You're listening to a MoMA Mia podcast.
Mamma Mia acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters that this podcast is recorded on. Men tend to really like practical jokes. If you think about the stories of movie stars who play practical jokes on each other and then they'd pressed to us that they'll be like, oh, Clooney was such a joker on set. He always did this, He always did that. It just makes everyone else look dumb. Hello,
and welcome to Mama Mia. Out loud. It's what women are actually talking about on Wednesday, the second of April. My name is Holly Waynwright.
I'm mea Friedman, and I'm mea Friedman.
That's no Forril Fool's joke.
That's funny. I do have something it's not an April Fool's joke, which is that, in case you missed it, we have merch.
Out louders, No, now it sounds like an April for it's not.
We finally have merch and it would be very elaborate April Fool's date because I'm wearing it now and we're all wearing it. Eagle eyed out there might have noticed if you saw the socials for Monday show or the picture that we put in the out loud.
Who one day. We were so subtle, weren't we? We were so subtle, all standing there in front of all the merchants. Out louders in our Facebook group were like, I see March and.
Then we're like, we're not telling you until Wednesday. We're so sneaky. We have done a collab with our favorite, one of our favorite local lady startup labels, Makou. She's designed a limited edition of four T shirts and bags and you can order any or all of them now at mamama out loud dot com dot au. Just click shop to get merch and when it arrives, make sure you tag us in photos of you wearing it, so I see you.
Are we telling them about the TYPEO? Is that a thing we can tell our Oh yeah, people are so.
If you order quickly, and if you've got eagle eyes, you will spot in one of the T shirts. I won't tell you which one. There is a typo that's so us So we were like, Holly of course spotted it, and I was proper to it. After it was printed and we went, oh dear, and then we went, well, let's just make a feature of our floor.
Yep.
We love to flearn here.
Yes, and you know if you get one of those, because obviously when we print the next edition, we are going to change it, but.
It'll be a collector item in It's true. I went to the gym the other day with my out Louder merch bag. Is it dicky to wear your own merch.
No, that's funny because I wore out my Outlouder t shirt and when I walked into the office somebody said to me, oh, a fan of yourself.
Like someone has to think of that.
But yeah, now I feel very self conscious. On today's show, there are two types of people, and neither of them think practical jokes are funny. We have feedback for eightful the first also the stratispheric drama level of sharing custody with the world's most powerful unhinged men, and kink are having a moment in pop culture, and a confession on Gwyneth's lay. This podcast left us with questions. But first, Mia, in.
Case you missed it, the Beatles are getting back together in see that coming movie form, and it's not actually them, which is why you probably didn't see it coming. I think two of them have died. Director Sam Mend's former husband of Kate Winslet, announced yesterday that he's making four describe some members.
That's the most interesting fact I've learned today. I didn't know that is.
An enormously successful and accomplished director, but hey.
Yeah, it's out loud.
That's how we wrong. He is making four separate movies, one focusing on each of the four band members through their point of view, and they'll all be dropping in cinemas in April twenty twenty eight in what is being called the first bingeable theatrical experience.
I have I have a question for Holly because she's British, so clearly she's the closest to the Beatles.
Do you want to know who's in it? Who's playing the Beatles?
That's actually pretty it's a dreamcast.
It is Paul Mescal as Paul McCartney, Paul Mescal from Normal People. Harris Dickinson is playing John Lennon. He was most recently in Baby Girl.
I think he is so hot. I can't even that's the role.
Everyone wants. You want to be John?
Do you want to be Paul?
You want to be John?
Why?
Because well, are you a Paul or are you a John? Is one of the world's longest running like poodle wolf situations, and you want to be John because's the main character.
Yeah, he's the main.
Character of the Beatles.
Joseph Quinn is George Harrison, I don't know who he is. And Barry Kogan is Ringo Star. He had to.
Be because I didn't realize that each one of these movies is told from their perspectives, and no one would go and see the Ringo one, no dissing Ringo. But he's the least interesting that so until you put Barry keg and then everyone goes, oh, yeah, now I need to see the Ringo version.
So if you're counting your pennies for that time in a few years, the ones you're going to see number one, you're going to see John a couple.
Of hundred dollars.
This is actually genius, absolute genius. I'm not happy that I have to wait three years. But everybody's talking about cinema is dead. Cinema is dead except for the massive stunt things, and they tend to be Marvel movies, those kind of things. Baby, with the exception of Barbie, which obviously is a brilliant movie. A lot of those movies don't get a lot of credibility, Like they're not very good.
I mean, you know, very artistically. What's the word critical, right, Yeah, they're seen as a bit cheap, even though they're the most expensive things that have ever been made. This is a great idea because it marries stunt with simultaneous release of four movies, biggest stars in the world, blah blah blah, with undoubted credibility. If you've got Sam Mendes directing and those actors playing these movies are going to be brilliant.
Do you think they'll have a few per fore men? Because the thing is, if this was if this was a Spice Girl, then we'd cut five women. We would be holding our breath. Because the feud on the press tour is the new like, that's the biggest st.
John famously clashed, particularly when Yo came into the picture. I'm popular opinion. I don't think I'll see any of them. I don't like the Beatles very much.
I will see them all, all of them in like a very short period. Imagine the fuss about this. It's going to be like set aside a day you're going to be like, it's going to be a whole.
I'll see Paul and John, and I'll decide whether I'll see the others.
Feedback is a gift from both the perspective of a giver as well as the recipient. I have feedback for April Full's Day, and I'm worried that I'm being a killjoy, which is why I'm bringing it to the table today to unpack it with my friends.
Because this did you get tricked yesterday?
Babe?
I wouldn't say I got tricked. I'm trying to be self aware.
This is my tenth year in media, and maybe I've become jaded, right, but I think I'm done with April Full's Day. Yesterday my social media Walter April Fool's Day pranks, and I didn't even understand half of them. Brands love and April Fool's Day joke, and there were some were there many decent ones. Dyson did the airbrow.
I saw that that was clever. I almost tried to buy.
See this is a problem.
Think of how many people did try and buy that.
It was like a little I don't even know what it was, but it was like to dry and fluff and shape your eyebrows, and it was like.
A teeny weeny little hair dry.
I love a little gadget, and Mac did a clear foundation and I was like, may I would buy that In an instant.
Jack sent us chocolate covered Jacks, which that's.
Clean funny about them.
They were just delicious.
They're seriously a fantastic product that now I can't buy, so now I'm annoyed. Set Then there was the school who played this prank on their students.
Morning, Year eleven. I hope we are all well this morning. I have some really significant news. This new will affect you all directly and will impact your HC and graduation dates. With this said, a mandatory year thirteen has been added to your educational pathway and therefore you will no longer be graduating in twenty twenty six. You will now be graduating in twenty twenty seven. Thank you for it is
compulsory that you complete your thirteenth year. Here is one other five compiece of information I need to share with you. Woollongong High School of the Performing Arts this year was selected to be a part of the twenty twenty five April Fool's Day Joke.
Got Up I love.
I actually love that.
I like that one schools deserve more fun.
I think we can all agree. I think that's fun, and I'll allow that broadly. The wall to wall pranks, I'm not into it. And it got me thinking about how some people are prank people. They love a practical joke, and then there are people like me who have absolutely no patience for it.
Am I jaded? Or does April Fool's Day grind your gears a bit?
Holly?
I can't stand them. I'm the same as you, absolutely And I think it's because ultimately, there's always a bot of the joke in practical jokes, right, And I'm going to generalize enormously. Men tend to really like practical jokes. If you think about I always think about the stories of movie stars who play practical jokes on each other and in the press tours that will be like, oh, Clooney was such a joker on set.
He always did this, he always did that.
It's like lols if you George Clooney, but it just makes everyone else look dumb. And I wonder if women are kind of used to being belittled a bit in a way that maybe men aren't so we're very sensitive and I'm told to laugh. It's just a joke. Stop taking this off.
So seriously, you know what, because I think the practical joke famously Leonardo DiCaprio and Jonah Hill. There are all these videos and they're quite funny the way that they kind of paying each other and praying each other. But practical jokes are about power, right, So if you're in a workplace, you can't pull a practical joke on your boss.
You know you can't.
You can too, it's too risky. You can with maybe a coworker. And I think that that's it. That it's like the butt of the joke is the audience or the person who's confused.
There is always a butt, isn't there.
There's always a butt, and it's not you. And the other thing about April Fool's lie, that's not true.
So one time at Mum Maya, someone had the idea of making an announcement or doing an article about how I changed my name from me a freedman to me a freed woman because my idea, but we published it. So the butt of the joke was on me really because it was like, oh maybe that with button the joke was on people who believed it anyway, completely backfired because six months later people were still saying to me, like,
my friends, did you really change your name? And I was like no, because the problem is unless the payoff, like in that video about the Department of Education, and in that context, the payoff came immediately, so.
You saw it all together.
But even when I was flicking through Instagram last night and I saw the dice in one I read the caption because I thought, wait, is this and then I had to go and look read all the comments to check if it was in April Fool's Day joke. So if you don't have that payoff straight away, it can be a bit confusing.
I wonder if practical jokes generally are a bit out of fashion, right, because I mean those ones are not they don't have a visual victim. But if you think about the shows that were massive for a while, like Punked and Candid Camera, which were all about tricking somebody famous or not famous for quite a long period of time and then revealing to them, and it was very cringey.
Like massive celebrities like Justin Timberlake and people like that were disposed at their rawst by that because as we discovered when we did a little prank this week at work, that you will all find out about if you come to the live show, you can't fake anything in that
moment way. And I wonder if now, with social media being so prevalent, we say that's made us more authentic, but actually it means we curate ourselves very carefully, and also we know how easily weaponized any moment of embarrassment is so like for a teenager, like a video, a quick video of you tripping over something or whatever will be sent around the school in a hot minute, and you will be a massive butt of a joke that's
mortifying for you. You know, so in a way that that didn't used to be the case.
I don't think practical jokes are out of fashion. I'm thinking about impractical jokers the show with the Inspired Unemployed that recently was on Paramount and that had an audience.
I would say most of them were men est But I reckon it's got something to do with the social media element because the for fools Day jokes had been co opted by brand since about the nineteen twenties, right, But when we saw a billboard or when we saw an ad for something, there was an innate sense of trust and therefore it was a flip to then go oh, I've been tricked, and it was a sign of brand trust like car brands used to do it, that they could be bold enough to on a day trick their audience.
Now we are always being tricked. I go on to my social media and there is a no innate sense of trust. I'm already on my guard. I'm already expecting to be hoodwinked because of fake news, misinformation out of those things.
But you mentioned that show on Paramount Plus cast your mind back when they worked with those Australian feminists who lured their audience there to come and watch this panel or debate, and then it turned out to be a joke and there was massive backlatch against those women and the inspired on employed guys because the butt of the joke was the audience. Yes, and they found massively betrayed. Very sensitive to it because it can be weaponized in
a way. Your embarrassment can be weaponized in a way that it couldn't be back then, right, So as I say, your sort of embarrassed reaction to suddenly being revealed that you've been tricked, can suddenly travel everywhere.
In a heartbeat in a way that it couldn't before. So I think it's riskier, the stakes are much higher.
Yeah, and I think too that we feel like we're being tricked all the time. We almost feel like we're living in an April Fool's Day prank, Like what's happening in the US.
It's like every day feels like an.
April Foll's Day.
Mc donaldson. Yeah, all of that.
You just look at it and then someone makes another joke and you're sort of like, can we not trust anything anymore?
Can I imagine what the Trump White House might have come up with for April Full's Day?
Every day is April Full's Day. It's like a MoMA mayor. Every day's International Women's Day there every day.
You know, the strict rules of April Full's Day is it only goes to the midday. You're only allowed to make joke.
What is that?
I don't know, But the strict rules of it are is it's a morning thing.
You know why because by the afternoon we're exp This is the thing about human too.
Prise.
Humor relies on surprise. So now you get to kind of April one. You go look at it and Australian's theory Australians hate it more than everyone else because we have two days of it because of time zions.
That's true.
We have it and we go no no, no, no no, and then the US is like, we're releasing in you and.
We're like, oh, we've been dealing with this brown.
Practical jokes they used to used to be like a real thing of radio right. Yeah, but they always make the person look good or they're the butt of the joke and im practical jokes. In their defense, they are often the butt, So like, what's an example, Well, in practical jokes, they're never cruel and they never humiliate people. That's not their brand. No, Well, Hamish and Andy would call someone one of their most viral videos saying, will you be a reference for me?
I know, I don't know you.
James speaking?
OK?
Mate?
Sorry, my name's Tim. How are you mate? I wonder if you can help me out of a slightly sticky situation. I'm just about to go into a job interview at an accounting firm.
I don't know why.
I Just've written down a random number and I just like to call it to see if it's a real thing. It's your number. But then it's occurred to me they might call it, but I doubt they will. But if someone calls you and says, do you know Tim Barnard?
Can you.
I'm going for a job at an accounting firm, but just say that, I'm just going to put you down as a personal reference.
Yes, over my.
Back, blah blah blah, Okay, a river bike.
I've got your covered.
Is that all right?
And this guy went to great lengths to be a reference for Hamish Nandy and was dubbed the nicest guy right, dubbed the nicest guy in Australia. That you kind of go, oh, this makes me feel good, Whereas when I see people who have been humiliated, I just kind of I remember being at school and there was a trick pulled on one of our classes, I think for like a muck update thing, and we were filmed and they said afterwards they were.
Like, we should have seen your face.
You should have seen I hated that feeling. I just went, I don't like nobody to that joke.
She so vulnerable.
The worst one is speaking of vulnerable is when people scare you there's a certain type of person who likes going to pop out, pop out. But do you also remember when people used to come up behind you and put their hands over your eyes, And I think it took a lot of women getting very distressed by that. People don't do that anymore, luckily, because I hate that. I just even walk around my house and get startled by members of my own family, even with them out not trying to scare me.
While we're on April, a little bit more feedback, since the month has only just been a few days ago. I signed up for a ten day meditation challenge online. I made it to day three, right, and then I looked at the date and they went, ah, I'm right on time. I'm having a little April moment, like that moment of the year where you go, I'm going to get everything sorted out because you've started in January. You were like, we've got word of the year, We've set things.
Then you live for three months, everything goes to shit, and then you reset your reset and it's a thing. So there's a thing called April theory, and it's the idea and it's you know, all over TikTok and everything that April is actually the start of the new year in a way, so it's the season shift for a start, whichever hemisphere you're in, it's the season shift from one of the main character seasons to one of the side
character seasons. There's something star shifting, you know. I never understand that it's eight aries season.
Yep, So it's the end of Piscey season, and Piscey season is all about purging, so you need to purge things that are no longer serving you. And we move into April, which is astrologically full of new and exciting thing.
Yes, so apparently it's a time of lots of enthusiasm, new projects, but also breakups and resets. Are you feeling April?
A you?
Is it?
Because do you think you start the beginning of the year with that sort of new page optimism? And then yes.
Then you're like, it's April and I'm still the same shitty mess I've always do you.
Do the same things in April? Is it just a repeat of January? Sexually? But three months later?
For me? I think when I decided to sign up for that meditation challenge and failed, I thought back and I was like, oh, it was this time last year that I started seeing that therapist myself, I gave up. I wandered off. I'm very wander offye on those things. But it's like, clearly you said all these good intentions in January. By April you've kind of gone, oh, same, I'm still the same. You know, wherever you go there
you are that whole thing. And then you're in a little crisis about it, so you reach out for something to solve it and like try and start again.
I wonder I have a different theory, which is that January, whether it's intentions or word or whatever, I think that you do actually make some changes, right, and you might make some big changes in that first kind of three months of the year, And by April, I think there might be a sense of newness or you ending a new era. Maybe you're benefiting from some of the things that you've more positive.
Yeah, in a moment, what's it like to be in a custody battle with the richest, smartest, most volatile men in the world. We're going to tell you celebrities they're just like us, except that in the custody battles with their exes, they're dealing with things like copyright claims over the names of your kids, and your children may be turning up in the office of the President of the United States when you just thought they'd gone to the
zoo with their dad. I'm talking, of course, about two very high profile divorced dads here, in particular, Kanye West and Elon Musk. Now, when I was getting the information together for this segment, it's a lot.
It's actually so distressing.
It is a lot. And also these two men who are very dominant in our culture at the moment for very different but sort.
Of related reasons, related but.
Also very distressing reasons in lots of ways. Also, being in the middle of these sort of parental battles is really a lot. So I'm just going to do a couple of very top line things about what's been going on lately and why you might have seen their names
around in headlines related to custody. So, Kanye, who is in the middle of what appears to be a year's long spiral into ever more alarming extremism on many fronts, has been very vocal lately about how he'd like to spend some more time and have more access to and more rights over the names of his four children with Kim Kardashian and now he was married to her for eight years, officially divorcing in twenty twenty two, and they
had four kids. As we know, North is the oldest, and she's the subject of most of this public back and forth because he recently made a track in support of Diddy, the infamous rapper and mogul who's in prison on claims of sex trafficking and racketeering and many other abuse claims, and Kim was furious about it, and then Kanye leaked some of the messages between them in relation to this, where it was revealed that Kim had trademarked
North's name and earned the rights to it. So she said in one of the leak texts, I asked you at the time if I can trademark her name. You said yes, when she's eighteen, it goes to her, so stop. I sent paperwork over so she wouldn't be in the Diddy song to protect her, but he leaked the song anyway.
Kardashian then requested an emergency hearing with their lawyers and a mediator and a judge because she also heard that North was going to be present at West's house when the Tate brothers, Andrew and Tristan Tate were visiting at Kanye's house, and so she sent bodyguards over to get North out of there.
Imagine that the.
Complexities of co parenting with a man like him evident in that he is publicly threatening to destroy her in this battle. So he has tweeted that neither of us will recover from the public fallout if you go to war over this. He said, You're going to have to kill me. Meanwhile, over in Elon's world, the apparent father
of fourteen children is perpetually involved in custody disputes. He apparently resolved one with Grimes over their three kids last year, but that's been rocked by his distance on using one of those kids X as a promotional tool. So we talked about this a little bit, turning up at the Oval office, taking him to events and wandering off and
leaving him alone. And Grimes has said she spent a year locked in a battle with him, having my Instagram posts and modeling used as reasons I shouldn't have my kids and fighting and detaching from the love of my life because they were actually in a relationship, which isn't the case with some of Elon's mothers of his children, detaching from the love of my life as he becomes unrecognizable to me with a fraction of his resources, so she means herself with a fraction of his resources or
IQ or strategy experience, all the while I didn't see one of my babies for five months. Meanwhile, Elon's also has been in a dispute with the mother of his five children after their divorce in two thousand and eight, and this week, the woman who's supposed to have had his most recent child, who's five months old, is a woman called Ashley Saint Clair. They've been in a public back and forth that some of those tweets have now been deleted. He denies paternity, even though he says he
gave lots of money. My god, Yeah, what is going on here?
I was reading through all of these and I've had some of Kannye's tweets pop up for me, and they are so much worse than you could possibly imagine, from racist to sexist to violent, outright violent.
Yep.
Look, that's the Kanye of it all. And it can feel as though this is about celebrity and ridiculousness, but there is some kernels in all of this that I actually think would be relatable to some women who have left toxic partners. What I keep thinking through all of this that isn't being discussed and in a lot of the articles and the analysis and the podcast and everything, are the kids, Like the kids at the center of
this Northwest can read Northwest has two ears. Recently, doctor Fiel did a podcast where he was saying, you know, if Kanye keeps this up and Kim does this, both of those parents are going to lose custody and basically suggesting that these kids are going to go into foster care.
False equivalence in that, yes, so outrageous.
Because people are saying Kim isn't protecting those kids either, And to that a woman and everyone knows, at least one who has had to keep her mouth shut because she knows that her child or children are being used as a pawn by her ex partner.
There are but a weapon.
A weapon, Yeah, exactly right, And if you do something wrong, they will punish either you or the children. And so I think that Kim, even the copyright thing. I'm looking at this going, Kim is doing everything in her power to protect those children and that's why we're not hearing from her, because she knows that that's what they need.
And even the also, she's probably going through an enormous amount of legal proceedings at the moment that we don't know about and that aren't made public, you know what I mean. Like the things that we are learning, the drip feeding that we are learning, sounds like she would be in a world of pain trying to basically stop the kids from seeing their death.
Yes, because Kanye and.
We don't know this, Yes, probably we don't know this, but it does look that way. But from the outside, you kind of go, why are they spending any time with him, given how he's been over the last couple of years and how he has been with Banka sensory and all of that. You know, it's really disturbing.
But then I think Kim, and this is kind of what some of the leaks are saying, she doesn't want to agitate him, So I think that women. You know, there's been cases like that where you sort of go, when the court case is called, or when the DVO is called in Australia, that's when it's a really dangerous moment for a volatile man and so I have so much empathy for particularly Kim Kardashian in that. But the other thing Kanye said this week in an interview was
that those kids weren't wanted. He said he wanted, he never wanted to have kids with Kim Kardashian, but that's not how it went. Like if they don't read it now, the trauma of those poor children or even I'm thinking Elon's kid, who there is an argument going on on Twitter between both his parents where he's alleged father is denying paternity, like these are real human beings who are going to have to get a lot of therapy one day.
Elon wanted to have all these children, right, because he's what they call a pro natalist, So he believes.
That populate the world, Yeah.
People like him, you know, very smart blah blah blah, should be the people who are breeding and that they're not breeding enough. Because I think his broad worldview is that we know that birth rates are declining, particularly among educated people, so he's like, right, more babies will needs more little Elons. I don't think that many people agree with that point at this point anyway, But he clearly doesn't necessarily want to be involved with any of these children,
and in fact, he doesn't. He has disowned his daughter and said that she is dead to him because she is transgender, and he says the word mind virus killed her. And so why I just don't understand these models of fatherhood. This is one of the things I think about. It's like, you wanted these all these kids, and you're telling everyone to have kids, but then your model of fatherhood seems completely anticom.
And if it's IVF that's been recorded for some of the children, that's how he had them. And if you want to do this unconventional, not that IVF is unconventional, but elon Musk having unconventional relationships with the mothers of these children. If you want to do that, shouldn't you have some sort of contract set in? So I think you're a business guy. Don't you make deals for a living.
How is it that you now have a five month old and you're feuding on Twitter about paternity like I would imagine.
And payment that you've locked that down. Yeah, And there was a video of Ashley Saint Clair, who is like a MAGA influencer, selling her tesla because she said he's cut her child support by sixty percent and she needs the money. And then there's another mother of one of his children who's saying on Twitter. I think it was Grimes, Actually, I need your attention. One of our kids needs medical help.
IY need money. I mean, it's just but while you said about what's the model of fatherhood, it's really just seed spreading. Like it's literally just populist seed spreading. It's not a father in any way that we would recognize a father, except biologically, and that's all he wants. I mean, people say that his child called X, one of his children with crimes, who he had in the Oval office, is his favorite, and he sort of doesn't really care about all the others. And then there are claims by
his daughter that he only wants boys. He insists on gender selection for all the children he fathers.
I mean, it's just interesting to note as well how much we're hearing from the men and how little we're hearing from the women, which is a to do with power, yeah, and b I think to do with trying to protect the kids.
But I think you're right Jesse in that although Kim Kardashian is one of the least relatable humans on the planet, there are a lot of women who know what it's like to be locked in this kind of battle with many fewer resources than Kim Kardashian has not access to that kind of legal support in any way. A man who might have something over them or believes that they do, and we'll use it against them like this is actually quite a familiar story playing out in a very unusual world.
But what's even more terrifying is that she does have all of those resources and still she can't stop him.
If this conversation has brought up any thing for you, resources for support will be listed in our show notes.
After the break. We're changing Gears, inspired by a couple of scenes in White Lotus and an interview with Gwyneth patro.
One unlimited out loud access. We drop episodes every Tuesday and Thursday exclusively for Mamma Mia subscribers. Follow the link at the show notes to get us in your ears five days a week, and a huge thank you to all our current subscribers.
Comedian Nikki Glazer, who you may remember, hosted the Golden Globes to Rave Reviews earlier this year. She was so good. She's done an interview this week with Gwyneth Paltrow for Gwinne's Goop podcast.
When Nikki talks about.
How during sex she likes her boyfriend to talk about the other women that he's been with.
Here's what she said, And are you really non monogamous?
No, I wouldn't mind if my boyfriend were to fool around with other.
Do you really think you wouldn't mind? Has he done it?
Yeah?
And you didn't mind?
Like years ago, there were like a couple times. I don't mind as long as the girl knows that it's not like cause you know, I think girls sometimes when they can be convinced like he's gonna leave her for me, it's like that's not gonna happen. So just know what this is. I think it's definitely the competition thing of like, ooh, maybe he will leave me for her, Okay, I gotta
step it up. Like I kind of like that, But I also like, I think he's hot, and I kind of am like try this out, like it's like lending like my friend, like a hairdresser.
I like really, I don't know, Like I'm just like have a good time and like I seck, like is that a sexual fetish?
Yeah?
I think it's a fetish.
It's called hot husband. So there's like a hot wife fetish that's way more prolific of like men who want their wives to be it's not cuckholding, and they're not in the corner like what are you doing, or like, they're just kind of like they either hear about it or they kind of like orchestrate it. And I don't want to be a part of it. I think he would like me to be a part of a thing with someone else, but I don't really I'd rather just hear about it later.
It's actually not the first time she's talked about it. Back in twenty twenty two, she said in another interview, I'm a wido and I like my boyfriend to at least entertain the idea of being with other women or be with them. I think it's about like I want things that other people want. So now you know, that's called hot husband syndrome. And it's funny that she describes it as being a weirdo and she says it's a fetish. It's also described as a kink, and kinks are really
having a moment in White Lotus this season. Creator Mike White has been exploring some fairly unconventional kinks, which we will go into in our subscriber episode tomorrow. Particularly in the last couple of episodes, there's been a lot of kinks explored. This week, there was also a pretty out there description of one kink that involved someone accidentally seeing his parents having sex and wanting to recreate that with his girlfriend and another man.
There's also been the sort of incest storyline, and there's also been, of course, Sam Rockwell talking about cours monologue where he talked about the most creative kink, desiring something so much that you want to be it.
Yeah, Jesse, do you think it's a good thing that people are sharing their kinks publicly?
Look, I find it fascinating, and I think that the way Mike White has done it in The White Lotus is very engrossing because the undercurrent to what he is saying is that kinks aren't only about sex. I don't think that he's doing it to be gratuitous or to be a rousing, but to explore power and relationships in
a fresh way. But I do think that Mike White's job, especially this season on The White Lotus, has become harder because to present an audience with a kink they haven't heard of is near impossible.
I mean obviously this season. Yeah, Yeah, that's what I mean.
It's like the proliferation of pornography means that all of these things we could never have imagined, or maybe people were imagining, but they just didn't have a word for. Like the subculture of sex means that you can now find certain communities.
Yeah, and they're in a drop down menu. So it's like if you can easily go into a place and type in what you're interested in, and then there's a whole list of a whole lot of other things. It's kind of opening your mind in a way that that wasn't really possible before.
And then you discover what turns.
And then what happened does, of course, is it normalizes it. And once something becomes normalized, it's no longer a kink, which is why I think that kinks can become wilder and wilder, like this sort of it didn't begin with it, but I think it popularized. Kink culture was fifty shades of gray, and now we imagine that being remade and parts of that are no longer subversive because it's like, oh, that's just become mainstream talking about kinks. I always find
it really funny because podcasts have done this increasingly. I think it can be a really good thing. I think that probably same sex marriage and a revolution when it came to LGBT sexuality means that what sex means and what sex acts looks like has widened. But podcasts you'll hear people talk about kinks, and I always think kinks require a sexually arousing context, and for people who aren't sexually aroused by you in this moment, this just sounds kind of weird.
But even on on White Lotus, yeah, it was being described, and even the person that was being described to who was being invited to participate, was like, no.
No, yeah, yeah.
And that's interesting because there's also a thing called kinkshape, which is when someone tells you their kink that you go ooh, yuck. But there was that app that we spoke about on the show where you can put all your kinks in and then your partner puts all their kinks in and it only shows the ones that match, or all the things that you're willing.
To try, which is the important part, right because the unspoken part about this is the sort of mixin creep as it were, that can easily tip into more dangerous territory. But back for a second to Niki Glazer. I loved hearing her talk about that.
Right.
That interview is all kinds of strange in lots of ways, but that part of it was so interesting. So honest, I love hearing women subvert the stereotypes about jealousy and
all those things. And she went on to explain that one of the things she thinks she loves about it is that when you've been in a long term relationship, and she's been with this guy for lots of years, one of the things you miss and you mourn is that frizon of first meeting someone and being attracted that she describes it as like, oh, is he really put my very close to his leg under the table, and how exciting that is, and how you'll never have that
again if you're signing up for vanilla monogamy, that is a feeling you will never experience again, and she wants to recreate it via him. I found that so interesting. But on the other side of it, I had to think about our friend Armie Hammer on the Louis Theroux podcast, which you guys talked.
About a couple of weeks ago.
His broad defense against the abuse allegations against him is that this was very consensual kinks like kink dating, almost that this was a world he was part of and everybody was on the same page. And that may well be true, but it also might not be true, which is why it's kind of It can be a convenient coverall if you are too much in the oh, this is just a kink and you're totally into it, it can be a convenient coverall for more yea more toxic behaviortion.
But I reckon that's a good point, because I think that dating apps have given way to an explosion in kink culture because it is far easier to express something you're into over a phone, perhaps with a stranger, than it is with a romantic partner looking them in the.
Eye and worried about feeling judged.
And yes, I also I was reading that gen Z are the kinkiest because of their exposure to pornography. It's like their from Yes, there was a great quote from it, a gen Z person who said vanilla is the new frigid.
So if you're someone.
So what about vanilla shaming?
That sucks.
But back to Nicki Glazer and the White Lotus. The other thing that they have in common is that there's a thing called nemdic desire, which is being turned on by someone else wanting the person, and so Mike Whites
explored this in every single season. So in the first season there were the two girlfriends and the one played by Sidney Sweeney went and cracked onto the boyfriend of her friend, and then the same thing happened between the married couples in season two, and now in season three it's played out with the three friends and Jacqueline and Valentine, and she encourages her friend to go for this other
guy and then she sleeps with the other guy. And that's what Niki Glaze was talking about as well, And she says that early on, for the first few years in their relationship, because I've been together on and off for thirteen years, she would just get him to describe having sex with other women. But then she said, he ran out of stories to tell me, so then I had to say to him, go out and get some more stories and bring them back to the cave. She was saying, that's her kink, is being turned on by
other women having the hots for her partner. Well, gosh, we've really covered a lot in this show.
It's all weird.
And a cup of tea and I lie down.
I think. Thank you out loud us for being with us listening to our show as you always do. We love it, we appreciate it. We also appreciate our fabulous team for helping us put it to go. Bye t shirt, guys.
Shirt and you can wear it, wear it to the live show.
And we have some bangers of some subs episodes this week.
So yesterday's subscriber episode was all about adolescence. We've been desperate to put this episode together with all the theories, all the tidbits about how it was made, why it was shot in one scene, the things you might have missed upon watching it, and then the conversation that's evolved, some of the criticisms that have emerged.
We unpack all of that.
In yesterday's subscriber episode, and then tomorrow watch out because our Whiteladus subs is dropping a link as always will be in the show notes.
Bye bye bye.
Shout out to any mum and Maya subscribers listening if you love the show and want to support us as well. Subscribing to Mom and Miya is the very.
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