December 8, 2025 • 50 mins
Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift never fight. Nor do George and Amal Clooney. Not about work, money, cleaning, travel or whose turn it is to feed the dog (sorry, cats.) An aspirational relationship goal? Or a flashing red flag?
Also, this week the whole world is looking at Australia as our world-first social media delay kicks in on Wednesday, December 10. So, what are we to make of the poll that says only a third of Aussie parents are actually going to enforce the ban that experts are calling "a mothers' revolution"?
Plus, Oprah Winfrey is in Australia and drawing huge crowds with her trademark a-ha moments. So why is Oprah still so interesting to Aussie women in 2025?
And, there's a very relevant Word of The Year, and a very intimidating Colour Of The Year, and Amelia, Jessie and Holly have a theory that they're linked.
Support independent women's media
Friends, what’s your Word of the Year for 2026, and why? Please let us know by emailing: outloud@mamamia.com.au or, even better, by leaving us a voice note.
What To Listen To Next:
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Watch Mamamia Out Loud:
What to read:
- Oprah spoke to parents and kids on either side of 'no-contact.' These are their stories.
- HOLLY WAINWRIGHT: 'How to really have a conversation with your kids about the social media ban.'
- We break down everything you need to know about Australia's under-16 social media ban.
- 'Travis Kelce admitted one thing he never does with Taylor Swift. It's the biggest red flag ever.'
- Bonnie thinks all men should cheat on their wives. Before you get angry, read this.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
You're listening to a MoMA Mia podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Hello and welcome to Mom and Mia out Loud. It's
what women are actually talking about on Monday, the eighth
of December.
Speaker 3 (00:22):
I'm Holly wayIn Wright, I'm Amelia Laster and.
Speaker 4 (00:25):
I'm Jesse Stephens.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
And here's what's on our agenda for today. Why Australian
women are still obsessed with Oprah Winfrey at least if
my social media feed from the weekend is anything to
be believed.
Speaker 5 (00:38):
Plus, this is the week, this is the week that
the social media band takes effect. Why do I suddenly
have complicated feelings about it?
Speaker 4 (00:46):
And apparently Travis Kelcey confessed to a giant red flag
in his relationship with Taylor Swift And I'm not so convinced.
But first, Jesse Stevens, in case you missed it, it's
the time of the year. Wherefore about eleven seconds, a
dictionary and a design service become surprisingly relevant. They have
their moment in the sun, we all make a fuss
(01:07):
and forget about them for twelve months. The Oxford Dictionary
has declared that their word of the year for twenty
twenty five is rage bait.
Speaker 3 (01:16):
Which is interesting because I thought that was two words.
Speaker 4 (01:18):
Yes, well last year was brain rot.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
It's true also two words.
Speaker 4 (01:22):
There are allegations that this is a classic example of
rage bait, given they've broken their own rules.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
That's so true.
Speaker 4 (01:29):
You can't upset the dictionary people like know your audience.
The dictionary people are really annoyed. But use of the term,
let's call it a term has tripled in the last
twelve months, and the president of Oxford Languages says that
the term brain rot from last year and rage bait
from this year, they sort of reveal how the digital
world are reshaping how we think and more generally, our behavior.
(01:52):
The Internet used to work on curiosity gaps, used to
work on what we call clickbait, right, and now it's
all about baiting people with the strongest emotion that they
can possibly generate, which is rage. Do you think this
was the year of rage bait?
Speaker 5 (02:08):
I don't think the human race is okay. Brain rot
last year, rage bait this year. I do think it
shows that we're getting more sophisticated in our understanding of
what the internet is doing to us.
Speaker 4 (02:19):
Yes, yeah, And I like that it's not meme terms.
Like for a while it was kind of these ridiculous,
not like skibbety toilet like that kind of stuff that
you go.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
Through boat face.
Speaker 4 (02:31):
Yeah, so for five seconds, maybe that's a meme. But
I think that these terms, as you say, describe a
real phenomenon, so I have more respect for them.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
Yeah, I think they speak to our increasing literacy. Right
to your point about us becoming more sophisticated, is that
hopefully by elevating and amplifying the term rage bait, we're
better at spotting it and that would be a good thing.
Speaker 4 (02:50):
Yes, And we saw it like used in advertising this year.
Remember we talked about the Elf ad that awful matt Rice,
who they knew their audience didn't like because he'd made
a really off color domestic violence joke and they threw
him in the ad blew up. The other one was
the American Eagle, and there.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
Was just maybe you could argue the pubic hair, mercant.
Speaker 4 (03:11):
Skin rage bait.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
There are some very good rage bait marketing techniques now.
Speaker 5 (03:15):
But I've noticed in my group chats that the rage
bait cycle has abated a little bit. So for instance,
I used to have one group chat where we would
just send each other links that we knew would get
each other worked up about politics. It was called rage
bit and now that's thread. We've decided that we're not
going to do that anymore. And I think there is
(03:37):
a power in naming it and then recognizing, oh, all
I'm doing is rage baiting.
Speaker 4 (03:41):
I'm being played. And that actually brings us to the
color of the year, right, which is kill me. Pantone,
which is a printing business, they declare every year their color.
Who can remember the color of twenty twenty five?
Speaker 1 (03:54):
No, I'm obsessed with the colors.
Speaker 4 (03:55):
It was brown, it's round, and I reckon, spot on,
I reckon, they nailed it. I saw a lot of
macka moose this year. The color of twenty twenty six
is white, specifically Cloud Dancer, which is described as a
lofty white that serves as a symbol of calming influence
(04:17):
in a society rediscovering the value of quiet reflection. So
what does the color of the year mean. It means
that we're going to be wearing it. It means it's
going to be the brand palette of a lot of
different places. It means celebrities and red carpets. It means
the color of your interiors. We're going to be seeing
it everywhere. I want to know if you are rage
baited that white is technically a shade, not a color.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
I'm raged baited just by the whole idea because A
I can't wear white, so I feel like excluded. I
feel excluded in every way, like I can't wear white
because of my coloring, but I also just can't wear white.
Speaker 5 (04:54):
I can't.
Speaker 4 (04:56):
Yes, Yes, if.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
I was wearing what Amelia was wearing now, I would
have spilt something down it, even if there was nothing
near me. Yesterday, you know, I was influenced by you, Jesse,
And over the weekend I bought one of those stripe
tea yeah, you know, the viral strapergy shirts, and mine
is navy with like a yellow stripe. Was literally wearing
it for five minutes coffee down at all the yellow
stripes covered in coffee.
Speaker 3 (05:18):
That shirt is dead to me.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
Now and I'm a properly grown woman and I still
can't wear white now.
Speaker 5 (05:22):
All this means is that bibbs are back, bibs are
gonna be bibs.
Speaker 4 (05:26):
I love that. Or like a really enriching cultural conversation
about stain removal, like how to get things out of
your clothes. Apparently. I did read an article that said,
on Christmas Day, we're all wearing white.
Speaker 3 (05:40):
I'm not Amelia.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
There's been a lot of controversy over this.
Speaker 5 (05:43):
I love pantone color of the year, obsessed with it,
generally by a pair of slippers in whatever color it
is to set a tone for the year ahead. There
hasn't been this much controversy with the color of the
year since twenty twenty one, when they named two colors.
Do you remember that they named gray and yellow and
everyone said, hang on, it's meant to.
Speaker 1 (05:59):
Be color of the year.
Speaker 5 (06:01):
But people are saying that they're quite tone deaf, or
they're calling them pantone deaf. I'm sorry, I didn't make
up and it did take me in an alarmingly long
time to get that joke, so I'll repeat it again,
pan tone death. Some people are saying that the color
evokes white supremacy at a time when right wing parties
are on the rise around the world. Others are saying
it's a recession indicator because we can't afford color anymore.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
Oh my goodness, No, because wearing white is a rich
person's game. Everybody knows that it means that you can
afford to have your clothes professionally cleaned and your sheets
professionally cleaned. Rich people wear white a lot. Jerry halliwell
only wears white and she's married to one of those richefwondu. Yeah,
can you remind me what the name of it is again?
Speaker 3 (06:42):
Please?
Speaker 1 (06:42):
It is cooler.
Speaker 3 (06:45):
Did not have to refer to notes.
Speaker 4 (06:47):
I believe it is a cool white rather than a
warm white.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
It is one of my favorite things to do is
in Bunnings, is to go and look at the paint
wall and look at all the shades of white and
try and boggle my brain about their minuscule differences.
Speaker 5 (06:58):
And if you've ever shot for a wedding dress, you
do know that there are actually which you haven't hold
is sorry, but there are multiple.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
Get married because you knew that.
Speaker 4 (07:08):
Why it wasn't Mum says, why it's not a color?
She wore gold?
Speaker 3 (07:12):
No very nice? Of course she did go on steep.
Speaker 5 (07:16):
The world is watching Australia this week because on Wednesday,
the social media ban finally comes into effect. Now, if
you're anything like me, I feel like this has been
coming for such a long time, and this Wednesday here, this.
Speaker 3 (07:29):
Wednesday, like Christmas for some of us friends.
Speaker 5 (07:32):
Now the Quikie has your covered on the nuts and
bolts of what is happening, and there are a lot
of nuts and bolts in terms of how this is
going to be implemented. They also have an interview with
the teenagers who are challenging this ban in the High Court.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
You can hear that on the QUICKI tomorrow. But I
wanted to check in on how we're all feeling.
Speaker 5 (07:49):
About it, because I've been on a bit of a
roller coaster of emotions about this ban. At first, I
felt real unbridled joy and pride in the fact that
Australia is really leading the world in this, and other
countries Malaysia, Indonesia, France, Denmark, they're all considering doing exactly
the same thing. Chris Pratt, he has a movie he's
been talking about how great he thinks the social media
(08:09):
ban is. You know, the world is looking at us
and is cheering us on in large parts of it.
But in the last i'd say the last couple of weeks,
I've started to hear some arguments that have given me
pause about this ban. One of them came from the
Sidney Monty Herald newspaper which.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
Reported today that a full two thirds.
Speaker 5 (08:33):
Of parents are going to find ways to get around
this ban. And I hadn't even considered that there were
ways to get around the band, But of course Holly's
been implying to me that there are many loopholes and
many ways in which parents are just going to say,
I can't fight this fight with my teenager, I can't
pull an addict away from something, and.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
Look, I should say that.
Speaker 5 (08:54):
Albow, in response to this kind of criticism, says, it
was never meant to be perfectly enforced. It was meant
to start conversations, and it was meant to change a
social norm over time. But it does kind of make
me think that it's being undermined little bit by parents. Holly,
what do you think? You know?
Speaker 2 (09:10):
I've been dying to talk about this every episode. I'm like,
can we talk about it yet?
Speaker 3 (09:15):
Like stop it?
Speaker 2 (09:16):
Just full disclosure, because if you are a regular out louder,
you would have heard my voice last week reading some
ads from the federal government about the social media delay
as they calling it, and I agreed to do those
because I am a supporter. Like full disclosure, I think
it's great, but I think it's complicated, and I think
we have to be really mindful in the next few weeks, months,
(09:39):
whatever of where the criticisms about this are coming from, right,
Because one thing you've got to remember, and we're not
getting into the nuts and bots, as you say, But
the pressure in this case is on the tech companies
to stop kids getting on their apps, rather than it's
not supposed to be to stop parents from letting their
kids get on the apps.
Speaker 3 (09:59):
Do you understand that distinction, right?
Speaker 2 (10:01):
So it's not like if you have a fifteen year
old and your fifteen year old is still on snap
Chat next week, you're going to go to prison. That's
not what's going to happen. And Nora are they and
you're not going to get fined, and nor are they.
The idea is to pressure the tech companies to make
it much harder, if not impossible, for kids under sixteen
to get online. Now that's not something the tech companies
(10:22):
are fans of.
Speaker 3 (10:23):
Right. Ninety nine percent of.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
Australian teenagers use some form of social media ninety nine percent,
So that is a lot of customers who are being
served ads all the time. So there are lots of
sort of vested interests without wanting to sound too conspiratorial
about this, who are not mad keen on this working,
And so I think we have to be mindful of that.
But back to the point, Amelia, of whether parents are
(10:46):
going to help their kids get around this man, they
definitely are going to because so my kids are exactly
in the bull's eye for this right thirteen and fifteen,
and me and my friends and most of my friends
I guess who you know I see regularly, their kids
are somewhere in that ballpark two, probably aged between like
nine and sixteen, And say, all the time, what did
(11:08):
we fight about before there were phones? What did parents
and kids.
Speaker 3 (11:11):
Argue about before there were phones?
Speaker 2 (11:13):
Because it is the biggest source of contention in every
house I know, including my own screen time, phone usage, addiction,
social media, all of those things are the things that
we have most conflict about. And so in a way,
you'd think, oh, well, how great, because now you don't
have to row about it because it's just illegal for
them to be on YouTube.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
But that's exactly what I thought.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
But that's not the case, because what it means is
you are now going to be fighting about them getting
off those things. The thing is Although I'm a big
supporter of the ban, I've never been a really big
supporter of the Jonathan Height kind of argument that really
parents just all need to get together and agree. Me
and all my friends are not going to buy our kids'
(11:55):
phones because I think it's a really simplistic idea, given
all the forces that are coming at us, that if
parents were just just grew a pair and told their
kids to get off phones, we wouldn't have a problem.
I think this is a really complicated relationship that teens
have with these platforms. We've just been handed a really
good tool to be able to help us get the
(12:16):
kids off them. But I think that the great benefit
of this ban is actually not going to be fifteen
year olds. It's going to be for the twelve year
olds who are never going to get on these platforms
in the first place, or the nine year old who
are not going to be handed a phone at eleven
and given Snapchat anymore. I think that actually the biggest
benefit is going to come from those kids rather than
(12:37):
for the kids who are already in the eye of
the storm.
Speaker 4 (12:39):
That's an interesting idea because even smoking right, like, if
you look at they were all different there were public
health campaigns, and there was the cost and almost the
social backlash towards people who smoked. And that didn't happen overnight.
It didn't happen with one piece of legislation or one policy.
It happened gradually, and so a lot of the arguments
(13:02):
that I hear against it. I think about alcohol, you
can say, oh, well, can technically go out and buy
alcohol for a seventeen year old. What if the parent
wants to have a glass of wine in their house
with their seventeen year old, What if they're seventeen and eleven,
Like that's been going on forever, and you negotiate it
as a family. But the fact that it is sort
(13:22):
of enshrined in law that that's not something that a
seventeen year old is allowed to do is in the parents' arsenal,
and it's in the teacher's arsenal as well. Like I'm
thinking about all of the teachers who are dealing with
social media conflicts every single day as part of their job,
who can now probably go you shouldn't even be on there.
(13:44):
Even that gives them something, And I think that it
chose the Australian government has a backbone I think it's brave.
I think it's bold. The rest of the world is
following suit, not identically interestingly, so even Denmark. I think
there's a lot of talk about that they're not allowed
on without parental consent. I wonder if that is a
change that will happen or curfew is the other they
(14:07):
talking about.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
The problem with the parental consent model is in theory,
this only really works if it's everybody. So that's always
Jonathan Hight's argument that I referenced before, and if you're
not awhere, he is the guy who wrote The Anxious Generation.
He's an American, what is his psychologist? And he's very
widely credited for It was actually the South Australian premier's
(14:28):
wife who read that book here and started pushing her
husband to do something about this. But that's kind of
the theory that his stuff about the village, like parents
should get together in a village almost and say we're
all not going to do phones is really as I say,
I don't think that works. I think it's a bit
of a middle class fantasy that everybody's just going to
do that. But I think that the thing that's really
(14:49):
good about the social media benefit works is that your
kid is going to say, I'm so isolated from my
friends if you'd kick me off social media. It's like,
but none of your friends are going to be on
social media, so you're not going to be isolated from
your friends, and you'll find somewhere else together on the Internet.
Speaker 4 (15:04):
And here there are some really good arguments, as there
is with any change in legislation. So there was an
article in The Guardian by Ezra Shohl, who is the
son of Natasha Shol, who has spoken about on this
podcast before. She's a brilliant writer. And he is fifteen
and is quadriplegic. He is in a wheelchair. He has
suffered the most horrific health crises over the last few years,
(15:29):
and the thing that has connected him to the outside
world when he has been stuck in a hospital bed
during adolescence has been social media. And I don't doubt
that that's his story. And in fact he made some
really good points. He wrote, if tech companies have the
capability to delete accounts for people under the age of sixteen,
(15:49):
they also have the capability to delete accounts that bully,
harass or cause harm. And he said that he's been bullied.
He gets stuff all the time, and he reports these
accounts and nothing happens. And as anyone with a profile knows,
you can get horrifically abused and nothing. So I think
this also proves the capabilities that tech companies have to
(16:12):
do more than their doing. But I think that ultimately
this is about utilitarianism. I think it's about the greater good.
I think it's got to look at you know, what
this has done to teen brains, and when I look
at like I saw this interview with Miranda Kerr a
few months ago. I think you talked about it on
Parenting out Loud and the Miranda Curs of the world,
(16:35):
who of course are married to the founder of Snapchat.
Do you think their kids have access to social media? No,
they don't because they know that screens are corrosive and
damaging and blah blah blah. So what I've always hated
is the divide between the tech billionaires who are very
strict with their screen time and just allowing everyone else
(16:55):
to kind of fall victim to it.
Speaker 5 (16:56):
And let's be clear, those tech companies right now are
quaking in their very expensive boots and Holly, I couldn't
underscore more what you said before about be conscious of
where you're hearing criticism over the next few weeks and
who is criticizing this legislation. Because these companies they're not
worried about the fines from the Australian government. They've made
(17:18):
the point that look, these companies could be fined fifty
million dollars dollars if they're shown to not be making
sure that the safeguards are in place to stop children
from signing up. Yeah, fifty million dollars is nothing for Mata.
Someone pointed out who used to work at Matter in
a BBC article that that's the equivalent of a parking
ticket for Matter. They make fifty million dollars in about
two hours, so it's not really a problem for them.
(17:39):
That's not why they're worried. They're not worried about the
fifty million dollars. They're worried that the Australian government is
leading the charge in changing a social norm that will
make a child looking at TikTok or YouTube the same
as seeing a child smoking a cigarette. You can see
a child smoking a cigarette's pretty rare these days, but
I'm sure that there are some kids who sneak a cigarette,
(18:01):
but we look at it aghast because we have decided
as a society that that is not okay. And that
is what the social media said exactly.
Speaker 4 (18:09):
And the tech companies aren't worried that the poor teenagers
won't be able to, you know, really galvanize and have
their online communities. They're not worried about that. They're worried
that they're not going to be able to serve them
ads anymore. And that I think is surely we can
hold hands and agree that that's a good thing.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
Absolutely, and I do. The only thing I want to say, though,
is that the articles that are coming out now about
parents aren't going to enforce it, and there will inevitably
be a conversation about like, oh, helicopter parents can't be
strict with their kids.
Speaker 3 (18:40):
That will be.
Speaker 4 (18:41):
That's what will comment. Sec Yeah, I want to.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
Be really clear, because, as I say, I am in
that sort of bull's eye. If your kid is say
sixteen or out of this now, it's hard to hear
everybody around you saying.
Speaker 3 (18:52):
Your kid's brain is damaged, your kid is addicted.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
You've been terrible parents who've just let your kids have
unfettered access to this Our kids are all going to
be pure and great and we're never going to give
them screens, and they won't. You know, it's hard to
hear that and not get your hackles up, because this
is a truth. And I'll put my hand up and
say it's the truth for me too. Technology and phones
and all that come along with them, which we are
(19:16):
broadly as a culture now sort of holding hands and
going not great for kids, have kind of made parenting
a lot easier in a million ways, right Like they
really have for busy working families, for the kind of
parents who which most parents are, who don't have all
the time in the world to be policing what their
kids are doing every minute, you know, who don't have
the time to be ferrying them around to improving activities
and all that stuff.
Speaker 3 (19:37):
There does feel to me to be.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
A little bit of a snobby divide opening about whether
or not, you know, the kids who aren't addicted to
social media are in one class and one who are aren't.
And I think that that's part of all the arguments
we're going to see opening up over the next few weeks.
I think we need to be careful not to demonize
this generation that have grown up with their phones. If
(20:01):
this van is successful and followed around the world, and
you know, as you say, Amelia, the social norm is
successful shifted, and let's all hope it is.
Speaker 3 (20:08):
I genuinely hope that it is. That's great, But.
Speaker 2 (20:12):
We are going to then have in this generational line
of like kind of like in the old days we
grew up before they knew that it was bad for
you to drink when you were pregnant, or not clip
your kids in in the car. I heard you talking
on parenting out loud about seat belts and drawing that comparison,
like we shouldn't demonize that, just like I think we
shouldn't demonize the parents who've got a fifteen year old
(20:32):
right now and they're going if they're on Snapchat for
another month, is that going to be the end.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
Of the world.
Speaker 4 (20:37):
No.
Speaker 5 (20:37):
And part of that is recognizing that the most powerful
people and the richest people the world has ever seen
have thrown everything at the wall to make children dependent
on what their offerings are. And the more that we
can shift that understanding from it's not about what parents
have decided or not decided. It was the most sophisticated
propaganda machine that had ever been thrown at anyone, and
(21:00):
it was thrown at kids. And now the Albanzi government
is trying to stop that tide.
Speaker 4 (21:04):
And Wednesday I think is the first day in what
I think they want to be a cultural, social, worldwide shift.
And I don't think if on Friday all of the
kids aren't off social media, it's a failure.
Speaker 2 (21:18):
Agreed, But thoughts and prayers if you're arguing with your
fourteen right now after the break, why Oprah Wisdom is
still all over your feed in twenty twenty five. My
(21:39):
social media feed, because I'm an adult and I'm allowed
to have one.
Speaker 3 (21:43):
This weekend has been swamped by a.
Speaker 2 (21:47):
Lot of women who've been to see Oprah Winfrey on
her tour around Australia. So if you're not on the
same kind of algorithmic or bent as I am, the
seventy one year old is in Australia right now. She's
doing these big speaking events. She's also doing lots of
social media. So every city she goes to, she's doing
a hike there because she says she hikes every day
now and she is eating local delicacies. And then she's
(22:09):
having these huge, sort of arena sized shows women are going.
The vibe seems to be very much with their mates,
you know, getting dressed up, put your other Camilla or
your imitation Camilla, caf done on. Go and see Oprah
talk and then post her wisdom. The kind of things
I'm seeing being posted are five things I learned at
Oprah last.
Speaker 4 (22:27):
Oh, I'm seeing all of them, and I'm reading all
of them because I would.
Speaker 3 (22:30):
Have loved to go.
Speaker 1 (22:30):
Are people loving it?
Speaker 2 (22:31):
Yeah, so I'm seeing this kind of thing. This is interesting.
You cannot be friends with anyone who is even a
little bit jealous of you. This is one of the
things I saw. This is unfortunate. I've declared in the past, Jesse,
I have had times when I've been jealous of you, exactly.
Jealousy is a crack in the foundation, says Oprah. The
whole house will fall.
Speaker 1 (22:50):
Oh gosh, I'm prone to jealousy.
Speaker 3 (22:53):
You're in trouble.
Speaker 2 (22:54):
Life is whispering to you all of the time. You
only go off track when you're not listening.
Speaker 1 (22:59):
This is interesting.
Speaker 3 (23:01):
I like that.
Speaker 4 (23:02):
I don't fully understand it, but I like the vibe.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
Yeah, this is the kind of stuff that I'm seeing post.
Everyone's saying this is what Oprah taught me last night.
The stereotype of the women who are going but I'm
sure this isn't entirely true, of course, is that there
are a certain age that they're white, that they're into
self optimization. But this is largely an audience that's come
of age with her, right, So Oprah is a guru
to this generation.
Speaker 4 (23:24):
Say I will fight you on that.
Speaker 3 (23:26):
Good I don't.
Speaker 4 (23:26):
I don't think that it is a certain generation. The
people I'm seeing are in their twenties. They are diverse,
and when I looked into it, one of the hallmarks
of her longevity has been the diversity of her audience.
Speaker 2 (23:40):
Yes, I mean, I think that's certainly true, because she's
you know, she has so many stories to tell. But
I think she is seen by her critics as being
like a sort of Tamu guru in a way, when
really I would argue she's the og.
Speaker 4 (23:54):
Yeah, me too.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
Anyway, Amelia always says that you're a bit baffled by
the Oprah phenomena.
Speaker 1 (23:59):
Yeah, like full disclosure.
Speaker 5 (24:01):
I wanted to do this today because I did say
she was in Australia, and I have to admit that
that phenomenon past nearby, and I want to learn. I
want to learn why Australian women in particular evidently still
love Oprah After decades in the public eye, she is
still attracting thousands of people to these shows. They're gathering
a lot from it. I want you to explain her
(24:22):
appeal to me.
Speaker 3 (24:22):
Do you want a little cheat sheet I do on
Oprah Winfrey.
Speaker 2 (24:25):
Now, this could be the longest cheat sheet of all time,
but it's not going to be.
Speaker 3 (24:29):
Because we will be here all day.
Speaker 2 (24:31):
Did you know the place that Oprah was born, which
is in Mississippi in the States, is called Kosiosco.
Speaker 5 (24:37):
Nolasco Bridge in New York City.
Speaker 3 (24:40):
Yes, so famously.
Speaker 2 (24:43):
I guess the Oprah myth and it isn't a myth,
it is her origin story is a large part of
her appeal right very top line. She was born to
teenage parents in Kosiosco, Mississippi, and she had a very
tough upbringing. She was sexually abused as a teenager. She
gave birth to a little boy at fourteen.
Speaker 3 (25:01):
He died.
Speaker 2 (25:03):
Despite this absolutely traumatic upbringing, I guess you'd say she
started working in media when she was seventeen.
Speaker 1 (25:11):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
And then she started working for a TV station locally
to her, and then she was working in Baltimore, and
then she most notably made a move to Chicago, which
is where she built her empire. Right, So, from a
very young age, she was incredibly driven. There are so
many firsts when it comes to Oprah Winfrey.
Speaker 4 (25:31):
Right.
Speaker 3 (25:31):
She was the first.
Speaker 2 (25:33):
Woman in history to own and produce her own talk show.
She's the first Black American woman to be syndicated, the
first Black American woman to be a billionaire, the first
Black American woman to own a TV network. She decided
that news reporting wasn't really her thing because.
Speaker 3 (25:51):
She struggled with the objectivity of it, which is a very.
Speaker 4 (25:55):
Self aware thing to say.
Speaker 2 (25:57):
I love her, Yeah, it's very self aware, but it
also is like one of the foundations for what she
then almost invented in a way, which was this like
own your truth, Yes, own your truth. So rather than
just reporting the news, she wanted to create the culture.
I guess, right, So she wanted to be a journal
and in nineteen eighty four, she relocated to Chicago to
(26:17):
host a low rated morning talk show called Am Chicago.
It was immediately a hit with her hosting it.
Speaker 5 (26:23):
Right.
Speaker 2 (26:24):
They say that because she was authentic and empathetic and engaging.
She quickly took the show from last place to the
top of the ratings within a year, and they soon
renamed the show after her within a year of her
doing it by nineteen eighty eight, so only four years.
That show was such a hit, and she acquired ownership
and production responsibilities for it, making her the first woman
(26:44):
in history to own and produce her own talk show.
Speaker 4 (26:47):
Wo wow, I invented it.
Speaker 3 (26:48):
She invented that shit.
Speaker 2 (26:50):
She founded Hyper Productions, groundbreaking move that secured her creative
control and made her loads of money. It's another big
thing about Oprah. She is very, very rich, as we know.
And then as we know, right, the Oprah Winfrey Show
started off in a kind of it was like, I
don't know what we call it, like shock TV in
those days, Like she'd have oring family members. I remember
very clearly an episode she had the Clueklux Klan.
Speaker 5 (27:10):
On god Is how as a child of the nineties,
I knew Oprah. She had this talk show that had
the scandalous sort of soap operaary elements to it.
Speaker 3 (27:20):
See.
Speaker 4 (27:20):
I think that you can only understand Oprah in relationship
to Jerry Springer like Jerry Springer was the scandalous, ethically dubious,
there was no soul to it. It was maybe the
original rage bait that was happening, and Oprah was almost
(27:42):
the more like morally upright version of that.
Speaker 2 (27:46):
But it's the order of things, So Oprah was first,
uh huh, And Oprah's TV show did have a fair
bit of that, but she didn't like it. By the
end of the eighties, she was over that kind of
stuff and she wanted to move in the nineties, which
she did into more like it's amazing to think that
the infamous Wagon of Fat episode, which is one of
the things that is most often used to criticize her for,
(28:09):
which is the episode where very famously she lost lots
of weight on a diet that she later admitted was
incredibly dangerous and basically starvation, and then she walked onto
her set with her Wagon and Fat.
Speaker 3 (28:20):
Was in nineteen eighty eight, and like, that is a
very long time ago.
Speaker 2 (28:24):
So she was doing that kind of stuff and then
Jerry Springer started doing it, Doctor Phil started doing it,
these other people started doing it, and she was like, oh,
I think I've given birth to a monster. And she
shifted into self help stuff.
Speaker 4 (28:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (28:37):
Do you think that part of the reason why that
wagon of felt was such a milestone in TV history
and for Oprah was because she basically kind of invented
vulnerability on TV because before that, is it true that
it was much more polished and people didn't sort of
open up in that way about their struggles?
Speaker 4 (28:54):
Yeah? I think so. They weren't as candid about it.
And when you go back and you look at all
the times Oprah was asked or mocked or criticized openly
to her face on other talk shows about her weight,
you can complete understand how she got to that point.
And I think that she was trying to use it
as a way to help inspire other women, which ironically
(29:18):
now her being in Australia. If you have a really
good look at that poster of Oprah's touring poster, it's
got a big face of her, and it's got all the
dates you can see presented by and it has a
brand name that I actually didn't recognize, and that brand
is a pharmaceutical company that makes weight loss products, which
is why she's here. They've paid for her to come
out here, which is sort of a lens by which
(29:40):
a lot of Maybe her social media content makes more
sense that she's doing these hikes and that, you know,
lots of commentary as they always has been about her body.
Speaker 5 (29:50):
The one I saw of her in Sydney after she'd
been on a hike and then she went to eat
hotcakes said something to the effect of, I've now earned
myself the ability to have an indulgent meal. Yeah, it
is diet adjacent culture that she is still pushing.
Speaker 4 (30:07):
No one has marinated in diet culture more than Oprah
Whgfrey like she has been the subject of it. She
has been in many ways victim of it. But then
I suppose at the same time she's espoused it because
that's the world in which she grew up.
Speaker 2 (30:24):
I think you've got to remember that, like her peak.
So the peak of Oprah's powers in terms of influence
were the eighties and nineties, right, and diet culture in
inverted commas didn't exist, as in it did absolutely exist,
but we didn't have a name for it.
Speaker 3 (30:39):
We couldn't point at it.
Speaker 1 (30:40):
Air that you breathe.
Speaker 4 (30:41):
Yes, it's just every single woman wanted to lose. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (30:44):
And so if you think that the power that Oprah
harnessed and then, as you say, Jesse, that power kind
of got hijacked by lots of other sort of other
shows and things. Was Middle America ordinary in inverted commas,
people watching television during the day, wrestling with the kind
of things that ordinary people wrestle with, which is family
(31:05):
dynamics and problems, money, weight relationships. She spoke to people
about the shit they really cared about, rather than what
she thought they should care about. That's the secret of
her success in those days. And we can pretend, as
much as we want, retrospectively or otherwise that women didn't
care about losing weight. But women cared, and you could
(31:26):
still argue now care enormously about weight.
Speaker 1 (31:28):
They just do.
Speaker 2 (31:30):
And I think that Oprah, if we think about the
Wagon of Fat being nineteen eighty eight, which is a
very long time ago, over that time, I think that
Oprah's lens on it has shifted as well. She during
that time has lost weight, put on weight, written a
million different words about it, spoken words about it, decided
not to speak about it at all, make a deal
with weight watches, make a deal with medical weight loss company,
(31:51):
don't do that. Over that time, she has ridden all
kinds of waves with that and she's been blamed in
a way for being a paragon of diet culture, when
I think that actually she just kind of reflected.
Speaker 3 (32:04):
She gave to us shar and she reflects it to us.
Speaker 2 (32:07):
And so where she is now here having been brought
here by a medical weight loss company, which whatever feelings
you have about that, and there are many to have,
I think she reflects where weight loss culture is in
this moment, which is the GLP one revolution. You can
go hiking and eat hotcakes and take like obesity is
a disease. That's what she's talking about a lot. So
(32:28):
I think it's hard to uncouple Oprah from that, But
she's actually a lot more than.
Speaker 5 (32:33):
That, right, And what I'm hearing from the way that
you describe her extraordinary rise is that she made people
who didn't feel very seen feel seen and understood as well,
not just seen, but understood at a time when their
concerns were seen as quotidian or not important, or superficial
or silly. And so, what do you think accounts for
(32:55):
both the longevity of that career, because now everyone discloses everything.
So back in the eighties and the early nineties, when
she's doing the wagon of fat that's unusual and revolutionary.
Now we all know much about each other, as the
internet meme goes, So what do you think it counts
for that continued fascination with Oprah when everyone's disclosing everything.
And also for Australian women, she strikes me so quintessentially
(33:19):
American in her rise and in the adversity that she's
had to overcome. What is it about Oprah these days
for Australian women that still clearly resonates.
Speaker 4 (33:28):
I think she doesn't talk about structural inequality. She doesn't
talk about the structures. She doesn't talk about things like
corporate power, or the gender divide, or environmental degradation or
all the scary big things. She talks about you and
your purpose, the.
Speaker 1 (33:47):
Scary small things.
Speaker 4 (33:48):
Yeah, yeah, exactly right. That actually she talks so eloquently
about grief and about friendship and about your goals and
your purpose. Which does it applies to the poor person
in Middle America? It applies to the rich celebrity in
Hollywood equally, And so I think whether or not that's
(34:09):
a good thing, and whether or not it's at all
true or you can uncouple capitalist structures from how people's
lives turn out whatever. But the reason that she can
fill a room is because there's something like fundamentally empowering
about that. And I've always had a relationship to Oprah.
That's like your great auntie who always buys you a
(34:30):
really good present and has great advice and gives you
the right book at the right moment. Like that's as simple,
and who doesn't want that? And everyone wants that. And
she's even seen as having been responsible for the reinvigoration
of reading in the US, like what she did with
her book club and her magazine.
Speaker 5 (34:48):
Now is she now? Reese and all these other people
have come in her footsteps, Quen, all these people wouldn't
exist with.
Speaker 1 (34:54):
The business empires they do were it not for Oprah.
Speaker 3 (34:57):
Yeah, I think it's so true, Jesse.
Speaker 2 (34:59):
I think that her appeal is because her story, her
origin story, and then all the things she's been through
in the past four decades. People are very seduced by
stories of transformation. That's true, whether they are, you know,
privileged and wealthy but always wanting to be better, you know,
like this self optimization culture which you could are You
(35:19):
could string together quite a goog argument that Oprah has
mainstreamed because therapy speaks self optimization, a certain amount of
wu woo. She's the points of criticism that you can
put on her.
Speaker 5 (35:29):
Now.
Speaker 2 (35:29):
For example, she was a massive support of The Secret.
The first time I ever saw The Secret, it was
on Oprah. You know, those kind of things. But she
mainstreamed all that stuff, and she is in herself. She
embodies a story of transformation and she continues to and
I think that's really seductive to everybody. The big points
of criticism for Oprah are the weight stuff which we
(35:51):
just talked about, toxic diet culture, the fact that she
is a multi billionaire who apparently her property portfolio is
worth like five billion dollars.
Speaker 3 (36:00):
Now.
Speaker 2 (36:00):
She is also a massive flat flut. I always fail
with this wordlaist.
Speaker 4 (36:05):
She did land in Australia on her private jet, she did.
Speaker 3 (36:07):
I mean she goes too.
Speaker 1 (36:09):
That's a long fly.
Speaker 5 (36:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (36:11):
She gives hundreds of millions to charities that she supports,
and she has an academy in South Africa and all
those things. But still you cannot be beyond approach when
you've got that level of personal wealth.
Speaker 3 (36:20):
She owns large swedes.
Speaker 5 (36:22):
That it's the women billionaires who often get this criticism
that in itself being a billionaire is not okay.
Speaker 2 (36:28):
Well, that's true, although I do have a few problems
with some of the male billionaires too. She has had
lots of criticism for the people she's chosen to platform
over time. You know, we're talking about before racist like
the KKK. She got a lot of trouble on her
book club for James Fray, remember the guy with a
Million Little Pieces. We talked the other week about Jenny McCarthy,
the anti vaxxa, various kind of questionable health growers.
Speaker 3 (36:50):
But then if you're on Telly for forty.
Speaker 2 (36:53):
Years, making content in all kinds of different climates, you
are going to get it wrong sometimes. So she gets
a lot of criticism for all those things.
Speaker 5 (37:00):
And like you said, because she's done so many firsts,
there's something by definition pushing the boundaries about what she does.
Speaker 1 (37:06):
It's inevitable.
Speaker 2 (37:07):
And also what's interesting about opes, as I like to
call it because we're such good friends, is one of
her pieces of magic, which I think some very famous
successful people have, is that even though they are so
unrelatable in every way, she sort of feels relatable too.
And one of the things that's interesting about Oprah in
terms of being one of the most iconic women of
a generation, is that her private life is quite unconventional
(37:30):
really so she's never married.
Speaker 3 (37:31):
She's been with the.
Speaker 2 (37:32):
Same and as Stedman. We could all recite this. They
have been together for forty years. They once got engaged
but quickly called it off, but never broke up.
Speaker 1 (37:39):
Okaya, why they're just.
Speaker 2 (37:42):
Not into it at that time in her life she
was always I prioritize work. You know, her life has
been work. She never had children after that tragic death
of that little boy when she was a teenager. Her
famous best friend Gail King, who is famous now too,
goes everywhere with it. In fact, my favorite Oprah detail
is that in all of her homes, which is the.
Speaker 3 (38:02):
Kind of thing you can only say about billionaires, Gail.
Speaker 2 (38:04):
Has her own room, like with her own deck or
I'm always like, if I was a moult.
Speaker 3 (38:08):
That's what I'd do.
Speaker 2 (38:10):
Gayla is the lover of her Gayle is the lover
of her life. You know, none of that is particularly
relatable business, but everybody's like, yeah, Oprah my position on her,
I would have liked to go and see her, even
though I do have some issues with the blatant product.
Speaker 3 (38:23):
Placement of the aforementioned.
Speaker 2 (38:26):
Medical weight loss company in that I don't necessarily like
her or not like her, but she's just there's no
question she's one of the most iconic figures.
Speaker 3 (38:33):
I think it would have.
Speaker 4 (38:33):
Been a lovely night. I would have really enjoyed it.
After the break, Travis Kelcey just shared an insight into
his relationship with Taylor Swift and apparently it's a big
red flag one unlimited out loud access. We drop episodes
every Tuesday and Thursday exclusively for Mum and MEA subscribers.
Follow the link in the show notes to get us
(38:55):
in your ears five days a week, and a huge
thank you to all our current subscribers. If you're not
up to date with New Heights Travis Kelsey's podcast aka
(39:15):
Taylor Swift's fiance and a famous NFL player, I want
to tell you about an episode recently.
Speaker 1 (39:21):
Do we all regularly podcast?
Speaker 4 (39:24):
Yeah? Yeah, it's a weekly listen. I've never listened to
one minute of this podcast.
Speaker 2 (39:28):
Oh, I listened to the inter Taylor Holy Smokey's that
was great. That was two hours of my life.
Speaker 4 (39:32):
Did you ever listen to another one?
Speaker 5 (39:34):
No?
Speaker 3 (39:34):
But I know.
Speaker 2 (39:36):
But the reason I know what you're going to say
in a minute is because I did see these social
media clips where he was interviewing one George Clooney, who
you know up there with Oprah for me.
Speaker 4 (39:45):
Yeah, okay, So he had George Clooney on and they
got onto the topic of relationships. Travis asked his friend
George about something he'd said about a year or so ago,
which actually came up on our podcast as well, which
is that George Clooney said that him and Amle have not,
in their ten years together, had a fight.
Speaker 3 (40:09):
Fun fact for you.
Speaker 4 (40:09):
They've got twins, they do, and they seem to be thriving.
Speaker 3 (40:14):
Well, you just have to be like George in a mile.
Speaker 4 (40:16):
Oh my gosh. Okay, that's really inspired.
Speaker 3 (40:19):
I asked them to send you some positivity.
Speaker 4 (40:20):
Made exactly right. They seem to like their twins. Okay,
this is great. Then George replied, I'm not lying, Travis.
Shall we ask you the same question? And Travis confessed
that while him and Taylor only been together for two
and a half years, they have never gotten into an argument.
Speaker 3 (40:37):
Not once.
Speaker 4 (40:39):
And then came the commentary. So there was a viral
tweet that was sharing that headline and it said this
is a bad sign. And Nowther said when couples say
this shit, all I can think is you're either a
psychopath or you view your partner the same way you
do a pet a pet. And an article on Mama
Mia called their lack of fighting a red flag, Amelia,
(41:02):
is it a red flag?
Speaker 5 (41:04):
It's interesting that we kind of go back and fourth
as a society about what we think the gold standard is,
because in my life already, I feel like I've looked
through a couple of incoundations of this. There was a
time where the gold standard was no fighting, and then
it very much moved. I think we all got parrel pilled.
That's my phrase for the therapization of our culture by
(41:26):
Esther Perel and Esther Pearrel's basic idea is that you
can talk through anything, including an affair. She's basically like,
you know, setting aside abuse, obviously, you can work through
just about any relationship issue if you just.
Speaker 4 (41:39):
Hash it out, have a little chat, go for it.
Speaker 5 (41:41):
There's a Psychology Today headline that kind of summarizes where
we were as a culture around this issue for a
long time, which was if you never fight, someone is hiding.
So the idea is that if you're not fighting, it's
because you're repressing something, and that's a very unhealthy, even
toxic dynamic.
Speaker 3 (41:57):
Is it that? Well?
Speaker 5 (41:58):
But now it feels like we've now swung back, and
now we've got these two probably the two most kind
of iconic couples in the world right now, George and Lamar,
Taylor and Travis proudly declaring that they don't fight. I
think we've seen the pendulum swing back again.
Speaker 4 (42:15):
Okay, unpopular opinion, all the money in the world, clean house,
not fighting over directions.
Speaker 1 (42:21):
But they do have twins, as Holy says.
Speaker 4 (42:23):
I know, but I think they would have some support
around them.
Speaker 5 (42:28):
I think Taylor Travis actually have kind of a complicated
schedule to deal with.
Speaker 1 (42:32):
He is a professional football player. She just did the
most successful tour of all time.
Speaker 4 (42:37):
Can you imagine the g Cow for the the g
Cow would be intense. But I will also say, Google calendar, Oh.
Speaker 3 (42:44):
God, we've still got a calendar in the kitchen on
the wall.
Speaker 4 (42:51):
Taylor Taylor.
Speaker 1 (42:56):
The blue is Travis's.
Speaker 4 (43:00):
But you look at all those things and you also
go two and a half years, you don't have kids.
Do they have a shared mortgage. Yet I don't think
they'll have a mortgage, will they, Amelia? Maybe mortgage?
Speaker 3 (43:11):
Imagine Taylor Travis.
Speaker 4 (43:12):
At the back in there fight for alone. I don't
think that they're going to be there. So are there
less things to fight about when you're Travis.
Speaker 2 (43:21):
And oh yeah, I think that Clooney said, what would
we fight about?
Speaker 3 (43:25):
Question back? That must be one of the most privileged
statement questions we fight about.
Speaker 4 (43:33):
Can you w the bench? I'll just get out cleaner.
Who's right here to do it?
Speaker 3 (43:37):
Great?
Speaker 5 (43:37):
George could be like, I hate human rights exactly.
Speaker 3 (43:42):
Oh my god, Ama, you're too beautiful. Stop it.
Speaker 2 (43:45):
I hate fighting, hate fighting, which is why my preferred
method is the much more insidious, toxic, passive aggressive fighting.
Speaker 3 (43:56):
So instead of saying that you haven't cleaned the.
Speaker 2 (43:58):
Bench, you say something like, interesting, how you chose to
just leave that little thing that like, you know, or whatever.
Speaker 4 (44:06):
It is, which is a discussion.
Speaker 3 (44:07):
It's a discussion, exactly.
Speaker 2 (44:10):
Interesting, How you still don't know where this goes in
the cobo.
Speaker 4 (44:14):
That's an observation, exactly, that's not a fire.
Speaker 3 (44:17):
Interesting.
Speaker 2 (44:18):
How you didn't put the lid back on the toothpaste. Yes,
that's just an invitation to explore your different techniques exactly
paste management. I think pass agnes is good.
Speaker 5 (44:29):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (44:30):
I think it's interesting.
Speaker 2 (44:31):
Tara from Amamea wrote, as you said that this was
a red flag and that she was worried about it
because she said, a huge part of any relationship is
conflict resolution and learning each other's fight styles. But what
if your two people who hate fighting? Are you supposed
to force yourself to fight? Because it's important to know,
maybe your fight style is to your point before Amelia hiding,
(44:53):
my fight style might be retreat, not attack.
Speaker 1 (44:57):
You know what I don't think Esther Perel is a
huge fan of retreat. What's passive aggression with retreat? Well,
she has this interesting question.
Speaker 5 (45:06):
She says, what most people don't realize is that you're
not actually fighting about money or commitment or who does
the housework. What you're actually fighting about is a lack.
Speaker 1 (45:13):
Of affection, respect, power.
Speaker 5 (45:15):
Or some combination of the three, just the two lit
Another way of thinking about this is that there's this
sort of like adage that every couple has the same
three fights and it just manifests in different ways. I
very much agree with that, and I guess those same
three fights are affection, respect, and power, And now even
Taylor and Travis and George and a mile are having
to navigate relationship dynamics where those things are flowing back
(45:37):
and forth.
Speaker 4 (45:38):
This is about our definition of fight, yeah, and it's
about our definition of argument. I reckon that if you
are the child of parents who fought really openly, you
felt like you had to walk on eggshells. Sometimes I
think it's just temperament. You don't like to escalate, then
you might resist going to that. And I don't think
(45:59):
any way is necessarily better or worse.
Speaker 1 (46:02):
Because don't you have a degree in psychology.
Speaker 2 (46:06):
Us has a degree in psychology, And because you're identical twins.
If she's got a degree in psychology, do you psychology?
Speaker 1 (46:14):
I thought it was a psychologist.
Speaker 4 (46:15):
I have a master's in history.
Speaker 1 (46:17):
Gender study, gender studies. There you go.
Speaker 4 (46:19):
Both of them didn't give me a lot of clarity
on fighting, but I will say it did make me
good at arguing. And therefore, if you're I remember thinking
this at the time, George Cloone is just a clever
man not to fight with a human rights law. Yes,
that's what you just need to know.
Speaker 5 (46:35):
You so true and son, who's the better fighter between
Taylor and Travis.
Speaker 3 (46:40):
Taylor by about a thousand.
Speaker 4 (46:42):
He's a poet.
Speaker 3 (46:44):
Do remember that interview where.
Speaker 1 (46:45):
He probably had some kind of brain She.
Speaker 3 (46:48):
Used a couple of long words and he went wow.
Speaker 1 (46:53):
But I reckon that you.
Speaker 4 (46:54):
Can sort of disagree with things and there can be
points of tension in the relationship, but you wouldn't define
that as a fight, like there can be discussions. I
would think that in my own relationship, like we don't
like fighting, don't feel so, and even my I don't
fight with my mum, that doesn't mean that we don't
(47:14):
have moments of probably what would be considered conflict. And
I think that conflict management evolves in in that way.
But the idea that if you're I just think we
use the term red flag too liberally. Now we just
stick it on everything, and it's like, if your biggest
problem is that you get along too well, I think.
Speaker 5 (47:31):
You're so you're not worried for them, You're not losing
any not losing a second.
Speaker 1 (47:37):
I'm selfish of you.
Speaker 2 (47:38):
I know people who love fighting and it's their dynamic
and their relationship. They shout that good and they're shouting
at each other and it gets all the sexual juicies going,
and they love it, and if you're around them, as
someone who hates fighting, you're very uncomfortable. I get very
uncomfortable if people are fighting. I get very uncomfortable with retreats.
Speaker 3 (47:55):
See that doesn't mean they're right and I'm wrong. It's
just different strokes.
Speaker 5 (47:59):
But do you feel like that kind of relationship where
you are even observing the fighting. It's that sort of
prevalent that people in their lives are watching them fight.
That cannot actually be good for the relationship.
Speaker 1 (48:10):
So then to be fighting that much.
Speaker 2 (48:12):
No, But I think people would say we're getting things
out in the open. We'd say, what we mean, we
clear the air. You know how, there are some people
who cry easily, and if you're not a cryer, you
see them crying, you're like, oh my god. Yeah, you
take it really seriously. And then you get to know
them and you realize that it's not a big deal
that they're crying. I think for some people, shouting and
arguing is like that too, So you're thinking, oh, these
(48:34):
guys are going to get divorced. They're fighting, and for
them it's just Tuesday. You know, It's like I think
different dynamics. But I think if you, as to your point, Jesse,
if various things in your life made you feel like
fighting is unsafe, that someone might leave at any time,
like you're not going to be fighting.
Speaker 4 (48:48):
I read this theory. It's called the Little Fox's theory
of couple fights, and it's a bit some quote from
the Bible, the Fox's reference, But basically what it means
is that most couples, when you get down to it,
if you said, Amelia, explained to me your last fight
with your partner, it would be over nothing like I
wouldn't understand.
Speaker 5 (49:06):
Oh, the opposite of that idea that you're actually fighting
about affection respect.
Speaker 4 (49:11):
Which you know what you probably are. That's the underlying thing.
But in terms of what you're of speaking to a
friend recently who had a fight with his partner, it's
like a misinterpretation of a thing. And then someone snapped.
The biggest fight Luker and I've ever had was when
Luna was really little. It was late at night and
I said you're up. I meant you're up, as in
(49:32):
you're awake, could you take the baby? And he heard
it as you're up, like look at you. Finally around
to look after the baby, and it was this complete
miscommunication of time that was about absolutely nothing. But underlying
it was just two people that were really tired or
whatever it is. And I think that often those little
(49:53):
fights are about nothing at all.
Speaker 2 (49:55):
There is another option we haven't considered that maybe George
Clooney Travis Kelcey are perfect people who always put the
lid back on the toothpaste, who never give their partners
any reason and to be angry with them in any way.
Speaker 3 (50:09):
Is this a possibility?
Speaker 4 (50:10):
Yeah, and seem pretty agreeable and they married perfect people.
Speaker 3 (50:15):
That's it.
Speaker 4 (50:16):
Maybe that's the life hack that we all forgot.
Speaker 2 (50:18):
I wonder if Brent says this about me, because Clooney
said neither of us are going to win. I've met
this incredible woman. She's beautiful and smart, and she stands
for all the most important things I believe in the world.
Speaker 3 (50:28):
And I can't believe how lucky I am. So what
am I going to fight about?
Speaker 4 (50:32):
I reckon Breds, you stand for Hollywayen Right, is George cleaning?
Speaker 3 (50:36):
I'm here for George. Well, this has been fun.
Speaker 2 (50:39):
Friends out louders, thank you for having us in your
ears on this Monday don't forget, of course, that you
can watch us on YouTube.
Speaker 3 (50:46):
We'll talk to you tomorrow.
Speaker 4 (50:48):
Bye. Mum and mayor acknowledges the traditional owners of the
land on which we have recorded this podcast.
You're listening to a MoMA Mia podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Hello and welcome to Mom and Mia out Loud. It's
what women are actually talking about on Monday, the eighth
of December.
Speaker 3 (00:22):
I'm Holly wayIn Wright, I'm Amelia Laster and.
Speaker 4 (00:25):
I'm Jesse Stephens.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
And here's what's on our agenda for today. Why Australian
women are still obsessed with Oprah Winfrey at least if
my social media feed from the weekend is anything to
be believed.
Speaker 5 (00:38):
Plus, this is the week, this is the week that
the social media band takes effect. Why do I suddenly
have complicated feelings about it?
Speaker 4 (00:46):
And apparently Travis Kelcey confessed to a giant red flag
in his relationship with Taylor Swift And I'm not so convinced.
But first, Jesse Stevens, in case you missed it, it's
the time of the year. Wherefore about eleven seconds, a
dictionary and a design service become surprisingly relevant. They have
their moment in the sun, we all make a fuss
(01:07):
and forget about them for twelve months. The Oxford Dictionary
has declared that their word of the year for twenty
twenty five is rage bait.
Speaker 3 (01:16):
Which is interesting because I thought that was two words.
Speaker 4 (01:18):
Yes, well last year was brain rot.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
It's true also two words.
Speaker 4 (01:22):
There are allegations that this is a classic example of
rage bait, given they've broken their own rules.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
That's so true.
Speaker 4 (01:29):
You can't upset the dictionary people like know your audience.
The dictionary people are really annoyed. But use of the term,
let's call it a term has tripled in the last
twelve months, and the president of Oxford Languages says that
the term brain rot from last year and rage bait
from this year, they sort of reveal how the digital
world are reshaping how we think and more generally, our behavior.
(01:52):
The Internet used to work on curiosity gaps, used to
work on what we call clickbait, right, and now it's
all about baiting people with the strongest emotion that they
can possibly generate, which is rage. Do you think this
was the year of rage bait?
Speaker 5 (02:08):
I don't think the human race is okay. Brain rot
last year, rage bait this year. I do think it
shows that we're getting more sophisticated in our understanding of
what the internet is doing to us.
Speaker 4 (02:19):
Yes, yeah, And I like that it's not meme terms.
Like for a while it was kind of these ridiculous,
not like skibbety toilet like that kind of stuff that
you go.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
Through boat face.
Speaker 4 (02:31):
Yeah, so for five seconds, maybe that's a meme. But
I think that these terms, as you say, describe a
real phenomenon, so I have more respect for them.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
Yeah, I think they speak to our increasing literacy. Right
to your point about us becoming more sophisticated, is that
hopefully by elevating and amplifying the term rage bait, we're
better at spotting it and that would be a good thing.
Speaker 4 (02:50):
Yes, And we saw it like used in advertising this year.
Remember we talked about the Elf ad that awful matt Rice,
who they knew their audience didn't like because he'd made
a really off color domestic violence joke and they threw
him in the ad blew up. The other one was
the American Eagle, and there.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
Was just maybe you could argue the pubic hair, mercant.
Speaker 4 (03:11):
Skin rage bait.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
There are some very good rage bait marketing techniques now.
Speaker 5 (03:15):
But I've noticed in my group chats that the rage
bait cycle has abated a little bit. So for instance,
I used to have one group chat where we would
just send each other links that we knew would get
each other worked up about politics. It was called rage
bit and now that's thread. We've decided that we're not
going to do that anymore. And I think there is
(03:37):
a power in naming it and then recognizing, oh, all
I'm doing is rage baiting.
Speaker 4 (03:41):
I'm being played. And that actually brings us to the
color of the year, right, which is kill me. Pantone,
which is a printing business, they declare every year their color.
Who can remember the color of twenty twenty five?
Speaker 1 (03:54):
No, I'm obsessed with the colors.
Speaker 4 (03:55):
It was brown, it's round, and I reckon, spot on,
I reckon, they nailed it. I saw a lot of
macka moose this year. The color of twenty twenty six
is white, specifically Cloud Dancer, which is described as a
lofty white that serves as a symbol of calming influence
(04:17):
in a society rediscovering the value of quiet reflection. So
what does the color of the year mean. It means
that we're going to be wearing it. It means it's
going to be the brand palette of a lot of
different places. It means celebrities and red carpets. It means
the color of your interiors. We're going to be seeing
it everywhere. I want to know if you are rage
baited that white is technically a shade, not a color.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
I'm raged baited just by the whole idea because A
I can't wear white, so I feel like excluded. I
feel excluded in every way, like I can't wear white
because of my coloring, but I also just can't wear white.
Speaker 5 (04:54):
I can't.
Speaker 4 (04:56):
Yes, Yes, if.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
I was wearing what Amelia was wearing now, I would
have spilt something down it, even if there was nothing
near me. Yesterday, you know, I was influenced by you, Jesse,
And over the weekend I bought one of those stripe
tea yeah, you know, the viral strapergy shirts, and mine
is navy with like a yellow stripe. Was literally wearing
it for five minutes coffee down at all the yellow
stripes covered in coffee.
Speaker 3 (05:18):
That shirt is dead to me.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
Now and I'm a properly grown woman and I still
can't wear white now.
Speaker 5 (05:22):
All this means is that bibbs are back, bibs are
gonna be bibs.
Speaker 4 (05:26):
I love that. Or like a really enriching cultural conversation
about stain removal, like how to get things out of
your clothes. Apparently. I did read an article that said,
on Christmas Day, we're all wearing white.
Speaker 3 (05:40):
I'm not Amelia.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
There's been a lot of controversy over this.
Speaker 5 (05:43):
I love pantone color of the year, obsessed with it,
generally by a pair of slippers in whatever color it
is to set a tone for the year ahead. There
hasn't been this much controversy with the color of the
year since twenty twenty one, when they named two colors.
Do you remember that they named gray and yellow and
everyone said, hang on, it's meant to.
Speaker 1 (05:59):
Be color of the year.
Speaker 5 (06:01):
But people are saying that they're quite tone deaf, or
they're calling them pantone deaf. I'm sorry, I didn't make
up and it did take me in an alarmingly long
time to get that joke, so I'll repeat it again,
pan tone death. Some people are saying that the color
evokes white supremacy at a time when right wing parties
are on the rise around the world. Others are saying
it's a recession indicator because we can't afford color anymore.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
Oh my goodness, No, because wearing white is a rich
person's game. Everybody knows that it means that you can
afford to have your clothes professionally cleaned and your sheets
professionally cleaned. Rich people wear white a lot. Jerry halliwell
only wears white and she's married to one of those richefwondu. Yeah,
can you remind me what the name of it is again?
Speaker 3 (06:42):
Please?
Speaker 1 (06:42):
It is cooler.
Speaker 3 (06:45):
Did not have to refer to notes.
Speaker 4 (06:47):
I believe it is a cool white rather than a
warm white.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
It is one of my favorite things to do is
in Bunnings, is to go and look at the paint
wall and look at all the shades of white and
try and boggle my brain about their minuscule differences.
Speaker 5 (06:58):
And if you've ever shot for a wedding dress, you
do know that there are actually which you haven't hold
is sorry, but there are multiple.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
Get married because you knew that.
Speaker 4 (07:08):
Why it wasn't Mum says, why it's not a color?
She wore gold?
Speaker 3 (07:12):
No very nice? Of course she did go on steep.
Speaker 5 (07:16):
The world is watching Australia this week because on Wednesday,
the social media ban finally comes into effect. Now, if
you're anything like me, I feel like this has been
coming for such a long time, and this Wednesday here, this.
Speaker 3 (07:29):
Wednesday, like Christmas for some of us friends.
Speaker 5 (07:32):
Now the Quikie has your covered on the nuts and
bolts of what is happening, and there are a lot
of nuts and bolts in terms of how this is
going to be implemented. They also have an interview with
the teenagers who are challenging this ban in the High Court.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
You can hear that on the QUICKI tomorrow. But I
wanted to check in on how we're all feeling.
Speaker 5 (07:49):
About it, because I've been on a bit of a
roller coaster of emotions about this ban. At first, I
felt real unbridled joy and pride in the fact that
Australia is really leading the world in this, and other
countries Malaysia, Indonesia, France, Denmark, they're all considering doing exactly
the same thing. Chris Pratt, he has a movie he's
been talking about how great he thinks the social media
(08:09):
ban is. You know, the world is looking at us
and is cheering us on in large parts of it.
But in the last i'd say the last couple of weeks,
I've started to hear some arguments that have given me
pause about this ban. One of them came from the
Sidney Monty Herald newspaper which.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
Reported today that a full two thirds.
Speaker 5 (08:33):
Of parents are going to find ways to get around
this ban. And I hadn't even considered that there were
ways to get around the band, But of course Holly's
been implying to me that there are many loopholes and
many ways in which parents are just going to say,
I can't fight this fight with my teenager, I can't
pull an addict away from something, and.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
Look, I should say that.
Speaker 5 (08:54):
Albow, in response to this kind of criticism, says, it
was never meant to be perfectly enforced. It was meant
to start conversations, and it was meant to change a
social norm over time. But it does kind of make
me think that it's being undermined little bit by parents. Holly,
what do you think? You know?
Speaker 2 (09:10):
I've been dying to talk about this every episode. I'm like,
can we talk about it yet?
Speaker 3 (09:15):
Like stop it?
Speaker 2 (09:16):
Just full disclosure, because if you are a regular out louder,
you would have heard my voice last week reading some
ads from the federal government about the social media delay
as they calling it, and I agreed to do those
because I am a supporter. Like full disclosure, I think
it's great, but I think it's complicated, and I think
we have to be really mindful in the next few weeks, months,
(09:39):
whatever of where the criticisms about this are coming from, right,
Because one thing you've got to remember, and we're not
getting into the nuts and bots, as you say, But
the pressure in this case is on the tech companies
to stop kids getting on their apps, rather than it's
not supposed to be to stop parents from letting their
kids get on the apps.
Speaker 3 (09:59):
Do you understand that distinction, right?
Speaker 2 (10:01):
So it's not like if you have a fifteen year
old and your fifteen year old is still on snap
Chat next week, you're going to go to prison. That's
not what's going to happen. And Nora are they and
you're not going to get fined, and nor are they.
The idea is to pressure the tech companies to make
it much harder, if not impossible, for kids under sixteen
to get online. Now that's not something the tech companies
(10:22):
are fans of.
Speaker 3 (10:23):
Right. Ninety nine percent of.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
Australian teenagers use some form of social media ninety nine percent,
So that is a lot of customers who are being
served ads all the time. So there are lots of
sort of vested interests without wanting to sound too conspiratorial
about this, who are not mad keen on this working,
And so I think we have to be mindful of that.
But back to the point, Amelia, of whether parents are
(10:46):
going to help their kids get around this man, they
definitely are going to because so my kids are exactly
in the bull's eye for this right thirteen and fifteen,
and me and my friends and most of my friends
I guess who you know I see regularly, their kids
are somewhere in that ballpark two, probably aged between like
nine and sixteen, And say, all the time, what did
(11:08):
we fight about before there were phones? What did parents
and kids.
Speaker 3 (11:11):
Argue about before there were phones?
Speaker 2 (11:13):
Because it is the biggest source of contention in every
house I know, including my own screen time, phone usage, addiction,
social media, all of those things are the things that
we have most conflict about. And so in a way,
you'd think, oh, well, how great, because now you don't
have to row about it because it's just illegal for
them to be on YouTube.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
But that's exactly what I thought.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
But that's not the case, because what it means is
you are now going to be fighting about them getting
off those things. The thing is Although I'm a big
supporter of the ban, I've never been a really big
supporter of the Jonathan Height kind of argument that really
parents just all need to get together and agree. Me
and all my friends are not going to buy our kids'
(11:55):
phones because I think it's a really simplistic idea, given
all the forces that are coming at us, that if
parents were just just grew a pair and told their
kids to get off phones, we wouldn't have a problem.
I think this is a really complicated relationship that teens
have with these platforms. We've just been handed a really
good tool to be able to help us get the
(12:16):
kids off them. But I think that the great benefit
of this ban is actually not going to be fifteen
year olds. It's going to be for the twelve year
olds who are never going to get on these platforms
in the first place, or the nine year old who
are not going to be handed a phone at eleven
and given Snapchat anymore. I think that actually the biggest
benefit is going to come from those kids rather than
(12:37):
for the kids who are already in the eye of
the storm.
Speaker 4 (12:39):
That's an interesting idea because even smoking right, like, if
you look at they were all different there were public
health campaigns, and there was the cost and almost the
social backlash towards people who smoked. And that didn't happen overnight.
It didn't happen with one piece of legislation or one policy.
It happened gradually, and so a lot of the arguments
(13:02):
that I hear against it. I think about alcohol, you
can say, oh, well, can technically go out and buy
alcohol for a seventeen year old. What if the parent
wants to have a glass of wine in their house
with their seventeen year old, What if they're seventeen and eleven,
Like that's been going on forever, and you negotiate it
as a family. But the fact that it is sort
(13:22):
of enshrined in law that that's not something that a
seventeen year old is allowed to do is in the parents' arsenal,
and it's in the teacher's arsenal as well. Like I'm
thinking about all of the teachers who are dealing with
social media conflicts every single day as part of their job,
who can now probably go you shouldn't even be on there.
(13:44):
Even that gives them something, And I think that it
chose the Australian government has a backbone I think it's brave.
I think it's bold. The rest of the world is
following suit, not identically interestingly, so even Denmark. I think
there's a lot of talk about that they're not allowed
on without parental consent. I wonder if that is a
change that will happen or curfew is the other they
(14:07):
talking about.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
The problem with the parental consent model is in theory,
this only really works if it's everybody. So that's always
Jonathan Hight's argument that I referenced before, and if you're
not awhere, he is the guy who wrote The Anxious Generation.
He's an American, what is his psychologist? And he's very
widely credited for It was actually the South Australian premier's
(14:28):
wife who read that book here and started pushing her
husband to do something about this. But that's kind of
the theory that his stuff about the village, like parents
should get together in a village almost and say we're
all not going to do phones is really as I say,
I don't think that works. I think it's a bit
of a middle class fantasy that everybody's just going to
do that. But I think that the thing that's really
(14:49):
good about the social media benefit works is that your
kid is going to say, I'm so isolated from my
friends if you'd kick me off social media. It's like,
but none of your friends are going to be on
social media, so you're not going to be isolated from
your friends, and you'll find somewhere else together on the Internet.
Speaker 4 (15:04):
And here there are some really good arguments, as there
is with any change in legislation. So there was an
article in The Guardian by Ezra Shohl, who is the
son of Natasha Shol, who has spoken about on this
podcast before. She's a brilliant writer. And he is fifteen
and is quadriplegic. He is in a wheelchair. He has
suffered the most horrific health crises over the last few years,
(15:29):
and the thing that has connected him to the outside
world when he has been stuck in a hospital bed
during adolescence has been social media. And I don't doubt
that that's his story. And in fact he made some
really good points. He wrote, if tech companies have the
capability to delete accounts for people under the age of sixteen,
(15:49):
they also have the capability to delete accounts that bully,
harass or cause harm. And he said that he's been bullied.
He gets stuff all the time, and he reports these
accounts and nothing happens. And as anyone with a profile knows,
you can get horrifically abused and nothing. So I think
this also proves the capabilities that tech companies have to
(16:12):
do more than their doing. But I think that ultimately
this is about utilitarianism. I think it's about the greater good.
I think it's got to look at you know, what
this has done to teen brains, and when I look
at like I saw this interview with Miranda Kerr a
few months ago. I think you talked about it on
Parenting out Loud and the Miranda Curs of the world,
(16:35):
who of course are married to the founder of Snapchat.
Do you think their kids have access to social media? No,
they don't because they know that screens are corrosive and
damaging and blah blah blah. So what I've always hated
is the divide between the tech billionaires who are very
strict with their screen time and just allowing everyone else
(16:55):
to kind of fall victim to it.
Speaker 5 (16:56):
And let's be clear, those tech companies right now are
quaking in their very expensive boots and Holly, I couldn't
underscore more what you said before about be conscious of
where you're hearing criticism over the next few weeks and
who is criticizing this legislation. Because these companies they're not
worried about the fines from the Australian government. They've made
(17:18):
the point that look, these companies could be fined fifty
million dollars dollars if they're shown to not be making
sure that the safeguards are in place to stop children
from signing up. Yeah, fifty million dollars is nothing for Mata.
Someone pointed out who used to work at Matter in
a BBC article that that's the equivalent of a parking
ticket for Matter. They make fifty million dollars in about
two hours, so it's not really a problem for them.
(17:39):
That's not why they're worried. They're not worried about the
fifty million dollars. They're worried that the Australian government is
leading the charge in changing a social norm that will
make a child looking at TikTok or YouTube the same
as seeing a child smoking a cigarette. You can see
a child smoking a cigarette's pretty rare these days, but
I'm sure that there are some kids who sneak a cigarette,
(18:01):
but we look at it aghast because we have decided
as a society that that is not okay. And that
is what the social media said exactly.
Speaker 4 (18:09):
And the tech companies aren't worried that the poor teenagers
won't be able to, you know, really galvanize and have
their online communities. They're not worried about that. They're worried
that they're not going to be able to serve them
ads anymore. And that I think is surely we can
hold hands and agree that that's a good thing.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
Absolutely, and I do. The only thing I want to say, though,
is that the articles that are coming out now about
parents aren't going to enforce it, and there will inevitably
be a conversation about like, oh, helicopter parents can't be
strict with their kids.
Speaker 3 (18:40):
That will be.
Speaker 4 (18:41):
That's what will comment. Sec Yeah, I want to.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
Be really clear, because, as I say, I am in
that sort of bull's eye. If your kid is say
sixteen or out of this now, it's hard to hear
everybody around you saying.
Speaker 3 (18:52):
Your kid's brain is damaged, your kid is addicted.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
You've been terrible parents who've just let your kids have
unfettered access to this Our kids are all going to
be pure and great and we're never going to give
them screens, and they won't. You know, it's hard to
hear that and not get your hackles up, because this
is a truth. And I'll put my hand up and
say it's the truth for me too. Technology and phones
and all that come along with them, which we are
(19:16):
broadly as a culture now sort of holding hands and
going not great for kids, have kind of made parenting
a lot easier in a million ways, right Like they
really have for busy working families, for the kind of
parents who which most parents are, who don't have all
the time in the world to be policing what their
kids are doing every minute, you know, who don't have
the time to be ferrying them around to improving activities
and all that stuff.
Speaker 3 (19:37):
There does feel to me to be.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
A little bit of a snobby divide opening about whether
or not, you know, the kids who aren't addicted to
social media are in one class and one who are aren't.
And I think that that's part of all the arguments
we're going to see opening up over the next few weeks.
I think we need to be careful not to demonize
this generation that have grown up with their phones. If
(20:01):
this van is successful and followed around the world, and
you know, as you say, Amelia, the social norm is
successful shifted, and let's all hope it is.
Speaker 3 (20:08):
I genuinely hope that it is. That's great, But.
Speaker 2 (20:12):
We are going to then have in this generational line
of like kind of like in the old days we
grew up before they knew that it was bad for
you to drink when you were pregnant, or not clip
your kids in in the car. I heard you talking
on parenting out loud about seat belts and drawing that comparison,
like we shouldn't demonize that, just like I think we
shouldn't demonize the parents who've got a fifteen year old
(20:32):
right now and they're going if they're on Snapchat for
another month, is that going to be the end.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
Of the world.
Speaker 4 (20:37):
No.
Speaker 5 (20:37):
And part of that is recognizing that the most powerful
people and the richest people the world has ever seen
have thrown everything at the wall to make children dependent
on what their offerings are. And the more that we
can shift that understanding from it's not about what parents
have decided or not decided. It was the most sophisticated
propaganda machine that had ever been thrown at anyone, and
(21:00):
it was thrown at kids. And now the Albanzi government
is trying to stop that tide.
Speaker 4 (21:04):
And Wednesday I think is the first day in what
I think they want to be a cultural, social, worldwide shift.
And I don't think if on Friday all of the
kids aren't off social media, it's a failure.
Speaker 2 (21:18):
Agreed, But thoughts and prayers if you're arguing with your
fourteen right now after the break, why Oprah Wisdom is
still all over your feed in twenty twenty five. My
(21:39):
social media feed, because I'm an adult and I'm allowed
to have one.
Speaker 3 (21:43):
This weekend has been swamped by a.
Speaker 2 (21:47):
Lot of women who've been to see Oprah Winfrey on
her tour around Australia. So if you're not on the
same kind of algorithmic or bent as I am, the
seventy one year old is in Australia right now. She's
doing these big speaking events. She's also doing lots of
social media. So every city she goes to, she's doing
a hike there because she says she hikes every day
now and she is eating local delicacies. And then she's
(22:09):
having these huge, sort of arena sized shows women are going.
The vibe seems to be very much with their mates,
you know, getting dressed up, put your other Camilla or
your imitation Camilla, caf done on. Go and see Oprah
talk and then post her wisdom. The kind of things
I'm seeing being posted are five things I learned at
Oprah last.
Speaker 4 (22:27):
Oh, I'm seeing all of them, and I'm reading all
of them because I would.
Speaker 3 (22:30):
Have loved to go.
Speaker 1 (22:30):
Are people loving it?
Speaker 2 (22:31):
Yeah, so I'm seeing this kind of thing. This is interesting.
You cannot be friends with anyone who is even a
little bit jealous of you. This is one of the
things I saw. This is unfortunate. I've declared in the past, Jesse,
I have had times when I've been jealous of you, exactly.
Jealousy is a crack in the foundation, says Oprah. The
whole house will fall.
Speaker 1 (22:50):
Oh gosh, I'm prone to jealousy.
Speaker 3 (22:53):
You're in trouble.
Speaker 2 (22:54):
Life is whispering to you all of the time. You
only go off track when you're not listening.
Speaker 1 (22:59):
This is interesting.
Speaker 3 (23:01):
I like that.
Speaker 4 (23:02):
I don't fully understand it, but I like the vibe.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
Yeah, this is the kind of stuff that I'm seeing post.
Everyone's saying this is what Oprah taught me last night.
The stereotype of the women who are going but I'm
sure this isn't entirely true, of course, is that there
are a certain age that they're white, that they're into
self optimization. But this is largely an audience that's come
of age with her, right, So Oprah is a guru
to this generation.
Speaker 4 (23:24):
Say I will fight you on that.
Speaker 3 (23:26):
Good I don't.
Speaker 4 (23:26):
I don't think that it is a certain generation. The
people I'm seeing are in their twenties. They are diverse,
and when I looked into it, one of the hallmarks
of her longevity has been the diversity of her audience.
Speaker 2 (23:40):
Yes, I mean, I think that's certainly true, because she's
you know, she has so many stories to tell. But
I think she is seen by her critics as being
like a sort of Tamu guru in a way, when
really I would argue she's the og.
Speaker 4 (23:54):
Yeah, me too.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
Anyway, Amelia always says that you're a bit baffled by
the Oprah phenomena.
Speaker 1 (23:59):
Yeah, like full disclosure.
Speaker 5 (24:01):
I wanted to do this today because I did say
she was in Australia, and I have to admit that
that phenomenon past nearby, and I want to learn. I
want to learn why Australian women in particular evidently still
love Oprah After decades in the public eye, she is
still attracting thousands of people to these shows. They're gathering
a lot from it. I want you to explain her
(24:22):
appeal to me.
Speaker 3 (24:22):
Do you want a little cheat sheet I do on
Oprah Winfrey.
Speaker 2 (24:25):
Now, this could be the longest cheat sheet of all time,
but it's not going to be.
Speaker 3 (24:29):
Because we will be here all day.
Speaker 2 (24:31):
Did you know the place that Oprah was born, which
is in Mississippi in the States, is called Kosiosco.
Speaker 5 (24:37):
Nolasco Bridge in New York City.
Speaker 3 (24:40):
Yes, so famously.
Speaker 2 (24:43):
I guess the Oprah myth and it isn't a myth,
it is her origin story is a large part of
her appeal right very top line. She was born to
teenage parents in Kosiosco, Mississippi, and she had a very
tough upbringing. She was sexually abused as a teenager. She
gave birth to a little boy at fourteen.
Speaker 3 (25:01):
He died.
Speaker 2 (25:03):
Despite this absolutely traumatic upbringing, I guess you'd say she
started working in media when she was seventeen.
Speaker 1 (25:11):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
And then she started working for a TV station locally
to her, and then she was working in Baltimore, and
then she most notably made a move to Chicago, which
is where she built her empire. Right, So, from a
very young age, she was incredibly driven. There are so
many firsts when it comes to Oprah Winfrey.
Speaker 4 (25:31):
Right.
Speaker 3 (25:31):
She was the first.
Speaker 2 (25:33):
Woman in history to own and produce her own talk show.
She's the first Black American woman to be syndicated, the
first Black American woman to be a billionaire, the first
Black American woman to own a TV network. She decided
that news reporting wasn't really her thing because.
Speaker 3 (25:51):
She struggled with the objectivity of it, which is a very.
Speaker 4 (25:55):
Self aware thing to say.
Speaker 2 (25:57):
I love her, Yeah, it's very self aware, but it
also is like one of the foundations for what she
then almost invented in a way, which was this like
own your truth, Yes, own your truth. So rather than
just reporting the news, she wanted to create the culture.
I guess, right, So she wanted to be a journal
and in nineteen eighty four, she relocated to Chicago to
(26:17):
host a low rated morning talk show called Am Chicago.
It was immediately a hit with her hosting it.
Speaker 5 (26:23):
Right.
Speaker 2 (26:24):
They say that because she was authentic and empathetic and engaging.
She quickly took the show from last place to the
top of the ratings within a year, and they soon
renamed the show after her within a year of her
doing it by nineteen eighty eight, so only four years.
That show was such a hit, and she acquired ownership
and production responsibilities for it, making her the first woman
(26:44):
in history to own and produce her own talk show.
Speaker 4 (26:47):
Wo wow, I invented it.
Speaker 3 (26:48):
She invented that shit.
Speaker 2 (26:50):
She founded Hyper Productions, groundbreaking move that secured her creative
control and made her loads of money. It's another big
thing about Oprah. She is very, very rich, as we know.
And then as we know, right, the Oprah Winfrey Show
started off in a kind of it was like, I
don't know what we call it, like shock TV in
those days, Like she'd have oring family members. I remember
very clearly an episode she had the Clueklux Klan.
Speaker 5 (27:10):
On god Is how as a child of the nineties,
I knew Oprah. She had this talk show that had
the scandalous sort of soap operaary elements to it.
Speaker 3 (27:20):
See.
Speaker 4 (27:20):
I think that you can only understand Oprah in relationship
to Jerry Springer like Jerry Springer was the scandalous, ethically dubious,
there was no soul to it. It was maybe the
original rage bait that was happening, and Oprah was almost
(27:42):
the more like morally upright version of that.
Speaker 2 (27:46):
But it's the order of things, So Oprah was first,
uh huh, And Oprah's TV show did have a fair
bit of that, but she didn't like it. By the
end of the eighties, she was over that kind of
stuff and she wanted to move in the nineties, which
she did into more like it's amazing to think that
the infamous Wagon of Fat episode, which is one of
the things that is most often used to criticize her for,
(28:09):
which is the episode where very famously she lost lots
of weight on a diet that she later admitted was
incredibly dangerous and basically starvation, and then she walked onto
her set with her Wagon and Fat.
Speaker 3 (28:20):
Was in nineteen eighty eight, and like, that is a
very long time ago.
Speaker 2 (28:24):
So she was doing that kind of stuff and then
Jerry Springer started doing it, Doctor Phil started doing it,
these other people started doing it, and she was like, oh,
I think I've given birth to a monster. And she
shifted into self help stuff.
Speaker 4 (28:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (28:37):
Do you think that part of the reason why that
wagon of felt was such a milestone in TV history
and for Oprah was because she basically kind of invented
vulnerability on TV because before that, is it true that
it was much more polished and people didn't sort of
open up in that way about their struggles?
Speaker 4 (28:54):
Yeah? I think so. They weren't as candid about it.
And when you go back and you look at all
the times Oprah was asked or mocked or criticized openly
to her face on other talk shows about her weight,
you can complete understand how she got to that point.
And I think that she was trying to use it
as a way to help inspire other women, which ironically
(29:18):
now her being in Australia. If you have a really
good look at that poster of Oprah's touring poster, it's
got a big face of her, and it's got all the
dates you can see presented by and it has a
brand name that I actually didn't recognize, and that brand
is a pharmaceutical company that makes weight loss products, which
is why she's here. They've paid for her to come
out here, which is sort of a lens by which
(29:40):
a lot of Maybe her social media content makes more
sense that she's doing these hikes and that, you know,
lots of commentary as they always has been about her body.
Speaker 5 (29:50):
The one I saw of her in Sydney after she'd
been on a hike and then she went to eat
hotcakes said something to the effect of, I've now earned
myself the ability to have an indulgent meal. Yeah, it
is diet adjacent culture that she is still pushing.
Speaker 4 (30:07):
No one has marinated in diet culture more than Oprah
Whgfrey like she has been the subject of it. She
has been in many ways victim of it. But then
I suppose at the same time she's espoused it because
that's the world in which she grew up.
Speaker 2 (30:24):
I think you've got to remember that, like her peak.
So the peak of Oprah's powers in terms of influence
were the eighties and nineties, right, and diet culture in
inverted commas didn't exist, as in it did absolutely exist,
but we didn't have a name for it.
Speaker 3 (30:39):
We couldn't point at it.
Speaker 1 (30:40):
Air that you breathe.
Speaker 4 (30:41):
Yes, it's just every single woman wanted to lose. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (30:44):
And so if you think that the power that Oprah
harnessed and then, as you say, Jesse, that power kind
of got hijacked by lots of other sort of other
shows and things. Was Middle America ordinary in inverted commas,
people watching television during the day, wrestling with the kind
of things that ordinary people wrestle with, which is family
(31:05):
dynamics and problems, money, weight relationships. She spoke to people
about the shit they really cared about, rather than what
she thought they should care about. That's the secret of
her success in those days. And we can pretend, as
much as we want, retrospectively or otherwise that women didn't
care about losing weight. But women cared, and you could
(31:26):
still argue now care enormously about weight.
Speaker 1 (31:28):
They just do.
Speaker 2 (31:30):
And I think that Oprah, if we think about the
Wagon of Fat being nineteen eighty eight, which is a
very long time ago, over that time, I think that
Oprah's lens on it has shifted as well. She during
that time has lost weight, put on weight, written a
million different words about it, spoken words about it, decided
not to speak about it at all, make a deal
with weight watches, make a deal with medical weight loss company,
(31:51):
don't do that. Over that time, she has ridden all
kinds of waves with that and she's been blamed in
a way for being a paragon of diet culture, when
I think that actually she just kind of reflected.
Speaker 3 (32:04):
She gave to us shar and she reflects it to us.
Speaker 2 (32:07):
And so where she is now here having been brought
here by a medical weight loss company, which whatever feelings
you have about that, and there are many to have,
I think she reflects where weight loss culture is in
this moment, which is the GLP one revolution. You can
go hiking and eat hotcakes and take like obesity is
a disease. That's what she's talking about a lot. So
(32:28):
I think it's hard to uncouple Oprah from that, But
she's actually a lot more than.
Speaker 5 (32:33):
That, right, And what I'm hearing from the way that
you describe her extraordinary rise is that she made people
who didn't feel very seen feel seen and understood as well,
not just seen, but understood at a time when their
concerns were seen as quotidian or not important, or superficial
or silly. And so, what do you think accounts for
(32:55):
both the longevity of that career, because now everyone discloses everything.
So back in the eighties and the early nineties, when
she's doing the wagon of fat that's unusual and revolutionary.
Now we all know much about each other, as the
internet meme goes, So what do you think it counts
for that continued fascination with Oprah when everyone's disclosing everything.
And also for Australian women, she strikes me so quintessentially
(33:19):
American in her rise and in the adversity that she's
had to overcome. What is it about Oprah these days
for Australian women that still clearly resonates.
Speaker 4 (33:28):
I think she doesn't talk about structural inequality. She doesn't
talk about the structures. She doesn't talk about things like
corporate power, or the gender divide, or environmental degradation or
all the scary big things. She talks about you and
your purpose, the.
Speaker 1 (33:47):
Scary small things.
Speaker 4 (33:48):
Yeah, yeah, exactly right. That actually she talks so eloquently
about grief and about friendship and about your goals and
your purpose. Which does it applies to the poor person
in Middle America? It applies to the rich celebrity in
Hollywood equally, And so I think whether or not that's
(34:09):
a good thing, and whether or not it's at all
true or you can uncouple capitalist structures from how people's
lives turn out whatever. But the reason that she can
fill a room is because there's something like fundamentally empowering
about that. And I've always had a relationship to Oprah.
That's like your great auntie who always buys you a
(34:30):
really good present and has great advice and gives you
the right book at the right moment. Like that's as simple,
and who doesn't want that? And everyone wants that. And
she's even seen as having been responsible for the reinvigoration
of reading in the US, like what she did with
her book club and her magazine.
Speaker 5 (34:48):
Now is she now? Reese and all these other people
have come in her footsteps, Quen, all these people wouldn't
exist with.
Speaker 1 (34:54):
The business empires they do were it not for Oprah.
Speaker 3 (34:57):
Yeah, I think it's so true, Jesse.
Speaker 2 (34:59):
I think that her appeal is because her story, her
origin story, and then all the things she's been through
in the past four decades. People are very seduced by
stories of transformation. That's true, whether they are, you know,
privileged and wealthy but always wanting to be better, you know,
like this self optimization culture which you could are You
(35:19):
could string together quite a goog argument that Oprah has
mainstreamed because therapy speaks self optimization, a certain amount of
wu woo. She's the points of criticism that you can
put on her.
Speaker 5 (35:29):
Now.
Speaker 2 (35:29):
For example, she was a massive support of The Secret.
The first time I ever saw The Secret, it was
on Oprah. You know, those kind of things. But she
mainstreamed all that stuff, and she is in herself. She
embodies a story of transformation and she continues to and
I think that's really seductive to everybody. The big points
of criticism for Oprah are the weight stuff which we
(35:51):
just talked about, toxic diet culture, the fact that she
is a multi billionaire who apparently her property portfolio is
worth like five billion dollars.
Speaker 3 (36:00):
Now.
Speaker 2 (36:00):
She is also a massive flat flut. I always fail
with this wordlaist.
Speaker 4 (36:05):
She did land in Australia on her private jet, she did.
Speaker 3 (36:07):
I mean she goes too.
Speaker 1 (36:09):
That's a long fly.
Speaker 5 (36:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (36:11):
She gives hundreds of millions to charities that she supports,
and she has an academy in South Africa and all
those things. But still you cannot be beyond approach when
you've got that level of personal wealth.
Speaker 3 (36:20):
She owns large swedes.
Speaker 5 (36:22):
That it's the women billionaires who often get this criticism
that in itself being a billionaire is not okay.
Speaker 2 (36:28):
Well, that's true, although I do have a few problems
with some of the male billionaires too. She has had
lots of criticism for the people she's chosen to platform
over time. You know, we're talking about before racist like
the KKK. She got a lot of trouble on her
book club for James Fray, remember the guy with a
Million Little Pieces. We talked the other week about Jenny McCarthy,
the anti vaxxa, various kind of questionable health growers.
Speaker 3 (36:50):
But then if you're on Telly for forty.
Speaker 2 (36:53):
Years, making content in all kinds of different climates, you
are going to get it wrong sometimes. So she gets
a lot of criticism for all those things.
Speaker 5 (37:00):
And like you said, because she's done so many firsts,
there's something by definition pushing the boundaries about what she does.
Speaker 1 (37:06):
It's inevitable.
Speaker 2 (37:07):
And also what's interesting about opes, as I like to
call it because we're such good friends, is one of
her pieces of magic, which I think some very famous
successful people have, is that even though they are so
unrelatable in every way, she sort of feels relatable too.
And one of the things that's interesting about Oprah in
terms of being one of the most iconic women of
a generation, is that her private life is quite unconventional
(37:30):
really so she's never married.
Speaker 3 (37:31):
She's been with the.
Speaker 2 (37:32):
Same and as Stedman. We could all recite this. They
have been together for forty years. They once got engaged
but quickly called it off, but never broke up.
Speaker 1 (37:39):
Okaya, why they're just.
Speaker 2 (37:42):
Not into it at that time in her life she
was always I prioritize work. You know, her life has
been work. She never had children after that tragic death
of that little boy when she was a teenager. Her
famous best friend Gail King, who is famous now too,
goes everywhere with it. In fact, my favorite Oprah detail
is that in all of her homes, which is the.
Speaker 3 (38:02):
Kind of thing you can only say about billionaires, Gail.
Speaker 2 (38:04):
Has her own room, like with her own deck or
I'm always like, if I was a moult.
Speaker 3 (38:08):
That's what I'd do.
Speaker 2 (38:10):
Gayla is the lover of her Gayle is the lover
of her life. You know, none of that is particularly
relatable business, but everybody's like, yeah, Oprah my position on her,
I would have liked to go and see her, even
though I do have some issues with the blatant product.
Speaker 3 (38:23):
Placement of the aforementioned.
Speaker 2 (38:26):
Medical weight loss company in that I don't necessarily like
her or not like her, but she's just there's no
question she's one of the most iconic figures.
Speaker 3 (38:33):
I think it would have.
Speaker 4 (38:33):
Been a lovely night. I would have really enjoyed it.
After the break, Travis Kelcey just shared an insight into
his relationship with Taylor Swift and apparently it's a big
red flag one unlimited out loud access. We drop episodes
every Tuesday and Thursday exclusively for Mum and MEA subscribers.
Follow the link in the show notes to get us
(38:55):
in your ears five days a week, and a huge
thank you to all our current subscribers. If you're not
up to date with New Heights Travis Kelsey's podcast aka
(39:15):
Taylor Swift's fiance and a famous NFL player, I want
to tell you about an episode recently.
Speaker 1 (39:21):
Do we all regularly podcast?
Speaker 4 (39:24):
Yeah? Yeah, it's a weekly listen. I've never listened to
one minute of this podcast.
Speaker 2 (39:28):
Oh, I listened to the inter Taylor Holy Smokey's that
was great. That was two hours of my life.
Speaker 4 (39:32):
Did you ever listen to another one?
Speaker 5 (39:34):
No?
Speaker 3 (39:34):
But I know.
Speaker 2 (39:36):
But the reason I know what you're going to say
in a minute is because I did see these social
media clips where he was interviewing one George Clooney, who
you know up there with Oprah for me.
Speaker 4 (39:45):
Yeah, okay, So he had George Clooney on and they
got onto the topic of relationships. Travis asked his friend
George about something he'd said about a year or so ago,
which actually came up on our podcast as well, which
is that George Clooney said that him and Amle have not,
in their ten years together, had a fight.
Speaker 3 (40:09):
Fun fact for you.
Speaker 4 (40:09):
They've got twins, they do, and they seem to be thriving.
Speaker 3 (40:14):
Well, you just have to be like George in a mile.
Speaker 4 (40:16):
Oh my gosh. Okay, that's really inspired.
Speaker 3 (40:19):
I asked them to send you some positivity.
Speaker 4 (40:20):
Made exactly right. They seem to like their twins. Okay,
this is great. Then George replied, I'm not lying, Travis.
Shall we ask you the same question? And Travis confessed
that while him and Taylor only been together for two
and a half years, they have never gotten into an argument.
Speaker 3 (40:37):
Not once.
Speaker 4 (40:39):
And then came the commentary. So there was a viral
tweet that was sharing that headline and it said this
is a bad sign. And Nowther said when couples say
this shit, all I can think is you're either a
psychopath or you view your partner the same way you
do a pet a pet. And an article on Mama
Mia called their lack of fighting a red flag, Amelia,
(41:02):
is it a red flag?
Speaker 5 (41:04):
It's interesting that we kind of go back and fourth
as a society about what we think the gold standard is,
because in my life already, I feel like I've looked
through a couple of incoundations of this. There was a
time where the gold standard was no fighting, and then
it very much moved. I think we all got parrel pilled.
That's my phrase for the therapization of our culture by
(41:26):
Esther Perel and Esther Pearrel's basic idea is that you
can talk through anything, including an affair. She's basically like,
you know, setting aside abuse, obviously, you can work through
just about any relationship issue if you just.
Speaker 4 (41:39):
Hash it out, have a little chat, go for it.
Speaker 5 (41:41):
There's a Psychology Today headline that kind of summarizes where
we were as a culture around this issue for a
long time, which was if you never fight, someone is hiding.
So the idea is that if you're not fighting, it's
because you're repressing something, and that's a very unhealthy, even
toxic dynamic.
Speaker 3 (41:57):
Is it that? Well?
Speaker 5 (41:58):
But now it feels like we've now swung back, and
now we've got these two probably the two most kind
of iconic couples in the world right now, George and Lamar,
Taylor and Travis proudly declaring that they don't fight. I
think we've seen the pendulum swing back again.
Speaker 4 (42:15):
Okay, unpopular opinion, all the money in the world, clean house,
not fighting over directions.
Speaker 1 (42:21):
But they do have twins, as Holy says.
Speaker 4 (42:23):
I know, but I think they would have some support
around them.
Speaker 5 (42:28):
I think Taylor Travis actually have kind of a complicated
schedule to deal with.
Speaker 1 (42:32):
He is a professional football player. She just did the
most successful tour of all time.
Speaker 4 (42:37):
Can you imagine the g Cow for the the g
Cow would be intense. But I will also say, Google calendar, Oh.
Speaker 3 (42:44):
God, we've still got a calendar in the kitchen on
the wall.
Speaker 4 (42:51):
Taylor Taylor.
Speaker 1 (42:56):
The blue is Travis's.
Speaker 4 (43:00):
But you look at all those things and you also
go two and a half years, you don't have kids.
Do they have a shared mortgage. Yet I don't think
they'll have a mortgage, will they, Amelia? Maybe mortgage?
Speaker 3 (43:11):
Imagine Taylor Travis.
Speaker 4 (43:12):
At the back in there fight for alone. I don't
think that they're going to be there. So are there
less things to fight about when you're Travis.
Speaker 2 (43:21):
And oh yeah, I think that Clooney said, what would
we fight about?
Speaker 3 (43:25):
Question back? That must be one of the most privileged
statement questions we fight about.
Speaker 4 (43:33):
Can you w the bench? I'll just get out cleaner.
Who's right here to do it?
Speaker 3 (43:37):
Great?
Speaker 5 (43:37):
George could be like, I hate human rights exactly.
Speaker 3 (43:42):
Oh my god, Ama, you're too beautiful. Stop it.
Speaker 2 (43:45):
I hate fighting, hate fighting, which is why my preferred
method is the much more insidious, toxic, passive aggressive fighting.
Speaker 3 (43:56):
So instead of saying that you haven't cleaned the.
Speaker 2 (43:58):
Bench, you say something like, interesting, how you chose to
just leave that little thing that like, you know, or whatever.
Speaker 4 (44:06):
It is, which is a discussion.
Speaker 3 (44:07):
It's a discussion, exactly.
Speaker 2 (44:10):
Interesting, How you still don't know where this goes in
the cobo.
Speaker 4 (44:14):
That's an observation, exactly, that's not a fire.
Speaker 3 (44:17):
Interesting.
Speaker 2 (44:18):
How you didn't put the lid back on the toothpaste. Yes,
that's just an invitation to explore your different techniques exactly
paste management. I think pass agnes is good.
Speaker 5 (44:29):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (44:30):
I think it's interesting.
Speaker 2 (44:31):
Tara from Amamea wrote, as you said that this was
a red flag and that she was worried about it
because she said, a huge part of any relationship is
conflict resolution and learning each other's fight styles. But what
if your two people who hate fighting? Are you supposed
to force yourself to fight? Because it's important to know,
maybe your fight style is to your point before Amelia hiding,
(44:53):
my fight style might be retreat, not attack.
Speaker 1 (44:57):
You know what I don't think Esther Perel is a
huge fan of retreat. What's passive aggression with retreat? Well,
she has this interesting question.
Speaker 5 (45:06):
She says, what most people don't realize is that you're
not actually fighting about money or commitment or who does
the housework. What you're actually fighting about is a lack.
Speaker 1 (45:13):
Of affection, respect, power.
Speaker 5 (45:15):
Or some combination of the three, just the two lit
Another way of thinking about this is that there's this
sort of like adage that every couple has the same
three fights and it just manifests in different ways. I
very much agree with that, and I guess those same
three fights are affection, respect, and power, And now even
Taylor and Travis and George and a mile are having
to navigate relationship dynamics where those things are flowing back
(45:37):
and forth.
Speaker 4 (45:38):
This is about our definition of fight, yeah, and it's
about our definition of argument. I reckon that if you
are the child of parents who fought really openly, you
felt like you had to walk on eggshells. Sometimes I
think it's just temperament. You don't like to escalate, then
you might resist going to that. And I don't think
(45:59):
any way is necessarily better or worse.
Speaker 1 (46:02):
Because don't you have a degree in psychology.
Speaker 2 (46:06):
Us has a degree in psychology, And because you're identical twins.
If she's got a degree in psychology, do you psychology?
Speaker 1 (46:14):
I thought it was a psychologist.
Speaker 4 (46:15):
I have a master's in history.
Speaker 1 (46:17):
Gender study, gender studies. There you go.
Speaker 4 (46:19):
Both of them didn't give me a lot of clarity
on fighting, but I will say it did make me
good at arguing. And therefore, if you're I remember thinking
this at the time, George Cloone is just a clever
man not to fight with a human rights law. Yes,
that's what you just need to know.
Speaker 5 (46:35):
You so true and son, who's the better fighter between
Taylor and Travis.
Speaker 3 (46:40):
Taylor by about a thousand.
Speaker 4 (46:42):
He's a poet.
Speaker 3 (46:44):
Do remember that interview where.
Speaker 1 (46:45):
He probably had some kind of brain She.
Speaker 3 (46:48):
Used a couple of long words and he went wow.
Speaker 1 (46:53):
But I reckon that you.
Speaker 4 (46:54):
Can sort of disagree with things and there can be
points of tension in the relationship, but you wouldn't define
that as a fight, like there can be discussions. I
would think that in my own relationship, like we don't
like fighting, don't feel so, and even my I don't
fight with my mum, that doesn't mean that we don't
(47:14):
have moments of probably what would be considered conflict. And
I think that conflict management evolves in in that way.
But the idea that if you're I just think we
use the term red flag too liberally. Now we just
stick it on everything, and it's like, if your biggest
problem is that you get along too well, I think.
Speaker 5 (47:31):
You're so you're not worried for them, You're not losing
any not losing a second.
Speaker 1 (47:37):
I'm selfish of you.
Speaker 2 (47:38):
I know people who love fighting and it's their dynamic
and their relationship. They shout that good and they're shouting
at each other and it gets all the sexual juicies going,
and they love it, and if you're around them, as
someone who hates fighting, you're very uncomfortable. I get very
uncomfortable if people are fighting. I get very uncomfortable with retreats.
Speaker 3 (47:55):
See that doesn't mean they're right and I'm wrong. It's
just different strokes.
Speaker 5 (47:59):
But do you feel like that kind of relationship where
you are even observing the fighting. It's that sort of
prevalent that people in their lives are watching them fight.
That cannot actually be good for the relationship.
Speaker 1 (48:10):
So then to be fighting that much.
Speaker 2 (48:12):
No, But I think people would say we're getting things
out in the open. We'd say, what we mean, we
clear the air. You know how, there are some people
who cry easily, and if you're not a cryer, you
see them crying, you're like, oh my god. Yeah, you
take it really seriously. And then you get to know
them and you realize that it's not a big deal
that they're crying. I think for some people, shouting and
arguing is like that too, So you're thinking, oh, these
(48:34):
guys are going to get divorced. They're fighting, and for
them it's just Tuesday. You know, It's like I think
different dynamics. But I think if you, as to your point, Jesse,
if various things in your life made you feel like
fighting is unsafe, that someone might leave at any time,
like you're not going to be fighting.
Speaker 4 (48:48):
I read this theory. It's called the Little Fox's theory
of couple fights, and it's a bit some quote from
the Bible, the Fox's reference, But basically what it means
is that most couples, when you get down to it,
if you said, Amelia, explained to me your last fight
with your partner, it would be over nothing like I
wouldn't understand.
Speaker 5 (49:06):
Oh, the opposite of that idea that you're actually fighting
about affection respect.
Speaker 4 (49:11):
Which you know what you probably are. That's the underlying thing.
But in terms of what you're of speaking to a
friend recently who had a fight with his partner, it's
like a misinterpretation of a thing. And then someone snapped.
The biggest fight Luker and I've ever had was when
Luna was really little. It was late at night and
I said you're up. I meant you're up, as in
(49:32):
you're awake, could you take the baby? And he heard
it as you're up, like look at you. Finally around
to look after the baby, and it was this complete
miscommunication of time that was about absolutely nothing. But underlying
it was just two people that were really tired or
whatever it is. And I think that often those little
(49:53):
fights are about nothing at all.
Speaker 2 (49:55):
There is another option we haven't considered that maybe George
Clooney Travis Kelcey are perfect people who always put the
lid back on the toothpaste, who never give their partners
any reason and to be angry with them in any way.
Speaker 3 (50:09):
Is this a possibility?
Speaker 4 (50:10):
Yeah, and seem pretty agreeable and they married perfect people.
Speaker 3 (50:15):
That's it.
Speaker 4 (50:16):
Maybe that's the life hack that we all forgot.
Speaker 2 (50:18):
I wonder if Brent says this about me, because Clooney
said neither of us are going to win. I've met
this incredible woman. She's beautiful and smart, and she stands
for all the most important things I believe in the world.
Speaker 3 (50:28):
And I can't believe how lucky I am. So what
am I going to fight about?
Speaker 4 (50:32):
I reckon Breds, you stand for Hollywayen Right, is George cleaning?
Speaker 3 (50:36):
I'm here for George. Well, this has been fun.
Speaker 2 (50:39):
Friends out louders, thank you for having us in your
ears on this Monday don't forget, of course, that you
can watch us on YouTube.
Speaker 3 (50:46):
We'll talk to you tomorrow.
Speaker 4 (50:48):
Bye. Mum and mayor acknowledges the traditional owners of the
land on which we have recorded this podcast.
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