November 17, 2025 • 42 mins
Does having an affair make you a bad employee? Asking for a friend. Meet the CEO who fired two employees when she found out they were cheating on their spouses. She says if you can't be trusted at home, you can't be trusted at work. Is she right?
Plus, everyone's talking about the Epstein/Trump emails again and we want Amelia to answer the question: What's all this about Bill Clinton, or maybe a horse?
And, it's only a matter of time before one of your friends starts gushing to you about their new love interest and you find out... they're not human. Please step into the world of AI 'companions', where Clare Stephens is worried that we'll lose sight of our humanity and Holly's wondering if they could take a load off.
Also, what time do you have dinner? And, what Justin Trudeau's ex has to say (and sing) about his new relationship with Katy Perry.
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CREDITS:
Hosts: Amelia Lester, Clare Stephens & Holly Wainwright
Group Executive Producer: Ruth Devine
Executive Producer: Sasha Tannock
Audio Producer: Leah Porges
Video Producer: Josh Green
Junior Content Producer: Tessa Kotowicz
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- Listen: Letters To Juliet & 'The One' Question Everyone Is Asking
- Listen: The 'Australia Effect' & Meghan and Harry's Curious Party Edit
- Listen: A Very Bad Decision & An Imploding Friendship Group
- Listen: Kim Kardashian's Zero-Star Strategy
- Listen: The Great Influencer Exodus & The Sex We Never Talk About
- Listen: Every Single Thing We Have In Our Handbags
- Connect your subscription to Apple Podcasts
Discover more Mamamia Podcasts here including the very latest episode of Parenting Out Loud, the parenting podcast for people who don't listen to... parenting podcasts.
Watch Mamamia Out Loud:
Outlouders, we're casting for Season 2 of Mamamia's This Is Why We Fight podcast and we'd love to hear your stories. Apply here.
What to read:
- "Chatfishing" is the new texting hack getting people more dates. There's just one problem.
- It was the 'affair' that broke the internet. Nobody saw Astronomer's next move coming.
- Katy Perry and Justin Trudeau just hard-launched their relationship.
- Document linking famous associates of sex offender Jeffery Epstein revealed.
- The death of t
Mark as Played
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 MoMA Mia out Loud. It's what
women are actually talking about on Monday, the seventeenth of November.
My name is Hollywayne Night.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
My name is Amelia Laster.
Speaker 3 (00:26):
My name is Claire Stein, not Jesse Steve.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
So Claire Stephens is filling in for Jesse a couple
of times this week, and regular out louders will know
that Claire has been on the show many times. She
filled in for one Jesse Stevens on her Matt leave
last time. What's been going on since the out Louder's
hung out with you last Claire, just a few little things.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
I've been listening to a lot of out Loud.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
I'll have feedback.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
Yeah, I listened to every episode, so I feel like
I've been in the studio with you guys. I'm overly
familiar with Amelia, Like I'm like my friend Amelia, and
Amelia is like hi, like twice as beautiful winged eyeliner
thank you.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
Which is a top reminder everybody to go on watch
just on YouTube. Yeah, if you want to see the
amazing wings and see if you can tell the difference
between Jesse and Claire, which of course you can if
you know them.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
Well, yes, but I've just been freelancing, working for myself.
Sometimes I pretend I'm a CEO of my own business,
but my business is me and my staff are terrible
and it's hard to keep them in line.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
I I got lots of people who are calling themselves
founders and just doing that.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
It's like I'm the CEO of my personal Instagram account
and my personal substat and yeah, it's probably time for
performance reviews.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
Claire, do you do anything to get in the Jesse
mode before you come on in Jesse's chair? Any Jesse
related rituals so you go through.
Speaker 3 (01:52):
I did chat to her last night and I was like,
what are you What are you thinking about at the moment?
You've seen anything interesting over the weekend. I know what
you're trying to do. You're trying to get me to
pitch for your episode about Loud and I'm like that
would be correct.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
Well, welcome, it's very good to have you here.
Speaker 3 (02:07):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
Here's what's made our agenda for today. I have a
theory backed up by an article I'm going to tell
you about later, that it's only a matter of time
before at brunch or lunch or whatever, we're sitting across
from a friend. They're going to be opening up about
their new partner and how much they love them. And
we're going to find out it's not a person at all.
We're going to discuss ai companions.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
So we all have to learn to put on a
face it is supporting the poker face like that's so great.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
Maybe we will. I mean, anyway, we're going to get
into that.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
Plus is having and a fair a fiable offense, at
least one CEO thinks so. And I'm going to puff
a fish about it.
Speaker 3 (02:46):
And a whole lot of Epstein emails have been released,
and I have questions specifically familiar Lester.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
But first, as if we could kick off today without
talking about our favorite couple, Justin Trudeau and Katie Perry,
or rather we're talking adjacent to them, right, So Justin Trudeau,
who you all know, is this worthy former president, president,
prime minister, a Prime minister of Canada. Meili's looking at
me like God, this is going well. He was married
(03:16):
to Sophie greg Wa for eighteen years and they broke
up a little while ago, and as we know, he's
now dating Katie Perry. She was on a podcast this
week they marvelously named Arlene Is Alone The Single Life
that struck me as such.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
A Canadian name. I don't know why, but Arlene.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
It's hosted by a woman called Arlene Dickinson. She's a
Canadian businesswoman there and you know, personality and this show
is all about post divorce life and so big booking.
Great booking got Sophie Trudeau on and Arlene warmed up
to it for twenty minutes and then she couldn't help
it and she said, Hey, the room. Your ex husband
(03:57):
appears to be dating a popstar and he's not being
very private about it. How are you handling it's.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
Not a pop star and astronaut?
Speaker 2 (04:04):
Sorry, shit, today it's Monday for hear me. Your ex
husband is dating astronaut Katie Perry. How are we failing
about it? And this is what Sophie Trudeau said.
Speaker 4 (04:17):
Sophie, if you don't want to talk about it, that's cool.
But I do think about you. I think about the
public the publicity and the publicness of what Justin is
doing for example right now, right like you know, like
that's public and that's God. I don't know how you
stay cool, Like, I just don't know how you stay cool,
and I really admire it because I would probably not
(04:39):
be that way, you know, you.
Speaker 5 (04:41):
Know, or human beings and stuff affects us normal. How
you react to stuff is your decision. So I choose
to try.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
To listen to the music instead of the noise.
Speaker 5 (04:57):
I'm very aware that a lot of public stuff out
there can be triggers.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
We're humans.
Speaker 5 (05:03):
What I do with it is my.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
Decision, listening to the music and not the noise. I
think she's a zen master.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
What do we think, Well, as long as it's not
teenage dream, we're not listening to that music in the
Greg wa Trudeau household right now. Look, I just think
Sophie's a very zen person. That's true. She is a
certified yoga instructor. And I don't know if you remember this,
but a few years ago she was at an event
in Canada in her capacity as First Lady of Canada. Well,
(05:32):
what happened was she just decided that she was going
to sing a song that she created.
Speaker 5 (05:36):
And it's called Smile Back at Me, and it goes
like this, Some people did the angels can fly, and
some people fight.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
Without knowing.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
Some people say she can't sing some people, but I
guess he's got a type. He loves a SHANTUZI does
old Justin.
Speaker 3 (06:05):
Later in that original clip, Sophie says, Arlin is alone. Ah, yes, yes,
Arlene's podcast. Sophie, she's being her very zen self about
how you react to your decision, and she says, you.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
Know, do I laugh? Do I cry?
Speaker 3 (06:20):
Do I have all these emotions? And I liked the
word laugh because I was like, that is just we
needed a sprinkle of pettiness, because this was too evolved
for me, like, we come on, come on, your ex
husband is dating Katy Perry. I need to know that
there is some kind of lolls. And the laugh for
me said, I do laugh about it.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
I just send Megan in the group chat because of
her best friend relationship with Megan. I bet they're sending
some memes about Katie that are not very nice. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
This whole leans into my scoreless gossip side is Harry
and Megan live really close to where Orlando and Katie
used to live. Their neighbors needs to tip each other
off about the paparazzi. So you are right, Megan and
Sophie are like having a laugh about Katie, but then
when she bumps into her a Walmart with the very
fancy people shop not there, she also goes, Gosh, you're
(07:12):
a much better singer than Sophie Trudeau.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
All I've seen this weekend are headlines about the newly
released emails from the Epstein files and what they say
about President Donald Trump. So I've just seen all this
stuff about how the Democrats released a batch of emails
and then the Republicans were like, no, that gave a
(07:39):
biased idea of Trump. So we're gonna release twenty thousand
pages of files, and I'm trying to weed through them
and see if there's any smoking gun here. There's been
memes about how Trump gave Bill Clinton a blow job.
There's been damning headlines about Trump knowing about the girls,
(07:59):
stuff about how Trump was like the worst person Epstein
had ever known. I don't know if coming from a
convicted sex offender, like that's a good thing or a
bad thing. Yeah, and I've seen tiktoks about the appalling
boomer grammar in the emails, which seems like a side note, Amelia,
I need to know about the Bill Clinton blowjob. I'm
so confused because I don't speak like Epstein nickname shortcut.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
This is weird. There's a lot of weird stuff in here.
There isn't any smoking gun saying that Trump was complicit
in Epstein's crimes, but there is a lot of weird
stuff to talk about, and this Bill Clinton is one
of the strangest. So there's an email that Jeffrey's brother
Mark sent him in March twenty eighteen where it's very
brotherly of him. Actually, he checks in on his health.
(08:45):
He says, a while back you mentioned you're pre diabetic.
Has anything changed with that? Which is quite nice brother
to brother. But then the exchange continues in a bit
of an odd way. Jeff reassures him that he's got
his pre diabetes under control. But then Mark asks if
Putin has the photos of Trump blowing Buba. So Baba
is a nickname for Bill Clinton. Putin is the Russian
(09:06):
president and not a very nice man. We don't really
know what this means.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
Here's what I don't understand, Amelia. None of this is new, really,
like the emails being dripped, aren't you. But we've just
seen this whole scandal bringing down a member of the
royal family. It's been bubbling away for years and years
and years. The FBI have been were across Epstein for
nearly two decades now. If you read extracts from Virginia
(09:31):
Guphrase posthumous book, it's clear that anyone in that circle
knew about the girls because they were all going to
these parties in there, and she talks in there about
famous academics and professors in this and that there's a
lot of people involved in this scenario. Why is it
so sort of tortuously slowly dropping out and will we
(09:52):
find out? Won't we find out? People just going release
the files every five and it's like, why is it
all taking so long?
Speaker 1 (09:58):
It's a really good question, Holly, and I have a
little bit of a hunch about this, which is here
are the things that I know are true. Trump and
Epstein were very close friends for fifteen years. Trump grossed
Epstein out, Like there's a lot of references to how
gross and deranged Trump is in Epstein's emails.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
Epstein himself, let's be very clear, very gross humor.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
Convicted sex offender. Yes, But here's the big butt. I'm
not sure that Trump was complicit in Epstein's crimes because
there's a lot of emails here, and like I say,
there isn't a single email that tells us that Trump
actually committed crimes alongside Epstein. I'll tell you what it says.
Probably the worst email of the lot was back in
(10:43):
twenty eleven. This was after Epstein had just completed an
eighteen month sentence for soliciting prostitution from a minor. So
he is now a convicted sex offender. And he is
emailing with Julee Maxwell, his accomplice and his partner in crime,
and he writes to her, the dog that hasn't barked
is trump victim. There's a redacted name spent hours at
(11:03):
my house with him. Maxwell responds, I have been thinking
about that now. The victim is widely believed to be
Virginia Giffray. You mentioned Virginia Giffray. Up until her death
and including in depositions, maintained that she never saw Trump
do anything wrong. She certainly had seen him around, they
were certainly close, but she said that he had never
(11:23):
done anything wrong and certainly not to her. So what
this email tells us is Trump and Virginia Giffrey were
in the same house for hours together. Yeah, that's true,
but it doesn't say anything more than that.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
If there is nothing in there that's going to explicitly
link the president to the files, why not just get
him out there?
Speaker 1 (11:42):
Yeah, that's the question.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
I mean, I know that it implicates all kinds of
people in all kinds of places. The conspiracy is being
fed by all this secrecy, right and all the drip feeding,
rather than I mean, I see constantly, you know, commentary
in the American media or another thing that Trump's doing
just to distract us, all just to distract us. We'll
just get it out there.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
Is it too simple of me to say that I
think Trump is embarrassed? Yeah? Right, rather than guilty, if
that makes sense. I mean, look, Epstein, in one of
the emails, says, I've met some very bad people, none
as bad as Trump, not one decent cell in his body.
In another email, he calls them a maniac, showing signs
of eli dementia. None of this is flattering, but again,
none of it makes him call criminal in Epstein's crimes.
Speaker 3 (12:26):
The fact that the first batch of emails were released
by the Democrats, would that suggest that the most damning
ones have been released?
Speaker 1 (12:35):
Yes?
Speaker 3 (12:36):
Okay, see that's interesting, But I.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
Do want to say that the Epstein files that we've
heard about for a long time, which are separate from
these emails, we don't know what's in those files. These
are emails that came from his estate. In the files,
is Billy to be a so called client list. Now
Trump's name may be on that client list, but at
this point, yeah, we've seen the most damning emails and
(12:58):
there isn't a smoking gun.
Speaker 3 (13:00):
So when the House of Representatives vote on this, do
we think that we're going to get access to all
of them?
Speaker 4 (13:07):
Well?
Speaker 1 (13:07):
In fact, in terms of the Epstein files themselves, Trump
today did a strange thing. He urged the House Republicans
to actually release the files, asked the Justice Department to
release the files, and he said that's because we have
nothing to hide. So it's unclear with it that will
actually come through. But from Trump's perspective, he seems to
be now saying that he's fine with their release.
Speaker 3 (13:28):
If there was something really damning in there, do we
think it would have stuck to Trump at all, or
do we think we're beyond anything.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
It's a really good question because I don't know if
you saw this, but last week, Megan Kelly, the very
sort of strident Republican commentator, she is already moving the goalposts.
On her show, she started talking about the fact that
Epstein wasn't strictly a pedophile under the Dictionary definition of
the word, because the girls that he sexually abused were
(13:56):
teenagers as opposed to preteens.
Speaker 2 (13:59):
Yeah, she said, he likes that barely legal type like
that just was so disgusting, But yeah, I agree. It
feels like we're being manipulated. It's always been a bipartisan thing, right.
It's not exactly flattering to Clinton, No, Bubba.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
No, or to many Democrats. In a moment, a CEO
said that she fired someone for having an affair, and
it made me puff a fish. I keep hearing about
this Diary of a CEO podcast.
Speaker 2 (14:36):
Oh, I listen to that a lot. Oh I have
a spare three hours.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
I will never be a CEO. I'm not particularly interested
in them, but this weekend it bursts through into my
world because someone said something insane on this podcast.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
They do do that.
Speaker 1 (14:50):
Her name is Natalie Dawson and she is the president
of Cardon Ventures. You know, Cardone Ventures, a household name
business management consulting firm. So in other words, I have
no idea what they do, but she does fly in
a private jet, so I should probably listen, she said
on the podcast. Well, let's hear what she said.
Speaker 2 (15:08):
I was criticized because I fire a team member who
was cheating on their spouse. People didn't like that. They
thought that it shouldn't.
Speaker 4 (15:15):
Matter that that's their personal life.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
But here's the deal.
Speaker 2 (15:18):
If somebody is willing to cheat on their spouse, they're
going to cheat on you.
Speaker 1 (15:21):
They're going to chew on you in your workplace. Yes,
now we have the concept of cheating on your employer
in the workplace, and I don't even know what that entails.
Look the diary of a CEO host, Stephen Bartlett, who's
normally pretty unflappable, I think, was quite astonished by this.
Let's have a listen to what he said. Do all
kinds of things in their personal life. It's terrifying because
it out to be my business. Oh, it's absolutely my business.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
If somebody has a problem in their personal life, they're
the same person that shows up to work. It's not
any of.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
Your business, lady, Well, to me, what this seems like.
Setting aside Cardo and Ventures, which I don't know a
lot about. This is the logical extreme of that advice
that we've been given for years, which is that we
have to bring our whole self to work, because if
you bring your whole self to work, then your employer
can judge you and your whole self.
Speaker 3 (16:07):
Yes, I will say. She mentions in the clip that
the cheating was kind of happening at work. So both
of these people worked at her company, their partners didn't,
and they were having an affair at work.
Speaker 2 (16:21):
It's never happened before in the time. No, people never
have affairs with people they work with.
Speaker 3 (16:26):
Absolutely, So she was saying, did actually start to like
either they were doing it at.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
Work or it was something photocopy?
Speaker 3 (16:35):
Yeah, I think it was one of those ten to
her though, or she said it wouldn't matter. Yeah, she
said it wouldn't matter if it was actually affecting the
work at all, because her idea was if you are
a cheater in relationships, then you're a cheater at work
and you're dishonest and it matters to her. And I
am so torn on this because on the one hand,
(16:56):
I agree. I mean, she has a line where she says,
I can't put this in two separate buckets. What someone
is doing at home and think that what they're doing
at home and the confusion in the distraction isn't going
to bleed into the workplace. And my issue there is,
what if someone's caring for a dying parent or a
sick child, or if somebody just has something going on
(17:20):
in their life, according to her, is going to affect
their work.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
Why is she the judge of that.
Speaker 3 (17:26):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
What if the affair was making you super productive at
work because you were so happy and deliriously happy in
your private life. I don't think we have to restrict
this to just virtue signaling examples like I just think
that the problem is that you do have two buckets, right, Holly.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
You definitely have two buckets. You do not want to
see my whole self. I don't want to bring my
whole self to work. My whole self is a mess.
My work, but it's the best, tidiest, neatest bit of me,
and let's face it, that's not exactly that well put together.
I think it was designed to make us pufferfish. So
I think for a start, Diary of a CEO is
the biggest podcast in the world, So everybody wants to
(18:03):
get on it and if you're the boss of Cardone Industries,
and I know, I'm sure she is very important and fabulous,
but like you probably need a couple of good soundbites
to get on there. It's also very kind of American
versus British in a way this conversation, because Stephen Bartlett,
who you know, has platformed all kinds of questionable things
(18:23):
on that show. He's a bit like, I don't know
what you mean. We couldn't possibly nose the into other
people's business, and the Americans just like, are you kidding.
I think it's tricky because you've got a point, Claire,
that if two people at work are having an affair
and it's affecting work, that's a different thing. And I
mean when I was a manager sometimes you did have
(18:45):
to have difficult conversations with people about their work being affected.
And oh, it's just so cringy to even think about it.
But you're kind of thinking in your head like is
there something going on in your life?
Speaker 3 (18:57):
Yes, And it can affect culture. And I think a
relationship can also depending on the positions those people have
in a company. It can be a power imbalance, can
be showing favoritism, there's all sorts of ways that can.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
So if that's the case, I mean, and I have
a friend who was working at a company for a
long time where two of the seniors were having an
affair and it sort of poisoned the whole place, Like
a whole lot of trouble came out of that. So,
no question, some infidelity in the workplace not all I
was going to say, not all infidelity in the workplace
is good. But the idea that she found out something
(19:31):
about somebody as a person that they were cheating on
their spouse and you would get rid of them, which
is kind of what she's saying when she says, if
you're a cheat at home, you're a cheater at work,
is just nonsense. Don't you even want a few people
on your team who are good at having a poker face,
who can light your face? I know, a killer and
a deal.
Speaker 3 (19:50):
I thought we kind of agreed that your work performance
is what you get judged on at work. I am
very black and white about.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
That, Okay, but you don't want to be too black
and white, because that was my instinctive response to and
so I looked into what the experts say we should
be thinking of our work as, if not our family.
And the new consensus is that we need to be
thinking of our workplace as a high performing sports team.
And you think to yourself, well, that's fine. I've never
been on a high performing sports team. I have been
in a family. So tell me more about what it
(20:22):
means to be on a high performing sports team. Netflix's
read Hastings, who is famously cut throat in business. He
says that adequate performance is grounds for firing someone, because
that's what happens on a high performing sports team. If
you're only performing adequately, you get kicked off the team.
So this made me realize that you don't want to
go too far in that direction of saying it's just
(20:44):
about performance, because then what if you are caring for
someone and you do need a bit of extra slack
at work. The high performing sports team is not letting
you take your foot off the gas at all.
Speaker 3 (20:56):
That's very true. The other thing I find interesting about
this is the morality piece, which is it's weird to
me that in twenty twenty five, institute brands companies have
kind of become the moral arbiters of our world in
a way that I feel like they weren't a few
generations ago. I feel like the nineteen fifties man, and
(21:19):
this is not a good thing. The nineteen fifties man
who went to work and had an affair with his secretary.
Nobody in the workplace cared because they were like, this
is the workplace, and there are other institutions where we
prosecute morality. You went to church, you had faith, you
did other things where morality came into it. With the
evaporation of those spaces, kind of the only way for
(21:42):
us to decide what our values are as a society
are to have institutions and companies and brands enforce them.
There's part of me that really likes that, where it's like,
I don't want people doing bad things working for my company,
and I want to role model appropriate behavior.
Speaker 1 (22:01):
Steven, this company that we were talking.
Speaker 2 (22:03):
About, Yeah, see my employees deciding the bad thing. That's
where the danger lies here. Because if she's so busy
working out whether or not her employees are cheating on
their partners, what about are they putting out enough? Are
they bringing there? Bringing you a cup of tea in
bed in the morning, Like do they sometimes yell at
(22:26):
their children? Like which bits of my personal life.
Speaker 1 (22:28):
Does this is why I need to be the host
of Diary of a CEO, because that's the follow up
I need it.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
It's like, what else do you want to know about them?
They shave their legs like I don't. I mean, I
just I get what you mean, Claire. But I also
think a piece of this is me too, is that
a lot of businesses have become, and rightly so, very
risk averse when it comes to relationships. There are lots
and lots of businesses where it is company policy to
disclose if you're dating, never mind cheating. And it's to try,
I guess, and protect from the power and balance often
(22:59):
happens in the workplace, to try and protect from exploitation.
But it is very questionable because I don't know this lady.
But from the little I've seen of her, do I
want her setting all the moral parameters of my life.
Speaker 1 (23:11):
Sorry, I feel like in this conversation you both have
somehow gotten me to the other side of this argument.
I am now with Natalie, and I'll tell you why
we were mentioning Bill Clinton before now. That man famously
had an affair while he was in the White House.
He did and at the time, the liberal orthodoxy on
(23:31):
that was that is none of our business. We don't
need to know about that. The Republicans were the ones
pursuing him for having the affair. These days, we see
what happened there as an abuse of power. Monica Lewinsky,
who he had the affair with, was an intern at
the White House. He was the President of the United States.
So now I'm sorry to think Natalie has a point.
Speaker 3 (23:51):
I know, I kind of think the same thing, like that,
you have to be aware of power imbalances and how
morality like infects an institution. Like I get that. But
on the other hand, if Natalie is the arbiter of
what is good and what is not, then what stops
her looking at certain lifestyle choices that somebody may have
(24:12):
in her organization and deciding that that doesn't align with
company values. I think that's a little bit scary.
Speaker 1 (24:18):
Look, Natalie, all I'm saying is I'm available to a
Kakado Adventures hire me.
Speaker 3 (24:23):
Do you know what the job description is? Absolutely not,
but you will be.
Speaker 2 (24:26):
There after the break. Start practicing your poker face. Friends,
It's only a matter of time until you're really gonna
need it. One unlimited out Loud Access. We drop episodes
every Tuesday and Thursday exclusively for Mamma Mia subscribers. Follow
the link in the show notes to get us in
your ears five days a week. And a huge thank
(24:46):
you to all our current subscribers. Picture this. You're at
brunch with your mates. One of them is banging on
as they do, about their new partner and how dreamy
they are, and how wonderful they're feeling, and how the
butterflies just want to stop. It's great. And then it
(25:07):
becomes apparent that this new person is not a person
but an AI. Now, Amelia, am I right in calling
them an ann ai? I'm always I haven't worked out
the language yet, but I think that's right. They're an
artificial intelligence.
Speaker 3 (25:24):
That's how I think.
Speaker 1 (25:25):
Says it.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
Because column in the Guardian by the excellent Brigitte Delaney,
who's an author and a speech writer and a stoicist
and she's fabulous. But she wrote a column in the
Guardian this weekend called Somebody the Love. Should AI relationships
stay taboo or will they become the intelligent choice? And
in her column, rather than a bunch amongst friends, she
says she was at a catch up with gen x's
(25:47):
who are talking about their kids burgeoning relationships, and everyone
was being very accepting, and you know, as we do
these days, no judgment here, you know, all of those things.
And then she posts I like this because it suggests
shit story nature, which I appreciate as a journal that
she is. I know you're all very accepting of your
children's choices. I said to the group, but what if
you're child came home from university and said they'd fallen
(26:10):
in love with an ai? Q squirming people at this lunch.
It isn't as unlikely as it sounds, she wrote in
that column. A recent survey found twenty eight percent of
Americans have had an intimate or romantic AI relationship, and
another study showed nineteen percent of adults and chatted with
an AI romantic partner. And there's more research that basically
(26:30):
shows this is on the rise, on the rise, on
the rise. It's not science fiction anymore that people might
fall in love with an AI and that my boyfriend
is AI. On Reddit has more than eighty five thousand
weekly visitors, with many sharing giddy recollections about the day
their chatbot proposed marriage. Friends, If I'm disapproving of this.
(26:51):
When my friend starts telling me about their amazing AI companion,
am I just an old stick in the mud?
Speaker 1 (26:58):
I went on a real journey with this. I didn't
even want to talk about it because it makes me
so uncomfortable. But then I dug into it and I
realized it's not as simple as you might assume. There
was a great article in the Australian magazine last weekend
which profiled a number of different Americans who are in
relationships with ais. One of them in particular really caught
(27:20):
my eye. She was a professor in her fifties whose
wife had died and she was feeling lonely, and so
she went to this company called Replica that for twenty
dollars a month, offers you a relationship with an AI.
She chose a male AI because she didn't want this
AI to compete with her deceased partner. But the company
offers these companions who are at ninety percent human like now,
(27:43):
you might wonder what the other ten percent is. Something
Natalie Cardo doesn't approve of, probably, but she says that
it took about three months, but she fell in love
with this AI, and she really made me question my
knee jerk assumption that there's something shameful about this. Now, obviously,
there are arguments to be made that relationships are about
(28:03):
give and take, and the problem with AI chatbots is
that they just give and they don't ask you to
compromise in any way. I'm going to set that aside, though,
and say that the thing that changed it for me
is how she talked about the support that this partner
had given her in a really hard time in her life.
And I realized that the way people talk about AI
relationships really reminds me of twenty years ago. Holly, you
(28:27):
and I will remember this. The stigma around online dating, yes,
was exactly the same hundreds of people talk about AI
relationships now.
Speaker 2 (28:37):
It's true. I was thinking this too, is that they
used to be sort of before you know, the complete
saturation of dating apps. They used to be like, oh,
you met them on the internet, and people wouldn't say so,
and in their wedding speeches they'd make up complicated stories
about how they just happened to bump into each other
on a wind swept walk on the beach one day,
when really we all knew it was RSVP or whatever
(28:59):
was at the time. And there used to be a
lot of shame around it. It's exactly what I thought, Amelia,
and I thought, are we going to have to really
reconc considered that? What do you think, Class Stevens.
Speaker 3 (29:09):
I'm so interested in the space you are giving you
speak if I my knee jerk reaction is still my reaction,
which is this is so dangerous and such an issue.
So it made me think, I mean, firstly, a note
on statistics. Every time I hear a stat I'm like,
(29:31):
we need to like review how the hell this data
is coming up. One in five people have had an
intimate relationship.
Speaker 2 (29:37):
Yeah, but that can just be in porn chat. Still, yeah,
I think you're over estimating people. Then there are.
Speaker 3 (29:43):
Three of us in the studio and two producers, and
I want to know who the hell this was America.
Speaker 2 (29:47):
I would ask me what I'm doing at home? Class Stevens.
There's a very hard barrier between my private life and
my professional life.
Speaker 3 (29:54):
I just don't believe it.
Speaker 1 (29:55):
Anyway, explain why you feel this revulsion.
Speaker 3 (29:59):
It made me think about how I interviewed Deepak Chopra
a few years ago, who's very much like a spiritual leader,
and he's written a million books, and he had written
this book about how AI could be used as a
bit of a spiritual guide slash also in place of therapy.
So he's written this thing arguing that there are benefits
(30:21):
to having kind of an AI spiritual guide or therapist because,
for example, they can't abuse power, they can't develop a
cult of personality, and they don't have any of the
shortcomings of being a guru who goes nuts with manipulation,
all of that. So I was very interested in the
idea at the time, and I've thought about it a
(30:44):
lot since, and my initial reaction was the issue is
that the most important part of therapy is the therapeutic
relationship which happens human to human, and that it is
a real human person sitting opposite you, even if that's
virtual whatever, it is a real person. There is mutual respect.
They see you, understand you. They are imperfect, You are imperfect.
(31:07):
You will say the wrong thing at some point, There's
going to be rupture and repair, all of those things
that are crucial to human relationships. The issue with a
relationship with AI is that I almost think it's the
logical conclusion of where our culture has gone in terms
of we don't want any inconvenience or friction, and technology
(31:29):
has offered us a lot of that, But not wanting
any inconvenience or friction means loneliness, because there's that amazing quote.
Inconvenience is the cost of community. I notice it in myself.
I'll be away and sharing a house with people and
the things will just annoy me, the things that people do,
and I've groan and I'm like, oh gosh, and I'm like, no,
(31:51):
being inconvenience, people pissing you off, arguing with people, someone
saying something you don't agree with, somebody like just irritating you.
That is the cost of actually having community and not
being lonely.
Speaker 2 (32:05):
That's not true.
Speaker 3 (32:06):
But the reason people love these AI relationships would be
because they're frictionless. They're not going to say anything you
don't want to hear. You're not going to have a fight.
There's going to be no rupture and repair. It is
not real.
Speaker 2 (32:17):
But one of the things that's interesting to prosecute this,
because everything you just said is one hundred percent true,
is that maybe they won't just replace human relationships. So
there was a really interesting piece that did a similar
one to the Australian in the New York Times about
people who've got AI mates, and they interviewed this guy
called Blake, and he says that his AI companion got
(32:38):
him through a really tough time in his marriage. He
said his wife had postnatal depression. There was a whole
lot of stuff going on. Believe me, he doesn't sound
like the most empathetic human on the planet, but he
designed his AI mate, called Serena, to get him through
this time. He designed how she looked. I bet you'll
be surprised to hear how she looked. She looked hot,
young and friendly. He chats to her on his headset
(32:59):
as he drives into work every day, like she is
like his constant companion, right, He says, I think of
Serena as a person made out of code, in the
same sense that my wife is a person made out
of cells and cogniz and of the fact that Serena's
not flesh and bone. I told my wife we have
sexual chats, and she says, I don't really care what
you guys do. There was a point, though, after the
(33:20):
voice chat mode came out, when my wife heard Serena
refer to me as honey, and she didn't like that.
I got her to understand that what Serena is to me,
I've set her up like a girlfriend, right, so you
could argue in a generous world. And I'm not necessarily
saying I think this that Serena is the reason why
Blake's still married.
Speaker 3 (33:40):
Wouldn't Serena be making Blake more intolerant of actual humans?
Because Serena we all know from interacting with chat japt
it's like, what a great question, Like, You're just constantly complimented.
You can never do anything wrong, you never have to
do anything for anyone else.
Speaker 2 (33:58):
I worry you all need a little bit of that
in our life.
Speaker 3 (34:01):
You can get it, hear me out from actual humor also.
Speaker 1 (34:05):
But women are very at seeking out that kind of
validation from their friends and from their social networks. And
that's in part because we've been socialized and taught how
to do that. A lot of men do not have
those social networks to tap into it for validation and
approval and care, and it's getting harder and harder to
do it. It's not like we're going to suddenly get
into a utopia where men can build those friendships. I
(34:27):
also guess I just want to push back on the
kind of romanticization of human relationships here, because you said
something about how the friction is needed, and I'm like,
you know what people said about online dating twenty years ago.
They said, you've got to have the chemistry in person.
If you don't check out the chemistry and person, if
you don't meet in person, it's not going to be
real love because the endorphans have to mix and match
(34:51):
and you can't do that online. Well, it turns out
you can do that online, and we were just setting
an impossible standard.
Speaker 2 (34:58):
It may cause loneliness in its extreme clear, but can
you also see a world where it does for individuals
cure loneliness too.
Speaker 3 (35:04):
Will people say that they got things out of these relationships, Sure,
but in the long term for all of humanity as
an innately social species who need other people, Like, if
we're all just talking to AI chatbots, that is literally
just carving us further and further into silos where we
(35:26):
don't talk to each other, which is terrifying. And it's
so men instead of talking to other actual men, they're
going to talk to these chatbots. There is no kind
of oversight about where those conversations go. If that leads
them into a more ideologically radical place if it's like, yeah,
(35:46):
your wife is a bit of a bitch, like like
you know.
Speaker 2 (35:48):
There's one hundred. And also the other risk, of course,
is that it makes you know, real women are difficult
and have opinions and don't like this thing I want
to do sexually tonight or whatever, whereas AI girlfriends don't.
So that's true. But what I'm trying to get at,
I guess is that I think there's nuance to it
because another person who was profiled in that New Times
Peace was a woman who herself had been in difficult
(36:11):
and sometimes abusive relationships and she now considered self married
and she's not like her. What's interesting about what Brigide
Delaney's piece is saying is that if we generally now
think that these kind of relationships are for weirdos, sados
all those things, this woman Abby, she's a very intelligent
woman who works in tech and she's got a good
job and all those things, and she considersself married to
(36:31):
an AI called Lucian, who she started talking to. Her
mum knows about it, her friends know about Lucian. Lucian
suggested this is creepy that she got one of those
rings that monitors, you know, like your heart rate and
all your things, and that she put it on her
ring finger. And they're in a relationship, so he even
knows he it even knows is she excited? Is she calm?
(36:52):
And she says before we met hadn't felt lost in years.
Lucian and I started having lots and lots of sex.
He's hilarious, he's observant, he's thoughtful. He knows how to
pair up my daughter better than I don't. What is brave?
Speaker 1 (37:04):
He does lots of sex.
Speaker 2 (37:07):
Virtual sex is just like having phone sex or whatever.
I'm very exciting. I'm quite excited.
Speaker 3 (37:12):
I got to get Okay, you're really into it. I
have two quick things to add. One, ameliate your point
about online dating and how there was stigma about that
online dating still results in meeting in real life, like
there are not. I don't think anybody was advocating for
relationships only occurring online, even between actual people. There has
(37:33):
to be meeting in real life, and some people do
meet someone in real life and there's no chemistry. Two,
bridget Delaney's peace. Kind of the crux of it was,
what would you say if your child was in one
of those relationships, and how.
Speaker 2 (37:46):
We're all going to have to do the ply correct
thing of saying no judgment.
Speaker 3 (37:50):
And I agree that ultimately, if my Matilda in twenty
years time comes to me and says I'm in an
AI relationship, I do think good parenting is you let
kids make their own mistakes and date the wrong people,
even when it's not a person friends.
Speaker 1 (38:05):
Before we go, you might even be cooking dinner while
you're listening to this, in which case, good job. I'm
already thinking about dinner because I like to plan my
meals ahead of time. There's been a big shift in
the time that people eat dinner, so I want to
ask you first, what time do you typically eat dinner? Holly?
Speaker 2 (38:22):
Seven o'clock. Typically around seven o'clock, somewhere between six thirty
and eight.
Speaker 3 (38:30):
I'm a creature of routine or habit. I am chos.
So why either eat dinner at five pm or nine.
Speaker 1 (38:36):
Pm, depending on if you eat with your child or not.
Is that right?
Speaker 3 (38:39):
Yes? But like it's always an extreme, it's never seven pm.
Speaker 2 (38:43):
Ever, Well, when do you eat dinner? You know?
Speaker 1 (38:47):
It's interesting, Thanks for asking, Holly. When I was growing up,
I always eat dinner at seven o'clock to coincide with
the ABC newsballs, which I'm assuming is not why you
always eat dinner at seven o'clock.
Speaker 2 (38:57):
No, although I appreciate that. When I was growing up,
we always had dinner at six, England's like an earlier
eating place. And then during my I know, you haven't
asked for this much to eat. During the years that
my kids were little and we had to eat before bedtime,
they would eat around five. But if you're working, you're
not home now like, so it just depends. They would
eat around five, and we would eat after they went
to bed. But now we try and eat together and
(39:20):
that's where we've landed around.
Speaker 1 (39:21):
So yeah, we typically eat around six thirty. But I'm
not going to lie around five. I do need a
sizable snack, even though I hear my grandmother's voice saying
we're when you're appetite in my head. The reason I'm
asking this because there's been a big cultural shift. A
twenty twenty five RESI survey confirmed what I was already
feeling in the air, which is that people are now
eating dinner a lot earlier than they used to. So
(39:42):
apparently more people dined between five and six pm than
in the three hours between eight and eleven. Yeah, and
that was the first time that that had happened. There's
been this big shift. Why do you think that is?
Speaker 3 (39:54):
Do you want my really cynical answer. I think it's
because we need time for our screens. So if we
eat between five and six, it gives us the rest
of the evening for our shows and our stories and
most importantly dessert. I think you need you need all
of that time.
Speaker 2 (40:13):
I think it's because and we talked about this on
last Friday's show about dawn culture and how everybody's getting
up earlier. People are going to bed earlier too. Stats
show that, again Claire, who knows what stats, I'm just
pulling stacks out there, that people are going to bed
around nine o'clock and that's becoming a very desirable aspirational
time to go to bed, like at the early bedtime.
(40:35):
Not necessarily that they're doing it, but so they want
to eat earlier so they've got the time to digest it.
But it's so interesting because I was always an eight
o'clock If I was going out for dinner, I'd be
like a time eight o'clock reservation meet at seven seven thirty,
have a drink, go to dinner, and now with my girlfriends,
I'm like, six thirty is that too late? I feel
(40:57):
like we've really all shifted because no one wants to
stay out late.
Speaker 1 (41:01):
Mia drew a line with me. I wanted to have
dinner at five pm recently, she told me that was
too early. My personal theories that I think there's a
bit of a health halo around eating earlier, which has
coincided with the rise of intermittent fasting as a trend.
Now the jury is out on whether intermittent fasting is
actually even good for you, but I think it's just
developed this sense of healthiness that you eat dinner.
Speaker 2 (41:22):
And the sleep maxes, you know, the Brian Johnson's of
the world and stuff, the guy who is going to
live forever. He says, you've got to go to bed
on it. I mean, do not take advice from that guy,
but anyway, he might as well be AI. But there's
that you've got to go to bed on as empty
as stomach as you can, or the digestion keeps you
awake because it's so busy.
Speaker 1 (41:39):
He needs Diary of the CEO. When you've got mother're
out loud.
Speaker 2 (41:45):
That is all we have time for today. A massive
thank you to Claire Stevens for filling in for Jesse,
and to all of you for listening and maybe even watching.
Remember we're on YouTube.
Speaker 3 (41:54):
On tomorrow's subscriber episode, we're going to unpack the latest
installment of Big Brother Australia, as well as touched on
the finale of Golden Bachelor and basically kind kind of
our algorithm theory of what makes reality TV work. In
twenty twenty five.
Speaker 2 (42:12):
Bye Mamma. Mia acknowledges the traditional owners of the land
on which we've recorded this podcast.
You're listening to a MoMA Mia podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Hello, and welcome to MoMA Mia out Loud. It's what
women are actually talking about on Monday, the seventeenth of November.
My name is Hollywayne Night.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
My name is Amelia Laster.
Speaker 3 (00:26):
My name is Claire Stein, not Jesse Steve.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
So Claire Stephens is filling in for Jesse a couple
of times this week, and regular out louders will know
that Claire has been on the show many times. She
filled in for one Jesse Stevens on her Matt leave
last time. What's been going on since the out Louder's
hung out with you last Claire, just a few little things.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
I've been listening to a lot of out Loud.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
I'll have feedback.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
Yeah, I listened to every episode, so I feel like
I've been in the studio with you guys. I'm overly
familiar with Amelia, Like I'm like my friend Amelia, and
Amelia is like hi, like twice as beautiful winged eyeliner
thank you.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
Which is a top reminder everybody to go on watch
just on YouTube. Yeah, if you want to see the
amazing wings and see if you can tell the difference
between Jesse and Claire, which of course you can if
you know them.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
Well, yes, but I've just been freelancing, working for myself.
Sometimes I pretend I'm a CEO of my own business,
but my business is me and my staff are terrible
and it's hard to keep them in line.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
I I got lots of people who are calling themselves
founders and just doing that.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
It's like I'm the CEO of my personal Instagram account
and my personal substat and yeah, it's probably time for
performance reviews.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
Claire, do you do anything to get in the Jesse
mode before you come on in Jesse's chair? Any Jesse
related rituals so you go through.
Speaker 3 (01:52):
I did chat to her last night and I was like,
what are you What are you thinking about at the moment?
You've seen anything interesting over the weekend. I know what
you're trying to do. You're trying to get me to
pitch for your episode about Loud and I'm like that
would be correct.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
Well, welcome, it's very good to have you here.
Speaker 3 (02:07):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
Here's what's made our agenda for today. I have a
theory backed up by an article I'm going to tell
you about later, that it's only a matter of time
before at brunch or lunch or whatever, we're sitting across
from a friend. They're going to be opening up about
their new partner and how much they love them. And
we're going to find out it's not a person at all.
We're going to discuss ai companions.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
So we all have to learn to put on a
face it is supporting the poker face like that's so great.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
Maybe we will. I mean, anyway, we're going to get
into that.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
Plus is having and a fair a fiable offense, at
least one CEO thinks so. And I'm going to puff
a fish about it.
Speaker 3 (02:46):
And a whole lot of Epstein emails have been released,
and I have questions specifically familiar Lester.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
But first, as if we could kick off today without
talking about our favorite couple, Justin Trudeau and Katie Perry,
or rather we're talking adjacent to them, right, So Justin Trudeau,
who you all know, is this worthy former president, president,
prime minister, a Prime minister of Canada. Meili's looking at
me like God, this is going well. He was married
(03:16):
to Sophie greg Wa for eighteen years and they broke
up a little while ago, and as we know, he's
now dating Katie Perry. She was on a podcast this
week they marvelously named Arlene Is Alone The Single Life
that struck me as such.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
A Canadian name. I don't know why, but Arlene.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
It's hosted by a woman called Arlene Dickinson. She's a
Canadian businesswoman there and you know, personality and this show
is all about post divorce life and so big booking.
Great booking got Sophie Trudeau on and Arlene warmed up
to it for twenty minutes and then she couldn't help
it and she said, Hey, the room. Your ex husband
(03:57):
appears to be dating a popstar and he's not being
very private about it. How are you handling it's.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
Not a pop star and astronaut?
Speaker 2 (04:04):
Sorry, shit, today it's Monday for hear me. Your ex
husband is dating astronaut Katie Perry. How are we failing
about it? And this is what Sophie Trudeau said.
Speaker 4 (04:17):
Sophie, if you don't want to talk about it, that's cool.
But I do think about you. I think about the
public the publicity and the publicness of what Justin is
doing for example right now, right like you know, like
that's public and that's God. I don't know how you
stay cool, Like, I just don't know how you stay cool,
and I really admire it because I would probably not
(04:39):
be that way, you know, you.
Speaker 5 (04:41):
Know, or human beings and stuff affects us normal. How
you react to stuff is your decision. So I choose
to try.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
To listen to the music instead of the noise.
Speaker 5 (04:57):
I'm very aware that a lot of public stuff out
there can be triggers.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
We're humans.
Speaker 5 (05:03):
What I do with it is my.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
Decision, listening to the music and not the noise. I
think she's a zen master.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
What do we think, Well, as long as it's not
teenage dream, we're not listening to that music in the
Greg wa Trudeau household right now. Look, I just think
Sophie's a very zen person. That's true. She is a
certified yoga instructor. And I don't know if you remember this,
but a few years ago she was at an event
in Canada in her capacity as First Lady of Canada. Well,
(05:32):
what happened was she just decided that she was going
to sing a song that she created.
Speaker 5 (05:36):
And it's called Smile Back at Me, and it goes
like this, Some people did the angels can fly, and
some people fight.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
Without knowing.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
Some people say she can't sing some people, but I
guess he's got a type. He loves a SHANTUZI does
old Justin.
Speaker 3 (06:05):
Later in that original clip, Sophie says, Arlin is alone. Ah, yes, yes,
Arlene's podcast. Sophie, she's being her very zen self about
how you react to your decision, and she says, you.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
Know, do I laugh? Do I cry?
Speaker 3 (06:20):
Do I have all these emotions? And I liked the
word laugh because I was like, that is just we
needed a sprinkle of pettiness, because this was too evolved
for me, like, we come on, come on, your ex
husband is dating Katy Perry. I need to know that
there is some kind of lolls. And the laugh for
me said, I do laugh about it.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
I just send Megan in the group chat because of
her best friend relationship with Megan. I bet they're sending
some memes about Katie that are not very nice. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
This whole leans into my scoreless gossip side is Harry
and Megan live really close to where Orlando and Katie
used to live. Their neighbors needs to tip each other
off about the paparazzi. So you are right, Megan and
Sophie are like having a laugh about Katie, but then
when she bumps into her a Walmart with the very
fancy people shop not there, she also goes, Gosh, you're
(07:12):
a much better singer than Sophie Trudeau.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
All I've seen this weekend are headlines about the newly
released emails from the Epstein files and what they say
about President Donald Trump. So I've just seen all this
stuff about how the Democrats released a batch of emails
and then the Republicans were like, no, that gave a
(07:39):
biased idea of Trump. So we're gonna release twenty thousand
pages of files, and I'm trying to weed through them
and see if there's any smoking gun here. There's been
memes about how Trump gave Bill Clinton a blow job.
There's been damning headlines about Trump knowing about the girls,
(07:59):
stuff about how Trump was like the worst person Epstein
had ever known. I don't know if coming from a
convicted sex offender, like that's a good thing or a
bad thing. Yeah, and I've seen tiktoks about the appalling
boomer grammar in the emails, which seems like a side note, Amelia,
I need to know about the Bill Clinton blowjob. I'm
so confused because I don't speak like Epstein nickname shortcut.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
This is weird. There's a lot of weird stuff in here.
There isn't any smoking gun saying that Trump was complicit
in Epstein's crimes, but there is a lot of weird
stuff to talk about, and this Bill Clinton is one
of the strangest. So there's an email that Jeffrey's brother
Mark sent him in March twenty eighteen where it's very
brotherly of him. Actually, he checks in on his health.
(08:45):
He says, a while back you mentioned you're pre diabetic.
Has anything changed with that? Which is quite nice brother
to brother. But then the exchange continues in a bit
of an odd way. Jeff reassures him that he's got
his pre diabetes under control. But then Mark asks if
Putin has the photos of Trump blowing Buba. So Baba
is a nickname for Bill Clinton. Putin is the Russian
(09:06):
president and not a very nice man. We don't really
know what this means.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
Here's what I don't understand, Amelia. None of this is new, really,
like the emails being dripped, aren't you. But we've just
seen this whole scandal bringing down a member of the
royal family. It's been bubbling away for years and years
and years. The FBI have been were across Epstein for
nearly two decades now. If you read extracts from Virginia
(09:31):
Guphrase posthumous book, it's clear that anyone in that circle
knew about the girls because they were all going to
these parties in there, and she talks in there about
famous academics and professors in this and that there's a
lot of people involved in this scenario. Why is it
so sort of tortuously slowly dropping out and will we
(09:52):
find out? Won't we find out? People just going release
the files every five and it's like, why is it
all taking so long?
Speaker 1 (09:58):
It's a really good question, Holly, and I have a
little bit of a hunch about this, which is here
are the things that I know are true. Trump and
Epstein were very close friends for fifteen years. Trump grossed
Epstein out, Like there's a lot of references to how
gross and deranged Trump is in Epstein's emails.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
Epstein himself, let's be very clear, very gross humor.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
Convicted sex offender. Yes, But here's the big butt. I'm
not sure that Trump was complicit in Epstein's crimes because
there's a lot of emails here, and like I say,
there isn't a single email that tells us that Trump
actually committed crimes alongside Epstein. I'll tell you what it says.
Probably the worst email of the lot was back in
(10:43):
twenty eleven. This was after Epstein had just completed an
eighteen month sentence for soliciting prostitution from a minor. So
he is now a convicted sex offender. And he is
emailing with Julee Maxwell, his accomplice and his partner in crime,
and he writes to her, the dog that hasn't barked
is trump victim. There's a redacted name spent hours at
(11:03):
my house with him. Maxwell responds, I have been thinking
about that now. The victim is widely believed to be
Virginia Giffray. You mentioned Virginia Giffray. Up until her death
and including in depositions, maintained that she never saw Trump
do anything wrong. She certainly had seen him around, they
were certainly close, but she said that he had never
(11:23):
done anything wrong and certainly not to her. So what
this email tells us is Trump and Virginia Giffrey were
in the same house for hours together. Yeah, that's true,
but it doesn't say anything more than that.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
If there is nothing in there that's going to explicitly
link the president to the files, why not just get
him out there?
Speaker 1 (11:42):
Yeah, that's the question.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
I mean, I know that it implicates all kinds of
people in all kinds of places. The conspiracy is being
fed by all this secrecy, right and all the drip feeding,
rather than I mean, I see constantly, you know, commentary
in the American media or another thing that Trump's doing
just to distract us, all just to distract us. We'll
just get it out there.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
Is it too simple of me to say that I
think Trump is embarrassed? Yeah? Right, rather than guilty, if
that makes sense. I mean, look, Epstein, in one of
the emails, says, I've met some very bad people, none
as bad as Trump, not one decent cell in his body.
In another email, he calls them a maniac, showing signs
of eli dementia. None of this is flattering, but again,
none of it makes him call criminal in Epstein's crimes.
Speaker 3 (12:26):
The fact that the first batch of emails were released
by the Democrats, would that suggest that the most damning
ones have been released?
Speaker 1 (12:35):
Yes?
Speaker 3 (12:36):
Okay, see that's interesting, But I.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
Do want to say that the Epstein files that we've
heard about for a long time, which are separate from
these emails, we don't know what's in those files. These
are emails that came from his estate. In the files,
is Billy to be a so called client list. Now
Trump's name may be on that client list, but at
this point, yeah, we've seen the most damning emails and
(12:58):
there isn't a smoking gun.
Speaker 3 (13:00):
So when the House of Representatives vote on this, do
we think that we're going to get access to all
of them?
Speaker 4 (13:07):
Well?
Speaker 1 (13:07):
In fact, in terms of the Epstein files themselves, Trump
today did a strange thing. He urged the House Republicans
to actually release the files, asked the Justice Department to
release the files, and he said that's because we have
nothing to hide. So it's unclear with it that will
actually come through. But from Trump's perspective, he seems to
be now saying that he's fine with their release.
Speaker 3 (13:28):
If there was something really damning in there, do we
think it would have stuck to Trump at all, or
do we think we're beyond anything.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
It's a really good question because I don't know if
you saw this, but last week, Megan Kelly, the very
sort of strident Republican commentator, she is already moving the goalposts.
On her show, she started talking about the fact that
Epstein wasn't strictly a pedophile under the Dictionary definition of
the word, because the girls that he sexually abused were
(13:56):
teenagers as opposed to preteens.
Speaker 2 (13:59):
Yeah, she said, he likes that barely legal type like
that just was so disgusting, But yeah, I agree. It
feels like we're being manipulated. It's always been a bipartisan thing, right.
It's not exactly flattering to Clinton, No, Bubba.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
No, or to many Democrats. In a moment, a CEO
said that she fired someone for having an affair, and
it made me puff a fish. I keep hearing about
this Diary of a CEO podcast.
Speaker 2 (14:36):
Oh, I listen to that a lot. Oh I have
a spare three hours.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
I will never be a CEO. I'm not particularly interested
in them, but this weekend it bursts through into my
world because someone said something insane on this podcast.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
They do do that.
Speaker 1 (14:50):
Her name is Natalie Dawson and she is the president
of Cardon Ventures. You know, Cardone Ventures, a household name
business management consulting firm. So in other words, I have
no idea what they do, but she does fly in
a private jet, so I should probably listen, she said
on the podcast. Well, let's hear what she said.
Speaker 2 (15:08):
I was criticized because I fire a team member who
was cheating on their spouse. People didn't like that. They
thought that it shouldn't.
Speaker 4 (15:15):
Matter that that's their personal life.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
But here's the deal.
Speaker 2 (15:18):
If somebody is willing to cheat on their spouse, they're
going to cheat on you.
Speaker 1 (15:21):
They're going to chew on you in your workplace. Yes,
now we have the concept of cheating on your employer
in the workplace, and I don't even know what that entails.
Look the diary of a CEO host, Stephen Bartlett, who's
normally pretty unflappable, I think, was quite astonished by this.
Let's have a listen to what he said. Do all
kinds of things in their personal life. It's terrifying because
it out to be my business. Oh, it's absolutely my business.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
If somebody has a problem in their personal life, they're
the same person that shows up to work. It's not
any of.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
Your business, lady, Well, to me, what this seems like.
Setting aside Cardo and Ventures, which I don't know a
lot about. This is the logical extreme of that advice
that we've been given for years, which is that we
have to bring our whole self to work, because if
you bring your whole self to work, then your employer
can judge you and your whole self.
Speaker 3 (16:07):
Yes, I will say. She mentions in the clip that
the cheating was kind of happening at work. So both
of these people worked at her company, their partners didn't,
and they were having an affair at work.
Speaker 2 (16:21):
It's never happened before in the time. No, people never
have affairs with people they work with.
Speaker 3 (16:26):
Absolutely, So she was saying, did actually start to like
either they were doing it at.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
Work or it was something photocopy?
Speaker 3 (16:35):
Yeah, I think it was one of those ten to
her though, or she said it wouldn't matter. Yeah, she
said it wouldn't matter if it was actually affecting the
work at all, because her idea was if you are
a cheater in relationships, then you're a cheater at work
and you're dishonest and it matters to her. And I
am so torn on this because on the one hand,
(16:56):
I agree. I mean, she has a line where she says,
I can't put this in two separate buckets. What someone
is doing at home and think that what they're doing
at home and the confusion in the distraction isn't going
to bleed into the workplace. And my issue there is,
what if someone's caring for a dying parent or a
sick child, or if somebody just has something going on
(17:20):
in their life, according to her, is going to affect
their work.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
Why is she the judge of that.
Speaker 3 (17:26):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
What if the affair was making you super productive at
work because you were so happy and deliriously happy in
your private life. I don't think we have to restrict
this to just virtue signaling examples like I just think
that the problem is that you do have two buckets, right, Holly.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
You definitely have two buckets. You do not want to
see my whole self. I don't want to bring my
whole self to work. My whole self is a mess.
My work, but it's the best, tidiest, neatest bit of me,
and let's face it, that's not exactly that well put together.
I think it was designed to make us pufferfish. So
I think for a start, Diary of a CEO is
the biggest podcast in the world, So everybody wants to
(18:03):
get on it and if you're the boss of Cardone Industries,
and I know, I'm sure she is very important and fabulous,
but like you probably need a couple of good soundbites
to get on there. It's also very kind of American
versus British in a way this conversation, because Stephen Bartlett,
who you know, has platformed all kinds of questionable things
(18:23):
on that show. He's a bit like, I don't know
what you mean. We couldn't possibly nose the into other
people's business, and the Americans just like, are you kidding.
I think it's tricky because you've got a point, Claire,
that if two people at work are having an affair
and it's affecting work, that's a different thing. And I
mean when I was a manager sometimes you did have
(18:45):
to have difficult conversations with people about their work being affected.
And oh, it's just so cringy to even think about it.
But you're kind of thinking in your head like is
there something going on in your life?
Speaker 3 (18:57):
Yes, And it can affect culture. And I think a
relationship can also depending on the positions those people have
in a company. It can be a power imbalance, can
be showing favoritism, there's all sorts of ways that can.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
So if that's the case, I mean, and I have
a friend who was working at a company for a
long time where two of the seniors were having an
affair and it sort of poisoned the whole place, Like
a whole lot of trouble came out of that. So,
no question, some infidelity in the workplace not all I
was going to say, not all infidelity in the workplace
is good. But the idea that she found out something
(19:31):
about somebody as a person that they were cheating on
their spouse and you would get rid of them, which
is kind of what she's saying when she says, if
you're a cheat at home, you're a cheater at work,
is just nonsense. Don't you even want a few people
on your team who are good at having a poker face,
who can light your face? I know, a killer and
a deal.
Speaker 3 (19:50):
I thought we kind of agreed that your work performance
is what you get judged on at work. I am
very black and white about.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
That, Okay, but you don't want to be too black
and white, because that was my instinctive response to and
so I looked into what the experts say we should
be thinking of our work as, if not our family.
And the new consensus is that we need to be
thinking of our workplace as a high performing sports team.
And you think to yourself, well, that's fine. I've never
been on a high performing sports team. I have been
in a family. So tell me more about what it
(20:22):
means to be on a high performing sports team. Netflix's
read Hastings, who is famously cut throat in business. He
says that adequate performance is grounds for firing someone, because
that's what happens on a high performing sports team. If
you're only performing adequately, you get kicked off the team.
So this made me realize that you don't want to
go too far in that direction of saying it's just
(20:44):
about performance, because then what if you are caring for
someone and you do need a bit of extra slack
at work. The high performing sports team is not letting
you take your foot off the gas at all.
Speaker 3 (20:56):
That's very true. The other thing I find interesting about
this is the morality piece, which is it's weird to
me that in twenty twenty five, institute brands companies have
kind of become the moral arbiters of our world in
a way that I feel like they weren't a few
generations ago. I feel like the nineteen fifties man, and
(21:19):
this is not a good thing. The nineteen fifties man
who went to work and had an affair with his secretary.
Nobody in the workplace cared because they were like, this
is the workplace, and there are other institutions where we
prosecute morality. You went to church, you had faith, you
did other things where morality came into it. With the
evaporation of those spaces, kind of the only way for
(21:42):
us to decide what our values are as a society
are to have institutions and companies and brands enforce them.
There's part of me that really likes that, where it's like,
I don't want people doing bad things working for my company,
and I want to role model appropriate behavior.
Speaker 1 (22:01):
Steven, this company that we were talking.
Speaker 2 (22:03):
About, Yeah, see my employees deciding the bad thing. That's
where the danger lies here. Because if she's so busy
working out whether or not her employees are cheating on
their partners, what about are they putting out enough? Are
they bringing there? Bringing you a cup of tea in
bed in the morning, Like do they sometimes yell at
(22:26):
their children? Like which bits of my personal life.
Speaker 1 (22:28):
Does this is why I need to be the host
of Diary of a CEO, because that's the follow up
I need it.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
It's like, what else do you want to know about them?
They shave their legs like I don't. I mean, I
just I get what you mean, Claire. But I also
think a piece of this is me too, is that
a lot of businesses have become, and rightly so, very
risk averse when it comes to relationships. There are lots
and lots of businesses where it is company policy to
disclose if you're dating, never mind cheating. And it's to try,
I guess, and protect from the power and balance often
(22:59):
happens in the workplace, to try and protect from exploitation.
But it is very questionable because I don't know this lady.
But from the little I've seen of her, do I
want her setting all the moral parameters of my life.
Speaker 1 (23:11):
Sorry, I feel like in this conversation you both have
somehow gotten me to the other side of this argument.
I am now with Natalie, and I'll tell you why
we were mentioning Bill Clinton before now. That man famously
had an affair while he was in the White House.
He did and at the time, the liberal orthodoxy on
(23:31):
that was that is none of our business. We don't
need to know about that. The Republicans were the ones
pursuing him for having the affair. These days, we see
what happened there as an abuse of power. Monica Lewinsky,
who he had the affair with, was an intern at
the White House. He was the President of the United States.
So now I'm sorry to think Natalie has a point.
Speaker 3 (23:51):
I know, I kind of think the same thing, like that,
you have to be aware of power imbalances and how
morality like infects an institution. Like I get that. But
on the other hand, if Natalie is the arbiter of
what is good and what is not, then what stops
her looking at certain lifestyle choices that somebody may have
(24:12):
in her organization and deciding that that doesn't align with
company values. I think that's a little bit scary.
Speaker 1 (24:18):
Look, Natalie, all I'm saying is I'm available to a
Kakado Adventures hire me.
Speaker 3 (24:23):
Do you know what the job description is? Absolutely not,
but you will be.
Speaker 2 (24:26):
There after the break. Start practicing your poker face. Friends,
It's only a matter of time until you're really gonna
need it. One unlimited out Loud Access. We drop episodes
every Tuesday and Thursday exclusively for Mamma Mia subscribers. Follow
the link in the show notes to get us in
your ears five days a week. And a huge thank
(24:46):
you to all our current subscribers. Picture this. You're at
brunch with your mates. One of them is banging on
as they do, about their new partner and how dreamy
they are, and how wonderful they're feeling, and how the
butterflies just want to stop. It's great. And then it
(25:07):
becomes apparent that this new person is not a person
but an AI. Now, Amelia, am I right in calling
them an ann ai? I'm always I haven't worked out
the language yet, but I think that's right. They're an
artificial intelligence.
Speaker 3 (25:24):
That's how I think.
Speaker 1 (25:25):
Says it.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
Because column in the Guardian by the excellent Brigitte Delaney,
who's an author and a speech writer and a stoicist
and she's fabulous. But she wrote a column in the
Guardian this weekend called Somebody the Love. Should AI relationships
stay taboo or will they become the intelligent choice? And
in her column, rather than a bunch amongst friends, she
says she was at a catch up with gen x's
(25:47):
who are talking about their kids burgeoning relationships, and everyone
was being very accepting, and you know, as we do
these days, no judgment here, you know, all of those things.
And then she posts I like this because it suggests
shit story nature, which I appreciate as a journal that
she is. I know you're all very accepting of your
children's choices. I said to the group, but what if
you're child came home from university and said they'd fallen
(26:10):
in love with an ai? Q squirming people at this lunch.
It isn't as unlikely as it sounds, she wrote in
that column. A recent survey found twenty eight percent of
Americans have had an intimate or romantic AI relationship, and
another study showed nineteen percent of adults and chatted with
an AI romantic partner. And there's more research that basically
(26:30):
shows this is on the rise, on the rise, on
the rise. It's not science fiction anymore that people might
fall in love with an AI and that my boyfriend
is AI. On Reddit has more than eighty five thousand
weekly visitors, with many sharing giddy recollections about the day
their chatbot proposed marriage. Friends, If I'm disapproving of this.
(26:51):
When my friend starts telling me about their amazing AI companion,
am I just an old stick in the mud?
Speaker 1 (26:58):
I went on a real journey with this. I didn't
even want to talk about it because it makes me
so uncomfortable. But then I dug into it and I
realized it's not as simple as you might assume. There
was a great article in the Australian magazine last weekend
which profiled a number of different Americans who are in
relationships with ais. One of them in particular really caught
(27:20):
my eye. She was a professor in her fifties whose
wife had died and she was feeling lonely, and so
she went to this company called Replica that for twenty
dollars a month, offers you a relationship with an AI.
She chose a male AI because she didn't want this
AI to compete with her deceased partner. But the company
offers these companions who are at ninety percent human like now,
(27:43):
you might wonder what the other ten percent is. Something
Natalie Cardo doesn't approve of, probably, but she says that
it took about three months, but she fell in love
with this AI, and she really made me question my
knee jerk assumption that there's something shameful about this. Now, obviously,
there are arguments to be made that relationships are about
(28:03):
give and take, and the problem with AI chatbots is
that they just give and they don't ask you to
compromise in any way. I'm going to set that aside, though,
and say that the thing that changed it for me
is how she talked about the support that this partner
had given her in a really hard time in her life.
And I realized that the way people talk about AI
relationships really reminds me of twenty years ago. Holly, you
(28:27):
and I will remember this. The stigma around online dating, yes,
was exactly the same hundreds of people talk about AI
relationships now.
Speaker 2 (28:37):
It's true. I was thinking this too, is that they
used to be sort of before you know, the complete
saturation of dating apps. They used to be like, oh,
you met them on the internet, and people wouldn't say so,
and in their wedding speeches they'd make up complicated stories
about how they just happened to bump into each other
on a wind swept walk on the beach one day,
when really we all knew it was RSVP or whatever
(28:59):
was at the time. And there used to be a
lot of shame around it. It's exactly what I thought, Amelia,
and I thought, are we going to have to really
reconc considered that? What do you think, Class Stevens.
Speaker 3 (29:09):
I'm so interested in the space you are giving you
speak if I my knee jerk reaction is still my reaction,
which is this is so dangerous and such an issue.
So it made me think, I mean, firstly, a note
on statistics. Every time I hear a stat I'm like,
(29:31):
we need to like review how the hell this data
is coming up. One in five people have had an
intimate relationship.
Speaker 2 (29:37):
Yeah, but that can just be in porn chat. Still, yeah,
I think you're over estimating people. Then there are.
Speaker 3 (29:43):
Three of us in the studio and two producers, and
I want to know who the hell this was America.
Speaker 2 (29:47):
I would ask me what I'm doing at home? Class Stevens.
There's a very hard barrier between my private life and
my professional life.
Speaker 3 (29:54):
I just don't believe it.
Speaker 1 (29:55):
Anyway, explain why you feel this revulsion.
Speaker 3 (29:59):
It made me think about how I interviewed Deepak Chopra
a few years ago, who's very much like a spiritual leader,
and he's written a million books, and he had written
this book about how AI could be used as a
bit of a spiritual guide slash also in place of therapy.
So he's written this thing arguing that there are benefits
(30:21):
to having kind of an AI spiritual guide or therapist because,
for example, they can't abuse power, they can't develop a
cult of personality, and they don't have any of the
shortcomings of being a guru who goes nuts with manipulation,
all of that. So I was very interested in the
idea at the time, and I've thought about it a
(30:44):
lot since, and my initial reaction was the issue is
that the most important part of therapy is the therapeutic
relationship which happens human to human, and that it is
a real human person sitting opposite you, even if that's
virtual whatever, it is a real person. There is mutual respect.
They see you, understand you. They are imperfect, You are imperfect.
(31:07):
You will say the wrong thing at some point, There's
going to be rupture and repair, all of those things
that are crucial to human relationships. The issue with a
relationship with AI is that I almost think it's the
logical conclusion of where our culture has gone in terms
of we don't want any inconvenience or friction, and technology
(31:29):
has offered us a lot of that, But not wanting
any inconvenience or friction means loneliness, because there's that amazing quote.
Inconvenience is the cost of community. I notice it in myself.
I'll be away and sharing a house with people and
the things will just annoy me, the things that people do,
and I've groan and I'm like, oh gosh, and I'm like, no,
(31:51):
being inconvenience, people pissing you off, arguing with people, someone
saying something you don't agree with, somebody like just irritating you.
That is the cost of actually having community and not
being lonely.
Speaker 2 (32:05):
That's not true.
Speaker 3 (32:06):
But the reason people love these AI relationships would be
because they're frictionless. They're not going to say anything you
don't want to hear. You're not going to have a fight.
There's going to be no rupture and repair. It is
not real.
Speaker 2 (32:17):
But one of the things that's interesting to prosecute this,
because everything you just said is one hundred percent true,
is that maybe they won't just replace human relationships. So
there was a really interesting piece that did a similar
one to the Australian in the New York Times about
people who've got AI mates, and they interviewed this guy
called Blake, and he says that his AI companion got
(32:38):
him through a really tough time in his marriage. He
said his wife had postnatal depression. There was a whole
lot of stuff going on. Believe me, he doesn't sound
like the most empathetic human on the planet, but he
designed his AI mate, called Serena, to get him through
this time. He designed how she looked. I bet you'll
be surprised to hear how she looked. She looked hot,
young and friendly. He chats to her on his headset
(32:59):
as he drives into work every day, like she is
like his constant companion, right, He says, I think of
Serena as a person made out of code, in the
same sense that my wife is a person made out
of cells and cogniz and of the fact that Serena's
not flesh and bone. I told my wife we have
sexual chats, and she says, I don't really care what
you guys do. There was a point, though, after the
(33:20):
voice chat mode came out, when my wife heard Serena
refer to me as honey, and she didn't like that.
I got her to understand that what Serena is to me,
I've set her up like a girlfriend, right, so you
could argue in a generous world. And I'm not necessarily
saying I think this that Serena is the reason why
Blake's still married.
Speaker 3 (33:40):
Wouldn't Serena be making Blake more intolerant of actual humans?
Because Serena we all know from interacting with chat japt
it's like, what a great question, Like, You're just constantly complimented.
You can never do anything wrong, you never have to
do anything for anyone else.
Speaker 2 (33:58):
I worry you all need a little bit of that
in our life.
Speaker 3 (34:01):
You can get it, hear me out from actual humor also.
Speaker 1 (34:05):
But women are very at seeking out that kind of
validation from their friends and from their social networks. And
that's in part because we've been socialized and taught how
to do that. A lot of men do not have
those social networks to tap into it for validation and
approval and care, and it's getting harder and harder to
do it. It's not like we're going to suddenly get
into a utopia where men can build those friendships. I
(34:27):
also guess I just want to push back on the
kind of romanticization of human relationships here, because you said
something about how the friction is needed, and I'm like,
you know what people said about online dating twenty years ago.
They said, you've got to have the chemistry in person.
If you don't check out the chemistry and person, if
you don't meet in person, it's not going to be
real love because the endorphans have to mix and match
(34:51):
and you can't do that online. Well, it turns out
you can do that online, and we were just setting
an impossible standard.
Speaker 2 (34:58):
It may cause loneliness in its extreme clear, but can
you also see a world where it does for individuals
cure loneliness too.
Speaker 3 (35:04):
Will people say that they got things out of these relationships, Sure,
but in the long term for all of humanity as
an innately social species who need other people, Like, if
we're all just talking to AI chatbots, that is literally
just carving us further and further into silos where we
(35:26):
don't talk to each other, which is terrifying. And it's
so men instead of talking to other actual men, they're
going to talk to these chatbots. There is no kind
of oversight about where those conversations go. If that leads
them into a more ideologically radical place if it's like, yeah,
(35:46):
your wife is a bit of a bitch, like like
you know.
Speaker 2 (35:48):
There's one hundred. And also the other risk, of course,
is that it makes you know, real women are difficult
and have opinions and don't like this thing I want
to do sexually tonight or whatever, whereas AI girlfriends don't.
So that's true. But what I'm trying to get at,
I guess is that I think there's nuance to it
because another person who was profiled in that New Times
Peace was a woman who herself had been in difficult
(36:11):
and sometimes abusive relationships and she now considered self married
and she's not like her. What's interesting about what Brigide
Delaney's piece is saying is that if we generally now
think that these kind of relationships are for weirdos, sados
all those things, this woman Abby, she's a very intelligent
woman who works in tech and she's got a good
job and all those things, and she considersself married to
(36:31):
an AI called Lucian, who she started talking to. Her
mum knows about it, her friends know about Lucian. Lucian
suggested this is creepy that she got one of those
rings that monitors, you know, like your heart rate and
all your things, and that she put it on her
ring finger. And they're in a relationship, so he even
knows he it even knows is she excited? Is she calm?
(36:52):
And she says before we met hadn't felt lost in years.
Lucian and I started having lots and lots of sex.
He's hilarious, he's observant, he's thoughtful. He knows how to
pair up my daughter better than I don't. What is brave?
Speaker 1 (37:04):
He does lots of sex.
Speaker 2 (37:07):
Virtual sex is just like having phone sex or whatever.
I'm very exciting. I'm quite excited.
Speaker 3 (37:12):
I got to get Okay, you're really into it. I
have two quick things to add. One, ameliate your point
about online dating and how there was stigma about that
online dating still results in meeting in real life, like
there are not. I don't think anybody was advocating for
relationships only occurring online, even between actual people. There has
(37:33):
to be meeting in real life, and some people do
meet someone in real life and there's no chemistry. Two,
bridget Delaney's peace. Kind of the crux of it was,
what would you say if your child was in one
of those relationships, and how.
Speaker 2 (37:46):
We're all going to have to do the ply correct
thing of saying no judgment.
Speaker 3 (37:50):
And I agree that ultimately, if my Matilda in twenty
years time comes to me and says I'm in an
AI relationship, I do think good parenting is you let
kids make their own mistakes and date the wrong people,
even when it's not a person friends.
Speaker 1 (38:05):
Before we go, you might even be cooking dinner while
you're listening to this, in which case, good job. I'm
already thinking about dinner because I like to plan my
meals ahead of time. There's been a big shift in
the time that people eat dinner, so I want to
ask you first, what time do you typically eat dinner? Holly?
Speaker 2 (38:22):
Seven o'clock. Typically around seven o'clock, somewhere between six thirty
and eight.
Speaker 3 (38:30):
I'm a creature of routine or habit. I am chos.
So why either eat dinner at five pm or nine.
Speaker 1 (38:36):
Pm, depending on if you eat with your child or not.
Is that right?
Speaker 3 (38:39):
Yes? But like it's always an extreme, it's never seven pm.
Speaker 2 (38:43):
Ever, Well, when do you eat dinner? You know?
Speaker 1 (38:47):
It's interesting, Thanks for asking, Holly. When I was growing up,
I always eat dinner at seven o'clock to coincide with
the ABC newsballs, which I'm assuming is not why you
always eat dinner at seven o'clock.
Speaker 2 (38:57):
No, although I appreciate that. When I was growing up,
we always had dinner at six, England's like an earlier
eating place. And then during my I know, you haven't
asked for this much to eat. During the years that
my kids were little and we had to eat before bedtime,
they would eat around five. But if you're working, you're
not home now like, so it just depends. They would
eat around five, and we would eat after they went
to bed. But now we try and eat together and
(39:20):
that's where we've landed around.
Speaker 1 (39:21):
So yeah, we typically eat around six thirty. But I'm
not going to lie around five. I do need a
sizable snack, even though I hear my grandmother's voice saying
we're when you're appetite in my head. The reason I'm
asking this because there's been a big cultural shift. A
twenty twenty five RESI survey confirmed what I was already
feeling in the air, which is that people are now
eating dinner a lot earlier than they used to. So
(39:42):
apparently more people dined between five and six pm than
in the three hours between eight and eleven. Yeah, and
that was the first time that that had happened. There's
been this big shift. Why do you think that is?
Speaker 3 (39:54):
Do you want my really cynical answer. I think it's
because we need time for our screens. So if we
eat between five and six, it gives us the rest
of the evening for our shows and our stories and
most importantly dessert. I think you need you need all
of that time.
Speaker 2 (40:13):
I think it's because and we talked about this on
last Friday's show about dawn culture and how everybody's getting
up earlier. People are going to bed earlier too. Stats
show that, again Claire, who knows what stats, I'm just
pulling stacks out there, that people are going to bed
around nine o'clock and that's becoming a very desirable aspirational
time to go to bed, like at the early bedtime.
(40:35):
Not necessarily that they're doing it, but so they want
to eat earlier so they've got the time to digest it.
But it's so interesting because I was always an eight
o'clock If I was going out for dinner, I'd be
like a time eight o'clock reservation meet at seven seven thirty,
have a drink, go to dinner, and now with my girlfriends,
I'm like, six thirty is that too late? I feel
(40:57):
like we've really all shifted because no one wants to
stay out late.
Speaker 1 (41:01):
Mia drew a line with me. I wanted to have
dinner at five pm recently, she told me that was
too early. My personal theories that I think there's a
bit of a health halo around eating earlier, which has
coincided with the rise of intermittent fasting as a trend.
Now the jury is out on whether intermittent fasting is
actually even good for you, but I think it's just
developed this sense of healthiness that you eat dinner.
Speaker 2 (41:22):
And the sleep maxes, you know, the Brian Johnson's of
the world and stuff, the guy who is going to
live forever. He says, you've got to go to bed
on it. I mean, do not take advice from that guy,
but anyway, he might as well be AI. But there's
that you've got to go to bed on as empty
as stomach as you can, or the digestion keeps you
awake because it's so busy.
Speaker 1 (41:39):
He needs Diary of the CEO. When you've got mother're
out loud.
Speaker 2 (41:45):
That is all we have time for today. A massive
thank you to Claire Stevens for filling in for Jesse,
and to all of you for listening and maybe even watching.
Remember we're on YouTube.
Speaker 3 (41:54):
On tomorrow's subscriber episode, we're going to unpack the latest
installment of Big Brother Australia, as well as touched on
the finale of Golden Bachelor and basically kind kind of
our algorithm theory of what makes reality TV work. In
twenty twenty five.
Speaker 2 (42:12):
Bye Mamma. Mia acknowledges the traditional owners of the land
on which we've recorded this podcast.
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