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Speaker 1: Hello and welcome to Mama Mia Out Loud. It's what women are actually talking about on Friday the 23rd of October. I'm Holly Wainwright.
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Speaker 2: I'm Jessie Stephens.
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Speaker 1: And I'm Em Burnham.
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Speaker 3: And Em, did you know that Holly did something this week that if this was, if I had a goal in life, it would be to be the type of person who gets one blow dryer a week? and then just dines off it. Holly got her hair professionally blow-dried for an event.
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Speaker 1: Oh, my God, you did.
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Speaker 2: But that's why it's looked all week. I've just been admiring how beautiful your hair looks.
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Speaker 1: I started trying to figure out if I could fit it into my week, getting a blow-dry like a proper grown-up person. So bougie. But I don't think so. I don't think I could fit it in.
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Speaker 2: Do you reckon?
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Speaker 3: Can an accountant tell us whether it's tact?
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Speaker 2: I don't think it should.
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Speaker 1: But it's true. I have been making this blow-dry. You've got to work for it. I'm not putting any product in it. No one blow on it.
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Speaker 2: No.
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Speaker 1: It's already been blowed. It's done. Thank you, Jessie. I feel special. Here's what's on our agenda for today.
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Speaker 4: The very specific questions you need to ask your friends so you can know them better.
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Speaker 3: And everywhere I look, I seem to be getting exactly the same piece of life advice. The case against niceness.
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Speaker 1: Also, your weekend recos and Em's defence of a movie that nobody likes at all. Nobody likes it at all. That makes me so sad. Except for Em. But first, in case you missed it, on Sunday I am going to see my friend Lily Allen in concert. That's not the in case you missed it. In case you missed it is that I just found out that my merch options got a bit more interesting. She has launched with Love Honey a line of sex toys inspired by the iconic now one-year-old album West End Girl.
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Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
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Speaker 1: I'm sorry if this is TMI for Friday, but they do include a polka dot bot plug.
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Speaker 2: Is that referenced in there?
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Speaker 1: I was going to say, does anybody need a little refresher on why? There is the iconic song Pussy Palace. I love that. In case anyone missed it. This album is a concept album and the concept is I Was Married. to an asshole.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, she was.
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Speaker 1: She was married to the guy from Stranger Things, David Harbour, and they had an infamous breakup and she wrote an album about it. And one of the most memorable scenes from the album is on the Song Pussy Palace where she goes to the flat that she thought in New York that she thought he was using as a dojo, dojo, dojo, which is a place you practice martial arts. And in fact, it had a plastic bag in there full of butt plugs. Yes, right. I reckon that's the worst sex toy to find. Interesting.
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Speaker 2: Of all the.
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Speaker 1: Sex toys to find.
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Speaker 3: Why?
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Speaker 1: I just feel like it's another level of intimacy.
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Speaker 3: This is like we're doing some exploring and I feel left out.
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Speaker 1: Anyway, my question is, is this smart business? So yes, there is a whole line of sex toys with Lily Allen's endorsement. Is this smart business for my friend Lily?
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Speaker 3: This is not her first line of sex toys. She's among like Cara Delevingne, Dakota Johnson. There's a bunch, Abbey Chatfield in Australia. She had a line of sex toys that sold just massively.
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Speaker 2: Completely viral.
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Speaker 3: I think she said she bought a house off her sex toys. But yes, Lily Allen did this a few years ago.
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Speaker 1: She's back.
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Speaker 3: The difference is in how she's marketing it. So she basically was like I was touring and I needed to unwind. I needed to de-stress. And that's when I decided to trial this new line of sex toys. And I was thinking about her life going, approve album art.
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Speaker 2: Go through emails.
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Speaker 1: Sound check at 7.
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Speaker 2: Sound check at 7. But I'm just going to, in my diary, just block out. How long do you reckon you need? 45? A little 45-minute meeting between you and your butt plug?
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Speaker 1: It depends on the one you're testing. You can be very pro with this. You can get it done.
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Speaker 2: She's a busy woman. She is a busy woman. She doesn't have all the time in the world.
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Speaker 1: I like it because I feel like.
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Speaker 4: There was one time where I think when Abby Chatfield released hers and it was like very edgy, very cool.
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Speaker 2: She was just really at the forefront of the revolution. Yes.
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Speaker 4: And now it kind of feels like the equivalent of releasing a new beauty product. Like I'm not really like I'm just like, oh, yeah, that's nice.
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Speaker 1: Happy for her.
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Speaker 4: But I feel like when you go and buy sex toys online, I feel, I don't know, maybe this is a personal thing, but I'm not really looking at the celebrity who's attached to them the same way I'm looking at other products.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, same. I'm not really imagining that situation.
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Speaker 3: It's an interesting marketing tool because every celebrity has to not only put their stamp on it, similar to a perfume, to a, you know, anything that they make. It's like you need to stand there and Lily Allen needs to say, I tried.
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Speaker 1: This butt plug.
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Speaker 2: And it's like, that's just, how much does that work? I feel like it's worth a lot of money.
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Speaker 1: Anyway, if you see me at Lily Allen on Sunday night, don't look too closely at the merch line. Anyway, over to you, Jessie Stephens.
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Speaker 3: There's an idea I feel like I'm coming across everywhere at the moment, and I'm going to call it the case against nice.
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Speaker 2: So first of all.
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Speaker 3: There was a newsletter from Hunter Biden. We did a subscriber episode all about him recently. But he's got this newsletter that is just popping off. And he wrote a whole piece about enablers. And in it, he wrote, some convince themselves that silence is kindness, that patience is strategy, that the next morning will bring the correction this morning could not. These people mistake the absence of confrontation for the presence of peace. And this reminded me of a term I came across recently in a completely different context, which is artificial harmony. So imagine you're in a relationship or you're at work or you're hanging out with your friends and you know not to bring up this particular subject because it's going to cause conflict. So you bite your tongue, you avoid, you prioritize peace and calm. And isn't that the sign of a great relationship? Well, apparently not because author and business consultant Patrick Lencioni says you've compromised trust and you've fostered avoidance. He actually says business leaders should be mining for conflict.
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Speaker 2: That's your job.
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Speaker 3: If you're a manager or something, you need to mine for conflict rather than smooth things over. And because three things make it a trend, Priya Parker, she was on the New York Times The Interview recently.
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Speaker 2: She's written a new book called The Art of Fighting.
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Speaker 3: And this episode is actually called An Expert on Conflict Says Your Relationships Are Doomed Without It. And she says that social etiquette is getting in the way of us having relationships. pro-social conflicts in our lives and ultimately conflict makes us closer to people. Then, as an extra little sprinkle, Amy Ramikis, she's an Australian political commentator, released a book a few months ago called Screw Nice. M, do we all need to be a bit ruder?
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Speaker 1: 100%. No way. I hate being nice.
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Speaker 4: And this is why I always didn't like I never really liked the let them theory.
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Speaker 1: I was always just like, you know what? Get them.
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Speaker 2: Get them back.
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Speaker 1: Get them. And it reminded.
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Speaker 4: Me of when I earlier this year, I went to see Michelle Obama's In Conversation in Sydney.
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Speaker 1: Oh, yeah.
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Speaker 4: And like her big slogan was, when they go low, we go high.
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Speaker 1: And then it worked for a little bit.
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Speaker 4: But then as we were going high, like Hunter Biden said, some bozos stormed the Capitol. And we were like, no, we're staying high. But I feel like when it comes to things like this, sometimes you need to go low and even a bit lower.
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Speaker 2: Yeah.
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Speaker 1: I couldn't agree less. What?
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Speaker 2: Em, you have a very friendly face.
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Speaker 3: I feel as though you can not be nice with your smile because you just look really nice, but you can be shockingly honest with that face.
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Speaker 1: The thing about this is... I have, there's a lot that I recognize about myself in that for sure, because I am, remember when we all did our Enneagrams? Yes. And I'm a nine, which is a peacemaker, and I prioritize harmony above almost everything.
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Speaker 2: You avoid conflict.
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Speaker 1: Not always a good thing at all. And I recognize that. So I was getting halfway through Hunter Biden's newsletter. And at first I was really irritated with him about his enabler stuff, because it sounded to me like pointing the finger at everyone else for your problems. But anyway, But then when I got to that bit about mistaking the absence of confrontation for the presence of peace, I was like, oh, yeah, I do that all the time. I hate conflict. I will go a really long way to avoid it. And it's not good. But where this loses me is the idea that we're living in an era where everyone is too nice. We discussed this on Wednesday's show. politically, culturally, we have never been meaner to each other, awful to each other. The shit we say to each other on the internet, the way we attack each other for disagreeing, the level of public discourse, the way that we're happy to dismiss somebody's entire personality and humanity because they disagree with us about something politically. Like, the problem is not that we are being too nice.
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Speaker 3: My instinct is the same as yours, Holly, but I'm going to table this theory. When we are online, it can look like conflict is everywhere and disagreement is everywhere. And by the time we put our phones down, I think that we're already fatigued.
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Speaker 1: We feel like we've been fighting.
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Speaker 2: We feel like we've been fighting all day.
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Speaker 1: Or marinating in confrontation.
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Speaker 2: Even though we didn't write anything.
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Speaker 1: Yeah.
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Speaker 3: So then we look at our partner and our partner does something really, really fucking annoying and we go, I can't.
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Speaker 2: I've been fighting all day.
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Speaker 1: Yeah.
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Speaker 2: I've been fighting all day.
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Speaker 3: And then I can see how that erodes intimacy because we're that's artificial harmony, just kind of going, I don't really want to get into it. And Priya Parker has this great line, which is basically, do you want someone to like you or do you want to feel closer to someone? And I can see what she's saying, which is I was out with a friend recently and we were chatting and they called me out and they said, do you actually agree with anything I just said?
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Speaker 1: And I was like, oh, you.
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Speaker 2: I'm actually transparent here.
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Speaker 3: Like, I think that I'm being really convincing in just agreeing and agreeing.
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Speaker 2: But that's not... intimacy.
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Speaker 1: But, yeah, but... I think you pick and choose your moments to weigh in with that. Because I've got some friends who I love to bits, but we don't agree about all kinds of things. And I don't want to have an argument with them every time we're having a wine or a cup of coffee. I just want to get on with life and talk about things that we will not necessarily agree on, but other stuff, you know what I mean? Stuff that isn't in that. And does that matter? Because my, and I genuinely ask this question as someone who is not very good at confrontation. The problem with once you do confront things, whether this is in a work setting or a personal setting, there has to be a resolution. Somebody is always going to walk away from that, usually feeling like they lost, and someone else is going to walk away from it feeling like they win. I know that when I was a manager and I was leading teams a lot, one of your hardest jobs is that, is that making sure you do get to hear everybody's feedback to come to a good resolution. So I totally get that. If everyone just sits there in the meeting going, that's a great idea. That's a great idea. And then they walk out and go and stand in the corridor and go, that's the worst idea in the world. Like that is toxic and you don't want that. But equally, if you're mining for conflict and you're getting everybody to tell you all their problems with it, then obviously, Where does that confrontation end up? It ends up often with the person who's best at arguing or has the loudest voice.
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Speaker 2: Or is the most powerful.
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Speaker 1: Getting their way and other people feeling like they may have raised something, but they didn't get their way with it.
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Speaker 2: Well, I mean, what I was reading was kind of arguing the opposite, which is that the most... toxic thing.
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Speaker 3: In a workplace is a seemingly boring meeting yeah like the one where everyone goes yes and then they walk out where everyone is quiet and everyone's just stopped you know how they say um the most dangerous moment in a relationship is when you both kind of go quiet and then a man goes I didn't know she was gonna leave me and it's like oh she gave.
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Speaker 2: Up on fighting like she gave up on saying how she.
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Speaker 3: Felt and the same goes for intimate relationships is I that peacekeeping or artificial harmony can lead to a feeling of complete loneliness because you're not feeling sane, at least when you're, you know, it's interesting that you use the word confrontation as like synonymous with conflict.
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Speaker 2: I wonder if they're actually different things. Em, you love conflict.
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Speaker 1: I do love conflict.
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Speaker 4: I also think that when it comes to like say the work situation and you're like, In this meeting and you're like, oh, this is not going to plan. I need to say something. The nicer thing to do would be to say something in that moment than to bitch about it later. And I think we sometimes get the words nice and kind mixed up because I always learned, and I learned this from my mom, like you don't owe anyone niceness. Like you don't have to be nice to everyone, but you should be a kind person. And I think nice, we always have like this– It feels very surface level and it feels very fake. And it's also, if you were to describe a close friend as nice, it sounds like a bit of an insult as well. Like I would never describe anyone I know as nice.
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Speaker 2: Whereas kind is, that's what you want to be.
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Speaker 3: Yeah.
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Speaker 1: You know, I don't know. I think people say that. But again, when I used to be in management and you'd hire people, if I walked into the office and said, oh, we've hired that new manager, the number one question that all the women in the office would ask me is, is she nice? Is she nice? Everybody wants there to be a nice person.
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Speaker 3: So my question about that too is that is it very, very gendered? Because there is more of a cost for women who decide not to be nice, is that men get away with maybe being more honest, especially in a workplace. We know that, you know, there are small repercussions but also very serious repercussions for women who decide not to be nice. And they talk about the survival mechanism of fawning and how you might... try and please someone because of certain experiences you've had in your life. So I hear the message, don't be so nice, don't be so nice. But there's also a survival reason why a lot of women think in order to get through the day, in order to get paid, I've got to put a smile on my face.
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Speaker 1: We're all different, right? And I, because I've really struggled with confrontation and I've obviously tried to work on it, but If I'm in an environment that is tense with confrontation, I hate it. Like, I hate it. I feel sick. I'll get a headache. I get so upset with myself if I feel like I've lost my cool, all that stuff. It happens. You guys have seen it happen. Whereas I know other people who thrive in that. They love it. So whose priorities get, like, some people are like, oh, it excites me. The adrenaline's pumping. It's great. It's how you get to good stuff. So who's... Like given that there isn't, given that we're all a bit different in terms of that, like whose needs get prioritized?
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Speaker 4: I think when we're speaking like, outwardly, when it comes to people who are confrontational versus people who are nice, it's always the confrontational people that you just end up seeing more. And I think this is why I get a bit upset with niceness, because there is a whole side, especially when we talk about politics, there's this whole side of people that are confrontational and are just not nice people. And then they're going up against people who want to play nice and it never works out. The nice people always lose. And that's what makes me angry about it because I'm like, why can't we also be confrontational? Why can't we stand up against that? Why do we always have to be nice?
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Speaker 2: I reckon what you're saying too, Holly, is that conflict takes time. energy.
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Speaker 3: You hear a lot of people saying, I want to protect my energy. And some people thrive off that constant conflict and other people don't. But what I would say is that if you avoid and avoid and avoid, then what it is costing you something, which is sometimes your own integrity or your own, you know, feeling like you're being honest and it can erupt, which in a lot of cases isn't very nice.
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Speaker 1: It's true.
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Speaker 3: For you to just, you know, we've all had the experience of then exploding over nothing and it seems completely out of proportion because you let A, B, C and D go. So I think I definitely understand that there's that often being honest is kinder. And I think that's a good mantra for us to prioritize kindness over niceness.
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Speaker 1: I think that's true. I did realize, though, when I was reading this, particularly the Amy Ramikis, who I have a lot of time for her, but I don't really agree with her that civility, civil discourse is death, because I think that that's actually really important, particularly at the minute. But it made me realize I tell my kids, so I'm passing on my generational people pleasing. I tell my kids all the time, you catch more flies with honey. Like, People will do more for you, be nicer to you, give you more respect if you treat them well, if you're a pleasant person who treats them well. That is nice.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, it's also a really important thing. And don't we need all types? Because if everyone woke up in the morning ready for conflict, there would be no functioning. Like we need people who want to avoid it, some people who thrive. Like that's why we're all developed. Differently, because we have different ways of getting what we want and what we need.
00:17:08
Speaker 1: Outlouders, in a.
00:17:08
Speaker 4: Moment, 19 questions you should be asking your friends. So a Substack post by a writer named Dylan, first name only. I hear that's what the cool kids are doing.
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Speaker 1: It's so funny that we often talk about, like, we saw this on Substack, we saw this on Instagram, and it's by somebody called... Three hairs on the chin. And we're all like, sure, we'll go with it. Go with it.
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Speaker 2: Sounds legit.
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Speaker 1: This is just Dylan.
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Speaker 2: Dylan with an I or Dylan with an A?
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Speaker 1: With a Y. D-Y-L-A-N. Light bulb. All right. And they wrote a sub stack.
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Speaker 4: It was just titled, Questions to Ask Your Friends If You Want to Get to Know Them Better. And the whole article is pretty much the questions. It starts off with a quote, and the quote says, Remember when is the lowest form of conversation, which is by Tony Soprano.
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Speaker 1: And I thought that was a real first. I didn't know it wasn't a real first. That's hilarious. You didn't know that, but that is truth. That is so true.
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Speaker 2: That's when you're really grasping.
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Speaker 1: I also, I tease Brent and his middle-aged man friends about this all the time, that so much of their conversation is all like, when I was backpacking around Nepal, back when, oh, when ACD, like, this is the worst conversation of all time.
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Speaker 2: I would say it's more of a man thing.
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Speaker 1: Like, I know more about my dad's childhood than my own.
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Speaker 2: Yeah.
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Speaker 1: He always talks about it.
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Speaker 2: And I'm like, can you have daughters?
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Speaker 1: That's also something you should remember when. But it's not. It's always when I was a little kid in India.
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Speaker 2: They need new questions to ask each other.
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Speaker 1: Exactly. Should I go through the questions?
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Speaker 2: Yes, please. What are your favourites?
00:18:37
Speaker 1: Okay, some of my favourites.
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Speaker 4: What's a mystery in your life you want the answer to? And it has to be a solvable mystery.
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Speaker 2: I've got one.
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Speaker 1: Okay.
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Speaker 2: Okay.
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Speaker 3: My best friend from high school, like we were so, so close.
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Speaker 2: After high school, bam, cut it off.
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Speaker 3: And I think about her like it is my– it lives in my head rent free that just I would love to and.
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Speaker 2: Maybe one day I will maybe one day I will run into her and I'll go I.
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Speaker 3: Just want to I'm not I'm not mad I would just love to know what it was that ended that relationship it would give me.
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Speaker 1: Some peace you really couldn't guess I can't.
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Speaker 2: I can't.
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Speaker 3: I had one theory once that was proven wrong, but it's not like we had a falling out. I think if I were to guess, probably she finished school and went, eh, I want to start a new era and kind of shed that.
00:19:25
Speaker 1: Yeah.
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Speaker 2: But I would just like a bit more clarity.
00:19:27
Speaker 1: Right. If I have an ex, I'd like to know what happened to him. He's not traceable. No social. Like, yeah, that would be good to know. Are you sure no socials or has he just blocked you on everything?
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Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, you need a friend to check.
00:19:40
Speaker 1: You need to create a finster.
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Speaker 2: No Googles.
00:19:42
Speaker 1: No, like cannot find him anywhere. Banished. That's interesting. Actually, I've got two of those. Maybe they can help me.
00:19:50
Speaker 2: In jail.
00:19:51
Speaker 1: Like that's also a very real chance.
00:19:53
Speaker 4: Mine is I have this very specific knee pain that's inexplainable by medicine.
00:19:59
Speaker 2: Oh. I have a hip pain like that and I would really like a diagnosis.
00:20:03
Speaker 1: I just want to know what's going on. Same. What else? See, that was a good one. I thought this list was great, by the way. Good list.
00:20:10
Speaker 4: If you could have one full-time staff member, what would they do?
00:20:14
Speaker 1: Masseuse. Masseuse. Full-time. Every day?
00:20:18
Speaker 2: Every day. Three massages a day. Just constantly. Just massage my calves. You constantly want to be touched. I want to be touched constantly by people that aren't related to me. Right.
00:20:26
Speaker 1: Mine's a facialist. Oh.
00:20:29
Speaker 4: And they would just, like, follow me around and be like, oh, she's getting a pimple. Let's put that on her right now. Or, like, she's looking a bit dull.
00:20:34
Speaker 1: Let's do this.
00:20:35
Speaker 2: Oh, I love.
00:20:35
Speaker 1: How about you, Holly? Washing folder. I just would like to never, ever, ever have to fold washing again. You know you can choose anyone.
00:20:43
Speaker 3: You know that you could also, I said she, that is so dangerous.
00:20:47
Speaker 2: You know, he could also wash and dry it.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, just a laundry attendant who, like, just deals with it all. That would be great. I hate dealing with washing. And I literally spend a day a week folding clothes.
00:21:01
Speaker 2: I'd like them to be an expert, too, who likes in-stain removal.
00:21:04
Speaker 1: Yeah, who makes everything lovely.
00:21:06
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:21:06
Speaker 1: I know that's not very exciting. Maybe I should have said hairdryer. Oh, yeah.
00:21:11
Speaker 4: If you could retire now and maintain your current lifestyle but go no further, would you?
00:21:17
Speaker 1: I think this is a very good question depending on what age and stage you're at. Yeah, mine's an immediate no. Yeah, because you have high hopes you're going to earn a lot more money than me.
00:21:26
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I also am like I really don't want to be living in my tiny studio apartment for.
00:21:31
Speaker 1: The rest of my life. Like I would like a door, one door.
00:21:33
Speaker 3: I think I need structure to my day. Like I think I do need– I don't think I work for money. I think I work for purpose.
00:21:41
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I reckon you could still do that. I could just write books for free. Yeah, I think on the basis, this one I thought about long and hard because I'm a lot older than you two and I was like, You mean like I make the income I make now every month for the rest of my life and I don't have to ever think about it again? Yeah, absolutely.
00:21:59
Speaker 4: So I would think like what you do on your weekends now will be you'll be able to do that all the time for the rest of your life.
00:22:06
Speaker 2: That does sound good.
00:22:07
Speaker 1: And I would like I love my job. That means your.
00:22:09
Speaker 4: Garden can't get bigger either if you're thinking about.
00:22:11
Speaker 1: Your vegetable patch. Well, it's true, but I could just get really clever at cramming more vegetables into it. That's true.
00:22:18
Speaker 4: Okay, what's a piece of common advice that you disagree with?
00:22:22
Speaker 2: Be yourself.
00:22:24
Speaker 1: Oh, that's good. Why?
00:22:26
Speaker 2: Well, I just look at my three-year-old and I think be less. Be less. Yourself.
00:22:31
Speaker 3: I see the instincts. Last night she was brushing her teeth. She went to a window, threw the toothbrush out the window.
00:22:35
Speaker 4: I was like.
00:22:36
Speaker 1: Why would you do that?
00:22:37
Speaker 2: I was like, I don't even know. I guess it's a bad choice, but I didn't even know to tell you that was a bad choice. Oh, that's so true.
00:22:42
Speaker 3: So there are just, we are social human beings who need to find out who we are and then temper it based on others.
00:22:48
Speaker 1: Be nice.
00:22:49
Speaker 2: We need to be nice.
00:22:50
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:22:51
Speaker 2: Be nice, Luna.
00:22:52
Speaker 1: When you know, you know. I think that's bullshit. 100% bullshit. People are always saying that.
00:22:58
Speaker 2: I've known.
00:22:59
Speaker 1: I was wrong. Like, exactly. And I think that some people are like, I know, and some people are never very certain about things. It's just different people.
00:23:06
Speaker 2: How about you?
00:23:06
Speaker 1: Mine's very similar.
00:23:07
Speaker 4: It's one that I feel like every single person gets when they're dating. It will happen when you least expect it. Oh, I hate that. People trying to get pregnant too.
00:23:15
Speaker 1: Just never say that. Just stop. It's a stupid thing to say. It's not true.
00:23:19
Speaker 4: Okay, what thing are we doing today, like currently, we'll be most laughed at in 10 years?
00:23:25
Speaker 1: Oh, that's a good one.
00:23:26
Speaker 2: That's a really good one. Hopefully laundry.
00:23:29
Speaker 1: Yes.
00:23:30
Speaker 2: Hopefully.
00:23:31
Speaker 1: Because we'll have robots to do it, I'm sure. Yeah, there must be lots of robot-y things that we're doing. Yeah. But maybe it's also this relentless self-optimization, like, They thought they could beat the clock. They thought they could put off all the things that are going to happen and we can't. How about you?
00:23:49
Speaker 4: I think it has to be something to do with multivitamins. We're having way too many vitamins and it's too much.
00:23:57
Speaker 1: It's too much. I really liked, what's a piece of advice you give to others but struggle to abide by?
00:24:03
Speaker 3: Oh, I think that this is probably something about honesty. Like being honest and telling the truth. Like I think that that's very true. But I reckon whatever advice you give the most to others is the one that you're not abiding by yourself.
00:24:18
Speaker 2: Like it's probably quite a revealing thing. Yeah.
00:24:21
Speaker 1: Put your phone down. Oh, yeah. Same. Like I'm always telling people, including on this podcast. Like, we need to stop doom scrolling and get off our phones.
00:24:31
Speaker 2: And you're literally on your phone telling them.
00:24:33
Speaker 1: And there's me at 11 o'clock every night going, you should be going to sleep now.
00:24:35
Speaker 3: Yeah, I have a bruise on my lip today from dropping my phone on my face last night.
00:24:40
Speaker 2: It looks like I've had lip filler, but I haven't. I just dropped my phone. Oh, my God.
00:24:44
Speaker 1: That looks so painful.
00:24:45
Speaker 2: It really does. It's actually giving us injuries.
00:24:47
Speaker 1: What about you?
00:24:48
Speaker 4: Mine, I always tell people never to eat food past its expiry.
00:24:52
Speaker 1: Day, and I do it all the time. I do it all the time. Sometimes if my chicken's too pink, I'll eat around it. I have a question about questions.
00:24:59
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:25:00
Speaker 1: Are you the type of people who would do these kind of questions with your friends? Yeah.
00:25:05
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.
00:25:06
Speaker 1: Like under what, talk me through a circumstance where that might happen. like dinner party, weekend away, like would you be like?
00:25:14
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm imagining that it's in a similar vein to my good weekend quiz.
00:25:17
Speaker 1: Oh, yeah.
00:25:18
Speaker 3: Is that we'd sit down and go, let's do the good weekend quiz. And then I'd sit down and go, I have some questions. What stereotypes do you think are true? I think that that is a slippery slope.
00:25:26
Speaker 1: You have to be very close.
00:25:28
Speaker 2: Cancelable opinions.
00:25:30
Speaker 3: I think that you should film it and use it as blackmail against your friends.
00:25:34
Speaker 2: Because that's a fun game.
00:25:36
Speaker 1: I think that northerners are the salt of the earth. That's true. It's a stereotype, but it's true.
00:25:42
Speaker 3: I think that boomers need to get off their phone more than any other generation.
00:25:47
Speaker 1: That's true.
00:25:47
Speaker 2: I think that's true.
00:25:48
Speaker 3: And they need to work out what's AI because that's AI.
00:25:51
Speaker 1: I think young people. Are lazy? No. I think young people.
00:25:57
Speaker 4: Need to be a bit less emotional in public spaces.
00:26:04
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. I really want to be, like when I go camping or whatever with my friends, I love the idea of us doing this in the evening instead of just sitting around talking shit. But inevitably we.
00:26:16
Speaker 2: Just sit around talking shit. Instead of telling.
00:26:18
Speaker 4: Fucking Holly's like, remember last year?
00:26:23
Speaker 1: The worst form of conversation. After the break. Our favorite things. I want to just keep doing the question. After the break, our favorite things we've read, watched and listened to this week. It's Friday. That means recommendations. But before we get into it, Emily Vernon. Yeah. Before you went away, you recommended a movie. Very excited because big release, got a lot of promo, that movie.
00:26:52
Speaker 2: I tried to see it with a friend. My friend said I will not be seeing that film.
00:26:56
Speaker 1: I think they were maybe a few steps ahead because what happened next is it has become the biggest flop in Hollywood history. It has lost hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars. But the reason I want to ask you about M is because, so it's this experimentally movie, right? Lots of people are saying it's an art movie, not a charts movie. Mm-hmm. And a lot of Hollywood stars are now defending it and coming out like Anne Hathaway was saying. This brilliant movie, it's smart and trippy and aggressive and funny and ambitious. It's worth making the time to see. Lots of actors are coming out and encouraging people and saying, this is the kind of movie you've got to go see. And as I said... Some people, like the filmmaker, are tweeting, Digger is for the arts, not the charts, which is a handy thing to say when you're at the bottom of the charts. But do you stand by your recommendation? The Outlouders want to know.
00:27:40
Speaker 4: Outlouders, I do have to say I'm sorry for having great taste because this movie is amazing. And I have to remind everyone that the same thing, a very similar thing happened when Sinners came out. Critics hated it initially. Ben Stiller had to come out and say this is one of the best movies ever created.
00:27:57
Speaker 1: That's right. It's true. That's why all these guys are doing this.
00:28:00
Speaker 2: And you were early on Sinners too.
00:28:01
Speaker 1: I was early on Sinners.
00:28:02
Speaker 4: And I actually got so much pushback from Sinners when I first recommended it. I should have probably said it is a very controversial, I forgot, like it is a very deep and can be quite an upsetting film, which I didn't really say because I was so obsessed with it.
00:28:15
Speaker 1: I heard Marina Hyde say it's an eco-satire, right? And that being an eco-satire is not usually what you see at the top of the box office, but because it's got Tom Cruise in it, everyone's a bit confused and thinks it's top.
00:28:26
Speaker 3: You know what else was an eco-satire was that Leonardo DiCaprio, Don't Look Up, and that also got shit.
00:28:31
Speaker 2: And I thought that was a fine film.
00:28:33
Speaker 1: I didn't like that one.
00:28:34
Speaker 2: No, it wasn't good, but it was fine.
00:28:37
Speaker 1: It was fine. Okay, so Em's tip is go watch Digger.
00:28:41
Speaker 2: Go watch Digger.
00:28:42
Speaker 1: And also that it might just be a slow burn. Yeah.
00:28:45
Speaker 2: Okay. I'm telling you.
00:28:46
Speaker 1: I'm jumping in with my record first. It's not to go. Although I haven't seen it. I do want to see it.
00:28:50
Speaker 2: I will see it.
00:28:51
Speaker 1: The problem is it's gone now because it wasn't, like, I tried to see it down my way. No, it's not on anywhere. Maybe I'll act it out for you. That would be great. A dramatic reenactment with Em playing all the parts. Anyway, I want to recommend the Judith Lucy episode of No Filter that came out this week. So good. Like, I was listening to it driving into work on Monday on the train or wherever I was, and it was one of those ones that made me.
00:29:16
Speaker 2: Go, oh, yeah really well.
00:29:19
Speaker 1: And people were looking at me on the train because what you might know about Judith Lucy if you watch so Judith Lucy iconic Australian comedian what you might know if you've been looking at seeing her face around the news is that she's recently been diagnosed with breast cancer and she's having a double mastectomy she was having that operation just a few days after she spoke to Kate but the thing about this interview is it's not really about that because the reason that Judith Lucy was on the press trail at all when she got her cancer diagnosis is that she's written a memoir, a book called Well, Well, Well, and it's all about wellness. And the tagline for it is, My Wellness Odyssey from Psychics to Psychedelics and Beyond. So she says that after COVID and various things, she got really burnt out. And she said as a Gen X woman, she didn't believe in burnout, which is very typical. That's how we all are. And then it happened to her. And so she went on this kind of mission. She left Melbourne, moved back to Perth and went on this big mission to try and solve everything from her childhood trauma issues to her gut health. And then this book explains it all. And then obviously... Right at the end of it, as she goes to promote the book, she gets diagnosed with breast cancer. It is an amazing interview. She also, there's this reveal in it that I had never heard before about, she talks about being single and what it's like to be diagnosed with an illness like that when you're a single woman and the fear of there not being anyone to look after you, but actually how your friends close in. And that's great. But Kate, because they're friends, Kate asked her about her last serious relationship, Lucy's, Judith and Lucy's last serious relationship. and said, you two were so in love, I'd see you ever and you seemed so happy. And Judith Lucy just drops the most astonishing bombshell about the betrayal that ended that relationship. That I was just like, how are you still walking around? Like, it is such a good interview. Kate does such a great job. Their chemistry is great, but... Wow, it's such a generous, open, interesting conversation that goes in so many directions. So I couldn't recommend it more. This week's No Filter with Kate Lambrook and Judith Lucy.
00:31:20
Speaker 3: I am going to recommend a book called Fruit Fly by Josh Silver.
00:31:24
Speaker 1: I've heard so many good things about this book. Yes.
00:31:27
Speaker 2: So did you read Yellow Face?
00:31:29
Speaker 1: Yes, and I heard it's a very similar concept.
00:31:31
Speaker 2: Like similar genre.
00:31:32
Speaker 3: Basically the premise is that a young writer has like writer's block. She wrote one book that just went off and then she's just had writer's block for years and years and she– knows that in order to write a bestseller, you have to go gay, you have to go dark and you have to go sad. So what she does is she finds this young gay man who is homeless, who has a really tantalising story and takes it. And she gets to know him and it's so clever about the ways that a certain class will exploit certain kind of things regardless of how they might impact or hurt them. The publishing industry, what the publishing industry wants, and it, you know, all spectacularly blows up. But it looks like there's going to be a TV adaptation soon. already on the cards it has just this is a you know relatively new young writer and he's a gay man who I think was working in like mental health and decided to write this book and it's just exploded it's it's a real satire real commentary on um on what kind of stories we want but who we want to write them yeah it's really clever.
00:32:48
Speaker 4: That sounds I can't wait to read that fruit fly fruit fly I think I have another controversial-ish recommendation.
00:32:54
Speaker 1: Oh, okay. Is this a love-hate thing too?
00:32:56
Speaker 4: Well, I'm just going to say that in front of all my recommendations going forward, I think. No, I'm recommending season three of Nobody Wants This.
00:33:04
Speaker 1: Oh, that is controversial.
00:33:05
Speaker 2: I didn't even do season two. I heard such bad things. Yes.
00:33:07
Speaker 1: Because I, like everyone, loved season one.
00:33:10
Speaker 2: Yes.
00:33:11
Speaker 1: Didn't love season two.
00:33:12
Speaker 4: Agreed.
00:33:13
Speaker 1: But you're telling me I should do season three. Well, I didn't want to watch.
00:33:17
Speaker 4: season three, but I realized I had to do my job because I'm an employee and I work on the Spill podcast.
00:33:24
Speaker 1: So I had to watch it for that. Everything entertainment. Yeah, everything entertainment. So I'm glad I did.
00:33:29
Speaker 4: It is on par from like the first episode of season three was already better than the whole of season two. And I think that's because in season three, we're leaning more into the side characters. So it's more of Morgan, Sasha, Esther, who I think is everyone's favorite. And about their dynamic and their relationships and what's going on in their life. So it's kind of like now half and half. So half Eleanor and Noah and then half the other people.
00:33:56
Speaker 1: So it's become like more of an ensemble. Yeah.
00:33:58
Speaker 4: And it's just like so much better. So I can't really tell too much because it's like immediate spoilers. But obviously you see from season two, we kicked off with Esther and Sasha trying to explore the.
00:34:13
Speaker 1: other people like leave each other. Am I allowed to say that?
00:34:18
Speaker 4: And it starts off with both of them kind of like figuring out this new world of being apart.
00:34:23
Speaker 1: And then Eleanor and Noah just kind of doing that thing together. They're moving in together, aren't they? They're moving in together.
00:34:27
Speaker 2: I think you might just skip season two, go straight to season three.
00:34:30
Speaker 1: You don't need to know much.
00:34:31
Speaker 4: Also, you know how they're all like really, really rich in the series? So it's a lot of like Nice interiors of houses. Like I'm just looking at everyone's house going, wow.
00:34:40
Speaker 1: This is amazing. I didn't like season two. I watched it because it is one of those what I call a Friday night show, like where I just want something easy.
00:34:48
Speaker 2: Yeah, life.
00:34:48
Speaker 1: Because I was going to recommend before I listened to that amazing thing, the new Australian drama Dustfall, which is so good. You guys have to watch it so we can talk about it. But it is so heavy. It's Australian. It's brilliant. It's got Anna Torv in it, but it's about a sexual assault case. So it's like one of those shows that is so good but you're also like, oh.
00:35:07
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:35:09
Speaker 1: Nobody wants this ain't like that.
00:35:10
Speaker 2: No.
00:35:10
Speaker 1: Which is not better, worse, but different moods, different.
00:35:13
Speaker 2: Vibes, different palate cleanser.
00:35:14
Speaker 4: When I recommended Digger, I think a lot of the feedback I got was like, I don't want to see something doom and gloom.
00:35:20
Speaker 1: Like this was a depressing thing. I hate you. But Tom Cruise in prosthetics. But like this is not depressing. This will make you feel really like light and fun and chill.
00:35:28
Speaker 2: Love that.
00:35:29
Speaker 1: Thank you, friends. We've come to the end of our Friday episode. Hope we've given you some questions to go on over the weekend at dinner. We really, I love Jessie's advice about asking them about stereotypes and then surreptitiously just press record on your phone.
00:35:44
Speaker 3: We'll link to it in the Outlouders group. We should put the link in the Outlouders group and then I want to see people's answers in there.
00:35:52
Speaker 2: We love you.
00:35:52
Speaker 1: We love our team for putting the show together this week. Thank you to everybody. We will be back in your ears on Monday.
00:35:58
Speaker 3: Bye.
00:35:59
Speaker 1: Bye.
00:36:00
Speaker 3: Mamma Mia acknowledges the traditional owners of the land on which we have recorded this podcast.
Speaker 1: Hello and welcome to Mama Mia Out Loud. It's what women are actually talking about on Friday the 23rd of October. I'm Holly Wainwright.
00:00:10
Speaker 2: I'm Jessie Stephens.
00:00:11
Speaker 1: And I'm Em Burnham.
00:00:12
Speaker 3: And Em, did you know that Holly did something this week that if this was, if I had a goal in life, it would be to be the type of person who gets one blow dryer a week? and then just dines off it. Holly got her hair professionally blow-dried for an event.
00:00:26
Speaker 1: Oh, my God, you did.
00:00:27
Speaker 2: But that's why it's looked all week. I've just been admiring how beautiful your hair looks.
00:00:30
Speaker 1: I started trying to figure out if I could fit it into my week, getting a blow-dry like a proper grown-up person. So bougie. But I don't think so. I don't think I could fit it in.
00:00:40
Speaker 2: Do you reckon?
00:00:41
Speaker 3: Can an accountant tell us whether it's tact?
00:00:43
Speaker 2: I don't think it should.
00:00:44
Speaker 1: But it's true. I have been making this blow-dry. You've got to work for it. I'm not putting any product in it. No one blow on it.
00:00:52
Speaker 2: No.
00:00:53
Speaker 1: It's already been blowed. It's done. Thank you, Jessie. I feel special. Here's what's on our agenda for today.
00:01:00
Speaker 4: The very specific questions you need to ask your friends so you can know them better.
00:01:06
Speaker 3: And everywhere I look, I seem to be getting exactly the same piece of life advice. The case against niceness.
00:01:13
Speaker 1: Also, your weekend recos and Em's defence of a movie that nobody likes at all. Nobody likes it at all. That makes me so sad. Except for Em. But first, in case you missed it, on Sunday I am going to see my friend Lily Allen in concert. That's not the in case you missed it. In case you missed it is that I just found out that my merch options got a bit more interesting. She has launched with Love Honey a line of sex toys inspired by the iconic now one-year-old album West End Girl.
00:01:46
Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
00:01:47
Speaker 1: I'm sorry if this is TMI for Friday, but they do include a polka dot bot plug.
00:01:52
Speaker 2: Is that referenced in there?
00:01:54
Speaker 1: I was going to say, does anybody need a little refresher on why? There is the iconic song Pussy Palace. I love that. In case anyone missed it. This album is a concept album and the concept is I Was Married. to an asshole.
00:02:09
Speaker 2: Yeah, she was.
00:02:10
Speaker 1: She was married to the guy from Stranger Things, David Harbour, and they had an infamous breakup and she wrote an album about it. And one of the most memorable scenes from the album is on the Song Pussy Palace where she goes to the flat that she thought in New York that she thought he was using as a dojo, dojo, dojo, which is a place you practice martial arts. And in fact, it had a plastic bag in there full of butt plugs. Yes, right. I reckon that's the worst sex toy to find. Interesting.
00:02:41
Speaker 2: Of all the.
00:02:41
Speaker 1: Sex toys to find.
00:02:43
Speaker 3: Why?
00:02:43
Speaker 1: I just feel like it's another level of intimacy.
00:02:46
Speaker 3: This is like we're doing some exploring and I feel left out.
00:02:50
Speaker 1: Anyway, my question is, is this smart business? So yes, there is a whole line of sex toys with Lily Allen's endorsement. Is this smart business for my friend Lily?
00:02:58
Speaker 3: This is not her first line of sex toys. She's among like Cara Delevingne, Dakota Johnson. There's a bunch, Abbey Chatfield in Australia. She had a line of sex toys that sold just massively.
00:03:13
Speaker 2: Completely viral.
00:03:14
Speaker 3: I think she said she bought a house off her sex toys. But yes, Lily Allen did this a few years ago.
00:03:18
Speaker 1: She's back.
00:03:18
Speaker 3: The difference is in how she's marketing it. So she basically was like I was touring and I needed to unwind. I needed to de-stress. And that's when I decided to trial this new line of sex toys. And I was thinking about her life going, approve album art.
00:03:36
Speaker 2: Go through emails.
00:03:37
Speaker 1: Sound check at 7.
00:03:38
Speaker 2: Sound check at 7. But I'm just going to, in my diary, just block out. How long do you reckon you need? 45? A little 45-minute meeting between you and your butt plug?
00:03:49
Speaker 1: It depends on the one you're testing. You can be very pro with this. You can get it done.
00:03:54
Speaker 2: She's a busy woman. She is a busy woman. She doesn't have all the time in the world.
00:03:57
Speaker 1: I like it because I feel like.
00:03:59
Speaker 4: There was one time where I think when Abby Chatfield released hers and it was like very edgy, very cool.
00:04:04
Speaker 2: She was just really at the forefront of the revolution. Yes.
00:04:07
Speaker 4: And now it kind of feels like the equivalent of releasing a new beauty product. Like I'm not really like I'm just like, oh, yeah, that's nice.
00:04:14
Speaker 1: Happy for her.
00:04:15
Speaker 4: But I feel like when you go and buy sex toys online, I feel, I don't know, maybe this is a personal thing, but I'm not really looking at the celebrity who's attached to them the same way I'm looking at other products.
00:04:25
Speaker 1: Yeah, same. I'm not really imagining that situation.
00:04:29
Speaker 3: It's an interesting marketing tool because every celebrity has to not only put their stamp on it, similar to a perfume, to a, you know, anything that they make. It's like you need to stand there and Lily Allen needs to say, I tried.
00:04:40
Speaker 1: This butt plug.
00:04:40
Speaker 2: And it's like, that's just, how much does that work? I feel like it's worth a lot of money.
00:04:44
Speaker 1: Anyway, if you see me at Lily Allen on Sunday night, don't look too closely at the merch line. Anyway, over to you, Jessie Stephens.
00:04:53
Speaker 3: There's an idea I feel like I'm coming across everywhere at the moment, and I'm going to call it the case against nice.
00:04:59
Speaker 2: So first of all.
00:05:00
Speaker 3: There was a newsletter from Hunter Biden. We did a subscriber episode all about him recently. But he's got this newsletter that is just popping off. And he wrote a whole piece about enablers. And in it, he wrote, some convince themselves that silence is kindness, that patience is strategy, that the next morning will bring the correction this morning could not. These people mistake the absence of confrontation for the presence of peace. And this reminded me of a term I came across recently in a completely different context, which is artificial harmony. So imagine you're in a relationship or you're at work or you're hanging out with your friends and you know not to bring up this particular subject because it's going to cause conflict. So you bite your tongue, you avoid, you prioritize peace and calm. And isn't that the sign of a great relationship? Well, apparently not because author and business consultant Patrick Lencioni says you've compromised trust and you've fostered avoidance. He actually says business leaders should be mining for conflict.
00:06:05
Speaker 2: That's your job.
00:06:06
Speaker 3: If you're a manager or something, you need to mine for conflict rather than smooth things over. And because three things make it a trend, Priya Parker, she was on the New York Times The Interview recently.
00:06:16
Speaker 2: She's written a new book called The Art of Fighting.
00:06:19
Speaker 3: And this episode is actually called An Expert on Conflict Says Your Relationships Are Doomed Without It. And she says that social etiquette is getting in the way of us having relationships. pro-social conflicts in our lives and ultimately conflict makes us closer to people. Then, as an extra little sprinkle, Amy Ramikis, she's an Australian political commentator, released a book a few months ago called Screw Nice. M, do we all need to be a bit ruder?
00:06:45
Speaker 1: 100%. No way. I hate being nice.
00:06:51
Speaker 4: And this is why I always didn't like I never really liked the let them theory.
00:06:55
Speaker 1: I was always just like, you know what? Get them.
00:06:57
Speaker 2: Get them back.
00:06:58
Speaker 1: Get them. And it reminded.
00:07:01
Speaker 4: Me of when I earlier this year, I went to see Michelle Obama's In Conversation in Sydney.
00:07:07
Speaker 1: Oh, yeah.
00:07:08
Speaker 4: And like her big slogan was, when they go low, we go high.
00:07:13
Speaker 1: And then it worked for a little bit.
00:07:15
Speaker 4: But then as we were going high, like Hunter Biden said, some bozos stormed the Capitol. And we were like, no, we're staying high. But I feel like when it comes to things like this, sometimes you need to go low and even a bit lower.
00:07:28
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:07:28
Speaker 1: I couldn't agree less. What?
00:07:31
Speaker 2: Em, you have a very friendly face.
00:07:33
Speaker 3: I feel as though you can not be nice with your smile because you just look really nice, but you can be shockingly honest with that face.
00:07:42
Speaker 1: The thing about this is... I have, there's a lot that I recognize about myself in that for sure, because I am, remember when we all did our Enneagrams? Yes. And I'm a nine, which is a peacemaker, and I prioritize harmony above almost everything.
00:07:55
Speaker 2: You avoid conflict.
00:07:56
Speaker 1: Not always a good thing at all. And I recognize that. So I was getting halfway through Hunter Biden's newsletter. And at first I was really irritated with him about his enabler stuff, because it sounded to me like pointing the finger at everyone else for your problems. But anyway, But then when I got to that bit about mistaking the absence of confrontation for the presence of peace, I was like, oh, yeah, I do that all the time. I hate conflict. I will go a really long way to avoid it. And it's not good. But where this loses me is the idea that we're living in an era where everyone is too nice. We discussed this on Wednesday's show. politically, culturally, we have never been meaner to each other, awful to each other. The shit we say to each other on the internet, the way we attack each other for disagreeing, the level of public discourse, the way that we're happy to dismiss somebody's entire personality and humanity because they disagree with us about something politically. Like, the problem is not that we are being too nice.
00:08:53
Speaker 3: My instinct is the same as yours, Holly, but I'm going to table this theory. When we are online, it can look like conflict is everywhere and disagreement is everywhere. And by the time we put our phones down, I think that we're already fatigued.
00:09:07
Speaker 1: We feel like we've been fighting.
00:09:08
Speaker 2: We feel like we've been fighting all day.
00:09:10
Speaker 1: Or marinating in confrontation.
00:09:12
Speaker 2: Even though we didn't write anything.
00:09:13
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:09:14
Speaker 3: So then we look at our partner and our partner does something really, really fucking annoying and we go, I can't.
00:09:21
Speaker 2: I've been fighting all day.
00:09:22
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:09:23
Speaker 2: I've been fighting all day.
00:09:24
Speaker 3: And then I can see how that erodes intimacy because we're that's artificial harmony, just kind of going, I don't really want to get into it. And Priya Parker has this great line, which is basically, do you want someone to like you or do you want to feel closer to someone? And I can see what she's saying, which is I was out with a friend recently and we were chatting and they called me out and they said, do you actually agree with anything I just said?
00:09:51
Speaker 1: And I was like, oh, you.
00:09:53
Speaker 2: I'm actually transparent here.
00:09:55
Speaker 3: Like, I think that I'm being really convincing in just agreeing and agreeing.
00:09:59
Speaker 2: But that's not... intimacy.
00:10:02
Speaker 1: But, yeah, but... I think you pick and choose your moments to weigh in with that. Because I've got some friends who I love to bits, but we don't agree about all kinds of things. And I don't want to have an argument with them every time we're having a wine or a cup of coffee. I just want to get on with life and talk about things that we will not necessarily agree on, but other stuff, you know what I mean? Stuff that isn't in that. And does that matter? Because my, and I genuinely ask this question as someone who is not very good at confrontation. The problem with once you do confront things, whether this is in a work setting or a personal setting, there has to be a resolution. Somebody is always going to walk away from that, usually feeling like they lost, and someone else is going to walk away from it feeling like they win. I know that when I was a manager and I was leading teams a lot, one of your hardest jobs is that, is that making sure you do get to hear everybody's feedback to come to a good resolution. So I totally get that. If everyone just sits there in the meeting going, that's a great idea. That's a great idea. And then they walk out and go and stand in the corridor and go, that's the worst idea in the world. Like that is toxic and you don't want that. But equally, if you're mining for conflict and you're getting everybody to tell you all their problems with it, then obviously, Where does that confrontation end up? It ends up often with the person who's best at arguing or has the loudest voice.
00:11:22
Speaker 2: Or is the most powerful.
00:11:23
Speaker 1: Getting their way and other people feeling like they may have raised something, but they didn't get their way with it.
00:11:30
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, what I was reading was kind of arguing the opposite, which is that the most... toxic thing.
00:11:38
Speaker 3: In a workplace is a seemingly boring meeting yeah like the one where everyone goes yes and then they walk out where everyone is quiet and everyone's just stopped you know how they say um the most dangerous moment in a relationship is when you both kind of go quiet and then a man goes I didn't know she was gonna leave me and it's like oh she gave.
00:11:56
Speaker 2: Up on fighting like she gave up on saying how she.
00:11:59
Speaker 3: Felt and the same goes for intimate relationships is I that peacekeeping or artificial harmony can lead to a feeling of complete loneliness because you're not feeling sane, at least when you're, you know, it's interesting that you use the word confrontation as like synonymous with conflict.
00:12:16
Speaker 2: I wonder if they're actually different things. Em, you love conflict.
00:12:18
Speaker 1: I do love conflict.
00:12:20
Speaker 4: I also think that when it comes to like say the work situation and you're like, In this meeting and you're like, oh, this is not going to plan. I need to say something. The nicer thing to do would be to say something in that moment than to bitch about it later. And I think we sometimes get the words nice and kind mixed up because I always learned, and I learned this from my mom, like you don't owe anyone niceness. Like you don't have to be nice to everyone, but you should be a kind person. And I think nice, we always have like this– It feels very surface level and it feels very fake. And it's also, if you were to describe a close friend as nice, it sounds like a bit of an insult as well. Like I would never describe anyone I know as nice.
00:13:00
Speaker 2: Whereas kind is, that's what you want to be.
00:13:03
Speaker 3: Yeah.
00:13:03
Speaker 1: You know, I don't know. I think people say that. But again, when I used to be in management and you'd hire people, if I walked into the office and said, oh, we've hired that new manager, the number one question that all the women in the office would ask me is, is she nice? Is she nice? Everybody wants there to be a nice person.
00:13:20
Speaker 3: So my question about that too is that is it very, very gendered? Because there is more of a cost for women who decide not to be nice, is that men get away with maybe being more honest, especially in a workplace. We know that, you know, there are small repercussions but also very serious repercussions for women who decide not to be nice. And they talk about the survival mechanism of fawning and how you might... try and please someone because of certain experiences you've had in your life. So I hear the message, don't be so nice, don't be so nice. But there's also a survival reason why a lot of women think in order to get through the day, in order to get paid, I've got to put a smile on my face.
00:14:01
Speaker 1: We're all different, right? And I, because I've really struggled with confrontation and I've obviously tried to work on it, but If I'm in an environment that is tense with confrontation, I hate it. Like, I hate it. I feel sick. I'll get a headache. I get so upset with myself if I feel like I've lost my cool, all that stuff. It happens. You guys have seen it happen. Whereas I know other people who thrive in that. They love it. So whose priorities get, like, some people are like, oh, it excites me. The adrenaline's pumping. It's great. It's how you get to good stuff. So who's... Like given that there isn't, given that we're all a bit different in terms of that, like whose needs get prioritized?
00:14:42
Speaker 4: I think when we're speaking like, outwardly, when it comes to people who are confrontational versus people who are nice, it's always the confrontational people that you just end up seeing more. And I think this is why I get a bit upset with niceness, because there is a whole side, especially when we talk about politics, there's this whole side of people that are confrontational and are just not nice people. And then they're going up against people who want to play nice and it never works out. The nice people always lose. And that's what makes me angry about it because I'm like, why can't we also be confrontational? Why can't we stand up against that? Why do we always have to be nice?
00:15:20
Speaker 2: I reckon what you're saying too, Holly, is that conflict takes time. energy.
00:15:25
Speaker 3: You hear a lot of people saying, I want to protect my energy. And some people thrive off that constant conflict and other people don't. But what I would say is that if you avoid and avoid and avoid, then what it is costing you something, which is sometimes your own integrity or your own, you know, feeling like you're being honest and it can erupt, which in a lot of cases isn't very nice.
00:15:53
Speaker 1: It's true.
00:15:53
Speaker 3: For you to just, you know, we've all had the experience of then exploding over nothing and it seems completely out of proportion because you let A, B, C and D go. So I think I definitely understand that there's that often being honest is kinder. And I think that's a good mantra for us to prioritize kindness over niceness.
00:16:14
Speaker 1: I think that's true. I did realize, though, when I was reading this, particularly the Amy Ramikis, who I have a lot of time for her, but I don't really agree with her that civility, civil discourse is death, because I think that that's actually really important, particularly at the minute. But it made me realize I tell my kids, so I'm passing on my generational people pleasing. I tell my kids all the time, you catch more flies with honey. Like, People will do more for you, be nicer to you, give you more respect if you treat them well, if you're a pleasant person who treats them well. That is nice.
00:16:47
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's also a really important thing. And don't we need all types? Because if everyone woke up in the morning ready for conflict, there would be no functioning. Like we need people who want to avoid it, some people who thrive. Like that's why we're all developed. Differently, because we have different ways of getting what we want and what we need.
00:17:08
Speaker 1: Outlouders, in a.
00:17:08
Speaker 4: Moment, 19 questions you should be asking your friends. So a Substack post by a writer named Dylan, first name only. I hear that's what the cool kids are doing.
00:17:19
Speaker 1: It's so funny that we often talk about, like, we saw this on Substack, we saw this on Instagram, and it's by somebody called... Three hairs on the chin. And we're all like, sure, we'll go with it. Go with it.
00:17:30
Speaker 2: Sounds legit.
00:17:31
Speaker 1: This is just Dylan.
00:17:33
Speaker 2: Dylan with an I or Dylan with an A?
00:17:35
Speaker 1: With a Y. D-Y-L-A-N. Light bulb. All right. And they wrote a sub stack.
00:17:41
Speaker 4: It was just titled, Questions to Ask Your Friends If You Want to Get to Know Them Better. And the whole article is pretty much the questions. It starts off with a quote, and the quote says, Remember when is the lowest form of conversation, which is by Tony Soprano.
00:17:57
Speaker 1: And I thought that was a real first. I didn't know it wasn't a real first. That's hilarious. You didn't know that, but that is truth. That is so true.
00:18:04
Speaker 2: That's when you're really grasping.
00:18:06
Speaker 1: I also, I tease Brent and his middle-aged man friends about this all the time, that so much of their conversation is all like, when I was backpacking around Nepal, back when, oh, when ACD, like, this is the worst conversation of all time.
00:18:20
Speaker 2: I would say it's more of a man thing.
00:18:22
Speaker 1: Like, I know more about my dad's childhood than my own.
00:18:24
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:18:25
Speaker 1: He always talks about it.
00:18:26
Speaker 2: And I'm like, can you have daughters?
00:18:28
Speaker 1: That's also something you should remember when. But it's not. It's always when I was a little kid in India.
00:18:32
Speaker 2: They need new questions to ask each other.
00:18:34
Speaker 1: Exactly. Should I go through the questions?
00:18:36
Speaker 2: Yes, please. What are your favourites?
00:18:37
Speaker 1: Okay, some of my favourites.
00:18:38
Speaker 4: What's a mystery in your life you want the answer to? And it has to be a solvable mystery.
00:18:43
Speaker 2: I've got one.
00:18:44
Speaker 1: Okay.
00:18:45
Speaker 2: Okay.
00:18:46
Speaker 3: My best friend from high school, like we were so, so close.
00:18:50
Speaker 2: After high school, bam, cut it off.
00:18:53
Speaker 3: And I think about her like it is my– it lives in my head rent free that just I would love to and.
00:19:00
Speaker 2: Maybe one day I will maybe one day I will run into her and I'll go I.
00:19:04
Speaker 3: Just want to I'm not I'm not mad I would just love to know what it was that ended that relationship it would give me.
00:19:12
Speaker 1: Some peace you really couldn't guess I can't.
00:19:16
Speaker 2: I can't.
00:19:16
Speaker 3: I had one theory once that was proven wrong, but it's not like we had a falling out. I think if I were to guess, probably she finished school and went, eh, I want to start a new era and kind of shed that.
00:19:25
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:19:26
Speaker 2: But I would just like a bit more clarity.
00:19:27
Speaker 1: Right. If I have an ex, I'd like to know what happened to him. He's not traceable. No social. Like, yeah, that would be good to know. Are you sure no socials or has he just blocked you on everything?
00:19:38
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, you need a friend to check.
00:19:40
Speaker 1: You need to create a finster.
00:19:42
Speaker 2: No Googles.
00:19:42
Speaker 1: No, like cannot find him anywhere. Banished. That's interesting. Actually, I've got two of those. Maybe they can help me.
00:19:50
Speaker 2: In jail.
00:19:51
Speaker 1: Like that's also a very real chance.
00:19:53
Speaker 4: Mine is I have this very specific knee pain that's inexplainable by medicine.
00:19:59
Speaker 2: Oh. I have a hip pain like that and I would really like a diagnosis.
00:20:03
Speaker 1: I just want to know what's going on. Same. What else? See, that was a good one. I thought this list was great, by the way. Good list.
00:20:10
Speaker 4: If you could have one full-time staff member, what would they do?
00:20:14
Speaker 1: Masseuse. Masseuse. Full-time. Every day?
00:20:18
Speaker 2: Every day. Three massages a day. Just constantly. Just massage my calves. You constantly want to be touched. I want to be touched constantly by people that aren't related to me. Right.
00:20:26
Speaker 1: Mine's a facialist. Oh.
00:20:29
Speaker 4: And they would just, like, follow me around and be like, oh, she's getting a pimple. Let's put that on her right now. Or, like, she's looking a bit dull.
00:20:34
Speaker 1: Let's do this.
00:20:35
Speaker 2: Oh, I love.
00:20:35
Speaker 1: How about you, Holly? Washing folder. I just would like to never, ever, ever have to fold washing again. You know you can choose anyone.
00:20:43
Speaker 3: You know that you could also, I said she, that is so dangerous.
00:20:47
Speaker 2: You know, he could also wash and dry it.
00:20:50
Speaker 1: Yeah, just a laundry attendant who, like, just deals with it all. That would be great. I hate dealing with washing. And I literally spend a day a week folding clothes.
00:21:01
Speaker 2: I'd like them to be an expert, too, who likes in-stain removal.
00:21:04
Speaker 1: Yeah, who makes everything lovely.
00:21:06
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:21:06
Speaker 1: I know that's not very exciting. Maybe I should have said hairdryer. Oh, yeah.
00:21:11
Speaker 4: If you could retire now and maintain your current lifestyle but go no further, would you?
00:21:17
Speaker 1: I think this is a very good question depending on what age and stage you're at. Yeah, mine's an immediate no. Yeah, because you have high hopes you're going to earn a lot more money than me.
00:21:26
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I also am like I really don't want to be living in my tiny studio apartment for.
00:21:31
Speaker 1: The rest of my life. Like I would like a door, one door.
00:21:33
Speaker 3: I think I need structure to my day. Like I think I do need– I don't think I work for money. I think I work for purpose.
00:21:41
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I reckon you could still do that. I could just write books for free. Yeah, I think on the basis, this one I thought about long and hard because I'm a lot older than you two and I was like, You mean like I make the income I make now every month for the rest of my life and I don't have to ever think about it again? Yeah, absolutely.
00:21:59
Speaker 4: So I would think like what you do on your weekends now will be you'll be able to do that all the time for the rest of your life.
00:22:06
Speaker 2: That does sound good.
00:22:07
Speaker 1: And I would like I love my job. That means your.
00:22:09
Speaker 4: Garden can't get bigger either if you're thinking about.
00:22:11
Speaker 1: Your vegetable patch. Well, it's true, but I could just get really clever at cramming more vegetables into it. That's true.
00:22:18
Speaker 4: Okay, what's a piece of common advice that you disagree with?
00:22:22
Speaker 2: Be yourself.
00:22:24
Speaker 1: Oh, that's good. Why?
00:22:26
Speaker 2: Well, I just look at my three-year-old and I think be less. Be less. Yourself.
00:22:31
Speaker 3: I see the instincts. Last night she was brushing her teeth. She went to a window, threw the toothbrush out the window.
00:22:35
Speaker 4: I was like.
00:22:36
Speaker 1: Why would you do that?
00:22:37
Speaker 2: I was like, I don't even know. I guess it's a bad choice, but I didn't even know to tell you that was a bad choice. Oh, that's so true.
00:22:42
Speaker 3: So there are just, we are social human beings who need to find out who we are and then temper it based on others.
00:22:48
Speaker 1: Be nice.
00:22:49
Speaker 2: We need to be nice.
00:22:50
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:22:51
Speaker 2: Be nice, Luna.
00:22:52
Speaker 1: When you know, you know. I think that's bullshit. 100% bullshit. People are always saying that.
00:22:58
Speaker 2: I've known.
00:22:59
Speaker 1: I was wrong. Like, exactly. And I think that some people are like, I know, and some people are never very certain about things. It's just different people.
00:23:06
Speaker 2: How about you?
00:23:06
Speaker 1: Mine's very similar.
00:23:07
Speaker 4: It's one that I feel like every single person gets when they're dating. It will happen when you least expect it. Oh, I hate that. People trying to get pregnant too.
00:23:15
Speaker 1: Just never say that. Just stop. It's a stupid thing to say. It's not true.
00:23:19
Speaker 4: Okay, what thing are we doing today, like currently, we'll be most laughed at in 10 years?
00:23:25
Speaker 1: Oh, that's a good one.
00:23:26
Speaker 2: That's a really good one. Hopefully laundry.
00:23:29
Speaker 1: Yes.
00:23:30
Speaker 2: Hopefully.
00:23:31
Speaker 1: Because we'll have robots to do it, I'm sure. Yeah, there must be lots of robot-y things that we're doing. Yeah. But maybe it's also this relentless self-optimization, like, They thought they could beat the clock. They thought they could put off all the things that are going to happen and we can't. How about you?
00:23:49
Speaker 4: I think it has to be something to do with multivitamins. We're having way too many vitamins and it's too much.
00:23:57
Speaker 1: It's too much. I really liked, what's a piece of advice you give to others but struggle to abide by?
00:24:03
Speaker 3: Oh, I think that this is probably something about honesty. Like being honest and telling the truth. Like I think that that's very true. But I reckon whatever advice you give the most to others is the one that you're not abiding by yourself.
00:24:18
Speaker 2: Like it's probably quite a revealing thing. Yeah.
00:24:21
Speaker 1: Put your phone down. Oh, yeah. Same. Like I'm always telling people, including on this podcast. Like, we need to stop doom scrolling and get off our phones.
00:24:31
Speaker 2: And you're literally on your phone telling them.
00:24:33
Speaker 1: And there's me at 11 o'clock every night going, you should be going to sleep now.
00:24:35
Speaker 3: Yeah, I have a bruise on my lip today from dropping my phone on my face last night.
00:24:40
Speaker 2: It looks like I've had lip filler, but I haven't. I just dropped my phone. Oh, my God.
00:24:44
Speaker 1: That looks so painful.
00:24:45
Speaker 2: It really does. It's actually giving us injuries.
00:24:47
Speaker 1: What about you?
00:24:48
Speaker 4: Mine, I always tell people never to eat food past its expiry.
00:24:52
Speaker 1: Day, and I do it all the time. I do it all the time. Sometimes if my chicken's too pink, I'll eat around it. I have a question about questions.
00:24:59
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:25:00
Speaker 1: Are you the type of people who would do these kind of questions with your friends? Yeah.
00:25:05
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.
00:25:06
Speaker 1: Like under what, talk me through a circumstance where that might happen. like dinner party, weekend away, like would you be like?
00:25:14
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm imagining that it's in a similar vein to my good weekend quiz.
00:25:17
Speaker 1: Oh, yeah.
00:25:18
Speaker 3: Is that we'd sit down and go, let's do the good weekend quiz. And then I'd sit down and go, I have some questions. What stereotypes do you think are true? I think that that is a slippery slope.
00:25:26
Speaker 1: You have to be very close.
00:25:28
Speaker 2: Cancelable opinions.
00:25:30
Speaker 3: I think that you should film it and use it as blackmail against your friends.
00:25:34
Speaker 2: Because that's a fun game.
00:25:36
Speaker 1: I think that northerners are the salt of the earth. That's true. It's a stereotype, but it's true.
00:25:42
Speaker 3: I think that boomers need to get off their phone more than any other generation.
00:25:47
Speaker 1: That's true.
00:25:47
Speaker 2: I think that's true.
00:25:48
Speaker 3: And they need to work out what's AI because that's AI.
00:25:51
Speaker 1: I think young people. Are lazy? No. I think young people.
00:25:57
Speaker 4: Need to be a bit less emotional in public spaces.
00:26:04
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. I really want to be, like when I go camping or whatever with my friends, I love the idea of us doing this in the evening instead of just sitting around talking shit. But inevitably we.
00:26:16
Speaker 2: Just sit around talking shit. Instead of telling.
00:26:18
Speaker 4: Fucking Holly's like, remember last year?
00:26:23
Speaker 1: The worst form of conversation. After the break. Our favorite things. I want to just keep doing the question. After the break, our favorite things we've read, watched and listened to this week. It's Friday. That means recommendations. But before we get into it, Emily Vernon. Yeah. Before you went away, you recommended a movie. Very excited because big release, got a lot of promo, that movie.
00:26:52
Speaker 2: I tried to see it with a friend. My friend said I will not be seeing that film.
00:26:56
Speaker 1: I think they were maybe a few steps ahead because what happened next is it has become the biggest flop in Hollywood history. It has lost hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars. But the reason I want to ask you about M is because, so it's this experimentally movie, right? Lots of people are saying it's an art movie, not a charts movie. Mm-hmm. And a lot of Hollywood stars are now defending it and coming out like Anne Hathaway was saying. This brilliant movie, it's smart and trippy and aggressive and funny and ambitious. It's worth making the time to see. Lots of actors are coming out and encouraging people and saying, this is the kind of movie you've got to go see. And as I said... Some people, like the filmmaker, are tweeting, Digger is for the arts, not the charts, which is a handy thing to say when you're at the bottom of the charts. But do you stand by your recommendation? The Outlouders want to know.
00:27:40
Speaker 4: Outlouders, I do have to say I'm sorry for having great taste because this movie is amazing. And I have to remind everyone that the same thing, a very similar thing happened when Sinners came out. Critics hated it initially. Ben Stiller had to come out and say this is one of the best movies ever created.
00:27:57
Speaker 1: That's right. It's true. That's why all these guys are doing this.
00:28:00
Speaker 2: And you were early on Sinners too.
00:28:01
Speaker 1: I was early on Sinners.
00:28:02
Speaker 4: And I actually got so much pushback from Sinners when I first recommended it. I should have probably said it is a very controversial, I forgot, like it is a very deep and can be quite an upsetting film, which I didn't really say because I was so obsessed with it.
00:28:15
Speaker 1: I heard Marina Hyde say it's an eco-satire, right? And that being an eco-satire is not usually what you see at the top of the box office, but because it's got Tom Cruise in it, everyone's a bit confused and thinks it's top.
00:28:26
Speaker 3: You know what else was an eco-satire was that Leonardo DiCaprio, Don't Look Up, and that also got shit.
00:28:31
Speaker 2: And I thought that was a fine film.
00:28:33
Speaker 1: I didn't like that one.
00:28:34
Speaker 2: No, it wasn't good, but it was fine.
00:28:37
Speaker 1: It was fine. Okay, so Em's tip is go watch Digger.
00:28:41
Speaker 2: Go watch Digger.
00:28:42
Speaker 1: And also that it might just be a slow burn. Yeah.
00:28:45
Speaker 2: Okay. I'm telling you.
00:28:46
Speaker 1: I'm jumping in with my record first. It's not to go. Although I haven't seen it. I do want to see it.
00:28:50
Speaker 2: I will see it.
00:28:51
Speaker 1: The problem is it's gone now because it wasn't, like, I tried to see it down my way. No, it's not on anywhere. Maybe I'll act it out for you. That would be great. A dramatic reenactment with Em playing all the parts. Anyway, I want to recommend the Judith Lucy episode of No Filter that came out this week. So good. Like, I was listening to it driving into work on Monday on the train or wherever I was, and it was one of those ones that made me.
00:29:16
Speaker 2: Go, oh, yeah really well.
00:29:19
Speaker 1: And people were looking at me on the train because what you might know about Judith Lucy if you watch so Judith Lucy iconic Australian comedian what you might know if you've been looking at seeing her face around the news is that she's recently been diagnosed with breast cancer and she's having a double mastectomy she was having that operation just a few days after she spoke to Kate but the thing about this interview is it's not really about that because the reason that Judith Lucy was on the press trail at all when she got her cancer diagnosis is that she's written a memoir, a book called Well, Well, Well, and it's all about wellness. And the tagline for it is, My Wellness Odyssey from Psychics to Psychedelics and Beyond. So she says that after COVID and various things, she got really burnt out. And she said as a Gen X woman, she didn't believe in burnout, which is very typical. That's how we all are. And then it happened to her. And so she went on this kind of mission. She left Melbourne, moved back to Perth and went on this big mission to try and solve everything from her childhood trauma issues to her gut health. And then this book explains it all. And then obviously... Right at the end of it, as she goes to promote the book, she gets diagnosed with breast cancer. It is an amazing interview. She also, there's this reveal in it that I had never heard before about, she talks about being single and what it's like to be diagnosed with an illness like that when you're a single woman and the fear of there not being anyone to look after you, but actually how your friends close in. And that's great. But Kate, because they're friends, Kate asked her about her last serious relationship, Lucy's, Judith and Lucy's last serious relationship. and said, you two were so in love, I'd see you ever and you seemed so happy. And Judith Lucy just drops the most astonishing bombshell about the betrayal that ended that relationship. That I was just like, how are you still walking around? Like, it is such a good interview. Kate does such a great job. Their chemistry is great, but... Wow, it's such a generous, open, interesting conversation that goes in so many directions. So I couldn't recommend it more. This week's No Filter with Kate Lambrook and Judith Lucy.
00:31:20
Speaker 3: I am going to recommend a book called Fruit Fly by Josh Silver.
00:31:24
Speaker 1: I've heard so many good things about this book. Yes.
00:31:27
Speaker 2: So did you read Yellow Face?
00:31:29
Speaker 1: Yes, and I heard it's a very similar concept.
00:31:31
Speaker 2: Like similar genre.
00:31:32
Speaker 3: Basically the premise is that a young writer has like writer's block. She wrote one book that just went off and then she's just had writer's block for years and years and she– knows that in order to write a bestseller, you have to go gay, you have to go dark and you have to go sad. So what she does is she finds this young gay man who is homeless, who has a really tantalising story and takes it. And she gets to know him and it's so clever about the ways that a certain class will exploit certain kind of things regardless of how they might impact or hurt them. The publishing industry, what the publishing industry wants, and it, you know, all spectacularly blows up. But it looks like there's going to be a TV adaptation soon. already on the cards it has just this is a you know relatively new young writer and he's a gay man who I think was working in like mental health and decided to write this book and it's just exploded it's it's a real satire real commentary on um on what kind of stories we want but who we want to write them yeah it's really clever.
00:32:48
Speaker 4: That sounds I can't wait to read that fruit fly fruit fly I think I have another controversial-ish recommendation.
00:32:54
Speaker 1: Oh, okay. Is this a love-hate thing too?
00:32:56
Speaker 4: Well, I'm just going to say that in front of all my recommendations going forward, I think. No, I'm recommending season three of Nobody Wants This.
00:33:04
Speaker 1: Oh, that is controversial.
00:33:05
Speaker 2: I didn't even do season two. I heard such bad things. Yes.
00:33:07
Speaker 1: Because I, like everyone, loved season one.
00:33:10
Speaker 2: Yes.
00:33:11
Speaker 1: Didn't love season two.
00:33:12
Speaker 4: Agreed.
00:33:13
Speaker 1: But you're telling me I should do season three. Well, I didn't want to watch.
00:33:17
Speaker 4: season three, but I realized I had to do my job because I'm an employee and I work on the Spill podcast.
00:33:24
Speaker 1: So I had to watch it for that. Everything entertainment. Yeah, everything entertainment. So I'm glad I did.
00:33:29
Speaker 4: It is on par from like the first episode of season three was already better than the whole of season two. And I think that's because in season three, we're leaning more into the side characters. So it's more of Morgan, Sasha, Esther, who I think is everyone's favorite. And about their dynamic and their relationships and what's going on in their life. So it's kind of like now half and half. So half Eleanor and Noah and then half the other people.
00:33:56
Speaker 1: So it's become like more of an ensemble. Yeah.
00:33:58
Speaker 4: And it's just like so much better. So I can't really tell too much because it's like immediate spoilers. But obviously you see from season two, we kicked off with Esther and Sasha trying to explore the.
00:34:13
Speaker 1: other people like leave each other. Am I allowed to say that?
00:34:18
Speaker 4: And it starts off with both of them kind of like figuring out this new world of being apart.
00:34:23
Speaker 1: And then Eleanor and Noah just kind of doing that thing together. They're moving in together, aren't they? They're moving in together.
00:34:27
Speaker 2: I think you might just skip season two, go straight to season three.
00:34:30
Speaker 1: You don't need to know much.
00:34:31
Speaker 4: Also, you know how they're all like really, really rich in the series? So it's a lot of like Nice interiors of houses. Like I'm just looking at everyone's house going, wow.
00:34:40
Speaker 1: This is amazing. I didn't like season two. I watched it because it is one of those what I call a Friday night show, like where I just want something easy.
00:34:48
Speaker 2: Yeah, life.
00:34:48
Speaker 1: Because I was going to recommend before I listened to that amazing thing, the new Australian drama Dustfall, which is so good. You guys have to watch it so we can talk about it. But it is so heavy. It's Australian. It's brilliant. It's got Anna Torv in it, but it's about a sexual assault case. So it's like one of those shows that is so good but you're also like, oh.
00:35:07
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:35:09
Speaker 1: Nobody wants this ain't like that.
00:35:10
Speaker 2: No.
00:35:10
Speaker 1: Which is not better, worse, but different moods, different.
00:35:13
Speaker 2: Vibes, different palate cleanser.
00:35:14
Speaker 4: When I recommended Digger, I think a lot of the feedback I got was like, I don't want to see something doom and gloom.
00:35:20
Speaker 1: Like this was a depressing thing. I hate you. But Tom Cruise in prosthetics. But like this is not depressing. This will make you feel really like light and fun and chill.
00:35:28
Speaker 2: Love that.
00:35:29
Speaker 1: Thank you, friends. We've come to the end of our Friday episode. Hope we've given you some questions to go on over the weekend at dinner. We really, I love Jessie's advice about asking them about stereotypes and then surreptitiously just press record on your phone.
00:35:44
Speaker 3: We'll link to it in the Outlouders group. We should put the link in the Outlouders group and then I want to see people's answers in there.
00:35:52
Speaker 2: We love you.
00:35:52
Speaker 1: We love our team for putting the show together this week. Thank you to everybody. We will be back in your ears on Monday.
00:35:58
Speaker 3: Bye.
00:35:59
Speaker 1: Bye.
00:36:00
Speaker 3: Mamma Mia acknowledges the traditional owners of the land on which we have recorded this podcast.
