Speaker 1: You're listening to a MoMA Mia podcast.
Speaker 2: Mamma Mia acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters
Speaker 2: that this podcast is recorded on.
Speaker 1: We've got the first generation of parents who were parenting
Speaker 1: issues that they never experienced. So when I was growing
Speaker 1: up and you were growing up Gen x's.
Speaker 3: Were growing up, it was like, Yeah, we did all the.
Speaker 1: Same naughty shit that our parents did. They have lived experience,
Speaker 1: and the things we were doing not even do we
Speaker 1: not have lived experience of this stuff. We don't even
Speaker 1: understand the words.
Speaker 2: Hello and welcome to Mama Mia. Out loud. It's what
Speaker 2: women are actually talking about on Monday, the twenty fourth
Speaker 2: of March. My name is Hollywayne Wright.
Speaker 4: My name's Mia Friedman, and today we are joined by
Speaker 4: Amelia Leicester.
Speaker 2: I think I was supposed to say that, Sorry, Amelia.
Speaker 2: Welcome Amelia Lester filling in for Jesse Steve.
Speaker 4: Thank you. Amelia is delighted to be here on.
Speaker 2: This show today. Luckily for you out loud, as we
Speaker 2: are here to bust some very important fake pyramid news.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the Anatomy of a conspiracy. Also the eighty
Speaker 2: twenty theory that everyone's madly googling after the TV phenomenon
Speaker 2: that is adolescence, and one of the stars of the
Speaker 2: White Lotus wants you to stop asking about his penis please,
Speaker 2: but first Mia.
Speaker 1: In case you missed it. Fresh from his stint at
Speaker 1: the Olympics, Snoop Dogg has a new job, and that
Speaker 1: is peace invoy between the royal brothers, William and Harry.
Speaker 3: The rapper has said that he would be happy this week.
Speaker 1: To act as a peacemaker between William and Harry because
Speaker 1: life is too short, as he said, and he said
Speaker 1: that he was willing to help heal that relationship between
Speaker 1: the estranged men. Well that's random, you may be thinking.
Speaker 1: Does he even know them? Well, yes, yes he actually does,
Speaker 1: he said. Harry and William I have known for a
Speaker 1: long time now. Harry asked me to perform at William's
Speaker 1: bachelor party, but I couldn't make it. Anything they want
Speaker 1: to perform at Now I am there. They are brothers, man.
Speaker 1: Anything that gets them in the same room and being
Speaker 1: brothers again will be worth it.
Speaker 4: Look Snoop has lived many lives. I think if anyone
Speaker 4: can bring the life experience necessary to heal this rift,
Speaker 4: it's Snoop. I don't know if you know this, but
Speaker 4: he was a member of a La gang in his
Speaker 4: twenties and actually was acquitted at first degree murder.
Speaker 1: I didn't know that, And who I knew is that
Speaker 1: he's Martha Stewart's new best friend.
Speaker 4: He is, but in his thirties he became a born
Speaker 4: again Christian. So he has lived many lives and you know,
Speaker 4: most recently he was in this controversial appearance at Trump's inauguration.
Speaker 4: He went to the Crypto Ball and performed there, and
Speaker 4: that was very controversial because he previously said that black
Speaker 4: artists should not support Donald Trump, and now he's all
Speaker 4: in on Crypto. He's all in on Trump, So I
Speaker 4: mean he is someone who's capable of changing his mind.
Speaker 4: We know that.
Speaker 2: I also think he would be really fun over at
Speaker 2: lunch at Montecito. I think he'd have some ideas for
Speaker 2: Megan's garden and things that she could grow in the
Speaker 2: back garden.
Speaker 3: She could roll in a nice, juicy blunt.
Speaker 2: I think he'd like that, and I have high helps
Speaker 2: that he could, you know, have a peace summit between
Speaker 2: the two brothers. It needs to happen. I need a
Speaker 2: new chapter in that.
Speaker 4: Because you remember when Princess Kate tried it at Prince
Speaker 4: Philip's funeral. She's sort of. She brought them together as
Speaker 4: they were walking out, and then she purled back, and
Speaker 4: then William and Harry walked together for a few moments,
Speaker 4: but to no avail tense.
Speaker 2: The thing about out Louders is that we're a curious people.
Speaker 2: We like information, we like news, we like a little
Speaker 2: bit of gossip, and yes, sometimes we like to get
Speaker 2: swept up in an exciting conspiracy theory. That's why one
Speaker 2: of our number jumped into the out Louders Facebook group
Speaker 2: on the weekend and asked an innocent enough question about
Speaker 2: a secret world beneath the pyramids of Northern Africa. The
Speaker 2: post went like this, just went to a friend's house
Speaker 2: and she was telling me about this amazing underground system
Speaker 2: that's just been discovered under the pyramids a couple of
Speaker 2: days ago, and that it's breaking news.
Speaker 4: And wow.
Speaker 2: Then I take a look on CNN, BBC News dot
Speaker 2: com and ABC to find out more, but there's nothing
Speaker 2: to be found. Why wouldn't something like this beyond the
Speaker 2: mainstream media, she says.
Speaker 4: Was the friend snoop dog that would be great.
Speaker 2: Spoke to my husband and he knew about it, and said,
Speaker 2: the mainstream media don't want to publicize these sorts of
Speaker 2: discoveries now. Other outluders jumped in immediately, telling her that
Speaker 2: she and her friend and her husband presumably were victims
Speaker 2: of a conspiracy theory, and it's a theory that's been
Speaker 2: around for a while, but has recently had new life
Speaker 2: breathed into on TikTok, of course, where creators are posting
Speaker 2: lots of videos talking about a paper that declares there's
Speaker 2: a vast secret city underneath the Pyramids, exposed by satellite radar.
Speaker 2: The reason that our out louder could not find this, however,
Speaker 2: on those credible news sites, is that it has widely
Speaker 2: been debunked. Leading egyptologists and archaeologists who've worked in this
Speaker 2: field for decades say it's impossible, and scientists out the
Speaker 2: accuracy of the supposed like radar be or whatever that
Speaker 2: have been shot down from satellites apparently to expose this.
Speaker 2: They say that's impossible. It couldn't penetrate that far underground,
Speaker 2: and they're.
Speaker 1: Trying to say that there's a city under there, like
Speaker 1: with people in it.
Speaker 2: I don't think they're saying there are people, but they're saying,
Speaker 2: it's like a whole world of chambers and cities. This
Speaker 2: is one of the interesting points about it me because
Speaker 2: I'm like, why do we care so much any people there?
Speaker 1: Because the QAnon had that conspiracy theory years ago about
Speaker 1: these underground tunnels through New York being used to washing
Speaker 1: children to Washington.
Speaker 4: There was a pizza shop.
Speaker 3: Oh, that's right, they.
Speaker 1: Were being used to smuggle children who were being trafficked.
Speaker 1: So people do like a tunnel conspiracy.
Speaker 3: They do.
Speaker 2: And I want to know, particularly from Amelia Lester, why
Speaker 2: we're so keen to believe these days that the truth
Speaker 2: is being hidden from us, whether it's about secret cities
Speaker 2: under deserts or tunnels in New York City, And why
Speaker 2: does everybody really want to believe conspiracy?
Speaker 4: Because sometimes the truth is being hidden from us. And
Speaker 4: I bring this as a card carrying member of the
Speaker 4: mainstream media, but sometimes the mainstream media hides things from people.
Speaker 4: And the example I'm going to bring up here is
Speaker 4: at the beginning of the COVID pandemic, when we were
Speaker 4: told by epidemiologists quoted in mainstream outlets that masks did
Speaker 4: not work, that you had to get medical masks professionally fitted,
Speaker 4: otherwise they wouldn't work. And it turns out, just a
Speaker 4: couple of weeks later, it was revealed that the reason
Speaker 4: why that was reported that way was because they were
Speaker 4: trying to save masks for healthcare workers, which is all
Speaker 4: well and good, love a healthcare worker. But the problem
Speaker 4: is that the media just very credulously reported this idea
Speaker 4: that masks didn't work, when we now know, of course,
Speaker 4: that masks do work.
Speaker 1: I'm going to pick you up on that now because
Speaker 1: I think that two things. Really when people talk about
Speaker 1: the mainstream media keeping things from us, as you say,
Speaker 1: the mainstream media is everything from the Project to Kyle
Speaker 1: and Jackie O to us to the New York Times. Right,
Speaker 1: it's a pretty broad show. And unless it's going to spam,
Speaker 1: I've missed the invitations to the mainstream media meetings where
Speaker 1: we're told by I don't know governments what we can
Speaker 1: and can't write about. And what I do know is
Speaker 1: that journalists and the mainstream media, who are accountable to
Speaker 1: things like deformation.
Speaker 3: Laws, like libel laws, press.
Speaker 1: Counsel adjudications, sometimes we don't report things until.
Speaker 3: There are enough facts.
Speaker 1: When you say credulously, and I think COVID is like
Speaker 1: a very specific thing that we'd never lived through a
Speaker 1: pandemic before, and it's so easy to have twenty twenty hindsight.
Speaker 1: And similarly, everyone said it came from a bat and
Speaker 1: the markets, and now it seems like it came from
Speaker 1: a lab. Sometimes you write or you report what you
Speaker 1: know and what you can verify at the time, and
Speaker 1: when more information comes out, well then you report that.
Speaker 1: It doesn't mean you were lying back then covering something out.
Speaker 4: I've got a more recent example. I knew you were
Speaker 4: going to say that about COVID. So did you hear
Speaker 4: about the drones last year? So did you hear you
Speaker 4: were trying to get me? And I just could sometimes
Speaker 4: I throw you tidbits in our chat and hope that
Speaker 4: you'll sort of.
Speaker 2: You were like that pebbal is not for me.
Speaker 4: So in November and December of last year, there were
Speaker 4: these drone sidings on the US East Coast, and I
Speaker 4: had a number of friends and family losing their minds,
Speaker 4: thinking that these drones were harbingers of doom. They kept
Speaker 4: seeing them at night. There were lots of them. I
Speaker 4: saw videos of them, and politicians were getting in on
Speaker 4: it too. This New Jersey politician said that the drones
Speaker 4: were coming from Iran, from the Iranian mothership. Another one
Speaker 4: other sheep, yeah, that's obviously a technical term. Another one
Speaker 4: said there was a non trivial chance that China could
Speaker 4: be involved in the drones. And even the FBI said
Speaker 4: they did not know where the drones were coming from.
Speaker 4: So it was kind of fun to start speculating about
Speaker 4: where these drones were coming from and why they were
Speaker 4: suddenly appearing everywhere. The government didn't really say much. There
Speaker 4: was this FBI thing, and then everyone was speculating that
Speaker 4: war was about to start. They truly didn't know. But
Speaker 4: then just a couple of weeks ago, President Chump's new
Speaker 4: Press secretary, Caroline Leave, it came out and she said
Speaker 4: that the drones were governmental and that they were doing research.
Speaker 4: What kind of resent, Well, she didn't really say. And
Speaker 4: also why did we have to wait until now to
Speaker 4: hear what the drones were about?
Speaker 3: But that's not about the media. That's about the well.
Speaker 4: At the time, there were these explainers in the New
Speaker 4: York Times, that Washington Post and elsewhere saying there's nothing
Speaker 4: to see here, the drones are nothing. It's like, well,
Speaker 4: the drones are clearly something.
Speaker 2: The thing is, though, is that sometimes we don't need
Speaker 2: to know straight away right And this is often the
Speaker 2: tension between governments, you know, lawmakers, courts, police, etc. And
Speaker 2: us annoying journalists who are always like, tell us, tell us,
Speaker 2: tell us, we're going to dig until we find out,
Speaker 2: and they're like, we're figuring it out. It's probably better
Speaker 2: you don't all know right now. This might not be
Speaker 2: the case with the drones. I don't know, but maybe
Speaker 2: it took a while to figure out where they were
Speaker 2: coming from and so on.
Speaker 3: Like the masks.
Speaker 2: Is a good point where Mia makes the point that
Speaker 2: in the pandemic we were all moving so quickly. There's
Speaker 2: a lot of yelling now about but they told us this,
Speaker 2: and they told us that, but a lot of those
Speaker 2: experts were learning on the job. We're not learning on
Speaker 2: the job, but the research was coming in thick and fast.
Speaker 1: Remember when we had to sing Happy Birthday while washing
Speaker 1: your hands.
Speaker 4: I'm still meant to happy washing your hands.
Speaker 2: It might turn out that there is a secret chamber
Speaker 2: under the pyramids, yea geezer, It might turn.
Speaker 4: To be honest. What I heard from you, Holly, was
Speaker 4: that they don't yet have the radar to penetrate beneath
Speaker 4: the pyramids, not that they have denied that the exact
Speaker 4: The reason.
Speaker 2: That the BBC isn't saying yes, definitely a you know,
Speaker 2: a city, and CNN I was saying yes, it definitely
Speaker 2: a city is because the scientists and everyone are going,
Speaker 2: we can't verify that yet. So it's a signal of
Speaker 2: the impatience between a rumor becoming fact that now we
Speaker 2: jump on that space in between and call it conspiracy.
Speaker 4: Yes, I just think that we in the media probably
Speaker 4: do need to do a better job of admitting when
Speaker 4: we don't know something, when one expert has told us
Speaker 4: something but they're still learning on the job. We didn't
Speaker 4: know back in COVID Times that the epidemiologists quoted saying
Speaker 4: that mass didn't work. We're learning on the job. Of course,
Speaker 4: now that you say it makes perfect sense, but at
Speaker 4: the time that was presented as gospel to us.
Speaker 1: What always strikes me is the naivety of people believing
Speaker 1: that if the media had this amazing story about you know,
Speaker 1: cabals of Hollywood elites eating children, or city under their
Speaker 1: ground or Chinese drones, the media would be cloring over
Speaker 1: each other to report that right, because from the point
Speaker 1: of view of journalists, everybody wants to break a great story.
Speaker 1: But also media organizations want to get exclusives because that
Speaker 1: makes traffic, which you can want to monetize. And you know,
Speaker 1: in this attention economy, the idea that the media are
Speaker 1: suppressing things because someone's told us to.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't think they're suppressing it, but I think
Speaker 4: sometimes there's not a lot of admission of humility, like
Speaker 4: we don't know versus nothing to say. Do you hear, folks,
Speaker 4: there's no underground city. I don't know. I'm hanging out
Speaker 4: for the underground city.
Speaker 3: It sounds fun in a moment.
Speaker 2: What is the eighty twenty theory and why is the
Speaker 2: world googling it? After watching Adolescence, Tina.
Speaker 1: Fey wants celebrities to stay in that lane and stop
Speaker 1: starting side hustles. She does not want to buy Natalie
Speaker 1: Portman's vegan shoes, Beyonce's shampoo, Cameron diaz Is organic wine,
Speaker 1: Jennifer Anderson's shampoo, j Loo's alcoholic sprits.
Speaker 4: The list goes on.
Speaker 1: Here's what she says on Amy Polla's new podcast after
Speaker 1: Amy said to her that she had great hair and
Speaker 1: should start her own haircut line.
Speaker 5: But you have incredible hair. I feel like you should
Speaker 5: have a hair campaign. And also I always pushing you
Speaker 5: to have a glass line. Why do you not have clouds?
Speaker 5: I don't have a glasses line because I have to say,
Speaker 5: you hate money. I have a problem with rich people
Speaker 5: having a side hustle. Yeah, do you mean like a podcasting?
Speaker 6: No, this is your doing work. I'm saying if you
Speaker 6: if you sold, like, where would my line be for you?
Speaker 6: Where would I draw the line?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 5: I know you mean like if I had if I
Speaker 5: had a rose, if you yeah, you know.
Speaker 6: If you already have like two hundred million dollars and
Speaker 6: you're like, also, I need you to be Tina.
Speaker 5: That is this is where you have to learn from
Speaker 5: gen Z.
Speaker 3: I'm sorry, and we have to They don't care, they don't,
Speaker 3: they don't.
Speaker 4: They don't judge it, judge it.
Speaker 5: Well, get you should stop because this is the thing
Speaker 5: that you have to have a million, you have to
Speaker 5: have glasses amiliar?
Speaker 3: Is it very gen x to be?
Speaker 1: I mean I love a side hustle obviously, so it
Speaker 1: doesn't apply to me. But do you think that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the idea of selling out is classic gen X,
Speaker 4: and I think it's part of why we've seen such
Speaker 4: a big backlash against Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively. I mean, yes,
Speaker 4: there's the texts of it all, but also Ryan Reynolds
Speaker 4: has been selling his gin for a long time now.
Speaker 4: His wife, Blake Lively, sells hair care and also an
Speaker 4: alcoholic beverages line. She doesn't drink, by the way, neither
Speaker 4: is j Loo, who also has a drenk. Jlo was
Speaker 4: also the one who told us that she uses olive
Speaker 4: oil on her skin until she wanted to sell us
Speaker 4: the skincare line. I'm over it. I love that Tina
Speaker 4: Fair is saying this.
Speaker 2: I agree it's funny because I'm sure it is gen X,
Speaker 2: but I do judge it because I'm like, what you
Speaker 2: get paid. Don't mean Tina Faye, but some a another
Speaker 2: movie star. You get paid thirty million dollars a movie
Speaker 2: and you need girose line. But then maybe ordinary people
Speaker 2: don't understand how expensive their lives are. Because you're right
Speaker 2: about Ryan Reynolds, but he doesn't only have gin. He
Speaker 2: also has a phone company. Oh yeah, that's a football team.
Speaker 2: He owns the world. We live, just live in Ryan
Speaker 2: Reynolds's world, and like sometimes I'm.
Speaker 4: Like as Ashton Kutcher, who is now he made some
Speaker 4: money through acting, but now he's made most of his
Speaker 4: money through his venture capital firm.
Speaker 1: But that's very different to selling me a sprits. I mean,
Speaker 1: Chris Hemsworth has a fitness app, Galgodott has a boxed
Speaker 1: macaroni cheese company. Scarlet your Hansen has a popcorn st
Speaker 1: and she's got getting caved in Paris. I don't understand
Speaker 1: the problem. It's like, for so long, famous people and
Speaker 1: particularly women, were used to make money for other people
Speaker 1: by being the faces of other people's businesses, and now
Speaker 1: these celebrities are saying, well, I'm not in control necessarily
Speaker 1: of my fame. And also particularly for the women, it's
Speaker 1: a tough world out there for a woman getting older,
Speaker 1: so I want a side hustle to use my own brain.
Speaker 4: It's not a tough world for a man out there
Speaker 4: when he's older.
Speaker 2: It's the Kardashian's fault because when the Kardashians became famous,
Speaker 2: and people used to say, but what do they do?
Speaker 2: No one says that anymore because they sprook things. That's
Speaker 2: what they do, but in the day they were spooking
Speaker 2: public toilets to remember that when there was the time.
Speaker 1: I still sometimes do they still take money for posts,
Speaker 1: But then there are also a lot of them are
Speaker 1: billionaires in their own right because the businesses that they've
Speaker 1: still like Skims and Kylie cost.
Speaker 4: And maybe that's where we draw the line. When the
Speaker 4: company comes across as standing on it so on two feet,
Speaker 4: I think we forgive it more so. Skims is an example,
Speaker 4: now has a billion dollar valuation. Selena Gomez's Rare Beauty
Speaker 4: is now a billion dollar company, and we all accept
Speaker 4: that that's the best liquid blush there is. When it's
Speaker 4: a good company, I think we forgive it.
Speaker 2: J Loo and Britney Spears have both made more money
Speaker 2: out of the perfumes with their names on them than
Speaker 2: anything else in their careers, so it definitely works. But
Speaker 2: it feels like I think what pay is saying is like,
Speaker 2: how many things do you need to put your name on?
Speaker 2: And I'm sure you're right that it's a gen x judgment.
Speaker 3: I'd buy some of her glasses. I wish she'd launch
Speaker 3: a glasses line.
Speaker 2: I'm selfish that she hasn't.
Speaker 4: This next topic is one that makes me really uncomfortable
Speaker 4: to talk about it, but we have to talk about
Speaker 4: it because everyone is talking about it right now. And
Speaker 4: it's the eighty twenty rule. This is a rule of
Speaker 4: in cells online, who believe that eighty percent of women
Speaker 4: are attracted to twenty percent of men. The phrase apparently
Speaker 4: comes from economics. It's from an Italian economist who observed
Speaker 4: at the beginning of the twentieth century that just twenty
Speaker 4: percent of Italian owned eighty percent of land. But in
Speaker 4: recent years in cells have really grabbed hold of this
Speaker 4: and they use this theory to justify why they deserve
Speaker 4: sex from women, because they say that twenty percent of
Speaker 4: men are alphas or chads in their parlance, and they
Speaker 4: get all the sexual opportunities, while the eighty percent of
Speaker 4: men who are not chads don't get any love from women,
Speaker 4: and therefore they can coerce women into sex.
Speaker 1: So it's like the eighty twenty rule of you wear
Speaker 1: twenty percent of your clothes eighty percent of the time.
Speaker 4: It's like that sort of more depressed and impressive. And
Speaker 4: the reason why suddenly everyone's talking about the eighty twenty
Speaker 4: rule is because of this show on Netflix called adolescence.
Speaker 4: This show has triggered a huge conversation about the radicalization
Speaker 4: of young men, how they turn into in cells, why
Speaker 4: young men are committing violence against women, why misogynistic violence
Speaker 4: is on the rise. I haven't watched this show. I
Speaker 4: don't think I ever will watch it, but I'm grateful
Speaker 4: to the star and co writer of the show, Stephen Grain,
Speaker 4: because I think he has kicked off a very important
Speaker 4: conversation at a world that not a lot of us
Speaker 4: know a lot about. I want to share with you
Speaker 4: a clip of him on Jimmy Fallon Show recently talking
Speaker 4: about why he made the show.
Speaker 7: It's a young boy who kills a young girl. I'm
Speaker 7: not doing any spoilers because we found out straight away,
Speaker 7: and as a collective, we didn't want it to be
Speaker 7: a who done it? We wanted it to be more
Speaker 7: of a why why he did it? You know what
Speaker 7: I mean? So what we kind of did was I
Speaker 7: watched I read an article in the paper. It was
Speaker 7: about a young boy who stabbed a young girl to death.
Speaker 7: And then there was a couple of months later on
Speaker 7: the news there was a piece about a young boy
Speaker 7: who stabbed a young girl to death. And these were
Speaker 7: the opposite ends of the country. And I just, if
Speaker 7: I'm really honest with you, Jim, I just hate my
Speaker 7: heart and I just think kind of a society we're
Speaker 7: living in at the moment where young boys are stabbing
Speaker 7: young girls and you know that beautiful saying it takes
Speaker 7: a village to raise a child. Well, I just thought,
Speaker 7: what if we're all kind of accountable, you know, the
Speaker 7: education system, parenting, the community, the government. And also when
Speaker 7: we were kids, we didn't have social media. So if
Speaker 7: we were in our rooms when we were kids, we
Speaker 7: were either playing out in the streets we or we
Speaker 7: were in our rooms I draw them pitches or playing
Speaker 7: keyboards or somethin We didn't have the accessibility to all
Speaker 7: of this stuff in the world that really influences young minds.
Speaker 7: And I just I wanted to take a look at it.
Speaker 7: I'm not blaming anyone. I just thought, maybe we're all
Speaker 7: accountable and we should, you know, have a conversation about it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I guess it's really great.
Speaker 1: Right, Oh, you're braver than Amelia or I. You watched
Speaker 1: it immediately, as did Jesse, and everyone's talking to you
Speaker 1: about it, and you want to.
Speaker 3: Talk about it.
Speaker 1: What are they saying, like, what are the things that
Speaker 1: people are taking away from this show?
Speaker 2: So I think that the reason that so something like
Speaker 2: the eight twenty rule that we decided to talk about
Speaker 2: today is being passed around, and there is some other
Speaker 2: intel in this show from the secret language of emojis,
Speaker 2: for example. I think what a lot of people are
Speaker 2: taking from this show is they want to s intel.
Speaker 2: They want to understand if they can do and if
Speaker 2: they've got children. We talked about this mere but I
Speaker 2: think how are you reacting to adolescents probably has a
Speaker 2: lot to do with your life stage right. Because Jesse
Speaker 2: recommended the show on Friday, it is an outstanding show.
Speaker 2: I also have to do a shout out for hearing
Speaker 2: an accent like that on an American talk show. Don't
Speaker 2: offer because this is a sidebar, but British creatives usually
Speaker 2: talk like this.
Speaker 8: They do.
Speaker 2: He's a work class man from the North of England
Speaker 2: and he has made one of the most important pieces
Speaker 2: of television to be made in ten years. Because the
Speaker 2: thing about this show is and he goes on to
Speaker 2: saying that he didn't have answers. It's not a show
Speaker 2: with like neat answers and things tied up in bows.
Speaker 2: But what it does is it reflects a whole cultural moment.
Speaker 2: And I think back to the life stage bit. If
Speaker 2: you've got a child in that demo, a thirteen year
Speaker 2: old boy, and obviously I do, and I have a
Speaker 2: fifteen year old girl, so teenagers, or you have kids
Speaker 2: who are younger and coming up to that space. It's
Speaker 2: not new to say that one of the things we
Speaker 2: mostly freak out about and parents talk about more than
Speaker 2: anything else is technology, right phones, social media, input and influence,
Speaker 2: and one of the things that this show does so
Speaker 2: brilliantly in episode two, and I won't go into lots
Speaker 2: of details if you're not watching it is not interesting,
Speaker 2: but basically, the policeman who is investigating this murder, his
Speaker 2: teenage son explains to him because the police are looking
Speaker 2: at all this evidence, you know, they're talking to the kids,
Speaker 2: and the kids aren't telling them anything, and they're looking
Speaker 2: at comments on social media and they're going there doesn't
Speaker 2: seem to be anything here. And then one of the
Speaker 2: policeman's teenage son kind of translates some of the comments
Speaker 2: for him.
Speaker 8: The eighty to.
Speaker 9: Twenty as a listen, my brain can't take all this.
Speaker 8: I don't know what you're talking about. Just break it down.
Speaker 8: Eighty percent of women are attracted to twenty percent of men.
Speaker 8: Women you must trick them because you'll never get them
Speaker 8: in a normal way. Eighty percent of women are cut
Speaker 8: off or or she's seeing he's an insult.
Speaker 2: That and explains that that's kind of coded language of
Speaker 2: the manisphere, and also of the girls using that language
Speaker 2: back at the boys as an insult, like calling them
Speaker 2: an insul and so on as an insult. So I
Speaker 2: think for a lot of parents, they're like clinging onto this.
Speaker 4: Like information we can try and protect.
Speaker 2: Ourselves from this. And then I think, if you're in
Speaker 2: a different phase of your life, you can just watch
Speaker 2: this show as a remarkable piece of television because it's
Speaker 2: famously discussed. Every episode is in one take. Acting is amazing.
Speaker 2: It doesn't offer all those neat little solutions were used
Speaker 2: to in a TV drama. I haven't seen a show
Speaker 2: take hold of people like this for such a long time,
Speaker 2: because I think it's grabbed hold of our biggest fears
Speaker 2: and we're swimming in this awful news at the moment.
Speaker 2: At the weekend, there was an enormous amount of courage
Speaker 2: of the Lily James Inquest, who was a young woman
Speaker 2: murdered two years ago in Sydney. The man who killed
Speaker 2: her took his own life, so we never got answers
Speaker 2: from him, but there's been an inquest and a lot
Speaker 2: of the similar themes come through, even though these people
Speaker 2: were in their early twenties. Rejection, you know, the idea,
Speaker 2: oh yeah, she wasn't as keen on him as he
Speaker 2: was on her. And that's also a theme in adolescence, stalking,
Speaker 2: you know, tracking people's whereabouts, what people say about each
Speaker 2: other on social media. It all feels of a peace
Speaker 2: and we're all just really frightened, and I think this
Speaker 2: show has kind of opened a bit of a window
Speaker 2: for us to be able to go what are we doing?
Speaker 4: But did it make you feel dismay? That's why I
Speaker 4: don't think I can bring them.
Speaker 2: Distress and de spare definitely. In fact, I had to
Speaker 2: watch it in bits, so I said this to you
Speaker 2: guys last week because me and Jesse were talking about it.
Speaker 2: I was like, Oh, it's amazing, it's amazing. And then
Speaker 2: I got halfway through the third episode and I had
Speaker 2: to stop because I literally was getting very distressed. But
Speaker 2: I also think that some things are important enough that
Speaker 2: we have to sit in our discomfort about them, right,
Speaker 2: like a lot of things are. And the thing that's
Speaker 2: interesting about this is now it's broken out into this
Speaker 2: mainstream conversation. I mean, Stephen Graham says, I wanted to
Speaker 2: have a conversation about what if we're all accountable, which is.
Speaker 3: A very big question. The problem is a lot of it.
Speaker 2: Always I was back to phones, which feels like this
Speaker 2: in sol the problem don't let your kids have too
Speaker 2: much access unfitted this idea that Jonathan Hite talks about,
Speaker 2: that we're overparenting in real life and underparenting in digital life.
Speaker 1: What I often think is the hardest thing for our
Speaker 1: generation of parents. And sometimes I feel like I'm a
Speaker 1: little bit of a bridge between old parenting and new
Speaker 1: parenting because I had most of my kids quite a
Speaker 1: while ago. It was before this, it was before the Manisphere,
Speaker 1: it was before I Andrew Taate and I've got a
Speaker 1: teenage son still, but that really vulnerable age of like
Speaker 1: tween and teen. Things were just different then when my
Speaker 1: kids were younger. But we've got the first generation of
Speaker 1: parents who were parenting issues that they never experienced. So
Speaker 1: when I was growing up and you were growing up,
Speaker 1: the Gen x'es were growing up, it was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: we did all the same naughty shit that our parents did.
Speaker 3: Drugs, alcohol, sex.
Speaker 1: All of those kinds of things, you know, skipping school,
Speaker 1: and our parents it just wasn't any different. So they
Speaker 1: could make rules because it was they had lived experience
Speaker 1: of the things we were doing. Not only do we
Speaker 1: not have lived experience of this stuff, we don't even
Speaker 1: understand the words.
Speaker 3: And it's also invisible to us.
Speaker 1: So it's not even as if we can really learn
Speaker 1: about it, because you can't. You can watch a movie
Speaker 1: like this, but of course half of that, the emojis
Speaker 1: and everything in the terminology, that'll all be out of date,
Speaker 1: and it will evolve and evolve and evolve. So it's
Speaker 1: like this secret talk about the underground world underneath the
Speaker 1: pyramids that's happening in the lives of our children that
Speaker 1: we have no idea about.
Speaker 4: And also as the technology has evolved, the challenges have intensified.
Speaker 4: See when I was growing up in the nineties, I'm
Speaker 4: sure listeners who grew up at the same time can
Speaker 4: relate to this. There was one big family computer and
Speaker 4: it was either in the corner of the living room
Speaker 4: or in one of your parents' studies, and it was
Speaker 4: this enormous thing, and you couldn't go in there, syrup.
Speaker 4: You would first of all have to dial up then
Speaker 4: and then you'd get on. But that said, kids are resourceful.
Speaker 4: I have to say that when I was on the
Speaker 4: Internet in the nineties, I was going to chat rooms
Speaker 4: and talking to people. My parents had no idea. But
Speaker 4: the difference is I guess that that's just ramped up
Speaker 4: even more since then.
Speaker 2: It's true, and it's interesting because obviously you can be
Speaker 2: semi literate. To your point me that there's a whole
Speaker 2: language we don't understand, which I think is why a
Speaker 2: lot of parents are seizing on the details of this show.
Speaker 2: There's a whole longs you don't understand it. If you're
Speaker 2: semi literate, sometimes it can be clumsier than if you
Speaker 2: don't understand it at all. My son will be watching
Speaker 2: YouTube shorts and I'll be like, what's that about, And
Speaker 2: he'll be like, it's about Minecraft, And I'm like, is
Speaker 2: it though, or are you being radicalized by the manisphere?
Speaker 2: You know, like there's probably coded messages in this that
Speaker 2: I don't understand, and you're like, and parenting from a
Speaker 2: place of fear is never a good place to parent from.
Speaker 3: My son was listening to You.
Speaker 1: Got in the car the other day and my bluetooth
Speaker 1: picked up his phone and he was listening to a podcast,
Speaker 1: and I was.
Speaker 3: Like, what's this podcast about? Who is the same?
Speaker 1: Is it someone radicalizing you? What are they talking about?
Speaker 4: But how do we avoid the moral panic? Because hasn't
Speaker 4: every parenting generation thought that there was something profoundly wrong
Speaker 4: or worrisome about what their children were consuming or listening to.
Speaker 4: Didn't parents say in the sixties that the Beatles had
Speaker 4: long hair and maybe we're taking drugs and corrupting their children.
Speaker 2: I think that's all true. And I generally am very
Speaker 2: much on the let's not panic bandwagon because I think that,
Speaker 2: you know, the vast majority of kids are not doing
Speaker 2: awful things to each other, The vast majority of males
Speaker 2: and females in relationships are not doing awful things.
Speaker 3: To each other.
Speaker 2: But there is no question that there is a rising
Speaker 2: influence that is almost invisible to the naked eye, that
Speaker 2: we're always really shocked to stumble across. So when you
Speaker 2: find out how many followers Andrew Tait has, for example,
Speaker 2: and he's just one of the names we know, you know,
Speaker 2: the mainstream knows.
Speaker 3: You're always like what you know.
Speaker 2: And when you find out that he's being flown on
Speaker 2: a jet back into him, like, it's kind of all
Speaker 2: very jolting, and I think that you don't want to panic,
Speaker 2: But the same time you have to be alert, just
Speaker 2: to be tiny but helpful, because there are a lot
Speaker 2: of information being swapped on the internet about this. It's
Speaker 2: a lot of the same information that parents share around
Speaker 2: about technology generally that returning to a time of a
Speaker 2: computer in the lounge room meallya it might be impossible,
Speaker 2: but it's still quite a good idea to keep the
Speaker 2: computer's big screens somewhere public, to make sure you talk
Speaker 2: to your kids about it, even though they do not
Speaker 2: want to talk to you about it. It's very clear,
Speaker 2: it's very confusing. Do you too think, having seen the
Speaker 2: scale of this show and its influence, are you tempted
Speaker 2: to watch it now?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 1: No, I'd hate that, Like, seriously, I just won't. And
Speaker 1: I know what you mean. It's like, sometimes we have
Speaker 1: to sit in our discomfort and we have to know.
Speaker 1: I feel like with so many things, you can get
Speaker 1: a sense of it without watching the thing itself.
Speaker 4: It sort of reminds me of how I love horror movies.
Speaker 4: I love you, I love reading the Wikipedia plots and
Speaker 4: Nazis horror movies.
Speaker 1: Break The White Loatus star who has asked everyone to
Speaker 1: please stop talking about his junk.
Speaker 2: One unlimited out loud access. We drop episodes every Tuesday
Speaker 2: and Thursday exclusively for Mamma Mia subscribers. Follow the link
Speaker 2: at the show notes to get us in your ears
Speaker 2: five days a week, and a huge thank you to
Speaker 2: all our current subscribers.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you read a headline that is so bad shit
Speaker 1: you have to pause and think about it for a moment.
Speaker 3: The one I read, Yeah, how's this?
Speaker 1: Jason Isaacs regrets bringing up Mikey Madison's volver watch watch what.
Speaker 1: There's just way too many unrelated nouns in that headline.
Speaker 1: And look if you're wondering why anyone is talking about
Speaker 1: the genitals of celebrities. Jason Isaacs who is the actor
Speaker 1: who plays the character of Tim in The White Lotus.
Speaker 3: He's the dad of the sort.
Speaker 1: Of southern family with the three grown up kids. He
Speaker 1: wants you to know that he didn't start this. So
Speaker 1: here's what happened.
Speaker 3: There was a scene in the show.
Speaker 1: A couple of weeks ago where his character is jacked
Speaker 1: up on his wife's pills and he's a bit out
Speaker 1: of it, and he comes down for breakfast in the
Speaker 1: villa where all his family are gathered and he is
Speaker 1: sitting on a chair and he sort of leans back
Speaker 1: at one point and his bathrobe falls open and you
Speaker 1: see his full situation, and his family are like, oh,
Speaker 1: put it away, put it away, and he leaves, and
Speaker 1: of course the internet immediately wanted to know whether it
Speaker 1: was a prosthetic or not, and so that conversation then
Speaker 1: spilled into the press circuit where all the cast are
Speaker 1: doing interviews, and he started getting asked about it in interviews.
Speaker 1: Here is what happened when he was on an American
Speaker 1: morning show with Gail King.
Speaker 2: You're amaking it is because last week we got to
Speaker 2: see a full frontal and it was you, yes, And
Speaker 2: I'm trying to figure out we were talking about being
Speaker 2: impolite you was that a prothetic?
Speaker 9: Well, because we were debating it, because we were a
Speaker 9: lot of people debating. It's all over the exiet and
Speaker 9: it's interest because you didn't answer the question. Well, I'll
Speaker 9: tell you why, because the best actresses year is Mikey
Speaker 9: Madison at the Oscars, and I don't see anybody discussing
Speaker 9: her vulva, which was on television all the time. Now,
Speaker 9: I'm not talking about Swedish cars, you know. So I
Speaker 9: think it's interesting that there's a double standard for men.
Speaker 9: But when women are naked Margaret quality as well in
Speaker 9: the substance, nobody woul dream of talking to her about
Speaker 9: her janitalia or nipples, any of those things. And so
Speaker 9: it's odd that there's a double standard when it comes
Speaker 9: to discussion.
Speaker 4: A bit of a dud d it is a.
Speaker 9: George, because I don't think that people really want to
Speaker 9: know how the sausage is made.
Speaker 8: Is the guy who does the prosthetics, the same guy
Speaker 8: he does the ears and the noses.
Speaker 9: Who says who's got fow?
Speaker 7: But in general, who's the guy you call?
Speaker 9: I genuinely think it would be odd when when there
Speaker 9: are characters in some of the women are naked. And
Speaker 9: here would be odd if you were sitting here and
Speaker 9: you would never dream of discussing this, Amelia.
Speaker 3: Are you out right?
Speaker 4: Oh? Yeah, I've been really railing against this for a
Speaker 4: long time that we don't talk about women's genitalia enough, culture.
Speaker 2: Their bodies in general, like was that a body double?
Speaker 2: Were those really your boobs?
Speaker 3: There's things get asked all the time. I must have
Speaker 3: missed it.
Speaker 1: I know for a fact because I heard her talking
Speaker 1: about it in an interview that Margaret Quali's boobs and
Speaker 1: bum were prosthetic and cgi a combination.
Speaker 4: Of the two.
Speaker 3: So this is just true. Also, I watched Nonra on
Speaker 3: the weekend.
Speaker 1: Didn't see Mikey Madison's ba bah.
Speaker 2: This is why it was a strange anecdote plat because
Speaker 2: you can tell from his delivery. When a celebrity goes
Speaker 2: on a talk show, they've rehearsed what they're going to say,
Speaker 2: so he knows he's going to be asked about the
Speaker 2: prosthetic penis. He's decided that's quite funny. Make the vulvar
Speaker 2: volvo joke hilarious. Like this, you know it doesn't really land.
Speaker 2: But also anyone could have told him exactly what you
Speaker 2: just told him me or that, like, yes, they do
Speaker 2: ask women about their prosthetic breasts and bums all the time.
Speaker 4: And also men who lean into it like I'm thinking
Speaker 4: of Ewan McGregor, for instance, he's famously fond of showing
Speaker 4: him fastbender. Yeah, all fastbender, and I think it behooves
Speaker 4: them to lean into the double sat and say we're
Speaker 4: trying to rectify something here.
Speaker 1: I read it differently, like he is an He's a
Speaker 1: serious actor, serious actor. And you know, there is a
Speaker 1: prosthetic dong in every season of The White Lotus in
Speaker 1: it's a fun fact that I'm happy to bring to
Speaker 1: the show. But I think he genuinely is jack of
Speaker 1: it in the same way that I'm sure women what
Speaker 1: was the phrase you use, jack, I'm sure he's in
Speaker 1: the same way that women are jack of it, But
Speaker 1: I guess he doesn't see the irony.
Speaker 4: No, and I was interested in I looked up Game
Speaker 4: of Thrones and the stats on nudity in that, because
Speaker 4: that was obviously quite famous for its nudity. Turns out
Speaker 4: the final tally was seventy breast appearances, So that's seventy
Speaker 4: pairs of breast, not thirty. Yeah, goodness, and four penises.
Speaker 4: But a quarter of those penis appearances was a character
Speaker 4: checking for genital warts, So we'll knock it down.
Speaker 3: To the game of thrown.
Speaker 1: Well, you'll be pleased to know that there was, of
Speaker 1: course backlash to his backlash, because this is the Zeitgey's
Speaker 1: news cycle, and he's walking back some of the comments
Speaker 1: that he made.
Speaker 3: He clarified in another interview. He said, I used the phrase.
Speaker 1: Double standard, which I didn't mean at all. There is
Speaker 1: a different double standard. Women have been monstrously exploited all
Speaker 1: men haven't. Helg this is a topic points for his publicist.
Speaker 1: He said, it came out wrong, and I was tired.
Speaker 1: I've done so many interviews. I absolutely should not have
Speaker 1: made those two actresses, from my respect, enormously disappointed. He
Speaker 1: then tried to clarify his point further by saying, I
Speaker 1: wasn't trying to say that men have had a harder
Speaker 1: time than women.
Speaker 3: That would be absurd.
Speaker 1: Women have had a monstrous time on camera forever, and
Speaker 1: I hope to God that is changed.
Speaker 4: Not to put too fine a point on it, Jason.
Speaker 2: Bless his heart, honestly, I want to know, though me,
Speaker 2: you know how in this world now where we've obviously
Speaker 2: and for very good reason, got much better. It sounds
Speaker 2: like managing nudity and sex scenes in Hollywood right, So
Speaker 2: we've got intimacy coordinators.
Speaker 8: Now.
Speaker 2: Obviously, the more famous you become, the more you can say, no,
Speaker 2: I won't show this, I won't show that, I'll show this,
Speaker 2: show that. But can you also say I also won't
Speaker 2: talk about it. Do you think that this schnaffo could
Speaker 2: have been avoiding.
Speaker 1: You can't really two things on that. First of all,
Speaker 1: there was another blip in the news cycle about intimacy
Speaker 1: coordinators because in the Gwyneth Paltrow interview that we spoke
Speaker 1: about last week, she talked about how she's just filmed
Speaker 1: this new movie with Timothy Shallamey where she's the older
Speaker 1: woman to his younger man and they have lots of
Speaker 1: sex scenes, and she said, and there was someone on
Speaker 1: the set called an intimacy coordinator that I didn't even
Speaker 1: know was a thing. And I'm just like, that's a
Speaker 1: bit disingenuous, because come on, I know it's a thing,
Speaker 1: and I don't work in Hollywood. And also, she was
Speaker 1: part of the whole Me Too movement when she spoke
Speaker 1: out about Harvey Weinstein and the proliferation of intimacy coordinators.
Speaker 1: Now they just standard on any movie set. Has been
Speaker 1: in response to that, and there are a way to
Speaker 1: protect actors, but mostly actresses, from being exploited. So there's
Speaker 1: this idea that she was trying to do a bit
Speaker 1: of a flex by saying, I'm old school. I'm just
Speaker 1: from the time when you just got into bed naked
Speaker 1: and the director said action and you went for it.
Speaker 1: So this idea of oh, if you're a cool girl,
Speaker 1: you can raw dog your sex scenes. I don't need
Speaker 1: an intimacy but it.
Speaker 4: Parallels with do you recall in the text between Blake
Speaker 4: Lively and Justin Baldoni. Justin Baldoni he texts her before
Speaker 4: filming starts and says, let's set up a meeting for
Speaker 4: you with the intimacy coordinator, and she also blows off
Speaker 4: the intimacy coordinator wrong terminology and says, I don't need
Speaker 4: to meet with the intimacy coordinator. I'm sure it's fine.
Speaker 4: So I think women still face this cool girl pressure
Speaker 4: to say I don't need this. I don't think it's.
Speaker 2: Cool girl pressure. I think it's an expression of power, right,
Speaker 2: Because what Gwyneth said in that interview is she said
Speaker 2: if I was starting out, it would be different. So
Speaker 2: Gwyneth Paltrow isn't worried about being exploited on a movie
Speaker 2: set with Timothy Chalamea or anyone else, because she's probably
Speaker 2: the most poweru person in the room. Right, Blake Lively
Speaker 2: maybe should have been worried the way that all ended up,
Speaker 2: but obviously didn't feel like she needed to be worried.
Speaker 2: The intimacy coordinators are there very much, aren't They to
Speaker 2: protect people from being pressured into things they don't want
Speaker 2: to do, making sure that people aren't being harassed or exploited,
Speaker 2: also to.
Speaker 3: Protect the producers from legal act Yes.
Speaker 2: But I don't think it's so much of a cool
Speaker 2: girl flex as it is a thing of like, if
Speaker 2: I'm powerful enough, I don't need That's.
Speaker 1: A really good point.
Speaker 3: That's a good point.
Speaker 1: What's also interesting, Just back to Jason Isaacs and the
Speaker 1: prosthetic penis for a second. The other thing that strikes
Speaker 1: me about this Mike White is great at getting extraordinary
Speaker 1: actors like Oscar winning actors, really proper capital A actors
Speaker 1: in his shows. Everybody wants to work with him. But
Speaker 1: where there's a little bit of a clash of cultures
Speaker 1: is that these are not actors who are used to
Speaker 1: having to answer those kinds of questions, and yet White
Speaker 1: Lotus is very much a zeiteguy's show, and Mike White
Speaker 1: knows exactly what he's doing by putting in the prosthetic penis,
Speaker 1: because when you have a show that drops week by week,
Speaker 1: you need talking points in every episode that the Internet
Speaker 1: then does a thousand think pieces about and gets buzz
Speaker 1: going and people make tiktoks about.
Speaker 3: So it's kind of a clash of cultures where this
Speaker 3: would be the.
Speaker 1: First time he would be asked about something so undignified
Speaker 1: is his wang.
Speaker 4: And that's a great point because White Lotus is an
Speaker 4: HBO show, meaning it's not on a streaming service. It
Speaker 4: started as a TV show that does drop every week,
Speaker 4: and so that need to create the conversation points is
Speaker 4: much more intense for that than it is for a
Speaker 4: Netflix show which drops all.
Speaker 2: Drops all the one he's dropping Easter eggs or Easter penh.
Speaker 1: And just in case you were wondering, it was prosthetic,
Speaker 1: even though he did not confirm or deny, the rest
Speaker 1: of the cast, we're like, yeah, yeah, we're throwing it
Speaker 1: around on stet it was funny, interesting.
Speaker 2: Oh before we go out louders, we've got to tell
Speaker 2: you about something exciting that we are going to do
Speaker 2: after we have recorded this show today. For Sydney out Louders,
Speaker 2: this is going to be particularly useful for you. On Friday,
Speaker 2: we are going to do a show at the Apple
Speaker 2: Store in Sydney. Live at the Apple Store in Sydney.
Speaker 2: Amelia Lestra is joining us.
Speaker 3: So today after the show, we're going for a rehearsal.
Speaker 2: We are a run through and we thought we'd better
Speaker 2: as a parsa, we better answer some of the questions
Speaker 2: that the Sydney out Louders wo'd like to come along.
Speaker 2: We're asking us about Friday's show.
Speaker 1: Lauren wants to know if she can bring her daughter along.
Speaker 2: Yes you can, Lauren, Yes you can. And Victoria, who
Speaker 2: said that she's having some minor eye surgery on that
Speaker 2: day or the day before, wants to know if she
Speaker 2: can come along with her ipatch. Absolutely welcome, Victoria, All
Speaker 2: pirates welcome.
Speaker 1: It's Friday, the twenty eighth of March at five point
Speaker 1: thirty pm. We'll all be there, Jesse too and Amelia.
Speaker 1: It's completely free and the link to register will be
Speaker 1: in the show notes.
Speaker 2: A massive thank you out Louders to all of you
Speaker 2: for listening to today's show and for being with us.
Speaker 2: Thank you Amelia for filling.
Speaker 4: Thanks for introducing me to the term Easter peen, and.
Speaker 2: To our fabulous team for putting the show together. As always,
Speaker 2: We're going to be back in your ears tomorrow.
Speaker 1: Keep it a classy bye bye shout out to any
Speaker 1: Mum and Maya subscribers listening. If you love the show
Speaker 1: and want to support us as well, subscribing to Mama
Speaker 1: Miya is the very best way to do so. There
Speaker 1: is a link in the episode description.