July 21, 2025 • 52 mins
The Coldplay affair has united every corner of the internet. But there's more to the story then meets the eye with strangers profiting, fake statements, and AI generated content. Mia's feeling conflicted to say the least, and she needs to talk about it.
And newsflash: Holly's back from her European Grand Tour—and just in the nick of time. An exclusive look at Gwyneth Paltrow: The Biography has dropped with strange details about her early life and career that our Gwyneth correspondent is desperate to fill us in on.
Plus, main character energy is ruining our public spaces. People are pooing in public pools and Jessie is demanding more information about it while Holly reports on her firsthand experience with over-tourism in 2025—and how this might all be our new norm.
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What to read:
- HOLLY WAINWRIGHT: Winona Ryder and Gwyneth Paltrow's brutal friendship break-up is the stuff of Hollywood legend.
- The truth about Brad Pitt and Gwyneth Paltrow's breakup is out.
- It was the 'affair' tens of millions of us watched. Now there's been an update.
- 'Like the woman we’re thinking about after the "affair" video, I was the wife who was left behind.'
- 'As a travel writer, this is how you can see Europe on a budget.'
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
You're listening to a MoMA Mia podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Mamma Mia acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters
that this podcast is recorded on.
Speaker 3 (00:20):
Hello and welcome to Momma Mia. Out loud What women
are actually talking about? On Monday, the twenty first of July,
excuse me, I went on holiday and our tagline appears
to have changed again.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
What's going on?
Speaker 3 (00:34):
Well?
Speaker 1 (00:36):
I was bored of the old one. And also sometimes
people got upset because if we talked about something that
they weren't talking about, they tried to say that they
weren't talking about it. So I tried to make for
gender happen.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Yeah, that was like fetch.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
I couldn't make it happen. You know, one like to
axing me.
Speaker 4 (00:51):
What women are talking about is the truest to out loud.
I was saying before. I feel like we came into
work with a loud hat on. We tried to see
if it suited us and if people gave us compliments.
Neither of those things happened, and now we're coming back
to work the next day without the hat and we're
not saying anything We tried to say.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
Women come to debrief that that just sounded a bit defeated.
It sounded passive, and we're nothing if not inconsistent.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
Yeah, well, look, I'm Holly Wainwright. I'm maist High Holidays,
and I think we're thinking about ourselves a little too much.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
That's what I do.
Speaker 4 (01:23):
That'll be a thing true. I'm me A Friedman and
I'm Jesse Stevens.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
And here is what is on our agenda for today.
Speaker 4 (01:31):
The moment that brought the Internet together we need to
unpack in a revolting amount of detail, the Coldplay kiss
Can discourse.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
I can't wait.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
Also, my imaginary friend Gwyneth Paltrow is the subject of
a tea soaked new unauthorized biography or.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
Is she plus main character? Energy is ruining our public spaces.
People are pooing in public pools and adams, yes, adults
and newly returned europe correspondent has some stories to share.
Speaker 4 (01:59):
But first, I just wanted to thank me out louders
for all their lovely messages. At the end of last week,
after I shared a story about pregnancy loss, I was
in undated with messages, all of them so kind like
our out louder community is just remarkable. And I was
listening to an episode of Ezracline recently and he was
(02:21):
speaking to this person who's a Buddhist, and the Buddhist
was saying that there's a story that they tell about
a woman who's grieving, and the Buddha says, if you
want to recover, you just have to go and find
this mustard seed. But you have to find it, you
have to go around and ask this whole village, find
it from someone who has never experienced grief. And so
(02:42):
she goes and tries to find this mustard seed, and
of course every house that she enters, they too have
their own story of grief. And why that story is
so powerful is because it's in that connection and realizing
that whatever pain you're in right now is being experienced
by people all of the time. I think when we
(03:02):
get stuck in pain, it's because we think no one
else is feeling how we feel. Yeah, and I actually
found it.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
It's the loneliness of it.
Speaker 4 (03:08):
Yeah, and I don't feel lonely. And there were people
that I know who said to me, I had a
miscarriage on the same day, like that's how common it is.
But having people put words around it was just so
so so comforting. So thank you to the out louders.
And I also have a confession to add to that,
which is, if you saw me with shopping bags over
(03:31):
the weekend, it couldn't.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
Have been you because you're not buying.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
You're not. Twenty twenty five is don't buy anything year
for Jesse friends.
Speaker 4 (03:38):
I was feeling pain.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
The year is thrift.
Speaker 4 (03:40):
I thought, what would Maya Friedman do?
Speaker 2 (03:42):
Should do? I should go and buy something.
Speaker 4 (03:44):
And the Maya it helped. I'm sorry, I'm sorry I've
been thrifting, but trying to get secondhand jeans is too hard,
and so I went, you know what, Jesse, be kind
to yourself and go and buy some new things, and
it did help. I'm not going to do it again,
but I just have to confess because I'm sure out
louders saw me, and I'm sure that they were going
to write an unauthorized biography about the time Jesse broke
her promise.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
I recommend it. Some people eat their feelings. I shop
for my feelings. Help.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
It does help us, Ah, Jesse, I listened obviously to
what you said, and like all those out louders who
contacted you, I just thought it was brilliantly put and
thank you for sharing it now they're making you feel
the way you made them.
Speaker 5 (04:23):
Hmmm, we'd like to say hello to some of you
in the crowd. How are we going to do that is,
we're going to use our cameras and put some of
the other big screen. So please, if you haven't done
(04:43):
your makeup, do your makeup now.
Speaker 4 (04:46):
This time a week ago, very few people knew the
name or were familiar with the face of CEO Andy Byron,
a married man and father of two. Byron decided on
Wednesday night to attend a Coldplay concert in Boston, which would,
as it happens, blow up his entire life. So here's
what actually happened. Coldplay was playing the Jumbo t So
(05:10):
when a kiss cam landed on a man and a
woman cuddling and they were watching the.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
Stage, is a kiss cam supposed to be? I know
this is a really dumb question, but you know there
are no dumb questions. When the camera lands on you.
You're meant to like do a little performance for it,
aren't you? Like do a kiss play to it?
Speaker 4 (05:28):
And this is a thing that happens at Coldplay concerts, right,
and some football games. And yes, and they go and
scout like the videographer who's there goes and scouts people
and sort of says, okay, let's go to these these people.
They look quite cuddly, and so went to this couple.
But something really unusual happened, which was that they jumped
apart and immediately attempted to hide their faces, and Chris Martin,
(05:51):
who's the lead singer of Coldplay, said.
Speaker 5 (05:53):
Oh, what either having an affair or.
Speaker 4 (06:00):
I hope we didn't do something bad. Now we can
argue about who might have done something bad, but something
very bad did indeed happen. A twenty eight year old
named Grace Springer filmed that moment and then she uploaded
it to social media, and by the following day, the
pair had been identified.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
Why did she do that? Out of interest? Like she
actually interviews everybody involved made content.
Speaker 4 (06:26):
She says that she saw it and when all something
tense has happened here, I'm not quite sure what it is.
I'll upload it and let the internet figure it out.
Because she thought if either of those partners are watching,
like they have the right to know.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
So she thought she was doing God's work.
Speaker 3 (06:42):
She thought she was I think she showed it to
her friends, and her friends all went, oh my god,
you've got to upload about it, and it's.
Speaker 4 (06:49):
Going to go viral, viewed more than one hundred million times.
I want to ask before we go any further, tell
me what your initial reaction was when you saw this
video at the end of last week.
Speaker 5 (07:00):
Ma'am.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
I thought this is incredible, Oh my god, and I
sort of laughed a little bit. Yeah, but there, I
guess because we work in the media and we're very
familiar with, you know, public shaming and virality. I felt
a bit sick from the beginning because I get very
(07:23):
caught up in how people's lives can change in an instant.
You know Lee's sales book Any Ordinary Day, where she
talks to people who've suffered tragedies, usually accidents or the
loss of a loved one very suddenly. And I know
this isn't that, but that sense of even when you
were just saying that they woke up and they went
let's and you know, it turns out they were having
(07:44):
an affair, but they went, let's go to this Coldplay concert,
and you think about them, every step they took and
every single decision that got to that point, and then oblivion.
Speaker 4 (07:54):
Holly, how about you? How did you respond when you
first saw it, Well, I.
Speaker 3 (07:57):
Just thought it was really juicy. I was immediately like,
what an idiot? Those were my first thoughts. It's like,
and I don't know why, but of course I thought
he was an idiot rather than her. That's my own
personal prejudice. I thought, what absolute idiot, and then I
went ha ha ha. And then of course I didn't
necessarily keep thinking that.
Speaker 4 (08:14):
I do agree that I thought it was very funny
and immediately wanted to send it to people because I
was like, I think as well, there was this moment
of like, doesn't everyone know a CEO or a CEO
coded person who has or is currently cheating on their
wife and appears to experience no repercussions as a result.
Speaker 3 (08:34):
And also that in that I mean and we didn't
know this when we very first saw it, but when
it became apparent the story of who they were, a
lot of people cheat with people at work like that
is a place that happens a lot, and if those
people are particularly senior, often a lot of people within
the business will know that that's happening, but it's just
all accepted that we just don't talk about it, and
all those kind of things. Originally, I thought, oh, imagine
(08:57):
if they were all, like the whole team was there.
Speaker 2 (08:59):
You know, that isn't what turned out to have happened.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
But I told myself many stories, and then I started
to see all those like letters to this man's wife
and everything on the internet, and I was like, oh, dear,
I sound.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
A bit sactimonious when I say that, like what I
said before, because it's not like I also didn't go, yeah,
that was jucy. And I wanted to know cause I
wanted to know more. Who's she, Who's he? How that? What?
You know? I wanted. I was hungry to know the story.
Speaker 4 (09:22):
So the more came, as happens with the internet. Byron
is fifty. He was the CEO of Astronomers, which is
a tech firm, and the woman he was with was
revealed to be Kristen Cabot. She is the chief people
officer the same company, and there's ambiguity about whether she
is still married or recently separated. Right, we know that
(09:43):
Byron married two kids. By Friday, both Byron and Cabot
had been put on leave by their company, and by Saturday,
Byron had resigned as CEO. She also has two kids, right,
I believe, So what's that?
Speaker 3 (09:55):
Do you think that the put them on leave and
resignation was inevitable? Like, is that how it would play
in a corporate sense? You think me are always well?
Speaker 1 (10:03):
Before that, there was the statement that he allegedly made,
which everybody shared and of people reacted to.
Speaker 4 (10:11):
So what's interesting is that this was one of the
first viral moments in the age of AI, and so
what happened was an influx of things where everyone sat
there going is this real? Even I think the kiscam footage,
it was sort of like is this real? So there
was fake stak it a bit, yeah, fake tweets and
this isn't AI related. But I was on TikTok watching
(10:33):
his daughter post these tiktoks that said reconnecting with life
after your dad's affair makes national news. I went deep
on her. It turns out that was not his daughter.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
He doesn't have a daughter.
Speaker 4 (10:42):
He didn't have a daughter. So there was a coldplay
tweet that read, starting with our next show, We're introducing
camera free audience sections for people in their side pieces.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
Fake funny.
Speaker 4 (10:51):
Then the statement from Andy Byron. I believe that there
were multiple ones, but there was one you might have
seen where he expressed how troubling it was that a
private moment became public without his consent.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
And the reason that I thought that was interesting is
because that spoke to you know, we often talk about
the second idea or the third idea, which is everybody
reacts in one way, but then what's the bigger issue?
Right if you zoom out? And I think that the
reason that so many people were fooled by that statement.
The only time I got a bit sus is when
he quoted a culture.
Speaker 4 (11:20):
How it ended.
Speaker 1 (11:21):
But before that I was on board because it followed
the template of public statements, public apologies, because we know
that in a vacuum people will make stuff up, right,
so you've got to you know that the first rule
of crisis pr is that you've got to try and
take control of the situation, to try and corterize the wound.
And what he said about a private situation became public
(11:43):
that way and taking time to think and learn and reflect.
All of that was like tick tick tick tick, but
then it was fake.
Speaker 4 (11:51):
It also reminded us. I think of how if any
of us were to go viral in an hour, what
can be found from LinkedIn profiles from the dig online
what they were able to find all of his family.
His wife had to, you know, go super private in
order to not have their detail shared.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
She took down her surname from her profile. Then she
deleted family photos. Because we've got our journalistic hats on.
The first place, this is the biggest story in the world.
The first place you go is what's on Instagram. Yeah,
because that's publicly usable, right.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
But how ridiculous this is the biggest story in the world. Yeah,
and we'll get to why that executives. Yeah, cheating at
a Coldplay concert?
Speaker 1 (12:35):
Why do you think? Because as an example of that, Jesse,
I was on Reddit yesterday and I was doing a
search because you're right. By last night it became really
confusing about what was real and what was real. And
I follow lots of different threads on Reddit. And what
was interesting about why this was such a huge story
is that the tech threads were about it, the work
threads were about it, the gossip threads were about it,
(12:58):
the news threads were about it. Like the ven diagram
of all the different places at time.
Speaker 4 (13:03):
The reason that happened, I reckon, is because the Internet
is so divided and so contented, amptuous, and we are
constantly at each other, probably in the last few years
more than ever before. And for the last four days,
the internet has had a common enemy. We have all
been united and even the means I don't know find
that's true.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
Do you think we have a common enemy? I don't see.
Speaker 4 (13:26):
Well, everyone almost looked at it. It was like everyone's
laugh immediately was like sucked in, You're having an affair.
And isn't that calma like.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
Real shaden for it?
Speaker 3 (13:35):
Yes, exactly for women whose husbands have cheated on them
and they have found out but humiliated. There's no question
that he in particular was an instant villain. But unfortunately
what has happened, which is always what happens, is that then,
as you've said, you know, his wife gets her privacy
horrifically invaded. Her picture is all over the internet. Here
are five things you didn't know about the CEO's wife,
(13:57):
you know, and then the woman in question also obviously
the twenty five things you didn't know about her, and
before you know it, the shit really is smeared everywhere
all over everybody involved. So if it started with an
almost like oh, this is quite satisfying watching this powerful
man being sort of humiliated.
Speaker 2 (14:16):
That isn't really what happened.
Speaker 4 (14:18):
And the dig then happened. We're recording this on you know,
Monday morning. He has made no statement yet, but his
salary has since been revealed as being in the ballpark
of about a million Australian dollars a year, and a
LinkedIn post that relevant. Well, I think that it adds
to the idea that this is an entitled.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
One hundred percent.
Speaker 3 (14:38):
I think if he was a teacher and she was
a nurse, this story is not as good.
Speaker 4 (14:43):
Yeah, no question, because then there's also this thing of like,
if he's having an affair with someone at work, what
are the power dynamics there? That's interesting. Then a post
on LinkedIn by the editor in chief of Forbes Australia
was about how there's barely any gender diversity. It looks
like she might be the only one kind of in
the higher in the leadership teams that's a female.
Speaker 1 (15:06):
Don't you think it's become I mean in the age
of the hot take, where everybody needs to have a
hot take to get engagement, to get traffic. I mean, look,
we're talking about it today, right but everybody then projecting
their lens onto it. So is it about diversity in
the leadership team? Is it about the cheated wife? Is
it about public spaces and what's private? Is it about AI?
(15:28):
Now all the pieces are running out about AI and
what's so hard? You know that thing about lives make
their way around the world three times before the truth
can do up at shoes. We were talking in our
slack journal last night, and a lot of us were
at very different parts of the story. Like some of
us really believed that the other woman in the video
was their head of HR and that she'd recently been promoted,
and other people knew that wasn't true. And then some
(15:51):
of us thought his daughter's on TikTok, and others knew
that it wasn't true. So most people got little bits
of the story.
Speaker 4 (15:58):
And I think most people are just at the memes, right,
Like most people are just consuming this as a series
of funny memes and they see as it is, here
is this kind of ideologue that represents the Master of
the universe, a particular type of man, as we said,
which maybe he is that.
Speaker 1 (16:18):
But it also maybe he isn't.
Speaker 4 (16:20):
Yeah exactly, And facing the wrath of the potentially tens
of millions of women who have either experienced this or
seen it happen, who then have somewhere to project their
fury and their anger at the dishonesty of some men.
That irks me, like, I'm starting to feel a bit
sick about this whole thing. And then I saw Grace Springer,
(16:40):
the woman who shared the video, right, and she's been
interviewed and everything. Her most recent or one of her
most recent Instagram stories was, you're so welcome for today's entertainment.
Want to show your gratitude? Help me who is just
a girl payoff eighty thousand dollars in student lines? And
now she's got a link and you can go and
help her pay off their student lins. So everyone who
can is capitalizing off this viral moment.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
It's just a desperate need for distraction.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
Right.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
The world is a scary place.
Speaker 3 (17:08):
We could spend forty eight hours obsessing over this story
and making celebrities out of all of the people in
it for five minutes, and no one will remember this
in twenty four hours, and those people's lives are ruined.
Is it their fault or not? Is a bit of
a matter of opinion. But there's interesting.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
On that for one second, because I'm interested in the
idea of the punishment in the crime, right, So I
think we can all agree that what they did was
not good.
Speaker 2 (17:36):
It doesn't appear to be good.
Speaker 3 (17:38):
He and his wife were separated and have been operated
for a long time. She has not spoken on the record, dography,
We have no idea, so a lot of assumptions are
being made.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
Right, So if we all agree cheating is not good,
if that's in fact what happened, but what should the
punishment for that be? Should it be that you your
reputation is forever destroyed, that the entire world is united
in laughing at you, that you lose your career, that
you lose your means to feed your family, that you're utterly, utterly,
abjectly humiliated.
Speaker 4 (18:08):
Is that totally like that's disproportionate. Yeah, because the affair,
whether the affair goes against company policy is even a question,
right because it's like, if that had just been discovered,
would that have been an issue or a conflict of interest?
But the kiss cam element, what I like to think
about is what if they just kissed, and they just kissed,
(18:28):
and this would never.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
Have gone viral. That's true, it wouldn't have got anything.
Speaker 4 (18:31):
It was the reaction, which I completely understand why they
reacted like that, but it was that that kind of
suggested some guilt. I understand why Chris Martin kind of went.
Speaker 3 (18:38):
Oh, if he hadn't have said what he said, it
probably which is I'm not saying we should be blaming
Chris Martin. Yeah, but like if he hadn't have said
what he said about either you're cheating or you're just
very shy, then Grace the young woman posted this probably
wouldn't have thought twice about it.
Speaker 2 (18:52):
No one would have thought twice about it.
Speaker 3 (18:53):
You're right, their guilty reaction to it started the story
in point about what they deserve for that. Me, you're
so right to be honest. I mean, again, this is assumption,
just as much as it's an assumption to pretend we
know the inner workings of either of their marriages.
Speaker 2 (19:09):
Life probably isn't going to be ruined.
Speaker 3 (19:11):
Like high profile CEOs have gone away with all kinds
of affairs for a very long time, and they get
another job and another job, and it might just be
acquired a job, but you know, no one knew who
he was a week ago, and no one will know
who he is in a couple of months. The collateral
damage around him, I don't agree.
Speaker 1 (19:26):
I actually don't agree with that, because I mean, he's
not Jeff Bezos, right, So yes, you're right, someone like
Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg or Donald Trump, nothing's going
to touch them.
Speaker 4 (19:35):
But he doesn't feeding even the feeding his family point,
it's like when you see the salary, there's a world
in which we all kind of got to kilby.
Speaker 3 (19:41):
I think that the he'll be fine thing is why
people feel comfortable laughing about it. You know how I
said before, this is a different story if he's not him.
I'm not saying that's right, but that's why, because we
don't really feel like he's going to be a victim.
We've all read a million stories about men who've harassed
women at work, never mind had affairs, but still go
on to get another good job, and another good job,
another good job. What's also interesting about this, though, and
(20:02):
we're going to talk in a minute about how we
all want to be main characters now, is this is
the sort of stuff that only used to happen to
famous people like who could forget those paparazzi pictures of
Kristin Stewart pashing her director Rupert Sanders when she was
still with Robert Pattinson, and there were these paparazzi pictures.
They're some of the most famous ones of all time
(20:23):
of them canoodling somewhere in a canyon in.
Speaker 2 (20:25):
La or whatever, and it.
Speaker 3 (20:27):
Went around the world in an instant, his wife, her relationship.
But this used to be that's what happens when you're
famous and you've corded the attention and you've asked for it,
and then you have no privacy. Now, because the Internet
can turn any of us into a celebrity, amenable celebrity
within three minutes. All of us have that level of
(20:49):
scrutiny around the corner.
Speaker 4 (20:51):
And we're treating each other like interactive reality shows. And
we're at a show on Saturday night. Nicki Glazer, who
is a comedian, she hosted the Oscars this year, and
she made a joke about this, which I thought was
actually quite funny, where she went around and showed people
on the screen and even if she was doing that,
I went, that's my worst nightmare to be broadcast in
(21:14):
front of all these people. Five thousand and six thousand people.
But then the idea that you could then be broadcast
to whoever chooses to film it is a whole other ballgame.
But then they eventually the last one that they got
to was Lisa Wilkinson being embraced by Hamish Blake, which
was the joke, which was actually very funny. But then
of course someone to film that and then that's gone
(21:35):
viral as well. So the platform of it, I think
is just terrified, the.
Speaker 1 (21:40):
Saturation, like there's no one of any generation presumably. I've
got a friend whose overseas at the moment, and she
was in an aerobi in an uber and the uber
driver who didn't speak English, was laughing with her about
it and about coldplay. It's the scale that's hard to
get your head around.
Speaker 4 (21:57):
Yeah, it ends up being connective tissue between people. It's
small talk, it's fodder, it's stuff for a comedy show.
Speaker 1 (22:02):
And everyone wants the next instrument. So yeah, my question
is when will we walk away from this story? What
will satis by our appetite for resolution of this narrative.
Speaker 3 (22:13):
It probably depends what happens next, right, because there's a
world where the woman in the video decides to come
out and tell a story and do an interview, or
the wife comes out and does that, or you know,
they perpetuate the story in whatever way that will keep
it going. But there's also a very strong likelihood that
this will die away very quickly, like all our memorable
Internet obsessions do, and in a couple of months we'll
(22:35):
all be going, can you remember that time when we
were all obsessed with that CEO? Whatever happened to him?
Like it kind of depends what happens next.
Speaker 1 (22:44):
In a moment. From Polarate's classes to cafes, concerts to
tourist destinations, public spaces have been overtaken by main character Syndrome.
Holly is going to tell us what it's like in
Rome and Paris and London right now.
Speaker 3 (22:59):
Sixteen year olds will be voting in the next UK election.
When the Labor Party won government in Britain last year,
one of their key manifesto promises is that they would
lower the voting age from eighteen to sixteen, and they're
doing it.
Speaker 1 (23:14):
I have a question, yes, why because the people who
would maybe be excited about that have not been allowed
to vote in that election.
Speaker 4 (23:22):
Now, why is it so popular so yes, Why.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
Is it so popular? Why would you go, yeah, you
know what, my children need to be able to vote.
Speaker 3 (23:28):
Well, when you think about it, it sounds kind of wild.
But even here in Australia, it was only in nineteen
seventy three that they lowered the voting age from twenty
one to eighteen, So it used to be seen as
ridiculous that you would let anyone between eighteen and twenty
one vote. That adults were twenty one and that was it.
Speaker 4 (23:45):
And whether it's true or not, there is a sense
that young people will vote more progressively.
Speaker 3 (23:51):
So often it is popular with left wing parties, but
that doesn't actually turn out to be true. But the
argument is that at sixteen years old, you can work,
you can pay tax, and you can fight for your country,
so why can't you vote, And that seems to be
you have a lot of resonance.
Speaker 1 (24:06):
You can make a baby.
Speaker 3 (24:07):
Here in Australia, Independent MP Manique Ryan is going to
table the bill here too. It was last tabled here
in twenty eighteen by the Greens and it was chucked
out because one of the arguments here is but we
have compulsory voting and can you make a.
Speaker 2 (24:20):
Sixteen year old vote.
Speaker 3 (24:21):
But Manique Ryan's bringing it back in light of the
UK thing and saying, well, why don't we make it
so that you it is compulsory, but you won't find
them if they don't do it, So it's kind of
like soft compulsory. So it looks like it might happen
here too. What do we think about it?
Speaker 4 (24:35):
I feel surprisingly not that passionate about allowing sixteen year
olds to vote. I feel as though, as someone who
considers myself progressive, it is something that I should be
fighting for. But I keep hearing the argument young people,
they're the ones who these policies are going to impact
the most. And I find that kind of a weak
argument because it's like, yeah, you could say that about
(24:57):
five year olds. I don't think five year olds should vote.
Like there is something about civic understanding and comprehension and
political knowledge and all that kind of stuff that I
think comes with voting. And they say sixteen year olds
can be taxed, right.
Speaker 3 (25:11):
That seems to me to be a sensible argument. If
I have to pay tax, I should have a say yes.
Speaker 4 (25:15):
But isn't it that if you earn less than about
eighteen five hundred dollars then you don't pay tax. So
most sixteen year olds aren't paying tax, they're not paying rent,
they're not like not that they're not impacted by policies,
but I think of myself at sixteen and my level
of engagement, even myself at eighteen and my level of engagement,
and I think I didn't know what I was doing. Mayo,
(25:36):
what do you think I'm.
Speaker 1 (25:37):
Stuck on the idea of five year olds voting. I
just put up your hand. Plus, I really like wrestling
with this issue because I think the idea, if it's
not compulsory, the people who will vote will be the
ones who are really engaged. The reason I love compulsory
voting is that you know.
Speaker 4 (25:57):
It's good for moderation.
Speaker 1 (25:59):
Yeah, it's good to sort of get a bit of
a common denominator, not necessarily the lowest, but a common denominator.
I'm also really interested in this idea of all the things.
As you say, Ohole, that you can do sixteen, but
you can't drink alcohol until you're eighteen, and I'm interested
in that.
Speaker 4 (26:15):
I was really interested that you could join the army
at sixteen. I fact checked that because I wouldn't get
you and you came sixteen and six months.
Speaker 3 (26:20):
And also, you know you said not that many sixteen
year olds are working, but plenty do. You can have
an apprenticeship, you can train.
Speaker 4 (26:27):
That's a really good point.
Speaker 2 (26:28):
Sixteen year olds are at school.
Speaker 4 (26:30):
Oh, that's a good point.
Speaker 2 (26:30):
I think I'm all.
Speaker 3 (26:31):
For it if the policies of the country impact you
and you're of that age. What's interesting to me about
it is that in so many other areas of our
culture now we're extending childhood. We're very much about infantilizing
people until they're about twenty five. These days, it seems
so this sort of almost seems countercultural to say, yeah,
but sixteen year olds are savvy enough to be able
(26:53):
to vote, But personally I think they are.
Speaker 2 (26:55):
I know that when I was young, I felt.
Speaker 3 (26:56):
Very passionately that I should be able to vote before
I was eighteen, and I think I probably knew what
I was talking about.
Speaker 4 (27:02):
Austria, Germany, Brazil, they've all changed their voting age sixteen.
It does look like we're going that way.
Speaker 3 (27:07):
And in Britain and also in terms of numbers, and
they think this is going to add another one and
a half million people to the electoral role. But it's
not compulsory there here, it wouldn't be anything like that
number because our population is a lot smaller, so it
probably wouldn't be the decider, but it would definitely make
campaigns more interesting.
Speaker 1 (27:24):
Main character syndrome is ruining public spaces. That's the title
of a piece I read this week by the writer
Molly Bath on Substack, and before we unpack it, I
want to do a quick glossary of what main character
syndrome actually is. It's the delusion that you are the
center of the universe like a toddler.
Speaker 4 (27:43):
Is it a delusion?
Speaker 1 (27:44):
Well, you're right, actually, because we all are literally all
the center of.
Speaker 2 (27:48):
Our own universe.
Speaker 1 (27:49):
Yeah, but it's one thing to feel it or know
it and another to pay yeah, act as if everybody
else in the world is a NPC non playing character
in the story of your life. You can kind of
trace it back to the introduction of the front facing
camera on the iPhone four back in twenty ten. That
was kind of ground zero, the cultural tipping point, because
(28:11):
that's when the world stopped being something that you looked
at and started being something that looked back at you
as the main character, with you in the middle of it.
And in this piece, Molly Bath says that it's kind
of made us all seemingly oblivious to just how annoying
we are in public. So she starts from a good place.
You know, this idea of main character syndrome. It's a
(28:33):
sort of self empowerment. It's like, here are my boundaries,
and I'm going to put myself first. I'm not going
to be a martyr. But it can really mutate quite
quickly into a type of oblivious narcissism. And she gives
some examples of things like, you know, talking loudly on
the phone in public at the movies or on public
transporter and cafes.
Speaker 4 (28:50):
Or playing your YouTube video on a train.
Speaker 1 (28:52):
Yes, or someone's phone pinging in a yoga class. This
also fairly extreme example. It's been a while since I've
been to a public pool, but in the UK and
in parts of the US, they've been reports that they've
had to empty and close public pools because people have
been pooing in them. Not children, adults who justdn't be
bothered to get out and go to the bathroom.
Speaker 4 (29:12):
Do we know couldn't be bothered? I immediately, and maybe
this is my own context, but I look at that,
and I think of whether it's people with disabilities, people
who are older, like, are there instances where adults? I
would want more details on that.
Speaker 1 (29:26):
It seems to be something that's rising.
Speaker 4 (29:28):
What is rising is things like public urination. Like public
urination to me is the idea that you're in their
home and you're winging on the streets as a terroist.
Speaker 2 (29:36):
Yeah, not cool.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
Don't pop a squat, yeah in the middle of Rome
like Holly did. Yes, she didn't really. But it also
has had an impact on tourism. And I want to
just link to a story that I've been reading about
and haven't really understood until now. There's been a lot
of protests in some of the big European cities over
summer about over tourism. You know, we saw some in
Venice being some in Rome the Louver closed for a
(29:58):
day because the staff just said, it's just too many people,
we can't take it whole. You have returned from the
frontline of main characters Syndrome, which is Europe in summer, right,
what did you see?
Speaker 4 (30:09):
Were you an MPC and other people's holiday.
Speaker 3 (30:11):
It's so funny because I've just come back from holiday
where I went to all those tourist hotspots with my family,
and that is not something that we do every year,
certainly not. But we went to London, Paris, Rome, and
then we spent a week in Italy with my family
and Manchester. But funnily enough that I don't have to
fight off that many influences in Manchester. I don't know
where they were, no viral restaurants. I haven't been to
(30:33):
Paris since I was twenty one, right, So like this
is a long time. Things have changed, friends, things have
changed a great deal. So here's one of the things.
My daughter's fifteen, and I don't want to embarrass it,
but I'm going to you ever so slightly. She knew
she was going to these cities, and she had a
shot list prepared for pictures that she wanted. And I
(30:54):
in my head, I thought, isn't that cute that my
daughter has done a bit of research and she's excited
that when we go to London, she knows that there's
this thing called Big Ben, she knows she wants a
picture with it. When we go to Paris, she knows
there's this thing called the Affatage.
Speaker 2 (31:06):
She knows pa with it. That's real cute.
Speaker 1 (31:08):
Which change.
Speaker 4 (31:10):
When I went overseas for the first time, I was
doing the same thing, like I went, I don't wait
to get a photo with the Eiffel Tower.
Speaker 3 (31:16):
But no, she has saved to Pinterest, and as I
found out, she is not alone this particular shot that
you've got to get when you go to London and
you go to Big Ben and there's a phone box
in a certain place and whatever. And I'm obviously an
indulgent mum who's excited that my daughter's excited. So I'm like,
let's go there, Let's go and get you this picture.
Speaker 1 (31:34):
What's so special about it?
Speaker 2 (31:35):
Like, it's just a really good view.
Speaker 3 (31:36):
So you get a London phone box and Big Ben
in the background and probably a London bus.
Speaker 2 (31:40):
It's like iconic composition.
Speaker 3 (31:42):
So you turn up to this phone box and there
is a que Like I'm not joking, this is not
a official sight seeing anything. There is a Q twenty
minutes long of other people, mostly young people, mostly female
older than fifteen, but like, who are all also taking
this particular picture in this particular place. You go to
(32:03):
Paris and the amount of time you have to wait
for again mostly young women, to get the shot that
they want in front of the tower at this particular time,
in this particular place, looking this particular way, head down,
maybe looking away, maybe looking off to the side. Then
the queue and the one in London, the poor Internet boyfriends,
and is going to generalize, but it's true of like
(32:25):
the girls posing for the picture and then taking the
phone back going through them.
Speaker 2 (32:28):
No no, no, not that one.
Speaker 3 (32:29):
Let's do it again, like reshooting everybody doing these content
creator shots. It is very different. That is new, new energy.
Everywhere we went. We went to when we were in Rome,
we went to the Trevy Fountain very very early. I'm
not that bothered about the Trevy Fountain. Obviously, all of
that stuff's gorgeous. There were women at six am who
looked like they had been in full glam for an hour,
(32:53):
and they were there in evening dresses with heels and
head to get this iconic to.
Speaker 2 (32:58):
Get these shots.
Speaker 3 (32:59):
And it made me really not I mean, I wasn't.
I know, I sound like I'm being a grumpy old
woman about it.
Speaker 1 (33:05):
I just found it so.
Speaker 3 (33:06):
Interesting because it is so different. It's true that we've
always taken pictures of things, and we've always taken pictures
of ourselves in places that we've always wanted to go,
and it's like a prove I was there, look back
at it and remember that I was really there because
the fleeting nature of travelers. You know, then you're back
home and you're in your office job and you're like,
(33:26):
was I ever even at the Eiffel Tower?
Speaker 2 (33:28):
And you can look at these pictures.
Speaker 3 (33:29):
But it's a very specific I'm going to use the
word I would say wrong esthetic. It's a very specific
type of person and there are so many of them,
and it's really something new, and I could only think
of it as main character.
Speaker 4 (33:43):
I think there are a few different things that are
like coalescing at the same time. The first is that
when my mum went to Europe for the first time,
when you took a photo and you got it developed,
you could only really have one. There wasn't unlimited right,
and now you've got unlimited data. It's not even like
a memory stick. It's like you can take three hundred
photos if you want to get the right one. The
second is video is that often from what as a
(34:05):
consumer who is seeing a lot of people in Europe,
I'm seeing people in all gowns doing almost runway walks.
Speaker 2 (34:13):
In front of the trap fashion show. Right, it's like
a fashion show, a fashion shoot, and I.
Speaker 4 (34:17):
Always think, imagine how that felt a film. I'd be
so because everyone would be would be watching you.
Speaker 2 (34:22):
Yeah, what do you do in your You're holding everybody in.
Speaker 3 (34:25):
Yeah, no offense to them, but they are holding everybody
up because they're hogging that spot and that view while
they do their fourteen takes so back to the idea
of everybody's main character and whether it's irritating that the
phone's pinging in the yoga studio or the whatever is
that your bespoke photo shoot at one of whatever place
you're at, everybody else is waiting. And it's changing cities
(34:48):
in a way that I can understand is you go
to places that are very Instagram famous. There's a particular
market in London that has this strawberry stand. It's just
chocolate covered strawberries, right, but it is so viral that
place that it has changed the entire nature of this market.
On a Tuesday lunchtime wasn't even school holidays. It is
so mobbed you can't get near it. All the stalls
(35:09):
around are getting no custom. The conques are like zig
zag backwards on each other. And they've got a system
in place, and it's all for the gram.
Speaker 4 (35:17):
There used to be a lonely planet or whatever, and
it's saying, oh, this cafe is good or whatever. But
the idea that, as we were saying before, overnight, you
can go from being a little known cafe to being
entirely viral. And that's not just happening to the little bakery.
It can happen to certain spots. There's always a new
spot that's blowing up in terms of interest. And the
(35:38):
other thing that they talk about with over tourism, because
this was a discussion before COVID. The Internet's made it
really easy to book things, and the cost of air
travel being lower than it was a few generations ago,
means it's more accessible and you've got more and more
people going and then having this sense of entitlement which
begins on the plane. It's like I get on the plane,
(35:59):
I go, this is my holiday, and this country exists
for me, and this air hostess exists for me, and
nothing will ruin my holiday. And so even the behavior,
we're all.
Speaker 1 (36:10):
The main character of our own holidays.
Speaker 4 (36:12):
Yes, but it's almost.
Speaker 1 (36:14):
Like locations have become famous. I mean, I know that
sounds funny because we've always had famous places like the
Harmbridge or Big Bear or the Empire State Building. But
it's more than that now because like the strawberry stand,
like it's no longer enough to go and take a
picture of that. It's so funny the different generations and
what they film, because I've got a number of friends
(36:37):
gen X's who are in Europe at the moment, and
the photos they take are still old school. Here's some strawberries,
or here's my dinner, or here's a view, or here's
a sunset or here's an interesting thing I can see.
So they're still looking out at the world. And I
don't mean to say that we're better than the people
who are looking back at themselves, but the people looking
back at themselves the currencies that they were there needing
(37:00):
to insert themselves in there, because what you say about
your daughter, hole, she's not an influencer, she's just a me.
So it's not just the people who were monetizing this content.
It's the idea that almost like when you go to Disneyland,
you want the photo in front of the Disney Castle
because you've seen that and it's iconic and it's like, look,
(37:21):
I'm inside this iconic theme.
Speaker 3 (37:23):
It's also that you know, our social media platforms have
done the art direction for us, right, so they're like,
if you stand in this place and you look a
certain way at this certain time, you'll get this amazing
shot that used to be just the sort of privilege
of a certain kind of person who had an eye
for that. So in some ways it's democratizing. But the
other thing is that our fomo, I think, has just
(37:44):
reached new levels with it. When you walk around a
city like London or or Paris, and this did actually
happen in Manchester too, you'll suddenly see a big queue
for something and immediately human nature, what are they quing for?
What do they know that I don't know that I
should join that queue? And in Paris you'd walk past
and it would be a particular petiserie. There'd be four
other bakeries on the street, but this particular one has
this cake that is particularly instagrammable. So the queue is
(38:07):
out the door, you can join a virtual way list
for it. You could do all these things, and so
everywhere we'd go there'd be a queue and we'd all
be like, what are they queuing for? What are they
cuing for? And then, horrifyingly, on the last day we
were there, we were walking around in the evening and
we'd been, as I say, seeing these cues for days
and kind of.
Speaker 2 (38:24):
What's that about?
Speaker 3 (38:25):
That must be something viral, that must be something exciting,
And then we saw this queue outside this place on
a side street in Paris, and we were like, what's that?
Speaker 2 (38:32):
What's that?
Speaker 3 (38:33):
And we realized this was a literal queue for a
souper kitchen, like a queue for people who are hungry
trying to get themselves fed, next to the tourists in
their long line trying to get a picture of their cake.
I'm not saying that with any moral judgment. They're like, oh,
I would never like, you know, I totally was buying
the macarons that looked really pretty. But it's kind of
(38:54):
really interesting how it's messed with our heads.
Speaker 4 (38:57):
I think the irony is that the beauty of travel
is the opposite of the main character syndrome is it
you often feel anonymous, You feel like no one knows you.
You feel like on the main stage is the culture
and the people, and you're like this viewer rather than
this person who the world it makes you feel small.
That's the beauty of it. We're not just saying this.
(39:19):
There's all this research and all of these countries that
have come out and said people are etching their names
on the Colosseum, like all these countries have come out
from Amsterdam to Kyoto. They literally have new codes of conduct.
Some countries are getting people to sign it when they
get there to go this is how you have to
behave in our country. Because we're having all of these
(39:40):
issues with tourists that there is this entitlement. I also
wonder I think it is a Western thing. I think
that it's a Western entitlement to like you just come
to this country. You see it in Bali, where it's
like this total disregard for cultural sensitivity is about things
and posing or you know, being really insensitive to cultural
(40:03):
or religious sites. Like that kind of stuff is all
over Europe.
Speaker 3 (40:06):
It makes you realize you're We were in some beautiful
for churches in Italy and some people are literally lying
on the floor in the middle of a cathedral trying
to get a photo of the well. Their friend leans
over them to get the shot of them doing the
peace sign underneath the amazing fresco or whatever. And I'm
not a religious person, but I found that insensitive, insensitive
(40:29):
and a bit ick. And the problem is is you
see it though, and the other little thought in the
back of your head, And certainly if you're I mean,
I didn't, but you're like.
Speaker 2 (40:38):
Oh, that would be a good shot.
Speaker 4 (40:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (40:41):
Before you know it, you're probably joining the queue to
lie on the floor in this century's old cathedral and
do a peace sign in front of the Virgin Mary
after the break? What happens when someone writes an unauthorized
biography of you and you kind of like it? All
the signs are that maybe the new Gwyneth Paltrow book
might be an inside job.
Speaker 1 (41:01):
Do you want daily outloud access? Why wouldn't you? We
dropped besides every Tuesday and Thursday exclusively for Muma MEA.
Speaker 2 (41:08):
Subscribers.
Speaker 1 (41:09):
Follow the link in the show notes to get us
in your ears five days a week, and a huge
thank you if you're already a subscriber. Look, I might have.
Speaker 3 (41:22):
Been on holiday, but don't believe for one second that
when my imaginary friend Gwyneth Paltrow was on the gram
making paleo lobster benedict for her husband the other day.
Speaker 2 (41:32):
I wasn't right there with her. What a relatable queen
she is.
Speaker 1 (41:36):
I saw making a tuna salad for him. Gosh, she's been.
Speaker 2 (41:38):
Cooking for tuna saldy guy is easy, look, tasty, paleo lobster.
Bless her.
Speaker 3 (41:45):
Anyway, while she was doing that, I like to imagine
that her lawyers were likely on the phone to People
magazine because they were about to publish a cover proclaiming
all the juicy gossip about Gwyneth from a new unauthorized biography.
This book is written by this woman called Amy Odell,
and it's being tagged as a bombshell book, bombshell, big letters, Mia,
(42:07):
what's an unauthorized biography?
Speaker 2 (42:09):
And is Amy O'Dell like sheer? Big name jehoe have
been worried about this?
Speaker 1 (42:13):
She's people in the industry know who she is, and
by that I sort of mean media fashion, that sort
of adjacent world. She is an author and a journalist.
She wrote the very very well received and successful also
unauthorised biography of Anna Wintour in twenty twenty two.
Speaker 4 (42:32):
What does unauthorized rey unauthorized means?
Speaker 1 (42:35):
It's not with the overt cooperation of the subject, and
they don't have any power over what you do publish,
who you do talk to. And there are different versions
of authorized and unauthorized, right, and the opposite of that
is an autobiography, which is you have complete control because.
Speaker 2 (42:51):
You're writing it all.
Speaker 1 (42:52):
A ghostwriter writes it with you. People often prefer unauthorized
because it means that you get the full story. But
then there are some that are really salacious and trying
to tell a particular juicy story, and then there are
others that have the you know. For example, with the Ana
Winter book, she didn't try to shut it down. Now,
(43:12):
if Anna winto hadn't wanted that book to happen, she
would have told everybody, do not speak to amy Odell.
She didn't do that. Now. Gwyneth Paltry didn't do that
to Amyodell either.
Speaker 2 (43:20):
With her book.
Speaker 4 (43:21):
Was Anna Wintre's flattering.
Speaker 1 (43:22):
I read it and it's the definitive biography of her.
And Anna probably won't ever write a book about herself,
but it was well done. She interviewed over two hundred
and twenty people for that book. I think about the
same for the Gwyneth book, and it was very comprehensive,
so it wasn't you know some unauthorised biographies or just
have an unnamed source and read like the Daily Mail.
But these books are extraordinary pieces of journalism.
Speaker 4 (43:45):
Can you tell me what we know? What did the people?
Speaker 3 (43:49):
So there's say what I'm interested about this is about
whether or not this book, whether or not Gwyneth is
in on it, right because it's described as a bombshell book.
It's not actually out yet and there's an NDA on it.
But People had an exclusive. Now, People magazine is still
widely regarded as the celebrity's mouthpiece if any gossip magazine,
(44:10):
as it were, has any credibility anymore and forever, really
it's People magazine. It's where celebrities go to confirm or
deny certain stories, to do exclusives back in the day
when that was a big thing. And so the fact
that they have the first extracts of this book is meaningful.
The other thing that might mean that gwynethsineon is, as
far as we can tell, despite it being called bombshell,
(44:32):
there doesn't seem to be a smoking gun here right.
Things that we know so far, she considered Brad Pitt
to be a bit of a dullard and she says
things like we came from very different backgrounds. I had
to teach him about the different types of caviat in restaurants.
Speaker 4 (44:46):
And didn't she say he's dumber shit or something.
Speaker 3 (44:48):
She is alleged to have told her friends that she
thought he was dumb as shit. There's a suggestion that
maybe she cheated on him, and there's a suggestion that
maybe ben Affleck cheated on her. There's some stuff in
there about why her and Madonna's friendship ended. I liked
that ye which was that Madonna and Lord es Gate
crashed a family holiday of Gwyneth and Chris Martin's back
(45:08):
to our friend who likes to out married cheating couples,
and that Madonna was so awful and so awful to
her daughter that Chris was like, we can't hang around
with that woman anymore.
Speaker 2 (45:17):
She's awful. So there's stuff like that.
Speaker 1 (45:19):
I don't think my daughter would be a very good hang.
Speaker 2 (45:21):
I reckon she'd be quite a good I also read.
Speaker 1 (45:24):
In that excerpt that Gwyneth said that ben Affleck is
very good at kindly. Yes, she really liked having sex
with him because he gives such good hand yeap.
Speaker 3 (45:33):
So there's that kind of juice, but there doesn't seem
to be like a really really awful thing. But here's
my question is if you were turning a blind eye
to a biography about yourself, because as me as already said,
it looks like Anna Wintour. Amy Odell has said this herself.
She was working on that book for two years and
she was kind of getting nowhere. And then Anna Wintour
heard obviously that she was doing it, and agreed to
(45:55):
hand over a list of contacts, not to talk to her,
but to say these people will talk to you. Because say,
if someone called you, Jesse and said I'm writing a
selicious book about Holly, You'd say, I will tell you nothing,
because I am a loyal and honest friend. But if
I said to you it's all right, babe, talk to them.
It'll be okay, then you would right. More likely obviously
(46:16):
they'd be writing books because let's play along. So but
would I do that if I knew you were going
to make me sound like a snobby idiot?
Speaker 4 (46:22):
Well, what's interesting, right is that I think the context
of this being us is libel laws. Right, So this
is going to be written regardless. There is nothing that
is going to stop that book being published. There was
an unauthorized biography written about Tom Cruise, and it's different
(46:43):
in Australia. Even that Tom Cruise biography wasn't published here
for a long while because of we have very very
strict defamation laws. So for Gwyneth, it's like Amy O'Dell
can kind of say what she wants. So you would
want some kind of involvement.
Speaker 3 (46:57):
Mia, Do you think there's a world in which Anana
Wintour or Gwyneth Peltrow goes, Okay, I'm going to give
you access to some of my people. So some of
the what the only really named source I've seen much
in this because a lot of it's dug up from
old interviews is Kevin o'quon, who's the famous celebrity makeupartist
who has that mascara that everybody was Yeah.
Speaker 1 (47:15):
But he's dead.
Speaker 2 (47:16):
Oh of course he is.
Speaker 1 (47:17):
Yeah, yeah, so that's easy he could give permission. I
think what's interesting these books are important in the important
cultural figures, and she is certainly from Goop to Conscious
Uncoupling to Shakespeare in Love, she's certainly got a footprint
on our culture. It's important, or it's a worthwhile exercise
(47:37):
to have one sort of place where all of that
is examined, the influence that person has on the culture.
There are examples where like an unauthorised biography Andrew Morton
and Princess Diana, right, we found out after she died
that she actually was the source of that and she
was literally sending him notes. And then there are others.
It very much depends who the writer is. Kitty Kelly
(47:59):
was a very famous biographer in the eighties and nineties,
and she would write like trashy, pretty trashy, like sensationalist ones.
I think when a respected journalist wants to write a
biography of you, first of all, it's a way to
slightly control it because they are a decent journalist who
have got a lot of connections in the industry, who
(48:19):
aren't going to want to make enemies of you or
of everybody else. And so it kind of plants the
flag in the ground and stops more salacious books from
having any credibility. And also from everything I've read about
Gwyneth's approach to this book is that people have talked
about her and gossiped about her since she first came
on the scene. There's no point in shutting it down.
(48:41):
I think she's changed her view of that because back
in the nineties, Grenon Carter was working on a cover
story for Vanity Fair about Gwyneth Paltrow and she moved
Heaven and Nurse to try and get that shut down,
and she was successful for many, many years. It ended
up coming out years later in a much watered down form.
But it's also flattering, so not necessarily the book, but
(49:02):
the idea that someone would write.
Speaker 3 (49:03):
She's doing a lot of interviews and stuff lately, so
she's obviously prepared to be more public than she was,
as you say. But I heard her say on one
of the podcasts recently, when someone said, what's the worst
misconception out there about you? She said that I'm a
snob who's out of touch. Now, everything I've read in
this of this book, from the caveat to the you know,
Ben Affleck was too much of a guy's guy and
all that kind of stuff certainly doesn't help that view
(49:25):
of her. But do you think there's a world where
you go if you don't write the worst things, I'll
let you have access to not.
Speaker 2 (49:33):
So bad flattering And I.
Speaker 1 (49:35):
Saw that it keeps her culturally relevant.
Speaker 4 (49:38):
The headline going around which was that maybe at the
end of school or something, she said her biggest fear
was obesity. Like things like that can do a lot.
Speaker 3 (49:46):
Of yeah's a lot of stuff in there that makes it. Well,
that's what was written about her in the yearbook. Yes,
that it would be her worst nightmare. So it certainly
reinforces everything about privileged, waspy, skinny, white lady who breezes
through life, NEPO baby, all that stuff.
Speaker 2 (50:01):
It's all seems.
Speaker 3 (50:03):
To be in here, But there isn't anything in there
so far that we didn't all already know.
Speaker 4 (50:08):
I couldn't. I couldn't of anything worse. I could not
think of anything worse than having two hundred people go
on the record to bitch about you to a strangers,
to then be read by millions and millions of people,
and there is not a single thing you can do
about it like that.
Speaker 1 (50:24):
But you just said they were bitching about her. They
won't know a bitch about her, like a lot of people
sully things about her.
Speaker 4 (50:30):
The thing about a source, right is that like, yes, Holly,
I'm loyal, and so I probably wouldn't say anything. A
source often has to feel something quite strongly about the subject.
Speaker 2 (50:40):
You kissed off at work.
Speaker 4 (50:41):
Yeah, if someone asked me about someone I felt kind
of neutral about, I'd be like, I don't really have
anything to say. They work out and whatever, Right, But
it's people with an axe to grind or like. And
there is not a single person on the planet who
wouldn't have someone they've come across who doesn't have a
terrible story to tell about you.
Speaker 1 (50:58):
Yeah, but the choice of journalists or that knowing who
the journalist is. Amy Odell's not interested in writing either
a hagiography which is just a puff piece, or a
trash book. She's not. And I think I've been asked
to contribute to profiles about particular high profile people before,
and it's actually after you check with them that they
(51:18):
are okay with you talking to the journalist. And often
I've had them done of me before and they say, oh,
who could we talk to? And you give them a
few people who you know will say something really nice
about you, and then they go and find people who
will say full things about you. I had to do
one of Zoe Foster Blake for a profile that the
Stradling Financial Review we're doing, and I really enjoyed the
process of thinking what I wanted to say about her,
(51:41):
like what I could offer to a profile that would
give the reader some insight into her. Obviously, you don't
just say, oh, she's really great and she's cool, like
I had to actually and be spa yeah. And for her,
I was like, Zoe really knows what she wants to
do and what she doesn't want to do. And even
though there's a lot of pressure to be an influencer
(52:03):
and be this, and she pioneered a voice that a
generation of young writers in Australia have tried to copy.
And she was also the first one in Australia that
gave a brand of voice. And all of these things
are very specific things. But that profile was not just
a suck up puff piece. But it was interesting to
read and it was interesting to contribute to. So I've
(52:25):
ordered the book of your pre.
Speaker 2 (52:26):
Ordered of course, I have you heard it here first.
Speaker 3 (52:28):
Ben Affleck gives good head and everything in this book
is true.
Speaker 2 (52:33):
That is all we have time for out louders. It's
very good to be back with you.
Speaker 3 (52:37):
Thank you to wonderful em and Amelia for filling my
seat while I was gone, and thank you to our
wonderful team for putting this show together as they always do.
We're going to be back in your ears tomorrow.
Speaker 1 (52:48):
Bye bye bye.
Speaker 4 (52:50):
Shout out to any Mum and MEA subscribers listening. If
you love the show and you want to support us,
subscribing to Mom and Mia is the very best way
to do so. There's a link in the episode description.
You're listening to a MoMA Mia podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Mamma Mia acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters
that this podcast is recorded on.
Speaker 3 (00:20):
Hello and welcome to Momma Mia. Out loud What women
are actually talking about? On Monday, the twenty first of July,
excuse me, I went on holiday and our tagline appears
to have changed again.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
What's going on?
Speaker 3 (00:34):
Well?
Speaker 1 (00:36):
I was bored of the old one. And also sometimes
people got upset because if we talked about something that
they weren't talking about, they tried to say that they
weren't talking about it. So I tried to make for
gender happen.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Yeah, that was like fetch.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
I couldn't make it happen. You know, one like to
axing me.
Speaker 4 (00:51):
What women are talking about is the truest to out loud.
I was saying before. I feel like we came into
work with a loud hat on. We tried to see
if it suited us and if people gave us compliments.
Neither of those things happened, and now we're coming back
to work the next day without the hat and we're
not saying anything We tried to say.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
Women come to debrief that that just sounded a bit defeated.
It sounded passive, and we're nothing if not inconsistent.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
Yeah, well, look, I'm Holly Wainwright. I'm maist High Holidays,
and I think we're thinking about ourselves a little too much.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
That's what I do.
Speaker 4 (01:23):
That'll be a thing true. I'm me A Friedman and
I'm Jesse Stevens.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
And here is what is on our agenda for today.
Speaker 4 (01:31):
The moment that brought the Internet together we need to
unpack in a revolting amount of detail, the Coldplay kiss
Can discourse.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
I can't wait.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
Also, my imaginary friend Gwyneth Paltrow is the subject of
a tea soaked new unauthorized biography or.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
Is she plus main character? Energy is ruining our public spaces.
People are pooing in public pools and adams, yes, adults
and newly returned europe correspondent has some stories to share.
Speaker 4 (01:59):
But first, I just wanted to thank me out louders
for all their lovely messages. At the end of last week,
after I shared a story about pregnancy loss, I was
in undated with messages, all of them so kind like
our out louder community is just remarkable. And I was
listening to an episode of Ezracline recently and he was
(02:21):
speaking to this person who's a Buddhist, and the Buddhist
was saying that there's a story that they tell about
a woman who's grieving, and the Buddha says, if you
want to recover, you just have to go and find
this mustard seed. But you have to find it, you
have to go around and ask this whole village, find
it from someone who has never experienced grief. And so
(02:42):
she goes and tries to find this mustard seed, and
of course every house that she enters, they too have
their own story of grief. And why that story is
so powerful is because it's in that connection and realizing
that whatever pain you're in right now is being experienced
by people all of the time. I think when we
(03:02):
get stuck in pain, it's because we think no one
else is feeling how we feel. Yeah, and I actually
found it.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
It's the loneliness of it.
Speaker 4 (03:08):
Yeah, and I don't feel lonely. And there were people
that I know who said to me, I had a
miscarriage on the same day, like that's how common it is.
But having people put words around it was just so
so so comforting. So thank you to the out louders.
And I also have a confession to add to that,
which is, if you saw me with shopping bags over
(03:31):
the weekend, it couldn't.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
Have been you because you're not buying.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
You're not. Twenty twenty five is don't buy anything year
for Jesse friends.
Speaker 4 (03:38):
I was feeling pain.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
The year is thrift.
Speaker 4 (03:40):
I thought, what would Maya Friedman do?
Speaker 2 (03:42):
Should do? I should go and buy something.
Speaker 4 (03:44):
And the Maya it helped. I'm sorry, I'm sorry I've
been thrifting, but trying to get secondhand jeans is too hard,
and so I went, you know what, Jesse, be kind
to yourself and go and buy some new things, and
it did help. I'm not going to do it again,
but I just have to confess because I'm sure out
louders saw me, and I'm sure that they were going
to write an unauthorized biography about the time Jesse broke
her promise.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
I recommend it. Some people eat their feelings. I shop
for my feelings. Help.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
It does help us, Ah, Jesse, I listened obviously to
what you said, and like all those out louders who
contacted you, I just thought it was brilliantly put and
thank you for sharing it now they're making you feel
the way you made them.
Speaker 5 (04:23):
Hmmm, we'd like to say hello to some of you
in the crowd. How are we going to do that is,
we're going to use our cameras and put some of
the other big screen. So please, if you haven't done
(04:43):
your makeup, do your makeup now.
Speaker 4 (04:46):
This time a week ago, very few people knew the
name or were familiar with the face of CEO Andy Byron,
a married man and father of two. Byron decided on
Wednesday night to attend a Coldplay concert in Boston, which would,
as it happens, blow up his entire life. So here's
what actually happened. Coldplay was playing the Jumbo t So
(05:10):
when a kiss cam landed on a man and a
woman cuddling and they were watching the.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
Stage, is a kiss cam supposed to be? I know
this is a really dumb question, but you know there
are no dumb questions. When the camera lands on you.
You're meant to like do a little performance for it,
aren't you? Like do a kiss play to it?
Speaker 4 (05:28):
And this is a thing that happens at Coldplay concerts, right,
and some football games. And yes, and they go and
scout like the videographer who's there goes and scouts people
and sort of says, okay, let's go to these these people.
They look quite cuddly, and so went to this couple.
But something really unusual happened, which was that they jumped
apart and immediately attempted to hide their faces, and Chris Martin,
(05:51):
who's the lead singer of Coldplay, said.
Speaker 5 (05:53):
Oh, what either having an affair or.
Speaker 4 (06:00):
I hope we didn't do something bad. Now we can
argue about who might have done something bad, but something
very bad did indeed happen. A twenty eight year old
named Grace Springer filmed that moment and then she uploaded
it to social media, and by the following day, the
pair had been identified.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
Why did she do that? Out of interest? Like she
actually interviews everybody involved made content.
Speaker 4 (06:26):
She says that she saw it and when all something
tense has happened here, I'm not quite sure what it is.
I'll upload it and let the internet figure it out.
Because she thought if either of those partners are watching,
like they have the right to know.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
So she thought she was doing God's work.
Speaker 3 (06:42):
She thought she was I think she showed it to
her friends, and her friends all went, oh my god,
you've got to upload about it, and it's.
Speaker 4 (06:49):
Going to go viral, viewed more than one hundred million times.
I want to ask before we go any further, tell
me what your initial reaction was when you saw this
video at the end of last week.
Speaker 5 (07:00):
Ma'am.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
I thought this is incredible, Oh my god, and I
sort of laughed a little bit. Yeah, but there, I
guess because we work in the media and we're very
familiar with, you know, public shaming and virality. I felt
a bit sick from the beginning because I get very
(07:23):
caught up in how people's lives can change in an instant.
You know Lee's sales book Any Ordinary Day, where she
talks to people who've suffered tragedies, usually accidents or the
loss of a loved one very suddenly. And I know
this isn't that, but that sense of even when you
were just saying that they woke up and they went
let's and you know, it turns out they were having
(07:44):
an affair, but they went, let's go to this Coldplay concert,
and you think about them, every step they took and
every single decision that got to that point, and then oblivion.
Speaker 4 (07:54):
Holly, how about you? How did you respond when you
first saw it, Well, I.
Speaker 3 (07:57):
Just thought it was really juicy. I was immediately like,
what an idiot? Those were my first thoughts. It's like,
and I don't know why, but of course I thought
he was an idiot rather than her. That's my own
personal prejudice. I thought, what absolute idiot, and then I
went ha ha ha. And then of course I didn't
necessarily keep thinking that.
Speaker 4 (08:14):
I do agree that I thought it was very funny
and immediately wanted to send it to people because I
was like, I think as well, there was this moment
of like, doesn't everyone know a CEO or a CEO
coded person who has or is currently cheating on their
wife and appears to experience no repercussions as a result.
Speaker 3 (08:34):
And also that in that I mean and we didn't
know this when we very first saw it, but when
it became apparent the story of who they were, a
lot of people cheat with people at work like that
is a place that happens a lot, and if those
people are particularly senior, often a lot of people within
the business will know that that's happening, but it's just
all accepted that we just don't talk about it, and
all those kind of things. Originally, I thought, oh, imagine
(08:57):
if they were all, like the whole team was there.
Speaker 2 (08:59):
You know, that isn't what turned out to have happened.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
But I told myself many stories, and then I started
to see all those like letters to this man's wife
and everything on the internet, and I was like, oh, dear,
I sound.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
A bit sactimonious when I say that, like what I
said before, because it's not like I also didn't go, yeah,
that was jucy. And I wanted to know cause I
wanted to know more. Who's she, Who's he? How that? What?
You know? I wanted. I was hungry to know the story.
Speaker 4 (09:22):
So the more came, as happens with the internet. Byron
is fifty. He was the CEO of Astronomers, which is
a tech firm, and the woman he was with was
revealed to be Kristen Cabot. She is the chief people
officer the same company, and there's ambiguity about whether she
is still married or recently separated. Right, we know that
(09:43):
Byron married two kids. By Friday, both Byron and Cabot
had been put on leave by their company, and by Saturday,
Byron had resigned as CEO. She also has two kids, right,
I believe, So what's that?
Speaker 3 (09:55):
Do you think that the put them on leave and
resignation was inevitable? Like, is that how it would play
in a corporate sense? You think me are always well?
Speaker 1 (10:03):
Before that, there was the statement that he allegedly made,
which everybody shared and of people reacted to.
Speaker 4 (10:11):
So what's interesting is that this was one of the
first viral moments in the age of AI, and so
what happened was an influx of things where everyone sat
there going is this real? Even I think the kiscam footage,
it was sort of like is this real? So there
was fake stak it a bit, yeah, fake tweets and
this isn't AI related. But I was on TikTok watching
(10:33):
his daughter post these tiktoks that said reconnecting with life
after your dad's affair makes national news. I went deep
on her. It turns out that was not his daughter.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
He doesn't have a daughter.
Speaker 4 (10:42):
He didn't have a daughter. So there was a coldplay
tweet that read, starting with our next show, We're introducing
camera free audience sections for people in their side pieces.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
Fake funny.
Speaker 4 (10:51):
Then the statement from Andy Byron. I believe that there
were multiple ones, but there was one you might have
seen where he expressed how troubling it was that a
private moment became public without his consent.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
And the reason that I thought that was interesting is
because that spoke to you know, we often talk about
the second idea or the third idea, which is everybody
reacts in one way, but then what's the bigger issue?
Right if you zoom out? And I think that the
reason that so many people were fooled by that statement.
The only time I got a bit sus is when
he quoted a culture.
Speaker 4 (11:20):
How it ended.
Speaker 1 (11:21):
But before that I was on board because it followed
the template of public statements, public apologies, because we know
that in a vacuum people will make stuff up, right,
so you've got to you know that the first rule
of crisis pr is that you've got to try and
take control of the situation, to try and corterize the wound.
And what he said about a private situation became public
(11:43):
that way and taking time to think and learn and reflect.
All of that was like tick tick tick tick, but
then it was fake.
Speaker 4 (11:51):
It also reminded us. I think of how if any
of us were to go viral in an hour, what
can be found from LinkedIn profiles from the dig online
what they were able to find all of his family.
His wife had to, you know, go super private in
order to not have their detail shared.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
She took down her surname from her profile. Then she
deleted family photos. Because we've got our journalistic hats on.
The first place, this is the biggest story in the world.
The first place you go is what's on Instagram. Yeah,
because that's publicly usable, right.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
But how ridiculous this is the biggest story in the world. Yeah,
and we'll get to why that executives. Yeah, cheating at
a Coldplay concert?
Speaker 1 (12:35):
Why do you think? Because as an example of that, Jesse,
I was on Reddit yesterday and I was doing a
search because you're right. By last night it became really
confusing about what was real and what was real. And
I follow lots of different threads on Reddit. And what
was interesting about why this was such a huge story
is that the tech threads were about it, the work
threads were about it, the gossip threads were about it,
(12:58):
the news threads were about it. Like the ven diagram
of all the different places at time.
Speaker 4 (13:03):
The reason that happened, I reckon, is because the Internet
is so divided and so contented, amptuous, and we are
constantly at each other, probably in the last few years
more than ever before. And for the last four days,
the internet has had a common enemy. We have all
been united and even the means I don't know find
that's true.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
Do you think we have a common enemy? I don't see.
Speaker 4 (13:26):
Well, everyone almost looked at it. It was like everyone's
laugh immediately was like sucked in, You're having an affair.
And isn't that calma like.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
Real shaden for it?
Speaker 3 (13:35):
Yes, exactly for women whose husbands have cheated on them
and they have found out but humiliated. There's no question
that he in particular was an instant villain. But unfortunately
what has happened, which is always what happens, is that then,
as you've said, you know, his wife gets her privacy
horrifically invaded. Her picture is all over the internet. Here
are five things you didn't know about the CEO's wife,
(13:57):
you know, and then the woman in question also obviously
the twenty five things you didn't know about her, and
before you know it, the shit really is smeared everywhere
all over everybody involved. So if it started with an
almost like oh, this is quite satisfying watching this powerful
man being sort of humiliated.
Speaker 2 (14:16):
That isn't really what happened.
Speaker 4 (14:18):
And the dig then happened. We're recording this on you know,
Monday morning. He has made no statement yet, but his
salary has since been revealed as being in the ballpark
of about a million Australian dollars a year, and a
LinkedIn post that relevant. Well, I think that it adds
to the idea that this is an entitled.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
One hundred percent.
Speaker 3 (14:38):
I think if he was a teacher and she was
a nurse, this story is not as good.
Speaker 4 (14:43):
Yeah, no question, because then there's also this thing of like,
if he's having an affair with someone at work, what
are the power dynamics there? That's interesting. Then a post
on LinkedIn by the editor in chief of Forbes Australia
was about how there's barely any gender diversity. It looks
like she might be the only one kind of in
the higher in the leadership teams that's a female.
Speaker 1 (15:06):
Don't you think it's become I mean in the age
of the hot take, where everybody needs to have a
hot take to get engagement, to get traffic. I mean, look,
we're talking about it today, right but everybody then projecting
their lens onto it. So is it about diversity in
the leadership team? Is it about the cheated wife? Is
it about public spaces and what's private? Is it about AI?
(15:28):
Now all the pieces are running out about AI and
what's so hard? You know that thing about lives make
their way around the world three times before the truth
can do up at shoes. We were talking in our
slack journal last night, and a lot of us were
at very different parts of the story. Like some of
us really believed that the other woman in the video
was their head of HR and that she'd recently been promoted,
and other people knew that wasn't true. And then some
(15:51):
of us thought his daughter's on TikTok, and others knew
that it wasn't true. So most people got little bits
of the story.
Speaker 4 (15:58):
And I think most people are just at the memes, right,
Like most people are just consuming this as a series
of funny memes and they see as it is, here
is this kind of ideologue that represents the Master of
the universe, a particular type of man, as we said,
which maybe he is that.
Speaker 1 (16:18):
But it also maybe he isn't.
Speaker 4 (16:20):
Yeah exactly, And facing the wrath of the potentially tens
of millions of women who have either experienced this or
seen it happen, who then have somewhere to project their
fury and their anger at the dishonesty of some men.
That irks me, like, I'm starting to feel a bit
sick about this whole thing. And then I saw Grace Springer,
(16:40):
the woman who shared the video, right, and she's been
interviewed and everything. Her most recent or one of her
most recent Instagram stories was, you're so welcome for today's entertainment.
Want to show your gratitude? Help me who is just
a girl payoff eighty thousand dollars in student lines? And
now she's got a link and you can go and
help her pay off their student lins. So everyone who
can is capitalizing off this viral moment.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
It's just a desperate need for distraction.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
Right.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
The world is a scary place.
Speaker 3 (17:08):
We could spend forty eight hours obsessing over this story
and making celebrities out of all of the people in
it for five minutes, and no one will remember this
in twenty four hours, and those people's lives are ruined.
Is it their fault or not? Is a bit of
a matter of opinion. But there's interesting.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
On that for one second, because I'm interested in the
idea of the punishment in the crime, right, So I
think we can all agree that what they did was
not good.
Speaker 2 (17:36):
It doesn't appear to be good.
Speaker 3 (17:38):
He and his wife were separated and have been operated
for a long time. She has not spoken on the record, dography,
We have no idea, so a lot of assumptions are
being made.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
Right, So if we all agree cheating is not good,
if that's in fact what happened, but what should the
punishment for that be? Should it be that you your
reputation is forever destroyed, that the entire world is united
in laughing at you, that you lose your career, that
you lose your means to feed your family, that you're utterly, utterly,
abjectly humiliated.
Speaker 4 (18:08):
Is that totally like that's disproportionate. Yeah, because the affair,
whether the affair goes against company policy is even a question,
right because it's like, if that had just been discovered,
would that have been an issue or a conflict of interest?
But the kiss cam element, what I like to think
about is what if they just kissed, and they just kissed,
(18:28):
and this would never.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
Have gone viral. That's true, it wouldn't have got anything.
Speaker 4 (18:31):
It was the reaction, which I completely understand why they
reacted like that, but it was that that kind of
suggested some guilt. I understand why Chris Martin kind of went.
Speaker 3 (18:38):
Oh, if he hadn't have said what he said, it
probably which is I'm not saying we should be blaming
Chris Martin. Yeah, but like if he hadn't have said
what he said about either you're cheating or you're just
very shy, then Grace the young woman posted this probably
wouldn't have thought twice about it.
Speaker 2 (18:52):
No one would have thought twice about it.
Speaker 3 (18:53):
You're right, their guilty reaction to it started the story
in point about what they deserve for that. Me, you're
so right to be honest. I mean, again, this is assumption,
just as much as it's an assumption to pretend we
know the inner workings of either of their marriages.
Speaker 2 (19:09):
Life probably isn't going to be ruined.
Speaker 3 (19:11):
Like high profile CEOs have gone away with all kinds
of affairs for a very long time, and they get
another job and another job, and it might just be
acquired a job, but you know, no one knew who
he was a week ago, and no one will know
who he is in a couple of months. The collateral
damage around him, I don't agree.
Speaker 1 (19:26):
I actually don't agree with that, because I mean, he's
not Jeff Bezos, right, So yes, you're right, someone like
Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg or Donald Trump, nothing's going
to touch them.
Speaker 4 (19:35):
But he doesn't feeding even the feeding his family point,
it's like when you see the salary, there's a world
in which we all kind of got to kilby.
Speaker 3 (19:41):
I think that the he'll be fine thing is why
people feel comfortable laughing about it. You know how I
said before, this is a different story if he's not him.
I'm not saying that's right, but that's why, because we
don't really feel like he's going to be a victim.
We've all read a million stories about men who've harassed
women at work, never mind had affairs, but still go
on to get another good job, and another good job,
another good job. What's also interesting about this, though, and
(20:02):
we're going to talk in a minute about how we
all want to be main characters now, is this is
the sort of stuff that only used to happen to
famous people like who could forget those paparazzi pictures of
Kristin Stewart pashing her director Rupert Sanders when she was
still with Robert Pattinson, and there were these paparazzi pictures.
They're some of the most famous ones of all time
(20:23):
of them canoodling somewhere in a canyon in.
Speaker 2 (20:25):
La or whatever, and it.
Speaker 3 (20:27):
Went around the world in an instant, his wife, her relationship.
But this used to be that's what happens when you're
famous and you've corded the attention and you've asked for it,
and then you have no privacy. Now, because the Internet
can turn any of us into a celebrity, amenable celebrity
within three minutes. All of us have that level of
(20:49):
scrutiny around the corner.
Speaker 4 (20:51):
And we're treating each other like interactive reality shows. And
we're at a show on Saturday night. Nicki Glazer, who
is a comedian, she hosted the Oscars this year, and
she made a joke about this, which I thought was
actually quite funny, where she went around and showed people
on the screen and even if she was doing that,
I went, that's my worst nightmare to be broadcast in
(21:14):
front of all these people. Five thousand and six thousand people.
But then the idea that you could then be broadcast
to whoever chooses to film it is a whole other ballgame.
But then they eventually the last one that they got
to was Lisa Wilkinson being embraced by Hamish Blake, which
was the joke, which was actually very funny. But then
of course someone to film that and then that's gone
(21:35):
viral as well. So the platform of it, I think
is just terrified, the.
Speaker 1 (21:40):
Saturation, like there's no one of any generation presumably. I've
got a friend whose overseas at the moment, and she
was in an aerobi in an uber and the uber
driver who didn't speak English, was laughing with her about
it and about coldplay. It's the scale that's hard to
get your head around.
Speaker 4 (21:57):
Yeah, it ends up being connective tissue between people. It's
small talk, it's fodder, it's stuff for a comedy show.
Speaker 1 (22:02):
And everyone wants the next instrument. So yeah, my question
is when will we walk away from this story? What
will satis by our appetite for resolution of this narrative.
Speaker 3 (22:13):
It probably depends what happens next, right, because there's a
world where the woman in the video decides to come
out and tell a story and do an interview, or
the wife comes out and does that, or you know,
they perpetuate the story in whatever way that will keep
it going. But there's also a very strong likelihood that
this will die away very quickly, like all our memorable
Internet obsessions do, and in a couple of months we'll
(22:35):
all be going, can you remember that time when we
were all obsessed with that CEO? Whatever happened to him?
Like it kind of depends what happens next.
Speaker 1 (22:44):
In a moment. From Polarate's classes to cafes, concerts to
tourist destinations, public spaces have been overtaken by main character Syndrome.
Holly is going to tell us what it's like in
Rome and Paris and London right now.
Speaker 3 (22:59):
Sixteen year olds will be voting in the next UK election.
When the Labor Party won government in Britain last year,
one of their key manifesto promises is that they would
lower the voting age from eighteen to sixteen, and they're
doing it.
Speaker 1 (23:14):
I have a question, yes, why because the people who
would maybe be excited about that have not been allowed
to vote in that election.
Speaker 4 (23:22):
Now, why is it so popular so yes, Why.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
Is it so popular? Why would you go, yeah, you
know what, my children need to be able to vote.
Speaker 3 (23:28):
Well, when you think about it, it sounds kind of wild.
But even here in Australia, it was only in nineteen
seventy three that they lowered the voting age from twenty
one to eighteen, So it used to be seen as
ridiculous that you would let anyone between eighteen and twenty
one vote. That adults were twenty one and that was it.
Speaker 4 (23:45):
And whether it's true or not, there is a sense
that young people will vote more progressively.
Speaker 3 (23:51):
So often it is popular with left wing parties, but
that doesn't actually turn out to be true. But the
argument is that at sixteen years old, you can work,
you can pay tax, and you can fight for your country,
so why can't you vote, And that seems to be
you have a lot of resonance.
Speaker 1 (24:06):
You can make a baby.
Speaker 3 (24:07):
Here in Australia, Independent MP Manique Ryan is going to
table the bill here too. It was last tabled here
in twenty eighteen by the Greens and it was chucked
out because one of the arguments here is but we
have compulsory voting and can you make a.
Speaker 2 (24:20):
Sixteen year old vote.
Speaker 3 (24:21):
But Manique Ryan's bringing it back in light of the
UK thing and saying, well, why don't we make it
so that you it is compulsory, but you won't find
them if they don't do it, So it's kind of
like soft compulsory. So it looks like it might happen
here too. What do we think about it?
Speaker 4 (24:35):
I feel surprisingly not that passionate about allowing sixteen year
olds to vote. I feel as though, as someone who
considers myself progressive, it is something that I should be
fighting for. But I keep hearing the argument young people,
they're the ones who these policies are going to impact
the most. And I find that kind of a weak
argument because it's like, yeah, you could say that about
(24:57):
five year olds. I don't think five year olds should vote.
Like there is something about civic understanding and comprehension and
political knowledge and all that kind of stuff that I
think comes with voting. And they say sixteen year olds
can be taxed, right.
Speaker 3 (25:11):
That seems to me to be a sensible argument. If
I have to pay tax, I should have a say yes.
Speaker 4 (25:15):
But isn't it that if you earn less than about
eighteen five hundred dollars then you don't pay tax. So
most sixteen year olds aren't paying tax, they're not paying rent,
they're not like not that they're not impacted by policies,
but I think of myself at sixteen and my level
of engagement, even myself at eighteen and my level of engagement,
and I think I didn't know what I was doing. Mayo,
(25:36):
what do you think I'm.
Speaker 1 (25:37):
Stuck on the idea of five year olds voting. I
just put up your hand. Plus, I really like wrestling
with this issue because I think the idea, if it's
not compulsory, the people who will vote will be the
ones who are really engaged. The reason I love compulsory
voting is that you know.
Speaker 4 (25:57):
It's good for moderation.
Speaker 1 (25:59):
Yeah, it's good to sort of get a bit of
a common denominator, not necessarily the lowest, but a common denominator.
I'm also really interested in this idea of all the things.
As you say, Ohole, that you can do sixteen, but
you can't drink alcohol until you're eighteen, and I'm interested
in that.
Speaker 4 (26:15):
I was really interested that you could join the army
at sixteen. I fact checked that because I wouldn't get
you and you came sixteen and six months.
Speaker 3 (26:20):
And also, you know you said not that many sixteen
year olds are working, but plenty do. You can have
an apprenticeship, you can train.
Speaker 4 (26:27):
That's a really good point.
Speaker 2 (26:28):
Sixteen year olds are at school.
Speaker 4 (26:30):
Oh, that's a good point.
Speaker 2 (26:30):
I think I'm all.
Speaker 3 (26:31):
For it if the policies of the country impact you
and you're of that age. What's interesting to me about
it is that in so many other areas of our
culture now we're extending childhood. We're very much about infantilizing
people until they're about twenty five. These days, it seems
so this sort of almost seems countercultural to say, yeah,
but sixteen year olds are savvy enough to be able
(26:53):
to vote, But personally I think they are.
Speaker 2 (26:55):
I know that when I was young, I felt.
Speaker 3 (26:56):
Very passionately that I should be able to vote before
I was eighteen, and I think I probably knew what
I was talking about.
Speaker 4 (27:02):
Austria, Germany, Brazil, they've all changed their voting age sixteen.
It does look like we're going that way.
Speaker 3 (27:07):
And in Britain and also in terms of numbers, and
they think this is going to add another one and
a half million people to the electoral role. But it's
not compulsory there here, it wouldn't be anything like that
number because our population is a lot smaller, so it
probably wouldn't be the decider, but it would definitely make
campaigns more interesting.
Speaker 1 (27:24):
Main character syndrome is ruining public spaces. That's the title
of a piece I read this week by the writer
Molly Bath on Substack, and before we unpack it, I
want to do a quick glossary of what main character
syndrome actually is. It's the delusion that you are the
center of the universe like a toddler.
Speaker 4 (27:43):
Is it a delusion?
Speaker 1 (27:44):
Well, you're right, actually, because we all are literally all
the center of.
Speaker 2 (27:48):
Our own universe.
Speaker 1 (27:49):
Yeah, but it's one thing to feel it or know
it and another to pay yeah, act as if everybody
else in the world is a NPC non playing character
in the story of your life. You can kind of
trace it back to the introduction of the front facing
camera on the iPhone four back in twenty ten. That
was kind of ground zero, the cultural tipping point, because
(28:11):
that's when the world stopped being something that you looked
at and started being something that looked back at you
as the main character, with you in the middle of it.
And in this piece, Molly Bath says that it's kind
of made us all seemingly oblivious to just how annoying
we are in public. So she starts from a good place.
You know, this idea of main character syndrome. It's a
(28:33):
sort of self empowerment. It's like, here are my boundaries,
and I'm going to put myself first. I'm not going
to be a martyr. But it can really mutate quite
quickly into a type of oblivious narcissism. And she gives
some examples of things like, you know, talking loudly on
the phone in public at the movies or on public
transporter and cafes.
Speaker 4 (28:50):
Or playing your YouTube video on a train.
Speaker 1 (28:52):
Yes, or someone's phone pinging in a yoga class. This
also fairly extreme example. It's been a while since I've
been to a public pool, but in the UK and
in parts of the US, they've been reports that they've
had to empty and close public pools because people have
been pooing in them. Not children, adults who justdn't be
bothered to get out and go to the bathroom.
Speaker 4 (29:12):
Do we know couldn't be bothered? I immediately, and maybe
this is my own context, but I look at that,
and I think of whether it's people with disabilities, people
who are older, like, are there instances where adults? I
would want more details on that.
Speaker 1 (29:26):
It seems to be something that's rising.
Speaker 4 (29:28):
What is rising is things like public urination. Like public
urination to me is the idea that you're in their
home and you're winging on the streets as a terroist.
Speaker 2 (29:36):
Yeah, not cool.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
Don't pop a squat, yeah in the middle of Rome
like Holly did. Yes, she didn't really. But it also
has had an impact on tourism. And I want to
just link to a story that I've been reading about
and haven't really understood until now. There's been a lot
of protests in some of the big European cities over
summer about over tourism. You know, we saw some in
Venice being some in Rome the Louver closed for a
(29:58):
day because the staff just said, it's just too many people,
we can't take it whole. You have returned from the
frontline of main characters Syndrome, which is Europe in summer, right,
what did you see?
Speaker 4 (30:09):
Were you an MPC and other people's holiday.
Speaker 3 (30:11):
It's so funny because I've just come back from holiday
where I went to all those tourist hotspots with my family,
and that is not something that we do every year,
certainly not. But we went to London, Paris, Rome, and
then we spent a week in Italy with my family
and Manchester. But funnily enough that I don't have to
fight off that many influences in Manchester. I don't know
where they were, no viral restaurants. I haven't been to
(30:33):
Paris since I was twenty one, right, So like this
is a long time. Things have changed, friends, things have
changed a great deal. So here's one of the things.
My daughter's fifteen, and I don't want to embarrass it,
but I'm going to you ever so slightly. She knew
she was going to these cities, and she had a
shot list prepared for pictures that she wanted. And I
(30:54):
in my head, I thought, isn't that cute that my
daughter has done a bit of research and she's excited
that when we go to London, she knows that there's
this thing called Big Ben, she knows she wants a
picture with it. When we go to Paris, she knows
there's this thing called the Affatage.
Speaker 2 (31:06):
She knows pa with it. That's real cute.
Speaker 1 (31:08):
Which change.
Speaker 4 (31:10):
When I went overseas for the first time, I was
doing the same thing, like I went, I don't wait
to get a photo with the Eiffel Tower.
Speaker 3 (31:16):
But no, she has saved to Pinterest, and as I
found out, she is not alone this particular shot that
you've got to get when you go to London and
you go to Big Ben and there's a phone box
in a certain place and whatever. And I'm obviously an
indulgent mum who's excited that my daughter's excited. So I'm like,
let's go there, Let's go and get you this picture.
Speaker 1 (31:34):
What's so special about it?
Speaker 2 (31:35):
Like, it's just a really good view.
Speaker 3 (31:36):
So you get a London phone box and Big Ben
in the background and probably a London bus.
Speaker 2 (31:40):
It's like iconic composition.
Speaker 3 (31:42):
So you turn up to this phone box and there
is a que Like I'm not joking, this is not
a official sight seeing anything. There is a Q twenty
minutes long of other people, mostly young people, mostly female
older than fifteen, but like, who are all also taking
this particular picture in this particular place. You go to
(32:03):
Paris and the amount of time you have to wait
for again mostly young women, to get the shot that
they want in front of the tower at this particular time,
in this particular place, looking this particular way, head down,
maybe looking away, maybe looking off to the side. Then
the queue and the one in London, the poor Internet boyfriends,
and is going to generalize, but it's true of like
(32:25):
the girls posing for the picture and then taking the
phone back going through them.
Speaker 2 (32:28):
No no, no, not that one.
Speaker 3 (32:29):
Let's do it again, like reshooting everybody doing these content
creator shots. It is very different. That is new, new energy.
Everywhere we went. We went to when we were in Rome,
we went to the Trevy Fountain very very early. I'm
not that bothered about the Trevy Fountain. Obviously, all of
that stuff's gorgeous. There were women at six am who
looked like they had been in full glam for an hour,
(32:53):
and they were there in evening dresses with heels and
head to get this iconic to.
Speaker 2 (32:58):
Get these shots.
Speaker 3 (32:59):
And it made me really not I mean, I wasn't.
I know, I sound like I'm being a grumpy old
woman about it.
Speaker 1 (33:05):
I just found it so.
Speaker 3 (33:06):
Interesting because it is so different. It's true that we've
always taken pictures of things, and we've always taken pictures
of ourselves in places that we've always wanted to go,
and it's like a prove I was there, look back
at it and remember that I was really there because
the fleeting nature of travelers. You know, then you're back
home and you're in your office job and you're like,
(33:26):
was I ever even at the Eiffel Tower?
Speaker 2 (33:28):
And you can look at these pictures.
Speaker 3 (33:29):
But it's a very specific I'm going to use the
word I would say wrong esthetic. It's a very specific
type of person and there are so many of them,
and it's really something new, and I could only think
of it as main character.
Speaker 4 (33:43):
I think there are a few different things that are
like coalescing at the same time. The first is that
when my mum went to Europe for the first time,
when you took a photo and you got it developed,
you could only really have one. There wasn't unlimited right,
and now you've got unlimited data. It's not even like
a memory stick. It's like you can take three hundred
photos if you want to get the right one. The
second is video is that often from what as a
(34:05):
consumer who is seeing a lot of people in Europe,
I'm seeing people in all gowns doing almost runway walks.
Speaker 2 (34:13):
In front of the trap fashion show. Right, it's like
a fashion show, a fashion shoot, and I.
Speaker 4 (34:17):
Always think, imagine how that felt a film. I'd be
so because everyone would be would be watching you.
Speaker 2 (34:22):
Yeah, what do you do in your You're holding everybody in.
Speaker 3 (34:25):
Yeah, no offense to them, but they are holding everybody
up because they're hogging that spot and that view while
they do their fourteen takes so back to the idea
of everybody's main character and whether it's irritating that the
phone's pinging in the yoga studio or the whatever is
that your bespoke photo shoot at one of whatever place
you're at, everybody else is waiting. And it's changing cities
(34:48):
in a way that I can understand is you go
to places that are very Instagram famous. There's a particular
market in London that has this strawberry stand. It's just
chocolate covered strawberries, right, but it is so viral that
place that it has changed the entire nature of this market.
On a Tuesday lunchtime wasn't even school holidays. It is
so mobbed you can't get near it. All the stalls
(35:09):
around are getting no custom. The conques are like zig
zag backwards on each other. And they've got a system
in place, and it's all for the gram.
Speaker 4 (35:17):
There used to be a lonely planet or whatever, and
it's saying, oh, this cafe is good or whatever. But
the idea that, as we were saying before, overnight, you
can go from being a little known cafe to being
entirely viral. And that's not just happening to the little bakery.
It can happen to certain spots. There's always a new
spot that's blowing up in terms of interest. And the
(35:38):
other thing that they talk about with over tourism, because
this was a discussion before COVID. The Internet's made it
really easy to book things, and the cost of air
travel being lower than it was a few generations ago,
means it's more accessible and you've got more and more
people going and then having this sense of entitlement which
begins on the plane. It's like I get on the plane,
(35:59):
I go, this is my holiday, and this country exists
for me, and this air hostess exists for me, and
nothing will ruin my holiday. And so even the behavior,
we're all.
Speaker 1 (36:10):
The main character of our own holidays.
Speaker 4 (36:12):
Yes, but it's almost.
Speaker 1 (36:14):
Like locations have become famous. I mean, I know that
sounds funny because we've always had famous places like the
Harmbridge or Big Bear or the Empire State Building. But
it's more than that now because like the strawberry stand,
like it's no longer enough to go and take a
picture of that. It's so funny the different generations and
what they film, because I've got a number of friends
(36:37):
gen X's who are in Europe at the moment, and
the photos they take are still old school. Here's some strawberries,
or here's my dinner, or here's a view, or here's
a sunset or here's an interesting thing I can see.
So they're still looking out at the world. And I
don't mean to say that we're better than the people
who are looking back at themselves, but the people looking
back at themselves the currencies that they were there needing
(37:00):
to insert themselves in there, because what you say about
your daughter, hole, she's not an influencer, she's just a me.
So it's not just the people who were monetizing this content.
It's the idea that almost like when you go to Disneyland,
you want the photo in front of the Disney Castle
because you've seen that and it's iconic and it's like, look,
(37:21):
I'm inside this iconic theme.
Speaker 3 (37:23):
It's also that you know, our social media platforms have
done the art direction for us, right, so they're like,
if you stand in this place and you look a
certain way at this certain time, you'll get this amazing
shot that used to be just the sort of privilege
of a certain kind of person who had an eye
for that. So in some ways it's democratizing. But the
other thing is that our fomo, I think, has just
(37:44):
reached new levels with it. When you walk around a
city like London or or Paris, and this did actually
happen in Manchester too, you'll suddenly see a big queue
for something and immediately human nature, what are they quing for?
What do they know that I don't know that I
should join that queue? And in Paris you'd walk past
and it would be a particular petiserie. There'd be four
other bakeries on the street, but this particular one has
this cake that is particularly instagrammable. So the queue is
(38:07):
out the door, you can join a virtual way list
for it. You could do all these things, and so
everywhere we'd go there'd be a queue and we'd all
be like, what are they queuing for? What are they
cuing for? And then, horrifyingly, on the last day we
were there, we were walking around in the evening and
we'd been, as I say, seeing these cues for days
and kind of.
Speaker 2 (38:24):
What's that about?
Speaker 3 (38:25):
That must be something viral, that must be something exciting,
And then we saw this queue outside this place on
a side street in Paris, and we were like, what's that?
Speaker 2 (38:32):
What's that?
Speaker 3 (38:33):
And we realized this was a literal queue for a
souper kitchen, like a queue for people who are hungry
trying to get themselves fed, next to the tourists in
their long line trying to get a picture of their cake.
I'm not saying that with any moral judgment. They're like, oh,
I would never like, you know, I totally was buying
the macarons that looked really pretty. But it's kind of
(38:54):
really interesting how it's messed with our heads.
Speaker 4 (38:57):
I think the irony is that the beauty of travel
is the opposite of the main character syndrome is it
you often feel anonymous, You feel like no one knows you.
You feel like on the main stage is the culture
and the people, and you're like this viewer rather than
this person who the world it makes you feel small.
That's the beauty of it. We're not just saying this.
(39:19):
There's all this research and all of these countries that
have come out and said people are etching their names
on the Colosseum, like all these countries have come out
from Amsterdam to Kyoto. They literally have new codes of conduct.
Some countries are getting people to sign it when they
get there to go this is how you have to
behave in our country. Because we're having all of these
(39:40):
issues with tourists that there is this entitlement. I also
wonder I think it is a Western thing. I think
that it's a Western entitlement to like you just come
to this country. You see it in Bali, where it's
like this total disregard for cultural sensitivity is about things
and posing or you know, being really insensitive to cultural
(40:03):
or religious sites. Like that kind of stuff is all
over Europe.
Speaker 3 (40:06):
It makes you realize you're We were in some beautiful
for churches in Italy and some people are literally lying
on the floor in the middle of a cathedral trying
to get a photo of the well. Their friend leans
over them to get the shot of them doing the
peace sign underneath the amazing fresco or whatever. And I'm
not a religious person, but I found that insensitive, insensitive
(40:29):
and a bit ick. And the problem is is you
see it though, and the other little thought in the
back of your head, And certainly if you're I mean,
I didn't, but you're like.
Speaker 2 (40:38):
Oh, that would be a good shot.
Speaker 4 (40:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (40:41):
Before you know it, you're probably joining the queue to
lie on the floor in this century's old cathedral and
do a peace sign in front of the Virgin Mary
after the break? What happens when someone writes an unauthorized
biography of you and you kind of like it? All
the signs are that maybe the new Gwyneth Paltrow book
might be an inside job.
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Speaker 3 (41:22):
Been on holiday, but don't believe for one second that
when my imaginary friend Gwyneth Paltrow was on the gram
making paleo lobster benedict for her husband the other day.
Speaker 2 (41:32):
I wasn't right there with her. What a relatable queen
she is.
Speaker 1 (41:36):
I saw making a tuna salad for him. Gosh, she's been.
Speaker 2 (41:38):
Cooking for tuna saldy guy is easy, look, tasty, paleo lobster.
Bless her.
Speaker 3 (41:45):
Anyway, while she was doing that, I like to imagine
that her lawyers were likely on the phone to People
magazine because they were about to publish a cover proclaiming
all the juicy gossip about Gwyneth from a new unauthorized biography.
This book is written by this woman called Amy Odell,
and it's being tagged as a bombshell book, bombshell, big letters, Mia,
(42:07):
what's an unauthorized biography?
Speaker 2 (42:09):
And is Amy O'Dell like sheer? Big name jehoe have
been worried about this?
Speaker 1 (42:13):
She's people in the industry know who she is, and
by that I sort of mean media fashion, that sort
of adjacent world. She is an author and a journalist.
She wrote the very very well received and successful also
unauthorised biography of Anna Wintour in twenty twenty two.
Speaker 4 (42:32):
What does unauthorized rey unauthorized means?
Speaker 1 (42:35):
It's not with the overt cooperation of the subject, and
they don't have any power over what you do publish,
who you do talk to. And there are different versions
of authorized and unauthorized, right, and the opposite of that
is an autobiography, which is you have complete control because.
Speaker 2 (42:51):
You're writing it all.
Speaker 1 (42:52):
A ghostwriter writes it with you. People often prefer unauthorized
because it means that you get the full story. But
then there are some that are really salacious and trying
to tell a particular juicy story, and then there are
others that have the you know. For example, with the Ana
Winter book, she didn't try to shut it down. Now,
(43:12):
if Anna winto hadn't wanted that book to happen, she
would have told everybody, do not speak to amy Odell.
She didn't do that. Now. Gwyneth Paltry didn't do that
to Amyodell either.
Speaker 2 (43:20):
With her book.
Speaker 4 (43:21):
Was Anna Wintre's flattering.
Speaker 1 (43:22):
I read it and it's the definitive biography of her.
And Anna probably won't ever write a book about herself,
but it was well done. She interviewed over two hundred
and twenty people for that book. I think about the
same for the Gwyneth book, and it was very comprehensive,
so it wasn't you know some unauthorised biographies or just
have an unnamed source and read like the Daily Mail.
But these books are extraordinary pieces of journalism.
Speaker 4 (43:45):
Can you tell me what we know? What did the people?
Speaker 3 (43:49):
So there's say what I'm interested about this is about
whether or not this book, whether or not Gwyneth is
in on it, right because it's described as a bombshell book.
It's not actually out yet and there's an NDA on it.
But People had an exclusive. Now, People magazine is still
widely regarded as the celebrity's mouthpiece if any gossip magazine,
(44:10):
as it were, has any credibility anymore and forever, really
it's People magazine. It's where celebrities go to confirm or
deny certain stories, to do exclusives back in the day
when that was a big thing. And so the fact
that they have the first extracts of this book is meaningful.
The other thing that might mean that gwynethsineon is, as
far as we can tell, despite it being called bombshell,
(44:32):
there doesn't seem to be a smoking gun here right.
Things that we know so far, she considered Brad Pitt
to be a bit of a dullard and she says
things like we came from very different backgrounds. I had
to teach him about the different types of caviat in restaurants.
Speaker 4 (44:46):
And didn't she say he's dumber shit or something.
Speaker 3 (44:48):
She is alleged to have told her friends that she
thought he was dumb as shit. There's a suggestion that
maybe she cheated on him, and there's a suggestion that
maybe ben Affleck cheated on her. There's some stuff in
there about why her and Madonna's friendship ended. I liked
that ye which was that Madonna and Lord es Gate
crashed a family holiday of Gwyneth and Chris Martin's back
(45:08):
to our friend who likes to out married cheating couples,
and that Madonna was so awful and so awful to
her daughter that Chris was like, we can't hang around
with that woman anymore.
Speaker 2 (45:17):
She's awful. So there's stuff like that.
Speaker 1 (45:19):
I don't think my daughter would be a very good hang.
Speaker 2 (45:21):
I reckon she'd be quite a good I also read.
Speaker 1 (45:24):
In that excerpt that Gwyneth said that ben Affleck is
very good at kindly. Yes, she really liked having sex
with him because he gives such good hand yeap.
Speaker 3 (45:33):
So there's that kind of juice, but there doesn't seem
to be like a really really awful thing. But here's
my question is if you were turning a blind eye
to a biography about yourself, because as me as already said,
it looks like Anna Wintour. Amy Odell has said this herself.
She was working on that book for two years and
she was kind of getting nowhere. And then Anna Wintour
heard obviously that she was doing it, and agreed to
(45:55):
hand over a list of contacts, not to talk to her,
but to say these people will talk to you. Because say,
if someone called you, Jesse and said I'm writing a
selicious book about Holly, You'd say, I will tell you nothing,
because I am a loyal and honest friend. But if
I said to you it's all right, babe, talk to them.
It'll be okay, then you would right. More likely obviously
(46:16):
they'd be writing books because let's play along. So but
would I do that if I knew you were going
to make me sound like a snobby idiot?
Speaker 4 (46:22):
Well, what's interesting, right is that I think the context
of this being us is libel laws. Right, So this
is going to be written regardless. There is nothing that
is going to stop that book being published. There was
an unauthorized biography written about Tom Cruise, and it's different
(46:43):
in Australia. Even that Tom Cruise biography wasn't published here
for a long while because of we have very very
strict defamation laws. So for Gwyneth, it's like Amy O'Dell
can kind of say what she wants. So you would
want some kind of involvement.
Speaker 3 (46:57):
Mia, Do you think there's a world in which Anana
Wintour or Gwyneth Peltrow goes, Okay, I'm going to give
you access to some of my people. So some of
the what the only really named source I've seen much
in this because a lot of it's dug up from
old interviews is Kevin o'quon, who's the famous celebrity makeupartist
who has that mascara that everybody was Yeah.
Speaker 1 (47:15):
But he's dead.
Speaker 2 (47:16):
Oh of course he is.
Speaker 1 (47:17):
Yeah, yeah, so that's easy he could give permission. I
think what's interesting these books are important in the important
cultural figures, and she is certainly from Goop to Conscious
Uncoupling to Shakespeare in Love, she's certainly got a footprint
on our culture. It's important, or it's a worthwhile exercise
(47:37):
to have one sort of place where all of that
is examined, the influence that person has on the culture.
There are examples where like an unauthorised biography Andrew Morton
and Princess Diana, right, we found out after she died
that she actually was the source of that and she
was literally sending him notes. And then there are others.
It very much depends who the writer is. Kitty Kelly
(47:59):
was a very famous biographer in the eighties and nineties,
and she would write like trashy, pretty trashy, like sensationalist ones.
I think when a respected journalist wants to write a
biography of you, first of all, it's a way to
slightly control it because they are a decent journalist who
have got a lot of connections in the industry, who
(48:19):
aren't going to want to make enemies of you or
of everybody else. And so it kind of plants the
flag in the ground and stops more salacious books from
having any credibility. And also from everything I've read about
Gwyneth's approach to this book is that people have talked
about her and gossiped about her since she first came
on the scene. There's no point in shutting it down.
(48:41):
I think she's changed her view of that because back
in the nineties, Grenon Carter was working on a cover
story for Vanity Fair about Gwyneth Paltrow and she moved
Heaven and Nurse to try and get that shut down,
and she was successful for many, many years. It ended
up coming out years later in a much watered down form.
But it's also flattering, so not necessarily the book, but
(49:02):
the idea that someone would write.
Speaker 3 (49:03):
She's doing a lot of interviews and stuff lately, so
she's obviously prepared to be more public than she was,
as you say. But I heard her say on one
of the podcasts recently, when someone said, what's the worst
misconception out there about you? She said that I'm a
snob who's out of touch. Now, everything I've read in
this of this book, from the caveat to the you know,
Ben Affleck was too much of a guy's guy and
all that kind of stuff certainly doesn't help that view
(49:25):
of her. But do you think there's a world where
you go if you don't write the worst things, I'll
let you have access to not.
Speaker 2 (49:33):
So bad flattering And I.
Speaker 1 (49:35):
Saw that it keeps her culturally relevant.
Speaker 4 (49:38):
The headline going around which was that maybe at the
end of school or something, she said her biggest fear
was obesity. Like things like that can do a lot.
Speaker 3 (49:46):
Of yeah's a lot of stuff in there that makes it. Well,
that's what was written about her in the yearbook. Yes,
that it would be her worst nightmare. So it certainly
reinforces everything about privileged, waspy, skinny, white lady who breezes
through life, NEPO baby, all that stuff.
Speaker 2 (50:01):
It's all seems.
Speaker 3 (50:03):
To be in here, But there isn't anything in there
so far that we didn't all already know.
Speaker 4 (50:08):
I couldn't. I couldn't of anything worse. I could not
think of anything worse than having two hundred people go
on the record to bitch about you to a strangers,
to then be read by millions and millions of people,
and there is not a single thing you can do
about it like that.
Speaker 1 (50:24):
But you just said they were bitching about her. They
won't know a bitch about her, like a lot of people
sully things about her.
Speaker 4 (50:30):
The thing about a source, right is that like, yes, Holly,
I'm loyal, and so I probably wouldn't say anything. A
source often has to feel something quite strongly about the subject.
Speaker 2 (50:40):
You kissed off at work.
Speaker 4 (50:41):
Yeah, if someone asked me about someone I felt kind
of neutral about, I'd be like, I don't really have
anything to say. They work out and whatever, Right, But
it's people with an axe to grind or like. And
there is not a single person on the planet who
wouldn't have someone they've come across who doesn't have a
terrible story to tell about you.
Speaker 1 (50:58):
Yeah, but the choice of journalists or that knowing who
the journalist is. Amy Odell's not interested in writing either
a hagiography which is just a puff piece, or a
trash book. She's not. And I think I've been asked
to contribute to profiles about particular high profile people before,
and it's actually after you check with them that they
(51:18):
are okay with you talking to the journalist. And often
I've had them done of me before and they say, oh,
who could we talk to? And you give them a
few people who you know will say something really nice
about you, and then they go and find people who
will say full things about you. I had to do
one of Zoe Foster Blake for a profile that the
Stradling Financial Review we're doing, and I really enjoyed the
process of thinking what I wanted to say about her,
(51:41):
like what I could offer to a profile that would
give the reader some insight into her. Obviously, you don't
just say, oh, she's really great and she's cool, like
I had to actually and be spa yeah. And for her,
I was like, Zoe really knows what she wants to
do and what she doesn't want to do. And even
though there's a lot of pressure to be an influencer
(52:03):
and be this, and she pioneered a voice that a
generation of young writers in Australia have tried to copy.
And she was also the first one in Australia that
gave a brand of voice. And all of these things
are very specific things. But that profile was not just
a suck up puff piece. But it was interesting to
read and it was interesting to contribute to. So I've
(52:25):
ordered the book of your pre.
Speaker 2 (52:26):
Ordered of course, I have you heard it here first.
Speaker 3 (52:28):
Ben Affleck gives good head and everything in this book
is true.
Speaker 2 (52:33):
That is all we have time for out louders. It's
very good to be back with you.
Speaker 3 (52:37):
Thank you to wonderful em and Amelia for filling my
seat while I was gone, and thank you to our
wonderful team for putting this show together as they always do.
We're going to be back in your ears tomorrow.
Speaker 1 (52:48):
Bye bye bye.
Speaker 4 (52:50):
Shout out to any Mum and MEA subscribers listening. If
you love the show and you want to support us,
subscribing to Mom and Mia is the very best way
to do so. There's a link in the episode description.
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