July 31, 2025 • 50 mins
‘Maybe you’re not actually trying’. It’s a Substack post that stopped us in our tracks this week, and it’s reframed everything we thought we knew about energy and effort. Mia has just one question that can determine your personality type.
Also, can we be saved from 'brain rot'? There are a handful of ways to ‘unrot your brain’ and Jessie is itching to put them to the test.
And our recommendations, including a book that is sure to lift you out of a reading slump, a sparkly newsletter to feed your soul, and some brilliant Aussie fiction which Holly loved.
Plus, we get a little teary in the studio as Mia shares some personal news.
Support independent women's media
Recommendations
Mia wants you to read Glimmers by Lucy Ormonde
Jessie wants you to read Don't Let Him In by Lisa Jewell and Torn by Nicole Madigan.
Holly wants you to read The Golden Sister by Suzanne Doh and Your Friend And Mine by Jess Detmann
What To Listen To Next:
- Listen to our latest episode: Is It OK To Flirt Outside Of Your Relationship?
- Listen: How Do You Make A Baby? Jessie Has Questions.
- Listen: The Great Feminist Exhaustion & One Of Us Has No Charisma
- Listen: A 10 Year Age Gap & Small Town Judgement
- Listen: Meghan Sussex, Jessica Biel & The Coffee Cup Test
- Listen: Every Nosy Question About Holly’s Holiday Answered
- Listen: The Coldplay Affair. And What The Internet Did Next.
- Listen: The Salt Path Scandal That Blew Up
- Parenting Out Loud: Sleep Divorce, 'Hopeless' Dads & Goodnight To The Bedtime Story
- Connect your subscription to Apple Podcasts
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
You're listening to a MoMA Mia podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Mamma Mia acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters
that this podcast is recorded on Welcome friends to MoMA
Mia out Loud. It's what women are actually talking about
on Friday, August the first. Don't think about that too much.
I'm Holly Wayne Wright.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
I thought it was may. I'm mea Friedman, and I'm
Jesse Stevens.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
And here's what's on our agenda for today. Just how
rotten is your brain after years of attention nibbling scrolls?
We happily have a cure.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
And the brutal essay that I haven't stopped thinking about
that thing in your life you're struggling with. What if
you're actually not trying that hard to fix it?
Speaker 1 (00:55):
And I have some personal news later in the show,
but first, in case you missed it, which you probably did.
A woman called Aaron Punton who's twenty two from Northumberland.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
I think that's in northern England. Yep, ok, down my
way sort off.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
She has been forced to bleach her whole house after
discovering that a seagull she drunkenly carried home from a
night out had bird flew ah, any questions, very many questions.
Speaker 3 (01:23):
I like how in the script it said drunk woman
takes seagull home and I was like, is that MEA's
personal news?
Speaker 1 (01:31):
And I was like, this is interesting. She says that
she had no idea why, but she picked up the
bird without even a thought. Have you seen a TikTok
from outside of Wetherspoon's pup. Here's a little bit of
the TikTok that she made at the time with She
just flipped her camera around and posted this to TikTok mancaensa,
come on home.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
Well, my bad has been moose. Look but old mane
he's a beauty. He actually wants to stop my woman everything.
Speaker 1 (01:59):
But I've got action them. The song she's singing is
Valerie by Amy white House. I don't know, maybe she
decided that the bird should be called Valerie. If you're
just listening to us and not watching this podcast, she
has this seagull which is the size of a small dog. Yes,
under her arm they have seagulls that big.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Well, they're beating a lot of chips, these seagulls. They're
hanging around outside par But the right of normous date night,
you're getting a lot of chips. Also that accent, that
Northeastern accent w chef's kiss and.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
Make everything funny.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
The seagulls, in case you're worried about crueltied animals, the
seagull is very happily under her arm, like it reminded
me of that episode of and just like that. Then
carry had the pigeon bag, except it was a real
seagull and it was enormous.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
Someone's like, excuse me, is that?
Speaker 1 (02:43):
So she carried the seagull home, and she was baffled
to find it flying around her living room. The next morning,
she said, I don't even know what made me pick
him up. I put him in my sitting room with
a blanket. When I woke up in the morning, i'd
forgotten and he was just floating around the sitting room.
I dropped him off with the vets the next day
in a box and was told he had bird flu.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
Maybe that's a clue to why I was a little
bit slippy and allowed himself to be. He wasn't feeling great.
He thought you were to take him home, give him
a lambsippotment a bed.
Speaker 3 (03:12):
My first reaction was this bird flu ridden seagull is
better than some of the things I have taken home
after a drunk night out because I've worken up and gone,
you have something worse than bird flu out of my house.
I read an essay over the weekend that, on the surface,
posited quite a simple idea, but I have not stopped
thinking about it. Kate Hall published a substack piece called
(03:35):
maybe You're Not Actually Trying, and she begins by telling
this story about a stalker she had years ago, and
after a particularly bad experience with this stalker, she writes,
and now if I thought and snapped into action, except
that I didn't. Instead, I curled up in a ball
and cried and told friends who suggested contacting the police,
that there was no point that no one would be
(03:55):
able to help. In the end, it was her husband
who contacted all the right people and Boom sorted it
all out. Now, this isn't to minimize stalking, and it's
an imperfect example because for a lot of people it
is a really, really difficult thing to address. But the
reason she used this example was because she said, why
did it take another person getting involved for me to
(04:15):
realize I wasn't actually trying? And she goes on to
nut out this idea of selective agency in capable people,
and how there are three theaters in our lives. So
we've got work, say, we've got relationships, and there's other
and she says that we all know of the high
achieving boss who can't seem to hold down a relationship,
(04:36):
or the person at work who will throw everything at
a complex problem and fix it, and yet they're feeling
ill but won't take the first step.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
Of going to the doctor right.
Speaker 3 (04:46):
And her suggestion is that we all assume that there's
some area of our lives where we are without realizing it,
frozen in time, and she challenges us to locate it. Maia,
do you relate to this?
Speaker 1 (05:01):
I also read this essay and was really struck by
it because the most interesting part of the story is
about when she thinks about it later. There's a period
of time from when it starts happening. It goes on
for years that this person's essentially stalking her and emailing her,
and it's years later when it sort of escalates that
(05:21):
her husband says, please, can you let me get involved?
And he sorts it out, and what she realizes is
that the time in her life when he first came in.
She was at a very different time in her life,
and she felt that she wasn't capable of it, and
she sort of got frozen in that, and she didn't
realize that several years down the track she was in
(05:42):
a much better position to deal with it, but she
got stuck into that headspace of I can't.
Speaker 3 (05:48):
It's an unfixable problem, fixable.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
Problem, and I really relate to this idea of everything's ruined,
nothing can fix it, like I will sometimes get like that.
And the only way I can describe how it feels
inside is that I do feel about six or seven
years old or even younger, and I'm stamping my foot
and I'm like it's all real and I can't. I can't.
Speaker 3 (06:11):
I thought about what it was in my life. What
am I not actually trying at? And yet I'm putting
a lot of effort in, but I'm not actually trying,
Like I'm not really workshopping this problem. I wondered if
there was a clue for all of us in our
word of the year. If our word of the year
is often the thing that we've not actually that we value,
but we've actually not tried at. So mine is creativity.
(06:32):
I've been talking about it. Oh yeah, I took a
big game about how I'm going to.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
Be really creative.
Speaker 3 (06:36):
Yes, there's this Simpsons quote that says something like, we've
tried nothing and we're all out of ideas. That's my
approach to creativity. Have I done anything? No, but I'm
going I just can't. How will I write a book?
I've virtually tried nothing, but the helplessness of it, I'm
quite stuck in.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
Do you think that's sometimes whole because there have been
years when we've all done our word of the year
and we've really failed. Do you think that's about just
outsourcing our word of the year and not trying going
I've made it my word of the year, so it
will magically have it.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
It's sort of that word of the year is so
I don't actually have to knuck anything. It's already done. Yeah.
I think that's a very true, very good insight, Jesse.
I'm really interested in this idea of high agency individuals
and low agency individuals because I immediately can pick people
in my life now. I know that this is because
she said, as you've said, Jesse, think about the different theaters,
(07:29):
as she calls them, relationships, work, and then she says
kind of self care, and what she means by that
is not massages and stuff.
Speaker 3 (07:35):
It's like health.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
Therapy, exercise, you know, like eating well, like looking after yourself.
So think about those three areas. You might be high
agency in one but not in others. But there are
definitely people who are just more high agencies. The definition
of these two broadly are high agency individuals are proactive,
see themselves as shapers of their own destiny, and actively
work to overcome obstacles. Mia, I think you are pretty
(07:59):
high agency. You're like, when I come to you with
a problem, You're like, do this and this and this,
and I'm like, okay. Low agency individuals tend to be
more passive, real active, and feel a greater sense of
helplessness or external control over their circumstances. So when you
kind of go, well, you know, it's just complicated and
I just cut you know.
Speaker 3 (08:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
And it's like the difference between me and my friend Penny,
for example, who I will talk about like, oh, we
need to get a new bathroom or something. I'd probably
talk about that for two years. And in the first
three sentences of me saying that she's already packed up
her bathroom called the builder got twenty five tile samples? Like,
you know, whatever it is? Is your bias to action
(08:40):
or is your bias to pondering? Do you know what
I mean?
Speaker 1 (08:44):
To your point? I think I am sometimes too high
agency because I just also want to fix everybody else's problems,
which is like, can be quite controlling. I get exasperated
by people who are low agency. And I'll give you
an example. I think a really good indicator of high
agency low agency. I'm so baffled by people who don't
get their driver's license, because to me, that's the ultimate
(09:08):
in agency.
Speaker 3 (09:10):
I think you're exactly right, But do you know how
I was when I got my life, oh like late twenties.
Speaker 1 (09:16):
What not late twenties? I knew you before that.
Speaker 3 (09:20):
I reckon you met me before I had a drivers
Like are you serious?
Speaker 2 (09:23):
Nah?
Speaker 1 (09:24):
To me, I put outside licenses in a particular basket
of I'm going to be harsh and say victims. I
don't really mean that, but passivity, like I've got no
agency in my life. Help me understand.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
Funny, But I think that that's it is a good example.
Although you could put a lot of circumstances in that
do you live in a good public transport like all
of those things. But I get what you mean. Though
you're not driving your You're literally not driving your y.
You are relying on other people to drive you whatever.
That looks like that is definitely true. But I think
it's really interesting how you can be high agency in
(09:59):
some areas because if you think about those theaters of work, relationships,
self care. In work, I do try hard, like I
get most things done. I take on more projects. I
do want to want not very high agency with it,
but not always like really effectively like that. I'm a
bit of a procrastinator at a time, but I do
a lot. But then say, how long have you guys
(10:19):
been listening to me talk lately? I mean over the
years you've talked about many things in French, but like
about how I'm gonna like embrace exercise this year again
because I've been through phases where I really have or
meditation or whatever, like I bang on and on and
I've got to look after myself more.
Speaker 3 (10:36):
To look remember you were buying a new car for
like six years.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
Yes, like I'm very I can be very low agency.
Whereas so even though I'm supposed to be looking after
myself better. I'm like putting off doctor's appointments because I
haven't got time for that, and I didn't get that
test they needed, and you know what, I'll just let
that roll. So her theory would be that side of
myself is stuck somewhere and it needs unsticking, whereas the
work side of myself is not stuck. It's in motion,
(11:01):
it's with you.
Speaker 1 (11:03):
I don't think you can work in digital media, or
certainly you can't be successful in digital media without having
high agency, because there's not a lot of time to
just sit around and wait for something to happen. You've
got to make it happen or get left behind.
Speaker 3 (11:14):
I think it's probably that your energy is finite, and
that we spend it in ways that might not be
conscious or chosen, but that a lot of people are
incredibly effective at work and are not so effective when
they walk in the door at home. But I think
that a piece of this puzzle is learned helplessness, right,
So that's a psychological concept that sort of suggests that
if you've had a series of negative life events happen,
(11:38):
particularly in childhood, you begin to think that basically you
have no bearing on the world around you. So I
remember we learned in psychology about this experiment that they
did with an elephant, and they got the elephant and
put ropes around the elephant's ankle when the elephant was
a baby, and it would struggle and struggle and struggle,
and eventually even when it got really really big and
(11:59):
it was a grown up elephant and one struggle, it
would have been released from this rope. But by that
point it is stuff trying, because it was just like,
I'm struck to this rope. This is what my life
is like.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
That's sad. That's like the Romanian orphans who don't cry
because they know that no one's coming.
Speaker 3 (12:13):
Exactly exactly right. So there's a piece of this puzzle
which is about negative life experiences, about things like domestic violence.
I think when you go are you trying, there's an
element of why are you still in that relationship? Which
is a really complicated yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
So it's the wrong way to pick up this piece
of information about like are you really trying is not
to go all the problems in your life are your
fault because you're not trying. It's much more complicated than that,
but on a more sort of simple, high level of
things that we know that at other times in our life,
when we have applied ourselves to it in the same
(12:50):
manner that we bring to an area where we have
high agency, we can shift the dial.
Speaker 3 (12:54):
Yeah. Like, I felt as though I was at a
particular place in my late teens twenties where I had
that sort of propensity towards depression, and in times in
my life when I've been particularly anxious and depressed, this
is the first thing I go to. No problem is solvable,
brow my arms up.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
It's a feeling of overwhelm. Yes, yes, And you're saying
more than overwhelm, it's helplessness and hopelessness.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (13:17):
Yeah. Like, And the correlation between learned helplessness and depression
is I mean that they're like the same thing, which is,
if you walk around the world thinking you have no impact,
it's probably healthier to think you have more of an
impact on the world than you actually do that your choices.
So like, there are two types of people, people who
think that their choices will have a real bearing on
what happens in their lives and the world.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
That's what I think, And.
Speaker 3 (13:39):
In fact, apparently the older you get a lot of
older people start to fall into the learned helplessness because
I think they look at their lives and go, I
don't really have that much control.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
I remember being in a terrible relationship, an abusive relationship,
and I held all the cards. It was so weird
because on paper, I had all the agency. He was
living in my apartment, he was driving my car.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
I had the job.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
He was unemployed, he was a drug addict. I wasn't.
I had family, support and friends and he didn't. And
yet he did such a number on me over a
couple of years that I had this learned helplessness and
hopelessness to the point where I didn't feel like I
had any agency. And I remember a close girlfriend of
mine said, kick him out, change the locks, get the
cleaners in, and get him out of your life. And
(14:24):
that felt like an impossible thing for me to say.
And it wasn't, ironically, until he went overseas and I
had that space from him that I was able to
end it. But then years later I saw her in
the same situation and I said the same thing to
her and she couldn't recognize it and she couldn't do it.
Speaker 2 (14:40):
This is really interesting about people telling you, because one
of the things that is written in this newsletter is
she says, apply yourself in the areas where you know
your low agency, but you could be higher agency, you
know what I mean, not necessarily for complex reasons. How
have I done my best to come up with a
set of potential solutions using all the resources I have?
Am I doing as well by myself as I would
buy any friend who came to me with the same problem.
(15:03):
So you know how people often say that to you,
like what would you say to a friend in this situation?
An interesting thought experiment, but it's not so much a
personality type as your story just shows as where you
are in that moment, because your friend had all the
answers until it was her problem, and then she needed
you to have all the answers, and although you might
not act with high agency in that moment, you might
(15:25):
file it away and get there.
Speaker 3 (15:27):
Which what your friend did is really I think like
the bedrock of therapy, right is that you feel like
you're stuck with all these positions and you can sit
there and the therapist who often leads you to your
own conclusions because they ask questions, and they ask questions,
But it might get to a point where it's like, oh,
well I could leave my job, and it's like, yeah,
you could, you know what I mean Like it kind
(15:47):
of leads you to a point of choice rather than rumination,
which I have.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
A therapist who once called her a thought trap, because
kids can get into this a bit where it's just like, no,
bet I can't. We'll try it, No, but I can't.
Maybe it's not kids, maybe it's certain type of people.
But I also, back to what you said about childhood,
I think it can go both ways because I think
if all your needs get met as a child, then
(16:12):
you can just feel like it's out of your control
and someone else will meet them. But at the same time,
if your needs don't get met, you learn well, I
have to do it myself, so I better have agency
or I'm going to be screwed. What an interesting essay.
We will put a link to it in the show notes.
Speaker 3 (16:28):
Justice for bitches who didn't get their license till late
in life. I would like the out louders to tell
me because there's a particular type of person and for
some reason they're my people.
Speaker 2 (16:37):
Out louders in a moment, how rotten is your brain
and is it savable. No, we have some good news friends,
good news. Brain rot. It's everywhere. So brain rot is
two things. Actually, it's a term bandied about by young
people like my son who's thirteen, as like a word
(16:59):
for a lot of content that they consume, a lot
of sort of pointless, very online content. So for a
while there when like skibbety toilet was the biggest thing
that Jen Alfers was saying, that was brain rot. Right,
But it's also.
Speaker 1 (17:13):
So it's different to hate watching.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
It's very different, so they love it. It's an actual genre,
so it's got sort of a few different meanings. But
brain rot is an actual sort of genre of content
that like kids will watch on YouTube. An example, they'll say, yeah,
this is brain is brain an example, not a kid.
Local will often show me tiktoks of an ai yetty
doing a day in life, and I feel it poison
(17:35):
my soul every time I say it, I go, this
isn't good.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
So it's something that's completely pointless.
Speaker 3 (17:40):
It is dumb.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
But also it's a thing that happens to us by
not literally. The scientists aren't entirely like in on the
fact that it's literally happened to us. But it's a
term that we now use for what fractured our attention spans,
What means we can't read books anymore, what means we
spend hours somehow we feel involuntarily talking of low agency
(18:02):
high agency scrolling TikTok or Instagram reels or YouTube shorts
or whatever it is your feet.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
It's like dirty in your brain.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
We feel as we're doing it, and we know it's mindless.
We know it's shallows surface and silly, and it's slowly,
slowly eroding our ability to focus deeply. So we might
then use it as like I've got brain wrong. Does
it sound familiar to you? Both?
Speaker 1 (18:25):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (18:25):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (18:25):
How far gone do you think your brains are? Before
I tell you the tricky steps to getting it back?
Speaker 3 (18:29):
Very very far. Most of what I consume is making
me dumber, and I have tried a few things to
fix it, so I'm interested to see if they are.
Speaker 2 (18:37):
Do you what do you watch or what do you
waste time on? Mea that you would consider brain rock?
Speaker 1 (18:44):
To me, it's less of a particular type of content
than jumping and the medium jumping jumping, jumping jumping, just
scrolling jumping, scrolling jumping.
Speaker 3 (18:54):
So I think. It's like there was this great article
about compression culture, which was this idea that we're trying
to get information as compressed as possible, that it's inefficient
to think, and so I reckon it's the three seconds,
three the second three seconds. And the other day I
stopped on a of a cake and it was being
decorated by a tennis racket and they were just doing
these brain and I watched it and watched it to
(19:17):
see the final result. They took it off. It was
just sludge. There was no point to it exactly.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
And it's like I'll start off by scrolling going, oh,
I'm going to look for like gardening whatever. But then
five minutes, ten minutes later, I'm watching someone do a dance,
and then I'm watching somebody teach someone else how to
do a dance. And then I'm to you, like, so
it's just And.
Speaker 3 (19:35):
What I find then is that I've trained my brain
to do these snippets. And then I sit down to
read a piece in the New York Times that's really meaty,
and I feel my brain go nah nahn and pull
myself away from it.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
They do that thing of I'll save that flater, I'll
save that flater. I'll save that for later. I have
a question, though, what's the difference between brain rot or
the act of rotting your brain, and just watching something
that's kind of mindless and soothing.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
I think soothing is a bit different, although we could
argue that all of this is self soothing in a way,
but I think the idea is that it is eroding
our ability to think more deeply.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
For example, something that I am watching a lot on
TikTok is ballerinas being fitted for or breaking in their
ballet shoes.
Speaker 2 (20:19):
That's very specific.
Speaker 1 (20:22):
There's no point to it. They're not dancing, they're not
actually dancing with their shoes. There's nothing artistic about it.
They're just being fitted for shoes or they're breaking in
the shoes or sewing on the ribbons. And I'm mesmerized.
Speaker 2 (20:34):
Yeah, I watched people endlessly packing lunches. I've never put
adult packed lunches anyway. A substack called plum Pits, spelled
out brilliantly recently, will link to it. But the writer
set out on a path to help us unrot our
brains because her kind of point was there are lots
of people who maybe did degrees, only one at this table,
but have studied things in depth, have applied themselves talking
(20:57):
about are you trying hard? Have applied themselves with a
lot of agency and focus to certain things in their lives,
who now feel like they just can't because of the
brain rotten. She sets out a path in this to
remember who you were before the dullness set in which
I totally get what she means about that. So just
to warn you, there will be losses to doing this.
(21:18):
If you do set on this path to restore your
brain till it's pre rot status. You may not be
the first to know about the next Coldplay cheating meme.
You may not be fully across all the details of
I don't know Timothy shallow May's ladies. Jaunty Scarf like,
you have to hard sit at this table. But if
(21:40):
you're feeling a little bit sick about all the nonsense
you're inputting, here's her advice. She's like, don't quit all
those things, but just pause. She's like, for at least
three days, set yourself a challenge that whenever you feel
the itch to pick up and just mindlessly scroll, don't
push through that urge, just once, just twice, or set
(22:01):
aside some time when you're allowed to do it, but
you've got to push through the urge, like when you're
giving up smoking and you're like, I want a cigarette,
Well do something else. Yeah, I want a cigarette, Well
do something else. Like that, right, Let your dopamine system
stop firing like a broken vending machine, she writes, and
allow your prefrontal cort is to actually breathe. And while
you're at it, she had stop asking chat GPT. Every
(22:24):
little thing you know more than you think, Well don't
that's a good thing.
Speaker 3 (22:28):
I actually agree with that. I don't think CHATJPT is
good for the brain.
Speaker 2 (22:31):
Run Let yourself be bored Mia. You struggle with this,
let yourself sit in silence, she says, no phone, no music,
no stimulation, just ten or fifteen minutes of mental stillness
a day. She says. If you struggle with it a lot,
try what they call the Navy seal nap. If you
need structure to it, lie on the floor, feed up
(22:52):
on the couch, twenty minutes max twenty. It's not max,
so it doesn't have to be. It's not lazy. It's
neurological recovery. Oh I love that.
Speaker 3 (23:01):
I love that.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
Could we do that? No, you seal nap. Yeah, okay,
start writing. I mean we do write so, but like notes,
app paper word. She says, let yourself ramble, write something
ugly and tangled and undeveloped, not to produce or sound intelligent,
but to hear yourself. Again. Oh I love that. You
know how Liz Gilbert writes herself a letter from God
(23:23):
every morning. I don't know if you listen to Liz Gilbert,
if you listen to her content, you know this. I
used to hear her say that and be like, you
got like, I'm very confused. But that's what she's doing.
She's like, every morning, hear yourself. Like, if you're not
thinking this is going to be published, I'm going to
show this to someone.
Speaker 3 (23:40):
This is like because we're quietening through all of these things,
the inner monologue, Like, I think that it starts to
become crowded with all the things you're inputting.
Speaker 1 (23:51):
It's true because it's just social media is just and
the internet is everybody else's monologue outer monologue. And so
you're right, you do lose touch with well.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
You start your monologue starts taking on their monologue. Learn
something that fascinates you, pick a topic, anything, become.
Speaker 3 (24:07):
Obsessed Gwyneth, Yes, okay, take my PhD.
Speaker 2 (24:10):
Yeah, and read, But she says, read with curiosity and
out of your comfort zone. So if it helps, if
you need a challenge, do something like five books in
two months, one fiction, one nonfiction, one reread, one wild card,
one deep dive into something niche. What do you think
about this?
Speaker 3 (24:27):
I think a solution is reading. I think reading fixes everything.
Speaker 2 (24:30):
I can't though well when this is the problem, Because
when you're suffering from brain rot, and this happens to
me often, one of my first signals that my brain
isn't happy is I can't read.
Speaker 1 (24:40):
I try every book that you guys recommend. I just
started The Nightingale, I started The Safe Keep. Maybe stop
recommending you know what? Period? No, no, no.
Speaker 2 (24:49):
No, how you do it, how you try and get
into them, kindle, But do you like set yourself a
like a time frame?
Speaker 1 (24:57):
No. I'm always aware that the first few chapters are
going to be horrific of any book, because I just
hate that feeling. I love the feeling of being well,
I'm in it. That feeling just isn't coming anymore.
Speaker 3 (25:08):
You know how we're talking about it? Actually trying, I
reckon that if you went to the gym and every
time you tried to do a squat you couldn't because
you were so weak, then you'd start at a lower
level or whatever, and you just work your way up right.
And I reckon that it is exactly like a muscle.
(25:29):
I completely relate. I've had this issue lately, the more
I fragment. There's a term that this person who spent
years at Apple and Microsoft, her name is Linda Stone,
she called it continuous partial attention. And I think what
reading demands, I'm like pretty much any other activity we do,
is total focus for a long period, and the feeling
of flow when you lose sense of time is just
(25:52):
a dream. Like that's the best, the best thing. But
in order to get there, I think you've got to
be Like, whether it's I'm going to read for ten
minutes or whatever, I think you've just got to keep
trying night after night. I found with a few of
those books that it took me a few goes to
sit down and do it. And in fact, I'm actually
gonna argue against the ten minutes because I think often
(26:12):
you've got to do longer.
Speaker 2 (26:14):
Yeah, I actually think because ten minutes is a thing
that I did when I was first trying to break
out of one of those periods, and I'd be like,
I can commit to ten minutes. I'd set a timer
on my phone and I'd read, and then what you
want to do is the alarm goes off and you go, oh,
shut up, like yes, but sometimes it does take longer.
So the other thing I sometimes do, and I think
I've talked about this before, is like mark it out
(26:36):
as half an hour at some point in the day.
When I can do half an hour and go, that
is reading time. It's not I'm not stealing that time
from anything else. And again said a timer like it
sounds so silly because they sound like scientific ways to
get you to do something you don't want to do.
And we all love reading, but it's just a brain
another trick.
Speaker 1 (26:56):
Because I have started reading on the weekend and I'm
really into it. Sally Hepworth's new book. It's called Mad
Maybel and two things. Interestingly, I'm reading it on paper.
Speaker 2 (27:06):
Same that's helping, ye because.
Speaker 1 (27:09):
Obviously if you read on an Internet enable device, you fucked. Yeah,
it's just no coming back from that. But the other
thing that I've learnt to do is put my phone
in a different room. Yes, if I can reach my phone,
it's all over, or any device, it's all over. But
if I'm there just with a book or my kindle
on airplane.
Speaker 2 (27:29):
I have to do it. I'm writing, and so do
lots of other novelists that I thought were you know,
obviously they just slip into a flow state. Is put
the phone in a part of your house. You can't
hear it for a period of time. Like most of
us have responsibilities. You're going to have to go and
check it, you know. But again, you say, a timer
on something else for thirty minutes, photos elsewhere.
Speaker 3 (27:49):
There's all this brain imaging about what happens when you
read and how you read the word tennis and you
visualize and actually parts of your body feel the tennis
right like it's and the way it fosters empathy and nuance,
and you dive back into a book. And how remarkable
is it that your brain can pick up I always
(28:10):
find this when I'm in a really good state, is
that I dive back in. I read one sentence and go,
WHOA where am I? Who is this person? And then boom,
you're back in. And the fact that your brain is
able to do that. The complexity, the holding all of
those things at once is the opposite to what the
culture forces us to do otherwise, And so I feel
like it's so rehabilitated, Like when I go on holidays,
(28:33):
That's what I want to do because I know it's
makes me feel like genuinely refreshed.
Speaker 1 (28:38):
No one feels refreshed after scrolling the internet. No ever
after the break. It is recommendations time in time for
the weekend, and also some news from me.
Speaker 2 (28:47):
One unlimited out loud access. We drop episodes every Tuesday
and Thursday exclusively for Mamma MIAs subscribers. Follow the link
in the show notes to get us in your ears
five days a week. And a huge thank you to
all our current subscribers. Vibes ideas atmosphere, something casual, something fun.
Speaker 1 (29:13):
This is my best recommendation. It's Friday, so we want
to help set up your weekend with our best recommendations.
I'm going to go first. It is another newsletter. We've
been recommending a lot of newsletters today. This one is
by friend of the pod and friend of us, Lucy Ormond.
We've recommended her substack before. It's called a year of healing.
She was diagnosed with breast cancer about a year ago
(29:35):
and she has dedicated this year after completing her treatment,
to just getting back on track. And she writes this
beautiful newsletter which we'll link to in the show notes.
But while you were away hole, she sent one out
about you, and it's about people responding to it in
all different ways to her news and people dropped over
(29:58):
Lasagna's and came to chemo with her. But you, as
one of her closest friends, couldn't do that. You lived
not only in a different city, but a different state.
So what you just started to do was to send
her these glimmers, like little photos every day. Can you
tell us how this came about? Because she talks about
you do this every day for a year, and she
shared in this newsletter some of the photos that you
(30:20):
sent and some that she sent back to you. How
did it happen?
Speaker 2 (30:24):
It's funny because I feel like uncomfortable about this, obviously,
but also because it seems like such a little thing.
But I think that actually the sending of glimmers is
something really useful to do when you can't do anything else,
do you know what I mean? So a glimmer is
the opposite of a trigger. It's something in your day
that makes you feel good, grateful, happy, something sparkly in
(30:47):
your day, and being on the hunt for them is
supposed to be able to help lift your mood and
maybe even help your mental health loose. Because she's amazing
in many ways. She was going through the worst time
of her life, but she actually has a really good
support network. She has a very close family, she has
a strong network of really great, old, established friends. Everybody
(31:07):
was doing lots of things for her. Not that that
made it easy, of course, but it's certainly lightened the load.
But I'm far away. And also, if I'm incredibly honest,
I'm not the bringer A's and your friend. I don't
know how I'm wired or whatever, but I find that
kind of thing quite hard, and don't I find it
hard to know what the line is between intruding and helping,
(31:27):
and I don't know. I just struggle with that. So
for me selfishly, for me, the glimmers and I think
we've talked about them on a show. We talked about
the idea of looking for moments in your day that
made you happy, grateful. I mean, these are grateful as
to become a cheesy kind of word, I guess. So
I said to Luise, I'll send you you might want
to vomit. I think I wrote something like that, this
(31:49):
might want to make you vomit. But every day I'm
going to send you a glimmer and you don't have
to send one back, but you can if you want.
And so what I did is for every day in
my day, I'd have to look for one thing to
send a picture to for Lucy. And it might be
from my morning walk. It might be a particularly good
cup of tea. It might be a cucumber I'd grown
in my garden. It might be my dog. It might
be this show. It might be new lipstick. It might
(32:10):
be a book I was reading, but one thing in
every day that was a bright spot.
Speaker 1 (32:15):
Did it feel like pressure to find something every day?
Speaker 2 (32:18):
Well, what it felt like after a while is it
was as good for me as it was for Loose,
because I trained myself to look every day for something like,
without wanting to sound really cheesy, but something wonderful, something
very ordinary but wonderful. And some days are harder than others,
as we all know, to find a glimmer in right,
(32:40):
Because some days are shit or some days it's just boring.
Speaker 1 (32:42):
Did you store them like if you saw three glimmers
in a day?
Speaker 2 (32:46):
No, the rules were me. I had to be from
the day.
Speaker 1 (32:50):
I'm trying to gain the system.
Speaker 2 (32:51):
Yeah, it had to be from the day.
Speaker 1 (32:53):
So did you have to explain the glimmo?
Speaker 2 (32:55):
So some days I did, some days I exclaimed the glimmer.
But some days it's literally just the photo with the
word glimmer. And then the beauty of this for anyone
who's thinking of doing it for someone who's going through
a hard time. We all want to be in touch
with our friends when they're suffering, but it can act
be a big burden for them to have to constantly
update everybody, so like asking how are you today, how's
(33:17):
the treatment going, how do you feel or you feel
it well?
Speaker 1 (33:20):
What can I do?
Speaker 2 (33:20):
Yeah, it's a burden, right. Luce had a lot going on,
and she'd so this is an offering without an expectation
of receiving, although Lucy did frequently send them back. So
then we would go a period of time where we
were like in a volley of sending them back and forward,
and I'd know that Lucy was in quite a good space.
And then there'd be a few days where I'd send
a glimmer and not get one back, and I'd be like,
(33:43):
so then I might be like, okay, But I think
that's the beauty of it is it doesn't place expectation,
and that's an important thing. Anyway, I did do it
every day, I think I actually I think she was
generous to me in that newsletter because I think I
missed two days. I think it was three hundred and
sixty three pictures. But some days it's true that I
would sit up and bed and go, shit, I haven't
(34:03):
done it, yeah, and scroll my camera role and very
often i'd taken it. I'd just had center in the moment.
Speaker 1 (34:10):
So you wouldn't just do a quick selfie of your boobs,
maybe like.
Speaker 2 (34:15):
Look at this handsome man I'm sleeping next.
Speaker 1 (34:18):
I love that. It reminded me that I have a
friend who went through cancer and she set up a
group chat where she posted glimmers, and just everybody in
the chat just posted their glimmers, And as you say,
it was just this stream of it forced her to
look for something bright in her day. And other people,
could you know, do them when they when they felt
(34:39):
them and it was just like the opposite of doom scrolling.
Speaker 2 (34:42):
Yes, I love it. And the thing is is we did.
When I look back through that chat, because obviously that's
our text history, and some of the ones she'd put
in the newsletter, I'd forgotten all about them, and that
was lovely too. Like you know, it's cheesy, but writing
a gratitude journalism for everybody, but like taking a minute
every day to think of one good thing is.
Speaker 1 (35:02):
That's so beautiful. We'll put a link to that substack
in our show notes. It's gorgeous. And the other thing
we'll put a link to is the new substack launched,
which is wholly out loud.
Speaker 3 (35:12):
Well we did say that, Mama outloud.
Speaker 1 (35:14):
Our substack was.
Speaker 3 (35:15):
We were putting it on hiatus while we worked out.
Speaker 1 (35:17):
What to do with it, renovator and Holly freening it.
Speaker 2 (35:21):
She gave a friend, I've renovated that instead of my bathroom.
She took it over and.
Speaker 3 (35:25):
She's writing on and so we'll have a link in
our show notes. Goes out every week and you get
to read Holly's writing, which.
Speaker 2 (35:33):
Is so some days, it will be some weeks it'll
be a proper essay. Some days it might be a
few little things. There'll be some scarleous gossip in there
every week, maybe some glimmers, maybe a couple of glimmers.
You never know.
Speaker 1 (35:43):
Why not.
Speaker 3 (35:43):
I have two books to recommend. The first is I
just read the latest Lisa Jewel, which I think came
out this month.
Speaker 1 (35:50):
That's always good to get out of a writing right,
really good, although I did read a couple of bad ones.
Speaker 3 (35:55):
Yeah, okay, this is She's back.
Speaker 1 (35:56):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (35:57):
It's called Don't Let Him In. And this is a blurb.
It says he's the perfect man. He says he loves you.
You think he might even be made for you. Before long,
he's moved into your house and into your heart, and
then he leaves for days at a time you don't
know where he's gone or who is with, and you
realize if you looked back, you'd say to yourself, don't
let him in. And so it's about it follows kind
(36:18):
of different relationships she has. She is the best character
to watch the story unfold from its different perspectives. The
way she's drawn this man is just genius. Loved it
really pacy and satisfying. And again, like I don't persevere
with books I don't like, So this one, I how.
Speaker 2 (36:37):
Long do you give a book before you give up?
Both of you.
Speaker 3 (36:40):
I recently got three quarters of all way through a book,
ye went, I'm just not spending another minute on this.
I do not care how this ends. I kept doing
that actually with a few really big ones that have
come out lately that everyone else loves, and I've just gone, nah,
not for me.
Speaker 2 (36:55):
How long do you give it?
Speaker 1 (36:56):
Well? I keep trying to read the books that you
guys give me, and then I'm like, I've got to
keep going. I've got to keep going. It really depends,
you know. I always give it more than a couple
of chapters. But I also just forget what i'm reading.
I think, as I've got a kindle and I'm sort
of like reading, and then I forget, and then I've
I've got a million half started books. What about you?
Speaker 2 (37:17):
Yeah? Same. It takes a lot for me to abandon
a book, although increasingly less. It's interesting like I used
to be like, no, I've started, so I have to
finish it, But now I'm more likely to give it away.
But then, you know, I'm a writer, and I hate
the idea of someone give it up on your book.
Speaker 3 (37:32):
So I'm like, oh, yeah, you know what, if I've
done half your book and you've not got me in,
then I feel my fault on you problem and a
bonus recommendation Nicole Madigan. She is a writer at My
Maya and she has published her second book literally this week.
Speaker 1 (37:45):
She wrote an amazing book about being stalked.
Speaker 3 (37:47):
Yeah yeah, This one is called Torn. It's nonfiction and
it follows four women who are trying to make the
decision about whether they stay in an unhappy relationship or
whether they leave. And it's about addiction and it's about infidelity.
Speaker 1 (38:02):
Did you say it's nonfiction?
Speaker 3 (38:04):
So they're true stories. It's about the loneliness of being
in a relationship and thinking this isn't right and I
don't know what I'm going to do. It's going to
speak to a lot of out louders where they are
right now. So that is available now link in our
show notes.
Speaker 2 (38:18):
I'm going to recommend books too, which I think, given
what we were talking about, this is relevant and also
it's now given me the point of this week's newsletter,
right books, We'll put some of those books that we've
out loud as have said get them out of reading
ruts in there because you asked that question before, because
it seems to be the theme of today's show a
little bit. But there are two new Aussie fiction books
that I want to give a shout out to because
(38:38):
we have some incredible Australian fiction writers, we really do.
And some of them are very famous and you know
their names and some not so much. But the debut
novel from Susan Do is out this week. It's called
The Golden Sister. And you might have seen it around.
Because Susan Do is married to Arn dou and because
he is actually one of Australia's most successful writers as
(38:58):
well as being a painter and a TV personality, people
are very interested in the idea that, oh, like, he's
not the only writer in the family.
Speaker 3 (39:05):
Yeah, And she's often written with him.
Speaker 2 (39:07):
She has helped him turn his very successful memoi The
Happiest Refugee into a children's book, and she's worked in
schools and everything. But this is her first adult novel
and so I think a lot of people are kind
of interested in, like, oh, anyway, it's really really good.
It's called The Golden Sister and it's about it's not what.
I don't know what I expected exactly, because it's kind
(39:27):
of a small town story. But it's not in any
way twee or cheesy. It's actually quite dark in places.
But it's about a woman, a young woman who's lost
her sister's.
Speaker 3 (39:37):
Quite isn't it her twin?
Speaker 2 (39:38):
Yes? Yeah, in quite dark circumstances, and she becomes obsessed
with what happened, which is, you know, in some way
it sounds like a familiar trope, but the places it
takes her is really interesting. So this young woman becomes
obsessed with this to a point that she gets herself
involved in a very unsuitable relationship. She has all these
interesting kind of clashes with the people at work. It
(40:01):
paints a very good picture about the claustrophobic nature of
a smallish town. It's really good. It's called The Golden Sister,
and I found that really interesting. And the other one
is by Jess Stepman. It's called Your Friend of Mine.
Now we have loved her books in the past. She
is a beautiful writer. She wrote How to Be Second Best.
Speaker 1 (40:18):
Oh, I love that book.
Speaker 2 (40:19):
The one with the cake. Everyone else says the one
with the cake on the and others she's a beautiful,
beautiful writer. Her latest one's called Your Friend of Mine
and it's a very it's quite a gentle book, but
it turns out to have a lot to say. It's
really about friendship and about the different versions of yourself
over the years. It starts with this young woman who
gets a letter out of the blue that appears to
(40:39):
be from her best friend who died twenty years before.
Oh wow, it's really good. They're both great Aussie fiction books.
So that was The Golden Sister by Suzann Do and
Your Friend of Mine by Jessica Deptman, and they're both
available now.
Speaker 1 (40:52):
Before we go, I have some news which is not
news to anyone working on the show. Bet he's going
to be newsed to some out lauders. I am taking
a few months off the show. I'm taking a kind
of I guess it's long service leave because I have
been doing the show for more than ten years now.
It started as a weekly show, it's now a daily show.
(41:14):
During that time, that hasn't even been my day job.
My day job, obviously has been being the co founder
of Mauma Maa and all the things that that involves
in helping to run a business, and I've not taken
any time off. I've co founded Mamma Maa maybe eighteen
nineteen years ago, almost twenty years ago now, and I
(41:37):
didn't take any time off. I think I took two
weeks off when I had my youngest child, and I've
obviously taken holidays. But I'm pretty well known to be
a bit.
Speaker 3 (41:48):
Of a workaholic and not so good at holidays.
Speaker 1 (41:51):
Not so good at holidays, and part of that I've been,
you know, thinking about that a lot. It'll be interesting
to see how the next few months go, because I mean,
I'm still going to be around, but part of it
is that I'm not taken leave because I haven't been
able to out Louders who run their own businesses will
know that when you work for your self, you don't
(42:11):
get holidays, you don't really get weekends all the time.
And I haven't ever felt confident to take this much
time off I do now. I mean, you guys and
the show and our team, you know, led by our
wonderful Ruth and everybody that works on out loud and
the wider business here at Mama Mea. It's never had
(42:31):
a better team. You know, there's like one hundred and
fifty odd people working here, and we've got an incredible
CEO and executive team, and I feel like maybe I
can step back for a little bit and also creatively,
I feel like what you say, Jesse about creativity. When
(42:53):
you run a business, you're part of a group project,
and you're part of a team, and you have to
lead a team or work within a team. And then
this show is my favorite thing that I do, but
it is a team. And working on Strife that was
a team, and there are some things that I want
to do. Even when I was doing No Filter, that
was still a team. It was a little bit more me,
but it was still a team. And I'm feeling that's
(43:17):
itch to just go a bit quiet and maybe work
on some things of my own as part of my
andmea still but not being a team a little bit.
You know.
Speaker 3 (43:28):
You posted in the out Louders about this decision, and
one thing that keeps coming up in the out Louders
recently is women who are feeling burnt out, Like, are
you just feeling beyond burnt out?
Speaker 1 (43:40):
Yeah? Look, I didn't really want to say it, but
it's been interesting my voice carking.
Speaker 3 (43:45):
It for the last time Loud have picked psychosomatic.
Speaker 2 (43:49):
Yeah. When you put the news in the group, quite
a few of them said what I wanted to say
when you were talking about your voice was you need
to rest.
Speaker 1 (43:57):
Yeah, And a lot of them have said they've heard
that I've sounded a bit tired. The last few couple
of years particularly have been very challenging for a lot
of people. But there's been a lot going on behind
the scenes as well, and there's been a lot of
online harassment and various things that I don't want to
talk about. But it's a lot of pressure. There's a
lot of pressure being the face of this business and
(44:20):
a lot of pressure being the one who it's my
face on the door, and when things go wrong and
we employ wonderful people who are all human as I am,
and humans make mistakes, as I certainly do.
Speaker 3 (44:36):
But when yeah, you know we've had this before, I've
made a mistake and it's not my face, it's there's
someone else's face, and you own the words or the
mistakes or the perceived mistakes, I can't imagine that level
of pressure. And I feel as though there's a level
of burnout that I've certainly experienced in my career where
I've been able to rest, but to watch what happens
(45:00):
when you work through that burnout, which I think is
actually really relatable to a lot of business owners and
actually to a lot of women.
Speaker 1 (45:07):
And mothers and and all sorts of people care is
and you've done it lots of time. I don't have
a choice yet, Like.
Speaker 2 (45:12):
You've worked through burnout. I mean I've worked with you
a decade. You've worked through burnout many times. And I know,
I know you're not going to go and go to
the map.
Speaker 3 (45:24):
For three months of like like on the floor, she's going,
she's gonna get pissed off.
Speaker 2 (45:31):
But can you do you have any kind of roadmap
for what this might look like? Because as you say,
you a can't and we don't necessarily want to like
completely remove yourself from everything. But which bits of yourself
do you think you can replenish?
Speaker 1 (45:47):
A great question? And we're going to find out. I mean,
I think that the business and the show can very
much live without me. We're going to find out if
I can live without it and them and you guys,
we can live without you, But it won't be can
you don't know?
Speaker 3 (46:00):
That's what's been hard for us being like, yeah, no, man,
we know you have to like low company mental health,
but like from a selfish perspective, we actually really like
it being on the show.
Speaker 1 (46:08):
There's also sense. And I'll be really honest, the internet's
a lot, and it's a lot at the moment, and
I feel I've sort of written about this a little
bit in my newsletter, like I want to be smaller.
I want to have it just a minute of a
smaller audience. Like the scrutiny of particularly women in the
public eye, particularly in the last couple of years. The
(46:30):
scrutiny is a lot, and I just want a little
bit of space, to be quiet, to spend time with Luna,
to spend more time with my family and my friends,
and see what it's like when I don't have to
race and people aren't depending on me. Maybe I'll hate it.
Maybe I'll be back in two weeks.
Speaker 2 (46:48):
Are you going to take up gardening?
Speaker 1 (46:49):
Oh God, please kill me if I do a fuck, because.
Speaker 2 (46:53):
I've got succeed I could succeed.
Speaker 1 (46:56):
I think I'm going to join a choir we started
acquiring by Maya that you two are not part of it,
I want to are. I think I'm going to do that,
and I'm going to trouble for a little bit. I
might even go to Copenhagen.
Speaker 2 (47:07):
She's just going to find out where Copenhagan is. Really.
Speaker 1 (47:10):
I'm still on the quest to find out where he
put it in Google maps stat Apparently it's a city,
not a country. I've got so much to learn my Stabatacra,
but I just wanted to say thank you. They've been
some beautiful messages in Yeah, that is. I just wanted
to make a big deal of it. There's not a
big deal. It's not a drama. I'm bloody end up
in the Daily Mail. I'm fine, it's fine.
Speaker 2 (47:31):
I'm typing.
Speaker 1 (47:32):
The only reason, exactly, the only reason I can do
this is because everything's going so well, and in a
time of crisis, you can't do this, and it's not
a time of crisis.
Speaker 3 (47:40):
So that's I like you out Louder who said that
I really need a break, and I've been waiting for
you to have a break. I feel as though if
there is anyone who've been waiting for permission to have
a break, Mayor Freedman is having one.
Speaker 1 (47:52):
So sometimes you'll you'll be hearing more from the wonderful
Amelia Lester and Vernon.
Speaker 2 (47:58):
I have one more question from It out Louder. She said,
give it a break. May we all know you're really
going into the jungle?
Speaker 1 (48:05):
That was my favorite, having a deep plane face, list.
Speaker 2 (48:09):
A deep face.
Speaker 3 (48:11):
Yeah, she's going to come back if you were going.
Speaker 1 (48:14):
And they're going to do both of those things, the
jungle and a deep Plans facelift. And then I'll come
back and you'll be like, you look so arrested, and
I'll be like, funny that.
Speaker 3 (48:21):
It was the jungle. I'm going to start rumors that
she's on the mask singer.
Speaker 1 (48:27):
It's my dream.
Speaker 2 (48:28):
You're a little l and bring it back, Miya. We
love you and we're going to miss you.
Speaker 1 (48:32):
Thank you. I love you too.
Speaker 2 (48:33):
We'll be fine. The show will be fine, but it
will be the same, and we will miss you a lot.
And I can't wait for you to come back. And
also I look forward to all the voice notes. Don't
care'll be coming in our way about the things we're
doing wrong.
Speaker 1 (48:42):
Yeah, I'm going to be a listener. I get to
shout at my phone and not infurious agreement like all
the outlouders do. I love you out louders, I'll see
you on the other side.
Speaker 2 (48:51):
Thank you out loud as we know you'll be wishing
out me as well as she has a well earned
time off. Jesse and I will still be here for you.
We'll be here for you with Amelia. We'll be here
with you for you.
Speaker 3 (49:00):
With Emily, the will be less significantly less singing.
Speaker 2 (49:03):
I'll tell you that will be Oh my gosh, you
and Amelia are going to try and make me talk
about all kinds of really in tel and things all
the time. Who's going to be my fellow gen X
celebrity obsessive? This is I can't cope. I'm already upset spiraling.
Thank you to our wonderful team Miya and Jesse tell
us who they are.
Speaker 3 (49:20):
A big thank you too. Group executive producer Ruth Devine.
She's your gen X.
Speaker 1 (49:25):
She can sing too, so she'll provide singing.
Speaker 3 (49:28):
Our senior producer is the brilliant Leah Porges. She has
been filling in while and Gazillis has been away and
it has been such a delight having her expertise on
this show.
Speaker 1 (49:40):
We've kept her on her toes.
Speaker 3 (49:41):
Poor Leah never.
Speaker 2 (49:42):
Boring, is it? Leah never? Boring.
Speaker 3 (49:44):
She should put on her LinkedIn profile has seen some shit.
Speaker 1 (49:52):
Video producer Josh Green, our junior content producers Coco and Tessa.
I'll see you soon, out loud as, I love you.
Speaker 2 (49:58):
Bye bye. Shout out to any Mamma Mia subscribers listening.
If you love the show and you want to support us,
subscribing to Mamma Mia is the very best way to
do it. There's a in the episode description you will
be back soon.
Speaker 1 (50:17):
I have a quick bit of feedback. Boom goes to dynamite.
Take that, Take that, take that, m listening. Each is
a song. Please don't think people have it? Hey, you
old sea words. I thought that you needed two people
to use it, and I was had some questions about
the wholes. I can do this, p me do this please.
That's why you're talking, Jesse. You're serving seaword today. I'd
(50:39):
stay Pink's fabulous.
Speaker 2 (50:49):
Yeah, okay.
Speaker 1 (50:50):
What's the plural though? Is it labby? I laby? I?
I'm sure lay by? I know, I think about that.
I'll see you soon, out louder, I love you, bye,
You're listening to a MoMA Mia podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Mamma Mia acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters
that this podcast is recorded on Welcome friends to MoMA
Mia out Loud. It's what women are actually talking about
on Friday, August the first. Don't think about that too much.
I'm Holly Wayne Wright.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
I thought it was may. I'm mea Friedman, and I'm
Jesse Stevens.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
And here's what's on our agenda for today. Just how
rotten is your brain after years of attention nibbling scrolls?
We happily have a cure.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
And the brutal essay that I haven't stopped thinking about
that thing in your life you're struggling with. What if
you're actually not trying that hard to fix it?
Speaker 1 (00:55):
And I have some personal news later in the show,
but first, in case you missed it, which you probably did.
A woman called Aaron Punton who's twenty two from Northumberland.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
I think that's in northern England. Yep, ok, down my
way sort off.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
She has been forced to bleach her whole house after
discovering that a seagull she drunkenly carried home from a
night out had bird flew ah, any questions, very many questions.
Speaker 3 (01:23):
I like how in the script it said drunk woman
takes seagull home and I was like, is that MEA's
personal news?
Speaker 1 (01:31):
And I was like, this is interesting. She says that
she had no idea why, but she picked up the
bird without even a thought. Have you seen a TikTok
from outside of Wetherspoon's pup. Here's a little bit of
the TikTok that she made at the time with She
just flipped her camera around and posted this to TikTok mancaensa,
come on home.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
Well, my bad has been moose. Look but old mane
he's a beauty. He actually wants to stop my woman everything.
Speaker 1 (01:59):
But I've got action them. The song she's singing is
Valerie by Amy white House. I don't know, maybe she
decided that the bird should be called Valerie. If you're
just listening to us and not watching this podcast, she
has this seagull which is the size of a small dog. Yes,
under her arm they have seagulls that big.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Well, they're beating a lot of chips, these seagulls. They're
hanging around outside par But the right of normous date night,
you're getting a lot of chips. Also that accent, that
Northeastern accent w chef's kiss and.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
Make everything funny.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
The seagulls, in case you're worried about crueltied animals, the
seagull is very happily under her arm, like it reminded
me of that episode of and just like that. Then
carry had the pigeon bag, except it was a real
seagull and it was enormous.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
Someone's like, excuse me, is that?
Speaker 1 (02:43):
So she carried the seagull home, and she was baffled
to find it flying around her living room. The next morning,
she said, I don't even know what made me pick
him up. I put him in my sitting room with
a blanket. When I woke up in the morning, i'd
forgotten and he was just floating around the sitting room.
I dropped him off with the vets the next day
in a box and was told he had bird flu.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
Maybe that's a clue to why I was a little
bit slippy and allowed himself to be. He wasn't feeling great.
He thought you were to take him home, give him
a lambsippotment a bed.
Speaker 3 (03:12):
My first reaction was this bird flu ridden seagull is
better than some of the things I have taken home
after a drunk night out because I've worken up and gone,
you have something worse than bird flu out of my house.
I read an essay over the weekend that, on the surface,
posited quite a simple idea, but I have not stopped
thinking about it. Kate Hall published a substack piece called
(03:35):
maybe You're Not Actually Trying, and she begins by telling
this story about a stalker she had years ago, and
after a particularly bad experience with this stalker, she writes,
and now if I thought and snapped into action, except
that I didn't. Instead, I curled up in a ball
and cried and told friends who suggested contacting the police,
that there was no point that no one would be
(03:55):
able to help. In the end, it was her husband
who contacted all the right people and Boom sorted it
all out. Now, this isn't to minimize stalking, and it's
an imperfect example because for a lot of people it
is a really, really difficult thing to address. But the
reason she used this example was because she said, why
did it take another person getting involved for me to
(04:15):
realize I wasn't actually trying? And she goes on to
nut out this idea of selective agency in capable people,
and how there are three theaters in our lives. So
we've got work, say, we've got relationships, and there's other
and she says that we all know of the high
achieving boss who can't seem to hold down a relationship,
(04:36):
or the person at work who will throw everything at
a complex problem and fix it, and yet they're feeling
ill but won't take the first step.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
Of going to the doctor right.
Speaker 3 (04:46):
And her suggestion is that we all assume that there's
some area of our lives where we are without realizing it,
frozen in time, and she challenges us to locate it. Maia,
do you relate to this?
Speaker 1 (05:01):
I also read this essay and was really struck by
it because the most interesting part of the story is
about when she thinks about it later. There's a period
of time from when it starts happening. It goes on
for years that this person's essentially stalking her and emailing her,
and it's years later when it sort of escalates that
(05:21):
her husband says, please, can you let me get involved?
And he sorts it out, and what she realizes is
that the time in her life when he first came in.
She was at a very different time in her life,
and she felt that she wasn't capable of it, and
she sort of got frozen in that, and she didn't
realize that several years down the track she was in
(05:42):
a much better position to deal with it, but she
got stuck into that headspace of I can't.
Speaker 3 (05:48):
It's an unfixable problem, fixable.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
Problem, and I really relate to this idea of everything's ruined,
nothing can fix it, like I will sometimes get like that.
And the only way I can describe how it feels
inside is that I do feel about six or seven
years old or even younger, and I'm stamping my foot
and I'm like it's all real and I can't. I can't.
Speaker 3 (06:11):
I thought about what it was in my life. What
am I not actually trying at? And yet I'm putting
a lot of effort in, but I'm not actually trying,
Like I'm not really workshopping this problem. I wondered if
there was a clue for all of us in our
word of the year. If our word of the year
is often the thing that we've not actually that we value,
but we've actually not tried at. So mine is creativity.
(06:32):
I've been talking about it. Oh yeah, I took a
big game about how I'm going to.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
Be really creative.
Speaker 3 (06:36):
Yes, there's this Simpsons quote that says something like, we've
tried nothing and we're all out of ideas. That's my
approach to creativity. Have I done anything? No, but I'm
going I just can't. How will I write a book?
I've virtually tried nothing, but the helplessness of it, I'm
quite stuck in.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
Do you think that's sometimes whole because there have been
years when we've all done our word of the year
and we've really failed. Do you think that's about just
outsourcing our word of the year and not trying going
I've made it my word of the year, so it
will magically have it.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
It's sort of that word of the year is so
I don't actually have to knuck anything. It's already done. Yeah.
I think that's a very true, very good insight, Jesse.
I'm really interested in this idea of high agency individuals
and low agency individuals because I immediately can pick people
in my life now. I know that this is because
she said, as you've said, Jesse, think about the different theaters,
(07:29):
as she calls them, relationships, work, and then she says
kind of self care, and what she means by that
is not massages and stuff.
Speaker 3 (07:35):
It's like health.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
Therapy, exercise, you know, like eating well, like looking after yourself.
So think about those three areas. You might be high
agency in one but not in others. But there are
definitely people who are just more high agencies. The definition
of these two broadly are high agency individuals are proactive,
see themselves as shapers of their own destiny, and actively
work to overcome obstacles. Mia, I think you are pretty
(07:59):
high agency. You're like, when I come to you with
a problem, You're like, do this and this and this,
and I'm like, okay. Low agency individuals tend to be
more passive, real active, and feel a greater sense of
helplessness or external control over their circumstances. So when you
kind of go, well, you know, it's just complicated and
I just cut you know.
Speaker 3 (08:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
And it's like the difference between me and my friend Penny,
for example, who I will talk about like, oh, we
need to get a new bathroom or something. I'd probably
talk about that for two years. And in the first
three sentences of me saying that she's already packed up
her bathroom called the builder got twenty five tile samples? Like,
you know, whatever it is? Is your bias to action
(08:40):
or is your bias to pondering? Do you know what
I mean?
Speaker 1 (08:44):
To your point? I think I am sometimes too high
agency because I just also want to fix everybody else's problems,
which is like, can be quite controlling. I get exasperated
by people who are low agency. And I'll give you
an example. I think a really good indicator of high
agency low agency. I'm so baffled by people who don't
get their driver's license, because to me, that's the ultimate
(09:08):
in agency.
Speaker 3 (09:10):
I think you're exactly right, But do you know how
I was when I got my life, oh like late twenties.
Speaker 1 (09:16):
What not late twenties? I knew you before that.
Speaker 3 (09:20):
I reckon you met me before I had a drivers
Like are you serious?
Speaker 2 (09:23):
Nah?
Speaker 1 (09:24):
To me, I put outside licenses in a particular basket
of I'm going to be harsh and say victims. I
don't really mean that, but passivity, like I've got no
agency in my life. Help me understand.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
Funny, But I think that that's it is a good example.
Although you could put a lot of circumstances in that
do you live in a good public transport like all
of those things. But I get what you mean. Though
you're not driving your You're literally not driving your y.
You are relying on other people to drive you whatever.
That looks like that is definitely true. But I think
it's really interesting how you can be high agency in
(09:59):
some areas because if you think about those theaters of work, relationships,
self care. In work, I do try hard, like I
get most things done. I take on more projects. I
do want to want not very high agency with it,
but not always like really effectively like that. I'm a
bit of a procrastinator at a time, but I do
a lot. But then say, how long have you guys
(10:19):
been listening to me talk lately? I mean over the
years you've talked about many things in French, but like
about how I'm gonna like embrace exercise this year again
because I've been through phases where I really have or
meditation or whatever, like I bang on and on and
I've got to look after myself more.
Speaker 3 (10:36):
To look remember you were buying a new car for
like six years.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
Yes, like I'm very I can be very low agency.
Whereas so even though I'm supposed to be looking after
myself better. I'm like putting off doctor's appointments because I
haven't got time for that, and I didn't get that
test they needed, and you know what, I'll just let
that roll. So her theory would be that side of
myself is stuck somewhere and it needs unsticking, whereas the
work side of myself is not stuck. It's in motion,
(11:01):
it's with you.
Speaker 1 (11:03):
I don't think you can work in digital media, or
certainly you can't be successful in digital media without having
high agency, because there's not a lot of time to
just sit around and wait for something to happen. You've
got to make it happen or get left behind.
Speaker 3 (11:14):
I think it's probably that your energy is finite, and
that we spend it in ways that might not be
conscious or chosen, but that a lot of people are
incredibly effective at work and are not so effective when
they walk in the door at home. But I think
that a piece of this puzzle is learned helplessness, right,
So that's a psychological concept that sort of suggests that
if you've had a series of negative life events happen,
(11:38):
particularly in childhood, you begin to think that basically you
have no bearing on the world around you. So I
remember we learned in psychology about this experiment that they
did with an elephant, and they got the elephant and
put ropes around the elephant's ankle when the elephant was
a baby, and it would struggle and struggle and struggle,
and eventually even when it got really really big and
(11:59):
it was a grown up elephant and one struggle, it
would have been released from this rope. But by that
point it is stuff trying, because it was just like,
I'm struck to this rope. This is what my life
is like.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
That's sad. That's like the Romanian orphans who don't cry
because they know that no one's coming.
Speaker 3 (12:13):
Exactly exactly right. So there's a piece of this puzzle
which is about negative life experiences, about things like domestic violence.
I think when you go are you trying, there's an
element of why are you still in that relationship? Which
is a really complicated yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
So it's the wrong way to pick up this piece
of information about like are you really trying is not
to go all the problems in your life are your
fault because you're not trying. It's much more complicated than that,
but on a more sort of simple, high level of
things that we know that at other times in our life,
when we have applied ourselves to it in the same
(12:50):
manner that we bring to an area where we have
high agency, we can shift the dial.
Speaker 3 (12:54):
Yeah. Like, I felt as though I was at a
particular place in my late teens twenties where I had
that sort of propensity towards depression, and in times in
my life when I've been particularly anxious and depressed, this
is the first thing I go to. No problem is solvable,
brow my arms up.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
It's a feeling of overwhelm. Yes, yes, And you're saying
more than overwhelm, it's helplessness and hopelessness.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (13:17):
Yeah. Like, And the correlation between learned helplessness and depression
is I mean that they're like the same thing, which is,
if you walk around the world thinking you have no impact,
it's probably healthier to think you have more of an
impact on the world than you actually do that your choices.
So like, there are two types of people, people who
think that their choices will have a real bearing on
what happens in their lives and the world.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
That's what I think, And.
Speaker 3 (13:39):
In fact, apparently the older you get a lot of
older people start to fall into the learned helplessness because
I think they look at their lives and go, I
don't really have that much control.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
I remember being in a terrible relationship, an abusive relationship,
and I held all the cards. It was so weird
because on paper, I had all the agency. He was
living in my apartment, he was driving my car.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
I had the job.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
He was unemployed, he was a drug addict. I wasn't.
I had family, support and friends and he didn't. And
yet he did such a number on me over a
couple of years that I had this learned helplessness and
hopelessness to the point where I didn't feel like I
had any agency. And I remember a close girlfriend of
mine said, kick him out, change the locks, get the
cleaners in, and get him out of your life. And
(14:24):
that felt like an impossible thing for me to say.
And it wasn't, ironically, until he went overseas and I
had that space from him that I was able to
end it. But then years later I saw her in
the same situation and I said the same thing to
her and she couldn't recognize it and she couldn't do it.
Speaker 2 (14:40):
This is really interesting about people telling you, because one
of the things that is written in this newsletter is
she says, apply yourself in the areas where you know
your low agency, but you could be higher agency, you
know what I mean, not necessarily for complex reasons. How
have I done my best to come up with a
set of potential solutions using all the resources I have?
Am I doing as well by myself as I would
buy any friend who came to me with the same problem.
(15:03):
So you know how people often say that to you,
like what would you say to a friend in this situation?
An interesting thought experiment, but it's not so much a
personality type as your story just shows as where you
are in that moment, because your friend had all the
answers until it was her problem, and then she needed
you to have all the answers, and although you might
not act with high agency in that moment, you might
(15:25):
file it away and get there.
Speaker 3 (15:27):
Which what your friend did is really I think like
the bedrock of therapy, right is that you feel like
you're stuck with all these positions and you can sit
there and the therapist who often leads you to your
own conclusions because they ask questions, and they ask questions,
But it might get to a point where it's like, oh,
well I could leave my job, and it's like, yeah,
you could, you know what I mean Like it kind
(15:47):
of leads you to a point of choice rather than rumination,
which I have.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
A therapist who once called her a thought trap, because
kids can get into this a bit where it's just like, no,
bet I can't. We'll try it, No, but I can't.
Maybe it's not kids, maybe it's certain type of people.
But I also, back to what you said about childhood,
I think it can go both ways because I think
if all your needs get met as a child, then
(16:12):
you can just feel like it's out of your control
and someone else will meet them. But at the same time,
if your needs don't get met, you learn well, I
have to do it myself, so I better have agency
or I'm going to be screwed. What an interesting essay.
We will put a link to it in the show notes.
Speaker 3 (16:28):
Justice for bitches who didn't get their license till late
in life. I would like the out louders to tell
me because there's a particular type of person and for
some reason they're my people.
Speaker 2 (16:37):
Out louders in a moment, how rotten is your brain
and is it savable. No, we have some good news friends,
good news. Brain rot. It's everywhere. So brain rot is
two things. Actually, it's a term bandied about by young
people like my son who's thirteen, as like a word
(16:59):
for a lot of content that they consume, a lot
of sort of pointless, very online content. So for a
while there when like skibbety toilet was the biggest thing
that Jen Alfers was saying, that was brain rot. Right,
But it's also.
Speaker 1 (17:13):
So it's different to hate watching.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
It's very different, so they love it. It's an actual genre,
so it's got sort of a few different meanings. But
brain rot is an actual sort of genre of content
that like kids will watch on YouTube. An example, they'll say, yeah,
this is brain is brain an example, not a kid.
Local will often show me tiktoks of an ai yetty
doing a day in life, and I feel it poison
(17:35):
my soul every time I say it, I go, this
isn't good.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
So it's something that's completely pointless.
Speaker 3 (17:40):
It is dumb.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
But also it's a thing that happens to us by
not literally. The scientists aren't entirely like in on the
fact that it's literally happened to us. But it's a
term that we now use for what fractured our attention spans,
What means we can't read books anymore, what means we
spend hours somehow we feel involuntarily talking of low agency
(18:02):
high agency scrolling TikTok or Instagram reels or YouTube shorts
or whatever it is your feet.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
It's like dirty in your brain.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
We feel as we're doing it, and we know it's mindless.
We know it's shallows surface and silly, and it's slowly,
slowly eroding our ability to focus deeply. So we might
then use it as like I've got brain wrong. Does
it sound familiar to you? Both?
Speaker 1 (18:25):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (18:25):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (18:25):
How far gone do you think your brains are? Before
I tell you the tricky steps to getting it back?
Speaker 3 (18:29):
Very very far. Most of what I consume is making
me dumber, and I have tried a few things to
fix it, so I'm interested to see if they are.
Speaker 2 (18:37):
Do you what do you watch or what do you
waste time on? Mea that you would consider brain rock?
Speaker 1 (18:44):
To me, it's less of a particular type of content
than jumping and the medium jumping jumping, jumping jumping, just
scrolling jumping, scrolling jumping.
Speaker 3 (18:54):
So I think. It's like there was this great article
about compression culture, which was this idea that we're trying
to get information as compressed as possible, that it's inefficient
to think, and so I reckon it's the three seconds,
three the second three seconds. And the other day I
stopped on a of a cake and it was being
decorated by a tennis racket and they were just doing
these brain and I watched it and watched it to
(19:17):
see the final result. They took it off. It was
just sludge. There was no point to it exactly.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
And it's like I'll start off by scrolling going, oh,
I'm going to look for like gardening whatever. But then
five minutes, ten minutes later, I'm watching someone do a dance,
and then I'm watching somebody teach someone else how to
do a dance. And then I'm to you, like, so
it's just And.
Speaker 3 (19:35):
What I find then is that I've trained my brain
to do these snippets. And then I sit down to
read a piece in the New York Times that's really meaty,
and I feel my brain go nah nahn and pull
myself away from it.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
They do that thing of I'll save that flater, I'll
save that flater. I'll save that for later. I have
a question, though, what's the difference between brain rot or
the act of rotting your brain, and just watching something
that's kind of mindless and soothing.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
I think soothing is a bit different, although we could
argue that all of this is self soothing in a way,
but I think the idea is that it is eroding
our ability to think more deeply.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
For example, something that I am watching a lot on
TikTok is ballerinas being fitted for or breaking in their
ballet shoes.
Speaker 2 (20:19):
That's very specific.
Speaker 1 (20:22):
There's no point to it. They're not dancing, they're not
actually dancing with their shoes. There's nothing artistic about it.
They're just being fitted for shoes or they're breaking in
the shoes or sewing on the ribbons. And I'm mesmerized.
Speaker 2 (20:34):
Yeah, I watched people endlessly packing lunches. I've never put
adult packed lunches anyway. A substack called plum Pits, spelled
out brilliantly recently, will link to it. But the writer
set out on a path to help us unrot our
brains because her kind of point was there are lots
of people who maybe did degrees, only one at this table,
but have studied things in depth, have applied themselves talking
(20:57):
about are you trying hard? Have applied themselves with a
lot of agency and focus to certain things in their lives,
who now feel like they just can't because of the
brain rotten. She sets out a path in this to
remember who you were before the dullness set in which
I totally get what she means about that. So just
to warn you, there will be losses to doing this.
(21:18):
If you do set on this path to restore your
brain till it's pre rot status. You may not be
the first to know about the next Coldplay cheating meme.
You may not be fully across all the details of
I don't know Timothy shallow May's ladies. Jaunty Scarf like,
you have to hard sit at this table. But if
(21:40):
you're feeling a little bit sick about all the nonsense
you're inputting, here's her advice. She's like, don't quit all
those things, but just pause. She's like, for at least
three days, set yourself a challenge that whenever you feel
the itch to pick up and just mindlessly scroll, don't
push through that urge, just once, just twice, or set
(22:01):
aside some time when you're allowed to do it, but
you've got to push through the urge, like when you're
giving up smoking and you're like, I want a cigarette,
Well do something else. Yeah, I want a cigarette, Well
do something else. Like that, right, Let your dopamine system
stop firing like a broken vending machine, she writes, and
allow your prefrontal cort is to actually breathe. And while
you're at it, she had stop asking chat GPT. Every
(22:24):
little thing you know more than you think, Well don't
that's a good thing.
Speaker 3 (22:28):
I actually agree with that. I don't think CHATJPT is
good for the brain.
Speaker 2 (22:31):
Run Let yourself be bored Mia. You struggle with this,
let yourself sit in silence, she says, no phone, no music,
no stimulation, just ten or fifteen minutes of mental stillness
a day. She says. If you struggle with it a lot,
try what they call the Navy seal nap. If you
need structure to it, lie on the floor, feed up
(22:52):
on the couch, twenty minutes max twenty. It's not max,
so it doesn't have to be. It's not lazy. It's
neurological recovery. Oh I love that.
Speaker 3 (23:01):
I love that.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
Could we do that? No, you seal nap. Yeah, okay,
start writing. I mean we do write so, but like notes,
app paper word. She says, let yourself ramble, write something
ugly and tangled and undeveloped, not to produce or sound intelligent,
but to hear yourself. Again. Oh I love that. You
know how Liz Gilbert writes herself a letter from God
(23:23):
every morning. I don't know if you listen to Liz Gilbert,
if you listen to her content, you know this. I
used to hear her say that and be like, you
got like, I'm very confused. But that's what she's doing.
She's like, every morning, hear yourself. Like, if you're not
thinking this is going to be published, I'm going to
show this to someone.
Speaker 3 (23:40):
This is like because we're quietening through all of these things,
the inner monologue, Like, I think that it starts to
become crowded with all the things you're inputting.
Speaker 1 (23:51):
It's true because it's just social media is just and
the internet is everybody else's monologue outer monologue. And so
you're right, you do lose touch with well.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
You start your monologue starts taking on their monologue. Learn
something that fascinates you, pick a topic, anything, become.
Speaker 3 (24:07):
Obsessed Gwyneth, Yes, okay, take my PhD.
Speaker 2 (24:10):
Yeah, and read, But she says, read with curiosity and
out of your comfort zone. So if it helps, if
you need a challenge, do something like five books in
two months, one fiction, one nonfiction, one reread, one wild card,
one deep dive into something niche. What do you think
about this?
Speaker 3 (24:27):
I think a solution is reading. I think reading fixes everything.
Speaker 2 (24:30):
I can't though well when this is the problem, Because
when you're suffering from brain rot, and this happens to
me often, one of my first signals that my brain
isn't happy is I can't read.
Speaker 1 (24:40):
I try every book that you guys recommend. I just
started The Nightingale, I started The Safe Keep. Maybe stop
recommending you know what? Period? No, no, no.
Speaker 2 (24:49):
No, how you do it, how you try and get
into them, kindle, But do you like set yourself a
like a time frame?
Speaker 1 (24:57):
No. I'm always aware that the first few chapters are
going to be horrific of any book, because I just
hate that feeling. I love the feeling of being well,
I'm in it. That feeling just isn't coming anymore.
Speaker 3 (25:08):
You know how we're talking about it? Actually trying, I
reckon that if you went to the gym and every
time you tried to do a squat you couldn't because
you were so weak, then you'd start at a lower
level or whatever, and you just work your way up right.
And I reckon that it is exactly like a muscle.
(25:29):
I completely relate. I've had this issue lately, the more
I fragment. There's a term that this person who spent
years at Apple and Microsoft, her name is Linda Stone,
she called it continuous partial attention. And I think what
reading demands, I'm like pretty much any other activity we do,
is total focus for a long period, and the feeling
of flow when you lose sense of time is just
(25:52):
a dream. Like that's the best, the best thing. But
in order to get there, I think you've got to
be Like, whether it's I'm going to read for ten
minutes or whatever, I think you've just got to keep
trying night after night. I found with a few of
those books that it took me a few goes to
sit down and do it. And in fact, I'm actually
gonna argue against the ten minutes because I think often
(26:12):
you've got to do longer.
Speaker 2 (26:14):
Yeah, I actually think because ten minutes is a thing
that I did when I was first trying to break
out of one of those periods, and I'd be like,
I can commit to ten minutes. I'd set a timer
on my phone and I'd read, and then what you
want to do is the alarm goes off and you go, oh,
shut up, like yes, but sometimes it does take longer.
So the other thing I sometimes do, and I think
I've talked about this before, is like mark it out
(26:36):
as half an hour at some point in the day.
When I can do half an hour and go, that
is reading time. It's not I'm not stealing that time
from anything else. And again said a timer like it
sounds so silly because they sound like scientific ways to
get you to do something you don't want to do.
And we all love reading, but it's just a brain
another trick.
Speaker 1 (26:56):
Because I have started reading on the weekend and I'm
really into it. Sally Hepworth's new book. It's called Mad
Maybel and two things. Interestingly, I'm reading it on paper.
Speaker 2 (27:06):
Same that's helping, ye because.
Speaker 1 (27:09):
Obviously if you read on an Internet enable device, you fucked. Yeah,
it's just no coming back from that. But the other
thing that I've learnt to do is put my phone
in a different room. Yes, if I can reach my phone,
it's all over, or any device, it's all over. But
if I'm there just with a book or my kindle
on airplane.
Speaker 2 (27:29):
I have to do it. I'm writing, and so do
lots of other novelists that I thought were you know,
obviously they just slip into a flow state. Is put
the phone in a part of your house. You can't
hear it for a period of time. Like most of
us have responsibilities. You're going to have to go and
check it, you know. But again, you say, a timer
on something else for thirty minutes, photos elsewhere.
Speaker 3 (27:49):
There's all this brain imaging about what happens when you
read and how you read the word tennis and you
visualize and actually parts of your body feel the tennis
right like it's and the way it fosters empathy and nuance,
and you dive back into a book. And how remarkable
is it that your brain can pick up I always
(28:10):
find this when I'm in a really good state, is
that I dive back in. I read one sentence and go,
WHOA where am I? Who is this person? And then boom,
you're back in. And the fact that your brain is
able to do that. The complexity, the holding all of
those things at once is the opposite to what the
culture forces us to do otherwise, And so I feel
like it's so rehabilitated, Like when I go on holidays,
(28:33):
That's what I want to do because I know it's
makes me feel like genuinely refreshed.
Speaker 1 (28:38):
No one feels refreshed after scrolling the internet. No ever
after the break. It is recommendations time in time for
the weekend, and also some news from me.
Speaker 2 (28:47):
One unlimited out loud access. We drop episodes every Tuesday
and Thursday exclusively for Mamma MIAs subscribers. Follow the link
in the show notes to get us in your ears
five days a week. And a huge thank you to
all our current subscribers. Vibes ideas atmosphere, something casual, something fun.
Speaker 1 (29:13):
This is my best recommendation. It's Friday, so we want
to help set up your weekend with our best recommendations.
I'm going to go first. It is another newsletter. We've
been recommending a lot of newsletters today. This one is
by friend of the pod and friend of us, Lucy Ormond.
We've recommended her substack before. It's called a year of healing.
She was diagnosed with breast cancer about a year ago
(29:35):
and she has dedicated this year after completing her treatment,
to just getting back on track. And she writes this
beautiful newsletter which we'll link to in the show notes.
But while you were away hole, she sent one out
about you, and it's about people responding to it in
all different ways to her news and people dropped over
(29:58):
Lasagna's and came to chemo with her. But you, as
one of her closest friends, couldn't do that. You lived
not only in a different city, but a different state.
So what you just started to do was to send
her these glimmers, like little photos every day. Can you
tell us how this came about? Because she talks about
you do this every day for a year, and she
shared in this newsletter some of the photos that you
(30:20):
sent and some that she sent back to you. How
did it happen?
Speaker 2 (30:24):
It's funny because I feel like uncomfortable about this, obviously,
but also because it seems like such a little thing.
But I think that actually the sending of glimmers is
something really useful to do when you can't do anything else,
do you know what I mean? So a glimmer is
the opposite of a trigger. It's something in your day
that makes you feel good, grateful, happy, something sparkly in
(30:47):
your day, and being on the hunt for them is
supposed to be able to help lift your mood and
maybe even help your mental health loose. Because she's amazing
in many ways. She was going through the worst time
of her life, but she actually has a really good
support network. She has a very close family, she has
a strong network of really great, old, established friends. Everybody
(31:07):
was doing lots of things for her. Not that that
made it easy, of course, but it's certainly lightened the load.
But I'm far away. And also, if I'm incredibly honest,
I'm not the bringer A's and your friend. I don't
know how I'm wired or whatever, but I find that
kind of thing quite hard, and don't I find it
hard to know what the line is between intruding and helping,
(31:27):
and I don't know. I just struggle with that. So
for me selfishly, for me, the glimmers and I think
we've talked about them on a show. We talked about
the idea of looking for moments in your day that
made you happy, grateful. I mean, these are grateful as
to become a cheesy kind of word, I guess. So
I said to Luise, I'll send you you might want
to vomit. I think I wrote something like that, this
(31:49):
might want to make you vomit. But every day I'm
going to send you a glimmer and you don't have
to send one back, but you can if you want.
And so what I did is for every day in
my day, I'd have to look for one thing to
send a picture to for Lucy. And it might be
from my morning walk. It might be a particularly good
cup of tea. It might be a cucumber I'd grown
in my garden. It might be my dog. It might
be this show. It might be new lipstick. It might
(32:10):
be a book I was reading, but one thing in
every day that was a bright spot.
Speaker 1 (32:15):
Did it feel like pressure to find something every day?
Speaker 2 (32:18):
Well, what it felt like after a while is it
was as good for me as it was for Loose,
because I trained myself to look every day for something like,
without wanting to sound really cheesy, but something wonderful, something
very ordinary but wonderful. And some days are harder than others,
as we all know, to find a glimmer in right,
(32:40):
Because some days are shit or some days it's just boring.
Speaker 1 (32:42):
Did you store them like if you saw three glimmers
in a day?
Speaker 2 (32:46):
No, the rules were me. I had to be from
the day.
Speaker 1 (32:50):
I'm trying to gain the system.
Speaker 2 (32:51):
Yeah, it had to be from the day.
Speaker 1 (32:53):
So did you have to explain the glimmo?
Speaker 2 (32:55):
So some days I did, some days I exclaimed the glimmer.
But some days it's literally just the photo with the
word glimmer. And then the beauty of this for anyone
who's thinking of doing it for someone who's going through
a hard time. We all want to be in touch
with our friends when they're suffering, but it can act
be a big burden for them to have to constantly
update everybody, so like asking how are you today, how's
(33:17):
the treatment going, how do you feel or you feel
it well?
Speaker 1 (33:20):
What can I do?
Speaker 2 (33:20):
Yeah, it's a burden, right. Luce had a lot going on,
and she'd so this is an offering without an expectation
of receiving, although Lucy did frequently send them back. So
then we would go a period of time where we
were like in a volley of sending them back and forward,
and I'd know that Lucy was in quite a good space.
And then there'd be a few days where I'd send
a glimmer and not get one back, and I'd be like,
(33:43):
so then I might be like, okay, But I think
that's the beauty of it is it doesn't place expectation,
and that's an important thing. Anyway, I did do it
every day, I think I actually I think she was
generous to me in that newsletter because I think I
missed two days. I think it was three hundred and
sixty three pictures. But some days it's true that I
would sit up and bed and go, shit, I haven't
(34:03):
done it, yeah, and scroll my camera role and very
often i'd taken it. I'd just had center in the moment.
Speaker 1 (34:10):
So you wouldn't just do a quick selfie of your boobs,
maybe like.
Speaker 2 (34:15):
Look at this handsome man I'm sleeping next.
Speaker 1 (34:18):
I love that. It reminded me that I have a
friend who went through cancer and she set up a
group chat where she posted glimmers, and just everybody in
the chat just posted their glimmers, And as you say,
it was just this stream of it forced her to
look for something bright in her day. And other people,
could you know, do them when they when they felt
(34:39):
them and it was just like the opposite of doom scrolling.
Speaker 2 (34:42):
Yes, I love it. And the thing is is we did.
When I look back through that chat, because obviously that's
our text history, and some of the ones she'd put
in the newsletter, I'd forgotten all about them, and that
was lovely too. Like you know, it's cheesy, but writing
a gratitude journalism for everybody, but like taking a minute
every day to think of one good thing is.
Speaker 1 (35:02):
That's so beautiful. We'll put a link to that substack
in our show notes. It's gorgeous. And the other thing
we'll put a link to is the new substack launched,
which is wholly out loud.
Speaker 3 (35:12):
Well we did say that, Mama outloud.
Speaker 1 (35:14):
Our substack was.
Speaker 3 (35:15):
We were putting it on hiatus while we worked out.
Speaker 1 (35:17):
What to do with it, renovator and Holly freening it.
Speaker 2 (35:21):
She gave a friend, I've renovated that instead of my bathroom.
She took it over and.
Speaker 3 (35:25):
She's writing on and so we'll have a link in
our show notes. Goes out every week and you get
to read Holly's writing, which.
Speaker 2 (35:33):
Is so some days, it will be some weeks it'll
be a proper essay. Some days it might be a
few little things. There'll be some scarleous gossip in there
every week, maybe some glimmers, maybe a couple of glimmers.
You never know.
Speaker 1 (35:43):
Why not.
Speaker 3 (35:43):
I have two books to recommend. The first is I
just read the latest Lisa Jewel, which I think came
out this month.
Speaker 1 (35:50):
That's always good to get out of a writing right,
really good, although I did read a couple of bad ones.
Speaker 3 (35:55):
Yeah, okay, this is She's back.
Speaker 1 (35:56):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (35:57):
It's called Don't Let Him In. And this is a blurb.
It says he's the perfect man. He says he loves you.
You think he might even be made for you. Before long,
he's moved into your house and into your heart, and
then he leaves for days at a time you don't
know where he's gone or who is with, and you
realize if you looked back, you'd say to yourself, don't
let him in. And so it's about it follows kind
(36:18):
of different relationships she has. She is the best character
to watch the story unfold from its different perspectives. The
way she's drawn this man is just genius. Loved it
really pacy and satisfying. And again, like I don't persevere
with books I don't like, So this one, I how.
Speaker 2 (36:37):
Long do you give a book before you give up?
Both of you.
Speaker 3 (36:40):
I recently got three quarters of all way through a book,
ye went, I'm just not spending another minute on this.
I do not care how this ends. I kept doing
that actually with a few really big ones that have
come out lately that everyone else loves, and I've just gone, nah,
not for me.
Speaker 2 (36:55):
How long do you give it?
Speaker 1 (36:56):
Well? I keep trying to read the books that you
guys give me, and then I'm like, I've got to
keep going. I've got to keep going. It really depends,
you know. I always give it more than a couple
of chapters. But I also just forget what i'm reading.
I think, as I've got a kindle and I'm sort
of like reading, and then I forget, and then I've
I've got a million half started books. What about you?
Speaker 2 (37:17):
Yeah? Same. It takes a lot for me to abandon
a book, although increasingly less. It's interesting like I used
to be like, no, I've started, so I have to
finish it, But now I'm more likely to give it away.
But then, you know, I'm a writer, and I hate
the idea of someone give it up on your book.
Speaker 3 (37:32):
So I'm like, oh, yeah, you know what, if I've
done half your book and you've not got me in,
then I feel my fault on you problem and a
bonus recommendation Nicole Madigan. She is a writer at My
Maya and she has published her second book literally this week.
Speaker 1 (37:45):
She wrote an amazing book about being stalked.
Speaker 3 (37:47):
Yeah yeah, This one is called Torn. It's nonfiction and
it follows four women who are trying to make the
decision about whether they stay in an unhappy relationship or
whether they leave. And it's about addiction and it's about infidelity.
Speaker 1 (38:02):
Did you say it's nonfiction?
Speaker 3 (38:04):
So they're true stories. It's about the loneliness of being
in a relationship and thinking this isn't right and I
don't know what I'm going to do. It's going to
speak to a lot of out louders where they are
right now. So that is available now link in our
show notes.
Speaker 2 (38:18):
I'm going to recommend books too, which I think, given
what we were talking about, this is relevant and also
it's now given me the point of this week's newsletter,
right books, We'll put some of those books that we've
out loud as have said get them out of reading
ruts in there because you asked that question before, because
it seems to be the theme of today's show a
little bit. But there are two new Aussie fiction books
that I want to give a shout out to because
(38:38):
we have some incredible Australian fiction writers, we really do.
And some of them are very famous and you know
their names and some not so much. But the debut
novel from Susan Do is out this week. It's called
The Golden Sister. And you might have seen it around.
Because Susan Do is married to Arn dou and because
he is actually one of Australia's most successful writers as
(38:58):
well as being a painter and a TV personality, people
are very interested in the idea that, oh, like, he's
not the only writer in the family.
Speaker 3 (39:05):
Yeah, And she's often written with him.
Speaker 2 (39:07):
She has helped him turn his very successful memoi The
Happiest Refugee into a children's book, and she's worked in
schools and everything. But this is her first adult novel
and so I think a lot of people are kind
of interested in, like, oh, anyway, it's really really good.
It's called The Golden Sister and it's about it's not what.
I don't know what I expected exactly, because it's kind
(39:27):
of a small town story. But it's not in any
way twee or cheesy. It's actually quite dark in places.
But it's about a woman, a young woman who's lost
her sister's.
Speaker 3 (39:37):
Quite isn't it her twin?
Speaker 2 (39:38):
Yes? Yeah, in quite dark circumstances, and she becomes obsessed
with what happened, which is, you know, in some way
it sounds like a familiar trope, but the places it
takes her is really interesting. So this young woman becomes
obsessed with this to a point that she gets herself
involved in a very unsuitable relationship. She has all these
interesting kind of clashes with the people at work. It
(40:01):
paints a very good picture about the claustrophobic nature of
a smallish town. It's really good. It's called The Golden Sister,
and I found that really interesting. And the other one
is by Jess Stepman. It's called Your Friend of Mine.
Now we have loved her books in the past. She
is a beautiful writer. She wrote How to Be Second Best.
Speaker 1 (40:18):
Oh, I love that book.
Speaker 2 (40:19):
The one with the cake. Everyone else says the one
with the cake on the and others she's a beautiful,
beautiful writer. Her latest one's called Your Friend of Mine
and it's a very it's quite a gentle book, but
it turns out to have a lot to say. It's
really about friendship and about the different versions of yourself
over the years. It starts with this young woman who
gets a letter out of the blue that appears to
(40:39):
be from her best friend who died twenty years before.
Oh wow, it's really good. They're both great Aussie fiction books.
So that was The Golden Sister by Suzann Do and
Your Friend of Mine by Jessica Deptman, and they're both
available now.
Speaker 1 (40:52):
Before we go, I have some news which is not
news to anyone working on the show. Bet he's going
to be newsed to some out lauders. I am taking
a few months off the show. I'm taking a kind
of I guess it's long service leave because I have
been doing the show for more than ten years now.
It started as a weekly show, it's now a daily show.
(41:14):
During that time, that hasn't even been my day job.
My day job, obviously has been being the co founder
of Mauma Maa and all the things that that involves
in helping to run a business, and I've not taken
any time off. I've co founded Mamma Maa maybe eighteen
nineteen years ago, almost twenty years ago now, and I
(41:37):
didn't take any time off. I think I took two
weeks off when I had my youngest child, and I've
obviously taken holidays. But I'm pretty well known to be
a bit.
Speaker 3 (41:48):
Of a workaholic and not so good at holidays.
Speaker 1 (41:51):
Not so good at holidays, and part of that I've been,
you know, thinking about that a lot. It'll be interesting
to see how the next few months go, because I mean,
I'm still going to be around, but part of it
is that I'm not taken leave because I haven't been
able to out Louders who run their own businesses will
know that when you work for your self, you don't
(42:11):
get holidays, you don't really get weekends all the time.
And I haven't ever felt confident to take this much
time off I do now. I mean, you guys and
the show and our team, you know, led by our
wonderful Ruth and everybody that works on out loud and
the wider business here at Mama Mea. It's never had
(42:31):
a better team. You know, there's like one hundred and
fifty odd people working here, and we've got an incredible
CEO and executive team, and I feel like maybe I
can step back for a little bit and also creatively,
I feel like what you say, Jesse about creativity. When
(42:53):
you run a business, you're part of a group project,
and you're part of a team, and you have to
lead a team or work within a team. And then
this show is my favorite thing that I do, but
it is a team. And working on Strife that was
a team, and there are some things that I want
to do. Even when I was doing No Filter, that
was still a team. It was a little bit more me,
but it was still a team. And I'm feeling that's
(43:17):
itch to just go a bit quiet and maybe work
on some things of my own as part of my
andmea still but not being a team a little bit.
You know.
Speaker 3 (43:28):
You posted in the out Louders about this decision, and
one thing that keeps coming up in the out Louders
recently is women who are feeling burnt out, Like, are
you just feeling beyond burnt out?
Speaker 1 (43:40):
Yeah? Look, I didn't really want to say it, but
it's been interesting my voice carking.
Speaker 3 (43:45):
It for the last time Loud have picked psychosomatic.
Speaker 2 (43:49):
Yeah. When you put the news in the group, quite
a few of them said what I wanted to say
when you were talking about your voice was you need
to rest.
Speaker 1 (43:57):
Yeah, And a lot of them have said they've heard
that I've sounded a bit tired. The last few couple
of years particularly have been very challenging for a lot
of people. But there's been a lot going on behind
the scenes as well, and there's been a lot of
online harassment and various things that I don't want to
talk about. But it's a lot of pressure. There's a
lot of pressure being the face of this business and
(44:20):
a lot of pressure being the one who it's my
face on the door, and when things go wrong and
we employ wonderful people who are all human as I am,
and humans make mistakes, as I certainly do.
Speaker 3 (44:36):
But when yeah, you know we've had this before, I've
made a mistake and it's not my face, it's there's
someone else's face, and you own the words or the
mistakes or the perceived mistakes, I can't imagine that level
of pressure. And I feel as though there's a level
of burnout that I've certainly experienced in my career where
I've been able to rest, but to watch what happens
(45:00):
when you work through that burnout, which I think is
actually really relatable to a lot of business owners and
actually to a lot of women.
Speaker 1 (45:07):
And mothers and and all sorts of people care is
and you've done it lots of time. I don't have
a choice yet, Like.
Speaker 2 (45:12):
You've worked through burnout. I mean I've worked with you
a decade. You've worked through burnout many times. And I know,
I know you're not going to go and go to
the map.
Speaker 3 (45:24):
For three months of like like on the floor, she's going,
she's gonna get pissed off.
Speaker 2 (45:31):
But can you do you have any kind of roadmap
for what this might look like? Because as you say,
you a can't and we don't necessarily want to like
completely remove yourself from everything. But which bits of yourself
do you think you can replenish?
Speaker 1 (45:47):
A great question? And we're going to find out. I mean,
I think that the business and the show can very
much live without me. We're going to find out if
I can live without it and them and you guys,
we can live without you, But it won't be can
you don't know?
Speaker 3 (46:00):
That's what's been hard for us being like, yeah, no, man,
we know you have to like low company mental health,
but like from a selfish perspective, we actually really like
it being on the show.
Speaker 1 (46:08):
There's also sense. And I'll be really honest, the internet's
a lot, and it's a lot at the moment, and
I feel I've sort of written about this a little
bit in my newsletter, like I want to be smaller.
I want to have it just a minute of a
smaller audience. Like the scrutiny of particularly women in the
public eye, particularly in the last couple of years. The
(46:30):
scrutiny is a lot, and I just want a little
bit of space, to be quiet, to spend time with Luna,
to spend more time with my family and my friends,
and see what it's like when I don't have to
race and people aren't depending on me. Maybe I'll hate it.
Maybe I'll be back in two weeks.
Speaker 2 (46:48):
Are you going to take up gardening?
Speaker 1 (46:49):
Oh God, please kill me if I do a fuck, because.
Speaker 2 (46:53):
I've got succeed I could succeed.
Speaker 1 (46:56):
I think I'm going to join a choir we started
acquiring by Maya that you two are not part of it,
I want to are. I think I'm going to do that,
and I'm going to trouble for a little bit. I
might even go to Copenhagen.
Speaker 2 (47:07):
She's just going to find out where Copenhagan is. Really.
Speaker 1 (47:10):
I'm still on the quest to find out where he
put it in Google maps stat Apparently it's a city,
not a country. I've got so much to learn my Stabatacra,
but I just wanted to say thank you. They've been
some beautiful messages in Yeah, that is. I just wanted
to make a big deal of it. There's not a
big deal. It's not a drama. I'm bloody end up
in the Daily Mail. I'm fine, it's fine.
Speaker 2 (47:31):
I'm typing.
Speaker 1 (47:32):
The only reason, exactly, the only reason I can do
this is because everything's going so well, and in a
time of crisis, you can't do this, and it's not
a time of crisis.
Speaker 3 (47:40):
So that's I like you out Louder who said that
I really need a break, and I've been waiting for
you to have a break. I feel as though if
there is anyone who've been waiting for permission to have
a break, Mayor Freedman is having one.
Speaker 1 (47:52):
So sometimes you'll you'll be hearing more from the wonderful
Amelia Lester and Vernon.
Speaker 2 (47:58):
I have one more question from It out Louder. She said,
give it a break. May we all know you're really
going into the jungle?
Speaker 1 (48:05):
That was my favorite, having a deep plane face, list.
Speaker 2 (48:09):
A deep face.
Speaker 3 (48:11):
Yeah, she's going to come back if you were going.
Speaker 1 (48:14):
And they're going to do both of those things, the
jungle and a deep Plans facelift. And then I'll come
back and you'll be like, you look so arrested, and
I'll be like, funny that.
Speaker 3 (48:21):
It was the jungle. I'm going to start rumors that
she's on the mask singer.
Speaker 1 (48:27):
It's my dream.
Speaker 2 (48:28):
You're a little l and bring it back, Miya. We
love you and we're going to miss you.
Speaker 1 (48:32):
Thank you. I love you too.
Speaker 2 (48:33):
We'll be fine. The show will be fine, but it
will be the same, and we will miss you a lot.
And I can't wait for you to come back. And
also I look forward to all the voice notes. Don't
care'll be coming in our way about the things we're
doing wrong.
Speaker 1 (48:42):
Yeah, I'm going to be a listener. I get to
shout at my phone and not infurious agreement like all
the outlouders do. I love you out louders, I'll see
you on the other side.
Speaker 2 (48:51):
Thank you out loud as we know you'll be wishing
out me as well as she has a well earned
time off. Jesse and I will still be here for you.
We'll be here for you with Amelia. We'll be here
with you for you.
Speaker 3 (49:00):
With Emily, the will be less significantly less singing.
Speaker 2 (49:03):
I'll tell you that will be Oh my gosh, you
and Amelia are going to try and make me talk
about all kinds of really in tel and things all
the time. Who's going to be my fellow gen X
celebrity obsessive? This is I can't cope. I'm already upset spiraling.
Thank you to our wonderful team Miya and Jesse tell
us who they are.
Speaker 3 (49:20):
A big thank you too. Group executive producer Ruth Devine.
She's your gen X.
Speaker 1 (49:25):
She can sing too, so she'll provide singing.
Speaker 3 (49:28):
Our senior producer is the brilliant Leah Porges. She has
been filling in while and Gazillis has been away and
it has been such a delight having her expertise on
this show.
Speaker 1 (49:40):
We've kept her on her toes.
Speaker 3 (49:41):
Poor Leah never.
Speaker 2 (49:42):
Boring, is it? Leah never? Boring.
Speaker 3 (49:44):
She should put on her LinkedIn profile has seen some shit.
Speaker 1 (49:52):
Video producer Josh Green, our junior content producers Coco and Tessa.
I'll see you soon, out loud as, I love you.
Speaker 2 (49:58):
Bye bye. Shout out to any Mamma Mia subscribers listening.
If you love the show and you want to support us,
subscribing to Mamma Mia is the very best way to
do it. There's a in the episode description you will
be back soon.
Speaker 1 (50:17):
I have a quick bit of feedback. Boom goes to dynamite.
Take that, Take that, take that, m listening. Each is
a song. Please don't think people have it? Hey, you
old sea words. I thought that you needed two people
to use it, and I was had some questions about
the wholes. I can do this, p me do this please.
That's why you're talking, Jesse. You're serving seaword today. I'd
(50:39):
stay Pink's fabulous.
Speaker 2 (50:49):
Yeah, okay.
Speaker 1 (50:50):
What's the plural though? Is it labby? I laby? I?
I'm sure lay by? I know, I think about that.
I'll see you soon, out louder, I love you, bye,
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