You're listening to a MoMA Mia podcast.
Mamma Mia acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters that this podcast is recorded on Hello and welcome to Mamma Mia. Out loud. It's what women are actually talking about on Monday, the sixth of September. I'm Holly Wayne right.
I think it's the eighth.
Shit.
I was trying to look up now that we make this podcast also for video, and I never know what David is. I would be terrible in one of those cognitive tests where people are like, what day is it, Holly? What date is it? Holly? No idea, no idea.
Well, the only reason I know is because of something I'm bringing to the show today. But I have looked into the data significance. But it is, in fact the eighth.
She's right, She's right, out louders, this is what women are actually talking about, not two days ago, but today, on Monday, the eighth of September. And I am Holly Wayne.
Right, I'm Jesse Stevens, and I am Amelia Last.
And here is what has made our agenda today. I know you knew I was going to talk about this, the hair change that swallowed your weekend group chats, I have a special royal roundup for you, and yes it does include Princess Kate.
Plus Australian wellness figure Pete Evans has returned and why does it feel like he is now a man who has truly met his.
Moment and you're doing small talk wrong. I've learned about a new theory about how.
To fix this.
But first, in case you missed it, early this morning, a total lunar eclipse was visible in much of the world. Who got up to see it, ladies not. I think it was like three point thirty. It was really I saw the.
Moon outside last night was very impressive. Yeah, that was the and I was like, that's enough, that's enough now. But then I started getting texts from people saying you must go crystals.
Out, you know.
I was in Canada one night and they were like, you know there's going to be the what do you call them, the fancy lights, normal lights the middle last night. All we have to do is at one o'clock go and look at them. And I was like, that's too warm.
Did you see that there's this new add out for Tourism Australia that's been playing in China, which features the Southern lights in Tasmania. No, the only problem is they're basically impossible to see and had to be photoshopped in, so they are under all sorts of criticism.
Maybe a little bit. I are interesting. Well, this moon really happened. The moon passed through the Earth's shadow, which produced a deep red hue, hence why it is called the blood moon.
I love that.
But the real question is what does the pretty moon say about me in my life? That's what everyone is asking. Does it mark endings or beginnings or significant shifts? Or should I be manifesting or reflecting?
And what does it mean for my period? Because I know the moon's linked to my period in some way. So true.
Well, yeah, that sounds like a superperio. That sounds bad.
Eclipses are cosmic plot twists in our lives. Obviously, they accelerate change and they dissolve anything outdated. Be ready, be prepared for some revelations, because they're coming. Be ready to be led in a direction your soul wants you to go. There's something about alignment with your life's truest path. But here is some practical advice that we must follow.
Do you think that's for like this week now that the moon has happened, So like, don't be surprised if things get a bit weird this week.
Exactly, it's going to be a bit chaotic, a bit messy, but in a good way.
I don't know what.
That's your pads, yeah, exactly right. Yeah, and your period undeas maybe some period genes. If something is leaving your life, don't chase it. That's if you've got someone who, like you're in the middle of a breakup, or something's going wrong at work and you feel like you're meant to let something go, You're meant to let it go.
That's so weird because I was driving in this morning and I was like, let go, let go see and I wasn't.
It was the blood it was the blood moon whispering to you. Also, if you were planning on manifesting, don't manifesting. Our job is too surrender, which I feel is lazier and it's just more of a vibe. The instruction is that we're not meant to do anything. We're just meant to sit in like this, let the universe do what it's meant to do. You're also the other thing you meant to do is look through your photos from last September because something significant happened and there's been like a
full circle thing, so I would do it. Yeah, and that's when I got my THERMOMX. No, yeah, it is. It is when I got my THERMOMX. So I feel like that was a beginning.
And then she discovered vegetables. Yeah, and then there was no stopping.
Us exactly exactly, and now I am basically Pete Evans.
So that's all I wish later.
That is all my blood moon update.
Oh no, I've immediately got to go and look at last September's photos. Maybe we can put something on social Yeah, exactly right, friends, I was wrong. You know, I don't like to admit it. You know, I don't like to admit being wrong, but I was really really wrong about something very important that had something to do with the royal person's hair color. Now you know I was going to talk about this. It's my royal round up for
the day. A princess has changed her hair and I have to deliver a mere culpa because just a couple of weeks ago on the show, the first time there was an image of Princess Catherine, Princess of Wales through a car window a couple of weeks ago that made it appear like her hair was sort of yellowish.
Honey honey blonde.
Yes, And it was all over the Daily Mail and everything, and everyone was saying, oh my God. And I confidently said on this show now, I can't really explain to you how I know, deep in my soul she did not dye her hair blonde. Princess Catherine is no more allowed to dye her hair blonde than she is to pick her undie's out of her bomb.
But I saw those pictures of her in the limousine or something, and they think that it's blonde. Is it just light? The lighting?
It's a pat picture right through a car window that looks like she's gone proper blonde blonde. But a strategic leak has already been placed with the Daily Mail that says this is just yacht hair. She has spent the summer in Greece and she's slowly been lightening her brown from chestnut to more caramelli and there's just a bit of summer sun on it. But Diana was blonde, yeah, but she didn't start off brunette.
Okay, So it's a royal rule that you can't go from brunette.
Well, I just think it's just very unlikely to have such a dramatic hair chakee well until now, right, So I was very very wrong because, as everybody listening to this knows, on Friday Thursday, their time, she and William went to an event I think they were Oh yes, they were looking at the newly renovated gardens outside the Natural History Museum in London, because that's the kind of
fun shit that is going to do. And all anyone wanted to talk about was the fact that she had blonde hair, big hair, the fonty hair, and the internet went into meltdown. Yes, what did you two think when you first saw it? I'm going to get to in a minute to what people were saying, But what did you two think?
Definitely drastic change, and there was a lot of andy going around with the images, and a lot of people were speculating about wig or extensions or topper all that kind of stuff. I felt slightly uncomfortable with some of the discourse, although I went, yeah, she probably does have some sort of like topper, which is sort of not a wig but additional hair.
Right, Obviously this is a sensitive topic and we're going to put this on the table because, as we know, in January this year, Princess Catherine said that she was in remission from cancer and she had had chemotherapy treatment last year, and she has spoken publicly about how She called it a roller coaster. She said it was brutal. She says that the adjustment to a post treatment life has been really difficult, which is something that very many women,
well people can relate to. And there's no question that obviously, the issues around hair with cancer treatment are very sensitive. She never appeared to lose her hair, of course, but we don't know and nor should we know, what's been going on. So there's obviously a sensitivity around discussing this,
which feels a bit icky. But then on the other hand, there is no question that often what a royal or We've talked about this with other public figures like politicians, with their appearance, they're often trying to have as little commentary as possible, like I just look the same every time you see me. I'm wearing very boring things. I'm not doing you know, I'm not doing this, I'm not doing that. I don't want to attract any commentary. And this was a big shift, so Kate was not doing
that with this. Some of the commentary has obviously been very icky around it because it hasn't been very complimentary. But Amelia, do you think it's fair game for conversation?
Yeah?
I think that was really well put, Holly.
And a lot of the debate that was happening in my group chats was about whether or not it was a wig. And what I found helpful was someone who did some actual reporting on this, and that was Caitlin Colemore, who's a hairstylist that Laney gossip called up and this was in Laney's newslet of The Squawk, and Caitlin Colemore's assessment was that these were extensions, they were not a wig. And the reason she said that is because there was no lace front visible, so it was Kate's actual hair
on top, the new blonde hair color on top. And then the issue is that the extensions that have been clipped underneath had not been executed well, meaning they hadn't been brushed through in a way that made them look seamless. Now Laney asks the question, and we all know that Laney is an expert on the signals that celebrities and public figures send in terms of things like their appearance. She makes the point that Kate is the future Queen of England.
She has plenty of resources, she has very skilled people working with her.
So the question is why did they not give their a game on this really important occasion for someone who's going through a lot. And my personal theory on this is that I wonder if Kate doesn't want to remind us that she's going through a lot behind the scenes
that we don't know about. In addition to her recovery from cancer, there may be other things happening too, and it's just a reminder that we don't always know everything that's happening in her life, and maybe she wants to remind us that she's got more important things to think about right now than making sure that her hair is executed perfectly.
This is my theory, as much as it's in any way okay for a grown woman to have a theory about another grown woman's hair. A while ago, you might remember that Kate's press office said, and then sort of backtracked, that they weren't going to talk about her clothes anymore. Do you remember that I said that it was always very standard that you would release the details of what a princess or a senior royal was wearing, like what designers she's wearing, Da da, Da da, And they kind
of said, we're going to stop doing that. Then they backtracked on it a little bit because there was an outcry from people who were very upset about it. But a lot of women who've gone through something as serious and life altering as Kate has over the past year or two come out with realigned priorities, And I sort of wonder if Kate is just jack of being the perfectly poised, quafft princess at all times and is kind of like, all right, so the hair isn't perfect today. I don't give a shit.
You know.
I haven't done a million things to my face that people think I should be doing. I'm wearing clothes I was wearing six months ago, which is something she's always done. For a start, she's always reworn clothes and things. She's kind of going, who gives a shit. I want to be here to support causes I care about, talk about issues that matter. But the problem is that's all we all care about. And when I say we, I don't
necessarily mean us. But you know, that's all the public cares about when it comes to a princess, so it's kind of it must be very frustrating if she's like, I want to send a message that who cares if I didn't brush my hair perfectly? But then that goes around the world.
To extend that theory a little further, I think we should remember that William is currently going through a kind of renegotiation of what it means to be a royal and how many engagements he should have each year. There was actually some reporting in Tatler last month that Princess Anne, who was seventy five now and who has always done the most engagements of anyone in the royal family, is annoyed at William. She says he is not doing enough
engagements and let me get the numbers right here. In the last year she did four hundred and seventy four engagement oh my god, which is mind boggling when you think about it.
And I talked about this list in his book about how when it comes out every the list that Amilia is talking about, the royals will get really shitty with each other.
And AD's always at the top. William last year did one hundred and thirty five. Now, obviously it was a hugely tough year for his.
Father and wife. Both were dealing with cancer diagnosis.
Yes, but also more generally, he and Kate have talked about for a long time about how they want to really focus on the early years of their children's lives and give them the kind of care and attention that frankly William did not get. They believe that that will set them up best for a life in the public eye. So this is part of also a renegotiation of what it means to be royal, how often should you be
seen in public? And I think you've got to see this hair change as part of that overall renegotiation.
I wonder if too, I've heard people talk about when something really dramatic happens in your life, whether that's a diagnosis or a loss that can't necessarily be seen from the outside, sometimes you want a visual marker that you've changed. So it's the classic getting a fringe after a breakup
in terms of I don't feel the same anymore. So I can completely understand how Kate feels like a totally different person if it has literally impacted her hair, which I mean, it probably has even you know, that sort of of treatment, it would make sense. I would think that if you're in the public eye, and even for the sake of getting ready more quickly, I would think that having extensions or top of the pieces something you
do all the time. And the other thing that I've heard a few hairdressers say is that for women over forty, you often see them go to that exact color. And the reason they go to that exact color is because you don't need to cover grays as much. If you have dark brown hair and you're starting to get little grays, it's every two weeks you're having to cover them and exactly, and so you go to that and you're able to kind of mix it in a little bit more So that kind of made.
Sense too out loud as prepare for much Kate hairwatch because then on Sunday she was out watching our Wallaroos get smashed by the English actually and the rugby and it looked like she was brunette again. But then the video in the change room with different lighting, Oh, look like she was blood again. Brown blood, brown blood. We've got whiplash. So just I think we all need a chill PILLLP.
I think as a culture too, there's something about wigs, because there is this obsession with men and wigs. So Harry styles. There have been rumors for years about his hair loss. Yes, about his hair loss. It's all the f one. There are certain players where it's like he has a topper or whatever. There are like Instagram accounts dedicated to it, and I think it's it's almost been coded or read. Is this thing about honesty or transparency, like that they're being somehow dishonest. Harry has had to
address it publicly. Yeah, there's this idea that people are kind of fooling us, which I think is really unfair because you go, how many ways do we all change our appearance before we leave the house, But wigs is just this kind of other.
I think that's a really good point.
And I think that's actually also changing a little bit too, because just recently John Cena came out and said that when he was losing hair, he got hair transplants and then his Hollywood career took off again.
Yeah, it's big business, the hair transplants. Oh, which brings me in a nice segway to my friend Prince Harry, who I am convinced has had a hair transplant, but that's just my theory. Nothing to see him move along. And we all know I was wrong about Kate's blonde, so you never know. Anyway, a little bit of Harry
gossip for my Royal roundup. Watch this week what happens in England with Hazard because he's there right and this is significant because this is the first time that Prince Harry has been back to Britain since he famously lost that court case you know where he said that he wanted to automatically get the highest level of protection from the British police when every time he went to Britain and he lost that case and he was really mad about it, and he went on the BBC and sprayed
basically and pretty much accused his family of not caring whether he died when he was on their soil.
And it cost him millions, to cost him millions.
It was not good. He was going nuclear about it. Anyway, he's back and what's interesting is that he's gone back for a charity function also the anniversary of the Queen's death. But he has gone by for a charity function tonight London, time for a charity that his sport's called Well Child. He went to that last year too. He's also going to another children's charity event where he's expected to announce a big donation to this charity in another part of England.
But what's interesting is all the leaks that are coming out clearly from his people, because they're in People magazine and everything, are saying Harry is so excited to be there, He's going to make the most of it, He's going to have fun. They are clearly trying to change the tune from sad Harry feeling unloved and unwelcome to happy Harry can't wait to be back. But everyone is saying
is he going to see his dad? It is generally believed that he has not seen Charles since February twenty twenty four.
Well, the league's coming out on the other side too, because in the Telegraph, which I believe is commonly referred to as the Tory Graph because it's quite conservative and more royal family and line establishment, there was an article saying that he's absolutely not going to meet with Charles, and he's certainly not going to meet with William.
That's not Willy on.
The Pale, but also not Charles and also make the point that since Center Barlay, that charity that he started, had the bullying scandal, he's really been casting about and he wants to have a kind of royal proxy role where he can show up at charities and he can do the good works. But Center Barlay's kind of imploded on him, and so there's a feeling with this visit that he's kind of casting about something new.
It'd be really sad if he doesn't go and have a pop in with King Charle, I know.
Especially since how much he's been expressing that he wants to. In a moment, Australian wellness figure Pete Evans has returned and we want to unpack what role he is playing in the culture now. Pete Evans, the fifty two year old former television chef he used to be on My Kitchen Rolls, made a rare public appearance earlier this month on a podcast called Get Harder. He was back on my Instagram.
Yeah, all over my socials.
Yeah to subscribe to the Get Harder podcast.
No.
No, I thought that there was probably a side of Instagram where Pete Evans still was because I knew he'd had his account reactivated, but I hadn't seen him before we get to any of that, just to refresh. Evans was an acclaimed author and TV personality whose claims about
health and wellness became increasingly outlandish. So first there was the Paleo Cookbook for Mothers and Babies, which he released in twenty fifteen, and that was enormously controversial because of a recipe which of the bone broth recipe for infants that dietitians came out and they were like, this would do a lot of harm to a child a baby. Then came the Healing Lamp he tried to market in twenty twenty as a treatment for COVID, and that landed him with a fine of more than twenty five thousand
dollars from the Therapeutic Goods Administration. Look, there's much more, but long story short. He got pulled off Instagram and Facebook, where he was very influential and had a massive, massive platform, and he was pulled off for deliberately spreading misinformation this year. Earlier this year, however, he was back and he has a much smaller audience, but he's there. He is being interviewed on many podcasts about how the lockdown in Melbourne
was a disaster. How people are scared of his teachings because they get people out of the system. By that, he means the hospital medical system, and we all know how lucrative that system is.
I think what you're referring to is what he would call the medical industrial complex. Y.
Yes, exactly, rash exactly. He's going up against those guys. He's wearing a t shirt that says food is Medicine, and he's also selling a bunch of retreats. What's interesting to me is that a lot of his beliefs now are sounding familiar and quite in tune with a cultural reset we've seen, particularly since the pandemic. A lot of his beliefs are sort of the bedrock of the Make America Healthy Again or MAHA movement, spearheaded by Robert F.
Kennedy Junior, the Secretary of Health and Human Services. Is this all becoming far more mainstream and is it kind of happening across the world.
Yeah, And it's such a sort of strange alliance of people because I think one of you mentioned that he's also shilling for bitcoin at the same time, right, Yeah, And he's appearing at a bitcoin conference in Las Vegas as we speak, which I'm disappointed to be missing.
But I wonder.
Why there's this sort of overlapse between insul culture or the manisphere. More accurately, I think cryptocurrency, health nuts. I wonder what that coalition is all about. And we see it most vividly in the Trump administration. Because Donald Trump
is not a man who's concerned with wellness culture. I would say we talked about his love, but he knew by inviting Robert F. Kennedy Junior, a former Democrat, into his coalition, he knew that he was tapping into this increasingly important, vocal group of men and women who were interested in cryptocurrency, interested in health, and the idea of bucking the mainstream culture in these ways. And he knew
that that was a very powerful political coalition. Of course, Ourka Junior's doing all sorts of terrible things right now. So for instance, when he was first nominated, he said, no, I love vaccines. I'm very mainstream, I believe in science. He appeared before a Congressional committee last week and kind of just threw all of that out the window. He said he thinks that the COVID vaccine should no longer be recommended for healthy adults, and in fact, they've decided
not to do that in the US. He says he doesn't know how many people died of COVID in the US during the pandemic. It was one point two million, and he fired an entire panel of childhood vaccine experts, opening the door for states like Florida to say that you do not have to get childhood vaccines to ender school there, which is making people worried about polio. So there are real effects of these Why do you think this has such purchase right now? Because I think there's
a kernel of truth to it. There are things in our modern lifestyle that clearly doing us damage. You only have to look at the fact that early on set cancers are hugely on the rise, particularly the gastro intestinal ones. And look, doctors have speculated as to why this is, and they've identified some things like obesity and microplastics, by the way, two things that RFK Junior has been very vocal about the fact that he wants to fight.
But also, we still don't.
Really know why young people are getting cancer at higher rates. So I think there's a kernel of truth to it.
I'm fascinated by Pete Evans, and I always have been because when he was at his peak of influence paleo influence, I mean, because obviously he became very famous and built up a massive following just being a handsome guy who was on My Kitchen Rules and was kind of charming next to Manu, right, and everybody liked that. And then he became really interested in this Food is Medicine movement. And what was fascinating is if you watched his social
media at that time, which I did. Obviously writing on the internet was a He had a huge community, but it started from you know, here's some nice salads, here's some healthy things to that all looked delicious, and then you could watch his slide into Black Lives Matter as a conspiracy, COVID as a conspiracy big farmers out to get us all, like it's like a case study of
radicalization if you watched what was happening with him. But one of the things that made him so powerful and effective, and I would say still makes him quite powerful and effective, is that the community that he built up, particularly on Facebook, because when he got tossed off those platforms, he had and combined following about two million, and I listened to this podcast interview that you're talking about Jesse. He is entirely unapologetic about absolutely anything, and in fact, he's not
even whinging about it. He just says, this was my journey, and I was. He sees himself very much as a sort of messiah in a way. But he had this very engaged community who had followed some of his dietary advice and found it massively helpful. And those are real people. And he said that most of them were women, most of them were over forty, and they became his evangelical foot soldiers. And I'm not diminishing them in any way.
The stories were very real about the ways that changing the way they ate had made them feel better and more energized and all of these things. And if you ever wrote anything negative about Pete Evans on the Internet in those days, which I did, I'm afraid it's trolling, Like I haven't had it on any other topic. People would come for you because it men or women, a lot both, but a lot of people who genuinely felt like this information had been really really helpful to them.
And who are you to say that it's nonsense? And I get that right. But the thing that you then saw that's overreach is like eating healthily, cutting out lots of processed foods, trying to eat you know, lean meat, lots of organic vegetables, all of that stuff. Great, great bit privileged, bit special, but great. But then this overstep would be and you can cure X, and you can cure Y. And the reason your child has this diagnosis is because that and it's the overreach and the overreach.
It's really interesting, and I wonder if that army of his is still engaged in mainstream or not, because you can't deny that some of the things that he was talking about that sort of got him mocked in those days, just like Gwyneth Paltrow says this a lot too, and now pretty mainstream. If you want to go to Pete Evans Retreat, I looked it up. Cost you about two grand for two nights to go to the beautiful property
and have a weekend of wellness. But you're looking at you know, magnesium baths, infrared saunas, forest bathing, like this is all stuff that lots of people are doing all the time. You know, even the heat lamp thing that he sold, which was obviously extreme, and he massively overstepped by tying it to COVID. But people are in infrared saunas at all, kinds of wellness retreats all over the place at the moment, and a lot of this stuff
has become really mainstream. And so his weapon, if you like, is saying, well, I was right, I was right.
And never accepting for it, and never accepting the things that he was wrong about. And the issue with a lot of these alternative remedies is that they haven't been put through clinical trials because a lot of them are really difficult to do so, because these are human bodies and it would be dangerous. And often traditional medicine doesn't say these don't work. They just say we don't have enough evidence. And that's the way that science works and evolves.
And so the criticism of science as well is that, well, they told us this, and now it's this. Yes, science changes its mind by virtue of running experiments and research studies.
Right.
And I listened to this great Ezra Klein episode last week about how make America Healthy Again is a bad answer to a very good question, and the core of it the idea that our diets and processed food and maybe medicines that we're taking and all of that have contributed to maybe more widespread ill health. The increasing kind
of diagnosis and stuff isn't necessarily helping. And I was thinking about that and a lot of because, as you say, Amelia, this rise of illnesses in young people, sort of these random cancers in people that appear health like, it's just
it's horrific. Speaking to a friend recently, and we were saying, people who have been diagnosed, gone through the treatment that ultimately saved their lives, which is chemo or radiation or a mixture or surgery, come out the other end with an openness to alternative therapies and a streak of what we call WU. And I don't mean that to denigrate it at all. I just think it's a really interesting data point.
I think the other reason for that, and this is the demographic that Pete Evans says his followers were this over forties women. There are so many women who are not getting the answers to the questions that they have at their GP. And that's where most of us who don't have the resources or the access to go to a million different specialists and get a million test runs.
We go to our GP and we say I'm feeling like this, I'm feeling like that, and they'll be like, oh, just could be nothing, could be this, could be that, But they're unsatisfactory answers, and so you go looking online for more satisfactory answers. And it doesn't seem massively odd that if you change the way you eat and change the way you live and start exercising and blah blah and you start feel better, that you might feel incredibly
evangelical about that because it has changed your life. The problem, though, the fact that he may well have had an undeniable positive impact on some people's health through diet advice, is that the other part that goes hand in hand with this that really upsets people, and for very good reason, is that the core of it all is a kind
of well, if you're sick, it's your fault. And he says on this podcast as well as you know, as I say, he's just incredibly confident, incredibly apologetic, but he basically says he believes that mindset can cure almost anything, and that kind of advice is not only dangerous because it can stop people from seeking the treatment that they need, but also is emotionally devastating because it really puts the what you just didn't fight hard enough, You had the
wrong mindset, you weren't willing to be disciplined enough with your diet, and that is the toxic part of all this.
You know what, though, Holly, it's also deeply attractive because when people run out of options, I mean, there is nothing that sparks fearing people like ill health and their mortality. You would do anything, you would believe in literally anything, And so I have such empathy for people who then move to some of these alternative treatments or follow these people like gurus, because you know, sometimes you do get to the end of the road and all you need is hope.
But it would be like, you know, a populist prime minister getting voted in in Australia and putting Pete Evans in charge of our health system. It is not that different to that.
Is it. No? And I think the other thing, the other lesson that we've learned from the pandemic is that silencing these people or deplatforming them to use that expression doesn't work. Because Donald Trump was kicked off Twitter too. We really crack down on the idea of you're not allowed to say certain things on social media platforms, and
social media companies got on board with that idea. Remember there used to be those little warnings during the pandemic about medical misinformation on Instagram.
Some of which ended up being true.
Yeah, so I think there was this issue of if we don't let them speak, then they'll go away, but they haven't.
It's interesting too that we're now telling a story about the pandemic, and in this as Reclined episode where he interviews experts, they say the two things people have forgotten is the death that it's more than one million people died, and the second is that the only reason this pandemic ended was because of the vaccines. And to have rewritten that narrative by now is just a fascinating response.
The Internet has died, and I know who killed it. Let's step back. The Internet's gotten boring, right, You've noticed this. Every time I want to procrastinate from work, I go on to the Internet, which we used to call the information super Highway, and now it's more just like a sort of clogged side road.
It's just sit there's nothing there.
Yeah, yeah, okay, there's a reason why the CEO of chat gpt. His name is Sam Altman. He has tweeted that he now believes in this so called dead Internet theory. This is a conspiracy theory which says that the majority of content online now is actually generated by bots, it's not actually by humans, and that's why the Internet has got really boring. And Oltman said that a lot of tweets now are being written by l elms, that is, large language models, like the one that he produces called
chat GPT. Now you may wonder why someone who is shilling chat gpt is also telling us that it's making the Internet bad. It's because he has another company that works out whether humans are really posting things online, Like you know when it says click the boxes here that have motorbikes in them to proof that you're human.
That's his other company.
Oh the amount of times I have to prove I'm a human?
Oh and I get it by yeah, I'm like, what do you mean by motorbike?
Like a little bit of a corner here? Is that a motive that a pushbike? I have to do it like four times.
Same and it's like the amount of times I get tested. I'm like, how many times are they not humans, and couldn't you get a bot to do this? I mean, I suppose apparently.
This is the one thing that bots still can't do, is they cannot recognize patterns that tell them what things are and what things aren't. That's like the one thing they haven't figured.
Out what to do yet. They're threatening highest strata of a community's jobs and all of these things, but they can't pick a motorbike. They cannot pick a motorbikes.
While there's in fact these like big warehouses where people are trying to train computers to recognize objects bridges, So there are people whose whole job it is to be like, hey, computer, this is a bridge, this is a bridge, this is a bridge.
I'm hoping eventually.
I've often thought this about Reddit, though, because I spend a lot of time on Reddit, and they'll be a mighty asshole. Is a famous kind of Subreddit or today I learned or whatever. And you see trends and you see patterns, and I've always thought not that it's a bot, but that it's someone from Reddit. And same with Twitter. Right, it's like someone planting no.
It's a bot.
A really yeah?
And I think you can start to tell now.
There is in fact a really interesting Wikipedia entry which is all about the ways you can tell that something's been written by AI and among the many signs are an overuse of M dashes.
Which is an M dash is like a lot.
Really online, and also a lot of hyperbole, like, for instance, the most interesting plant in the world is such and such, just because the computer thinks that, because it's being asked to write about it, it's a really important topic, which is always the case.
Because you always see as well at the end of articles, now you know there's recommended articles just from around the internet, and it'll be like, you won't believe what this nineties pop star looks like now, and it's a one hundred and forty year old AI generated woman from an internet website that doesn't exist. It's like, it's just absolute slop.
It's crap and it's everywhere. So many cures for belly fat hah. After the break. The one tip to make your small talk better.
One unlimited out loud access. We dropped episodes every Tuesday and Thursday exclusively for Mamma Mia subscribers. Follow the link in the show notes to get us in your ears five days a week. And a huge thank you to all our current subscribers.
Small talk gets a really bad rap.
I think I think I've heard you say, Holy, you don't even like small.
Talk, so I can't be doing with it okay, And I'm also really bad at it. To be honest, Well, I haven't just a study for you.
There's a new study that's come out that explains how we can all get better at small talk.
Actually, I just have to do a little correction to the record. Actually, Amelia is because I remember years ago when I started working with some young promising journalists called Claire and Jesse Stevens. I actually had a word with them about small talk beauns right, because they hadn't worked in an office before and they didn't know that like when somebody comes into the kitchen and says to you, like how should that? It was good to engage them
like smile, say hello when you walk in. And I was actually being an advocate for small talk at that time in my life, when I was a manager, I was like, all be nice to each other, all ask each other how your weekends were, smile and nod. But now I think maybe my tolerance for it is just warm. I don't know so much small talk in you.
I didn't know that, like it was a learned skill for me, that when you enter the office on a Monday morning you vocally acknowledge those around you Like that doesn't come naturally to me.
I am going to wager that what you told Jesse about how to do small talk is in fact wrong, because you know, when we're all taught how to make conversation, one of the key rules is that you meant to folly back and forth. It's meant to be like a game of tennis. I don't play tennis, but this is my understanding. I let the tennis correspond to chime in where some ask you a question, then you asked them a question back. So here's an example of how you
might do small talk this way. How is your weekend?
Oh good, I've binge to Netflix you.
Yeah, I took my dog to the park. Oh nice, what sort of dog is he? So do you see what happened there? There was just a pinging back and forth. It never got anywhere. You didn't ask what they were watching on Netflix. It never got below the surface.
Yeah.
Now, these psychologists say that you've got to get below the surface because that's where human connection is. If you stay on the surface, just pinging back and forth, you're never going to get anywhere. And they have introduced this concept called riffing. It's almost like flirting by another name.
It's like picking up something that someone said and rather than just immediately volleying back a basic question to them, making a little joke about it, or starting to sort of do a little bit of imaginary play around it. Think about kids. When little kids go to the park, they're not engaging in small talk. They're immediately like we're playing like shipwrecked pirates. You're the pirate, you're the you know,
the ocean coming up to the ship. But you know, they like to just assign roles immediately.
And not like how are your snacks? My snacks are good.
And they understand the concept of yes, and that in order to socialize you've got to lean in and go yes. All of the books I read to Learna are about like you might not want to play round and round, but you have to in order to get along with Morton. And I'm like, oh, really learning these lessons, I guess.
And this is a famous improvisational technique which says you've always got to go along with what someone else proposes.
So here's how it might play out in small talk role play. How is your weekend good?
But I watched way too many tiktoks of people making little food whoall like little food, like dollhouse sized food. Yeah, if you want to learn how to make lasagna in a dollhouse, let me know.
That's hilarious.
We can organize a tiny food poplark and put it all on this coaster.
And it sounds like any.
Questions, Yeah, it sounds like we're in an episode of Friends.
That's hilarious. Okay, here's the problem with it. I went to the hairdresser this morning and she asked me how my father's day was?
And I just read this article.
Hold on, yes, and what time do you go to the hair in the morning because it's Monday.
Wow, that's amazing.
This is my dedication to the VOD format. So she said, how was your father's Day? And I said, oh, it's good. How's your father's Day? Yeah?
Good? And I just thought to myself there was no to be fair at once seven am. Are you going to be able to incorporate riffing?
HOI let's see if you're on your game and you're feeling energetic, then yes, because I have a lot of questions for you about the hairdressers. At seven, I am not before coffee, but definitely need a coffee. But it is true that sometimes because the problem with small talk is sometimes you just do it to box tick obviously, So I'm like, in the kitchen this morning, cup of tea, how is your weekend good? How is your weekend good? Awkward size, and then you're kind of like, oh, the
weather was it? Because it was? The weather was lovely, wasn't it. And the thing is is there's a script that we I bet there were five different versions more of that in the kitchen this morning, where we all said exactly the same thing. So I guess the way we should have done that is I go, how is your weekend? You say good? How was your weekend? I say, well, I got some bad news from home. My dog vomited on the carpet. I spent way too much time up to my ears in horseshit, Like.
How is The response is that's hilarious.
We couldn't start a horse stable with all that horseshit, Jesse, you had to learn small Yeah.
How could you could you incorporate this new rule? I think so.
I like the idea and this is something that comes up in all the small talk advice is levity, right, because I think some people are like, I don't like small talk. I'm going to talk about death, and it's like, no, not at seven am with the hairdresser people.
You don't know.
No.
So I read this advice from a woman named Alison wood Brooks and it's the talk. It's like an acronym talk. So the first one stands for topics, and the idea is that you know what, before you walk in on a Monday morning, maybe have some topics. Yes, it says people prepare way more what they're going to wear the next day than what they're going to talk about. We put so much thought into what we're going to wear, and then we get in and we're like, like, someone's
going to ask you about your weekend. Have a think what you're going to say?
This is because I do this to my kids, right, is that if I'm going to take my kids too, now that they're older and they or you know, they can be little kids are entertaining for everybody, but teenagers they'll be like, oh oh, they're going to be on a call with their grandma for a while, and they're like, oh, I want to be doing this. I'm like, think of one story. Think of one story you're going to tell grandma.
Or when we go to this thing today, they're all going to want to know, Matilda about your grand final and Billy how you're doing at school. Those are boring questions. Think of a good story, just one yeah story.
Yeah.
So I prep them like that, And so what you're saying is we should all be prepping like that before we step into the arena of conversation.
Yes, yes, I actually I ran into someone yesterday who's like an acquaintance, and weirdly he had been on my mind because of the last conversation we had. So as soon as I saw him, it wasn't awkward because I was like, oh, my goodness, I'm so glad I ran into you. I've been meaning to tell you black Like, so that sort of thing is meant to be really good.
Can we role play what should I have done at the hairdresser when she said, how is your father's day?
I think he should have prepared like.
You know, what's interesting. We tried a new method of cooking steak, boiled it at the end, and does anyone want to hear me?
Yes, you need to think of one interesting thing that happened on your Father's day. Give me one.
Now that was that technique. I'm sorry, steak.
I'm going to give you the next and then you have to do it. Okay, A is for asking, So then you have to ask Holly a question based off your Okay, maybe did you have steak?
Yeah? What's your preferred method of cooking stack?
Yes? Perfect? And then Holly say I.
Didn't cook the steak. My friend did, but she's very good at cooking steak, and she made garlic butter with it.
Oh, now that's hilarious.
And then that brings us to levity or lightness. That's hilarious levity because then Holly is going to say I can't cook ha haha.
I'm going to say I probably had too much garlic butter. Don't come too close to me this morning.
But then tell me what is is it kissing?
No, it's kindness, and you're going to say you don't stink.
Exactly.
Generosity apparently meant to come into situation and go, what does this person you know? Sometimes you have small talk and you go, oh, this person seems a little nervous. It's like, oh, my job is to make this person feel comfortable or less overwhelmed or whatever. And so it's about like bringing generosity.
To ask levity kindness.
Yeah, I like that.
I love it.
You haven't told us one interesting thing about your father's day?
Oh, one interesting thing about my father's day.
Did you make a fuss with all the fathers in your life?
Yes? And I bought my dad a new T shirt. He already had this T shirt. He wore it too much and washed it too much that it was destroyed. I've recommended threadheads on here before and it's a collage of the girl's faces and lunar and it says pop is the best on it. And so now we've decided that he just can't wash it because the images will come on.
Can I riff on that?
I got my partner some socks that have our two kids' faces on.
Oh, that's got just brought them online.
Okay, very levity with that. Something new afoot in the Melia Lester household. That was terrible cut cut, Oh dear, okay, on that note, not that classy, classy, very neat.
We do need to practice, We need to practice more.
But that's all we've got time for today. The more small talk. A massive thank you to all of you for being with us here on today's show, and of course to our fabulous team for putting it together. Friends, don't forget that the reason Amelia got her head done and the reason I got the date wrong today is because we are making video here. And if you want to watch the show instead of listening, or as well as listening, you will find us on YouTube. We'll see you tomorrow.
Bye bye. Shout out to any Mum and me a subscribers listening. If you love the show and you want to support us, subscribing to Mom and Mia is the very best way to do so. There's a link in the episode description.
They be s
Intand they should be the SA