September 29, 2025 • 52 mins
Australian singer Vanessa Amorosi has spoken about the very messy feud with her mum and the financial fallout that destroyed their relationship. But does it reveal more about the bizarre dynamics of child stars and their families?
Also, Jessie has a question: if you’re going through something in your personal life, should you tell your workplace about it? How much do you REALLY want your boss to know? We have thoughts.
Plus, it's 'Sit at the Bar September' and Amelia has a theory about why sitting and making eye contact with strangers IRL sound so unappealing to young people.
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- JESSIE STEPHENS: On being pregnant with twins. As a twin. With twin brothers.
- HOLLY WAINWRIGHT: So, what do people do at night?
- Vanessa Amorosi was on every radio station. Behind the scenes, her family was falling apart.
- Child star Mara Wilson disappeared from Hollywood after playing Matilda. This is her life now.
- A Schitt's Creek favourite, a new child and a death: What the cast of Home Alone are doing now.
- The parents of Nickelodeon stars are being blamed for the horrors they faced on set. But there’s so much more to this story.
- Jennette McCurdy was a child star on Nickelodeon. She never wanted to be.
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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, Welcome, Welcome to
Mom and Mia out loud. It's what women are actually
talking about on Monday, the twenty ninth of September. And
my name is Holly Wayne right.
Speaker 3 (00:28):
I am Jesse Stevens, and I am Amelia Lester.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Now, it has been a big weekend for somebody here
who on Friday dropped the news of all news out louders.
If you haven't caught up, Jesse Stevens is pregnant twins. Yeah,
and on Friday's show she just announced it to myself
and Emily as if like, no big deal, yeap.
Speaker 4 (00:47):
I put it in the script is Robert Irwin. And
I think you and Emma still a bit annoyed that
we didn't talk about Robert.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
Swan because I did watch that clip of Robert Erwin
dancing on that which I just recommend generally for mood purposes.
Speaker 4 (00:57):
Well, the reason I put it in is that is
because I thought, oh, I've had a really straightforward pregnancy,
and then I saw that clip of him dancing and
I started to cry.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
Because I thought how proud Steve would be at him.
I went, oh, you're pregnant. You are very pregnant.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Anyway, the out louders have been overwhelmingly delighted with your news, Jesse.
We put some videos up on our Instagram if you
want to see them of Jesse telling us, and lots
of people said that I was like looking really smug,
as if like, I know, it was like what Holly
realized the moment at which she's like, yeah, of course.
Speaker 5 (01:28):
She's pregnant, and then you go twins and.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
I just.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
My head explode so good?
Speaker 2 (01:34):
As have you been overwhelmed with the love I have?
Speaker 4 (01:37):
And on Thursday or Friday afternoon, got a call about
the gender.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
I haven't told you?
Speaker 4 (01:43):
Oh no, I am so Look, you didn't even ask
me this morning, Holly, and you were asking me all
last week.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
But Darling, that's because I'm trying to be like this.
I have told myself by from texting you all weekend.
Speaker 4 (01:57):
I nearly texted it to you and then I went
nan out to tell her. So did you know that
with twins it's very different. The gender experience is different
because I do the blood test and they can tell
you if you're having two girls. But otherwise they go,
we know there's at least one boy because the Y
chromosome is detected in the blood.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
We've got at least one boy. Oh, which means terror.
Card reader. That's a big old tick.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
Because she said your instincts.
Speaker 3 (02:24):
And my instincts, and I will just double down here.
It's two boys. I know it in my heart, so.
Speaker 4 (02:30):
We know for sure one, and I think next gown,
i'll know if it's it's another.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
Very exciting. I don't want to wander too far down
parenting out loud territory. But did you find out the
gender of your children?
Speaker 5 (02:40):
Amelia?
Speaker 2 (02:40):
Is that too personal a question for this?
Speaker 1 (02:42):
Because I was of advanced geriatric age and so I
got all the tests one that you got to get done,
so they kind of make it hard not to find.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
Out, because I didn't because I like surprises and I
was a bit obsessive about it. I'd be in the
ultrasound just being like, don't tell me, putting my hand
over what I've perceived might be a penis or whatever,
like I don't want to know. And my instinct both
times was entirely wrong. I thought that Matilda was a
boy my first words when she came out, and the
iconic it's a girl moment would get out. But Jesse
(03:16):
knew that Luna was a girl before she turn out,
so Jesse obviously has excellent maternal.
Speaker 4 (03:20):
Insit y Yeah, yeah, I really really think it's two boys.
And my favorite story from the out Louders, which holy,
I think you actually met this out louder in person.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
I do it on Saturday night.
Speaker 4 (03:29):
She messaged me on Friday and she said, I own
this restaurant and I really wanted to hear it, and
I was really desperate, so she turned it on to
listen to it because she wanted to know what the
news was and kind of skipped through, but she didn't
realize that it was hooked up to the speakers in
the restaurant, so everyone in the entire restaurant just hears
me announcing my news and I'm.
Speaker 5 (03:50):
Pregnant with a hundred people.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
She said, I don't give a ship, and then listening
to her go wow, I actually went out on Saturday night,
which if you listen to what Do We Do at Night?
Yeah episode, that would be very rare, and that out
Louder came running.
Speaker 5 (04:05):
Up to me to tell me that story. I love it.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
Can I just say that I love just stirk about
it from the weekend, Thank you. Jesse talked about how
she is quite worried and has a lot of anxiety,
but also you wrote so beautifully about the concept of
never being alone when you're a twin.
Speaker 4 (04:22):
Yeah, that they've got a maid in there, because I
reckon the womb could be a little bit lonely.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
A bit dark, bit bit weird.
Speaker 4 (04:28):
I've been inundated with love but also with twin mums
who just it's such a nice community to be a
part of and just lots of advice and you're going
to be okay, and not telling you that the first
year will be easy.
Speaker 3 (04:39):
Not that message.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
No one said that, not anyone marriage.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
So just waiting for that message.
Speaker 5 (04:44):
Thanks guys.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
On our agenda for today. An Australian icon has told
the world about the money fight with her mother that
has lasted for years and ended their relationship. So what
is it about famous kids and their parents?
Speaker 4 (04:59):
Plus you're going through a tough period in your personal life.
Speaker 3 (05:02):
Are you meant to tell work about it.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
And forget about dry July? It's sit at the bar
September and We've got two days left to say.
Speaker 3 (05:11):
But first, in case you missed it.
Speaker 4 (05:13):
Sometimes a sporting event gets so messy that the police
are called. There's some big events coming up in Australia
as far as I know, police not.
Speaker 3 (05:21):
Yet fault, so far.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
Not the drama, yep.
Speaker 4 (05:23):
I need to tell you about what happened at the
Ryder Cup.
Speaker 5 (05:26):
Is that golf?
Speaker 2 (05:27):
Yes, so golf not normally rowdy in my.
Speaker 3 (05:29):
Experience, not normally the stuff of out loud.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
Some might say golf correspond to Jesse Stevens.
Speaker 4 (05:34):
Well, most of the time when my dad brings up golf,
I associate all right, I go somewhere else.
Speaker 5 (05:39):
In my mind.
Speaker 4 (05:40):
But a few keywords caught my attention over the weekend.
My mum was like, Pete, tell Jesse about the golf,
and I was like, why the hell would you tell.
Speaker 3 (05:48):
Me about the golf.
Speaker 4 (05:49):
Anyway, he starts telling me about a beer thrown at
one of the golfer's wives, homophobic insults, Trump's there, something
about a sniper gun, something about an MC stepping down,
and I was like, what the hell? This is not
just putting and birdies or whatever they call it.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
So eddie golf and we're about to really be diminished
in your eyes.
Speaker 5 (06:12):
You're standing. I'm sorry.
Speaker 4 (06:14):
So the Ryder Cup golf tournament between the US and Europe,
and it's a team sports situation. Normally you're just playing
for yourself, right, but US Europe, and it is a
little more heated than your average golf tournament. And this
year it's held in New York and the tournament was
described as exhibiting some of the worst behavior the sport
has ever seen. Generally, when golfers go to hit a ball,
(06:38):
they're like, they're doing their drive, they're doing their part.
Speaker 3 (06:40):
Everyone similar to problem tennis.
Speaker 5 (06:44):
It's a problem.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
I'm just going to say it. Sports that require silence
are silly.
Speaker 4 (06:48):
Oh Hollywayne, right, that is wrong. It is It is etiquette.
It is something something sportive gentlemen and gentle women.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
People are still arguing in the comments on our video
about do you remember a while ago we did the
story about the tennis player who asked for a baby
the shushy in the crowd.
Speaker 3 (07:03):
And we all were kind of like, yeah, fair enough, and.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
We put a video upon Instagram of that conversation about that.
People are still about that, like months later. Sports where
you have to be quite very controversial.
Speaker 3 (07:15):
Well this year, no, everyone went I'm not going to
be quiet.
Speaker 4 (07:18):
Every time the PGA of America posted spectator etiquette warnings,
had big screens and they would go shut up, like
these are the rules of golf. People would just start
booing really loudly. The crowd taunted UK golfer Rory McElroy
from day one. They took a lot of jabs at
his wife. They had briefly separated and now they're back together,
and it was all like it's U ex wife, just
(07:41):
really personal stuff. At one stage of beer can was
thrown at her head and she left the course, reportedly
in tears. State trippers were placed along the course for
players and public safety.
Speaker 3 (07:52):
Trump turned up.
Speaker 4 (07:53):
He sat behind bulletproof glass with a visible sniper in
front of him.
Speaker 5 (07:57):
He loves golf, he does. He plays a lot of golf.
Speaker 4 (08:00):
But he wasn't happy with the outcome because the US
didn't play well, which I think probably contributed to a
lot of the anger.
Speaker 3 (08:05):
It was a mess.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
I do need to say when you say New York,
it was happening on Long Island, New York, Okay, And
I'm going to get count for both people. But I'm
just going to whisper this to the out loud as
we called. Don't tell anyone I said this. Long Islanders
are the very worst. They're notorious for their rudeness, their brashness.
But on the plus that I guess Billy Joel is
(08:27):
a prominent Long Islander. They're just seen as very, very rude, loud.
They're loud, They're very loud. They're the loud Americans.
Speaker 4 (08:35):
There was a great analysis in the Guardian that said
that this tournament reflected what's been an incremental breakdown in
public behavior in the US. The country now lives in
all caps, and comment sections have spilled into the streets.
The writer Brian Arman Graham wrote that the event was
full of people testing boundaries because they've been told volume
is virtue. I found the whole thing fascinating and then
(08:58):
enormously depressing.
Speaker 5 (08:59):
Yeah, I saw.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
I mean, obviously golf is not one of my sports.
I don't understand that. But I saw a TikTok where
they were saying, how one of the I think you
referenced it earlier, what the MC who has asked to
step down? At seven in the morning. They were leading
a chant of f you Rory not saying f about
Rory McElroy like an official person from the tournament at
a time. And look, you know, I grew up going
(09:22):
to football games in England, soccer games in England where
it is notoriously rowdy. We are very creative with our
deeply offensive songs where you make up about all the
players and that's part of the atmosphere and I'm not
going to pretend otherwise. But the thing that kind of
feels a little bit alarming about this is that's not
part of the atmosphere at golf and the fact that
it's broken through and become that way. I like that
(09:44):
point about like living in all caps, like yes, really alarming.
Last night on sixty Minutes, Vanessa Amma Rossi, a huge
name in Australian pop in the noughties, told Tracy Grimshaw
why she's been fighting her mum in court for over
a decade, about a complicated mess of houses, money and debt.
And then last week one of the biggest child stars
(10:06):
of the millennial era, one Emma Watson Miami Granger, sat
down for a very rare and very long conversation with
podcasts at Jay Sheddy and among other things, She praised
her mom for being obsessed with keeping her in school,
having her feed on the ground as she became one
of the richest and most famous young people in the world.
(10:27):
Back to Amma Rossi, she was only about seventeen when
absolutely everybody became absolutely everywhere, and she immediately became enormous.
And she says in the next ten years she earned
easily ten million dollars, probably more. Mark Holden of Australian
idol fame, who was part of discovering Amarossi, said on
Sixty Minutes that she's the reason he lives in a
fancy house and has lots of money.
Speaker 5 (10:47):
Right, so she was a big deal.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
And she says, and she goes into this in this interview,
which is very emotional and we're not going to get
into it in too much detail, but she basically says
that after an early childhood that was marked by abuse,
she and her mum were really close, like really tight.
Speaker 5 (11:02):
They were like a unit.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
And she said she trusted her completely that when the
money started coming in, she would put it in a
family try trust, let her mum and stepdad have a
part in managing that and her property and her funds.
Until one day she found out, Vanessa found out that
she couldn't pay her mortgage on a house that she
had in America that was not a particularly expensive house,
and that sparked a whole lot of questions, a whole
(11:26):
lot of digging, and what ended up being a years
and years long court battle. Now, the thing that's interesting
about this is that she said in this interview that
she was the family breadwinner, and that is one of
the things that complicates everything, right, because we all know
stories about child stars where things have gone quite badly
and off the rails, And in this story, just like
(11:48):
many others, everyone in it has their own version of events. Obviously,
Vanessa and Rossi's mother has her side of this story,
and there's no suggestion of misappropriation or mismanagement of any money.
But what's really clear is that often kids making a
lot more money than their parents ends up in a
bit of a messy heap. Mcaulay Culkin ended up in
court with his family after he became a kid superstar
and home alone. Leighton Mester and up in court with
(12:10):
her family, So did Leanne Rhymes. In terms of families
that fall apart and tell all books and tabloid accusations.
We can go to Jennifer Aniston, who his mother wrote
a book about her, Drew Barrymore, both Britney Spears's parents,
Lindsay Lohan's parents. We could go on and on and on.
It makes me wonder, is the question about whether or
not your kids should go on the stage, as they
(12:31):
use to say, answered by how much the parents want
it to happen.
Speaker 4 (12:37):
Yeah, it's interesting, right because I read this quote by
Macaulay Culkin who said that a lot of the tension
and the issues growing up from his father were that
everything he said about his father, Kit, who was also
an actor, he said, everything he tried to do in life,
I excelled at before I was ten years old.
Speaker 3 (12:58):
So there was.
Speaker 4 (12:58):
Also this enormous level of jealousy or resentment that he
was carrying as well, which I can't imagine.
Speaker 3 (13:08):
It seems as well.
Speaker 4 (13:09):
Well, I've been reading a lot about Selena Gomez and
her mother had ambitions about working in kind of show business,
So you wonder how much of it was also pushed
by the parents who wanted to see their kids success.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
Yeah, and that Michael a bit deeper than just the
parents sort of seeing the kid as a source of income.
When you think about Vanessa Amerose's story, which was so
upsetting because she's such an Australian icon and for women
of a certain age like mine, she really evokes this
time in Australian history around the two thousand Olympics, which
felt so special and hopeful and positive. So you know,
(13:47):
it's great to see her back, but under such sad circumstances.
But her story has a lot of similarities with Selena
Gomez's in that Selena Gomez and her mother have gone
for long periods without speaking to each other. Selena Gomez's
mother used to manage her, but then Gomez fired her
and she learned about that on TMZ. Her mother has said,
but what struck me in both stories is that they
(14:09):
both had tough childhoods, both Selena and Vanessa. They grew
up in families where there was a lot of difficult
challenges and they had very complicated relationships with their fathers.
And I wonder in these situations whether the parents feel
that stardom is not just a financial lifeline, but it's
also a way of finding meaning and purpose and autonomy
(14:31):
outside of a domestic relationship. That's so hard, and that's
so difficult.
Speaker 2 (14:36):
It's interesting because it made me think about I listened
to this interview around when the Thursday Murder Club came
out side Barbie.
Speaker 5 (14:43):
We'll get background to it.
Speaker 2 (14:44):
The director of that, Chris Columbus, is like a big
mainstream Hollywood director, right, and he directed both Home Alone
and the first two Harry Potters, so he was instrumental
in casting those movies, like at least a decade apart.
And he talked about hiring Macaulay Culkin, who obviously was
a little kid, and that Culkin's talent was undeniable. They
(15:05):
just knew that that was the kid and it was
going to be amazing, and it was and became obviously huge.
But the Culkin family, as we've already touched on, was
very complicated, and that all kind of fell apart over
a period of years and ended up in court and
there was all a lot of drama around that. Macaulay
Culkin obviously went through a very difficult time, and he
said that going through that experience, when it came to
(15:27):
casting the Potter kids, Hermione, Harry, and Ron, he was
as interested in the family as he was in the kid.
He said, I certainly realized that parents needed to play
a significant role in this process. I can't have an
actor go home to a really shaky environment for the
sake of a film. It's not worth it. Casting the
(15:48):
parents was just as crucial as casting the children. Now,
that makes such sense, So he says when they came
to hire Emma Watson, whose parents were split, and she's
talked about there were some difficulties there and she probably
wanted to sort of escape the tensions of her household,
and the film set was really nurturing for that. But
clearly her parents, or at least her mother, were still
(16:09):
very invested in her being a normal and inverted Commas kid,
and neither Daniel Radcliffe or Rupert Grinn ended up in
these kind of messy situations with the parents. So Columbus
and the others obviously did a pretty good job in that.
But even hearing that, it kind of sounds a bit classest, yes,
and a little bit like it's not your fault if
you're a talented child actor, if your parents are messy,
(16:31):
whatever that means, whatever the term of that means. Because
money is obviously a part of this, and so is stability.
Speaker 1 (16:38):
Do you know what this makes me think? Of Holly
Too is our old friend Gwinny. The Gwyneth Paltrow biography
details how much she wanted to go into professional acting
much earlier than she did, but her parents, because they
were wealthy and they didn't need money, said to her, note,
you've got to finish your schooling before you can go in.
Speaker 4 (16:55):
I also knew the industry, and I think that that's
an unspoken privilege. And like the privilege as well of
just having great parents is the thing that a parents
that are stable doesn't mean that they have to have
every resource in the world.
Speaker 3 (17:10):
But you see a lot of parents that.
Speaker 4 (17:12):
Have, you know, lots of addiction issues, or there's domestic
violence within the home or whatever that is going to
make their lives a little bit more complicated. But I'm
thinking of even Justin Bieber, and he didn't come from
a lot of wealth. And what does seem to happen
in certain circumstances. In fact, this happens whether you come
(17:32):
from wealth or not, is that if the people around
you are profiting from you, I think they stop giving
you good advice because you're their paycheck.
Speaker 3 (17:40):
So if it's like they're going to.
Speaker 4 (17:42):
Get a cut of whatever you do, of no matter
how hard you work. You see this with so many
celebrities and they're overworked and they're burnt out and they're
being exploited and the parents are standing there going go
for it. I mean Amy Weinehouse's father, I think, was
another example.
Speaker 1 (17:58):
And you're right that that can happen regardless of the
financial circumstances they come from. Because Drew Barrymore and Nepo
Baby herself has obviously very famously talked about her early
drug a daiction problems when she was a child star
from et and her family, who was sort of grandfathered
into Hollywood, pretty much turned a blind eye because she
was such a success for them.
Speaker 4 (18:19):
I thought this in the Selena Gomez story that it
often isn't just the person at the center that becomes
famous overnight.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
Yeah, the impact on the rest of the family.
Speaker 4 (18:28):
The impact on the rest of the family would be
enormous and life changing.
Speaker 3 (18:34):
You're not prepared and you don't know what to do
with fame.
Speaker 4 (18:38):
And the idea even listening to people, people aren't meant
to have a million dollars land in their lap overnight,
Like the fact they can't manage that makes total sense.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
Yeah, let alone the media training involved. I mean, as
a parent, you obviously always want to talk about how
great your kids are. They and so when the media
comes knocking because they know about your child and your
child is famous, it's probably very hard to restrain yourself.
And I was reading that Matthew McConaughey didn't talk to
his mother for many years because she kept talking to
the press about him, saying with Selena. That was part
of the Selena Gomes story was her mum kept talking
(19:11):
to the media about Selena and her ups and downs.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
And you can understand why because they're proud, as you've said, Amelia,
but also they'd be like, no, I'm going to set
the record straight. Yes, I'm going to set the record straight,
my mom your lovest statement.
Speaker 3 (19:23):
Yes, she would be. She'd be posting on Instagram all
the time.
Speaker 2 (19:27):
You're not allowed to get any more famous than you are, Jesse,
because I'm Steven.
Speaker 3 (19:30):
She's already breaking.
Speaker 2 (19:31):
But then this is interesting because to the point that
you just brought up about how fame can impact really
negatively on family, Like, think about people who get sort
of instantly famous, like I mean, Megan Markle is a
very good example of this, right it's well documented what
happened with her dad with Thomas Markle, who their relationship
was tricky anyway, because if you get instantly worldwide famous
(19:53):
like that, the media on your doorstep. They are hounding you,
that are finding you wherever you go. They're offering you
large sums of money, they're telling you things that aren't
true about what your child or so and so said
about you. And it takes a lot of restraint to
be able to hold that together and also say no
to everything that's coming your way because and you see
this sometimes with celebrity siblings, is there kind of like, well,
(20:15):
there has to be an upside here, Like I'm being
constantly compared against my sibling, I'm being harassed by the press.
Maybe at least I can pilo this adjacent fame into
either some money or I don't know, a party supplies
business or something, you know, like something that you could
make work for you. You can see how it would happen,
and you can also see how it would happen if
(20:36):
you're an ordinary family and you're working the nine to
five and you've got mortgage and debts and things, and
then somebody in your orbit suddenly becomes other worldly, rich, privileged.
You would kind of be like, well, yeah, pay my
mortgage off, bitch.
Speaker 1 (20:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
I don't mean that.
Speaker 3 (20:51):
It comes up in the Bonnie Blue documentary.
Speaker 4 (20:54):
Like her, that's one of the first things that she
did was by her mother a house, which we all
love to imagine that if we had a pot of money,
you know, fall on our lap, that's what we would do.
But I did wonder when they're sort of interviewing her mother,
I don't.
Speaker 3 (21:08):
Doubt how much she likes, loves and cares for her daughter.
Speaker 4 (21:11):
I wondered how that would impact the advice that you'd
give your child.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
And it's also such a fine line between encouraging your
child and drawing boundaries around them. There was an interesting
Glamor magazine interview last year where for Mother's Day they
interviewed the mothers of four very famous people. Now it's
interesting Selena Gomez's mother participated in that, Travis Kelsey's mother participated,
(21:37):
and then there was also Billie Eilish's mum who had
a career, a small career in Hollywood in the nineties.
She was a bit player on Friends and so on.
And then the final one was Beyonce's mother last year
released a memoir. I think what was really interesting about
that interview was that you actually saw in the interview
that Billie Eilish, Beyonce, and Travis Kelsey's mother's all had
(22:00):
a slightly different approach to Selena Gomez's mother. They came
from more stable backgrounds and they just saw themselves as
a wowing their child's obvious talents, like manifest talents to
blossom and to be out there in the world. I mean,
Travis Kelsey was very obviously extremely athletic from an early age,
Ditto Beyonce with singing and dancing, and Billie Eilish, and
(22:23):
so those parents you could sort of see that they've
been able to separate a bit their own ego from
this sort of miraculous child that they somehow brought into
the world, and they saw themselves as just showcasing this
amazing talent that they don't even know where it came from.
But then with Selena Gomez's mother, there's obviously been a
lot more difficult back and forth there over the years,
(22:44):
and you could see that Selena's talent was more difficult
for her to talk about because she was more intertwined
with it.
Speaker 4 (22:51):
Yeah, She was also only sixteen when she had Selena Gomez,
So I think it's it's right to grow up alongside
such a good point your daughter, like that would be
a very different experience.
Speaker 2 (23:00):
That's such an interesting way of putting it, Amelia. If
you can separate your ego from your child's talents, is
so good. To the point Jesse about the idea that
have call, we would all want to share that kind
of good fortune and wealth. There's an amazing anecdote in
that Liz Gilbert memoir that I read recently that we
talked about on the show a few weeks ago, all
the way to the River, where she said that when
she became Eat, Pray, Love Rich, the level of success
(23:23):
of that book was so outsized. She felt so sort
of guilty about having all this money. And also she's
such a people pleaser that she just was giving it
to everybody in her life, like let me buy you
a house, let me pay off your debts, let me
send you on holiday, let me pay for your kid's
school fees. She was like walking down the high street
in her little town going that business is in trouble.
And she says that with the hindsight and what happened. Next,
(23:45):
she said none of her relationships were ever improved by
involving money in them. Every single one of those relationships
in a different way became worse and more complicated and
more toxic from her sort of insisting on injecting cash
into it.
Speaker 5 (24:02):
Which is very interesting to know.
Speaker 3 (24:05):
In a moment.
Speaker 4 (24:06):
If you're having a difficult period in your private life,
should you tell people at work? And if so, how
much do you TELP? We discuss should you share personal
news at work? This was a question posed by The
Sydney Morning Herald recently. A reader wrote in reflecting, I've
(24:26):
gone through a difficult period in my private life. I
have spent a lot of time wondering whether this is
something I should tell people at work. My direct managers,
but also others I work with regularly. Now they don't
share the specifics of what's going on, but let's imagine
it could be a scenario like a parent that's really ill,
or the end of a long term relationship, or a
(24:48):
kid that's having a hard time. Not that my experience
compares to any of those examples. But keeping from you
guys while I was so weird for two months was
very hard, and it felt dishonest because I disappear as
hard as I might try, my moods probably were impacted.
Speaker 3 (25:06):
I was so dishonest the diva, I.
Speaker 1 (25:09):
Kind of vanderberg ginger beer on your jab, which.
Speaker 5 (25:12):
I felt like side.
Speaker 4 (25:16):
I also felt a little bit distracted, which is what
can happen. You know, you've got to run out for
an appointment and you think, oh, people looking at me
thinking I'm slacking off. The question is do we owe
our colleagues or our boss and explanation or is it
just you turn up, you meet your requirements. If you're
doing your job, then what's going on in your private
life is private? Holly, what do you reckon?
Speaker 2 (25:37):
This is tricky, I think, because I think it depends
on how sort of safe you feel at work. I mean,
that's like a bit of an overused term now, but
I think that there are some workplaces where if you
share that you're going through a difficult time, it may
almost be used against you a little bit in terms
of like, oh, well, you know, we can't give you
that good promotion or that project to work on, or
(26:00):
we won't really be relied upon to do X y
Z because you know she's got that thing going on,
or she's just been through a divorce, or which I
think of we would probably all agree is not great.
On the other hand, if you feel safe at work,
it can be great to have an understanding manager who's
going to understand that you're going to need some flexibility,
because I guess it depends on how much the difficult
(26:21):
thing you're going through is going to affect your work.
Speaker 1 (26:24):
Well, that's the thing, because in the answer to this
question in the Herald, they did ask an expert from
NSW Business School who said that there are two reasons
to tell. The first is that your employer may be
able to help. But this second reason is the one
I wanted to highlight. He said that it could be
impacting them too. Yeah, And that reminded me that a
couple of years ago, a colleague of mine who I
(26:46):
also happened to be quite good friends with, messaged me
and our mutual boss and he said he needed to
talk to us, and what he wanted to tell us
was that his marriage was going through a really hard time.
Nothing even in particular, it was just, you know, that
kind of thing happens in relationships sometimes, and he had
been really checked out at work. We had been complaining
(27:06):
about how he'd been dropping the ball and others had
had to pick up the slack, and it was really
helpful to know because then we could say, Okay, we're
going to give him a little bit of slack going forward.
Speaker 4 (27:16):
So that's my theory, is that I reckon it's a
kind thing to do to your boss or to your colleagues.
I think there are moments in your life where you
get to ask people for grace around certain circumstances that
you're experiencing. But my question is how much you need
to explain, because sometimes I think that the details or
(27:40):
the specificity help people afford you the grace that you
actually deserve or need in that moment. And when you
are vague, human nature is such that people begin to speculate,
which can be distracting and annoying.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
Which is why the example that I mentioned of my
colleague who was going through the marital problems was interesting
because no one had had an affair, no one was
threatening to leave anyone. It's just that they were not
getting along and they were feeling like maybe they wanted
to separate. Yeah, Actually, quite a lot of detail to
have to establish with someone, because it's not like you
can say in one sentence like, well, my marriage is
(28:16):
having some trouble. You know there's going to be some
follow up. But the fact that he had to open
up to that extent with us is is like you say,
that's how we gave him the grease.
Speaker 4 (28:25):
Exactly because in that article The Sydney Morning Harold, when
the expert was saying he had a script and he
was saying, you can say something like I haven't been
feeling myself lately. I've been dealing with some problems. Something
major happened to me, and I was trying to imagine
how I might react in that, like obviously I would
feel incredibly empathetic, but I would be desperate to know
what it was. And I think that's because you also think,
(28:48):
is there anything I can do to help?
Speaker 3 (28:49):
Is there anything work can do to help?
Speaker 2 (28:51):
Obviously I manage people for a lot of years, and
if people wanted to share with me something that they
were going through personally, it was always helpful in that
term of context. But I entirely understand when people don't
want to do it, because often if you're going through
something really difficult personally, you don't want everybody at work
to know about it. You don't want them to see
you differently. You don't want to have to talk to
(29:12):
them about it in the kitchen. You don't want everybody
to like tilt their head and tap you on the shoulder.
And some people, yes, but a lot of people know,
they're like, I just want you to still think I
can do my job, because I can. And to be honest,
I know, and I'm sure we all know very many
women in particular, and I shouldn't say in particular, but
I guess I work with mostly women for most of
my career who will turn up and do their jobs
(29:34):
in the most extraordinarily difficult circumstances. The shit they've got
going on at home with, you know, maybe children who
are going through different things, maybe pregnancy, loss, maybe this,
Maybe that they still somehow manage to get their shit
together and keep going. And I'm not suggesting that that
should be the standard, you know, the stiff a pullip
and the standard. But I do think that whether or
(29:56):
not to share those intimate details, I understand why you
might not want to, and I also understand why you
might want to be vague. And I also when I
was a manager, I would always say do you want
me to tell anyone about this?
Speaker 5 (30:08):
Yeah, I'd be like a question. You know, this is
in the vault.
Speaker 2 (30:10):
We can understand why you might need to ask for
extra time off this or that, But do you want
me to share it with some of the people who
work close to you so they understand? Do you want
me to say? Don't talk about like? It's good to
do that. But then, strictly speaking, you don't have to
offer any of that. You know, as long as you're
doing your job. The fact that maybe you're leaving at
five instead of staying till six because you've got things
going on, you shouldn't necessarily have to offer up personal
(30:33):
details about that.
Speaker 1 (30:34):
You shared with us the other day that GQ has
done this list of modern etiquette and I love an
etiquette guide, and one of the sort of generic tips
in there was be mysterious at work. Don't tell people
why you're going on leave. Just have a little bit
of an enigmatic presence at work and if that's possible,
if you can do that, it depends on obviously how
(30:55):
severe and difficult what you're dealing with. Is I love
a bit of mystery at work?
Speaker 2 (30:58):
Well, I was going to ask you because you've obviously
worked in America A lot are the cultural differences about this,
You know, this stereotype about whether or not women should
put a photo of the kids on their desk, for example,
that to be one of the I mean, these days,
well a lot of us are hot desking and all
the rest of it. But it used to be one
of the things that men could put a picture of
children on their desk and it would be like, oh,
humanizes him, nice guy. Woman puts a picture of kids
(31:20):
on desks, Like, well, you're thinking about work, why are
you thinking about your children? Have you noticed cultural differences
in how much of your personal life is allowed to
seep into the office. Oh?
Speaker 1 (31:29):
Absolutely. I think one of the biggest things is, I mean,
Australia has recently codified this idea that you should not
contact people outside of work hours. That's kind of like
actual law. Now in the US, your boss will get
angry at you if they email you on the weekend
and you don't respond or yeah, it depends on the workplace,
but the expectation is that you should be available. And
(31:51):
that's particularly so given that I work in the media,
and this idea of you need to have a really
fast twitch muscle when you're responding to news. In general,
I think Australians are more comfortable sharing things at work,
and I think that's because sometimes alcohol is more often
involved in socializing in Australia, so people tend to share more.
I remember when I first moved back to Australia from
(32:12):
the US, I went to lunch with a book publicist.
This is a few years ago now, and we sat
down for lunch and she said, would you like a cocktail?
So I ordered a cocktail and then she said, and
do you want to split a bottle of wine on
the side.
Speaker 5 (32:24):
Wow?
Speaker 1 (32:24):
And I was like, well, okay, you know that's inevitably
going to lead to disclosure. Yeah. And in an American workplace,
even mom and Mia has worked drinks on a certain
day of the week, that's just not really in the
American work culture. So those lines are much more clearly demarketed.
Speaker 5 (32:41):
That's interesting.
Speaker 2 (32:42):
One of the times this came home to me is
ages ago, somebody advised me this is when you're young.
You might go in to ask your boss for a
pay rise, for example, and be like, I'm saving for
a house, or my husband's just lost his job, or
you know, like you give a person my.
Speaker 3 (32:57):
Rent just went up.
Speaker 2 (32:58):
Yeah, my rent just went up, so I need some
more money. That is irrelevant to your boss. However, some
bosses like to note that kind of stuff and like
to use it almost as leverage with you if you
give them and this is sort of a bad boss,
I would say, broadly, but if you give them a
little insight into your life and why you need what
you need, it can also be used to kind of
(33:18):
wege you a little bit.
Speaker 5 (33:19):
You know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (33:20):
But I remember that that when I was young, getting
that advice of like, your problems are not your manager's problems.
So if you think you should have a pay rise,
it's not because you're saving up for a car or
whatever it might be. Your rent went up, it has
to be because you're doing X, Y Z, And I
wonder if there's.
Speaker 5 (33:38):
An inverse of that.
Speaker 2 (33:39):
I think it still all comes down to trust and
whether or not you feel safe sharing that information or
whether it might be used against you.
Speaker 1 (33:46):
But I also think that we've talked a lot here
about bosses. I just want to also inject that idea
of colleagues and the fact that sometimes sharing with a
colleague can be very powerful and can help them pick
up the slack for you and give you that grace. Like,
I think that your point about bosses and what they
can do with that information is really well taken. It's
that whole idea of HR is not there for you,
(34:07):
They're there for the company. Colleagues I think can be
real sources of support in difficult times.
Speaker 2 (34:14):
I learned something this weekend from looking at the wedding
pictures of some very famous people. We mentioned her already today,
but one Selena Gomez, got married on the weekend, and
what I learned is that it's very cool to make
the pictures look as fuzzy, chaotic and low fire as possible.
Speaker 3 (34:29):
They're a giant orbs.
Speaker 2 (34:30):
Yes, there are giant orbs, right Selena Gomez. Let's remind
everybody she's got four hundred and seventeen million Instagram followers.
Speaker 4 (34:39):
I don't know if she's still the most followed woman
on Instagram, but for a long time she at least was.
Speaker 2 (34:43):
That is a lot of people, right. She is so
famous and so well connected that obviously she married. Benny
Blanco is a very famous producer and songwriter, and reportedly
at this wedding were Taylor Swift, who may have made
a speech Paris, Hilton Carra Telavian, Paul Rudd, Martin Short,
Steve Martin, Mark Ronson ed Shearing like a lot of
(35:04):
exceptionally famous teaching.
Speaker 4 (35:06):
You know that Steve Martin and Martin Short gave a
speech at the rehearsal dinner.
Speaker 5 (35:09):
Can you imagine they would have been funny.
Speaker 2 (35:12):
So basically she's having the wedding beyond all weddings, yep.
And yet on her Instagram, and of course they might
all come out these pictures. Famous people often dribble them
out a bit later. The photographs are They're beautiful, but
they look like they were taken with my digital camera
in nineteen ninety six, and they are blurry. They are
very upclosed, the crops are off their orbs. As you've discussed,
(35:35):
I also spent I don't know why I'm so obsessed
with this, but Charlie XCX, she's had the most chaotic
Italian wedding where I've never seen so many good looking
people sew off their chops at the same time, like
just stumbling around. But again, so many photos, every single
one of them badly cropped, hazy, messy, like it's a
(35:55):
vibe obviously like our posed, nice, slick wedding pictures that
you take hours to take out.
Speaker 1 (36:01):
I saw a comment that said that the photos at
that wedding, at the Selena wedding, looked like they were
taken with a vasaline smeared potato.
Speaker 3 (36:09):
Exactly right.
Speaker 4 (36:10):
There's one where she looks radioactive, like there's a life
behind her or something like the lighting's very, very strange.
And it just made me think of every photo of
me taken between twenty ten and about twenty thirteen, where
Instagram filters were everything, and I go back and I'm like,
I don't know what I looked like at twenty two
(36:31):
because I'm CPA.
Speaker 3 (36:33):
I just worry.
Speaker 4 (36:34):
I worry that they'll look back and they'll go I
wonder if they still have the original prints without all
the filtering and editing.
Speaker 1 (36:42):
I walked past a wedding the other day at a
beach and it looked very fancy, and there was a
big sign up welcoming people to the wedding, and it
said I'm going to make up the bride's name, Welcome
to the Wedding of Mary, and then down at the
bottom it said featuring hours And I was like at
least for being real. Now who this event is for.
Speaker 5 (37:00):
That's so funny.
Speaker 2 (37:01):
I have to quick correction now that we're on weddings.
If you believed that Keanu Reeves married Alexandra Grant recently,
you were either a tricked by an AI photograph on
the internet or be listening to this show. Because when
I was sick, Amir was on. I think we all
told you that Keanu Reeves got married to Alexandra gram.
Speaker 3 (37:21):
Someone on this show told me that maybe I brought it.
Speaker 4 (37:23):
I can't remember, but that appeared to be fact in
my scripts.
Speaker 2 (37:26):
The photo that you have seen on the internet, and
this has been served to me many times, of Keanu
Reeves and his glorious partner Alexandra holding out their hands,
knows you so very.
Speaker 5 (37:38):
Very well, is fake.
Speaker 2 (37:40):
It is AI, and it has been so well spread
that Alexandra herself had to release a photo, a very beautiful,
very artip photo of her and Keanu just after having
a little kiss, saying this is a real photo, not
an engagement photo or an AI wedding announcement, simply a kiss.
I'm sharing it here to say thank you to everyone
for the congratulations on our wedding, except we didn't get married.
(38:01):
Good news is much needed these days, but it's still
fake news, so be careful out.
Speaker 1 (38:05):
There, which is, by the way, why they're the cause
couple just like you, not just sending to this bourgeois
institution of Marion.
Speaker 2 (38:12):
They are not. And I think that Alexandra and Keanu
were a little bit offended that everybody thought they might
but they would be that basic, and that if they
did that, their wedding picture would look that clear.
Speaker 4 (38:22):
Yeah, but she's just in a standard wedding dress and
he's just in.
Speaker 2 (38:25):
A tux and there were no potatoes involved in the
photography of their wedding.
Speaker 1 (38:30):
After the break, there's an elder influencer in New York
who has a radical new way to meet people and
it involves, wait for it, a conversation.
Speaker 3 (38:42):
What unlimited out loud access.
Speaker 4 (38:44):
We drop episodes every Tuesday and Thursday exclusively for Muma
Maya 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.
Speaker 1 (39:04):
So, first of all, I wanted to introduce you both
to the concept of an elder influencer. Did you know
that there were older influences.
Speaker 5 (39:10):
No, but I'm excited.
Speaker 1 (39:12):
Laurie Cooper is a real estate agent from Brooklyn who
will not tell you her age, which I love for her.
But she looks like she's lived a life, and she
looks like she's probably very accomplished in the real estate business.
Speaker 2 (39:23):
Can I interject with a question, yes, at what age
am I allowed to stop telling people my age? And
what do I say when people say how old are you?
Speaker 5 (39:31):
Do you have any thoughts? I am just elder, I.
Speaker 1 (39:36):
Am elder influencer. I just met someone on the weekend.
She was I think almost certainly my age, and I
am forty two, and she refused to say how old
she was. And that was the first time I've met
someone who's sort of contemporaneous with me who is no longer.
Speaker 3 (39:50):
And how did she refuse?
Speaker 1 (39:52):
Well, my partner asked her age because he's very rude.
She's American and American not from Long Island, and she emerged.
She simply said, I'm not going to tell you my age,
and I respected it. I think the answer is now, Holy,
I think I should be not telling people my age
starting now.
Speaker 2 (40:11):
My NN used to say, I'm as old as my tongue.
I'm younger than my teeth. That's what I'm going to
start saying from now on.
Speaker 1 (40:19):
So Laurie Cooper, who has a great TikTok presence, and
I recommend you check her out. But she has become
very prominent lately because she has started something called sit
at the Bar September. So Laurie says that in September,
and let me remind you there are two days left
in September for you to do this. People of all
stripes need to go and sit in bars and talk
(40:41):
to people, and that is how she says you will
meet the love of your life if in fact you
are looking for the love of your life at the bar.
Speaker 2 (40:47):
So go and get one of the high stool tables
at the bar.
Speaker 1 (40:50):
At the bar, and do not whip out your phone
and start doing the crossword or scrolling your Instagram. No,
you need to just keep the phone in your bag,
sit at the bar and talk to people.
Speaker 2 (41:00):
Sit at the bar September has made such a splash, girls,
then I'm.
Speaker 1 (41:04):
Going to give you some more places for you to.
Speaker 4 (41:06):
Go and enjoy yourself.
Speaker 2 (41:08):
Get off those dating apps and sid as these bars instead.
Speaker 1 (41:11):
So She goes on to recommend a few New York
bars that she says that single people looking to mingle
should be sitting up. But the reason I thought this
is really interesting is because over the weekend I met
two couples who had both met through striking up conversation.
The first couple met at a pub, a Sydney pub,
and the second met at a New York City cafe.
(41:34):
And the crucial thing about both these couples is that
they met in twenty twelve, twenty thirteen, Okay, And that's
crucial because both couples said that they didn't think that
they could meet this way now. And I have a
theory for why this is. And the theory is phones.
In twenty thirteen, that's the exact year that the majority
of adult Australians gained a smartphone, and ever since then,
(41:57):
we've just been scrolling and we don't look up, and
we don't talk to people. And Tinder this is also
going to support my case here. It launched in twenty twelve,
but in Australia it really gained a significant presence in
twenty fourteen, and so ever since then, we're not talking
to people in cafes and bars. But my question is,
what would you do if someone came up to you
in a cafe or bar, doesn't have to be romantic,
(42:18):
but came up to you and started talking to you.
Speaker 2 (42:21):
Holly, It's really interesting because I think this does still
happen a little bit in certain kind of places, right, So, like,
I do talk to people in cafes and bars a
little bit, but they're not trying to pick me up, clearly.
And when I was young and more on the market,
she said, if I might still be just a little bit,
what percentage of me might still be on the market
(42:41):
to be convinced. You used to hate it when guys
came over and interrupted you if you were with your
friends or whatever. Didn't you like that unless they were
really hot. But you'd be kind of like, oh, I'm
just trying to talk to my and I can't believe
you're here. But then that whole idea of being at
the bar and trying to be there at the same
(43:01):
time as someone that you find attractive and striking up conversation.
Speaker 5 (43:05):
Like that was great.
Speaker 2 (43:06):
That gave you the whole adrenaline, and then you'd be
looking at each other across the bar the rest of
the day.
Speaker 3 (43:11):
See, the thing about this elder influencer is I just
want to.
Speaker 4 (43:14):
Say I could sit at the bar all day. I
could do my sit at the bar September. Every day
of September.
Speaker 3 (43:19):
No one's coming.
Speaker 5 (43:20):
I don't think that's true.
Speaker 4 (43:21):
No, no one's coming. And I'm not saying this is
some kind of self deprecating thing. It's like the social
contract has been broken. The social contract no longer says
that it's appropriate.
Speaker 2 (43:30):
So your friends who are like around the thirties, early thirties,
they are not talking to strangers in bars, whether they're
single or not.
Speaker 4 (43:38):
No, and no one I know who is kind of
about to get married. I've got a few friends who
are at that stage or are married.
Speaker 3 (43:50):
None of them met at a bar or a club.
Speaker 1 (43:52):
I think that social contract point is largely true. But
I think what the older influencer is stressing is that
you need to sit at the bar. I'm wondering if
that's a little bit of a caveat to the contract,
because those bar stools are designed to strike up conversation,
and now you're.
Speaker 2 (44:08):
On your own, that's the striker. So it is a
bit different from just being at the bar and ordering
a drink. It's like in every movie set in New York,
they'll be like, send that beautiful.
Speaker 5 (44:18):
Lady a drink down at the bar.
Speaker 2 (44:20):
I remember, But if you're sitting at the bar by yourself,
you are kind of saying I want to talk to someone.
Speaker 4 (44:27):
That's the thing is that I remember the signal being
like when it was say twenty thirteen, and I reckon,
that's the last time someone came up to me in
a pub just wanted to get to know you and
chatted to you, and it was all lovely. But there
used to be a signal which was even like if
I was out with a bunch of friends and we're
like clubbing or whatever, if you went to the bar
on your own, or even like just you and a friend, like,
(44:50):
there were certain signals that you would give other people
in the room that you were open to like talking
to someone. But now I'm not even sure what those
signals would be, because do you not look I wonder
if you'd look like a bit of a weirdo. Like
if I was sitting at a bar with my phone
put away, just making eye contact with people, I think
(45:11):
they'd be like that person's well.
Speaker 2 (45:13):
Maybe they would wait, maybe someone and I a while
ago for mid I interviewed this woman, this American woman
called Leslie Morgan, who was quite amazing and after her divorce.
She was in her forties and after her divorce she
decided she wanted to meet men, try men on basically
was her thing. She said, I'm going to date like
a divorce mandates. I'm not looking for a husband. I'm
going to try on some different guys as who happens.
(45:33):
And she said, suddenly she realized there were men everywhere.
There are men everywhere. You know that, the men at
the car wash, the men at the pub, the room
of the airport. That you have to be prepared to
make a tid of yourself to start conversations with those.
Speaker 3 (45:47):
Peace, which I think most people are not prepared.
Speaker 2 (45:49):
Yes, So she said airports are particularly good for this
because lots of business travel, lots of solo people. There's
an immediate inn of like, oh can you believe the
planes delayed?
Speaker 5 (45:59):
Or where are you going or whatever? She said, that
was great, Sod.
Speaker 2 (46:01):
You have to talk yourself into being a confident enough
place that sometimes you're going to strike out. Sometimes somebody
is going to say, as you just said, Jesse, they
might think there's something wrong with me. Some people are
going to think that, but a surprising number of people,
she said, would be like, Oh, somebody's talking to me,
and they would quite enjoy it. I wonder if the
reason why, if indeed it has taken off this sit
(46:23):
at the bar September, is because in the same way
that we're all feeling sick about our phones about other things,
we're also feeling.
Speaker 5 (46:31):
Sick about that part of it.
Speaker 2 (46:33):
The meeting people on apps have been we talk about
it all the time, is not necessarily going that great
for everybody. It isn't great for all kinds of people
self esteem, it doesn't suit certain types of personalities, It
privileges some kinds of attraction over others. And so maybe
people have been dying to sit at bars again and
talk to people I don't know.
Speaker 1 (46:50):
And let's boarden it out. So we have mostly talked
about meeting people romantically here, but I'm wondering if we
all need to be making more of an effort to
be receptive to everyday conversation with people in bars and cafes.
And while we're waiting for our coffee, an elderly man
came up to me while I was waiting for my
coffee the other day and I was weird wearing a sweatshirt,
(47:11):
which provokes some conversation from him, And at first I
was kind of annoyed, but then I thought to myself,
I'm literally standing here waiting for my coffee. I'm not
doing anything. We'll discuss politics with this man who wants
to talk about politics with me. And then I did
and we disagreed, but it was actually quite fun, and
I walked away with a little bit of a spring
in my step because I'd had a human interaction.
Speaker 2 (47:32):
Maybe we're all firsting for that.
Speaker 3 (47:34):
Yeah, it's interesting too.
Speaker 4 (47:35):
I was reading there's this book out called Labor of
Love by Moira Weigel, and she's written about how there
has always been a moral panic and almost a nihilism
about the state of dating. There is no time in
all of human history where people have looked around and
gone dating's going really well for us, Like that just
never happens.
Speaker 5 (47:53):
It's true.
Speaker 2 (47:54):
That's so true because if you think about way pre apps,
think about the whole premise of sex and the city,
it is all the good guys like And that was
way before app day.
Speaker 1 (48:02):
And Karen was sitting at bars, and so what this
book says is the history of love is inextricably intertwined
with the history of technology.
Speaker 4 (48:12):
Those two things just like inform each other. So the
invention of the car, the invention of the telephone, like
this just changed the way that we relate.
Speaker 3 (48:19):
And the idea that romance.
Speaker 4 (48:22):
Is this spontaneous chance thing that can be found as
you walk down the street is a modern invention that
is like one hundred maybe two hundred years old. It's
sex in the city, right, that he or she could just.
Speaker 3 (48:36):
Pop up in your life to them in the street
in the red.
Speaker 4 (48:39):
Yes, before that, it was incredibly calculating. It was like
how much money does this because of gender, roles and
everything does this guy next door have? Your family was involved,
you were working out status, class, wealth, dowry, all of that.
And her argument is kind of we're back to the calculating,
like we've taken away the spontaneity and the chance that
(49:02):
sort of doesn't fit anymore, and we're back to using
technology to go, all right, what exactly do I want?
Speaker 3 (49:09):
How exact clear am I going to find it?
Speaker 2 (49:10):
But we that's why we've I think idolized and loved
the idea of Sarah diipitous meetings, because it then it
seems like this was meant to be, you know what
I mean, Like you could tell a story that you
have done about Like if I hadn't have walked into
that office on that day and met No Da Da
Da Da, then I wouldn't have met this guy, and
I wouldn't now have my kid. I wouldn't I be
pregnant with twins, thanks very much, And like you can
(49:32):
tell that if I hadn't walked into that bar, if
I hadn't, Like, it's a nice story for us all
to noodle on and be Like, clearly the universe wanted
to bring us together. It's harder to tell yourself that
story about a dating app, but you're not.
Speaker 5 (49:44):
I don't mean that.
Speaker 2 (49:46):
I'm not saying that because I think there's anything true
about the serendipity of that. But I think we like it,
don't we. Whereas it feels like, well, I swiped and
they swiped.
Speaker 3 (49:55):
I think we're feeling nostalgic for it.
Speaker 1 (49:57):
Well, and because it is harder than before, Like I
take the moral panic point, but it does feel harder
than it felt even ten years ago before the majority
of Australians had a smartphone, and it reminds me that
my parents tell me a story about Sydney in the
sixties and they used to go to a nightclub on
the Lower north Shore of Sydney, which is funny if
anyone lives in Sydney, how unlikely that is. That was
apparently very hip, and you'd go into this nightclub and
(50:20):
on every table there was a phone and you could
call other tables.
Speaker 3 (50:25):
So phone, Oh, they should bring in view.
Speaker 1 (50:28):
You can't tell me that that's not a good way
of meeting people. They should bring that back.
Speaker 2 (50:34):
Going back to what I said at the beginning about
how now we've kind of culturally very much digested that,
particularly for guys to approach women in bars is a
bit icky and creepy. It's kind of like we've kind
of metabolized that, right. I wonder if there's any such
thing as a safe bet of how to do it.
Speaker 5 (50:51):
You know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (50:52):
Like we used to talk about cheesy chat up lines,
and I wonder if any out louders maybe have stories
of how they started talking to somebody or I hate
to say the line, but the conversation started that doesn't
feel gross.
Speaker 5 (51:08):
I'd love to hear in twenty twenty five Vibe.
Speaker 2 (51:10):
Out Louders, a massive thank you to all of you
for being here with us on this Monday. We appreciate
you very much, as we do our team for helping
us put it together. Do not forget that if you
want to watch us on YouTube and slowly see Jesse
expanding over time and maybe not only Jesse back, we
are on YouTube and you can see us there and
(51:32):
watch our show there whenever you want to.
Speaker 4 (51:35):
And we got so much feedback about last Wednesday's segment
where we spoke about office attire. For some reason, we
asked the out Louders if we had dressed appropriately for
the office.
Speaker 3 (51:44):
They all said no. When I was like, why do
we ask you?
Speaker 2 (51:46):
We were wearing jeans?
Speaker 3 (51:47):
No, were liking no, you all are terrible.
Speaker 2 (51:51):
They said, there's a few passecs. Oh, I thought this
was another video about Jesse not hawning her clothes.
Speaker 3 (51:59):
Did I in my clothes?
Speaker 4 (52:01):
We discussed the rules of how to dress and how
corporate wear is back. There's apparently new rules about office wear. Also,
Amelia has a fear about why we should never aim
for feeling fully recharged, which good because I'm not feeling
fully recharged to We'll pop a link in the show
note goodbye bye.
Speaker 2 (52:21):
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 link in the episode description
You're listening to a MoMA Mia podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Mamma Mia acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters
that this podcast is recorded on Welcome, Welcome, Welcome to
Mom and Mia out loud. It's what women are actually
talking about on Monday, the twenty ninth of September. And
my name is Holly Wayne right.
Speaker 3 (00:28):
I am Jesse Stevens, and I am Amelia Lester.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Now, it has been a big weekend for somebody here
who on Friday dropped the news of all news out louders.
If you haven't caught up, Jesse Stevens is pregnant twins. Yeah,
and on Friday's show she just announced it to myself
and Emily as if like, no big deal, yeap.
Speaker 4 (00:47):
I put it in the script is Robert Irwin. And
I think you and Emma still a bit annoyed that
we didn't talk about Robert.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
Swan because I did watch that clip of Robert Erwin
dancing on that which I just recommend generally for mood purposes.
Speaker 4 (00:57):
Well, the reason I put it in is that is
because I thought, oh, I've had a really straightforward pregnancy,
and then I saw that clip of him dancing and
I started to cry.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
Because I thought how proud Steve would be at him.
I went, oh, you're pregnant. You are very pregnant.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Anyway, the out louders have been overwhelmingly delighted with your news, Jesse.
We put some videos up on our Instagram if you
want to see them of Jesse telling us, and lots
of people said that I was like looking really smug,
as if like, I know, it was like what Holly
realized the moment at which she's like, yeah, of course.
Speaker 5 (01:28):
She's pregnant, and then you go twins and.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
I just.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
My head explode so good?
Speaker 2 (01:34):
As have you been overwhelmed with the love I have?
Speaker 4 (01:37):
And on Thursday or Friday afternoon, got a call about
the gender.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
I haven't told you?
Speaker 4 (01:43):
Oh no, I am so Look, you didn't even ask
me this morning, Holly, and you were asking me all
last week.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
But Darling, that's because I'm trying to be like this.
I have told myself by from texting you all weekend.
Speaker 4 (01:57):
I nearly texted it to you and then I went
nan out to tell her. So did you know that
with twins it's very different. The gender experience is different
because I do the blood test and they can tell
you if you're having two girls. But otherwise they go,
we know there's at least one boy because the Y
chromosome is detected in the blood.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
We've got at least one boy. Oh, which means terror.
Card reader. That's a big old tick.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
Because she said your instincts.
Speaker 3 (02:24):
And my instincts, and I will just double down here.
It's two boys. I know it in my heart, so.
Speaker 4 (02:30):
We know for sure one, and I think next gown,
i'll know if it's it's another.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
Very exciting. I don't want to wander too far down
parenting out loud territory. But did you find out the
gender of your children?
Speaker 5 (02:40):
Amelia?
Speaker 2 (02:40):
Is that too personal a question for this?
Speaker 1 (02:42):
Because I was of advanced geriatric age and so I
got all the tests one that you got to get done,
so they kind of make it hard not to find.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
Out, because I didn't because I like surprises and I
was a bit obsessive about it. I'd be in the
ultrasound just being like, don't tell me, putting my hand
over what I've perceived might be a penis or whatever,
like I don't want to know. And my instinct both
times was entirely wrong. I thought that Matilda was a
boy my first words when she came out, and the
iconic it's a girl moment would get out. But Jesse
(03:16):
knew that Luna was a girl before she turn out,
so Jesse obviously has excellent maternal.
Speaker 4 (03:20):
Insit y Yeah, yeah, I really really think it's two boys.
And my favorite story from the out Louders, which holy,
I think you actually met this out louder in person.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
I do it on Saturday night.
Speaker 4 (03:29):
She messaged me on Friday and she said, I own
this restaurant and I really wanted to hear it, and
I was really desperate, so she turned it on to
listen to it because she wanted to know what the
news was and kind of skipped through, but she didn't
realize that it was hooked up to the speakers in
the restaurant, so everyone in the entire restaurant just hears
me announcing my news and I'm.
Speaker 5 (03:50):
Pregnant with a hundred people.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
She said, I don't give a ship, and then listening
to her go wow, I actually went out on Saturday night,
which if you listen to what Do We Do at Night?
Yeah episode, that would be very rare, and that out
Louder came running.
Speaker 5 (04:05):
Up to me to tell me that story. I love it.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
Can I just say that I love just stirk about
it from the weekend, Thank you. Jesse talked about how
she is quite worried and has a lot of anxiety,
but also you wrote so beautifully about the concept of
never being alone when you're a twin.
Speaker 4 (04:22):
Yeah, that they've got a maid in there, because I
reckon the womb could be a little bit lonely.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
A bit dark, bit bit weird.
Speaker 4 (04:28):
I've been inundated with love but also with twin mums
who just it's such a nice community to be a
part of and just lots of advice and you're going
to be okay, and not telling you that the first
year will be easy.
Speaker 3 (04:39):
Not that message.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
No one said that, not anyone marriage.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
So just waiting for that message.
Speaker 5 (04:44):
Thanks guys.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
On our agenda for today. An Australian icon has told
the world about the money fight with her mother that
has lasted for years and ended their relationship. So what
is it about famous kids and their parents?
Speaker 4 (04:59):
Plus you're going through a tough period in your personal life.
Speaker 3 (05:02):
Are you meant to tell work about it.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
And forget about dry July? It's sit at the bar
September and We've got two days left to say.
Speaker 3 (05:11):
But first, in case you missed it.
Speaker 4 (05:13):
Sometimes a sporting event gets so messy that the police
are called. There's some big events coming up in Australia
as far as I know, police not.
Speaker 3 (05:21):
Yet fault, so far.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
Not the drama, yep.
Speaker 4 (05:23):
I need to tell you about what happened at the
Ryder Cup.
Speaker 5 (05:26):
Is that golf?
Speaker 2 (05:27):
Yes, so golf not normally rowdy in my.
Speaker 3 (05:29):
Experience, not normally the stuff of out loud.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
Some might say golf correspond to Jesse Stevens.
Speaker 4 (05:34):
Well, most of the time when my dad brings up golf,
I associate all right, I go somewhere else.
Speaker 5 (05:39):
In my mind.
Speaker 4 (05:40):
But a few keywords caught my attention over the weekend.
My mum was like, Pete, tell Jesse about the golf,
and I was like, why the hell would you tell.
Speaker 3 (05:48):
Me about the golf.
Speaker 4 (05:49):
Anyway, he starts telling me about a beer thrown at
one of the golfer's wives, homophobic insults, Trump's there, something
about a sniper gun, something about an MC stepping down,
and I was like, what the hell? This is not
just putting and birdies or whatever they call it.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
So eddie golf and we're about to really be diminished
in your eyes.
Speaker 5 (06:12):
You're standing. I'm sorry.
Speaker 4 (06:14):
So the Ryder Cup golf tournament between the US and Europe,
and it's a team sports situation. Normally you're just playing
for yourself, right, but US Europe, and it is a
little more heated than your average golf tournament. And this
year it's held in New York and the tournament was
described as exhibiting some of the worst behavior the sport
has ever seen. Generally, when golfers go to hit a ball,
(06:38):
they're like, they're doing their drive, they're doing their part.
Speaker 3 (06:40):
Everyone similar to problem tennis.
Speaker 5 (06:44):
It's a problem.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
I'm just going to say it. Sports that require silence
are silly.
Speaker 4 (06:48):
Oh Hollywayne, right, that is wrong. It is It is etiquette.
It is something something sportive gentlemen and gentle women.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
People are still arguing in the comments on our video
about do you remember a while ago we did the
story about the tennis player who asked for a baby
the shushy in the crowd.
Speaker 3 (07:03):
And we all were kind of like, yeah, fair enough, and.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
We put a video upon Instagram of that conversation about that.
People are still about that, like months later. Sports where
you have to be quite very controversial.
Speaker 3 (07:15):
Well this year, no, everyone went I'm not going to
be quiet.
Speaker 4 (07:18):
Every time the PGA of America posted spectator etiquette warnings,
had big screens and they would go shut up, like
these are the rules of golf. People would just start
booing really loudly. The crowd taunted UK golfer Rory McElroy
from day one. They took a lot of jabs at
his wife. They had briefly separated and now they're back together,
and it was all like it's U ex wife, just
(07:41):
really personal stuff. At one stage of beer can was
thrown at her head and she left the course, reportedly
in tears. State trippers were placed along the course for
players and public safety.
Speaker 3 (07:52):
Trump turned up.
Speaker 4 (07:53):
He sat behind bulletproof glass with a visible sniper in
front of him.
Speaker 5 (07:57):
He loves golf, he does. He plays a lot of golf.
Speaker 4 (08:00):
But he wasn't happy with the outcome because the US
didn't play well, which I think probably contributed to a
lot of the anger.
Speaker 3 (08:05):
It was a mess.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
I do need to say when you say New York,
it was happening on Long Island, New York, Okay, And
I'm going to get count for both people. But I'm
just going to whisper this to the out loud as
we called. Don't tell anyone I said this. Long Islanders
are the very worst. They're notorious for their rudeness, their brashness.
But on the plus that I guess Billy Joel is
(08:27):
a prominent Long Islander. They're just seen as very, very rude, loud.
They're loud, They're very loud. They're the loud Americans.
Speaker 4 (08:35):
There was a great analysis in the Guardian that said
that this tournament reflected what's been an incremental breakdown in
public behavior in the US. The country now lives in
all caps, and comment sections have spilled into the streets.
The writer Brian Arman Graham wrote that the event was
full of people testing boundaries because they've been told volume
is virtue. I found the whole thing fascinating and then
(08:58):
enormously depressing.
Speaker 5 (08:59):
Yeah, I saw.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
I mean, obviously golf is not one of my sports.
I don't understand that. But I saw a TikTok where
they were saying, how one of the I think you
referenced it earlier, what the MC who has asked to
step down? At seven in the morning. They were leading
a chant of f you Rory not saying f about
Rory McElroy like an official person from the tournament at
a time. And look, you know, I grew up going
(09:22):
to football games in England, soccer games in England where
it is notoriously rowdy. We are very creative with our
deeply offensive songs where you make up about all the
players and that's part of the atmosphere and I'm not
going to pretend otherwise. But the thing that kind of
feels a little bit alarming about this is that's not
part of the atmosphere at golf and the fact that
it's broken through and become that way. I like that
(09:44):
point about like living in all caps, like yes, really alarming.
Last night on sixty Minutes, Vanessa Amma Rossi, a huge
name in Australian pop in the noughties, told Tracy Grimshaw
why she's been fighting her mum in court for over
a decade, about a complicated mess of houses, money and debt.
And then last week one of the biggest child stars
(10:06):
of the millennial era, one Emma Watson Miami Granger, sat
down for a very rare and very long conversation with
podcasts at Jay Sheddy and among other things, She praised
her mom for being obsessed with keeping her in school,
having her feed on the ground as she became one
of the richest and most famous young people in the world.
(10:27):
Back to Amma Rossi, she was only about seventeen when
absolutely everybody became absolutely everywhere, and she immediately became enormous.
And she says in the next ten years she earned
easily ten million dollars, probably more. Mark Holden of Australian
idol fame, who was part of discovering Amarossi, said on
Sixty Minutes that she's the reason he lives in a
fancy house and has lots of money.
Speaker 5 (10:47):
Right, so she was a big deal.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
And she says, and she goes into this in this interview,
which is very emotional and we're not going to get
into it in too much detail, but she basically says
that after an early childhood that was marked by abuse,
she and her mum were really close, like really tight.
Speaker 5 (11:02):
They were like a unit.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
And she said she trusted her completely that when the
money started coming in, she would put it in a
family try trust, let her mum and stepdad have a
part in managing that and her property and her funds.
Until one day she found out, Vanessa found out that
she couldn't pay her mortgage on a house that she
had in America that was not a particularly expensive house,
and that sparked a whole lot of questions, a whole
(11:26):
lot of digging, and what ended up being a years
and years long court battle. Now, the thing that's interesting
about this is that she said in this interview that
she was the family breadwinner, and that is one of
the things that complicates everything, right, because we all know
stories about child stars where things have gone quite badly
and off the rails, And in this story, just like
(11:48):
many others, everyone in it has their own version of events. Obviously,
Vanessa and Rossi's mother has her side of this story,
and there's no suggestion of misappropriation or mismanagement of any money.
But what's really clear is that often kids making a
lot more money than their parents ends up in a
bit of a messy heap. Mcaulay Culkin ended up in
court with his family after he became a kid superstar
and home alone. Leighton Mester and up in court with
(12:10):
her family, So did Leanne Rhymes. In terms of families
that fall apart and tell all books and tabloid accusations.
We can go to Jennifer Aniston, who his mother wrote
a book about her, Drew Barrymore, both Britney Spears's parents,
Lindsay Lohan's parents. We could go on and on and on.
It makes me wonder, is the question about whether or
not your kids should go on the stage, as they
(12:31):
use to say, answered by how much the parents want
it to happen.
Speaker 4 (12:37):
Yeah, it's interesting, right because I read this quote by
Macaulay Culkin who said that a lot of the tension
and the issues growing up from his father were that
everything he said about his father, Kit, who was also
an actor, he said, everything he tried to do in life,
I excelled at before I was ten years old.
Speaker 3 (12:58):
So there was.
Speaker 4 (12:58):
Also this enormous level of jealousy or resentment that he
was carrying as well, which I can't imagine.
Speaker 3 (13:08):
It seems as well.
Speaker 4 (13:09):
Well, I've been reading a lot about Selena Gomez and
her mother had ambitions about working in kind of show business,
So you wonder how much of it was also pushed
by the parents who wanted to see their kids success.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
Yeah, and that Michael a bit deeper than just the
parents sort of seeing the kid as a source of income.
When you think about Vanessa Amerose's story, which was so
upsetting because she's such an Australian icon and for women
of a certain age like mine, she really evokes this
time in Australian history around the two thousand Olympics, which
felt so special and hopeful and positive. So you know,
(13:47):
it's great to see her back, but under such sad circumstances.
But her story has a lot of similarities with Selena
Gomez's in that Selena Gomez and her mother have gone
for long periods without speaking to each other. Selena Gomez's
mother used to manage her, but then Gomez fired her
and she learned about that on TMZ. Her mother has said,
but what struck me in both stories is that they
(14:09):
both had tough childhoods, both Selena and Vanessa. They grew
up in families where there was a lot of difficult
challenges and they had very complicated relationships with their fathers.
And I wonder in these situations whether the parents feel
that stardom is not just a financial lifeline, but it's
also a way of finding meaning and purpose and autonomy
(14:31):
outside of a domestic relationship. That's so hard, and that's
so difficult.
Speaker 2 (14:36):
It's interesting because it made me think about I listened
to this interview around when the Thursday Murder Club came
out side Barbie.
Speaker 5 (14:43):
We'll get background to it.
Speaker 2 (14:44):
The director of that, Chris Columbus, is like a big
mainstream Hollywood director, right, and he directed both Home Alone
and the first two Harry Potters, so he was instrumental
in casting those movies, like at least a decade apart.
And he talked about hiring Macaulay Culkin, who obviously was
a little kid, and that Culkin's talent was undeniable. They
(15:05):
just knew that that was the kid and it was
going to be amazing, and it was and became obviously huge.
But the Culkin family, as we've already touched on, was
very complicated, and that all kind of fell apart over
a period of years and ended up in court and
there was all a lot of drama around that. Macaulay
Culkin obviously went through a very difficult time, and he
said that going through that experience, when it came to
(15:27):
casting the Potter kids, Hermione, Harry, and Ron, he was
as interested in the family as he was in the kid.
He said, I certainly realized that parents needed to play
a significant role in this process. I can't have an
actor go home to a really shaky environment for the
sake of a film. It's not worth it. Casting the
(15:48):
parents was just as crucial as casting the children. Now,
that makes such sense, So he says when they came
to hire Emma Watson, whose parents were split, and she's
talked about there were some difficulties there and she probably
wanted to sort of escape the tensions of her household,
and the film set was really nurturing for that. But
clearly her parents, or at least her mother, were still
(16:09):
very invested in her being a normal and inverted Commas kid,
and neither Daniel Radcliffe or Rupert Grinn ended up in
these kind of messy situations with the parents. So Columbus
and the others obviously did a pretty good job in that.
But even hearing that, it kind of sounds a bit classest, yes,
and a little bit like it's not your fault if
you're a talented child actor, if your parents are messy,
(16:31):
whatever that means, whatever the term of that means. Because
money is obviously a part of this, and so is stability.
Speaker 1 (16:38):
Do you know what this makes me think? Of Holly
Too is our old friend Gwinny. The Gwyneth Paltrow biography
details how much she wanted to go into professional acting
much earlier than she did, but her parents, because they
were wealthy and they didn't need money, said to her, note,
you've got to finish your schooling before you can go in.
Speaker 4 (16:55):
I also knew the industry, and I think that that's
an unspoken privilege. And like the privilege as well of
just having great parents is the thing that a parents
that are stable doesn't mean that they have to have
every resource in the world.
Speaker 3 (17:10):
But you see a lot of parents that.
Speaker 4 (17:12):
Have, you know, lots of addiction issues, or there's domestic
violence within the home or whatever that is going to
make their lives a little bit more complicated. But I'm
thinking of even Justin Bieber, and he didn't come from
a lot of wealth. And what does seem to happen
in certain circumstances. In fact, this happens whether you come
(17:32):
from wealth or not, is that if the people around
you are profiting from you, I think they stop giving
you good advice because you're their paycheck.
Speaker 3 (17:40):
So if it's like they're going to.
Speaker 4 (17:42):
Get a cut of whatever you do, of no matter
how hard you work. You see this with so many
celebrities and they're overworked and they're burnt out and they're
being exploited and the parents are standing there going go
for it. I mean Amy Weinehouse's father, I think, was
another example.
Speaker 1 (17:58):
And you're right that that can happen regardless of the
financial circumstances they come from. Because Drew Barrymore and Nepo
Baby herself has obviously very famously talked about her early
drug a daiction problems when she was a child star
from et and her family, who was sort of grandfathered
into Hollywood, pretty much turned a blind eye because she
was such a success for them.
Speaker 4 (18:19):
I thought this in the Selena Gomez story that it
often isn't just the person at the center that becomes
famous overnight.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
Yeah, the impact on the rest of the family.
Speaker 4 (18:28):
The impact on the rest of the family would be
enormous and life changing.
Speaker 3 (18:34):
You're not prepared and you don't know what to do
with fame.
Speaker 4 (18:38):
And the idea even listening to people, people aren't meant
to have a million dollars land in their lap overnight,
Like the fact they can't manage that makes total sense.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
Yeah, let alone the media training involved. I mean, as
a parent, you obviously always want to talk about how
great your kids are. They and so when the media
comes knocking because they know about your child and your
child is famous, it's probably very hard to restrain yourself.
And I was reading that Matthew McConaughey didn't talk to
his mother for many years because she kept talking to
the press about him, saying with Selena. That was part
of the Selena Gomes story was her mum kept talking
(19:11):
to the media about Selena and her ups and downs.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
And you can understand why because they're proud, as you've said, Amelia,
but also they'd be like, no, I'm going to set
the record straight. Yes, I'm going to set the record straight,
my mom your lovest statement.
Speaker 3 (19:23):
Yes, she would be. She'd be posting on Instagram all
the time.
Speaker 2 (19:27):
You're not allowed to get any more famous than you are, Jesse,
because I'm Steven.
Speaker 3 (19:30):
She's already breaking.
Speaker 2 (19:31):
But then this is interesting because to the point that
you just brought up about how fame can impact really
negatively on family, Like, think about people who get sort
of instantly famous, like I mean, Megan Markle is a
very good example of this, right it's well documented what
happened with her dad with Thomas Markle, who their relationship
was tricky anyway, because if you get instantly worldwide famous
(19:53):
like that, the media on your doorstep. They are hounding you,
that are finding you wherever you go. They're offering you
large sums of money, they're telling you things that aren't
true about what your child or so and so said
about you. And it takes a lot of restraint to
be able to hold that together and also say no
to everything that's coming your way because and you see
this sometimes with celebrity siblings, is there kind of like, well,
(20:15):
there has to be an upside here, Like I'm being
constantly compared against my sibling, I'm being harassed by the press.
Maybe at least I can pilo this adjacent fame into
either some money or I don't know, a party supplies
business or something, you know, like something that you could
make work for you. You can see how it would happen,
and you can also see how it would happen if
(20:36):
you're an ordinary family and you're working the nine to
five and you've got mortgage and debts and things, and
then somebody in your orbit suddenly becomes other worldly, rich, privileged.
You would kind of be like, well, yeah, pay my
mortgage off, bitch.
Speaker 1 (20:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
I don't mean that.
Speaker 3 (20:51):
It comes up in the Bonnie Blue documentary.
Speaker 4 (20:54):
Like her, that's one of the first things that she
did was by her mother a house, which we all
love to imagine that if we had a pot of money,
you know, fall on our lap, that's what we would do.
But I did wonder when they're sort of interviewing her mother,
I don't.
Speaker 3 (21:08):
Doubt how much she likes, loves and cares for her daughter.
Speaker 4 (21:11):
I wondered how that would impact the advice that you'd
give your child.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
And it's also such a fine line between encouraging your
child and drawing boundaries around them. There was an interesting
Glamor magazine interview last year where for Mother's Day they
interviewed the mothers of four very famous people. Now it's
interesting Selena Gomez's mother participated in that, Travis Kelsey's mother participated,
(21:37):
and then there was also Billie Eilish's mum who had
a career, a small career in Hollywood in the nineties.
She was a bit player on Friends and so on.
And then the final one was Beyonce's mother last year
released a memoir. I think what was really interesting about
that interview was that you actually saw in the interview
that Billie Eilish, Beyonce, and Travis Kelsey's mother's all had
(22:00):
a slightly different approach to Selena Gomez's mother. They came
from more stable backgrounds and they just saw themselves as
a wowing their child's obvious talents, like manifest talents to
blossom and to be out there in the world. I mean,
Travis Kelsey was very obviously extremely athletic from an early age,
Ditto Beyonce with singing and dancing, and Billie Eilish, and
(22:23):
so those parents you could sort of see that they've
been able to separate a bit their own ego from
this sort of miraculous child that they somehow brought into
the world, and they saw themselves as just showcasing this
amazing talent that they don't even know where it came from.
But then with Selena Gomez's mother, there's obviously been a
lot more difficult back and forth there over the years,
(22:44):
and you could see that Selena's talent was more difficult
for her to talk about because she was more intertwined
with it.
Speaker 4 (22:51):
Yeah, She was also only sixteen when she had Selena Gomez,
So I think it's it's right to grow up alongside
such a good point your daughter, like that would be
a very different experience.
Speaker 2 (23:00):
That's such an interesting way of putting it, Amelia. If
you can separate your ego from your child's talents, is
so good. To the point Jesse about the idea that
have call, we would all want to share that kind
of good fortune and wealth. There's an amazing anecdote in
that Liz Gilbert memoir that I read recently that we
talked about on the show a few weeks ago, all
the way to the River, where she said that when
she became Eat, Pray, Love Rich, the level of success
(23:23):
of that book was so outsized. She felt so sort
of guilty about having all this money. And also she's
such a people pleaser that she just was giving it
to everybody in her life, like let me buy you
a house, let me pay off your debts, let me
send you on holiday, let me pay for your kid's
school fees. She was like walking down the high street
in her little town going that business is in trouble.
And she says that with the hindsight and what happened. Next,
(23:45):
she said none of her relationships were ever improved by
involving money in them. Every single one of those relationships
in a different way became worse and more complicated and
more toxic from her sort of insisting on injecting cash
into it.
Speaker 5 (24:02):
Which is very interesting to know.
Speaker 3 (24:05):
In a moment.
Speaker 4 (24:06):
If you're having a difficult period in your private life,
should you tell people at work? And if so, how
much do you TELP? We discuss should you share personal
news at work? This was a question posed by The
Sydney Morning Herald recently. A reader wrote in reflecting, I've
(24:26):
gone through a difficult period in my private life. I
have spent a lot of time wondering whether this is
something I should tell people at work. My direct managers,
but also others I work with regularly. Now they don't
share the specifics of what's going on, but let's imagine
it could be a scenario like a parent that's really ill,
or the end of a long term relationship, or a
(24:48):
kid that's having a hard time. Not that my experience
compares to any of those examples. But keeping from you
guys while I was so weird for two months was
very hard, and it felt dishonest because I disappear as
hard as I might try, my moods probably were impacted.
Speaker 3 (25:06):
I was so dishonest the diva, I.
Speaker 1 (25:09):
Kind of vanderberg ginger beer on your jab, which.
Speaker 5 (25:12):
I felt like side.
Speaker 4 (25:16):
I also felt a little bit distracted, which is what
can happen. You know, you've got to run out for
an appointment and you think, oh, people looking at me
thinking I'm slacking off. The question is do we owe
our colleagues or our boss and explanation or is it
just you turn up, you meet your requirements. If you're
doing your job, then what's going on in your private
life is private? Holly, what do you reckon?
Speaker 2 (25:37):
This is tricky, I think, because I think it depends
on how sort of safe you feel at work. I mean,
that's like a bit of an overused term now, but
I think that there are some workplaces where if you
share that you're going through a difficult time, it may
almost be used against you a little bit in terms
of like, oh, well, you know, we can't give you
that good promotion or that project to work on, or
(26:00):
we won't really be relied upon to do X y
Z because you know she's got that thing going on,
or she's just been through a divorce, or which I
think of we would probably all agree is not great.
On the other hand, if you feel safe at work,
it can be great to have an understanding manager who's
going to understand that you're going to need some flexibility,
because I guess it depends on how much the difficult
(26:21):
thing you're going through is going to affect your work.
Speaker 1 (26:24):
Well, that's the thing, because in the answer to this
question in the Herald, they did ask an expert from
NSW Business School who said that there are two reasons
to tell. The first is that your employer may be
able to help. But this second reason is the one
I wanted to highlight. He said that it could be
impacting them too. Yeah, And that reminded me that a
couple of years ago, a colleague of mine who I
(26:46):
also happened to be quite good friends with, messaged me
and our mutual boss and he said he needed to
talk to us, and what he wanted to tell us
was that his marriage was going through a really hard time.
Nothing even in particular, it was just, you know, that
kind of thing happens in relationships sometimes, and he had
been really checked out at work. We had been complaining
(27:06):
about how he'd been dropping the ball and others had
had to pick up the slack, and it was really
helpful to know because then we could say, Okay, we're
going to give him a little bit of slack going forward.
Speaker 4 (27:16):
So that's my theory, is that I reckon it's a
kind thing to do to your boss or to your colleagues.
I think there are moments in your life where you
get to ask people for grace around certain circumstances that
you're experiencing. But my question is how much you need
to explain, because sometimes I think that the details or
(27:40):
the specificity help people afford you the grace that you
actually deserve or need in that moment. And when you
are vague, human nature is such that people begin to speculate,
which can be distracting and annoying.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
Which is why the example that I mentioned of my
colleague who was going through the marital problems was interesting
because no one had had an affair, no one was
threatening to leave anyone. It's just that they were not
getting along and they were feeling like maybe they wanted
to separate. Yeah, Actually, quite a lot of detail to
have to establish with someone, because it's not like you
can say in one sentence like, well, my marriage is
(28:16):
having some trouble. You know there's going to be some
follow up. But the fact that he had to open
up to that extent with us is is like you say,
that's how we gave him the grease.
Speaker 4 (28:25):
Exactly because in that article The Sydney Morning Harold, when
the expert was saying he had a script and he
was saying, you can say something like I haven't been
feeling myself lately. I've been dealing with some problems. Something
major happened to me, and I was trying to imagine
how I might react in that, like obviously I would
feel incredibly empathetic, but I would be desperate to know
what it was. And I think that's because you also think,
(28:48):
is there anything I can do to help?
Speaker 3 (28:49):
Is there anything work can do to help?
Speaker 2 (28:51):
Obviously I manage people for a lot of years, and
if people wanted to share with me something that they
were going through personally, it was always helpful in that
term of context. But I entirely understand when people don't
want to do it, because often if you're going through
something really difficult personally, you don't want everybody at work
to know about it. You don't want them to see
you differently. You don't want to have to talk to
(29:12):
them about it in the kitchen. You don't want everybody
to like tilt their head and tap you on the shoulder.
And some people, yes, but a lot of people know,
they're like, I just want you to still think I
can do my job, because I can. And to be honest,
I know, and I'm sure we all know very many
women in particular, and I shouldn't say in particular, but
I guess I work with mostly women for most of
my career who will turn up and do their jobs
(29:34):
in the most extraordinarily difficult circumstances. The shit they've got
going on at home with, you know, maybe children who
are going through different things, maybe pregnancy, loss, maybe this,
Maybe that they still somehow manage to get their shit
together and keep going. And I'm not suggesting that that
should be the standard, you know, the stiff a pullip
and the standard. But I do think that whether or
(29:56):
not to share those intimate details, I understand why you
might not want to, and I also understand why you
might want to be vague. And I also when I
was a manager, I would always say do you want
me to tell anyone about this?
Speaker 5 (30:08):
Yeah, I'd be like a question. You know, this is
in the vault.
Speaker 2 (30:10):
We can understand why you might need to ask for
extra time off this or that, But do you want
me to share it with some of the people who
work close to you so they understand? Do you want
me to say? Don't talk about like? It's good to
do that. But then, strictly speaking, you don't have to
offer any of that. You know, as long as you're
doing your job. The fact that maybe you're leaving at
five instead of staying till six because you've got things
going on, you shouldn't necessarily have to offer up personal
(30:33):
details about that.
Speaker 1 (30:34):
You shared with us the other day that GQ has
done this list of modern etiquette and I love an
etiquette guide, and one of the sort of generic tips
in there was be mysterious at work. Don't tell people
why you're going on leave. Just have a little bit
of an enigmatic presence at work and if that's possible,
if you can do that, it depends on obviously how
(30:55):
severe and difficult what you're dealing with. Is I love
a bit of mystery at work?
Speaker 2 (30:58):
Well, I was going to ask you because you've obviously
worked in America A lot are the cultural differences about this,
You know, this stereotype about whether or not women should
put a photo of the kids on their desk, for example,
that to be one of the I mean, these days,
well a lot of us are hot desking and all
the rest of it. But it used to be one
of the things that men could put a picture of
children on their desk and it would be like, oh,
humanizes him, nice guy. Woman puts a picture of kids
(31:20):
on desks, Like, well, you're thinking about work, why are
you thinking about your children? Have you noticed cultural differences
in how much of your personal life is allowed to
seep into the office. Oh?
Speaker 1 (31:29):
Absolutely. I think one of the biggest things is, I mean,
Australia has recently codified this idea that you should not
contact people outside of work hours. That's kind of like
actual law. Now in the US, your boss will get
angry at you if they email you on the weekend
and you don't respond or yeah, it depends on the workplace,
but the expectation is that you should be available. And
(31:51):
that's particularly so given that I work in the media,
and this idea of you need to have a really
fast twitch muscle when you're responding to news. In general,
I think Australians are more comfortable sharing things at work,
and I think that's because sometimes alcohol is more often
involved in socializing in Australia, so people tend to share more.
I remember when I first moved back to Australia from
(32:12):
the US, I went to lunch with a book publicist.
This is a few years ago now, and we sat
down for lunch and she said, would you like a cocktail?
So I ordered a cocktail and then she said, and
do you want to split a bottle of wine on
the side.
Speaker 5 (32:24):
Wow?
Speaker 1 (32:24):
And I was like, well, okay, you know that's inevitably
going to lead to disclosure. Yeah. And in an American workplace,
even mom and Mia has worked drinks on a certain
day of the week, that's just not really in the
American work culture. So those lines are much more clearly demarketed.
Speaker 5 (32:41):
That's interesting.
Speaker 2 (32:42):
One of the times this came home to me is
ages ago, somebody advised me this is when you're young.
You might go in to ask your boss for a
pay rise, for example, and be like, I'm saving for
a house, or my husband's just lost his job, or
you know, like you give a person my.
Speaker 3 (32:57):
Rent just went up.
Speaker 2 (32:58):
Yeah, my rent just went up, so I need some
more money. That is irrelevant to your boss. However, some
bosses like to note that kind of stuff and like
to use it almost as leverage with you if you
give them and this is sort of a bad boss,
I would say, broadly, but if you give them a
little insight into your life and why you need what
you need, it can also be used to kind of
(33:18):
wege you a little bit.
Speaker 5 (33:19):
You know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (33:20):
But I remember that that when I was young, getting
that advice of like, your problems are not your manager's problems.
So if you think you should have a pay rise,
it's not because you're saving up for a car or
whatever it might be. Your rent went up, it has
to be because you're doing X, Y Z, And I
wonder if there's.
Speaker 5 (33:38):
An inverse of that.
Speaker 2 (33:39):
I think it still all comes down to trust and
whether or not you feel safe sharing that information or
whether it might be used against you.
Speaker 1 (33:46):
But I also think that we've talked a lot here
about bosses. I just want to also inject that idea
of colleagues and the fact that sometimes sharing with a
colleague can be very powerful and can help them pick
up the slack for you and give you that grace. Like,
I think that your point about bosses and what they
can do with that information is really well taken. It's
that whole idea of HR is not there for you,
(34:07):
They're there for the company. Colleagues I think can be
real sources of support in difficult times.
Speaker 2 (34:14):
I learned something this weekend from looking at the wedding
pictures of some very famous people. We mentioned her already today,
but one Selena Gomez, got married on the weekend, and
what I learned is that it's very cool to make
the pictures look as fuzzy, chaotic and low fire as possible.
Speaker 3 (34:29):
They're a giant orbs.
Speaker 2 (34:30):
Yes, there are giant orbs, right Selena Gomez. Let's remind
everybody she's got four hundred and seventeen million Instagram followers.
Speaker 4 (34:39):
I don't know if she's still the most followed woman
on Instagram, but for a long time she at least was.
Speaker 2 (34:43):
That is a lot of people, right. She is so
famous and so well connected that obviously she married. Benny
Blanco is a very famous producer and songwriter, and reportedly
at this wedding were Taylor Swift, who may have made
a speech Paris, Hilton Carra Telavian, Paul Rudd, Martin Short,
Steve Martin, Mark Ronson ed Shearing like a lot of
(35:04):
exceptionally famous teaching.
Speaker 4 (35:06):
You know that Steve Martin and Martin Short gave a
speech at the rehearsal dinner.
Speaker 5 (35:09):
Can you imagine they would have been funny.
Speaker 2 (35:12):
So basically she's having the wedding beyond all weddings, yep.
And yet on her Instagram, and of course they might
all come out these pictures. Famous people often dribble them
out a bit later. The photographs are They're beautiful, but
they look like they were taken with my digital camera
in nineteen ninety six, and they are blurry. They are
very upclosed, the crops are off their orbs. As you've discussed,
(35:35):
I also spent I don't know why I'm so obsessed
with this, but Charlie XCX, she's had the most chaotic
Italian wedding where I've never seen so many good looking
people sew off their chops at the same time, like
just stumbling around. But again, so many photos, every single
one of them badly cropped, hazy, messy, like it's a
(35:55):
vibe obviously like our posed, nice, slick wedding pictures that
you take hours to take out.
Speaker 1 (36:01):
I saw a comment that said that the photos at
that wedding, at the Selena wedding, looked like they were
taken with a vasaline smeared potato.
Speaker 3 (36:09):
Exactly right.
Speaker 4 (36:10):
There's one where she looks radioactive, like there's a life
behind her or something like the lighting's very, very strange.
And it just made me think of every photo of
me taken between twenty ten and about twenty thirteen, where
Instagram filters were everything, and I go back and I'm like,
I don't know what I looked like at twenty two
(36:31):
because I'm CPA.
Speaker 3 (36:33):
I just worry.
Speaker 4 (36:34):
I worry that they'll look back and they'll go I
wonder if they still have the original prints without all
the filtering and editing.
Speaker 1 (36:42):
I walked past a wedding the other day at a
beach and it looked very fancy, and there was a
big sign up welcoming people to the wedding, and it
said I'm going to make up the bride's name, Welcome
to the Wedding of Mary, and then down at the
bottom it said featuring hours And I was like at
least for being real. Now who this event is for.
Speaker 5 (37:00):
That's so funny.
Speaker 2 (37:01):
I have to quick correction now that we're on weddings.
If you believed that Keanu Reeves married Alexandra Grant recently,
you were either a tricked by an AI photograph on
the internet or be listening to this show. Because when
I was sick, Amir was on. I think we all
told you that Keanu Reeves got married to Alexandra gram.
Speaker 3 (37:21):
Someone on this show told me that maybe I brought it.
Speaker 4 (37:23):
I can't remember, but that appeared to be fact in
my scripts.
Speaker 2 (37:26):
The photo that you have seen on the internet, and
this has been served to me many times, of Keanu
Reeves and his glorious partner Alexandra holding out their hands,
knows you so very.
Speaker 5 (37:38):
Very well, is fake.
Speaker 2 (37:40):
It is AI, and it has been so well spread
that Alexandra herself had to release a photo, a very beautiful,
very artip photo of her and Keanu just after having
a little kiss, saying this is a real photo, not
an engagement photo or an AI wedding announcement, simply a kiss.
I'm sharing it here to say thank you to everyone
for the congratulations on our wedding, except we didn't get married.
(38:01):
Good news is much needed these days, but it's still
fake news, so be careful out.
Speaker 1 (38:05):
There, which is, by the way, why they're the cause
couple just like you, not just sending to this bourgeois
institution of Marion.
Speaker 2 (38:12):
They are not. And I think that Alexandra and Keanu
were a little bit offended that everybody thought they might
but they would be that basic, and that if they
did that, their wedding picture would look that clear.
Speaker 4 (38:22):
Yeah, but she's just in a standard wedding dress and
he's just in.
Speaker 2 (38:25):
A tux and there were no potatoes involved in the
photography of their wedding.
Speaker 1 (38:30):
After the break, there's an elder influencer in New York
who has a radical new way to meet people and
it involves, wait for it, a conversation.
Speaker 3 (38:42):
What unlimited out loud access.
Speaker 4 (38:44):
We drop episodes every Tuesday and Thursday exclusively for Muma
Maya 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.
Speaker 1 (39:04):
So, first of all, I wanted to introduce you both
to the concept of an elder influencer. Did you know
that there were older influences.
Speaker 5 (39:10):
No, but I'm excited.
Speaker 1 (39:12):
Laurie Cooper is a real estate agent from Brooklyn who
will not tell you her age, which I love for her.
But she looks like she's lived a life, and she
looks like she's probably very accomplished in the real estate business.
Speaker 2 (39:23):
Can I interject with a question, yes, at what age
am I allowed to stop telling people my age? And
what do I say when people say how old are you?
Speaker 5 (39:31):
Do you have any thoughts? I am just elder, I.
Speaker 1 (39:36):
Am elder influencer. I just met someone on the weekend.
She was I think almost certainly my age, and I
am forty two, and she refused to say how old
she was. And that was the first time I've met
someone who's sort of contemporaneous with me who is no longer.
Speaker 3 (39:50):
And how did she refuse?
Speaker 1 (39:52):
Well, my partner asked her age because he's very rude.
She's American and American not from Long Island, and she emerged.
She simply said, I'm not going to tell you my age,
and I respected it. I think the answer is now, Holy,
I think I should be not telling people my age
starting now.
Speaker 2 (40:11):
My NN used to say, I'm as old as my tongue.
I'm younger than my teeth. That's what I'm going to
start saying from now on.
Speaker 1 (40:19):
So Laurie Cooper, who has a great TikTok presence, and
I recommend you check her out. But she has become
very prominent lately because she has started something called sit
at the Bar September. So Laurie says that in September,
and let me remind you there are two days left
in September for you to do this. People of all
stripes need to go and sit in bars and talk
(40:41):
to people, and that is how she says you will
meet the love of your life if in fact you
are looking for the love of your life at the bar.
Speaker 2 (40:47):
So go and get one of the high stool tables
at the bar.
Speaker 1 (40:50):
At the bar, and do not whip out your phone
and start doing the crossword or scrolling your Instagram. No,
you need to just keep the phone in your bag,
sit at the bar and talk to people.
Speaker 2 (41:00):
Sit at the bar September has made such a splash, girls,
then I'm.
Speaker 1 (41:04):
Going to give you some more places for you to.
Speaker 4 (41:06):
Go and enjoy yourself.
Speaker 2 (41:08):
Get off those dating apps and sid as these bars instead.
Speaker 1 (41:11):
So She goes on to recommend a few New York
bars that she says that single people looking to mingle
should be sitting up. But the reason I thought this
is really interesting is because over the weekend I met
two couples who had both met through striking up conversation.
The first couple met at a pub, a Sydney pub,
and the second met at a New York City cafe.
(41:34):
And the crucial thing about both these couples is that
they met in twenty twelve, twenty thirteen, Okay, And that's
crucial because both couples said that they didn't think that
they could meet this way now. And I have a
theory for why this is. And the theory is phones.
In twenty thirteen, that's the exact year that the majority
of adult Australians gained a smartphone, and ever since then,
(41:57):
we've just been scrolling and we don't look up, and
we don't talk to people. And Tinder this is also
going to support my case here. It launched in twenty twelve,
but in Australia it really gained a significant presence in
twenty fourteen, and so ever since then, we're not talking
to people in cafes and bars. But my question is,
what would you do if someone came up to you
in a cafe or bar, doesn't have to be romantic,
(42:18):
but came up to you and started talking to you.
Speaker 2 (42:21):
Holly, It's really interesting because I think this does still
happen a little bit in certain kind of places, right, So, like,
I do talk to people in cafes and bars a
little bit, but they're not trying to pick me up, clearly.
And when I was young and more on the market,
she said, if I might still be just a little bit,
what percentage of me might still be on the market
(42:41):
to be convinced. You used to hate it when guys
came over and interrupted you if you were with your
friends or whatever. Didn't you like that unless they were
really hot. But you'd be kind of like, oh, I'm
just trying to talk to my and I can't believe
you're here. But then that whole idea of being at
the bar and trying to be there at the same
(43:01):
time as someone that you find attractive and striking up conversation.
Speaker 5 (43:05):
Like that was great.
Speaker 2 (43:06):
That gave you the whole adrenaline, and then you'd be
looking at each other across the bar the rest of
the day.
Speaker 3 (43:11):
See, the thing about this elder influencer is I just
want to.
Speaker 4 (43:14):
Say I could sit at the bar all day. I
could do my sit at the bar September. Every day
of September.
Speaker 3 (43:19):
No one's coming.
Speaker 5 (43:20):
I don't think that's true.
Speaker 4 (43:21):
No, no one's coming. And I'm not saying this is
some kind of self deprecating thing. It's like the social
contract has been broken. The social contract no longer says
that it's appropriate.
Speaker 2 (43:30):
So your friends who are like around the thirties, early thirties,
they are not talking to strangers in bars, whether they're
single or not.
Speaker 4 (43:38):
No, and no one I know who is kind of
about to get married. I've got a few friends who
are at that stage or are married.
Speaker 3 (43:50):
None of them met at a bar or a club.
Speaker 1 (43:52):
I think that social contract point is largely true. But
I think what the older influencer is stressing is that
you need to sit at the bar. I'm wondering if
that's a little bit of a caveat to the contract,
because those bar stools are designed to strike up conversation,
and now you're.
Speaker 2 (44:08):
On your own, that's the striker. So it is a
bit different from just being at the bar and ordering
a drink. It's like in every movie set in New York,
they'll be like, send that beautiful.
Speaker 5 (44:18):
Lady a drink down at the bar.
Speaker 2 (44:20):
I remember, But if you're sitting at the bar by yourself,
you are kind of saying I want to talk to someone.
Speaker 4 (44:27):
That's the thing is that I remember the signal being
like when it was say twenty thirteen, and I reckon,
that's the last time someone came up to me in
a pub just wanted to get to know you and
chatted to you, and it was all lovely. But there
used to be a signal which was even like if
I was out with a bunch of friends and we're
like clubbing or whatever, if you went to the bar
on your own, or even like just you and a friend, like,
(44:50):
there were certain signals that you would give other people
in the room that you were open to like talking
to someone. But now I'm not even sure what those
signals would be, because do you not look I wonder
if you'd look like a bit of a weirdo. Like
if I was sitting at a bar with my phone
put away, just making eye contact with people, I think
(45:11):
they'd be like that person's well.
Speaker 2 (45:13):
Maybe they would wait, maybe someone and I a while
ago for mid I interviewed this woman, this American woman
called Leslie Morgan, who was quite amazing and after her divorce.
She was in her forties and after her divorce she
decided she wanted to meet men, try men on basically
was her thing. She said, I'm going to date like
a divorce mandates. I'm not looking for a husband. I'm
going to try on some different guys as who happens.
(45:33):
And she said, suddenly she realized there were men everywhere.
There are men everywhere. You know that, the men at
the car wash, the men at the pub, the room
of the airport. That you have to be prepared to
make a tid of yourself to start conversations with those.
Speaker 3 (45:47):
Peace, which I think most people are not prepared.
Speaker 2 (45:49):
Yes, So she said airports are particularly good for this
because lots of business travel, lots of solo people. There's
an immediate inn of like, oh can you believe the
planes delayed?
Speaker 5 (45:59):
Or where are you going or whatever? She said, that
was great, Sod.
Speaker 2 (46:01):
You have to talk yourself into being a confident enough
place that sometimes you're going to strike out. Sometimes somebody
is going to say, as you just said, Jesse, they
might think there's something wrong with me. Some people are
going to think that, but a surprising number of people,
she said, would be like, Oh, somebody's talking to me,
and they would quite enjoy it. I wonder if the
reason why, if indeed it has taken off this sit
(46:23):
at the bar September, is because in the same way
that we're all feeling sick about our phones about other things,
we're also feeling.
Speaker 5 (46:31):
Sick about that part of it.
Speaker 2 (46:33):
The meeting people on apps have been we talk about
it all the time, is not necessarily going that great
for everybody. It isn't great for all kinds of people
self esteem, it doesn't suit certain types of personalities, It
privileges some kinds of attraction over others. And so maybe
people have been dying to sit at bars again and
talk to people I don't know.
Speaker 1 (46:50):
And let's boarden it out. So we have mostly talked
about meeting people romantically here, but I'm wondering if we
all need to be making more of an effort to
be receptive to everyday conversation with people in bars and cafes.
And while we're waiting for our coffee, an elderly man
came up to me while I was waiting for my
coffee the other day and I was weird wearing a sweatshirt,
(47:11):
which provokes some conversation from him, And at first I
was kind of annoyed, but then I thought to myself,
I'm literally standing here waiting for my coffee. I'm not
doing anything. We'll discuss politics with this man who wants
to talk about politics with me. And then I did
and we disagreed, but it was actually quite fun, and
I walked away with a little bit of a spring
in my step because I'd had a human interaction.
Speaker 2 (47:32):
Maybe we're all firsting for that.
Speaker 3 (47:34):
Yeah, it's interesting too.
Speaker 4 (47:35):
I was reading there's this book out called Labor of
Love by Moira Weigel, and she's written about how there
has always been a moral panic and almost a nihilism
about the state of dating. There is no time in
all of human history where people have looked around and
gone dating's going really well for us, Like that just
never happens.
Speaker 5 (47:53):
It's true.
Speaker 2 (47:54):
That's so true because if you think about way pre apps,
think about the whole premise of sex and the city,
it is all the good guys like And that was
way before app day.
Speaker 1 (48:02):
And Karen was sitting at bars, and so what this
book says is the history of love is inextricably intertwined
with the history of technology.
Speaker 4 (48:12):
Those two things just like inform each other. So the
invention of the car, the invention of the telephone, like
this just changed the way that we relate.
Speaker 3 (48:19):
And the idea that romance.
Speaker 4 (48:22):
Is this spontaneous chance thing that can be found as
you walk down the street is a modern invention that
is like one hundred maybe two hundred years old. It's
sex in the city, right, that he or she could just.
Speaker 3 (48:36):
Pop up in your life to them in the street
in the red.
Speaker 4 (48:39):
Yes, before that, it was incredibly calculating. It was like
how much money does this because of gender, roles and
everything does this guy next door have? Your family was involved,
you were working out status, class, wealth, dowry, all of that.
And her argument is kind of we're back to the calculating,
like we've taken away the spontaneity and the chance that
(49:02):
sort of doesn't fit anymore, and we're back to using
technology to go, all right, what exactly do I want?
Speaker 3 (49:09):
How exact clear am I going to find it?
Speaker 2 (49:10):
But we that's why we've I think idolized and loved
the idea of Sarah diipitous meetings, because it then it
seems like this was meant to be, you know what
I mean, Like you could tell a story that you
have done about Like if I hadn't have walked into
that office on that day and met No Da Da
Da Da, then I wouldn't have met this guy, and
I wouldn't now have my kid. I wouldn't I be
pregnant with twins, thanks very much, And like you can
(49:32):
tell that if I hadn't walked into that bar, if
I hadn't, Like, it's a nice story for us all
to noodle on and be Like, clearly the universe wanted
to bring us together. It's harder to tell yourself that
story about a dating app, but you're not.
Speaker 5 (49:44):
I don't mean that.
Speaker 2 (49:46):
I'm not saying that because I think there's anything true
about the serendipity of that. But I think we like it,
don't we. Whereas it feels like, well, I swiped and
they swiped.
Speaker 3 (49:55):
I think we're feeling nostalgic for it.
Speaker 1 (49:57):
Well, and because it is harder than before, Like I
take the moral panic point, but it does feel harder
than it felt even ten years ago before the majority
of Australians had a smartphone, and it reminds me that
my parents tell me a story about Sydney in the
sixties and they used to go to a nightclub on
the Lower north Shore of Sydney, which is funny if
anyone lives in Sydney, how unlikely that is. That was
apparently very hip, and you'd go into this nightclub and
(50:20):
on every table there was a phone and you could
call other tables.
Speaker 3 (50:25):
So phone, Oh, they should bring in view.
Speaker 1 (50:28):
You can't tell me that that's not a good way
of meeting people. They should bring that back.
Speaker 2 (50:34):
Going back to what I said at the beginning about
how now we've kind of culturally very much digested that,
particularly for guys to approach women in bars is a
bit icky and creepy. It's kind of like we've kind
of metabolized that, right. I wonder if there's any such
thing as a safe bet of how to do it.
Speaker 5 (50:51):
You know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (50:52):
Like we used to talk about cheesy chat up lines,
and I wonder if any out louders maybe have stories
of how they started talking to somebody or I hate
to say the line, but the conversation started that doesn't
feel gross.
Speaker 5 (51:08):
I'd love to hear in twenty twenty five Vibe.
Speaker 2 (51:10):
Out Louders, a massive thank you to all of you
for being here with us on this Monday. We appreciate
you very much, as we do our team for helping
us put it together. Do not forget that if you
want to watch us on YouTube and slowly see Jesse
expanding over time and maybe not only Jesse back, we
are on YouTube and you can see us there and
(51:32):
watch our show there whenever you want to.
Speaker 4 (51:35):
And we got so much feedback about last Wednesday's segment
where we spoke about office attire. For some reason, we
asked the out Louders if we had dressed appropriately for
the office.
Speaker 3 (51:44):
They all said no. When I was like, why do
we ask you?
Speaker 2 (51:46):
We were wearing jeans?
Speaker 3 (51:47):
No, were liking no, you all are terrible.
Speaker 2 (51:51):
They said, there's a few passecs. Oh, I thought this
was another video about Jesse not hawning her clothes.
Speaker 3 (51:59):
Did I in my clothes?
Speaker 4 (52:01):
We discussed the rules of how to dress and how
corporate wear is back. There's apparently new rules about office wear. Also,
Amelia has a fear about why we should never aim
for feeling fully recharged, which good because I'm not feeling
fully recharged to We'll pop a link in the show
note goodbye bye.
Speaker 2 (52:21):
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 link in the episode description
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