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 Hello and welcome to
Speaker 2: MoMA Mia. Out loud what we've been are actually talking about?
Speaker 2: On Monday, the eleventh of August. I'm Holly Wayne right,
Speaker 2: and it just occurred to me I might be shouting.
Speaker 2: Had some feedback this week that sometimes when I talk,
Speaker 2: I wake a baby.
Speaker 3: And that I can be too quiet. So I'm working
Speaker 3: on my loudness on the podcast.
Speaker 2: But when I just jumped in and went hello, oh,
Speaker 2: I suddenly thought shit, I've just wokened the nation's babies.
Speaker 1: I apologize.
Speaker 3: I'm Jesse Stevens.
Speaker 1: I'm Amelia Lester and here's.
Speaker 2: What made our agenda for today. Does every group chat
Speaker 2: in your life spawn two more group chats?
Speaker 1: Yes, LUs as some issues just not up for debate.
Speaker 1: As a former high school debater that will suppose no one,
Speaker 1: this is personal for.
Speaker 3: Me and the surprising reason why divorce rates in Australa
Speaker 3: are at a fifty year low.
Speaker 2: But first, Jesse Stevens.
Speaker 3: In case you missed it, Instagram just launched a new
Speaker 3: feature that shows all your followers where you are right now? Hey,
Speaker 3: So this rolled out in the US last week, with
Speaker 3: lots of users claiming that they were shocked to find
Speaker 3: their whereabouts was being shared to their followers without their knowledge.
Speaker 3: The head of Instagram, his name is Adam Mussori, released
Speaker 3: a statement in response, assuring users that to start, location
Speaker 3: sharing will be off, but you can opt in so
Speaker 3: you can better connect with your friends on Instagram. It
Speaker 3: is likely that this feature will come to Australia very soon,
Speaker 3: which comes with a whole host of concerns, including things
Speaker 3: like tech based coercive control. One in five young adults,
Speaker 3: according to recent research, believe it is reasonable to track
Speaker 3: a partner's location. So that's just become the default. So
Speaker 3: if it's on an app that everyone's watching where they are,
Speaker 3: then it becomes sort of conspicuous if you turn it off. Holly,
Speaker 3: Why why would anyone want their followers to know where
Speaker 3: they are right now?
Speaker 2: I have no idea, but it's really interesting because I
Speaker 2: saw this and quite a few people shared it with
Speaker 2: me on the weekend. Because I'm on the record several
Speaker 2: times as saying I hate location sharing. I don't track
Speaker 2: anyone in my house.
Speaker 3: You won't let me attract you. She tries, she tries
Speaker 3: to put like little tags around Inta and you're like, nah,
Speaker 3: she's dropping.
Speaker 2: Air tags into her pockets. Yes, I am allergic to it.
Speaker 2: I don't really know why I need to prosecute this
Speaker 2: at some point, but generally speaking, I just think privacy
Speaker 2: and none of your business, not even big safety concerns,
Speaker 2: just like you don't need to know where I am
Speaker 2: and what I'm doing. Nobody needs to know that.
Speaker 3: I think secrets are a basic human right. I don't
Speaker 3: even have them. I just think I have the right
Speaker 3: to have them exactly.
Speaker 2: And it's interesting because, I mean, you just sort of
Speaker 2: mentioned this about how it's become table stakes and relationships.
Speaker 2: But the New York Times run a story recently that like,
Speaker 2: are you at location sharing level? It's like going Instagram official,
Speaker 2: you know, changing your status in your whatever update and
Speaker 2: location sharing. It's supposed to be the ultimate intimacy. And
Speaker 2: I cannot understand it. But I think we know why
Speaker 2: the tech platform would do this.
Speaker 3: Why why would Instagram want to do this?
Speaker 2: So A, they believe their audience want it, but more pertinently,
Speaker 2: the more information they have about us, the more things
Speaker 2: they can sell to us. We all know that right
Speaker 2: data mining is the number one thing that tech companies
Speaker 2: like to do, and if they know where you are,
Speaker 2: they can target you better with ads of all kinds.
Speaker 3: Okay, because this came at an interesting time, which is
Speaker 3: I think just in the last week, there was this
Speaker 3: massive lawsuit that wrapped up in California. Have you sayen this,
Speaker 3: no tell me? Meta a legally collected data from another
Speaker 3: app so that it could specifically target people. That other
Speaker 3: app was Flow, which I have on my phone, the
Speaker 3: Period Appeah, the period app. So it is a health app.
Speaker 3: It is I think the most downloaded women's health app.
Speaker 3: Now why would they information on where I am in
Speaker 3: my cycle? Why would they want that? Well, my mood changes,
Speaker 3: there are concerns about weight, or maybe I have a breakout.
Speaker 3: Do you want to sell me a special cream? Maybe
Speaker 3: you notice that at my lucial phase I have less
Speaker 3: impulse control, So we can start kind of putting those
Speaker 3: ads out. It's been a massive, massive deal and they've
Speaker 3: been punished for it, and a lot of Flow users
Speaker 3: have gone hang on this, you know, starts a lot
Speaker 3: of privacy concerns. But this is why people are very
Speaker 3: suspicious of Meta.
Speaker 1: It's interesting because Instagram called this and I love this phrase,
Speaker 1: a new lightweight way to connect, which sounds so nice.
Speaker 1: But you know who doesn't want to connect and share
Speaker 1: his location? Mark Zuckerberg. There was a fascinating expose this
Speaker 1: weekend in The New York Times about how he's basically
Speaker 1: brought up an entire suburb in northern California outside San
Speaker 1: Francisco because he doesn't want anyone near him, so he
Speaker 1: lives in one large house. He has also bought eleven
Speaker 1: houses around his house for a cost of they estimate
Speaker 1: about one hundred and fifty million AUSI dollars. Now he
Speaker 1: is worth two hundred and seventy billions, so don't worry
Speaker 1: too much about that. But he's even opened a private
Speaker 1: school in one of these eleven houses, which goes against
Speaker 1: all the zoning regulations for his two daughters and ten
Speaker 1: other children. And neighbors say they can no longer walk
Speaker 1: down the street, they can't use the footpath outside his
Speaker 1: house without being asked to move along by men in
Speaker 1: large SUVs privacy, and they're always having parties and blocking driveways,
Speaker 1: and they've even had the city like block off streets
Speaker 1: successfully so that no one can get near the parties,
Speaker 1: so someone's not interconnecting.
Speaker 3: Ah, that's not about connecting.
Speaker 2: You know what though, as you know, I have this
Speaker 2: allergic reaction to location sharing. But certainly my daughter and
Speaker 2: her friends don't even blink about it. They don't even
Speaker 2: think about it. They think it's so normal because they
Speaker 2: can all look at where each other are at all times.
Speaker 2: And the only reason that they can see for turning
Speaker 2: off your life sharing on snap maps or whatever is
Speaker 2: that you would be literally doing something that you shouldn't
Speaker 2: be doing, or something that you know your friends would
Speaker 2: get mad.
Speaker 1: With you about.
Speaker 2: So the set expectation is, unless you are behaving badly,
Speaker 2: you should have no reason for privacy. And I wonder
Speaker 2: if you know the people who like us, well not
Speaker 2: necessarily us, but me who are arking up about this
Speaker 2: are just outsiders in that generation where it just is
Speaker 2: the most normal.
Speaker 3: Thing in the world, because this is snap maps, right
Speaker 3: like this, this is what we do, just like TikTok
Speaker 3: kind of makes video and then they instagram goes really
Speaker 3: hard on reels like this is the kind of thing
Speaker 3: you do. But you hear stories of people going, oh,
Speaker 3: I discovered that my friend is back with her ex
Speaker 3: boyfriend because on snap maps I could see where she was.
Speaker 3: You just wait, Matilda, you wait until you have secrets
Speaker 3: like the rest of us.
Speaker 2: It's true, and of course we should point out there
Speaker 2: are genuine safety concerns with this kind of location sharing
Speaker 2: being used in bad relationships, bad faith actors, and stalking.
Speaker 2: Like it's really really interesting. I'm not going to try
Speaker 2: and break it down on an intellectual level. I just
Speaker 2: find a check that's been with way too many guys.
Speaker 2: I find that unattractive.
Speaker 1: That important contribution to knowledge, to the exploration of the
Speaker 1: human condition came from Dean Wells, an expert on masculinity.
Speaker 1: No just kidding. Dean Wells was on season five IF
Speaker 1: Married at First Sight, but he did appear last week
Speaker 1: on an episode of SBS's The Feed. The Feed is
Speaker 1: a current of THEIRS show, and this episode made people
Speaker 1: very upset. It was called Men Debate Masculinity, and it
Speaker 1: was a forty three minute debate that dropped on YouTube
Speaker 1: on Friday. SBS introduced the segment, perhaps justified what was
Speaker 1: to come by saying, these are claims and opinions that
Speaker 1: are being debated online. What I love about that is
Speaker 1: literally everything can be put under the umbrella of claims
Speaker 1: and opinions that are being debated online, and we heard
Speaker 1: the opinions certainly run the gamut from acceptable to not
Speaker 1: so acceptable. Frankly, the first contention put to the group
Speaker 1: of six panelists and which Dean was trying to answer,
Speaker 1: and that clip you just heard, wasn't actually about women.
Speaker 1: Despite the fact that Dean was talking about women. The
Speaker 1: contention that was put to them was having lots of
Speaker 1: sexual partners is tied to your status as a man.
Speaker 1: Here's what Clayton Harrop, who was billed as a men's coach,
Speaker 1: had to say about women with what he called a
Speaker 1: high body count.
Speaker 2: It's the same as a car, Like this is a
Speaker 2: quick Women are not cars.
Speaker 3: Women are not cars.
Speaker 2: Do you take care of your car?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 2: Do you do really when it's yours and yours alone?
Speaker 3: We take a little I want know other people driving
Speaker 3: my car put it that way, not.
Speaker 2: To say that she's less because of it, but.
Speaker 1: In terms, but it is it is inherently.
Speaker 3: That I'm most offended by how terrible that argument is.
Speaker 3: Like I know that the nature and like what he's
Speaker 3: actually saying is deeply offensive to women, but the quality
Speaker 3: of the argument is so poor.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, look, it's not tremendously revealing. And that's
Speaker 1: what I want us to talk about here today, because
Speaker 1: I want to talk about whether there's any value in
Speaker 1: airing out views like this. I watched this so you
Speaker 1: don't have to. At another point, Dean Well said, we
Speaker 1: need men to basically stop being in therapy because it's
Speaker 1: over feminizing them. And Clayton, the guy who compared women
Speaker 1: to cars, kept talking about women's purity like we're a
Speaker 1: cleaning product. It upset me, and it upset a lot
Speaker 1: of other people. Mia Finlay accused SBS of rage baiting,
Speaker 1: and interestingly, one of the panelists, Jeff Kasubi, wrote later
Speaker 1: about the experience on Pedestrian and I just want to
Speaker 1: read a little bit of what he wrote. He said,
Speaker 1: from the moment we sat down, it became clear that
Speaker 1: nuance was not the priority. Who knew reaction took precedence
Speaker 1: over care. The loudest voices in the room were often
Speaker 1: those most unwilling to listen. Particularly the opinions of men
Speaker 1: of color were dismissed, and they were dismissed under the
Speaker 1: excuse of it's just my opinion because I should say
Speaker 1: that another one of the panelists rang Chorla, who was
Speaker 1: an anti violence campaigner whose sister was murdered by her husband.
Speaker 1: He came out afterwards and said he did see value
Speaker 1: in participating. He said that if just one man starts
Speaker 1: to question the culture that we've built as a result
Speaker 1: of his participation in this show, then there is value
Speaker 1: in that. Do we think that a debate of this
Speaker 1: sort ever changes minds?
Speaker 2: Holly, No, I don't think it changes minds, because I
Speaker 2: think that a lot of people just hear what they
Speaker 2: came here to hear. So I watched quite a bit
Speaker 2: of this this morning, and I wasn't particularly surprised by
Speaker 2: some of what some of these guys were saying, because
Speaker 2: I hear it on the internet all the time. Do
Speaker 2: I think it's dangerous that it got aired on SBS's
Speaker 2: YouTube channel.
Speaker 1: No.
Speaker 2: Do I think that it was a sort of cheap
Speaker 2: and not very evolved debate.
Speaker 1: Yes.
Speaker 2: I also think that SBS were clearly trying to hedge
Speaker 2: their bets because, for example, when Harrop was talking about purity,
Speaker 2: they put up a little box at the bottom that
Speaker 2: said context, and it said purity culture can be damaging
Speaker 2: because blah blah blah, and every now and again it
Speaker 2: would flash up a fact check or you know, another
Speaker 2: context box or a helpline or whatever. So they obviously
Speaker 2: knew that this was going to get a lot of criticism.
Speaker 2: The thing that was a bit disturbing to me to watch,
Speaker 2: and thank God for Terrang, you know, who is a
Speaker 2: tireless campaigner for women's safety. But is that what you
Speaker 2: were watching kind of felt a little bit like you
Speaker 2: could divide that panel into these three kind of very
Speaker 2: physically big masculine guys who did, as Jeff Kasubi said,
Speaker 2: they did shout the loudest, they did talk over everybody else,
Speaker 2: and then it became a very it was sort of
Speaker 2: like an ugly parody of what it was supposed to
Speaker 2: be debating, do you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: I felt that SBS did a decent job of addressing that.
Speaker 3: At times they jumped in and they said, oh, we
Speaker 3: haven't heard from Trang, and in that way, I think
Speaker 3: the moderation was useful. I actually really support this format
Speaker 3: for a few reasons. The first is that I really
Speaker 3: liked that they didn't have an audience. I think that
Speaker 3: when you have an audience, it totally changes the nature
Speaker 3: of the debate. Because people are speaking for applause and
Speaker 3: for clout, they might say something that sounds really effective,
Speaker 3: but when you actually drill down onto it, they haven't
Speaker 3: actually said anything. I found that in a lot, and
Speaker 3: I'm thinking about the trend, particularly in the US, where
Speaker 3: it's so and so, schools so and so, and they
Speaker 3: go and you know, speak to a college student or whatever,
Speaker 3: and you hear people in the audience booing or gasping,
Speaker 3: and I think that really throws people. And I don't
Speaker 3: think that that's conducive to good debate. So I quite
Speaker 3: liked that they just had the six men.
Speaker 2: Do you think it was a debate though? To think,
Speaker 2: I don't. That's my problem with this, And I know
Speaker 2: we're moving on to some of the other forms of
Speaker 2: debate we're seeing everywhere at the moment, I don't know
Speaker 2: that anyone was listening to each other.
Speaker 3: They weren't. They were speaking at each other, not to
Speaker 3: each other. And this is the issue with plucking people
Speaker 3: from their social media bubbles. Like you, Holly, I actually
Speaker 3: think put Dean Wells on that platform. I think that
Speaker 3: was a good call. And I think that it's like
Speaker 3: if you think that Dean Wells doesn't already have influence
Speaker 3: and already have a platform. You're wrong. He's got eighty
Speaker 3: four thousand followers on Instagram.
Speaker 2: He likes to comment on what we talk about quite Oh.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's slipped into my DMS great debata. So if
Speaker 3: you put him in there, at least hold him to
Speaker 3: some sort of account, And I think he was probably
Speaker 3: on slightly better behavior than he normally would. I think
Speaker 3: what it uncovered is that a lot of these men
Speaker 3: don't actually have an argument. There was no substance to
Speaker 3: their argument. Dean Well's hearing at the beginning him trying
Speaker 3: to say, I'm not going to try and break it
Speaker 3: down on an intellectual level. I mean, that's the purpose
Speaker 3: of a debate, but no one was listening. The whole
Speaker 3: point of a debate is that there's curiosity, and there's humility,
Speaker 3: and there's leaning in and trying to understand and engage
Speaker 3: with the other side's points. But there wasn't any there
Speaker 3: There a lot of the time it was just them
Speaker 3: talking about how they like chicks who have had sex
Speaker 3: with less people like that's not an argument, and that's
Speaker 3: not the feeds fault.
Speaker 2: I don't criticize the feed, except for as I said,
Speaker 2: I found the sort of context boxes and stuff a
Speaker 2: little bit like we know what people are going to say,
Speaker 2: so let's say it first. Yeah, some of these men
Speaker 2: who are obviously out there talking on the internet all
Speaker 2: the time. As you say, Jesse, we're using very manisphere
Speaker 2: terms like body count for how many people you've slept with,
Speaker 2: very specifically how many men women had slept with, and
Speaker 2: high value men and high value women, which are very
Speaker 2: coded and are out there everywhere in the kind of
Speaker 2: content that kids are seeing on YouTube. I want to know,
Speaker 2: especially as you said to me at the beginning, that you,
Speaker 2: like Jesse, did a lot of debating at school. When
Speaker 2: you just said, Jesse, the point of a debate is
Speaker 2: to lean in and be curious and be interested, is it,
Speaker 2: or is the point of this kind of debate it's
Speaker 2: a competition.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And I also worry that we're paying too much
Speaker 1: attention to people who don't have very interesting viewpoints or
Speaker 1: who are not moving the debate forward. And we've started
Speaker 1: treating debater as entertainment. Yeah, when it's meant to be
Speaker 1: about edification and about sharing informed viewpoints and finding consensus
Speaker 1: in those viewpoints. So I want to bring in another
Speaker 1: upsetting YouTube debate that I watched last week. This one
Speaker 1: was from Jubilee, which is a company that's arguably done
Speaker 1: more than I would say any other company to turn
Speaker 1: debating into a competitive sport. So they have this format
Speaker 1: that they call Surrounded. Someone sits in the middle of
Speaker 1: a circle of twenty people who disagree with them, and
Speaker 1: they literally race to debate against this poor person in
Speaker 1: the center of the circle.
Speaker 2: It's with Jerry Springery in a way, it feels I
Speaker 2: kept waiting for violence to break out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this particulars a victory Springer. So this one I
Speaker 1: kept hearing about it and how dramatic and extreme it got,
Speaker 1: so I did watch it. Ten million people watched it
Speaker 1: along with me. British born American citizen Mehdi Hassan was
Speaker 1: surrounded by what Jubilee called twenty far right conservatives, and
Speaker 1: Hassan definitely held his own I mean, he's written whole
Speaker 1: books about debating and how to be an effective debater,
Speaker 1: and he is an extremely effective debater. But what he
Speaker 1: said afterwards is that but he was prepared for a
Speaker 1: lot of really extreme viewpoints. He was not expecting over racism,
Speaker 1: and that is what he got. One person yelled him
Speaker 1: to go back to where he came from. Another one
Speaker 1: sat down and immediately started asking him about what his
Speaker 1: ethnic heritage was, and he happens to be of Indian descent,
Speaker 1: but he couldn't understand the relevance to that they were
Speaker 1: meant to be talking about Donald Trump, and so Hassan,
Speaker 1: I think interestingly, started to regret participating in this event.
Speaker 1: He is someone he is a professional debater, and he
Speaker 1: walked away from that thinking what did I achieve there?
Speaker 1: And at one particularly tense moment in the debate, he
Speaker 1: simply stopped debating. He refused to debate. It was because
Speaker 1: he found himself speaking to someone who's self identified as
Speaker 1: a fascist. And later he said, that's my line. Fascism
Speaker 1: is violence. It is not about solving political disagreements through
Speaker 1: talking and consensus and elections. And I will not speak
Speaker 1: to someone who identifies as a fascist. So when even
Speaker 1: the professional debater is saying I'm done with debating, I
Speaker 1: wonder if we've reached this point where it's becoming almost
Speaker 1: impossible to have a civilized debate. And I wanted to
Speaker 1: throw this back at the two of you a bit.
Speaker 1: I remember that in fairly recent history on this podcast,
Speaker 1: you've celebrated the fact that you were able to disagree
Speaker 1: with one another respectfully and correct me if I'm wrong.
Speaker 1: But I feel like over the last couple of years
Speaker 1: I've noticed a bit of a pulling back on that messaging.
Speaker 1: Is that because our times have become so polarized that
Speaker 1: we don't even want a debate amongst people who we
Speaker 1: basically agree.
Speaker 3: With, I feel as though our tolerance for disagreement might
Speaker 3: have gone down a little. People might feel as though
Speaker 3: everywhere they look in their feeds, at their dinner tables,
Speaker 3: there is just constant disagreement. And in saying that, I
Speaker 3: think that we often do disagree about things on this show,
Speaker 3: but when the stakes of something is very very high,
Speaker 3: and the potential of seriously hurting someone is there, I
Speaker 3: think we're probably more careful than we were before. I
Speaker 3: think it's probably because this show has grown and our
Speaker 3: platform has grown, and with that comes more responsibility. But
Speaker 3: I was thinking, Amelia, you kind of clarified something for
Speaker 3: me there, because what a lot of the analysis has
Speaker 3: said is that you've got Ben Shapiro for people who
Speaker 3: don't know him he's kind of a right wing conservative
Speaker 3: voice in the US, and he, I would say, popularized
Speaker 3: the fight me like that. I think it's almost the
Speaker 3: wwe of debating, of using debating as entertainment but also
Speaker 3: as sport. Like he's this guy who will say abortion
Speaker 3: is wrong, fight me, and then he speaks really quickly,
Speaker 3: doesn't listen to the other person at all, and then
Speaker 3: owns them in capital letters, and then the video goes viral.
Speaker 3: The new version of that is Charlie Kirk. And Charlie
Speaker 3: Kirk goes to universities. You've probably seen him on your feed.
Speaker 3: Someone says something and he'll go, but what is a
Speaker 3: woman or something, and then that's kind of like, oh,
Speaker 3: he wins him ram booze and it's just this kind
Speaker 3: of spectacle. And a lot of place in the US
Speaker 3: have said even the Jubilee, the guy who created Jubilee,
Speaker 3: people have said, well, why aren't your platforming the left
Speaker 3: wing version of Kirk or Shapiro, And he's like, point
Speaker 3: to them, there isn't left wing versions. What you clarified
Speaker 3: for me is the cost of doing that if you
Speaker 3: are not a white straight man. The thing about Shapiro
Speaker 3: or Kirk is that they feel they can play with
Speaker 3: ideas in a way that if you are any minority,
Speaker 3: it becomes about your identity, so people will start to
Speaker 3: mock you. This happens in the public eye. Remember Hamish
Speaker 3: McDonald on Q and A. His trolling wasn't about his ideas,
Speaker 3: it was about the fact that he was gay, like
Speaker 3: it was homophobia. Same with anyone in the public eye,
Speaker 3: Walid Ali or any woman. It just becomes about their identity.
Speaker 1: Or maybe his son on Jubile exactly.
Speaker 3: So what happens is it becomes white men shouting at
Speaker 3: minorities or feeling like they can have debates because doesn't
Speaker 3: really impact them, maybe the outcome, or.
Speaker 2: So they're not viewing it as sport. Like I think
Speaker 2: there is danger to the fact that this has become entertainment.
Speaker 2: It feels like the new Colosseum, the new Gladiate. Like
Speaker 2: we watching the bits of this that I watched the
Speaker 2: Jubilee conversation. There's a point at which one of the
Speaker 2: guys who's sitting opposite Hassan says, what's going on in
Speaker 2: the US right now? And the guy who's saying this
Speaker 2: is one of the far right guys. He's saying it's
Speaker 2: tribal warfare. Right, He's saying it's tribal warfare. That's where
Speaker 2: we are. The thing is is that that's how this
Speaker 2: is all set up. It's set up as fun and games,
Speaker 2: and it's not fun and games for so many people
Speaker 2: who are directly affected by these arguments.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: So I can't say that I think that the left
Speaker 2: have a completely clean slate on this. I mean, I
Speaker 2: can't remember his name, but there are plenty of late
Speaker 2: night TV guys who, during a various election cycles, get
Speaker 2: a lot of sport out of going to Trump rallies
Speaker 2: and interviewing people and making them look dumb and broadcasting
Speaker 2: that and making like, let's all loll at the stupid rednecks.
Speaker 2: That's kind of their trope, and that trope has been
Speaker 2: out there for a long time, and plenty of people
Speaker 2: think it isn't a coincidence that a lot of the
Speaker 2: so called stupid rednecks and inverted commas have got sick
Speaker 2: of that, feel empowered by it. Now they want to
Speaker 2: own the Libs and own the feminists and it's all
Speaker 2: ugly and it's all competition and there's no respect. And
Speaker 2: to the point about respectful disagreement. I think I would
Speaker 2: still defend that position, but I think that there's a
Speaker 2: very crucial component you need for any disagreement to be respectful.
Speaker 2: I remember someone saying to me ages ago about out loud.
Speaker 2: They said, one of the reasons why you can disagree
Speaker 2: respectfully is that although you disagree about lots of things,
Speaker 2: you share values. Like we can argue about various things,
Speaker 2: but nobody's sitting here genuinely thinking, you know, as some
Speaker 2: of the guys on the surrounded clearly did, that they
Speaker 2: are fascists, that they believe that white people are superior.
Speaker 2: You know that the very basics of the values that
Speaker 2: they're talking about are too extreme for debate to the
Speaker 2: point here, you know, whereas I think, to disagree respectfully
Speaker 2: you have to kind of agree on the basic parameters
Speaker 2: of what we all think humanity is and what we
Speaker 2: all think the way that a civilized society should work.
Speaker 1: Which is why Maddie has Son refused to debate the
Speaker 1: fascist because he says, well, we don't have that common
Speaker 1: ground anymore.
Speaker 2: But should he have agreed to go in that circle
Speaker 2: in the first place. It's interesting because it's self promotion
Speaker 2: for him, like with all respect. I mean, I genuinely
Speaker 2: the first five minutes of that.
Speaker 1: I thought, what a brave guy.
Speaker 2: But he's got his own news platform, he's promoting it.
Speaker 2: It's all this is all sport. It's all sport, it's
Speaker 2: all show, it's all gladiators. It's not actually, you know,
Speaker 2: when you said earlier, Amelia, the point of actual debate,
Speaker 2: what it's supposed to do. That's not what any of
Speaker 2: this is about.
Speaker 3: So what do we do though? Do we all just
Speaker 3: yell into our own voids? Because social media has deteriorated
Speaker 3: the standard of discourse so so much that it is
Speaker 3: not about you know, I was reading something the other
Speaker 3: day that said, go hard on structures, go easy on people.
Speaker 3: We don't do that anymore. We do the complete opposite.
Speaker 3: And everyone wants to present monologues into the void and
Speaker 3: ignore anything that comes back. We are now just doing that.
Speaker 3: In person.
Speaker 2: I agree.
Speaker 1: I'm struggling with it because I remember when we talked
Speaker 1: about adolescence, the Netflix show on here, and the importance
Speaker 1: of talking to men. It's not just a women's problem
Speaker 1: that there's violence against women, and there's not just a
Speaker 1: women's problem that women continue to be discriminated against. We've
Speaker 1: got to talk to men. Well, I guess SBS decided
Speaker 1: to take us up on that and talk to men.
Speaker 1: And so I'm reluctant to sit here and then criticize
Speaker 1: men for speaking honestly and openly about what they really think. However,
Speaker 1: I do want to make a pitch. We talked about
Speaker 1: how debating has become sport. I am watching Unreal on Netflix,
Speaker 1: which is behind the scenes of WWE weirdly compelling. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: if each is actually an Australian woman, Rhea Ripley, who
Speaker 1: is the world champion in women's wrestling. It's sort of
Speaker 1: like the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders documentary bit for wrestling. Watch
Speaker 1: wa E when you want to see people duke it
Speaker 1: out in the ring using violence. That's great, doesn't hurt
Speaker 1: anyone most of the time. Debating should remain boring, just
Speaker 1: like it was when we were in high school and
Speaker 1: everyone made fun of us for being nerds. That's how
Speaker 1: it should be.
Speaker 2: Well, politics should be boring, like leading is boring, governing
Speaker 2: is boring. We've just seemed to have. Everything has to
Speaker 2: be entertaining now and everything has to be thirty seconds
Speaker 2: in a moment. Does everyone in your group chats have
Speaker 2: another group chat about the group chat? Maybe two or three? Yes,
Speaker 2: we're talking about the Great DM contagion. I made a
Speaker 2: new group chat last week. This is unusual.
Speaker 1: It's not like you.
Speaker 2: No, I'm not generally the instigator of group chats. I'm
Speaker 2: generally the person who is added to them against my will.
Speaker 2: Within three hours, that group chat had spawned another separate
Speaker 2: group chat with two extra people in it. And then
Speaker 2: there was obviously the direct chat with the person who
Speaker 2: was the subject of the group chat in the first place.
Speaker 2: So I had by Tuesday afternoon, I had three new
Speaker 2: conversations going that I didn't have going on Monday, and
Speaker 2: yet the same amount of hours in my day. The
Speaker 2: Great group chat Contagion was the subject of a Guardian
Speaker 2: column by Polly Hudson this week, who wrote, you can mute,
Speaker 2: but you can never leave. Why have WhatsApp groups become
Speaker 2: so stressful? And in it, she said, she gave this
Speaker 2: example of how group chats just spawn more and more
Speaker 2: group chats. A friend of mine has a group with
Speaker 2: five moms from her daughter's class, and another whittled down
Speaker 2: to four of them, then more with three, two and
Speaker 2: one how she keeps track without the use of murder
Speaker 2: investigation board with red strings pinned to photographs is genuinely
Speaker 2: a mystery. And then, of course there is the very
Speaker 2: particular anxiety of putting the wrong thing in the wrong chat.
Speaker 2: I was trying to come up with a cool name
Speaker 2: for it. I haven't really got one. Chat anxiety. I'm
Speaker 2: not going to make that happen, Jesse. Why the chats
Speaker 2: spawn chats spawn chats? And how the hell do we
Speaker 2: feed and clothe ourselves with so much communication to be
Speaker 2: attended to at all times.
Speaker 3: Mine do not have three offshoots, which suggests to me
Speaker 3: I'm not invited to them. So I am concerned that,
Speaker 3: for example, our out loud WhatsApp that's all I got.
Speaker 3: There is no other one. I feel like there could
Speaker 3: be a Maya Holly. Maybe there's a Meya Holly, Amelia.
Speaker 2: We have a group chat with the hosts, yeah, and
Speaker 2: then we also have one with our ep ruth, so
Speaker 2: that's two.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, exactly. I'm just worried.
Speaker 1: I just want to point out I'm not in it,
Speaker 1: not even the prime.
Speaker 2: We're gone already.
Speaker 3: Amelia and m is maya homework where she sends really
Speaker 3: obscure leaders, and then we feel guilty that we haven't
Speaker 3: read them, and I go, oh wow, I'll read that. Look,
Speaker 3: we talked about this at our live show a few
Speaker 3: months ago, because this is a uniquely female phenomenon, as
Speaker 3: I have discovered. I decided before our live show, I
Speaker 3: was like, I'm gonna look at Luca's group chats because
Speaker 3: I swear that man is not He doesn't have a
Speaker 3: part time job group chatting, whereas I feel like I do.
Speaker 3: And there are not four minute voice notes in Lucas
Speaker 3: group chats like there are for mine. There are not poles,
Speaker 3: There are not the enthusiastic performance of upcoming event, which
Speaker 3: I feel like women need to do. There are not
Speaker 3: the constant offshoots. They just they are so much less pressured,
Speaker 3: Like women are the backbone of WhatsApp and Messenger and
Speaker 3: all of our difference. Someone I feel like someone's making
Speaker 3: money every time we make a new group chat. Someone
Speaker 3: at WhatsApp is rubbing their hands together, going what would
Speaker 3: we do about exactly right, exactly that he can use
Speaker 3: for histtle enclave. But it's like women feel like they
Speaker 3: need to water their group chats like little plants while
Speaker 3: men are. When I went through Lucas group chats, I
Speaker 3: would find like he'd send a TikTok and then someone
Speaker 3: would say I don't get it and then never respond again.
Speaker 3: There were maybe a pole that had nothing a twenty
Speaker 3: seven second phone call, like there was just no trying
Speaker 3: to the same degree that women are. Why do women
Speaker 3: feel this pressure and this stress to be so actively
Speaker 3: social in our group chats and then to make all
Speaker 3: the offshoots.
Speaker 1: There was a very funny Curb Your Enthusiasm episode where
Speaker 1: Larry David was basically being schooled in the fact that
Speaker 1: you have to heart or thumbs up messages that women
Speaker 1: just routinely do. But he needed to be told, no,
Speaker 1: you must acknowledge this important message where someone is telling
Speaker 1: you they just got engaged or just had a baby,
Speaker 1: you got to give it a heart. But I don't
Speaker 1: think that's instinctive for a lot of men.
Speaker 3: No, it's absolutely not. It's like they're not there. I
Speaker 3: find often you set up a group chat, like with
Speaker 3: a family, and then what you do is the next
Speaker 3: day you make the group chat with just the women,
Speaker 3: because why were the men even Yeah, like you don't
Speaker 3: even keep them across.
Speaker 2: I have a friend group like that, we have a
Speaker 2: group chat for the friend group, and then we have
Speaker 2: one with just the women in the friend group, because
Speaker 2: I wonder if the men have one for just the
Speaker 2: men in them.
Speaker 1: They don't, I don't think, Holly. When you introduce this segment,
Speaker 1: I admit I felt a little bit paranoid, because are
Speaker 1: you saying that part of the group chat this morning
Speaker 1: is about people essentially bitching about other people in the
Speaker 1: group chat?
Speaker 2: Not in my world, but of course, and of course not.
Speaker 2: But I think that yes, certainly, even if it's not bitching.
Speaker 2: The thing about big group chats, so say, think about
Speaker 2: the classic one, which might be the school group or
Speaker 2: the football team you know, for parents, right this is,
Speaker 2: or in a non parent environment, the one for somebody's NDU, birthday, dinner, whatever,
Speaker 2: and like, lots of people are in there, and some
Speaker 2: people you know and some people you don't, and so
Speaker 2: within that group there are messages that are for everyone,
Speaker 2: and then there's a little bit of chat you need
Speaker 2: to have on the side, not necessarily about them. But
Speaker 2: say when I had a group chat going for my
Speaker 2: friend's fiftieth she had fifty people in that not all
Speaker 2: of them needed to be weighing in on what the
Speaker 2: present should be, but like a core group did so,
Speaker 2: then we needed another group chat for that see another
Speaker 2: the things that happened in that had to be reported
Speaker 2: back in the big one, and then you kin'd ever
Speaker 2: leave that group even though the fiftieth birthday was six
Speaker 2: months ago, because it seems a bit rude.
Speaker 3: I've got group chats that are quite big, like let's
Speaker 3: say they've got twent people in them, and then I
Speaker 3: see that four of those people went to dinner last week,
Speaker 3: and I go okay. At some point the new group
Speaker 3: chat was warned and it was decided that these four
Speaker 3: would make this particular dinner arrangement. How did I not
Speaker 3: make the cup?
Speaker 1: This happened to me recently. I have a group of
Speaker 1: friends from high school and they decided to go on
Speaker 1: a trip to Melbourne together. But it was at the
Speaker 1: time when I was out of the country. Unclear whether
Speaker 1: they decided or not, but I respectfully asked them to
Speaker 1: take the planning for the Melbourne trip to another chat. Yes,
Speaker 1: start a new chat, because I don't want to hear
Speaker 1: how excited you all are about getting the massages at
Speaker 1: the hotel. Did you ask them to do going to dinner.
Speaker 2: Did you ask them to do that in the group?
Speaker 2: I did so in the group, you said.
Speaker 1: Take it elsewhere, ladies get a room.
Speaker 2: Get a room.
Speaker 1: And now I think they're just over there because the
Speaker 1: there's new in jokes and they're all just making the in.
Speaker 2: Jokes and from the trip. The hour spent last week
Speaker 2: for a show that I'm doing for mid which is
Speaker 2: my other podcast that has group chats too, Jesse, I
Speaker 2: asked people for friendship dilemmas, and one lady sent me
Speaker 2: a friendship dilemma that she was very angry that one
Speaker 2: of her friends in her group chats never replies in
Speaker 2: a timely fashion and she was making her feel like
Speaker 2: she didn't care about her, so that she'd say she
Speaker 2: might put some personal news in there, like quite serious
Speaker 2: personal news, and the other people would all jump in
Speaker 2: with like, oh, I'm so sorry, or I hope you're
Speaker 2: okay or whatever, but this one person yes thefations of
Speaker 2: but then I think that's me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Oh, so what advice did you give? I just relax.
Speaker 2: My advice was everybody's got a different communication rhythm. But
Speaker 2: this woman was very upset about it, As she said
Speaker 2: timely fashion several times, So I just would like us
Speaker 2: to clarify what a timely fashion is.
Speaker 3: I would literally give someone three or four days. I
Speaker 3: reckon when we're over a week, it's like, Okay, you
Speaker 3: saw it and you forgot to reply. And sometimes that
Speaker 3: does get offensive and you feel especially when you know
Speaker 3: that four day.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. Everyone has their phone at all times, and
Speaker 1: I know you're taking them to the toilet. No, three
Speaker 1: or four hours is what I expect.
Speaker 2: The first cut of Wuthering Heights, the latest movie adaptation
Speaker 2: of Emily Bronte's gothic masterpiece, has reportedly been shown to
Speaker 2: a test audience in Dallas, Texas. Would you like a
Speaker 2: sneak peek? And you don't get to say no, yep,
Speaker 2: because I know you might.
Speaker 3: Since when do we go to test audiences and then
Speaker 3: get leaks?
Speaker 2: Well, this is the thing, so lots and lots of
Speaker 2: movies are tested. Obviously they test big movies. But it
Speaker 2: seems to be a bit new that now there it's
Speaker 2: all leaking out. I read all about this on a
Speaker 2: blog called World of Real. I don't even know how
Speaker 2: real World of Reel is, but they apparently interviewed all
Speaker 2: the people who came out of the test screen.
Speaker 3: I feel like you would have signed some sort of
Speaker 3: non disclosure thing, but.
Speaker 2: Okay, they weren't named. This is what Word of Reel reported.
Speaker 2: Audience reaction inside the theater was largely mex with some
Speaker 2: visible well maybe they were in there, maybe World of
Speaker 2: Reel were in there, with some visible restlessness, while others
Speaker 2: were won over. The film, described by one attendee as
Speaker 2: aggressively provocative and tonally abrasive, leans hard into Ferinelle's now
Speaker 2: familiar brand of stylized depravity. If you're wondering how depraved,
Speaker 2: I apologize for what I'm about to say, or rather
Speaker 2: for what World of Reel said, And if you have
Speaker 2: a little around you, you might just really need to
Speaker 2: press pause. But anyway, grown ups, stay with.
Speaker 3: Me, because Emerald Fanell is the criti director, and she
Speaker 3: did Saltburn, and she did Promising Young Woman.
Speaker 2: Yes, and Saltburn was a wonderful film in many levels,
Speaker 2: but all anyone ever wants to talk about her the
Speaker 2: really really rude bits.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: The film opens with a public hanging that quickly descends
Speaker 2: into grotesque absurdity as the condemned man ejaculates mid execution,
Speaker 2: sending the onlooking crowd into a kind of orgiastic frenzy.
Speaker 2: A none even fondles. The corpse is visible erect.
Speaker 1: World of Reel had fun with that word fondles. I
Speaker 1: really did, I seel.
Speaker 2: And it is one of my favorite books. So why
Speaker 2: don't I remember the nun and the erection in Weathering Heights?
Speaker 1: Oh look, I really missed the days when all we
Speaker 1: knew about this Wuthering Heights was that Margot Robbie was
Speaker 1: wearing a lovely, slightly eighty styled wedding dress in it.
Speaker 1: Remember those blurry picks. That's all we knew, and it
Speaker 1: sounded promising. And now I just feel like we know
Speaker 1: too much about movies before they come out.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I fundamentally don't believe in pre promotion of anything.
Speaker 3: I think hype is finite, and if you start the
Speaker 3: hype too early, by the time we drop the film,
Speaker 3: I'm over it and I have fatigue.
Speaker 1: But do your book publicists agree with that? Good question?
Speaker 3: There's a lead up where you kind of go, book
Speaker 3: is coming, But I would say that you can go
Speaker 3: book is coming too many times, and it's like, stop
Speaker 3: telling me that until I can buy the book.
Speaker 2: You really go hard on the book promotion wants pre order.
Speaker 3: Zed, Yeah, when someone can do it the same.
Speaker 2: Time, you need to give them action. The thing that's
Speaker 2: interesting about this is you're right, Jesse, because the other
Speaker 2: thing that might happen, and this is also happening at
Speaker 2: the minute in the culture with the Devil with different
Speaker 2: different I don't think there are any nuns erections fondling
Speaker 2: going on in that. But we've all seen We've all
Speaker 2: seen the photos or I imagine we have, and in
Speaker 2: some cases video of Anne Hathaway and our very own
Speaker 2: Patrick Brammel walking down the street and she's twirling around
Speaker 2: a lampers and he's like looking very sharp and skinny
Speaker 2: in a suit. Like I already feel I know too
Speaker 2: much about the plot of that movie. Is one of
Speaker 2: the dangers of this much excitement preprint emotion, for example,
Speaker 2: that I've already made my mind up that I don't
Speaker 2: want to go and see Wuthering Heights by the time
Speaker 2: it comes out.
Speaker 1: Oh, we know way too much about Devil was prior
Speaker 1: to too. Do you know we know the code name
Speaker 1: that they're using the movie on the New York sets?
Speaker 1: What's Cerulean, which is brilliant, referring, of course, to the
Speaker 1: famous scene in the first one where Meryl Streep's character
Speaker 1: talks about how she sets the tone and picks the
Speaker 1: colors for the next season. I do think movies need
Speaker 1: a bit of mystery. I heard it said once that
Speaker 1: good movie stars retain a sense of intrigue, and that's
Speaker 1: why you put on your hard pants and you go
Speaker 1: and pay to go to the movies to see a
Speaker 1: movie star, because you want more of them than you're getting.
Speaker 1: And they're always having to toe this line between reminding
Speaker 1: you that they exist and not getting too overexposive. There's
Speaker 1: no mystery, and the quintessential movie star is, of course
Speaker 1: Tom Cruise. And Tom Cruise is a movie star because
Speaker 1: we literally don't know where he lives. It might be England,
Speaker 1: we don't know what it could be.
Speaker 3: Us, it could be And I think that perhaps they've
Speaker 3: always taken pictures on set, right, that's not new. What's
Speaker 3: new is the ubiquity of those images is that I
Speaker 3: can't go through my feed. I actually do not care
Speaker 3: about the Devil Wears Prada two spot. I don't care,
Speaker 3: not even about Patrick Bramle, not really. And I've been
Speaker 3: bombarded with images and actually spoilers that they've managed to
Speaker 3: gauge through all of it, but by the time it
Speaker 3: comes out, it's just like, where's the interest?
Speaker 1: Are you more interested in? The is the best advertisement
Speaker 1: for a film I have heard in a long time,
Speaker 1: because there is not.
Speaker 3: Much we haven't seen that I haven't seen.
Speaker 2: The World of Reel went on to be like, they
Speaker 2: seem to have great chemistry, these actors they're talking about
Speaker 2: Jacob A Laudie and Margot Robbie obviously, but the characters
Speaker 2: are so cold and unlikable. Again, I do remember that
Speaker 2: in the book I Do.
Speaker 1: The World of Reel has this. This is their watergate.
Speaker 2: My favorite thing about this whole conversation has been Amelia saying,
Speaker 2: putting on your hard pants, Oh your hard pants, the
Speaker 2: ones that don't have a stretchy.
Speaker 3: Waste to the movies all the time. After the break,
Speaker 3: the surprising reason that people are choosing not to get divorced.
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: of the show notes to get us in your is
Speaker 2: five days a week and a huge thank you to
Speaker 2: all our current subscribers.
Speaker 3: Australia's divorce right is the lowest it's been in fifty years.
Speaker 3: And the question I have is why do people just
Speaker 3: love each other more?
Speaker 1: That's a question.
Speaker 3: If you think that it is because we are somehow
Speaker 3: better at relationships, or that ever since Amelia and I
Speaker 3: got married the love is stronger, you would be very,
Speaker 3: very wrong. One significant factor is the cost of divorcing.
Speaker 3: So a cheap marriage dissolution starts upwards of ten thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: Really, I thought you could just do it online at
Speaker 1: divorce dot com.
Speaker 3: I actually did too, I didn't know it.
Speaker 2: It's also just all the knock on. And then also
Speaker 2: the other big financial consideration is obviously for a great
Speaker 2: number of families, imagine in this economy harving your income
Speaker 2: and yet still having all the same expenses. Well, actually
Speaker 2: having expensive business, Well that's the most expensive of all
Speaker 2: exactly now have to pay for two months yet, ceter
Speaker 2: So it's an expensive business.
Speaker 3: And it's prohibitive for a lot of couples. So one
Speaker 3: growing trend is living a part together, where a couple
Speaker 3: live separately but in the same house, often for the
Speaker 3: sake of the children and Now, the reason divorce is
Speaker 3: lower is because of a practice called relationship testing prior
Speaker 3: to marriage. So this is about cohabiting before marriage, where
Speaker 3: you might live together for five or ten years. Therefore
Speaker 3: you know whether you live well together, which appears to
Speaker 3: lead to greater success. Jnity really, Charlie Kerr, Oh no.
Speaker 2: Why not?
Speaker 1: Well, I did not live with my partner before marriage.
Speaker 1: Now that could have had something to do with the
Speaker 1: fact that he was in Washington, DC and I was
Speaker 1: in Sydney. But I choose to lean into the idea
Speaker 1: of purity.
Speaker 3: That's why Dean Wells would be like, you are a
Speaker 3: high status woman.
Speaker 2: This is the most shocking thing I've learned about Amelia.
Speaker 1: Like this ever saw me in hard pants until if
Speaker 1: to be all married and then I pulled out my
Speaker 1: tax fuits. Oh my god.
Speaker 2: It was the soft pan, big reveal. I get the
Speaker 2: logistics of that. But you could have still when you
Speaker 2: finally did merge your lives, you could have done that
Speaker 2: with cohabitation. Had you cohabited before. And so you're I know,
Speaker 2: I'm getting very personal. I do hope cohabited before, and
Speaker 2: that's why you were like, no, put a ring on it.
Speaker 1: The answer to that is in two parts. Yes, I
Speaker 1: had cohabited. That's a hard word to say, isn't it.
Speaker 1: That's really why I didn't you. It's too hard to
Speaker 1: pronounce I had. But also, well, you know, I was
Speaker 1: in my thirties. I was ready to get on with it.
Speaker 2: I just aw nothing that such a romantic notion to
Speaker 2: me that you'd go. So let's jump straight in.
Speaker 1: Tiny bit of condescension there, I'll take it. I'll take it.
Speaker 1: I promise not.
Speaker 2: I just mean more, you know, as Jesse's saying, it's
Speaker 2: very common.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: I don't know what the stats are exactly, because obviously
Speaker 2: it changes with cultural you know, all kinds of cultural things.
Speaker 2: But it just seems like a very romantic idea.
Speaker 1: Let's jump it's.
Speaker 2: Right in, no try before you buy all that stuff.
Speaker 2: I am impressed. I promise I'm not gone.
Speaker 3: Because that's that's the other stat as well, is that
Speaker 3: people are getting married later, which yes, yeah, often means
Speaker 3: that they've had relationships before, or they've had the opportunity
Speaker 3: to live with each other. The institution has evolved and
Speaker 3: adapted in a way that, say, in the nineteen seventies,
Speaker 3: you might not have thought because no fault divorce came out,
Speaker 3: and the marriage rate, we should say as well, has
Speaker 3: halved since nineteen seventy one, meaning that there are also
Speaker 3: less divorces because there are less marriages. Holly does marriage appeal.
Speaker 2: Yet, one way to not get divorced is to not
Speaker 2: get married in the first place.
Speaker 3: Life Life, you heard it here first.
Speaker 2: Yes, because obviously I'm the opposite of Amelia in this regard,
Speaker 2: in that my partner and I've been living together for
Speaker 2: twenty years.
Speaker 1: If you're ready.
Speaker 2: From the beginning and on once started that way, I
Speaker 2: think it's really interesting because I'm seeing this being reported
Speaker 2: around a lot as a cause for great celebration, and
Speaker 2: of course it is if it's sparing anyone heartache, pain,
Speaker 2: you know, the level of disruption, economic hardship exactly, and
Speaker 2: all of the things that come often but not always
Speaker 2: come from divorce. But divorce rates themselves are a bit
Speaker 2: of a blunt measure, as you've already said, Jesse, when
Speaker 2: you're spelling out these stats, because they don't necessarily reflect
Speaker 2: happiness or success like a successful marriage. You know, commas
Speaker 2: like I don't know if you listened to the No
Speaker 2: Filter with Sally Hepworth last week.
Speaker 1: Soo yeah.
Speaker 2: So Sally Hepworth obviously one of Australia's most successful fiction
Speaker 2: authors New York Times bestseller, She's got a book coming
Speaker 2: out soon, but she went on No Filter to talk
Speaker 2: to Kate Langbert, but not really about her book, but
Speaker 2: about her divorce. And it was a brilliant conversation because
Speaker 2: it was very respectful. It wasn't kind of sledging anyone.
Speaker 2: But she did say, going through what she's gone through
Speaker 2: after being married for well over a decade, three kids,
Speaker 2: divorce was the hardest thing that she has ever happened
Speaker 2: to her in her life. She talked about how canmpletely
Speaker 2: devastating it was, and that it's changed her view of marriage,
Speaker 2: and she said, now I look around at people's marriages,
Speaker 2: and obviously she's the caveat as you never know, but
Speaker 2: she said, whose marriage would you want? And she looks
Speaker 2: around and goes, oh, like I.
Speaker 3: Could think that made me so depressed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, She's like, I could think of like one or
Speaker 2: two of So this is what I mean when I
Speaker 2: say I think the divorced stat in itself is a
Speaker 2: blunt measure because it doesn't necessarily mean that all the
Speaker 2: people who are not getting divorced a happy, healthy, harmonious whatever.
Speaker 2: And also I think that in the same way we
Speaker 2: have many more choices about how to live together now,
Speaker 2: we also have many more choices and how to separate.
Speaker 2: So I know lots of people who've separated but haven't divorced,
Speaker 2: you know, and they may be separated for five to
Speaker 2: ten years. There are all different ways of doing it.
Speaker 2: So just the divorce stat in itself, I'm not sure
Speaker 2: if it tells us that we're getting better at love.
Speaker 2: Do you think it does?
Speaker 1: No. I think that's a really good point, and I
Speaker 1: picked up on that in that conversation too. That idea
Speaker 1: of the divorce almost took her by surprise, how hard
Speaker 1: it was and how isolating it was. And it reminded
Speaker 1: me of two divorce memoirs that have come out pretty recently.
Speaker 1: One is Leslie Jamison's Splinters, and the other is Sarah
Speaker 1: Manguso's book Liars, which is pitched as a novel, but
Speaker 1: it's pretty clearly a memoir about her divorce. Both these
Speaker 1: women were very successful writers, just like Sally Hepworth, who
Speaker 1: traveled the world and who had written about love many
Speaker 1: times in their professional life. And both of them highlighted
Speaker 1: how isolating it was to go through a divorce because
Speaker 1: I guess because it is now less common in certainly
Speaker 1: certain social millieres. They found that their friends withdrew from them,
Speaker 1: and that there was a sense that divorce was contagious,
Speaker 1: that if their friends gave them too much support, or
Speaker 1: if they let their friends in too close during that chapter,
Speaker 1: their friends were worried they would somehow catch the divorce.
Speaker 1: And it's interesting because I looked into this and yes,
Speaker 1: divorce is a bit contagious, it turns out in social groups,
Speaker 1: but so is marriage. And there's this phrase, the marriage
Speaker 1: bug that means that you're more likely to get married
Speaker 1: if people around you are getting married. And what's interesting
Speaker 1: is that among young Australians there has been a trend
Speaker 1: towards getting married a little bit earlier than we might expect,
Speaker 1: and that's because they think it's sort of this contagious element.
Speaker 1: Marriage is contagious and divorce is contagious.
Speaker 3: I wondered that in the Sally No Filter interview, and
Speaker 3: I wondered if it was a life staged thing when
Speaker 3: she said you look around and go whose marriage would
Speaker 3: I want? Does that ring true to either of you.
Speaker 3: Do you think that there's yes.
Speaker 2: The thing is that the more you do know about
Speaker 2: other people's relationships at and again, I don't want to
Speaker 2: sound like a cynic, because I'm genuinely not like I
Speaker 2: am a romantic in lots of ways, but I think
Speaker 2: that we set ourselves an impossible target with marriage. We
Speaker 2: set ourselves an impossible target in long term relationships that
Speaker 2: you know, happily ever after till death do us part,
Speaker 2: and we'll always be happy and everything will always be great,
Speaker 2: and this person will be my best friend, and you know,
Speaker 2: we'll co parent brilliantly and we'll have the same ambitions
Speaker 2: and what we want from each other will never change.
Speaker 2: And the older you get and the more life lived
Speaker 2: and the more things you've seen around you, you just
Speaker 2: realize that that is it's like almost impossible, Which is
Speaker 2: why I think that, you know, the happy, successful marriages
Speaker 2: you do see around you are definitely worth celebrating because
Speaker 2: it's really really hard. It's very very hard to live
Speaker 2: most of your life with somebody else. But I don't know,
Speaker 2: I think it's interesting. Sally said this, and also my
Speaker 2: friends who've been through divorce will tell me this is
Speaker 2: that when you are going through that and have been
Speaker 2: through that, you know how you were saying, Amelia, is
Speaker 2: it contagious? Suddenly everyone comes and tells you the truth
Speaker 2: about their relationships. You know, you don't go and tell
Speaker 2: your friends who looks like they've got a perfect marriage, like,
Speaker 2: actually we haven't had sex in two years, or I'm
Speaker 2: thinking of having an affair, or I'm really unhappy, or
Speaker 2: he's awful to me or whatever it is. You don't
Speaker 2: say that to your happily married friends. You say that
Speaker 2: to your friends who you can see have found a
Speaker 2: way through it. And maybe you're on the other side
Speaker 2: of that. So I think that probably people who are
Speaker 2: divorced and separated, I know a lot more about it
Speaker 2: in a way.
Speaker 1: You know, Jesse, you said something interesting too, when you
Speaker 1: said that marriage has evolved in ways that we might
Speaker 1: not have expected. Sort of surprising, how tenacious the idea
Speaker 1: of marriage remains, even when we have evolved in so
Speaker 1: many other ways to sort of reject traditional institutions. It
Speaker 1: was interesting because apparently there was a recent survey donogen
Speaker 1: Z Australians between the ages of fifteen and twenty four,
Speaker 1: and seventy percent of them said that marriage was still
Speaker 1: an aspiration. They said, it's not essential for raising children,
Speaker 1: which is what we used to think of as the
Speaker 1: reason why people got married, but that they still wanted
Speaker 1: to get married. And it's fascinating that among all those
Speaker 1: traditional institutions, think of the church, or think of the
Speaker 1: idea of women staying at home, marriage is the one
Speaker 1: that's really clung on.
Speaker 3: I like the idea that it's evolved, and there was
Speaker 3: an article in the Atlantic about it and had a
Speaker 3: lot of research. And obviously these are generalizations and there
Speaker 3: are lots of different exceptions, but in terms of loneliness,
Speaker 3: apparently it can be really good for men and women.
Speaker 3: And to think that it's this institution that's been around
Speaker 3: for a really long time. Yet what the research suggested
Speaker 3: was that the nineteen sixty marriage bears very little resemblance
Speaker 3: to the twenty twenty five marriage. And even though of
Speaker 3: course there are still domestic inequalities with things like child
Speaker 3: rearing and housework and all of those things, there are changes.
Speaker 3: And when they asked people in marriages what contributed to
Speaker 3: a happy marriage, equality was one of the biggest things,
Speaker 3: them saying that they felt like there was a quality
Speaker 3: within that marriage, which would not have been the answer.
Speaker 1: In the night well when they got married in the
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties, the woman wouldn't have been able to open
Speaker 1: a bank account on her own.
Speaker 2: Hold her job. I think the reason that seventy percent
Speaker 2: of young people want to get married is for the GRAM.
Speaker 2: It's taken care of your content for at least six months.
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