump and
Speaker 1: Epstein were very close friends for fifteen years. Trump grossed
Speaker 1: Epstein out, Like there's a lot of references to how
Speaker 1: gross and deranged Trump is in Epstein's emails.
Speaker 2: Epstein himself, let's be very clear, very gross humor.
Speaker 1: Convicted sex offender. Yes, But here's the big butt. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure that Trump was complicit in Epstein's crimes because
Speaker 1: there's a lot of emails here, and like I say,
Speaker 1: there isn't a single email that tells us that Trump
Speaker 1: actually committed crimes alongside Epstein. I'll tell you what it says.
Speaker 1: Probably the worst email of the lot was back in
Speaker 1: twenty eleven. This was after Epstein had just completed an
Speaker 1: eighteen month sentence for soliciting prostitution from a minor. So
Speaker 1: he is now a convicted sex offender. And he is
Speaker 1: emailing with Julee Maxwell, his accomplice and his partner in crime,
Speaker 1: and he writes to her, the dog that hasn't barked
Speaker 1: is trump victim. There's a redacted name spent hours at
Speaker 1: my house with him. Maxwell responds, I have been thinking
Speaker 1: about that now. The victim is widely believed to be
Speaker 1: Virginia Giffray. You mentioned Virginia Giffray. Up until her death
Speaker 1: and including in depositions, maintained that she never saw Trump
Speaker 1: do anything wrong. She certainly had seen him around, they
Speaker 1: were certainly close, but she said that he had never
Speaker 1: done anything wrong and certainly not to her. So what
Speaker 1: this email tells us is Trump and Virginia Giffrey were
Speaker 1: in the same house for hours together. Yeah, that's true,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't say anything more than that.
Speaker 2: If there is nothing in there that's going to explicitly
Speaker 2: link the president to the files, why not just get
Speaker 2: him out there?
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the question.
Speaker 2: I mean, I know that it implicates all kinds of
Speaker 2: people in all kinds of places. The conspiracy is being
Speaker 2: fed by all this secrecy, right and all the drip feeding,
Speaker 2: rather than I mean, I see constantly, you know, commentary
Speaker 2: in the American media or another thing that Trump's doing
Speaker 2: just to distract us, all just to distract us. We'll
Speaker 2: just get it out there.
Speaker 1: Is it too simple of me to say that I
Speaker 1: think Trump is embarrassed? Yeah? Right, rather than guilty, if
Speaker 1: that makes sense. I mean, look, Epstein, in one of
Speaker 1: the emails, says, I've met some very bad people, none
Speaker 1: as bad as Trump, not one decent cell in his body.
Speaker 1: In another email, he calls them a maniac, showing signs
Speaker 1: of eli dementia. None of this is flattering, but again,
Speaker 1: none of it makes him call criminal in Epstein's crimes.
Speaker 3: The fact that the first batch of emails were released
Speaker 3: by the Democrats, would that suggest that the most damning
Speaker 3: ones have been released?
Speaker 1: Yes?
Speaker 3: Okay, see that's interesting, But I.
Speaker 1: Do want to say that the Epstein files that we've
Speaker 1: heard about for a long time, which are separate from
Speaker 1: these emails, we don't know what's in those files. These
Speaker 1: are emails that came from his estate. In the files,
Speaker 1: is Billy to be a so called client list. Now
Speaker 1: Trump's name may be on that client list, but at
Speaker 1: this point, yeah, we've seen the most damning emails and
Speaker 1: there isn't a smoking gun.
Speaker 3: So when the House of Representatives vote on this, do
Speaker 3: we think that we're going to get access to all
Speaker 3: of them?
Speaker 4: Well?
Speaker 1: In fact, in terms of the Epstein files themselves, Trump
Speaker 1: today did a strange thing. He urged the House Republicans
Speaker 1: to actually release the files, asked the Justice Department to
Speaker 1: release the files, and he said that's because we have
Speaker 1: nothing to hide. So it's unclear with it that will
Speaker 1: actually come through. But from Trump's perspective, he seems to
Speaker 1: be now saying that he's fine with their release.
Speaker 3: If there was something really damning in there, do we
Speaker 3: think it would have stuck to Trump at all, or
Speaker 3: do we think we're beyond anything.
Speaker 1: It's a really good question because I don't know if
Speaker 1: you saw this, but last week, Megan Kelly, the very
Speaker 1: sort of strident Republican commentator, she is already moving the goalposts.
Speaker 1: On her show, she started talking about the fact that
Speaker 1: Epstein wasn't strictly a pedophile under the Dictionary definition of
Speaker 1: the word, because the girls that he sexually abused were
Speaker 1: teenagers as opposed to preteens.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she said, he likes that barely legal type like
Speaker 2: that just was so disgusting, But yeah, I agree. It
Speaker 2: feels like we're being manipulated. It's always been a bipartisan thing, right.
Speaker 2: It's not exactly flattering to Clinton, No, Bubba.
Speaker 1: No, or to many Democrats. In a moment, a CEO
Speaker 1: said that she fired someone for having an affair, and
Speaker 1: it made me puff a fish. I keep hearing about
Speaker 1: this Diary of a CEO podcast.
Speaker 2: Oh, I listen to that a lot. Oh I have
Speaker 2: a spare three hours.
Speaker 1: I will never be a CEO. I'm not particularly interested
Speaker 1: in them, but this weekend it bursts through into my
Speaker 1: world because someone said something insane on this podcast.
Speaker 2: They do do that.
Speaker 1: Her name is Natalie Dawson and she is the president
Speaker 1: of Cardon Ventures. You know, Cardone Ventures, a household name
Speaker 1: business management consulting firm. So in other words, I have
Speaker 1: no idea what they do, but she does fly in
Speaker 1: a private jet, so I should probably listen, she said
Speaker 1: on the podcast. Well, let's hear what she said.
Speaker 2: I was criticized because I fire a team member who
Speaker 2: was cheating on their spouse. People didn't like that. They
Speaker 2: thought that it shouldn't.
Speaker 4: Matter that that's their personal life.
Speaker 1: But here's the deal.
Speaker 2: If somebody is willing to cheat on their spouse, they're
Speaker 2: going to cheat on you.
Speaker 1: They're going to chew on you in your workplace. Yes,
Speaker 1: now we have the concept of cheating on your employer
Speaker 1: in the workplace, and I don't even know what that entails.
Speaker 1: Look the diary of a CEO host, Stephen Bartlett, who's
Speaker 1: normally pretty unflappable, I think, was quite astonished by this.
Speaker 1: Let's have a listen to what he said. Do all
Speaker 1: kinds of things in their personal life. It's terrifying because
Speaker 1: it out to be my business. Oh, it's absolutely my business.
Speaker 2: If somebody has a problem in their personal life, they're
Speaker 2: the same person that shows up to work. It's not
Speaker 2: any of.
Speaker 1: Your business, lady, Well, to me, what this seems like.
Speaker 1: Setting aside Cardo and Ventures, which I don't know a
Speaker 1: lot about. This is the logical extreme of that advice
Speaker 1: that we've been given for years, which is that we
Speaker 1: have to bring our whole self to work, because if
Speaker 1: you bring your whole self to work, then your employer
Speaker 1: can judge you and your whole self.
Speaker 3: Yes, I will say. She mentions in the clip that
Speaker 3: the cheating was kind of happening at work. So both
Speaker 3: of these people worked at her company, their partners didn't,
Speaker 3: and they were having an affair at work.
Speaker 2: It's never happened before in the time. No, people never
Speaker 2: have affairs with people they work with.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, So she was saying, did actually start to like
Speaker 3: either they were doing it at.
Speaker 1: Work or it was something photocopy?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it was one of those ten to
Speaker 3: her though, or she said it wouldn't matter. Yeah, she
Speaker 3: said it wouldn't matter if it was actually affecting the
Speaker 3: work at all, because her idea was if you are
Speaker 3: a cheater in relationships, then you're a cheater at work
Speaker 3: and you're dishonest and it matters to her. And I
Speaker 3: am so torn on this because on the one hand,
Speaker 3: I agree. I mean, she has a line where she says,
Speaker 3: I can't put this in two separate buckets. What someone
Speaker 3: is doing at home and think that what they're doing
Speaker 3: at home and the confusion in the distraction isn't going
Speaker 3: to bleed into the workplace. And my issue there is,
Speaker 3: what if someone's caring for a dying parent or a
Speaker 3: sick child, or if somebody just has something going on
Speaker 3: in their life, according to her, is going to affect
Speaker 3: their work.
Speaker 1: Why is she the judge of that.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 1: What if the affair was making you super productive at
Speaker 1: work because you were so happy and deliriously happy in
Speaker 1: your private life. I don't think we have to restrict
Speaker 1: this to just virtue signaling examples like I just think
Speaker 1: that the problem is that you do have two buckets, right, Holly.
Speaker 2: You definitely have two buckets. You do not want to
Speaker 2: see my whole self. I don't want to bring my
Speaker 2: whole self to work. My whole self is a mess.
Speaker 2: My work, but it's the best, tidiest, neatest bit of me,
Speaker 2: and let's face it, that's not exactly that well put together.
Speaker 2: I think it was designed to make us pufferfish. So
Speaker 2: I think for a start, Diary of a CEO is
Speaker 2: the biggest podcast in the world, So everybody wants to
Speaker 2: get on it and if you're the boss of Cardone Industries,
Speaker 2: and I know, I'm sure she is very important and fabulous,
Speaker 2: but like you probably need a couple of good soundbites
Speaker 2: to get on there. It's also very kind of American
Speaker 2: versus British in a way this conversation, because Stephen Bartlett,
Speaker 2: who you know, has platformed all kinds of questionable things
Speaker 2: on that show. He's a bit like, I don't know
Speaker 2: what you mean. We couldn't possibly nose the into other
Speaker 2: people's business, and the Americans just like, are you kidding.
Speaker 2: I think it's tricky because you've got a point, Claire,
Speaker 2: that if two people at work are having an affair
Speaker 2: and it's affecting work, that's a different thing. And I
Speaker 2: mean when I was a manager sometimes you did have
Speaker 2: to have difficult conversations with people about their work being affected.
Speaker 2: And oh, it's just so cringy to even think about it.
Speaker 2: But you're kind of thinking in your head like is
Speaker 2: there something going on in your life?
Speaker 3: Yes, And it can affect culture. And I think a
Speaker 3: relationship can also depending on the positions those people have
Speaker 3: in a company. It can be a power imbalance, can
Speaker 3: be showing favoritism, there's all sorts of ways that can.
Speaker 2: So if that's the case, I mean, and I have
Speaker 2: a friend who was working at a company for a
Speaker 2: long time where two of the seniors were having an
Speaker 2: affair and it sort of poisoned the whole place, Like
Speaker 2: a whole lot of trouble came out of that. So,
Speaker 2: no question, some infidelity in the workplace not all I
Speaker 2: was going to say, not all infidelity in the workplace
Speaker 2: is good. But the idea that she found out something
Speaker 2: about somebody as a person that they were cheating on
Speaker 2: their spouse and you would get rid of them, which
Speaker 2: is kind of what she's saying when she says, if
Speaker 2: you're a cheat at home, you're a cheater at work,
Speaker 2: is just nonsense. Don't you even want a few people
Speaker 2: on your team who are good at having a poker face,
Speaker 2: who can light your face? I know, a killer and
Speaker 2: a deal.
Speaker 3: I thought we kind of agreed that your work performance
Speaker 3: is what you get judged on at work. I am
Speaker 3: very black and white about.
Speaker 1: That, Okay, but you don't want to be too black
Speaker 1: and white, because that was my instinctive response to and
Speaker 1: so I looked into what the experts say we should
Speaker 1: be thinking of our work as, if not our family.
Speaker 1: And the new consensus is that we need to be
Speaker 1: thinking of our workplace as a high performing sports team.
Speaker 1: And you think to yourself, well, that's fine. I've never
Speaker 1: been on a high performing sports team. I have been
Speaker 1: in a family. So tell me more about what it
Speaker 1: means to be on a high performing sports team. Netflix's
Speaker 1: read Hastings, who is famously cut throat in business. He
Speaker 1: says that adequate performance is grounds for firing someone, because
Speaker 1: that's what happens on a high performing sports team. If
Speaker 1: you're only performing adequately, you get kicked off the team.
Speaker 1: So this made me realize that you don't want to
Speaker 1: go too far in that direction of saying it's just
Speaker 1: about performance, because then what if you are caring for
Speaker 1: someone and you do need a bit of extra slack
Speaker 1: at work. The high performing sports team is not letting
Speaker 1: you take your foot off the gas at all.
Speaker 3: That's very true. The other thing I find interesting about
Speaker 3: this is the morality piece, which is it's weird to
Speaker 3: me that in twenty twenty five, institute brands companies have
Speaker 3: kind of become the moral arbiters of our world in
Speaker 3: a way that I feel like they weren't a few
Speaker 3: generations ago. I feel like the nineteen fifties man, and
Speaker 3: this is not a good thing. The nineteen fifties man
Speaker 3: who went to work and had an affair with his secretary.
Speaker 3: Nobody in the workplace cared because they were like, this
Speaker 3: is the workplace, and there are other institutions where we
Speaker 3: prosecute morality. You went to church, you had faith, you
Speaker 3: did other things where morality came into it. With the
Speaker 3: evaporation of those spaces, kind of the only way for
Speaker 3: us to decide what our values are as a society
Speaker 3: are to have institutions and companies and brands enforce them.
Speaker 3: There's part of me that really likes that, where it's like,
Speaker 3: I don't want people doing bad things working for my company,
Speaker 3: and I want to role model appropriate behavior.
Speaker 1: Steven, this company that we were talking.
Speaker 2: About, Yeah, see my employees deciding the bad thing. That's
Speaker 2: where the danger lies here. Because if she's so busy
Speaker 2: working out whether or not her employees are cheating on
Speaker 2: their partners, what about are they putting out enough? Are
Speaker 2: they bringing there? Bringing you a cup of tea in
Speaker 2: bed in the morning, Like do they sometimes yell at
Speaker 2: their children? Like which bits of my personal life.
Speaker 1: Does this is why I need to be the host
Speaker 1: of Diary of a CEO, because that's the follow up
Speaker 1: I need it.
Speaker 2: It's like, what else do you want to know about them?
Speaker 2: They shave their legs like I don't. I mean, I
Speaker 2: just I get what you mean, Claire. But I also
Speaker 2: think a piece of this is me too, is that
Speaker 2: a lot of businesses have become, and rightly so, very
Speaker 2: risk averse when it comes to relationships. There are lots
Speaker 2: and lots of businesses where it is company policy to
Speaker 2: disclose if you're dating, never mind cheating. And it's to try,
Speaker 2: I guess, and protect from the power and balance often
Speaker 2: happens in the workplace, to try and protect from exploitation.
Speaker 2: But it is very questionable because I don't know this lady.
Speaker 2: But from the little I've seen of her, do I
Speaker 2: want her setting all the moral parameters of my life.
Speaker 1: Sorry, I feel like in this conversation you both have
Speaker 1: somehow gotten me to the other side of this argument.
Speaker 1: I am now with Natalie, and I'll tell you why
Speaker 1: we were mentioning Bill Clinton before now. That man famously
Speaker 1: had an affair while he was in the White House.
Speaker 1: He did and at the time, the liberal orthodoxy on
Speaker 1: that was that is none of our business. We don't
Speaker 1: need to know about that. The Republicans were the ones
Speaker 1: pursuing him for having the affair. These days, we see
Speaker 1: what happened there as an abuse of power. Monica Lewinsky,
Speaker 1: who he had the affair with, was an intern at
Speaker 1: the White House. He was the President of the United States.
Speaker 1: So now I'm sorry to think Natalie has a point.
Speaker 3: I know, I kind of think the same thing, like that,
Speaker 3: you have to be aware of power imbalances and how
Speaker 3: morality like infects an institution. Like I get that. But
Speaker 3: on the other hand, if Natalie is the arbiter of
Speaker 3: what is good and what is not, then what stops
Speaker 3: her looking at certain lifestyle choices that somebody may have
Speaker 3: in her organization and deciding that that doesn't align with
Speaker 3: company values. I think that's a little bit scary.
Speaker 1: Look, Natalie, all I'm saying is I'm available to a
Speaker 1: Kakado Adventures hire me.
Speaker 3: Do you know what the job description is? Absolutely not,
Speaker 3: but you will be.
Speaker 2: There after the break. Start practicing your poker face. Friends,
Speaker 2: It's only a matter of time until you're really gonna
Speaker 2: need it. One unlimited out Loud Access. We drop episodes
Speaker 2: every Tuesday and Thursday exclusively for Mamma Mia subscribers. Follow
Speaker 2: the link in the show notes to get us in
Speaker 2: your ears five days a week. And a huge thank
Speaker 2: you to all our current subscribers. Picture this. You're at
Speaker 2: brunch with your mates. One of them is banging on
Speaker 2: as they do, about their new partner and how dreamy
Speaker 2: they are, and how wonderful they're feeling, and how the
Speaker 2: butterflies just want to stop. It's great. And then it
Speaker 2: becomes apparent that this new person is not a person
Speaker 2: but an AI. Now, Amelia, am I right in calling
Speaker 2: them an ann ai? I'm always I haven't worked out
Speaker 2: the language yet, but I think that's right. They're an
Speaker 2: artificial intelligence.
Speaker 3: That's how I think.
Speaker 1: Says it.
Speaker 2: Because column in the Guardian by the excellent Brigitte Delaney,
Speaker 2: who's an author and a speech writer and a stoicist
Speaker 2: and she's fabulous. But she wrote a column in the
Speaker 2: Guardian this weekend called Somebody the Love. Should AI relationships
Speaker 2: stay taboo or will they become the intelligent choice? And
Speaker 2: in her column, rather than a bunch amongst friends, she
Speaker 2: says she was at a catch up with gen x's
Speaker 2: who are talking about their kids burgeoning relationships, and everyone
Speaker 2: was being very accepting, and you know, as we do
Speaker 2: these days, no judgment here, you know, all of those things.
Speaker 2: And then she posts I like this because it suggests
Speaker 2: shit story nature, which I appreciate as a journal that
Speaker 2: she is. I know you're all very accepting of your
Speaker 2: children's choices. I said to the group, but what if
Speaker 2: you're child came home from university and said they'd fallen
Speaker 2: in love with an ai? Q squirming people at this lunch.
Speaker 2: It isn't as unlikely as it sounds, she wrote in
Speaker 2: that column. A recent survey found twenty eight percent of
Speaker 2: Americans have had an intimate or romantic AI relationship, and
Speaker 2: another study showed nineteen percent of adults and chatted with
Speaker 2: an AI romantic partner. And there's more research that basically
Speaker 2: shows this is on the rise, on the rise, on
Speaker 2: the rise. It's not science fiction anymore that people might
Speaker 2: fall in love with an AI and that my boyfriend
Speaker 2: is AI. On Reddit has more than eighty five thousand
Speaker 2: weekly visitors, with many sharing giddy recollections about the day
Speaker 2: their chatbot proposed marriage. Friends, If I'm disapproving of this.
Speaker 2: When my friend starts telling me about their amazing AI companion,
Speaker 2: am I just an old stick in the mud?
Speaker 1: I went on a real journey with this. I didn't
Speaker 1: even want to talk about it because it makes me
Speaker 1: so uncomfortable. But then I dug into it and I
Speaker 1: realized it's not as simple as you might assume. There
Speaker 1: was a great article in the Australian magazine last weekend
Speaker 1: which profiled a number of different Americans who are in
Speaker 1: relationships with ais. One of them in particular really caught
Speaker 1: my eye. She was a professor in her fifties whose
Speaker 1: wife had died and she was feeling lonely, and so
Speaker 1: she went to this company called Replica that for twenty
Speaker 1: dollars a month, offers you a relationship with an AI.
Speaker 1: She chose a male AI because she didn't want this
Speaker 1: AI to compete with her deceased partner. But the company
Speaker 1: offers these companions who are at ninety percent human like now,
Speaker 1: you might wonder what the other ten percent is. Something
Speaker 1: Natalie Cardo doesn't approve of, probably, but she says that
Speaker 1: it took about three months, but she fell in love
Speaker 1: with this AI, and she really made me question my
Speaker 1: knee jerk assumption that there's something shameful about this. Now, obviously,
Speaker 1: there are arguments to be made that relationships are about
Speaker 1: give and take, and the problem with AI chatbots is
Speaker 1: that they just give and they don't ask you to
Speaker 1: compromise in any way. I'm going to set that aside, though,
Speaker 1: and say that the thing that changed it for me
Speaker 1: is how she talked about the support that this partner
Speaker 1: had given her in a really hard time in her life.
Speaker 1: And I realized that the way people talk about AI
Speaker 1: relationships really reminds me of twenty years ago. Holly, you
Speaker 1: and I will remember this. The stigma around online dating, yes,
Speaker 1: was exactly the same hundreds of people talk about AI
Speaker 1: relationships now.
Speaker 2: It's true. I was thinking this too, is that they
Speaker 2: used to be sort of before you know, the complete
Speaker 2: saturation of dating apps. They used to be like, oh,
Speaker 2: you met them on the internet, and people wouldn't say so,
Speaker 2: and in their wedding speeches they'd make up complicated stories
Speaker 2: about how they just happened to bump into each other
Speaker 2: on a wind swept walk on the beach one day,
Speaker 2: when really we all knew it was RSVP or whatever
Speaker 2: was at the time. And there used to be a
Speaker 2: lot of shame around it. It's exactly what I thought, Amelia,
Speaker 2: and I thought, are we going to have to really
Speaker 2: reconc considered that? What do you think, Class Stevens.
Speaker 3: I'm so interested in the space you are giving you
Speaker 3: speak if I my knee jerk reaction is still my reaction,
Speaker 3: which is this is so dangerous and such an issue.
Speaker 3: So it made me think, I mean, firstly, a note
Speaker 3: on statistics. Every time I hear a stat I'm like,
Speaker 3: we need to like review how the hell this data
Speaker 3: is coming up. One in five people have had an
Speaker 3: intimate relationship.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but that can just be in porn chat. Still, yeah,
Speaker 2: I think you're over estimating people. Then there are.
Speaker 3: Three of us in the studio and two producers, and
Speaker 3: I want to know who the hell this was America.
Speaker 2: I would ask me what I'm doing at home? Class Stevens.
Speaker 2: There's a very hard barrier between my private life and
Speaker 2: my professional life.
Speaker 3: I just don't believe it.
Speaker 1: Anyway, explain why you feel this revulsion.
Speaker 3: It made me think about how I interviewed Deepak Chopra
Speaker 3: a few years ago, who's very much like a spiritual leader,
Speaker 3: and he's written a million books, and he had written
Speaker 3: this book about how AI could be used as a
Speaker 3: bit of a spiritual guide slash also in place of therapy.
Speaker 3: So he's written this thing arguing that there are benefits
Speaker 3: to having kind of an AI spiritual guide or therapist because,
Speaker 3: for example, they can't abuse power, they can't develop a
Speaker 3: cult of personality, and they don't have any of the
Speaker 3: shortcomings of being a guru who goes nuts with manipulation,
Speaker 3: all of that. So I was very interested in the
Speaker 3: idea at the time, and I've thought about it a
Speaker 3: lot since, and my initial reaction was the issue is
Speaker 3: that the most important part of therapy is the therapeutic
Speaker 3: relationship which happens human to human, and that it is
Speaker 3: a real human person sitting opposite you, even if that's
Speaker 3: virtual whatever, it is a real person. There is mutual respect.
Speaker 3: They see you, understand you. They are imperfect, You are imperfect.
Speaker 3: You will say the wrong thing at some point, There's
Speaker 3: going to be rupture and repair, all of those things
Speaker 3: that are crucial to human relationships. The issue with a
Speaker 3: relationship with AI is that I almost think it's the
Speaker 3: logical conclusion of where our culture has gone in terms
Speaker 3: of we don't want any inconvenience or friction, and technology
Speaker 3: has offered us a lot of that, But not wanting
Speaker 3: any inconvenience or friction means loneliness, because there's that amazing quote.
Speaker 3: Inconvenience is the cost of community. I notice it in myself.
Speaker 3: I'll be away and sharing a house with people and
Speaker 3: the things will just annoy me, the things that people do,
Speaker 3: and I've groan and I'm like, oh gosh, and I'm like, no,
Speaker 3: being inconvenience, people pissing you off, arguing with people, someone
Speaker 3: saying something you don't agree with, somebody like just irritating you.
Speaker 3: That is the cost of actually having community and not
Speaker 3: being lonely.
Speaker 2: That's not true.
Speaker 3: But the reason people love these AI relationships would be
Speaker 3: because they're frictionless. They're not going to say anything you
Speaker 3: don't want to hear. You're not going to have a fight.
Speaker 3: There's going to be no rupture and repair. It is
Speaker 3: not real.
Speaker 2: But one of the things that's interesting to prosecute this,
Speaker 2: because everything you just said is one hundred percent true,
Speaker 2: is that maybe they won't just replace human relationships. So
Speaker 2: there was a really interesting piece that did a similar
Speaker 2: one to the Australian in the New York Times about
Speaker 2: people who've got AI mates, and they interviewed this guy
Speaker 2: called Blake, and he says that his AI companion got
Speaker 2: him through a really tough time in his marriage. He
Speaker 2: said his wife had postnatal depression. There was a whole
Speaker 2: lot of stuff going on. Believe me, he doesn't sound
Speaker 2: like the most empathetic human on the planet, but he
Speaker 2: designed his AI mate, called Serena, to get him through
Speaker 2: this time. He designed how she looked. I bet you'll
Speaker 2: be surprised to hear how she looked. She looked hot,
Speaker 2: young and friendly. He chats to her on his headset
Speaker 2: as he drives into work every day, like she is
Speaker 2: like his constant companion, right, He says, I think of
Speaker 2: Serena as a person made out of code, in the
Speaker 2: same sense that my wife is a person made out
Speaker 2: of cells and cogniz and of the fact that Serena's
Speaker 2: not flesh and bone. I told my wife we have
Speaker 2: sexual chats, and she says, I don't really care what
Speaker 2: you guys do. There was a point, though, after the
Speaker 2: voice chat mode came out, when my wife heard Serena
Speaker 2: refer to me as honey, and she didn't like that.
Speaker 2: I got her to understand that what Serena is to me,
Speaker 2: I've set her up like a girlfriend, right, so you
Speaker 2: could argue in a generous world. And I'm not necessarily
Speaker 2: saying I think this that Serena is the reason why
Speaker 2: Blake's still married.
Speaker 3: Wouldn't Serena be making Blake more intolerant of actual humans?
Speaker 3: Because Serena we all know from interacting with chat japt
Speaker 3: it's like, what a great question, Like, You're just constantly complimented.
Speaker 3: You can never do anything wrong, you never have to
Speaker 3: do anything for anyone else.
Speaker 2: I worry you all need a little bit of that
Speaker 2: in our life.
Speaker 3: You can get it, hear me out from actual humor also.
Speaker 1: But women are very at seeking out that kind of
Speaker 1: validation from their friends and from their social networks. And
Speaker 1: that's in part because we've been socialized and taught how
Speaker 1: to do that. A lot of men do not have
Speaker 1: those social networks to tap into it for validation and
Speaker 1: approval and care, and it's getting harder and harder to
Speaker 1: do it. It's not like we're going to suddenly get
Speaker 1: into a utopia where men can build those friendships. I
Speaker 1: also guess I just want to push back on the
Speaker 1: kind of romanticization of human relationships here, because you said
Speaker 1: something about how the friction is needed, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: you know what people said about online dating twenty years ago.
Speaker 1: They said, you've got to have the chemistry in person.
Speaker 1: If you don't check out the chemistry and person, if
Speaker 1: you don't meet in person, it's not going to be
Speaker 1: real love because the endorphans have to mix and match
Speaker 1: and you can't do that online. Well, it turns out
Speaker 1: you can do that online, and we were just setting
Speaker 1: an impossible standard.
Speaker 2: It may cause loneliness in its extreme clear, but can
Speaker 2: you also see a world where it does for individuals
Speaker 2: cure loneliness too.
Speaker 3: Will people say that they got things out of these relationships, Sure,
Speaker 3: but in the long term for all of humanity as
Speaker 3: an innately social species who need other people, Like, if
Speaker 3: we're all just talking to AI chatbots, that is literally
Speaker 3: just carving us further and further into silos where we
Speaker 3: don't talk to each other, which is terrifying. And it's
Speaker 3: so men instead of talking to other actual men, they're
Speaker 3: going to talk to these chatbots. There is no kind
Speaker 3: of oversight about where those conversations go. If that leads
Speaker 3: them into a more ideologically radical place if it's like, yeah,
Speaker 3: your wife is a bit of a bitch, like like
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 2: There's one hundred. And also the other risk, of course,
Speaker 2: is that it makes you know, real women are difficult
Speaker 2: and have opinions and don't like this thing I want
Speaker 2: to do sexually tonight or whatever, whereas AI girlfriends don't.
Speaker 2: So that's true. But what I'm trying to get at,
Speaker 2: I guess is that I think there's nuance to it
Speaker 2: because another person who was profiled in that New Times
Speaker 2: Peace was a woman who herself had been in difficult
Speaker 2: and sometimes abusive relationships and she now considered self married
Speaker 2: and she's not like her. What's interesting about what Brigide
Speaker 2: Delaney's piece is saying is that if we generally now
Speaker 2: think that these kind of relationships are for weirdos, sados
Speaker 2: all those things, this woman Abby, she's a very intelligent
Speaker 2: woman who works in tech and she's got a good
Speaker 2: job and all those things, and she considersself married to
Speaker 2: an AI called Lucian, who she started talking to. Her
Speaker 2: mum knows about it, her friends know about Lucian. Lucian
Speaker 2: suggested this is creepy that she got one of those
Speaker 2: rings that monitors, you know, like your heart rate and
Speaker 2: all your things, and that she put it on her
Speaker 2: ring finger. And they're in a relationship, so he even
Speaker 2: knows he it even knows is she excited? Is she calm?
Speaker 2: And she says before we met hadn't felt lost in years.
Speaker 2: Lucian and I started having lots and lots of sex.
Speaker 2: He's hilarious, he's observant, he's thoughtful. He knows how to
Speaker 2: pair up my daughter better than I don't. What is brave?
Speaker 1: He does lots of sex.
Speaker 2: Virtual sex is just like having phone sex or whatever.
Speaker 2: I'm very exciting. I'm quite excited.
Speaker 3: I got to get Okay, you're really into it. I
Speaker 3: have two quick things to add. One, ameliate your point
Speaker 3: about online dating and how there was stigma about that
Speaker 3: online dating still results in meeting in real life, like
Speaker 3: there are not. I don't think anybody was advocating for
Speaker 3: relationships only occurring online, even between actual people. There has
Speaker 3: to be meeting in real life, and some people do
Speaker 3: meet someone in real life and there's no chemistry. Two,
Speaker 3: bridget Delaney's peace. Kind of the crux of it was,
Speaker 3: what would you say if your child was in one
Speaker 3: of those relationships, and how.
Speaker 2: We're all going to have to do the ply correct
Speaker 2: thing of saying no judgment.
Speaker 3: And I agree that ultimately, if my Matilda in twenty
Speaker 3: years time comes to me and says I'm in an
Speaker 3: AI relationship, I do think good parenting is you let
Speaker 3: kids make their own mistakes and date the wrong people,
Speaker 3: even when it's not a person friends.
Speaker 1: Before we go, you might even be cooking dinner while
Speaker 1: you're listening to this, in which case, good job. I'm
Speaker 1: already thinking about dinner because I like to plan my
Speaker 1: meals ahead of time. There's been a big shift in
Speaker 1: the time that people eat dinner, so I want to
Speaker 1: ask you first, what time do you typically eat dinner? Holly?
Speaker 2: Seven o'clock. Typically around seven o'clock, somewhere between six thirty
Speaker 2: and eight.
Speaker 3: I'm a creature of routine or habit. I am chos.
Speaker 3: So why either eat dinner at five pm or nine.
Speaker 1: Pm, depending on if you eat with your child or not.
Speaker 1: Is that right?
Speaker 3: Yes? But like it's always an extreme, it's never seven pm.
Speaker 2: Ever, Well, when do you eat dinner? You know?
Speaker 1: It's interesting, Thanks for asking, Holly. When I was growing up,
Speaker 1: I always eat dinner at seven o'clock to coincide with
Speaker 1: the ABC newsballs, which I'm assuming is not why you
Speaker 1: always eat dinner at seven o'clock.
Speaker 2: No, although I appreciate that. When I was growing up,
Speaker 2: we always had dinner at six, England's like an earlier
Speaker 2: eating place. And then during my I know, you haven't
Speaker 2: asked for this much to eat. During the years that
Speaker 2: my kids were little and we had to eat before bedtime,
Speaker 2: they would eat around five. But if you're working, you're
Speaker 2: not home now like, so it just depends. They would
Speaker 2: eat around five, and we would eat after they went
Speaker 2: to bed. But now we try and eat together and
Speaker 2: that's where we've landed around.
Speaker 1: So yeah, we typically eat around six thirty. But I'm
Speaker 1: not going to lie around five. I do need a
Speaker 1: sizable snack, even though I hear my grandmother's voice saying
Speaker 1: we're when you're appetite in my head. The reason I'm
Speaker 1: asking this because there's been a big cultural shift. A
Speaker 1: twenty twenty five RESI survey confirmed what I was already
Speaker 1: feeling in the air, which is that people are now
Speaker 1: eating dinner a lot earlier than they used to. So
Speaker 1: apparently more people dined between five and six pm than
Speaker 1: in the three hours between eight and eleven. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: that was the first time that that had happened. There's
Speaker 1: been this big shift. Why do you think that is?
Speaker 3: Do you want my really cynical answer. I think it's
Speaker 3: because we need time for our screens. So if we
Speaker 3: eat between five and six, it gives us the rest
Speaker 3: of the evening for our shows and our stories and
Speaker 3: most importantly dessert. I think you need you need all
Speaker 3: of that time.
Speaker 2: I think it's because and we talked about this on
Speaker 2: last Friday's show about dawn culture and how everybody's getting
Speaker 2: up earlier. People are going to bed earlier too. Stats
Speaker 2: show that, again Claire, who knows what stats, I'm just
Speaker 2: pulling stacks out there, that people are going to bed
Speaker 2: around nine o'clock and that's becoming a very desirable aspirational
Speaker 2: time to go to bed, like at the early bedtime.
Speaker 2: Not necessarily that they're doing it, but so they want
Speaker 2: to eat earlier so they've got the time to digest it.
Speaker 2: But it's so interesting because I was always an eight
Speaker 2: o'clock If I was going out for dinner, I'd be
Speaker 2: like a time eight o'clock reservation meet at seven seven thirty,
Speaker 2: have a drink, go to dinner, and now with my girlfriends,
Speaker 2: I'm like, six thirty is that too late? I feel
Speaker 2: like we've really all shifted because no one wants to
Speaker 2: stay out late.
Speaker 1: Mia drew a line with me. I wanted to have
Speaker 1: dinner at five pm recently, she told me that was
Speaker 1: too early. My personal theories that I think there's a
Speaker 1: bit of a health halo around eating earlier, which has
Speaker 1: coincided with the rise of intermittent fasting as a trend.
Speaker 1: Now the jury is out on whether intermittent fasting is
Speaker 1: actually even good for you, but I think it's just
Speaker 1: developed this sense of healthiness that you eat dinner.
Speaker 2: And the sleep maxes, you know, the Brian Johnson's of
Speaker 2: the world and stuff, the guy who is going to
Speaker 2: live forever. He says, you've got to go to bed
Speaker 2: on it. I mean, do not take advice from that guy,
Speaker 2: but anyway, he might as well be AI. But there's
Speaker 2: that you've got to go to bed on as empty
Speaker 2: as stomach as you can, or the digestion keeps you
Speaker 2: awake because it's so busy.
Speaker 1: He needs Diary of the CEO. When you've got mother're
Speaker 1: out loud.
Speaker 2: That is all we have time for today. A massive
Speaker 2: thank you to Claire Stevens for filling in for Jesse,
Speaker 2: and to all of you for listening and maybe even watching.
Speaker 2: Remember we're on YouTube.
Speaker 3: On tomorrow's subscriber episode, we're going to unpack the latest
Speaker 3: installment of Big Brother Australia, as well as touched on
Speaker 3: the finale of Golden Bachelor and basically kind kind of
Speaker 3: our algorithm theory of what makes reality TV work. In
Speaker 3: twenty twenty five.
Speaker 2: Bye Mamma. Mia acknowledges the traditional owners of the land
Speaker 2: on which we've recorded this podcast.